Seriously, Ubuntu?

Every six months I foolishly endure another distribution update from the jokers at Canonical. This fall's oneiric ocelot was no lack of surprises. For once, I didn't revert to classic, and have struggled to work through unity (I think there are people who like this, I doubt they use a trackball). Although I am growing less opposed to the poorly thought out hovering scrollbar, I still am not able to adjust.

My number one complaint, besides the absence of the nice footprint menu with a categorical grouping of installed applications, is the second class status of the terminal, perhaps the one program I use the most. Open a terminal (if you didn't figure this out, it's C-M-t, now switch applications to something else, M-tab, now try to get your terminal back? It's absolutely invisible, like a second class citizen. Clip it to the Launcher (dock). Can't see the window list? Not there... open 20 terminals, try to get to any of them... Curiously, they had to purposefully exclude this, since a dumb old xterm works just fine and is a first class citizen.

Really, I think the move to netbook optimized interfaces is going to leave unhappy dinosaurs like me migrating to a sane environment. I started using Window Maker again on my primary laptop (still on 11.04 since I see no reason to ruin two computers) and apart from manually having to handle pm-hibernate and nm-applet, it's rock solid and a positive environment. I can live with compiz not making my windows wobble while I move them.

I guess it's user friendly to make the terminal a one shot deal, but that's what M-F2 used to do, rather than conjuring a powerless launcher that looks like a heads up display for an action game. It used to call up a 'run' dialog. Hail the 'run' dialog.

More reasons why C++ gives me headaches

This gem is from the wikibook More C++ Idioms, to get the address without needing a valid operator&. Enjoy the cast once, cast twice, wait, I didn't mean char at all goodness.

template 
T * addressof(T & v)
{
  return reinterpret_cast(& const_cast(reinterpret_cast(v)));
}

Don Quixote

Just bought a ticket to see Don Quixote this Sunday. Anyone? $40 for the Joffrey Ballet? I'll just go alone.

Contemplating Spring

Well, I'm thinking these are the things I'd like to take (from what's available).
I need Abstract Algebra and Writing (required), and I think I'll add to that Algorithms, Theory of Computation, Graph Theory, and Financial Mathematics. Then I believe I'm done. There are a hundred things I think I'd have liked to take, given the time, and perhaps a nice graduate school will consider my case, but if not, it's off to find work.

Intermediate Values

We were talking about the intermediate value theorem (can't get from here to there without sometime being in between them) in my real analysis class and the thought occurred to me that the interval is a very restrictive notion. How does this generalise to more dimensions?

Is there a natural way to extend the IVT beyond real valued functions? I could see that the length/radius of a set of points in R^2 or C would have this property (since we have length in R, and the curve is continuous implies the changes in its distance are continuous), but I don't see what it means for say the helix f:R-->R^3 where f(t)=(cos(t), sin(t), t) except when considered as three separate continuous functions. (i.e., let a = 0, b = 2*pi, and see that nothing more can be said than that there exist z values between 0 and pi for which the z component of f(t) obeys the intermediate value property).

Is the problem in the notion of an interval, or of betweenness? Is there a better way to describe this phenomenon when talking about parameterised curves?

Seriously, Emacs is a winner

Anyone using rfcview? This is about as useful as an umbrella in a rain shower! The fact that I just give it a number, and it fetches a well formatted text file for me is a feeling of power. When was the last time your editor gave you a feeling of power.

The gdb integration is superb, and I'm on my way to making it my primary email editor (largely due to finger inertia, after a few hours of write compile debug, it's easy to forget how to use more 'friendly' software.) How do you kill a line in Evolution, anyway?

I recently forced w3m to start working, which is pretty slick as far as non-javascript powered browsers go. It's a lot prettier than lynx.

As if slime weren't reason enough.

Quicklisp

I think Quicklisp is incredible. I may have to add this

(ql:update-all-dists)

to my list of things to do once in a while. If only I had an automatic alert when a new sbcl version was released. Painful is the way when you are one or two point releases back.