| snow |
[Jan. 27th, 2007|07:18 pm] |
Finally it started to snow...
I was outside for a while, feeling the snow falling slowly and tenderly, for a long time, not cold at all. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 11th, 2006|11:07 am] |
Oh maan.
First I saw the movie Sumuru, bad story, bad special effects, unreal (in a bad way) characters, a REAL waste of time.
Now I am watching Ergo Proxy, which has great art, great story, good music, and is generally very very watchable (although it probably drags me down like Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell and Armitage did in the end).
Anyways, off, watching more :) |
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| ode to lucie |
[May. 7th, 2006|01:33 pm] |
I love my cat Lucie.
I remember how she would sit a bit away from me, pretending not to care about me. In reality I always felt her eyes follow me though. Then after a time, she or I wouldn't stand it anymore and we'd get muuch closer :)
I remember the time when she wanted to know who is hiding under the sofa... she would look at me, like she wanted to say "Toooo bad the sofa is in the way and nooobody can do anything about it..."... the sofa felt kind of heavy.. :)
I remember the countless times she would sit on me, conquering me... purring and rhythmically poking her paws on my belly.... using her claws to tease me just to the point where it almost, but not quite, started to hurt...
I remember the times when she came to me in the middle of the night, jumping on the asleep me, and then looking like "whaaat? Did I wake you up? I'm sooo sorry :P", then sleeping on me. hehehe.
We would play hunter-and-hunted with a ball of wool, a long string or anything that was around, really.
At first, she would just lightly pretend to hunt it. But over time we would extend it to real scary running away and running after, jumping and clinging in earnest. And then, releasing.
I loved her snake-like eyes that would make me shiver when I looked at their reflections in the night, for no reason. She was kind after all. Guess my instinct still had a little bit of ancient fear left. Ah the inertia...
I remember the times when she tried lying on her back in front of me and purring... wanting me to stroke her belly like she did to mine... then she struggled to disable her catch reflexed when my hand neared her... it sometimes worked, sometimes not... After the times it didn't, she looked so horrified, it made me forgive her instantly....
I remember the time when she gave me a present. I don't really have a liking for mice though, not even when she caught them herself. Well, it's the thought that counts.
I remember the times when she would stroll around me, stroking and caressing everything around us by leaning on it and walking around... she would stroke my legs, then the chair legs, the table, the floor, the table legs, the pillow, everything around us was in another light, all the while she was purring like she couldn't help it.
When I picked her up from the floor then, there would be no complaint, although it probably feels bad for her to be so high in the air. I couldn't help it though. She would grab onto me really tight then, but she would be purring and (here only half :)) closing her eyes and savouring my caresses, now that she took care of securing against gravity.
I love my cat Lucie.
Now that you went ahead of me, I miss you. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 23rd, 2006|08:50 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  worried | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Free Bird | ] |
Hmmm...
The company I work at is sometimes weird.
They got a new guy for our departement and after some days I wonder what they are thinking...
I mean whatever became of the idea of actually teaching the employees first?
I'm not against "learning by being thrown into cold water", but that isn't just cold, it's icy...
New guy is proficient with Java, so first thing they did is to put him onto making a Linux Live CD (yes, that thing whose making even I dread). Ok.
Next, they task him with writing heavy diagram-drawing html & javascript (_not_ Java). Oook.
New guy isn't proficient with editing HTML in a text editor, I can _only_ edit it there (after you saw as many failed attempts at making IDEs for that task as I saw, you will, too. Believe me). Well, some crappy IDEs later, he got my point (I hope).
Well now... to communicate with our server part one uses SOAP (Strange Obnoxious Access Protocol, errr, Simple Object Access Protocol). That I had to learn more or less recently (2 years), and it hasn't been around for much longer than that either. Which is a bad thing. If it were useful, the internet would have created it on it's birth... not like ... decades later. Anyways. Over time it got more and more useless (read: they added cruft no one needs) and by now it's pretty much a dangerous jungle.
He'll learn that now :) On his own... NOT.
