Category: Uncategorized

Paul Graham’s been at it again, contrasting hacking (writing “good” software)with painting. Very interesting article <Ahref=“http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html”>http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

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Also found some useful stuff on <Ahref=“http://www.uiweb.com/issues/issue08.htm”>http://www.uiweb.com/issues/issue08.htm – good design comes from giving people choices and working through them; “bad” ideas are good.

Forms again

I can’t get one of our internal servers to use the servlet so I gave up and went back to port 9000 with some alacrity after wasting a day on it.

Lisp

Spending a lot of personal time on this but it beats TV. I managed to get my Java Lisp interpreter (Jisp) to compile but it doesn’t do anything useful yet. It’s interesting building a parser in Java because it doesn’t have goto so writing those state machines is quite hard – I have decided to use recursion instead, as long as the gotos go back to the beginning of the function it should work fine. It occurred to me that I could do something like SAX but it seemed a bit over the top. I’ve started using Eclipse, which I didn’t like originally, but I think that it works when you are writing stuff from scratch, a la open source, but JDeveloper is very good at the old beans and that kind of crap. http://francis.blog-city.com/download.cfm?F=jisp.zip

VIM and CLISP

I’ve abandoned Lisp Studio and started using CLISP and VIM. I like Vim a lot and it works very well matching braces etc. It’s charityware and works very well, I even got it going in KDE running on top of cygwin (after compiling with the GUI switched on). http://www.vim.org

Paddling

Well, light nights here again. Lots of work with the club, most Thursdays at Llangohllen. Did the upper section of the Tryweryn again last week (2 weeks on the trot). Still pretty sore but survived OK and worked on my skills. Still need to make the breakouts near the middle of the graveyard. One tip, get into the eddy behind the tree on river right before it speeds up so you can scout before the current takes you roaring down it.

There is also a route at the bridge with the diagonal wave (Mrs. Something’s bridge?) hard on river left that drops you into the nice eddy, rather than that tricky recirculating bastard on the right.

I must fit a new back rest to the Big EZ cos the old one broke, can only get Pyrhana ones but it should do.

Diary stuff

Didn’t get to Camelot because it wasn’t open. Went to Park Farm near Welshpool. Had a good day. My mother in law has just moved up from Cambridge into a rented house. It’s near the park and the kids like it there. About 15 mins walk from home, just far enough.

Well then, well then.

Paddling the River Nene (Peterborough)

Went with the Canoe Camping Club to a meet at Peterborough. Stayed at a very weird campsite called Yarwell Mill. Costs about £10 a night and only has one toilet block for 200+ caravans. Owners had a bit of an attitude problem. I felt I was paying them so they could do me a favour, a sellers’ market perhaps.The paddling was hard against the wind on the Friday. I was in a sea kayak and one of the kids in a new Piranha Pilot, which the club (pen pads) bought recently. Rosie was in an unladen open with the wind facing. Very hard day.Rosie thinks the pilots are good but I’m not convinced why a sea boat should have so much rocker.

We took Saturday off and went for a wander around Rutland Water, stopping toget some food and stuff at Oakham. Went to Lands End outlet store and spent small fortune on clothes for Deb. Nice meal in a little cafe near Boots (you have to know its there and dow a side entry).

Sunday we did half of the main paddle and got out.

Monday Rosie took Howard and Deb paddling for the morning and I chilled out.Jon went playing with the other kids and said he wanted a fishing rod. Nope. Too cruel.

Lisp

Finally got my hands on Paul Graham’s Ansi Common Lisp book. I’vebeen working with Lisp Studio (see earlier blog) and found a windows version of the Harvard Common Lisp interpreter (which has much more helpful error messages). Also been using good ‘ole Emacs. Paul has also made the text of hisOn Lisp available <Ahref=“http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html”>http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html. I love Lisp,even after a short exposure to it. A lot of the ideas in object orientation aresimply to shoe horn the stuff Lisp has always had. I was working my way through one of the examples and wanted to sort a slightly odd data structure. No problem, just call the system sort with your own inline function that does the comparison for you. I know this can be done in other languages but in Lisp it iseasy and you don’t have to name the function or anything. It just fucking works.

