http://www.shlomifish.org/me/blogs/ A Perl-based →with(...) method http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/46303.html Lately, I've been writing some <a href="http://pdl.perl.org/">PDL (Perl Data Language)</a> code and noticed that I've been doing the following: <pre> my $temp_pdl = $pdl->…->final_expr(); my $result_pdl = $temp_pdl->where($temp_pdl < 0); </pre> I've been thinking if I could somehow write it like that: <pre> my $result_pdl = $pdl->…->final_expr()->with(sub { $_->where($_ > 0)}); </pre> Which seems cleaner and more elegant. I went on IRC asking about it and someone suggested <tt>rindolf: (sub { local $_ = shift; $_ * $_ * $_})-gt;( $obj->... );</tt> (up to an episolon, but naturally this reverses the order and messes with the flow of the code). Eventually <a href="http://www.shadowcat.co.uk/blog/matt-s-trout/">Matt S. Trout (mst)</a> proposed the following solutions: <pre> sub UNIVERSAL::with { local $_ = shift; my $sub = shift; return $sub->($_,@_); } my $_with = sub { local $_ = shift; my $sub = shift; return $sub->($_,@_); }; </pre> (I had figured something like that was possible previously, but I was beating around the bush.) The $_with approach is covered in <a href="http://www.shadowcat.co.uk/blog/matt-s-trout/madness-with-methods/">one of Matt's blog posts titled "Madness with Methods"</a>. I wondered if it will work with <a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/autobox/">autobox</a> and mst said that <q>I don't know and I hope not since the UNIVERSAL approach is evil.</q>. But it does, out-of-the-box: <pre> #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use autobox; sub UNIVERSAL::with { local $_ = shift; my $sub = shift; return $sub->($_,@_); } my $_with = sub { local $_ = shift; my $sub = shift; return $sub->($_,@_); }; print +(10+1)->with(sub { $_ * $_; }), "\n"; print +(10+1)->$_with(sub { $_ * $_; }), "\n"; </pre> This prints 121 twice. I now wonder what to do with this knowledge. I have some aspirations of releasing it to the cpan as a mini-module. Still, it's really cool. Finally, I should note that it seems like I'm going to lose my current Planet Perl Iron Man karma due to inadequate blogging. Oh well. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) perl fun http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/46303.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/46303.html Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:22:55 GMT Purim Special: The Ultimate Conspiracy Theory Behind the Story of the Scroll of Esther http://shlomif.livejournal.com/62243.html It's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purim">Purim</a> today, and here is my own conspiracy theory for the events detailed in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Esther">the Scroll of Esther</a> on which the holiday is based. In my conspiracy theory, Mordechai was very interested in the politics of the Persian empire, and sought ways to influence it. He got in contact with Haman, a close childhood friend of the King, and gave him a lot of advice for how to run the empire, which Haman delivered to the king by proxy. The king was so impressed by Haman's good advice that he appointed him as prime minister (or in Hebrew "second/vice to the king."). Mordechai also had proposed his cousin, Hadasah (afterwards renamed Esther) as the wife of the king as a way to further influence the king (or it is possible that Esther delivered Mordechai's advice to Haman). However, Mordechai, Esther and Haman got tired of all the proxying and so sought a way to make Mordechai second to the king instead of Haman. So they staged the rest of what happened. Then, after the night the king could not sleep and requested that the royal records be read to him and then told Haman that Mordechai should be honoured, was indicative that he also came to understand what was going on and agreed to play along. Meir Shalev in <a href="http://bookme.co.il/Books/Item_Details.aspx?Barcode=40-10976">תנ"ך עכשיו (= "the Bible Now" in Hebrew)</a> presents Mordechai as the master mind behind the scenes of the plot, but acknowledged that there are many remaining co-incidences. On the other hand, I go a step further, and make Esther and Haman his co-conspirators, and so get rid of most of the remaining co-incidences there. Happy Purim, though it seems like it's a particularly rainy one this year. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) bible purim http://shlomif.livejournal.com/62243.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/62243.html Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:12:14 GMT Review: Alternative (to Firefox) Linux Web Browsers http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/46078.html Since I've been blogging about <a href="http://perl-begin.org/">Perl</a> a lot lately (trying to maintain and advance my <a href="http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org/">Planet Perl Iron Man</a> status), I've been neglecting to blog about other things. So here's a new entry not about Perl, not even about programming - but about web-browsers. I've been using Firefox (now at version 3.6) as my primary browser on my Mandriva Linux Cooker system for a while now, and have been mostly happy with it. Today I wanted to edit <a href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_Write_a_Program">this wikibook titled "How to Write a Program"</a>. It had been written awfully (see <a href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Talk:How_to_Write_a_Program">the