Saw many things lately... It's scary how many things I don't know. I wonder if it's possible to take Mathematics, Physics and Electronics courses besides working somehow... And not by cutting off the sleep I'm getting :)
Visiting the dentist tomorrow... siiiigh. |
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| weird guy gone |
[Nov. 28th, 2005|06:33 pm] |
Today I heard weird guy (see previous journal entry) quit. Out of the blue... O_o
anyways... too...tired... *bam* zzzZZZ |
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| argh! |
[Nov. 24th, 2005|07:13 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | disappointed | ] |
Ok...
so I was at some training course because of my company, and, during the lunch break, we (as in, some of the trainees there) walk to the next shop to get food:
He: *gets phone call*
He: *blablabla*
He: *done with phone call* *turns to me*
He: Hey. you know how you can keep yourself a girl as a spare, and, you know, f*ck her from time to time?
Me: Uhm.... ?????
He(after 1 sec): You just have to someday stop meeting up with her. If she calls, tell her you are busy. Don't ever tell her that you want to break up. Just keep her hoping. If you do it right, you know, you can come over from time to time and bang her... She'll cling to you. It works, for real.
Me: Errr... what the ..
He: *gets another phone call, obviously from a girl* (the way he talks... it's the way of talking that just screams "LIE" for the uninvolved observer)
He: *blablabla*
(repeat phone calls over the day...)
You get the idea... Argh! And I thought the saying about guys being a**holes were exaggregated...
I mean, think about it. Telling a girl when you lost interest in her, just to avoid breaking her heart (actually it is worse than "breaking", think of slow slow torture with needles instead, you know, the kind you don't feel instantly but that will build up)...
Much better to fake affection so that she'll be calm and then, one day, wake up in the cold cruel reality, shocked to no end, eh?
I mean, meeting some woman _over and over again, from time to time_, just to f*ck her, while betraying her by feigning affection. What would that make me, then? I can't even imagine... Wait, I think I can, actually. (brb... Need to throw up... ;))
He went on like, "Of course all women are the same, no matter where they are from.. I've known Slavic, German, Greek, French, ..........."... you know, like someone boasting about his stamp collection or whatever.
Well, that guy also has the most weird beliefs about how "abnormal" homosexuality is (oh yeah, another person that thinks that what is "normal" is *natural*, as opposed to a view forced on you by society - or worse, by subjects of questionable authority - read: church, government, whatever). *The bible* too hates homosexuality, he says. I ask if he is serious or what, and cite a small example that is hideously bug-ridden. Well, his reply: "Of course the stuff in the bible is just symbolic, the thing with the 7 days of creation is an example"
Uh-huh... Symbolic... Really? I'd say totally made-up crap that isn't even worth the paper it is printed on. He says, of course the dead sea scrolls (the latter part, not made-up by the hebrew but by someone else) are much better, and he didn't really read the former part.
Well, I did, I tell him. He is like, what, are you christian too?
I saw that one coming, yeah. My answer: "No, I just want to know my enemy." He went like "O_o".
Well, anyways, so I was still curious as to where he read the stuff about homosexuality... after all, in the dead sea scrolls there isn't even one reference by Jesus. He went like "you know, Sodom and Gomorrah". Really? I thought you didn't read the old former part of the bible, huh?
I've been thinking about just continuing to talk him out of it and in the result destroy his whole world view. But then I remembered:
Don't argue with an idiot. They'll drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
So I didn't. Also, no matter how wrong someone's world view is, I do not want to destroy it without him having a means to get a replacement - after all, he might even find a worse one or make one up himself (e.g. like "natural selection" between humans or worse, "engineered selection", "elimination of the ability to suffer", "keeping humans alive no matter what", "seeking the ultimate momentary pleasure", "having peace at all costs", "blending into society as a nice obedient sla.. err... citizen" ..... there are lots and lots of cowardly ones to choose from)
Anyways. Are we really that bad? It seems so. |
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| programming languages |
[Nov. 20th, 2005|02:18 pm] |
I read some more of http://paulgraham.com/ and I must say I am relieved that
I'm not the only one that thinks that:
- most mainstream programming languages suck.
- whoever learns a non-mainstream language (or, multiple ones), does it
because mainstream programming languages suck.
- you want to have programmers that learn non-mainstream languages because
they program enough high-level code for the pain level of using mainstream
languages to rise to amounts that are not tolerable.
Read: they love to program, and they hate it when a sucky programming
language, of all things, gets in the way.
I'm finding myself designing a programming language out of neccessity. I've
been into "depressions" every three or four years regarding on if I really
want to continue programming. Don't get me wrong, I love to read, learn,
tinker with programs, write new programs, so much that I don't even get much
sleep anymore. Whenever I stop writing programs (or at least thinking about
new programs), it feels like I'm going to die any minute (out of boredom).
