pygy

There was a tryruby repository at Github, but I don't know if it was all that was needed to run it.

One of the things that bother me more is the fact that he also pulled the plug on all the mailing list of his projects, which would have been the right place to discuss what to do with the code.

I read his original blog on advogado today. There's a mention of his father undergoing a mental breakdown, and of his sister having drugs and alcohol problems. It ends like this:

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"and i go home and draw cats and doctors in space. without the medication. i'm a stiff. an upright. i'll never pass a joint. maybe mj works, maybe mj's death. i have too much mental illness in my blood to find out. narco+alco have turned kooky people i love into obliterated people i love. god, god, god, please keep her alive. (if i'm lucky maybe god will let a horse run by.)

families are a network of lost packets and bad routing. cause you got spouses on the vpn. it's not all that bad, but it's fun to moan, ya know."

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While there are some errements, these themes are far too recurrent to just be whimsical.

It was there when he wrote the chapter, with the comic section attached next to it.

There are other allusions to him leaving the scene/dying in other writings.

It may not be the right place to discuss these matters, but it's the only place I have (with the programming reddit, but the userbase is different).

http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/images/the.foxes-6... :-(

Tall Fox: -Have you noticed that this book is basically written by a _lunatic_?

Short Fox: -Yup

Tall Fox: -Seriously, he's way too hyperactive. If he keeps at this frantic pace he's gonna burn out quick.

Short Fox: -Burn out? He's gonna shoot himself in the head by the time he hits 30.

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From that kind of comment and the pace of his work (bouts of rabid coding interspersed with AWOL periods), I'm afraid he's bipolar. His only output (code, writing, mailing list contributions) in june was a single tweet saying that he was trapped in a labyrinth of his own design.

I sincerely hope he's alright.

I'd rather say magicpn ;-) (see potion's source)

The hacker side of the sentence is not debatable.

He wrote a graphical toolkit, a sound synthesiser, an HTML parser, html template language, a language (grammar, parser, vm and jit, gc, ...), and many other software projects on his own.

All of these are a joy to use. They are not only well though out technically (and it's an euphemisim), their APIs are excellent and often fun to use, and they are wonderfully documented.

Do you know of many people who are proficient in so many domains?

He also has a very personal graphic and literary style. What makes him unique is that he treated coding as an artistic medium too, and that he was able to mix his various skills to create integrated works.

Can you name somebody else that would qualify for these traits?

If not he's indeed a remarkably unique artist/hacker, and a creative visionary since no one had done that before.

There has always been some dark corners in _why's writing, with some dreary biographical detyails permeating.

I 2000-2001, his parents divorced, and his father went through a mental breakdown.

A bit later he writes that suicide would be the only thing preventing him from finishing some work.

Death is present in several chapters of the poingnant guide.

Then comes this: "narco+alco have turned kooky people i love into obliterated people i love. god, god, god, please keep her alive." in the post linked above.

The 4th version of shoes should have been nicked "murder". One of his last tweets was "i thought that RIP was strictly for cremation." ... An I find the Shoes book scary.

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Overall, his universe wasn't as fun as he tried to present it.

I simply hope he's ok.

“A guy walks up to me and asks 'What's Punk?'. So I kick over a garbage can and say 'That's punk!'. So he kicks over the garbage can and says 'That's Punk?', and I say 'No, that's trendy!'” -- Billy Joel Armstrong.

You're missing a few things.

Your second line is phonetically almost as good as the original, IMO, but the picture isn't as fun. Both are imitating the same (good) template and are therefore less original.

Regarding (modern) art, context is king. Most of these tweets would of little worth if taken independently. They may not have much lasting appeal (the future will tell us, I hope some of them do), but they were fun or puzzling in the context of why writing them, and I enjoyed reading them.

He's got humor, you know. That pun chain doesn't seem offensive to me.

Thanks for putting up the link.

The interresting part is that you can define on the spot a single usen, throwaway function to be used as a parameter of a function that accepts functions as arguments.