I’ve started looking at building a Lisp interpreter in Java, I found a C example but its full of horrible C- and Unix-isms like setjmp if you get anerror. It’s odd but the C version is only 900 lines of code. Have a look at ithttp://www.civilised.com, there’s also a.ps of a document describing how it was built. Of course, once initialised, it loads a lot of Lisp definitions to get you the rest of the functions. To get asimilar Java thing will take a lot more effort (and you can’t use crap like setjmp to handle errors either). I think Java’s exception handling will work well underneath but hey, it was ripped out of Lisp in the first place methinks. I really hate it when the C code has #defines for == and other standard operators, tho’, totally daft cleverdick stuff. (You can tell I used tohack C for a living, don’t get me started on what makes good and bad style).

At last, the tooth

Finally got it out of my head last Friday 25th. The pain stopped, what can I say? It took a couple of attempts with different calipers from the ones my original dentist used. Now I have a broken filling for repair. The biggest problem was the injections, particularly when one was administered directly into the hole where the tooth used to be and I didn’t expect it.

Treweryn tour (sundae)

Not much to report, did the usual tour down to Bala. A good day.

A surprise

A new sale of the product I work on has been taken away from us and given to another office on the other side of the world. I should be really annoyed but to be honest I’m bored to death with the bastard; let ‘em have it, maybe they’ll finally work out how to write software that actually meets the requirements and even has something approximating an architecture. After the dog’s breakfast they delivered last time I can’t wait.

Off to Camelot tomorrow with the kids, their school is closed because of the local elections.

Very interesting article on <Ahref=“http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html”>http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html

, I had a wander around the site. It inspired me to want to have a go at Lisp again. Got a nice IDE at <Ahref=“http://www.ufasoft.com/lisp/”>http://www.ufasoft.com/lisp/ (freefor non-commercial use). Found an online tutorial at <Ahref=“http://grimpeur.tamu.edu/~colin/lp/node1.html”>http://grimpeur.tamu.edu/~colin/lp/node1.html.

I suspect that I do a lot of what he talks about anyway. I use recursion alot, even in Oracle PL/SQL as well as Java and I tend to write things that are reusable and stuff them in libraries, o-o just makes this easier. I love the Lisp idea of being able to write macros that change runtime behaviours. Lisp seems much easier than Ruby. Like a lot of languages I think its simplicity is what makes it so powerful. Writing a language in itself is also good because it makes it easier to understand.

It was interesting that PG puts down his success and rapid software development down to using Lisp, which gives you the power to do prototypes quickly and then get them working. Java is very low-level and the power actually comes from all of the libraries supplied with it. PL/SQL is based on Ada and starts with better constructs (from a Pascal rather than C++ heritage) and much better database binding. For me Java should be calling PL/SQL procedures, I think this would be very fast and allow you to build anything on top of the procedures. Leave the data in the database, how radical.

Ah, maybe a little project for a Lisp interpreter in Java (probably find one in 5 secs on t’internet)…

This busted tooth, driving me nuts, can’t work properly. Gum has been bleeding today for some reason, had to try hard not to wave bloody mouth around the office. Yeuch. Will look into private health insurance cover tonight to see if I can expedite the rest of it.

Form again

Oracle forms has been driving me up the wall again, even with the newer version you still have to occasionally copy/delete/recreate/paste into triggers and program units that either won’t fire or make the form disappear. Something resized some canvases slightly and it now looks wrong on the web forms. I still like it better than any Java IDE because it lets you get on with developing the software. Been having fun making an autoquery function work, had to use the when-mouse-navigate trigger rather than post-item because of the restrictions on post-item. I really like all of the inheritance stuff.

