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First Day Pt. 2 - Story Time
2016.04.01 14:05:29For both Monika and Florian their ride to school went by rather quickly, although for very different reasons. Monika's head was once again filled with piercing questions about her new life, while Florian's was almost completely empty, or perhaps just filled with a mist that made everything feel dull and weary. For Florian, this was a perfectly normal situation. It took him at least three hours every morning before he was actually, truly awake. A trait he shared with his mother; anything they did before that just felt like an immense drag. Monika on the other hand simply didn't adapt well to sudden changes. Situations like these always brought her into great turmoil. Normally she wouldn't think too much about anything, which would make trips like these take much longer than it did now.
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A Case for Documentation - Confession 61
2016.03.18 23:24:06I thought I was done typing for today after spending all day writing up the documentation for North, but I guess I was wrong. Now, there's something that I've noticed every now and again when I take a peek at some of the new projects that pop up on Quicklisp.
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It's Once More Time - Confession 60
2016.01.22 21:34:33
It's Once More Time to talk about myself and my troubles for a bit. Not because I want anyone to listen or to care, but merely because I need to do something –anything to at least find some peace within myself. Writing seems to let me at least vent some of my frustrations, even if not by much. So, even though I would've liked to have a much bigger gap of informative and nice articles between this and my last lamenting post, I guess it'll be as it has to.
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Into the Dark - Confession 59
2016.01.16 20:42:07
The fire crackles quietly as it gnaws on the dry campfire wood, slowly turning it darker. The orange flames dance silently surrounded by a ring of charred rocks. Despite the rock's cold and uncaring stare the flames go on dancing long into the night. But even their dance must end eventually. All that remains behind them is a pile of smouldering ash, lamenting the beautiful spectacle that once was.
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Ran, How Did You Become Yukari's Shikigami?
2015.12.07 11:39:08Note for the uninitiated: This is an answer to a question that was posed on an in-character blog. If you are not familiar with the Touhou universe and characters, this story is likely going to be difficult to understand to its fullest. A good starting point to understand it however would be to read some parts of the wiki entries about Yukari and Ran, the two characters this is about, and about what a Shikigami is in the official works.
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Yukari, How Did Ran Become Your Shikigami?
2015.11.22 12:50:56Note for the uninitiated: This is an answer to a question that was posed on an in-character blog. If you are not familiar with the Touhou universe and characters, this story is likely going to be difficult to understand to its fullest. A good starting point to understand it however would be to read some parts of the wiki entries about Yukari and Ran, the two characters this is about, and about what a Shikigami is in the official works.
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I'm Not Doing Well - Confession 58
2015.09.20 20:26:18It's been a while since I updated this blog, let alone with personal stuff. To cut to the chase: right now, I'm not doing very well at all. I haven't been doing well since last Friday when I was once more pulled into the abyss of self loathing.
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First Day Pt. 1 - Story Time
2015.09.02 21:24:05Change is a fickle thing. While it might make things a lot better, it still only actually promises to bring one thing: uncertainty. Uncertainty makes people anxious, makes them worried and stressed out, irregardless of how things are likely to turn out in the end. It isn't surprising then that in a lot of folklore, any time that brings forth change is associated with a time for demons and all sorts of other evil-bringing creatures that cause humans grief and suffering. While this story is indeed about a time of great change, it is however fortunately enough not about demons, even if looking around the room could have very well led us to believe that some sort of demon must have done his deeds here. While for some people children are indeed embodiments of the devil himself, we shall abstain from such metaphors for now.
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Smoking - Confession 57
2015.06.26 18:17:55After a long time of frustration, trial, and mostly error, qt-libs finally supports Windows. In this entry I'll do something that will most likely not be of interest to many people, but I still think it is worth recording for posterity. Specifically, I will describe the way to build the smoke libraries on Windows. As with anything that combines the terms “C++”, “building”, and “Windows”, I cannot guarantee that it will work straight away. Regardless, I hope that it provides enough of a framework to guide you most of the way, if you ever do find yourself in this unfortunate position.
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The Great UI Warts - Confession 56
2015.06.11 22:02:19
It's now been about a year since I first started work on Parasol. In the process, I had to learn about UI programming in Common Lisp. It pains me a lot to say this, but it is definitely not one of the great strengths of CL. It certainly wasn't back then, and it still isn't now. Since Parasol started I learned a lot about Qt and in particular the Common Lisp bindings, CommonQt. While using Qt is your best bet at writing a native GUI, it just isn't as pleasant as writing other lisp code. Too many things can break, too many brick walls are laying in wait for you to hit your head against, too many things are simply not there infrastructure wise. However, as Parasol grew, and I grew tired of CommonQt's shortcomings, I started to write more and more systems to work around these problems and make the UI experience for the developer a better one. This is the goal of Qtools.
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Memoirs of a Lost Girl - Entry No. 9
2015.05.28 21:12:00I think I finally managed to figure out what my generous hosts' names are. I always confused them for words before, but now I'm fairly sure that his name is “Ionas”, and hers is “Mia”. Though I'm not entirely certain that this is the proper way to write their names. I wish I knew a phonetic scripture to write them down properly, but I doubt there's much of a chance of me being able to learn such a thing here.
