I collect here small comments on computer science, math, technology, typography, language, and whatever stroke me that I found worth sharing.

Posts by Date

Powersort's Pursuit 16 Jul 2023

Thanks to Tony McCabe, you can play Powersort for yourself.
My PyCon US 2023 Powersort Talk 22 Apr 2023

I presented Powersort and its story at the largest Python community conference.
How to contribute your inputs to the Adaptive Sorting Benchmark 21 Apr 2023

Quick instructions on building our instrumented CPython version to collect sorted lists.
Build CPython from source and install packages 7 Feb 2023

For experimenting with novel CPython features, you can quickly set up an isolated environment. This post shows you how to do that.
Powersort in official Python 3.11 release 24 Oct 2022

Our sorting method Powersort is now used as default sorting algorithm in CPython, the reference implementation of the Python programming language.
Amortized analysis of resizing-array stacks 20 Oct 2022

A rigorous proof that a stack implemented with doubling arrays has constant amortized time operations; written up here since it does not seem to appear in any of the standard algorithms books.
Increase the number of recent folders in Thunderbird 27 Jan 2022

Showing more than 15 recent folders in move-to and copy-to context menus is easy in Thunderbird 91.
How to move your lecture online – in little time 17 Mar 2020

I describe my solution for online lecturing amid the COVID-19 crisis using youtube livestreams and PINGO.
Install pdf2htmlEX on recent Ubuntu 1 Jan 2019

Because of unresolved dependencies, installing pdf2htmlEX became challenging in recent Ubuntu.
Why DOIs Rule 13 Jul 2018

DOIs (digital object identifiers) are much more than a unique id for scientific papers.
Making pdfs efficiently readable on the web 13 May 2018

My experiments with pdf2htmlEX for this site.
Ingenious mechanical explanations of math facts 23 Mar 2018

Creative mechanical devices can demonstrate abstract facts in a most memorable way.
Quick animations from slides for youtube 5 Apr 2017

Quick animations from slides for youtube.
Git for Computer Scientists 27 Jun 2016

A memorizable description of git commands.
Pseudocode in Jekyll 20 May 2016

There is a Jekyll plugin to typeset pseudocode.
MathJax in Jekyll 20 May 2016

I describe how I include MathJax using Euler fonts.
Markdown Cheatsheet 19 May 2016

This document demonstrates Markdown features, and shows how they look using my Jekyll style.