Time

Time management is a total pain in the arse, working at about 50% because of the tooth and lack of sleep, priorities won’t stay still, can’t seem to get anything done. Just apply shoulder to the wheel of dharma, as usual.

Music.

Been listening to Pearl Jam. Couldn’t get into them at first but really like the singer’s voice. Mostly Riot Act This is such a happening tailpipe of a party, like sugar the guests are so refined (Bushleager).  I like their politics as well, they’re talking about giving their stuff away and just making money from gigging and had a row with Ticketmaster over the price of tickets – can’t see the Stones doing that, can you? Had a go at Faith No More (the Real Thing) again but still can’t quite get there. Interesting note perfect cover of old Black Sabbath tune but they apparently stopped playing it because it screwed their street cred. I remember the Sabs 1st time around, being so crusty, they were my favourite band before I discovered Free and the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Baby boom

Found out today that one of my colleagues from Oracle has just had a baby. Haven’t seen her for ages and didn’t even know she was pregnant! Good news, everyone home safe and well. My mate Andy’s wife had one about a week ago as; took the opportunity to nag him about smoking, very naughty of me, but if I can give up anyone can (12 years now).

Another Oracle colleague’s wife is expecting and I emailed him how things were going, house sorted everything ready and then a pipe burst and fucked everything, all the decorating etc. etc. Not a happy bunny. If t’were me I’d get the insurance people to sort it all.

Fun

If you like radio comedy have a go at bb7 http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/ I also really enjoyed the Now Show http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/rams/sat1230.ram (this will go at the end of this week).

Blessings to you all.

Teething trouble

Ah well, the tooth extraction did not go well. After my dentist had swung on it for about 20 minutes and not got anywhere (except for a groovy crackling noise in my head) it shattered. I now have the stub of a dead tooth and a bruised and sore gum. Haven’t had a lot of sleep in the last few days with the pain. Ibuprofen and paracetamol together for the first couple of days. It’s beginning to heal up. I went and bought 96 max strength ibuprofen tablets.Paracetamol is quite toxic if you overdo it so I’ve been giving them a wide berth except when the ibuprofen needed some help.

Now I have to wait until a specialist can see me to take out the remains of the tooth, probably just as it settles down again. I reckon he’ll have to cut the gum to get in and then stitch it up. Then another week of misery. Ah well. This is what we all went through as babies but can’t remember. My dharma teacher said that you should take on the pain as part of the pain of all sentient beings, and use it to help you equalise yourself with them, but then take the medicine!

Kars

My car’s in for repair so I’m driving a Ford Ka(k) courtesy car. Don’t like it, very noisy, it sounds like the bearings on the back have gone hut it’s only done 4 1/2 k. Probably just a lack of sound insulation. It will cruise on the motorway quite happily but I have to have the CD really loud just to drown out the noise. All these criticisms apart, I would probably consider something like this if I lived in London because you can never get up to more than about 20 mph anyway and their size makes parking a dream. I’d still have to have a proper car for the weekends though.

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I seem to have spent the last couple of weeks tired out of my mind. I have been keeping up my buddhist practice and it has been hard. Today I had something of a breakthrough, although like all of these things it is essentially empty and you can’t break through to what isn’t there.

There is a fundamental view that we are conditioned by our ignorance of our buddha nature that causes the split between subject and object. This separation breeds fear, and the like/dislike/don’t care about the “other” which in turn breeds anger and the other mental defilements. I was fighting with my anger today (won’t go into why) and pushed hard at it. Pushing doesn’t work because if you suppress something you make it stronger so instead I imagined it being transformed into the base nature that it comprises of. The black anger was siffused with rivers of gold that changed it back into the open space behind it. So what happened? There was all of my fear hiding behind it. This was indescribably shattering and liberating, but like my teacher says, practice every day and don’t worry about what happens – the important thing is to be consistent. The practice is for the benifit of all sentient beings and if you feel better because of it then OK, but others still come first. This is why you dedicate the virtue you may have accumulated doing the practice to the benefit of others. That said, it still felt like I had been hit by a bus.