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Unified Document Processing Model - Confession 55
2015.05.17 00:05:51A good while ago Robert Strandh approached me about a project idea. Namely that of a form of unified document processor, that could be used for any document format. His argument was that basically any new document format boils down to a question of syntax, while everything else about a document would get reimplemented anew for each new format syntax, generating a huge amount of wasted effort. What if there was a unified processing model that a syntax parser could be plugged on top of?
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PSA: Reading Statistics - Confession 54
2015.05.14 10:24:44Statistics and figures are often used to make arguments and provide evidence for certain points of view. Sadly, the overwhelming majority of these figures and graphs are misrepresentative, misleading, or outright wrong. Knowing what to look for in a statistic is extremely important in order to know whether you can trust its stance at all. This isn't going to be an entry about making statistics, but more about determining whether you can trust the data presented to you. I'll also explain some of the important terminology used to discuss statistics.
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8th European Lisp Symposium - Confession 53
2015.04.23 10:48:49
I'm currently sitting in a lecture hall at the ETH in Zürich. It's 8 AM9 in the morning, and despite having had a long night's sleep, I'm still quite tired. It's amazing what two days of just listening and talking can do to you. It also feels so much longer than that, just because of all the things that happened. I suppose I should start from the beginning though.
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Rime - Confession 52
2015.04.12 20:35:06A cold wind blew through my hair, decorating it with snowflakes. The vapour clouds that rose from my mouth looked like puffs of cotton, almost solid enough to grasp. It was very foggy all around me. I estimated that I could see twenty, maybe thirty meters ahead of me. In every direction I looked there was nothing but trees and the never ending blizzard. The cold had already made its way through my thick fur coats, rendering everything stiff and heavy. Nevertheless, I trudged onward. Where to, I had long since forgotten. Anywhere but here was good enough.
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Past Midnight - Confession 51
2015.03.22 23:45:55It's past midnight and I'm not feeling all to happy with myself. So, what better time than this to write a confession. After all, this was initially supposed to be another daily thing so it won't matter if it is more on the short side of things than usual.
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Memoirs of a Lost Girl - Entry No. 8
2015.03.20 20:37:12I've been staying with the couple for a couple of weeks now. I still can't understand their native tongue, but I've been able to pick up on a few phrases. Most of what needs to be said is exchanged through gesturing and acting. It's frustrating at times, but also strangely amusing. I really don't know why they put up with me though, my unexpected arrival must have drastically altered their lives, not to mention that my cluelessness and prior illness means they have a lot more to do than they would normally.
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A Not So Brief Update - Confession 50
2015.02.22 22:00:16It's been a while since I've made a blog about my personal life, even though I recall promising that I would. So, I suppose it can't hurt to quickly summarise what's been going on, and what will most likely be going on in the near future.
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Using CL+Qt - Confession 49
2015.02.12 22:33:19Some deem it unfortunate, others are not bothered by it at all, but the fact remains that Common Lisp does not have a standard GUI toolkit. It does have a native toolkit called McCLIM, but due to general outdated-ness it is not a very attractive choice. Generally I'm not one to linger long on decisions when it comes to learning something, so after quickly evaluating the options I chose to try CommonQt, a library to allow using the Qt framework with CL.
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Memoirs of a Lost Girl - Entry No. 7
2015.02.09 18:40:03It has been a long time since I've had the chance to write an entry. A lot has happened – too much to think about, let alone put it into words. Many a thing that I've experienced is still strange and foreign to me, as if from a bad dream.
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Running Tests in CL - Confession 48
2015.01.31 23:59:46I haven't come across this anywhere yet, but I think it's worth writing a quick entry about, just so that it's referable. So, writing tests is a common enough occurrence in programming and Common Lisp is no exception. The vast amount of testing frameworks is both a sign of the repeated desire to have a comfortable way to write tests and the general ‘I can do it better’ syndrome prevalent in Common Lisp. However, this blog is not about those things, but about another, much easier aspect: Running tests.
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Introduction - Stylistics 1
2015.01.20 09:26:18In this series of articles I will be trying to discuss topics about stylistics, mainly in the sense of what it means in a context of art, but I may very well expand it into a more broad concept at a later date.
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Optimised Traversal - Confession 47
2014.12.31 16:48:27Usually when we talk about optimisation of data structures the concern for optimisation lies within the operations of adding, updating, deleting, and/or retrieving. I've never really heard of any algorithms or data structures that try to optimise traversal. After all, if you have
n
elements, how can traversal be anything butO(n)
?
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The Road Onwards - Confession 46
2014.12.28 23:56:57Just yesterday I finally finished the last big problem that plagued Radiance since its conception. Actually, the issue dates even further back all the way to when I started TyNET, since I never really did solve it until now. Though the main reason for this long delay is that I wasn't completely conscious of the issue until about half a year ago. For better or worse, things worked just well enough without absolutely having to solve it. But, ever since I grew aware of it it has been a thorn in my side as I couldn't figure out how to elegantly solve it.
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Lost - Confession 45
2014.12.15 23:10:31I feel like I'm, in a lot of ways, lacking in direction. Given that I hear that a lot of people around my age go through similar experiences this doesn't really come as a surprise to me. Even so, it is quite bothersome.