There are many reasons to keep a blog, and most of them are in#
Wed, 01 Jun 2005 11:22:10 +0000
There are many reasons to keep a blog, and most of them are in
conflict with each other. Today the conflict is between writing
something so I will remember next year what I was doing this year, and
writing nothing so that everyone else doesn't have to wade through my
rambling. Guess who won?
- Listening to music on the tube doesn't make the tube journey pass
any faster in the way that reading a book does (when I can find a book
interesting enough to read but not yet so interesting that I don't
just finish it when I get home). But the headphones do keep the screeching
noise down.
- I'm missing not having a spare computer on the internet. I don't
know why, as I barely used the one I did have. £150 buys me a year's
worth of 64Mb UML, or £200 (plus delivery) buys me a Celeron from the
Dell "factory outlet" with really rather a lot more memory and disk
than that, which my employers will host for me => free bandwidth. But
then I'm still stuck with real hardware.
- To confirm what everyone already knew really, I am Officially Not
Hacking SBCL (or much else) right now - really don't have the time or
the enthusiasm. If you were waiting for me to finish or merge
something that's interesting to you, ask on the appropriate mailing
list and I'll work out what state I left it in and post any WIP I have
lying around that's not publically available already.
- The full extent of my Lisping lately is - would you believe it -
tools for dealing with HTML forms and databases and stuff without (a)
going mad, or (b) involving much more of a framework than Araneida
already imposes.
I think I probably won't be at LSM after all.
Obviously I should be charging it with the power off#
Fri, 03 Jun 2005 15:41:35 +0000
Obviously I should be charging it with the power off ...
It has been reported by some of our customers that they have
experienced reduced battery life after charging their Zen Micro. Our
product development team has researched these reports and determined
that the users may have experienced this after they plugged their Zen
Micro into the AC adapter that was already inserted into a wall socket
with the AC power on.While this is not the conventional way to plug in a player for
charging, we wanted to ensure that our customers did not experience
this problem, so we have developed a solution to address this, which
simply involves upgrading the Zen Micro's firmware.
http://www.nomadworld.com/downloads/firmware/wma-zenmicro.asp?nProdID=556&sProd=Creative%20Zen%20Micro
Enotomotomy, Trivial Sockets and Bordeaux-MP added to telent darcs#
Mon, 13 Jun 2005 11:20:17 +0000
Enotomotomy, Trivial Sockets and Bordeaux-MP added to telent darcs.
I think this is probably all of the code from telent cvs that anyone
might be interested in: please holler if there's anything else you're
missing.
In non-Lisp news, yesterday I fulfilled my New Year's Resolution
no. 6 and perhaps also number 7. Two hours doesn't sound like a
great time, but the winner got 1:35 and I think his usual marathon
time is more like 1:15-1:20, so my excuse will be (a) vicious
headwind, (b) lack of people to draft. I did most of the second half
without benefit of a paceline. In short, I'm secretly quite pleased,
but I'm not telling anybody that.
Actually, since we're now halfway through 2005, I may as well
update on the status of the other resolutions
- zilch
- also nothing (though the PPC issue looks like it will go away of
its own accord longterm)
- the texinfo translator got stolen with my last laptop and I
haven't thought about it since
- well, this one has no measurable targets and is therefore easy
- done. although I'm moving soon anyway, so just in time to
put all the books back in boxes....
I'm thinking about selling or otherwise disposing of a
whole bunch of said books; presently any fiction book that I've read
but haven't reread since last time I moved is up for the chop.
- Yup!
- I suppose so, yes. Though I have another next week (which is on
the Lee
Valley Cycle Circuit and probably just as slow by virtue of its
hills as Goodwood was due to headwind) and then Berlin in September,
which is allegedly much faster.
- no
- likewise no
Looks like a busy autumn ahead.
NOT MORE CONSUMERISM#
Tue, 14 Jun 2005 13:48:06 +0000
NOT MORE CONSUMERISM
Latest in the ongoing Zen Micro story:
UpdateOops! After people began installing the firmware update, they began
experiencing problems, like the battery dying when the headphones are
left plugged in. Creative pulled the update from their Web site,
saying that you should re-install the older 1.02.05 if you experience
problems.
So, in fixing the bug that made it not charge when plugged into a
charger which was already turned on, they managed to add a bug that
makes it discharge when the headphones are plugged in. Fucking
genius.
Needless to say I find this extremely amusing. That said, I might
appreciate the joke even more if I hadn't already done the upgrade (or
had or could still find a copy of the previous firmware version).
Still no closer to Resolution 7, I'm afraid#
Wed, 22 Jun 2005 10:58:52 +0000
Still no closer to Resolution 7, I'm afraid. Sunday
afternoon was stupidly hot, and having managed to lose count of the
number of laps I'd done, get suntan lotion in my eyes, and wear my
back wheel down to the plastic core, I decided I had reasonable excuse
for stopping when I thought I was about half way through. Turned out
I was nearer 2/3 of the way through, but still. Better luck in Berlin.
I've been playing
a little with climacs lately. Haven't got much further with it than what you
see there, though.
In gadget news, the Zen Micro seems quite happy now it's on
firmware 1.02.05. The phone is dead, or at least practially useless:
I broke the screen on Saturday when I fell on it (borrowed some 4x100
skates to see what they were like, and tried to crossover turn without
paying enough attention to how long the frames were), so I've returned
to the Ericsson fold with a T630. It has OBEX, which inclines me
favourably towards it already.
Random notes on the CLIM layout protocol, as implemented in McCLIM#
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:28:17 +0000
Random notes on the CLIM layout protocol, as implemented in McCLIM.
- attempting to override the size of a stream pane (by calling
change-space-requirements on it) is probably a bad idea: at
any rate, it doesn't work. Let the internal clim magic work out the
sizes of these things based on the stuff that you've printed to them,
and if you need to constrain them to a given size, drop them in a
scroller or (possibly, haven't tried) a restraining-pane.
- setting the :scroll-bars option on a stream pane is not the same
as putting it in a scroller. Indeed, I can't see from the spec how the
:scroll-bars stuff is even supposed to work - do the
:height/:width/etc keywords apply to the visible area or to the inner
stream pane?
As you may have guessed from the preceding, largely undirected climacs
hacking continues.
I'm not going to say much about the LispNYC Summer of Code stuff,#
Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:43:51 +0000
I'm not going to say much about the LispNYC Summer of Code stuff,
except to note that the final project list is significantly less dumb
than some of the proposed projects were, and to congratulate Dirk on
getting one for Erlisp. After writing the SBCL socket stuff and trivial sockets, I
feel required to have
an opinion on "Lisp Sockets", though.