I spend an unusually large amount of time thinking about interactions between what I call 'past me' and 'future me.' It seems that my life changes significantly every few years, and I like to ground myself by imagining how odd it would be if 'current me' could tell 'past me' things like 'Someday, you'll be speaking at OSCON.'

It's not always general life stuff, though, it's often a trick or technique with code. How many times have you learned something new, and then had that terrible urge to go back and re-write all of that terrible, terrible code you've written in the past? This happens to me constantly.

How to use the observer pattern. Specific to PHP, but can be applied to other languages.

A short summary of the patterns in Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (P of EAA).

"Machina.js is a JavaScript framework for highly customizable finite state machines (FSMs). Many of the ideas for machina have been very heavily borrowed from the Erlang/OTP FSM behaviors."

"A number of representation schemes have been presented for use within Learning Classifier Systems, ranging from binary encodings to neural networks. This paper presents results from an investigation into using a discrete dynamical system representation within the XCS Learning Classifier System. In particular, asynchronous random Boolean networks are used to represent the traditional condition-action production system rules. It is shown possible to use self-adaptive, open-ended evolution to design an ensemble of such discrete dynamical systems within XCS to solve a number of well-known test problems."

"An important problem in computational social choice theory is the complexity of undesirable behavior among agents, such as control, manipulation, and bribery in election systems. These kinds of voting strategies are often tempting at the individual level but disastrous for the agents as a whole. Creating election systems where the determination of such strategies is difficult is thus an important goal. …"