Seagull

Today I had my first swim ever in sea in Brighton even though I used to live there for two years. It was quite windy with quite large choppy waves and I managed to catch a few waves "body-surfing". It was the end of a lovely weekend in Brighton hanging out with Anna and Dave and I also met up with Mike on the beach. While on the beach we studied some kite-surfers jumping and going much faster than the wind-surfers. I need to try sometime!

for bla bla else bla bla

Ever written something like this?:

found = false
for i in list
if i == wanted
    found = true
    do_something()
    break

if not found
    do_something_else()

In Python there is a nice construction that makes this much easier - the for else statement. The same code in Python can be written as:

for i in list:
    if i == wanted:
        do_something()
        break
else:
    do_something_else()

The else-statement is executed if the for-loop is terminated by exhaustion of the list. Pretty neat. Is this available in any other language?

Can a machine think?

Just found this lovely quote by computer scientist extraordinare Edsger Dijkstra:

You see, it is not only that the question "Can machines think?" is regularly raised; we can - and should - deal with that by pointing out that it is just as relevant as the equally burning question "Can submarines swim?

Liz Hurley is a witch

I had no idea that Liz Hurley is a witch but now I know. Spent an hour earlier today at Speaker's corner in Hyde Park listening to all kinds of crackpots inclusing a born-again christian who claimed that most celebrities are witches and satanists. If this has been verified by the "swimming" test or any other method I'm not sure.