discussion page</a>), but I was introduced to it after it was made <a href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Optimizing_Code_for_Speed">a prerquisite of a different wikibook which I've written</a>, and decided that the dependency should be kept (assuming "How to Write a Program" would be written better). Now, I could either throw away "How to Write a Program" and start from scratch, or revamp it to submission. Right now, it seems like it would be a combination of both. In any case, after editing it, I've ran into a long-term <a href="https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=57864">bug in Mandriva, or in my Mandriva setup</a> (which is exhibited in any Firefox that is running directly on it.), which I've finally reported there (though I believe I had reported it in the Firefox bugzilla too) and so had been unable to use Firefox for it. So I've been looking for an alternative browser. I ruled out <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konqueror">Konqueror</a> because KHTML has been suffering from a lot of bug report, and Konqueror is just plain annoying. (WebKit has been forked from KHTML, and it proved to be more popular.). I initially ruled out <a href="http://www.opera.com/">Opera</a> because it's not open-source. So that left me only with WebKit-based browsers. I asked for recommendations and people on <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#ubnutu-uk">#ubuntu-uk (great channel, BTW)</a> recommended <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_%28web_browser%29">Chromium</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_%28web_browser%29">GNOME's Epiphany</a>, and some other more obscure browsers. I've decided to check them out. I decided to go with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRWare_Iron">SRWare Iron</a> as my Chromium browser. The first thing I noticed was that the Linux download link led to a web forum post - very unprofessional. After downloading and unpacking the archive, it refused to run - <tt>/home/shlomi/apps/iron-linux/iron: error while loading shared libraries: libbz2.so.1.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory</tt>. A symbolic link to libbz2.so.1.0.0 (done by root) fixed that problem, and then it crashed with an X error. However, it started the second time and seemed to run fine (don't know what the problem was). I noticed Chromium was indeed very fast, but then I ran into a few glitches: <ul> <li> No menu bar. WTF? All desktop applications, including web browsers had menu bars for generations. And I'm used to invoke the File menu and select "New Window" and "New Tab". But Chromium does not have any menus, and it appears to be by intentional design (but probably a crappy one). </li> <li> If this wasn't enough, there was another more minor but still irritating annoyance: after clicking on the URL bar and pressing double click, only the current word is selected as opposed to the Firefox behaviour of selecting the entire URL. </li> </ul> So I decided to look at Epiphany. Slower than Chromium, but maybe it will work. Or maybe it won't. The first thing I noticed was that it looked ugly - very unaesthetic and several widgets in the main window were slightly out-of-place. Its URL bar also behaved unlike Firefox in the double click respect, which was also annoying. So what can I do? I eventually decided to use Opera for editing Wikimedia wikis until the Firefox-influencing bug is resolved. It is fast, it has a menu bar, and double click in the URL bar selects the entire URL. Very nice. It's not open-source, so I'm trying not to get myself used to it, but seems like I'll need to use it. If you haven't done so already, I suggest you read <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html">the "Joel on Software" "must-read" books recommendations page</a>. I haven't read all the books there, but the page itself is also good. Quoting from it from our context: <blockquote> A few months ago when we released CityDesk, I got an email from a customer complaining that he was used to doing Alt+F, Alt+S to save files. Unfortunately due to a tiny, unnoticed bug, that keyboard shortcut saved the file and then closed it, irritatingly. I had never noticed because I'm in the habit of doing Alt+F,S to save files, not Alt+F,Alt+S -- a tiny difference -- and Alt+F,S worked fine. Once you get into the habit of doing Alt+F,Alt+S to save, it becomes so automatic you don't think of it as Alt+F,Alt+S. You think of it as save. And when you push the "save" button in your brain and the file you were working on goes away, it makes you feel like you're not in control of your environment. It's a small thing, but about the fourth time that it happens, you're going to be seriously unhappy. That's why I spent several hours tracking down this bug and fixing it. In a bizarre application of Murphy's Law, this fix led to a cascade of events that caused us to waste something like a week, but that's neither here nor there. It was worth the time spent. This is what it means to be concerned about usability. If you still think that something as small as how long you hold down the Alt key when you activate a menu command doesn't matter, well, your software is going to make people unhappy. These tiny inconsistencies are what makes Swing applications so unbearably annoying to use, and in my opinion it's why there are virtually no commercially successful Java GUI applications. </blockquote> If I can't go to "File → New Tab" in the menubar to start a new tab then I'm going to be unhappy. If I have to triple click the URL bar in order to select the entire URL, then I'm going to be unhappy. These tiny things are why I can't use either Chromium or Epiphany. (And frankly, a lack of a menubar is a huge UI screw-up, not a tiny one). At the moment, I'm just ranting, but I am planning on reporting these bugs to the bug trackers of the appropriate projects. I just hope Google won't think the lack of menu-bar in Chromium is a feature. "Welcome to Google UIs". (Welcome to Google Hell…). Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) web browser firefox open source http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/46078.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/46078.html Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:21:42 GMT Etymology of the Word "Cat" http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61969.html According to <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cat#Etymology_1">the Wiktionary entry of the English word "Cat"</a> (for domestic felines, etc.) it is originally derived from the Late Egyptian "čaute", feminine of "čaus 'jungle cat". I guess the Hebrew word for Cat, <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%97%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%9C">"Chatul"</a> has a similar origin, and I never noticed the similarity between the two words until I've read the etymology in the Wiktionary. There are similar words in other European languages: <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chat#French">the French chat</a>, and <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Katze#German">the German "Katze"</a>, and the Arabic word for Cat is <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D9%82%D8%B7">Qitt</a>. Make sure you avoid a <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/">useless use of "cat"</a>… Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) linguistics cats etymology http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61969.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61969.html Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:59:33 GMT New Perl Quiz-of-the-Whatever: Short Freecell Solutions http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/45610.html I published a new <a href="http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.perl.qotw.discuss/2655">Perl Quiz-of-the-Whatever about finding short Freecell solutions</a>. Hope you enjoy thinking about it. Here is the <a href="http://perl.plover.com/qotw/">Perl Quiz-of-the-Whatever (formerly "Quiz of the Week") information.</a>. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) perl fc-solve freecell http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/45610.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/45610.html Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:57:30 GMT Solving gaal's Circuit Riddle Using Perl http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/45409.html <a href="http://gaal.livejournal.com/234795.html">gaal (= Gaal Yahas) mentions a riddle</a> on his blog: <blockquote> There’s a box with three input signals: A, B, C. It has three output signals: ~A, ~B, ~C (that is, the negation of each input). Design a circuit satisfying the above description. You have two NOT gates, and as many AND and OR gates as you like. (If you solve this, don’t tell me the answer — I haven’t solved it yet; I just want to share the misery.) </blockquote> I decided that I will try to solve this riddle on my own and then attempt to write a solution using a Perl 5 program, which I've also thought about how to write. As it turned out, I ended up exploring and eventually completely solving the riddle using a series of Perl programs. I won't mention the final solution here, but I'll tell which programs I wrote to solve them and how I wrote them. The code can be found in <a href="http://bitbucket.org/shlomif/riddle-not-a-not-b-not-c/src/">its Mercurial repository</a> under the MIT/X11 licence, as I mentioned in <a href="http://gaal.livejournal.com/234795.html?thread=936235#t936235">a comment</a> to gaal's post. Well, first of all I decided to write a program that will take two negated expressions of AND and OR gates and see if one can arrive to the final solution using them and the given inputs (A, B and C). To do this I represented every such possible expression as its components of (A + ~A) × (B + ~B) × (C + ~C) - 8 in total which fit in an 8-bit datum, and which I indexed using an array of 256 items to see which ones exist in the population. After doing the coding I realised none of the expressions I tried worked. Then I decided to see if I there are any two possible expressions that when added to A, B an C will yield all the necessary outputs. I ran it and indeed found a single pair (and only a single pair) of such expressions (given as numbers) which I was able to analyse. I should note that the programs as I've written it using some functions and closures was too slow, so I ended up writing another Perl script to preprocess the code, and inline the functions, which has made everything much faster. (You can find this preprocessor in the repository). Then I wanted to see if I can indeed construct these expressions from A , B, and C using two negations. When I had thought about this, I believed I needed to maintain a collection of expressions' populations, and to keep how many negations were in each. But when I got to code it I thought of a simpler way: marry all the inputs using AND and OR until no more can be married, then go over the existing ones and negate each one in turn, then add the negated vector to the population and marry it with all the rest, and then do it again for all the existing inputs. Using this I was able to find a single solution. Then I had to output the solution. For that, I wrote a recursive expression dumper, which ended up outputting with many parentheses, so I had to post- process it a bit. The solution I got to was very complicated and I believe it would have taken me a long time to reach it without resorting to programming. But at least it saved me a lot of time and head-scratching. