I spent a good part of this evening (can you call it evening when it’s well past midnight?) trying to learn how to do a simple Java-based query using Amazon’s Product Advertising API. This entire exercise could have been finished within an hour had there been clear, concise documentation. Instead of one recipe for success, …
Tag Archive: programming
Feb 21
Helping the spammers
As I was updating the site, I took notice of all the ways that people (myself included) attempt to obfuscate their e-mail addresses to avoid getting their e-mail picked up by the spammers diligently crawling the web. You often see variations like first.last@domain.com first@lastname.com first[dot]last@domain.com <first_initial><last_name>@domain.com Even though the extra layer of HTML makes the …
Nov 30
Sampling from a stream
I have long enjoyed programming brain teasers, at the same time I have been trying to find subjects that might get me blogging more consistently. Hence when I saw a list of 140 Google Interview Questions, I felt inspired to start a series that explores answers to some of these questions. Given my interest random numbers, …