Detecting C++ memory leaks

It's fairly simple to redefine malloc() and free() to your own functions, to track the file and line number of memory leaks.

C++: A language for next generation web apps

On Monday, I was pleased to be an uninvited speaker at Waterloo Devhouse, hosted in Postrank's magnificent office. After making some surreptitious alterations to their agile development wall, I gave a tongue-in-cheek talk on how C++ can fit in to a web application.

Blame the extensions (comic)

Asking users for steps to reproduce bugs, and other dumb ideas

You can fix impossible bugs, if you really try.

Throw away the keys: Easy, Minimal Perfect Hashing

Perfect hashing is a technique for building a hash table with no collisions in the minimum possible space. They are a easy to build with this simple python function.

Fast and Easy Levenshtein distance using a Trie

If you have a web site with a search function, you will rapidly realize that most mortals are terrible typists. Many searches contain mispelled words, and users will expect these searches to magically work. This magic is often done using levenshtein distance. In this article, I'll compare two ways of finding the closest matching word in a large dictionary. I'll describe how I use it on rhymebrain.com

Make a web page screenshot service

I'll take you step by step into how to make a service that takes screenshots of webpages and returns them as an image.

The PenIsland Problem: Text-to-speech for domain names

Recently, I was contracted to run a list of domain names through the custom-built pronunciation engine that powers my rhyming web site. On the first attempt, I found that the results were embarrassingly bad. A quick inspection revealed the problem: most domain names are severalwordsstucktogether.

Stock Picking using Python

Python can tell you which stocks to buy. It's a sure thing!

Keeping Abreast of Pornographic Research in Computer Science

Burgeoning numbers of Ph.D's and grad students are choosing to study pornography. Techniques for the analysis of "objectionable images" are gaining increased attention (and grant money) from governments and research institutions around the world, as well as Google. But what, exactly, does computer science have to do with porn? In the name of academic persuit, let's roll up our sleeves and plunge deeply into this often hidden area that lies between the covers of top-shelf research journals.