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Wow, I finally learned recursion. June 28, 2007

Posted by sdpurtill in : Python, Django , 1 comment so far

One of the things that bothers me the most about programming is all the terms that everyone throws around. Sometimes I hear terms that I have no idea what they mean, and they sound really complicated, but in reality they are just big words and could be implemented by a 3 year old. So tonight I had to write this stupidly easy script.

It was like this: create a random 10 character string, and if that string exists in the database, create another random one until you have a unique string. So I wrote a function that was very practical; it did the job and made sense. I asked a question in the Django IRC to see if what I was doing was 1) right and 2) efficient, and somehow someone started talking about a recursive function. WTF is recursion? I hear this word all the time, I thought, but I never know what people are talking about. So I did what everyone with an IQ greater than 40 would do — I Googled it. Turns out I’ve been writing recursive functions since I was 12.

Just because you know all the terms doesn’t mean you’re a great hacker. This post goes out to all you CS majors that know all the theory but can’t code for sh……

Google adding more mobile features June 26, 2007

Posted by sdpurtill in : Google , 1 comment so far

I am slowly beginning to enjoy web applications from my phone. My favorite so far is Facebook (m.facebook.com), and I just found out that Google has added a nifty little feature for people to look up how much a company is trading at via text messaging. I think this is really cool because 1) it’s super convenient and 2) I always talk stocks with Nate Pina, and for some reason we’re never around a computer when we do. So when we’re talking about buying Apple stock like we did on a ski lift in 2003 (when Apple was at $11.50), I could have looked it up right then and there.

Once again, information should be free and publicly available.

Google + Facebook [+ ClassOwl] = a more open world.

A great view of risk June 26, 2007

Posted by sdpurtill in : Advice , 1 comment so far

I just came across this article on Digg. It’s an interview with Peng Ong (I’ve never heard of him until a few minutes ago, but he sounds like a big Silicon Valley guy). This is an excerpt from the interview that I thought was great

SM: I am an entrepreneur’s daughter as well, and it is a risk taking propensity that I think kind of gets built in if you are from that type of a family.

PO: Let me try and pose this slightly differently because I think this helps some folks even if it doesn’t help everyone. I am actually not a really high risk taker. I will explain why. It is how you look at risk. Most of us, when we think about risk we thing of dollars and cents. Now flip the situation around and think about something else; in my case I invite people to think about the time they have. You can always make money here and there later. If you don’t make some now you can make some later. You get a little bit smarter and you can figure out different ways to make money.

Time just keeps marching on. Most of us that I know of have a limited supply of it. The biggest risk to me is not that I loose money but I do not make use of the time I have as effectively as I can. When you look at it from that perspective it is very risky to get a regular job, not learn anything and not to experience very much. From that perspective, losing all of my money is lower risk to losing all of my time.

My problem with Marc Andreessen’s blog June 26, 2007

Posted by sdpurtill in : Blogging , 2comments

I read very few blogs because I hate being overloaded with information. My favorite mainstream ones are Scobleizer (Robert Scoble), Blog Maverick (Mark Cuban), and TechCrunch (Michael Arrington). I subscribe to all my friends that write blogs too, which is about 8 in total (yeah, I don’t live in Silicon Valley… yet).

So the other day I came across Marc Andreessen’s [new] blog, blog.pmarca.com. I have a lot of respect for Marc, I’ve never met him, but he is definitely an internet pioneer who showed the world you don’t need revenues to have an IPO and sell for billions (Netscape). This guy must be 1) extremely lucky or 2) very intelligent. I think he is the latter, because he is on his third startup, Ning, and it looks like it is going to sell in the hundreds of millions when all is said and done.

But with that said, I have a big problem with how this guy blogs. Here are my questions to Marc:

1) How on earth do you write such long posts every day AND run a startup that is gaining tons of traction? Your posts are WAAAAY too long for me to read all the way through, especially since they are almost daily that you post them. Mark Cuban posts his thoughts about once a week/once every two weeks, and writes long articles when he does.

2) A lot of your advice is definitely valid, since you have seen over 50 startups from start -> exit/failure. But you spend too much time talking about VC’s IMO.
Dude, this is Web 2.0, there is no such thing as a “barrier to entry” ESPECIALLY with Amazon S3 and Amazon Compute.

I can’t think of anything else I’d ask him. Well, I’d ask him for like $50,000,000 just so I don’t have to worry about making money for the rest of my life. And my kids. And my grandkids (hopefully all of the money would be blown by then).