But the real problem is that the programming languages I know suck.
Really, from a practical standpoint, they do.
I have mastered many programming languages so far:
- Borland Pascal, which was my first programming language I wrote real
programs in and the reason I got interested in programming.
An interesting language feature:
object oriented programming, serialization, gui frameworks.
yes, in 1990. mainstream.
- Delphi, which was the logical thing to learn after Pascal :)
An interesting language feature:
properties: instead of having to decide beforehand if you want to
expose a member variable public or expose a getter/setter, define
a property in the class, and there, set the getter and setter to
be either the variable access or the method call.
Runtime speed penalty: zero for direct access
neglectable for dynamic access.
Runtime size penality: considerable.
Convenience: good ;)
Also, the properties were available via Runtime Type Information,
which made for nice components. I'm not sure if the methods were
available via Runtime Type Information too, I guess so. Not that
you needed them to though.
Cons: Manual Memory Management, only a little bit lightened by the
component library which used a "Owner" concept for automatic freeing
of _some_ components.
Note that all languages that came before had the same limitation, but
this is the first one where it becomes a problem, because the
usefulness and efficiency in terms of programmer time is so good that
the programs start getting sophisticated. You can't worry about memory
management when you write a neural network. You can't. Also, computers
have more memory to begin with nowadays.
- C, which is nice, but too cryptic and low-level for my taste. Note that
I still use it every other day, for programming gobjects on xfce.
The amount of time that eats up is ridiculous and I'm beginning to stop
tolerating that. Don't write GUI programs in C. Don't. It is painfully
slow (in terms of _programmer time_, I do not especially have to care
about runtime speed because I cannot saturate my current computer with
anything I do anymore - as opposed to the C=64 :)).
Remember those days in school where some uninteresting subject was
taught and you had to somehow manage not falling asleep, and manage to
"learn" enough in order to pass? Especially the ones that required you
to memorize pointless facts and repeat them over and over again?
Yeah, that feeling. Exactly that feeling. C.
That said, at least you get to know system-near programming. Having
learned assembly for three or four different architectures, I couldn't
care less though.
An interesting language feature:
Umm? It compiles? You don't need to use assembly?
- C++, just as I thought C couldn't get any worse, it proved me wrong.
Guys, don't design a language from the assembly upwards to some evolved
syntax. The syntax of the programming language matters because it sets
in stone what _you as a programmer can express in it, and how quickly_.
And what's up with those error messages? Bad runtime speed?
Unreadability? Ugly standard library?
Ugly side effects? Ugly object orientend features? Incompability?
Note for all that want to suggest that "I might be just using it wrong"
(as Bill Gates put it), I use that language every day, 10 hours, at a
engineering job as a main programmer. Let me assure you, I know every
twist of it. I know it inside out. I could rewrite a compiler for it,
probably. But I still hate it. And I know many many other hackers who
hate it just the same.
Think about a overly pedantic superior that argues about how you didn't
use some ridiculously complicated standardized (human) names for things
somewhere, while there is no standardized object library in the company
(which would be very useful, indeed).
Yeah, that. C++.
- Python, which is a VERY nice language. It got me out of my latest
depression and made programming fun again. It has a nice syntax, a nice
standard library, one of the nicest way to write blocks, a vibrant
community, it is open source, and I can't think of _anything at all_
which I couldn't write easily using that language.
That said, it being a scripting language I hate the fact that by not
having a compiler, types are not validated at compile time and thus
you don't know if the program works or not without starting it and
_feeding it some concrete test data_. Hence, unit tests. Everywhere.
But, overall, I still like it most. It is readable. Designers of every
other language, look! That's how source code is supposed to read (at
least)
Of course one of the major nitpicking is how python properties work:
I don't get it. What a mess.
But overall, python is like mold, you can shape it any way you want, and
it will keep the structure. It will let you do thing how you please
while still keeping things very readable. I have to say, for hacking,
that is the nicest language I have seen so far. Interestingly enough,
it's also the nicest language for beginners to learn. So after 12 years,
the circle is completed, I guess :)
An interesting language feature:
yield: you can return a value to the caller, but retain the current
scope. when the caller has processed the value, execution will return
to the point where the yield left off and contine executing the
function. You have NEVER implemented iterators more nicely. Or
threading. Following from that, the only "for" loop that makes sense
is the "foreach" style loop. That they did. Perfect.
