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The function random.shuffle relies on the mutability of the argument and mutability is a pain in the arse, so we propose an alternative. Mutability and random.shuffle The function random.shuffle shuffles its argument in place, which means it relies on the mutability of the argument. This can introduce bugs if care is not taken. Consider the snippet of code that follows: def generate_maze(base_width, base_height): width = 2 * base_width + 1 …

Right now, as these very words are being published, Letna Park in the Czech Republic’s capital city Prague is playing[…] The post A Visit to Letni Letna Festival appeared first on The Circus Diaries.

There aren't a great many sites of memory left to evoke the first bombing war, so during my recent UK trip I thought I'd make the effort to track a couple of them down. (One, Cleopatra's Needle, I did see on my first UK trip, but have never managed to make it back.) The first is a very sad place, yet a peaceful one, as is often the way with …

1. The more science fiction and fantasy you read the easier it is to guess where any given premise will go. When a book upends your predictions you feel like you’ve got something special. Doris Piserchia—like Margaret St. Clair, another neglected SF writer—has a talent for dodging the predictable narrative. Take the first Piserchia novel I read, I, Zombie (originally published under the name Curt Selby). A company uses remote-controlled …

by James Patrick Kelly James Patrick Kelly discusses the dramatic beginnings of his latest Asimov’s novelette “In the Dark,” now available in our [September/October issue, on sale now!] Credit: Bill Clemente There’s an annual conference that I like to attend called the International Conference on the Fantastic (ICFA). It takes place in March in Orlando, Florida. While it started as an academic conference, over time the organizers began to welcome …

With this work by Anthony Domenick, we continue to highlight original fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry from writers who either published their first book at 40 or after, or who have yet to publish a book. Writers interested in submitting work should see our guidelines. (For Gina Marie Smith, whose capacity for empathy embraced the possibility of enduring the unendurable) Strong Son of God, immortal Love Whom we, that have …

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In September I’m trialing a new challenge. I’m calling it the IMPOSSIBLE 30. It’s actually not that IMPOSSIBLE. It’s a simple baseline. So here’s the challenge: 30 Days Oh, and sometime during the month – knock one thing off your impossible. That’s all. Free to join. It starts this Sunday (on the 1st). Just click... continue reading >

Via NASAPlanet generation is a topic I keep coming back to, trying to develop the perfect formula. This post has been percolating for well over a year at this point, long enough that I had actually forgotten the contents of my prior attempts (see here, here, here and here)I have been fiddling around with this idea for a very long while now (I think this is a year+ draft?), and …

This time-lapse drone video following the climbing route up Mount Everest does more to make clear the sheer scale of Everest, and in greater detail, than the eponymous 1998 documentary I first saw in an IMAX theatre—which wasn’t exactly a slouch. This video, however, uses a commercially available drone that starts at around C$2,750 (and it’s no coincidence that it was posted by the drone manufacturer, because oh lord does …

With brevity, my operational view on structured concurrency is the management of a tree structure of tasks. It doesn't matter what color the function is, this task tree can be fully controlled by a parent, child interface. You can cancel children tasks, bubble exceptions up to the root task, catch them from raising exceptions, or even restart them when they fail. While this might sound a little abstract, I wanted …

Here’s the text and images from my talk at Wuthering Bytes 2024. Credits / links are here. This isn’t exactly what I said, I was distracted by a talking robot at one point for one thing I had a really lovely time and met lots of interesting people. Thanks for asking me to speak Andrew. I had a big fight with WordPress over the formatting here and it still looks …

Hello! I am dipping my toe back in the water – just to see how it feels. My last post on Heavenali was in mid June, and at the beginning of July I stopped reading other blog posts and announced on social media that I would be taking a break. Although I didn’t put a time scale on it – I had the vague idea of coming back at the …

First game of the season! My options were thus: a 1730 kick off at Crawley for the Blackpool match; or Chase away at Clitheroe, which coincided with a food festival and the launch of a real ale trail. I briefly considered incorporating a trip to Brighton into the Crawley weekender but decided the cost would be ridiculous – and news of the food fest and real ale trail in Clitheroe …

The Open Web Advocacy (OWA) initiative in their recent blog post Apple adopts 6 of OWA's Choice Architecture Recommendations highlighted the six recommendations that Apple has adopted from the group's recommendations to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act in relation to browser defaults and choice screens. In parallel, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched a Market Investigation Reference into mobile browsers and cloud gaming and have recently …