Anyways. Back to Summer Vacation, I’m going to go watch a movie.

High School is out, reading 4-Hour Work Week June 23, 2007

Posted by sdpurtill in : Life, Classowl , 2comments

I have a post that is coming regarding my time in High School, it is kind of long so I am taking my time writing it. Anyways, just wanted to give my readers an update on what I’ve been up to.

Summer has started out lazily for me; I’ve finally caught up on all the sleep that I missed out on during the last 3 months when I was working on ClassOwl for 15 hours a day. If you’ve called me before 11am these last few days, sorry for missing your calls. No, I wasn’t on a conference call, I was definitely sleeeeping. So I am caught up on Z’s, and am gearing up to start working non-stop on ClassOwl once again.

We moved into a newer, bigger, nicer house about a week before school was out. That was interesting. I learned a lot about moving, the #1 thing that I learned was “Less Is More”. As we were clearing out the garage, I realized how much crap you can compile over the years. We should have taken a dump truck instead of a UHAUL for half the stuff too; if it’s in your garage, it is probably never going to be used. The only thing in my garage that I wanted to keep were my skis, and I’m going to get a new pair this year anyways.

My parents bought a nice TV for the first time in my life; a 46″ Sharp Aquos LCD. We also got cable for the first time in our lives too, DirecTV.

I’m currently finishing up 2 freelance jobs, and starting 1 other. These are the last freelance jobs that I will be having in a while, I just took them so I could make enough money to not worry about working for the rest of summer.

My love for Django has only increased since I took a break from the crazy amounts of Python I was writing on ClassOwl every night. It’s hard for me to not recommend Django to someone looking for a beautiful web framework. Recently I’ve been writing custom Middleware classes just for fun.

I also picked up a book at Borders a few days ago, The 4-Hour Work Week, thanks to Scoble’s recommendation. It is making me think a lot and re-evaluate the way I think about retiring. Why slave your whole life for 40-45 years and then retire at the end? He talks about how the “New Rich” are taking mini-retirements throughout their lives and enjoying the world a lot more than saving it all for the end. He also talks a lot about cutting all the BS; meetings that waste time, checking email too much, responding to everyone’s whims, etc. There are very few real emergencies that ever happen, people just make everything out to be an “emergency”.

It’s cool because before reading this, I thought that always being available was the greatest thing. But making yourself unavailable to everyone will help you to be much more efficient and effective in whatever you do. I am almost about to stop reading my feeds in Google Reader, but that would be oh-so-hard to let go of!

So there’s a little update of what has been going on. Check out my Facebook to see all the pictures because I document all my adventures now.

Wafa Sultan on Al Jazeera TV June 13, 2007

Posted by sdpurtill in : World , 3comments

I wrote out the entire transcript because it’s *that good*…

[Sultan] The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and anohter that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on the other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings.

What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.

[Interviewer] I understand from your words that what is happening today is a clash between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims?

[Sultan] Yes, that is what I mean.

[Interviewer] Who came up with the concept of a clash of civilizations? Was it not Samuel Huntington? It was not Bin Laden. I would like to discuss this issue, if you don’t mind…

[Sultan] The Muslims are the ones who began using this expression. The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of the civilizations. The Prophet of Islam said: “I was ordered to fight the people until they belivee in Allah and His Messenger.” When the Muslims divided the people into Muslim and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash and began this war. In order to stop this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for ‘takfir’ and fighting the infidels.

My colleague has said that he never offends other people’s beliefs. What civilization on the face of this earth allows him to call other people by names they did not choose for themselves? Once he calls them ‘Ahl Al-Dhimma’, another time he calls them the “People of the Book”, and yet another time he compares them to apes and pigs, or he calls the Christians “those who incur Allah’s wrath.” Who told you they are “People of the Book”? They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them “those who incur Allah’s Wrath,” and then come here and say that religion commands you to refrain from offending the beliefs of others?

I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others’ right to believe in it.

[Interviewer 2] Are you a heretic?

[Sultan] You can say whatever you like, I am a secular human being who dos not believe in the supernatural…

[Interviewer 2] If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran…

[Sultan] These are personal matters that do not concern you.

Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don’t throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people’s beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs.

The Jews have come from the tragedy [of the Holocaust] and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists.

15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people.

The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results.

The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind before they demand that humankind respect them.