MacDiva macdiva

Mathematics: What do grad students in math do all day?

A lot of math grad school is reading books and papers and trying to understand what's going on. The difficulty is that reading math is not like reading a mystery thriller, and it's not even like reading a history book or a New York Times article.

The main issue is that, by the time you get to the frontiers of math, the words to describe the concepts don't really exist yet. Communicating these ideas is a bit like trying to explain a vacuum cleaner to someone who has never seen one, except you're only allowed to use words that are four letters long or shorter.

What can you say?

The Secret Passions of Git Checkout

The Hand of God

Git checkout can do almost anything ... or, at least, many things. It can switch branches. It can mix and match branches. It can resolve merge conflicts. It can give you a scratchpad to test things. It can even be used to interactively patch files. It's so powerful because it's so abstract. But much like numinous mystics, abstraction makes it confusing.

Basically git checkout does two things:

First things first...

Swap Control and Caps Lock in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys
Google Chrome http://www.google.com/chrome/
iTerm2 http://www.iterm2.com/
Oh my zsh https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/
XCode (from the mac app store)
XCode command line tools (run XCode, go to Preferences -> Downloads -> Command Line Tools)
Homebrew https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/wiki/installation

	Docs here:

	http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.search.htm

	Interactive API Explorer for that method here:

	http://www.flickr.com/services/api/explore/flickr.photos.search

	Find a place. Like this:

	UPDATE counties_results o SET pres_dem_pct = n.pres_dem_pct, pres_gop_pct = n.pres_gop_pct,
	pres_oth_pct = n.pres_oth_pct, pres_pctrpt = n.pres_pctrpt
	FROM ( VALUES
	(48.51, 39.69, 11.8, 100, 'AK', '02000'),
	(51.65, 41.67, 6.68, 100 , 'AL' , '01001' ),
	(52.14, 42.4, 5.46, 100 , 'AL' , '01003' ),
	(51.94, 42.24, 5.82, 100 , 'AL' , '01005' ),
	(60.28, 34.95, 4.76, 100 , 'AL' , '01007' ),
	(53.19, 42.04, 4.77, 100 , 'AL' , '01009' ),
	(45.07, 50.85, 4.08, 100 , 'AL' , '01011' ),

	import urllib
	import settings
	try:
	import json
	except ImportError:
	import simplejson as json


	class YahooException(Exception):
	pass

	require 'net/http'

	# These links were taken from my twitter timeline. No endorsement implied.
	tiny_urls = {
	'bitly' => ['http://bit.ly/3S9c5K', 'http://developer.nytimes.com/'],
	'j.mp' => ['http://j.mp/JsML0u', 'http://www.npr.org/2012/04/26/151303230/an-african-trader-and-the-perils-of-business-in-china'],
	'tinyurl' => ['http://tinyurl.com/6rq9vob', 'http://politicsoftheplate.com/?p=1283'],
	'owly' => ['http://ow.ly/axesj', 'http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/opera-12-beta-released-new-security-features-including-do-not-track-support-042612'],
	'ht.ly' => ['http://ht.ly/1j7LiX', 'http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~r/usatoday-LifeTopStories/~3/8vFV-fFfhAc/1'],
	'is.gd' => ['http://is.gd/gk0FoM', 'http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/04/joe-schmoe-drones/'],

	require 'rubygems'
	require 'matrix'
	require 'lingua/stemmer'
	require 'csv'
	require 'erb'
	require 'iconv'
	require 'sanitize'
	require './cleaner.rb'

	STEMMER = Lingua::Stemmer.new

	module TumblrOauth
	class Client

	def initialize(options = {})
	@consumer_key = options[:consumer_key]
	@consumer_secret = options[:consumer_secret]
	@token = options[:token]
	@secret = options[:secret]
	@proxy = options[:proxy]
	end

	## Scrape wjchat using Twitter API
	# API Twitter [Docs here](http://dev.twitter.com/doc/get/search):
	# by @dancow, News App Developer at ProPublica
	# Updated Mar. 2, 2011
	##
	# This tutorial uses basic scripting commands but doesn't take the time
	# to explain them. A more explanatory tutorial can be found here:
	#
	# http://code-dancow.s3.amazonaws.com/beginners.html
	#