This entry is more in the nature of "hello, I'm still alive" than#

Sat, 28 Feb 2004 00:09:05 +0000

This entry is more in the nature of "hello, I'm still alive" than "hey, see the cool stuff I've hacked on lately". I suspect that you're not so interested in the news that I think I've optimised my route for skating from Baker St to the office (one way systems are involved; the return journey still needs some work).

In no particular order

• sbcl amd64

• sbcl threading special variable binding changes: in the interests of predictability, make new threads start witha default set of special variable values/bindingsd instead of whatever the parent had.

• a clim-based postgresql client to kick psql's ass ($dayjob uses a lot of postgres, so this is my excuse to install lisp on my work machine). It's going to interrogate posgres metadata so the user can navigate through the database by clicking on field names, stuff like that. Colourised/marked up illustrations of the query plan, perhaps some kind of interface to help with query generation, etc etc. Lots of ideas I haven't quite locked down that need prototyping before I can tell if they're good ones or not.

• longterm handwavey project: a lisp-based "thin platform" based on SBCL/Linux that's easily scriptable.

Installing SBCL on my work machine provided an illustration of just how far we've come lately. Untar and install sbcl then

• (require 'asdf-install)
• (asdf-install:install 'clx) ;; fiddle with cliki for 2 minutes to add a :package link for pg
• (asdf-install:install 'pg)

and I have graphics, sockets, and database connectivity. McCLIM took a little longer, but it was still pretty straightforward. All told, it took me less time to get lisp-based web serving environment up than it did to install coldfusion, and that's a real commercial product. (Actually, it took less time to install the lisp-based web serving environment than it did just to unpack coldfusion, and it eats less ram, too)