Another property of lambdas is nested defines with the possibility to return an inner function (be it anonymous or not) from an outer one.

At last their lexical scope allows, in the inner/outer functions described above, to keep the scope of the outer function alive as long as the returned inner function is referenced. This allows to make them work as lightweight objects (or even to define an object system if you want to).

It makes sense for the author to use it, since he wants to emulate the behaviour of the "Recent Applications", etc. Dock folders. A bounce is unwelcome in this case, and the other benefits of the normal application startup (like being registered in the "Recent Apps" list) are useless for him.

When I was an intern, I witnessed, helpless, a newborn losing most of his left hemisphere in the first hours of his life because of a massive meningeal hemorrhage (he's hemophiliac). He was only left with an atrophic, gliotic frontal lobe (and an intact right hemisphere).

It was 5 years ago. Today, he can walk, use both hands, speaks two languages and has a normal mental development. He's paretic (reduced force) on the right side and a bit temperamental, but he should live a quasi-normal life (he will have some difficulties at sport).

That's just amazing :-)

The perception of auras is a kind of synesthesia (emotions => vision). It can also be related to optical illusions (like contrast amplification).

Spontaneous synesthetic aura perception is very rare, and I don't know if you can develop it later on, or if secondary "aura readers" percieve the second kind, or if a strong emotion can trigger the phenomenon is someone who usually doesn't percieve it.

There's nothing magical related to that.

I'm using Chrome 2.0.172.33 and I don't experience what you are describing.

"Rational person" is an oxymoron.

A sufficient amount of harassing and violence (both mental and physical) can lead someone to mental breakdown. The threshold may vary from one person to the next, of course, but it can be done.

Furthermore, some studies suggest that depressed people have a more objective assesment of reality (specifically, their estimation of what other people think of them is spot on, whereas non depressed people think that the others see them in a better light than they actually do).

We developed through evolution an optimist bias that keeps most people afloat and allowed humans to survive despite their part of rationality.

Actually, I think that we should give it a user-parsable name, quite like Microsoft did when they switched renamed Palladium (easy to remember, easy to target in the media) to NGSCB (technical gibbersish, scary for non techies), but in reverse.

It was very effective for Microsoft. Palladium was all over the place in tech media, NGSCB got much less coverage.

I remember seeing the phrase "infected by DRM" on Slashdot by it didn't get much traction.

I think that labelling a DRMed work as "locked" would be quite effective.

The feedback mechanism is priceless here.

Becoming increddibly good at something nobody wants is somewhat useless.

It's usually a consequence of not caring much about one's appearance due to your lack of social skills ans poor self image.

Beauty comes in part from your attitude, too.

It will look identical assuming the 262k colors monitor reduces the gammut using the same method used for that image.

It was clear, to me at least :-).

I know a future neurosurgeon who, as a teen, used to code 3D demos in 80386 assembly... Including whipping on his own linear algebra routines, for the fun of it...

That said, I agree with your point, and thank you for your support.

They give the name of the main authors (first and last), and the journal in which it has been published in the same paragraph, which is actually amazing in a vulgarization article...

Usually, you can be happy if they named one of the investigators. It's all about "scientists".

That said, it's true that the article itself is light on facts. The fact that the paper had been published in Science was a good hint, though.

I don't think that your "high energy" profile is related to your late profile.

Disrupting the natural sleep tendencies (usually) results in diminished energy. The early vs late type depends on a balance between the day/night light variations, and an internal clock that produces an internal sleep pressure.

I think that early people have an endogenous cycle shorter than 24 hours, and the opposite for the late type.

Some do, some don't. Most people go back to their natural patterns during the holidays, though. The classification is based on forms asking questions in a context of freedom from external constraints.

I'm not very familiar with sleep research, but I'd guess that both types will underperform if their natural penchant is disturbed (by work hours, for example).