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) perl fun http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/45409.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/45409.html Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:28:13 GMT "Escape from GNU Autohell", List of Editors and IDEs and Factoids' Fortunes Collection http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/14312.html There's <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#english-spelling">a new joke in the aphorisms' collection</a>: <blockquote> English spelling aims to be consistent. Publicly and methodically. </blockquote> I added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/shlomif-factoids.html">a new fortune cookies' collection with factoids about Chuck Norris/etc.</a>, concentrating the ones from <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/facts/">the collections of facts section</a>. There are also some new fortune cookies there: <blockquote> <ul> <li>Shlomif:BTW, have you read my stories yet?</li> <li>Sjors:I haven't</li> <li>Shlomif:Ah.</li> <li>Shlomif:"If you read my stories, I'll give you 1,000,000 virtual dollars."</li> <li>Sjors:Causing me to have a lot of extra virtual time!</li> <li>Shlomif:And be virtually rich.</li> <li>Shlomif:And then you can virtually bribe virtual politicians.</li> <li>Shlomif:And buy a lot of virtual goods.</li> <li>Shlomif:LOL.</li> <li>Sjors:Then, I'd be virtually happy</li> <li>Sjors:Too bad... :P</li> <li>Shlomif:It's a virtual win-win situation.</li> <li>Shlomif:You can hire many virtual programmers to write a lot of virtual code for KMess.</li> <li>Shlomif:"My old virtual dad used to say to me: 'virtual money does not bring you virtual happiness, my virtual son.'"</li> </ul> </blockquote> There's <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/editors-and-IDEs/">a new page with a list of text editors and IDEs</a>. I also added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/autohell/">a page titled "Escape from GNU Autohell!"</a> explaining why the GNU Autotools suck so much and why you should switch to CMake or a different better alternative. I added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits-and-bobs/greasemonkey/grease.html#self-links-for-headers">a new Greasemonkey script</a> for providing self-links for headers with an <tt>id=</tt> attribute. <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/Freecell-Solver/project-intro/">The Freecell Solver project intro</a> now contains <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/Freecell-Solver/project-intro/Summary.txt">a summary</a>. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) facts autotools www site humour fish autohell norris web homepage jokes chuck shlomi ides cmake factoids text editors http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/14312.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/14312.html Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:40:22 GMT Article Recommendation: "What Every CSer Should Know about Floating-Point Arithmetic" http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/45104.html I've read the paper <a href="http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html">"What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic"</a> and can recommend it as it has many interesting insights. I had received quite a lot of reports for bugs in <a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/Statistics-Descriptive/">the "Statistics-Descriptive" CPAN distribution</a> that were caused by expected floating-point behaviour. Some of them I was able to resolve using some trickery, and some others possibly can be somewhat mitigated using the insights I've learnt in the article. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) perl recommendation article http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/45104.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/45104.html Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:24:18 GMT NYTProf-3 is Out! http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44836.html <a href="http://blog.timbunce.org/2009/12/24/nytprof-v3-worth-the-wait/">Tim Bunce writes on his blog about the new features in Devel-NYTProf version 3</a>. Devel-NYTProf is a profiler for the <a href="http://perl-begin.org/">Perl programming language</a>, which has put all the previous attempts in profiling in the dust, and now it's even better than before. Enjoy! (Thanks to <a href="http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/sanfrancisco-pm/2010-February/002704.html">Fred Moyer's post</a> on the San-Fransisco Perl Mongers mailing list). Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) 3 version perl profiler release nytprof http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44836.