April dawns

Well, we’ve done a lot of things. Been to the Aztec exhibition at the Royal academy, very interesting, they had some serious insights into the world. Sad that their conclusions were so bloody. Did the tourist bus thing afterwards, which I’ve never done before. London is an interesting place. Had a conversation with a cabbie. Apparently central London is rubbish for secondary schools if you don’t have money. I am glad that I live in the North of England, near to beautiful Wales and its rivers.

Been getting into Pearl Jam (yeah, I know everyone else has already done this).

Bought some Sennheiser PMX60’s today. They are the neck mounted type. Very good. My old ‘phones are OK but the foam has gone and they were eating my ears. Not sure about the neck mount yet.

Competing in a kayak slalom at Marple on Sunday. 1st time I’ve ever done this, should be a laugh.

Having a tooth out tomorrow morning – not looking forward to this. Last had teeth out when I was 9 or so and it was nasty and traumatic. I remember coming round from the gas and my mum wasn’t there. I called for her and frightened my sister who wouldn’t go. I remember being sick and scared was somehow my fault because my sister wouldn’t go. Funny how these things sometimes never leave. Must be karma.

Blessings upon you all, if anyone ever reads this!

Opinions

Well, I’m against this ridiculous war. Personally couldn’t care less about UN legality or whatever. Taking life is wrong, the deeper teachings say one should give up one’s own life rather than take another’s (it’s more subtle than this, but it’ll do here). What is needed in these situations is wisdom and I don’t see a lot of it.

Just think:

If I hit you then it’s OK for you to hit me, it legitimises it. The war “proves” all of the allegations of bias and mayhem that the Arab nations have been making against the west for all these years. It insults the dead and recruits more extremists. Education and attacking poverty are the only answers to terror. One life is too many, and no, before you start on that worn-out rubbish, I’m not defending Saddam, get a grip. Two wrongs do not make a right, never have, never will. I lack the vision to see where the ultimate good may lie, I’m only a simple human being and won’t pretend otherwise.

If it’s OK for “us” to effect regime change using violence then it’s OK for “them” to do the same to us. So watch out Tony, George, and co. you’re making terror legitimate. Have you thought about that?

Music

Listening to Fishbone, Truth and Soul is pretty accessible, The Reality of My Surroundings quite hard – I found Junkie’s Prayer very sad. If you believe the web guide to the band they haven’t got the success they deserve. I can half see it because they are so eclectic, still interesting.

23 Mar : Buddha season on BBC2

Not bad, I liked what Richard Gere said but noticed that he still has ego to call his foundation that helps displaced Tibetans the Gere Foundation. I suppose that the celeb name helps raise money. I can’t fault the motivation though and I’m glad someone with the power has helped others. I have heard that the foundation also helps the diaspora’s neighbours so that there isn’t any resentment. I wonder if the politicians in the UK and elsewhere have the sense to learn from this example?

23 Mar : Llangollen : Mile end mill

Borrowed a Perception Amp to try. Not what I’m looking for, a little more interesting than the Big EZ but not enough of a difference. Borrowed a Transformer and fell in love with it. Would like to try it with the medium end caps. Got talking to an owner who said the long end caps are like clown’s feet and very tippy. Fran, the manager, recons that it might be a bit long with the caps on for the famous summer rivers in England. Nose wouldn’t bury without the caps unless there was a lot of current.

22 Mar : Thornberry’s Movie

Took the kids to this. Very good, very moral, lots of jokes and of course the bad guys lose. Gentle entertainment.

16th March Outdoors show : NEC

First time to one of these events. It was interesting if very tiring. They had a pool with a waterfall so that the play boaters could compete. It looked good except that they kept being driven to the sides and running out of space. I wonder if we could put something like this at Merseysport in the Albert dock in Liverpool to add some interesting paddling. I may have a think about this.

