Tagged as Gaming, Linux, Music, Programming
Written on 2008-09-12 16:19:27
Wow. What a day. I've been managing to keep fairly busy lately but also enjoying myself a good deal. So what's in store today? A word about music, a bit about games, some programming thoughts (on Factor and Common Lisp) and a mention of RedLinux.
Music:
Four Tet has been making me really happy for the past 24-48 hours. I've known and liked Four Tet for a few years now but I think just how good he is at what he's doing only hit me recently. Two tracks did the trick for me and both are off his album Everything is Ecstatic. One is titled 'Smile Around The Face' and the other is titled 'And Then Patterns'. I'm posting a streaming link to 'Smile Around The Face' because it's awesome. There's a pretty interesting list of his 9 most influential records
here and some interviews
here and
here that I may read later. As a sidenote, I'm jealous of all those NCF kids and their Walls. I want to throw a wall. If I did though I'd probably be silly/lame and try to sneak this track in...
Games: I've been saying that one of my favorite things about the new game consoles is the downloadable games. Xbox 360 and PS3 seem particularly strong in this category to me though the Wii has old mainstays from Nintendo lore to prop it up. I've already mentioned
echochrome and
everyday shooter here in the past and they're both quite good but I don't think I've mentioned
Super Stardust HD. It has been and continues to be simply delightful. Some video tips on the game were recently released as a free downloaded on the PSN and convinced me to pick up the $4.99 single player expansion pack. They also released a free patch for the game so that you could play music off the PS3 hard drive once that functionality was possible through firmware updates. If anyone who has worked on the game is reading this: Excellent, excellent work guys. Really. This is how to build a title and continually improve it, create community, etc. I look forward to your future releases.
Languages: I'm going to separate my blathering here into sub-ramblings based upon the language concerned. First up,
Common Lisp. I've been having some fun working with a friend to get a simple Gmail scraper/wrapper API developed in Common Lisp that would allow me to connect to accounts grab and compose messages, etc. We were relying on a CL library named mel-base to achieve this. I've been doing development locally and in the process gotten a bit more familiar with
SBCL,
SLIME and
ASDF-Install. I've definitely come around to the idea that there is a place for both Common Lisp and Scheme which I, in misguided form,
derided some time back. There are certainly pros and cons to each. At any rate, the combination of ASDF-Install, SBCL and SLIME is pretty great. That said, I realized after a bit of tinkering that mel-base lacks SSL support even here in 2008. That means it won't work with most (if not all) of today's web-based e-mail services which require SSL to encrypt the connection to the server (you know, so people can't steal your password and e-mails). I'm quite surprised it isn't there by now but assume the maintainer has been busy. Luckily, there is a CL library for SSL called CL+SSL, appropriately. I'm very tempted to find a way to patch SSL support (with a dependency on CL+SSL, of course) into the POP3, IMAP and SMTP folders in mel-base and contribute the patch upstream for the next release. I have no idea what I'd be doing really and I'm fairly intimidated but it seems like a good start and a reasonable place to help and try my hand. There are
some other people who have pursued this though that I should get in touch with first to make sure no patches are already in circulation for SSL. Next up,
Factor. I've been interested in
stack-based languages since I first learned of them and still am quite intent on learning
Forth in the near future. Possibly as my first non-lisp language. I stumbled into some blog entries by Phil Dawes on
why he likes Factor and
has enjoyed learning it. He also has
an excellent post digging down into the versatility and usefulness of the compiler. Speaking of which, the
Planet Factor blog offers some of the clearest insight into the development and internals of a programming language I've ever read, particularly one as young as Factor. Keep an eye on this one. You've got one more year, Slava. I want my 1.0.
RedLinux and Logos: I'm solidifying "plans" for the v.08 update to RedLinux. You can catch a glimpse
at the changelog. I also have some logo designs (Thanks, Neil!) for
the lambdabang, I just need to decide on size and color. Once I get a logo for RedLinux, I'll start working on the web page for it and get the ISOs up. End of September? We just might be able to do that.