I did a preview demo of the text search visualizer (see) today and achieved understanding in one other person. Yay!
Here is the source (with git repository) of the updated text search visualization tool, now featuring Michael’s Knuth-Morris-Pratt search implementation and actually helpful help text.
I recently discovered that several of my (programming) friends know no string search algorithms other than the naïve left-to-right, one character at a time scan. There are much better algorithms out there, among them the one by Boyer-Moore.
When I first heard about Boyer-Moore, it made me realize how easy it is to overlook opportunities for optimization — I hadn’t thought it feasible to speed up string search, either.
In order to allow others to see the beauty of it, I made a little CLIM visualizer app for string search algorithms, to use in a little intro session to good string matching code. Get the code here, load it with McCLIM installed (preferably through clbuild), and run (run-frame-top-level (make-application-frame 'visualizer)).
It’s a great tradition on the channel #lisp to watch the Eurovision Song contest live transmission, make fun of participants, and get drunk in the process. From today’s news, it sounds like 2007 is going to be a good year for this kind of thing:
Unfortunately, Europe took the wrong lessons from Lordi: they’re now inserting monster references into their bovine love ballads. Sweden’s entry to Eurovision 2007 is this monstrosity, ‘Vampires Are Alive’ by DJ Bobo. I swear I’m not making that up. The lyrics go: “I am a vampire. I’m a slave./I sleep through the daylight, hence my grave.”
“Unfortunately”? “Monstrosity”? DJ Bobo?? Hah. Hahaha.
Update: Bruce O’Neel tells me that the DJ Bobo entry is not from Sweden, but from Switzerland. I was wondering about that. Also, note that the link above has an embedded YouTube video of the entry. I particularly enjoyed the “VAMPIRES!” chorus near the end.