Inventing on Principle

Now I see what everyone was so excited about. Brett Victor - Inventing on Principle. is perhaps the most intriguing video I've seen in over a year. This is the future coming at you fast. It looks like dynamic languages are finally coming back to the future.

A Simple Example

Occasionally, people make far fetched claims about the flexibility offered by lisp. Here is a simple example: editing the source code of a running program.

(defun foo () t) ;; foo returns true when called
(loop (when (not (foo)) (return))) ;; call foo repeatedly, until it is false.

This is of course a simple while true do nothing loop. But then we evaluate this little bit on the same system in a separate interaction session/slime buffer.

(defun foo () nil) ;; foo returns nil/false when called.

Amazingly, our loop exits, returns nil, and we are back in business. This is of course a contrived example, but not so far from the mark in expressing the simple idea that editing a program at runtime can yield a lot of power.

A sigh of relief

Wikileaks to Release 5000 Open Source Java Programs with Abstract and Final removed.

Somehow I found Steve Yegge's blog, and was drawn by some of the humor.

Busy Week

We wanted to see "The Artist" on New Years Day, but the showing we planned on was sold out. Our second choice, "A Dangerous Method", left us with one hour of free time. The theater in Evanston has a Cost Plus next door, so we decided to while away the time in there. My wife found these very attractive blue leather chairs, and launched on a mission to replace our used Ikea chairs with the white slipcovers with these 'more adult' chairs. We placed a hold that day and borrowed a truck from someone who owed us a small favor for moving their things on New Years Eve. We were able to find a home for the other chairs with a friend the same day, and now we are back to a normal set of two chairs in the living room.


While at the friends apartment delivering chairs, I picked up her copy of "The Winter of Our Discontent" by Steinbeck and have since devoured it. I look forward to returning it with positive reviews.

Lately I've been reading through some of the published ACL2 'books' for inspiration. The system looks quite readable, and after wrestling for some time with Cyc, it's a pleasure to find something so aesthically pleasant. The modifications and extensions to the main CL functions are mostly removable from the axioms file, and implementing and testing some of the methods has been a relaxing pastime. Having the full source in /usr/share is a wonderful benefit to the curious. Anyone looking for hints on how to bootstrap lisp in lisp is encouraged to read through the beautifully documented acl2.lisp file, which sets up all packages and handles masking  out the existing language while preserving the system's symbols in another area.

School starts Monday. I picked up my bus pass and last book yesterday. I look forward to the interaction and stimulation that a group effort to understand some thorny subjects will bring.

I've recently started using github. Somehow, within 24 hours, a friend from school had found me and followed me. Amazing how quickly information spreads. Nothing I've put there is particularly interesting, but it's useful to think I can have an additional backup, and starting to use vc is enlightening. I think I hear sourceforge slowly collapsing.

Beth left town tonight for the weekend. That leaves me to indulge in stuffed green peppers and Sabado Gigante. I can't wait to watch el Chacal de la trompeta eliminate some more contestants.

Branding

xkcd: Brand Identity

In an unrelated note, I added "No Logo" to my wishlist yesterday.

Euler

I finally got around to doing what I intended to do over the break, which was to make a little progress on project euler. I knocked out a few problems today, and will likely make some more progress between now and the 9th, when I go back to class. It's a useful activity if only to remember how to write what you mean when you have an idea and need a computer to do the boring parts. It's a challenging list of problems if you don't have a great mathematical preparation (guilty as charged). The best part is of course unlocking the forums, to see how others solved the same problem. Sometimes it's a radically different approach.

Gloves and Mittens

Watching children dismantle the careful barriers their parents erect to keep them warm reminds me how much we all dislike wearing gloves. Watching babies removes their socks or booties makes me wonder how long it takes a young person to learn to ignore the discomfort of wearing shoes. Looking at the footwear of the women downtown makes me think we may have taken a necessary process far beyond its original intent. Those can't be comfortable at all, and seem not to provide much protection from the environment. The open-toed dress shoe is a strange beast.