I sat in various boats, still looking at Liquid Logic, but I really liked the Wavesport Transformer. It has different length end fittings depending upon what you want to do in the water. They guys from Pirahna wanted me to get their Sub 6 200 and dissed the Transformer.

15th March : Diary of an Action Man : Unity Theatre, Liverpool

Took Jon and a friend to this play. Very well done, some of the actors had disabilities and there was signing throughout but they did it so well that it worked and wasn’t a problem. The plot revolves around a small boy who wants his dad to come back home, his dad was a soldier and he has fantasies about him being action man. Well acted and put together without being worthy. I didn’t realise (but it’s obvious) that deaf people use mobile phones to communicate over distance using texts. One of the irritating blights of modern life actually has some kind of upside.

Frogg Manor

The meal was every bit as good as I hoped. It’s a really civilised place as well, no hurrying, no crowding.

Liquid Logic Session

I loved the kayak when I tried it on moving water but it was a little sphincter clenching at times. I remember going over a drop that I normally bounce straight through and it just stopped and then sucked me into the (playable but not in a difficult boat) stopper. I thought I was there for the duration but I got a front ender and rolled up out of the stopper. The curved ends made it interesting if you wanted to force your way across the eddy fence into the current. Unfortunately the guy selling the boat was harassed by one of the teenagers and gave in for a quiet life.

River Leven (16th Feb)

Took a group from the club. Rather large (15) but I had plenty of cover from experienced paddlers. Only one swimmer. Poor Greg rolled up to find that his wooly hat had fallen over his face and, of course, he had to keep bracing so he couldn’t push it out of the way. Fortunately he didn’t panic while the rest of us couldn’t stop laughing. A paddler from another group was playing in the wave and pushed him out. Paddled the Big EZ.

UML Course

We did a week-long UML course using Rational Rose. It was very useful and I’ve finally found out how to use Rose. The UML bit made sense of those millions of books I’ve been reading for a while. It’s interesting to realise how much people have been bullshitting me. Rose is still a bit primitive for drawing things but if you use it properly it gives you traceability end to end from analysis to design, right through to implementation. I also like the ability to save shared packages and version them independently.

Pen Pads Ceildh

We had a very successful Ceildh at the club, everyone dancing, people getting thanked for their contributions etc. My favourite moment was Len getting an award for least improved forward paddler, when he teaches forward paddling to the point of obsession (how can you improve on perfection?). Rosie was awarded club member of the year, quite rightly. The kids had a dance, Deb really enjoying it.

Forms 6i

Installed latest patch (dated Feb 2003!) and the problems I’ve been having seem to have gone away.

River Lune (again) 1st March

5 of us from Friends of Allonby and Pen Pads. Nice paddle. One of the people from the club’s beginners class, good to see her improving. I will probably run an introduction to white water group in the next month or so. Rosie managed to get out too, which was great, she doesn’t believe her own ability which can be a bit frustrating. One (very embarrassed) swimmer, who wasn’t the beginner. River level lower than last time.

Fitness campaign

I’m going to the gym again and trying to cut out the fat and chocolate. The older you get the harder it is, I think the old metabolism slows down. There’s an athlete hiding behind this growing gut, if only because you have to have muscle to move the thing about.

Tom Lehrer

Go out and buy some Lehrer if you don’t own some. A friend bought the complete CDs and gave me his duplicates.

Books

Got a lot out of Agile Software Development Ecosystems (skim read it and read the interviews more carefully). Interesting book. Want to work in that kind of environment, which we are trying to do. Borrow it or get work to buy it for you, though.

Was recommended Building Web Applications with UML – good if you don’t know what a web application is but do know UML. I skimmed 2/3 of the way through to find anything new. Borrow it or get work to buy it for you.