Edit: Here is the actual screening form (in French) used for the studies: http://www2.ulg.ac.be/crc/in/CIRCADIEN_ONLYweb.html ... Adapted from: Horne, J. A. and O. Ostberg (1976). "A self-assessment questionnaire to determine morningness-eveningness in human circadian rhythms." Int J Chronobiol 4(2): 97-110.

Extreme early and late subject are further "diagnosed" with more exhaustive tests.

"After 10 hours of being awake" is correct actually.

For the behavioral part of the study, "In their relative evening, late risers are more alert and can outperform early birds in a reaction time test assuming they're allowed follow their natural sleep rhythm, whereas there are no such differences in the morning" would be more accurate.

For the imaging one: "Ten hours after waking up early birds show patterns of activation similar to those of sleep deprived people (1 night skipped). Late owls show patterns associated with optimal concentration". The sleep pressure in EB is also greater as demonstrated by the amount on slow wave sleep in the first part of the night.

> Of course morning people are going to be less effective in their evenings because, well, they are MORNING people.

Not necessarily. In absolute time, it's obvious it will be the case, but why, beforehand, would it be when you adjust the measurements to the sleep cycle? At least it's not obvious for me. Read the detailed methods in my post above. Furthermore, evening people are as performant as early people in their relative morning. The only difference is in the relative evening where late types are better.

I'm not sure it has much impact in terms of eugenics. The paper shows that late people, who tend to be seen as slackers in general, actually perform better (at some tasks) if they are free to follow their natural rhythm (up at 10+am, go to sleep at 2+ am), which is impossible to do for most of them in the current socio-proffesionnal environment.

The measurements were performed at time points relative to the natural rhythms of the subjects i.e. respectively 1h30 and 10h30 after waking up according to their natural rhythms. Have a look the methods and protocol linked above.

"In their relative evening, late risers are more alert and can outperform early birds in a reaction time test assuming they're allowed follow their natural sleep rhythm, whereas there are no such differences in the morning" would be a more accurate title...

The paper also gives insights relative to the neural processes involved.

I'm sorry I killed the discussion... and you have a point regarding my patronizing tone. I should have refrained from replying to specific comments, but it got on my nerves. Most of these are bordering the "not even wrong" kind.

The usual behavior towards this kind of ignorance and arrogance is contempt. I could have kept shut and let people make fools of themselves but, somehow, I care about this place and the quality of the community, hence my reply.

I probably wouldn't have been as vehement hadn't I known (remotely for most of them) some of the authors, hence the disclosure, but that's not the point.

The criticism below come from people who, by the fact of their comments, displayed flagrant ignorance of the subject and of the scientific process, and imagined they could criticize the paper on a technical ground when they are clearly incompetent to do so. Hence the link to the original paper and the information complement ==> "Please read the paper and make your opinion based on it rather than on a simplified summary".

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I know of course that there are smart people outside the academic world. That's why I'm hanging around here. But the Science reviewers are the best researchers in their fields, and, to get there, you need to be impressively smart and knowledgeable. I hope you've had or will have the chance to hang around with people in that "league", they are amazing. Assuming you can outsmart them at reviewing a paper without having even read it is just dumb.

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At last, I didn't see the comments here as threats to the paper it is solid, and so are the people behind it. I wouldn't have written the comment if I had a single doubt about it. The Cyclotron team routinely publishes papers in the best journals (Science, Nature, PLOS, PNAS, the Lancet, to name a few). They're badasses ;-)

The genetic origin of the variation in circadian phenotypes are well documented, and have been for a long time.

You can work against your predispositions, but if you remove social constraints, your natural pattern will quickly re-emerge.

Furthermore, your subjective assessment of your productivity along the day is not really meaningful in this context.

> but this study says nothing about the quality or intensity of the early birds vs. night owls.

Yes it does. Sleep length was fixed at 8 hours, and they acquired polysomnographic recordings of both nights spent at the lab and scored the sleep quality. ==> No statistical difference.

They controlled most controllable parameters. Read the paper and the supporting materials.