Metablog

Check out all my awesome branches. To get one, download Bazaar, a pretty good revision control system, and type in (for example)

bzr branch http://pdf23ds.net/bzr/Common/trunk Common

I’ve put a lot of my source in there, including everything needed to build (if you dare) Lojgloss. Lots of projects depend on another project. Specifically, most projects depend on Common.

Of course, I can’t guarantee that anything will build or what-have-you. Assume GPL unless otherwise notified. (I don’t really like the GPL, and I’ll put something under a BSD license pretty easily, but there are a couple things I want GPL’d.)

If by some amazing chance you actually want to send me a patch, well, you have my e-mail. And I want to keep the copyright on all my code, so any changes you want me to include must have the copyright assigned to me or the public domain.

All this is a result of my finally getting out of SVN, whose limitations were getting annoying.

I have released a new version of my dynamic compressor with a nicer algorithm. It’s currently in a standalone program version, but I’m planning to release an Audacity plugin version as well.

Update: I’ve released the Audacity version too, which is much faster than before.

Computer science question. What would it take to make a language to describe both an interpreter and a compiler for an arbitrary language? So that you could have one program that takes the description of the target language and interprets that language, and have another program that compiles the target language? If such a specification language were possible, would writing compilers/interpreters in it be practically possible, and if so, how easy? I’m surprised that googling didn’t turn anything up along these lines.

There are languages where most implementations support interpretation and compiling, like Common Lisp, but in general it seems to be the exception.

What is the philosophical difference between interpretation and compiling? How would it be best characterized?

If you’re trying to get logged into another machine, and you put in some bad credentials, but Windows doesn’t ask you again for other credentials, saying “access is denied” or something, then go to your Services (Control Panel \ Administrative Tools \ Services) and restart the Workstation service. Try again, and Windows should ask you for your password again.

Keywords: user name, password, prompt, SMB, filesharing, cached credentials, network, log in problem, log on, security, access denied

You know the worst thing about depression? There’s nothing to fucking blog about! Unless you want to hear endless, repetitive whining, that is.

How much of the stability of our various economies relies on the relative rationality of the actors involved? I mean, it’s a common criticism leveled against economics that models fail to take into account ways in which humans are not rational actors. But this is a different point entirely. How much of the actual instability which we observe in economic systems is due to the stupidity of people? Could the housing bubble and current crisis have occurred in a world where people were more rational? Is trying to create economic stability hopeless with such irrationality to deal with?

Anders loves Maria is my new favorite comic next to Sinfest and Gunnerkrigg Court. Check it out. Awesome webcomic. The art style near the beginning isn’t too hot, but the artist really hits her stride later on. Check out this little interlude done in a slightly more artsy style. In fact, medium changes like this appear to happen frequently, as the artist gets tired of vector graphics, or her scanner breaks preventing hand-inking. But the underlying style is the same regardless. Human expressions are conveyed expertly, in a slightly exaggerated way that’s a bit offputting at first, but you later grow to love. The author, a Swede, is not prudish in the way many Americans are, which is refreshing. (It’s a webcomic, god dammit! I’m an adult! A little nudity won’t reduce me to a small puddle of mush! (Though nudity and sex aren’t the only ways this is exhibited in the comic.)) Updates are fairly consistent, though frequency has been all over the place. Currently it’s at 3/week.

The story explores the evolving relationship between its two main characters, Anders and Maria. We follow them through her impregnation, Anders’ affair and their breakup, and then the ways in which they eventually reconcile. We take trips into the past to explore the history of each character to see how it shapes their current character. Everything stays quite realistic, only asking you to suspend disbelief that Anders is the inheritor of a large fortune and a celebrity in Sweden. (Maria, on the other hand, hails from the working class.)

Oh, and I’ve linked to them before, but Gunnerkrigg Court is still awesome.

I got an Ipod nano last Christmas. I didn’t use it. Well, I finally got around to fixing some problems with my dynamic compressor so I can my classical music on there the way I like it, and extracting the contents of my old linux hard drive (which has been in my machine for a long time, but with its contents inaccessible) with lots of my mp3s on it, and getting a large backup drive to store everything on, and I think I’m almost ready to start using the damn thing. What a lot of work it is!

So I plug it in, and it doesn’t come on. No big surprise—the battery’s dead. I wait two hours. Nope, still dead. I look up how to reset the thing, try it, no results. I’m not seeing anything at all on the LCD screen. Not even the “recharging the graphic” battery you’re supposed to see. Well that’s just great.

So, two days pass. I take a look at the Ipod. Oh, look, it’s on. Interesting. Battery still dead, but at least showing a menu. Not connecting to ITunes, but it’s on.

Oh, look. Now it’s not.

Hmm. This is going to take some work.

Lack of posting due to depression, stress, and working on projects (Lojban translation, Isabelle theorem prover, dynamic compressor) rather than posting. The dynamic compressor’s about ready to release, once I get around to it. I have it as a standalone tool now that does batch processing and is much faster and more memory-efficient (well, except for the fixed overhead of .NET) than the old one.

I have released version 2.0 of Lojgloss. Very cool, in many ways. Check it out.

A cat
A flat
A spat
A splat
A vat
A hat