A nasty experience

An acquaintance of mine visited a porn site 5 years ago and paid his $5 to view piccies of people doing whatever it is they do. It turns out that more recently the site has been used for rather nasty stuff and he’s been accused (by the cops) downloading questionable material. It would be laughable if he hadn’t been hounded out of his house and home because somehow the information got out. I hope he gets some serious compensation from them. I’d want the cop’s testicles on my wall as a trophy if it was me (that’s very un-Buddhist of me, but you know what I mean). So the moral is – stay away from those internet porn sites, you never know what the evil bastards might get you into. Then the superzealous cops come knocking on your door and ruining your life. Hey, $5 (5 years ago) to screw your life, very cheap.

Blessings upon you all, even the superzealous.

Burrs Weekend 1-2 Feb

We had a club weekend at the Burrs activity centre. Ran the gorge section but not a lot of water in it. The first day was OK. Second day weather freezing and Deb didn’t want to paddle. The kids from the club were cajoled into doing a race which I couldn’t be bothered with (let’s all do something competitive for the sake of it when most of you are in play boats and want to play ‘cos granddad knows best, yeah right).

Work

Fighting with Oracle Forms 6i. A lot of the bugs I thought had gone have come back. Weird stuff like triggers not firing so you copy the text, delete them, recreate them, paste it back in and then it works OK. Errors appearing that don’t show in the debugger, all that kind of crap, my favourite is pre and on-insert triggers crapping the whole form out until you recreate the trigger. I revisited some of the forms from the beginning of the project and they can never have worked in places but no-one said anything. I took the pragmatic approach and hid the parts that were broken – what the eye don’t see the heart don’t grieve over.

Play

I’ve been learning Ruby. I wish Java were Ruby although I’m still trying to get my head round what some of the constructs mean, especially things like yield. The language is taking shape in my mind and I like it. There will never be any opportunity to use it seriously, I think. It needs a decent editor with code completion because it has so many methods, it probably has one and I don’t know where it is (as usual).

I tried a Liquid Logic Session http://www.liquidlogickayaks.com/products/session.html. Seriously easy to finally get the moves going. Going to borrow it at the weekend and try it on some tame moving water.

I’m selling one of my guitars, my TexMex Fender Stratocaster so I can fund buying the Session if it works out. (have a look on preloved if you’re interested).

I replaced the feet on my Thule roof rack ‘cos the current ones seem to be worn and come undone the best part of £60, that Thule stuff ain’t cheap.

Music

Been listening to the Foo Fighters almost continuously. Got into them via the One by One but the rest are damn fine too. One of my dear friends bought the complete Tom Lehrer and sent me the duplicates seems very contemporary satire but was recorded in the 50’s and 60’s – politicians are still warmongering undemocratic tossers so I suppose no change there. I’m currently listening to Temple of the Dog’s eponymous CD, my kind of blues rock – not wildly original but got that vibe – singer like Coverdale before his voice went, overloaded strats with a lot of trem. Almost makes me want to get a band together again.

Religion

Went to see my Dharma teacher. Very good session but I can’t discuss details here. I don’t know what I’d do without him and my daily meditation practice, it keeps me sane and I haven’t needed antidepressants for a long time now. If you want to find out more see the Dechen link on the right. I don’t know if I’m a better person but Buddhism works for me on every level and the best bit is you don’t have to take anything on faith, you take teachings, try them out and then report back. You walk the path, no-one else does it for you, others may help you find your way but you are responsible for yourself. Very adult, can’t blame anyone else, not very new age passive.

Coming up

Taking Rosie to Frogg manor for a birthday meal on Saturday. http://www.froggmanorhotel.co.uk/One of the best restaurants I have ever been to and it’s not in the South of England.

Paddling the river Leven on Sunday. Looking forward to it. Looking forward to playing with the Session (very sensibly taking by Big EZ to the Leven, I’d get eaten alive in the Session).

Blessings rain upon you all. Happy Valentine’s day – I got a cake from my son, I nearly cried, soppy soul that I am.