Nat Torkington

Four short links: 27 November 2009

3D Models from Webcams, a Javascript Scheme, EMACS in Your Browser, and CS History

by @gnat  | Comments: 227 November 2009

  1. ProFORMA -- software which builds a 3D model as you rotate an object in front of your webcam. Check out the video below. (via Wired)
  2. BiwaScheme -- a Scheme interpreter written in Javascript. (via Hacker News)
  3. YMacs -- in-browser EMACS written in Javascript. Emacs, for those of you who were left in any doubt, is the only editor ever created by software engineers worth a damn (where "worth a damn" == "has possibly already achieved sentience") with the possible exception of teco.
  4. Historic Documents in Computer Science -- my eye was caught by John Backus's first FORTRAN manual, Niklaus Wirth's original Pascal paper, the BCPL reference manual (the C programming language got its name from the C in BCPL), and Eckert and Mauchly's ENIAC patent. (via Hacker News)

Comments: 2

Ajeet [27 November 2009 05:49 AM]

Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition is an interesting application. I want to see it out of the Cambridge University Engineering department and available as a free web-communication tool on GTalk :)

Dennis Parrott [ 7 December 2009 10:14 AM]

Wow. Text Editor and COrrector. I thought time had completely passed me by. Used to use that on RSX-11M+ in the old, old days doing plots and data massaging at the Large Lakes Research Station.

Hmmm. FORTRAN, RSX-11... A man's language on a real man's machine! Life was good then.