- Java, oh yes, the mediocre. Still _way_ better than C++ though and the Virtual Machine is kind of nice too.
- C#, hmm... didn't I see that somewhere? oh wait, it's like Delphi. No, actually it IS Delphi. May more horrid syntax, but still. Delphi.
.NET: political issues
I started learning:
- LISP, which gives one interesting insights on just HOW powerful a
language can be. If you thought that it is old and outdated and newer
languages can do far better, you would be wrong. Oh boy, would you be
wrong.
However, the syntax is the most hideous thing ever. Paradoxically, it is
also it's best strength. Because the syntax _is_ the internal
representation of the program. There is no retrofitting into some model
in the background. It is like it is.
- oCaml, mmh... I don't have enough experience yet.
- Haskell, mmh... I don't have enough experience yet.
- Boo, which is like python, but based on .NET. It adds exactly what I
missed on python, while taking nothing away, from a technical
standpoint. But it is based on .NET, a kludge requiring a "byte code"
intermediate step so you can be "portable" without showing the world
your sacred source code.
This isn't the way to go for the open source community.
But political issues aside, Boo is the logical continuation of what
Python started: making programming FUN again.
An interesting language feature:
type inference: data types of variables are inferred _at compile
time_, if they can be. No duplication of type names in variable/
function declarations anymore.
Note that automatic variable declarations have a bad name only
because of the likes of BASIC, which do it in an extraordinarily
stupid way.
Note also that automatic variable declarations connected with macros
can confuse the heck out of you.
- Ruby, mmh... I don't have enough experience yet.
I avoid (because of some feeling of disgust many can relate, I guess):
- Perl, argh! write-only. =~!$%*"!% bless $_[] ${$...}. Make it stop.
Please, make it stop. My head hurts.
An interesting language feature:
single-statement if with the "if" keyword _after_ the statement that
is supposed to be done. This sounds confusing, is however useful for
loop exit statements like,
"break if foo = bar;"
- Basic, the first progamming language I ever used was some
BASIC dialect on the Commodore 128/64, but it was so limited
that I couldn't be bothered doing any real work with it - I still have
that prejudice over current BASIC dialects because of what it did to me,
which is a bad thing (hard to believe, but: it required line numbers,
it's 'structured' storage were the "DATA" block, it had no declarations,
no foreach, no objects, ...) - compare that to the CLUSTER programming
language for the Commodore Amiga which had features to rival Borland
Pascal.
Things I expect of every new programming language:
- namespaces. automagically composed of all the symbols of the libraries
that contain definitions of that namespace. (i.e. multiple
libraries/source files can refer to the same namespace and ADD
functions there_)
- function pointers, also with partial arguments filled in (currying)
- "object orientedness"
- garbage collection, but with a explicit "del" operation for the times you
care.
- a good standard library
- short names for operators and reserved words, and maybe just use
identation for blocks.
- case insensitive symbols!
- global functions and variables
- type system. Call me old-fashioned, but I need compile-time type
checking. not mandatory, but optional, and with inferred types.
Things I expect the standard library to have:
- threading primitives
- unix file "objects", if only simulated.
TSocket
TFile
- topic specifiers ("with" statement)
- enumerated types
whereas they have for each possible value:
- name (with RTTI)
- integral value (needed and convenient, just see it as an ID)
- flags
- deprecated
Things NOT to have in a programming language:
- case sensitiveness. I wonder what the one that designs a programming
language that gets that wrong is thinking... especially in connection to
camelCase
- type names that look like instances/variables. Types are types.
Variables are not. That is one of the few cases where I actually WANT
the library to have a name convention. "TFoo" for a type and "foo" for a
variable. If I had a nickel everytime I had to add a hideous workaround
in any language just to make the type and the variable names not clash,
I'd be rich.
Example:
Direction = (North, East, South, West);
Direction as Direction;
Direction := North;
UGH!
- ALL UPPERCASE IDENTIFIERS, OR DO YOU LIKE BEING SCREAMED AT?
PLUS YOU HAVE TO HOLD THE SHIFT KEY ALL THE TIME
so, enough ranting for now, time for improving the situation... |
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