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Radiance - An Overview - Confession 70
2016.10.30 15:11:09
It's been a good while since I last worked on Radiance. Unfortunately I can't claim that this was because Radiance was completely finished, quite far from it to be truthful. However, it has been stable and running well enough that I didn't have to tend to it either. In fact, you're reading this entry on a site served by Radiance right now. Either way, thanks to some nudging by my good friend Janne, I've now returned to it.
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Evening - Confession 69
2016.10.05 22:07:39Monika stared out of the window. The bright light from inside made it practically impossible to make out any distinguishing features in the dark outside. She was close enough to the glass that her breath created a circle of fog every time she breathed. Small pearls of water would form from it and slowly make their way down onto the windowsill. Monika sniffled and then sneezed.
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Where to Go - Confession 68
2016.10.05 20:57:54
Well, here we are. Here we are again. About three weeks ago another semester of university began for me. Since then I've been feeling a lack of interest and motivation in most things. None of the projects that are open right now seem inviting or exciting to me, and I don't know what to do.
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Ludum Dare 36 & Lisp Application Programming - Confession 68
2016.08.30 21:53:45
With just about one hour and a half to spare we managed to submit our entry for Ludum Dare 36. Ludum Dare is a regularly occurring, fairly well-known game jam the idea of which is to create a game from scratch in 48 hours by yourself or 72 hours in a team. Given that, unlike last time we tried to participate we actually managed to finish making something that resembles a game, I think it's worth noting what my experience was as well as my general thoughts on game programming in Lisp.
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Onesies in Repose - Confession 67
2016.08.16 08:58:40
My first onesie was published on 2013.03.02, and the thousandth was yesterday on 2016.08.15. This means that 3 years, 5 months, and 14 days, or 1263 days in total have passed, and I've drawn ~0.8 drawings every day of those. Not quite the quota I had intended originally, but not all too shabby either, I suppose.
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Go FORth - Confession 66
2016.07.12 15:18:03
As part of yet another yak-shaving quest I've come to write a library that I only now realise I've been missing for a while: an extensible and generic iteration macro.
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I Am Broken - Confession 65
2016.06.29 22:08:54It's late in the evening and I'm not feeling all too jolly. About an hour ago I was once again frustrated with my drawing attempts as I had failed to produce anything whatsoever in an entire hour. I decided that it was enough. I am broken.
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What I've Been up To - Confession 64
2016.06.18 11:35:30
I thought it might be worthwhile to write about what I've been up to in recent times. Especially in terms of software projects it's been rather quiet from my side, and that's mostly because the things I've been working on require a lot of time and effort before I would dare to release them for public use. There's also been a lot of turmoil in my life again, which has disrupted my ability to really push ahead.
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Dust - Confession 63
2016.05.30 22:34:37
The only thing that seemed to be moving at all were the specks of dust in the air. They glistened up as they passed through the rays of light falling down from above. Sometimes it seemed as if the dust had a mind of its own, moving about without any noticeable trace of wind, sometimes suddenly soaring high up into the air, only to coast back down a moment later.
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9th European Lisp Symposium - Confession 62
2016.05.11 13:58:40
As I'm writing this I'm still in Krakow. Sitting next to me is Till, who joined me for ELS this year. It was a blast, but I'm also really exhausted and my throat is still hurting a bit from talking all the time the past three days. Our flight back to Zürich is in about an hour from now and I have a test to study for on the coming Thursday; I actually would've really liked to stay a bit longer, especially considering there were a few people I would've loved to talk to a bit more. Alas, you can't always get what you want.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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)
?