So freaking tired lately….

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Been rebuilding / revising a bucket list I created long ago, and also applying some of my machine-like thinking to furthering those ends, along with what I desire in life; but all in all, I just find it a very depressing project. I am used to hammering though problems: suck up information, study the situation, plot a course of action, and conduct it subject to in flight adjustments. That’s basically how my brain works, whether it takes five hundred milliseconds or five hundred hours to come to a viable conclusion.

There seems to be no way to dislodge the obstacles in my way, aside from turning my back on my own character… and that is much to high a price to pay. Perhaps further precise analyzation of things will prove other wise, but I am rather doubtful that it will :'(

*sigh*

Why commercial EULAs are stupid.

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1. INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS.

a. Installation and Use. You may install and use any number of copies of the software on your devices.

….
4. BACKUP COPY. You may make one backup copy of the software. You may use it only to reinstall the software.

— from Microsoft DirectX SDK (March 2009) EULA

Maybe it is because I don’t deal in legalize daily, but I am still laughing 😀

Old but not dead, yet

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Sometime during my SDL-related studies, I was interrupted and ended up in somewhat of a fire-arms quiz: it has really been a lustrum since I’ve followed developments, but I used to be quite knowledgeable for someone who doesn’t spend their time on a shooting range lol.

Actually, I find it kind of curious when I look back over my “focal points” of study. Toys and games got me into the study of weapon and vehicle technology, it was a design/engineering interest in aeronautics and ‘mechs that made me realize that math was useful, and it was computers that refined my analytical mind: training it beyond the obsessive-geek analyzation of Sci-Fi and technology, into what it is today. And it also seems, that computers are pulling me back into mathematics slowly bit by bit.

All in all, despite the time-loss: I was quite happy to see that while the study of firearms were largely displaced from my routine interests years ago, I am still not an ignoramus on the subject hehe 🙂

^_^

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The Simpler Direct-media Library (SDL) has proven more impressive then originally anticipated. I’ve downloaded the MinGW (GCC) and MSVC (V8.0/2005) development libraries along with the source code: much to my surprise, the Borland and Watcom compilers are also supported. While I’m using GCC for the unix side of things, I fully intend to make use of Microsofts compiler for the windows builds. My desktop system also has the OpenWatcom compilers installed on the Windows partition, never have used them, but they are available (I them installed ages ago, mainly out respect for the old watcom-c compiler). Since I need the DirectX SDK to compile SDL from source on Win32, and it is like a 512 meg download, it’ll have to wait a while lol. The binaries available are from MSVC8, so I really woul dprefer compiling SDL from source: not to mention feel more comfortable using the combination for projects, knowing it built well…. hehe.

I’ve been taking the effort to study the Visual Studio-style build system in preparation, it will get the job done. My desktop has the Express Editions of Visual C++ (V9.0/2008), C#, and Basic installed; along with MinGW and OpenWatcom, but I avoid C/C++ development under Windows as much as possible — just not a comfortable environment. If I ever opened a shop, I would probably nab a few copies of Visual Studio proper, and just use it for building stuff ^_^.

I’m accustomed to having an entire operating system as my integrated development environment, so I do not care much for traditional IDEs, they are just not my bag. Visual Studio (particularly the more professional oriented versions) however are one of the best as far as such things go; and perhaps the only Microsoft product that I have ever met, and did not *hate* eventually. The various Visual {lang} Express Editions are also sufficient for many things; I have them setup because it was the quick route of getting something that might come in handy later, and I have no need to buy VS Standard or Professional.

GCC for Unix and Visual C++ Express for Windows, will do fine for SDL, but I have yet to decide on an XML parser… The only XML parsing I’ve ever done in C++, has been done though the Qt toolkit. Normally, I would expect to use libxml++ for this, but using libxml under MSVC might be more annoying them I am willing to tolerate at compile/link time. Another option I reckon, would be to try out Xerces-C++.

All development is basically going to be done on a FreeBSD machine, as that *is* my concept of an IDE lol. The only interest I have in Visual C++, is to get the most ‘bang’ out of the Win32 builds. So with luck, I will never have to bugger with the S.O.B. beyond getting my project built, hehe.

2 Razor blades, 3 years? Oh my

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For the first time in a long time, I’ve a sort of smile on my face. I think age has somewhat taken away my grin (the spitting image of pa’s smile, mixed an even bigger shit eating grin lol), but it feels quite nice…

It’s been 3 years since I’ve had a resupply on razor blades, with two cartridges that have passed their end of life marks a few times over, to say the least! I hope these fresh 4 won’t have to last 6 years, but either way I am thankful. Haven’t had this smooth a shave in a very, very long long time: not to mention the speed factor lol.

Thank you GOD, at long last fresh razor blades! And thank you ma, it is better late then never!

Mother’s Day, past Zero hour

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Just sorted Ma’s ecard, if she doesn’t check her email in the morning, well that’s her problem lol.

It’s always been a bit of a tradition of mine, to prep cards at the last minute: and usually hand made. Except the usual forced family card list for all the major holidays… lol.

In recent years, do to, you could say some rather unpleasant experiences, I have adapted ecards for my family. It has also been somewhat of a recent row, that I never gave her a card last Mother’s day, nor wished her a happy one. (Or was it the year before last, honestly I don’t keep track of all this shit!) There was a bit of a hateful argument involved, so I bugged out — the you can vent all you want to the wall, but I ain’t listening kind. It was my feeling, that such a sign of ‘weakness’ would be pounced upon and thrown back in my face, because really, that is the kind of family I’ve had to grow up in. We forget nothing, we are not capable of it; the question is what capacity is it maintained in…

As things are more docile this year, she gets both a card and a happy Mother’s Day… assuming she checks her email lol.

In my experience, members of my branch of the family, generally are better at exhibiting cruelty, hatred, and the like, then any inverse emotion. Such is the hell, called family. One of the things that differentiates me and most of my family, I choose to not be that way… most of the time that is. Because while I do not believe in hurting people more then necessary, I also will “bite” when hurting someone else, prevents them from hurting me even worse….

Only my family, has ever really had the power to wound me, and they are generally good at it, whether or not they intend to; so I always take any positive action on my part, with a grain of salt — in consideration of it invoking a backfire. That is one sad part of loving family, anyone you love, has infinite power over you: however they utilize it.

I honestly think, someday I will look upon most of my memories, as just another feeling to burn in the fire.

more tpsh: control flow stuff

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I’ve been trying to find a way of hooking in proper shell control flow keywords into tpsh, without uglifing the existing code. At the moment, tpsh understands executing singular command sequences, scripts, and a queue of command sequences. It’s fairly easy to modify the parsing/lexing portions to adjust the internal data structures IAW control flow keywords, the problem is how to handle execution phase.

Originally, I had in mind setting up nested data structures and doing a delayed execution: evaluate the control flow statement and modify the data, then execute the remaining commands (e.g. if CMD0; then CMD1; else CMD2; fi, would execute CMD when the statement needs to be evaluated at execution phase, then reshape the strucure so that only CMD1 or CMD2 remains, and then feed that back into the executor).

Last night, I had an interesting idea… on the case specific code generation.

Shell control flow basically amounts to very simple if, while, for, and case statements; and the more modern until and select statements. Normal execution patterns amount to using a single command sequence (e.g. cat f0 f1 f2 f3 | sort > f), or a queue of such command sequences. Why not replace that executor with a section of code, that understands how to handle those as well as control flow (etc), and then generate the desired code to execute the result.

Exempli gratia:

tpsh_cgen( ( [ 'if', 'test command' ],
             [ 'then', 'other commands' ],
             ....
             [ 'else', 'other other commands' ],
             ....
             [ 'fi' ] )
)

might return something like:

sub { 
    if (evaluate the 'test command' and test the exit status)
    {
        execute the 'other commands'
    }
    else {
        execute the 'other other commands'
    }
}

and so on and so forth; so that if we call the generated code ref, we have a set of code that will execute the correct commands, whatever they may be, and with quite a lot less fuss.

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One way to tell I’m miserable, is when I stop coding…

I’ve effectively, not written a line of code since the third week of April or so… feeling a bit better now though, and the ideas have been cooking for the last 3 days… hehehehe 😀

Something I would do just for fun ;)

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Build a modernized Galaga like game, that is simple, fun, highly addictive, and could be played for countless hours until you forget what day of the week it is — without needing quarters xD. Most definitely one made for a fast pace and long-haul style of play, like old arcade games, hehe.

It would also be a fun way to learn a few libraries ^_^.