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44836.html Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:31:51 GMT New Page about Text Editors and IDEs for Programmers http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44605.html After answering the questions "Can anyone recommend a good text editor?" and "What is a good IDE?" a few times in the past, I set up <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/editors-and-IDEs/">a page listing some prominent text editors and Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)</a> for development on my homepage. Currently it includes only cross-platform open-source text editors and cross-platform open-source IDEs, but I'm planning to expand it as time and interest permits. Additions would be welcome. <a href="http://www.vim.org/">Vim</a> is there and so are XEmacs and <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/">Eclipse</a>, and also <a href="http://padre.perlide.org/">Padre, the Perl IDE</a> and more specialised IDEs such as <a href="http://eric-ide.python-projects.org/">the "Eric" Python IDE</a>. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44605.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44605.html Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:59:14 GMT פגישת קוד פתוח בתל-אביב: 14 בפברואר - vtiger CRM http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44385.html <div dir="rtl" align="right"> <a href="http://tel.foss.org.il/">מועדון הקוד הפתוח התל-אביבי (תלוקס)</a> ייפגש שוב כדי לשמוע את <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_14_February_2010">הרצאתו של רמי הדדי אודות "מערכת ניהול קשרי הלקוחות vtigerCRM</a>. ההרצאה תתקיים ביום ראשון, 14 בפברואר 2010, בשעה 18:00, באולם הולצבלט, מס' 007 במסדרון הבניינים למדעים מדויקים (שימו לב לשינוי בשעה ובמיקום משנה שעברה) באוניברסיטת תל אביב. פרטים נוספים, מפות להגעה וכיוצא בזה, ניתן למצוא <a href="http://tel.foss.org.il/">באתר</a> <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_14_February_2010">ובוויקי</a>. הנוכחות בהרצאה היא חינמית ולא נדרשת הרשמה מראש. <a href="http://www.vtiger.com/">vtiger CRM</a> היא מערכת ניהול קשרי לקוחות אשר פועלת בממשק Web דרך הדפדפן. המערכת מכילה את כל הכלים הנדרשים לניהול מלא ומקיף של עסק: החל מעסק קטן של אדם אחד וכלה בעשרות עובדים. במערכת ניתן למצוא ביטוי ללקוחות, יומנים, הזדמנויות עסקיות, מכירות, שירות ועוד. המערכת מבוססת על קוד-פתוח וניתן גם לבצע בה התאמות בקלות רבה. המערכת תורגמה לשפות רבות ובכללן עברית. רמי הדדי הינו מנכ"ל אקטיבטק אשר מתמחה ביעוץ, פיתוח ואירוח של vtiger CRM. אנו תמיד מחפשים מרצים שיתנדבו לתת הרצאות בנושאים שונים הקשורים לקוד-פתוח ולמחשבים. במידה שאתם מעוניינים לתת הרצאה, או שיש לכם הצעה להרצאה שמעניינת אתכם, נשמח לשמוע ממכם. </div> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44385.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44385.html Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:47:42 GMT Escape from GNU Autohell! http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44103.html I've set up <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/autohell/">a page on my web-site titled "Escape from GNU Autohell!"</a> about the evils of the GNU Autotools (GNU Autoconf/Automake/Libtool and other GNU auto-brain-damages) and why you should convert to a good alternative such as <a href="http://www.cmake.org/">CMake</a>. The page contains a list of the many disadvantages of the GNU Autotools, some refutation of common arguments against CMake, and some links. And lo and behold, some time after writing the page I spent hours dealing with yet another Autohell problem: <a href="https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=57319">"Mandriva's libtool causes "make install" of xine-lib-1.1-hg to fail"</a>. I actually had to build the Mandriva libtool several times to find the offending downstream patch, and libtool's "./bootstrap" script was so slow that I could finish running "make" and "make install" in xine-lib while waiting for it to finish. And it says a lot because xine uses GNU Autohell which slows down the build process considerably. Eventually, I found the offending patch after several hours, and I wouldn't have finished on time if I didn't cancel the "make check" test in the .rpm. Autohell must die! Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) rants cmake build autohell gnu escape rant make autotools http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44103.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44103.html Sun, 31 Jan 2010 12:45:57 GMT Project Euler Problem #10 in Haskell, Perl and C http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44006.html zerothorder told <a href="http://zerothorder.blogspot.com/2009/11/after-drinking-functional-immutable-and.html">how he found a solution for Project Euler's Problem 10 in Haskell</a>. The problem is "Find the sum of all primes less than 2,000,000". It is given here below: <pre> primes :: [Integer] primes = 2 : filter isPrime [3, 5 ..] where -- only check divisibility of the numbers less than the square root of n isPrime n = all (not . divides n) $ takeWhile (\p -> p*p <= n) primes divides n p = n `mod` p == 0 result = sum $ takeWhile (< 2000000) primes main = do putStrLn( show result ) </pre> He says "If this doesn't give you a nerdgasm, I don't know what will.". The problem is that this nerdgasm will last a long time. Benchmarking this program gives that 20 iterations of it run at 310 seconds - less than - about 15 seconds each (on my Pentium 4 2.4GHz machine running Mandriva Linux Cooker). So next I tried a better Haskell implmenetation that I recalled from a thread I started in the Haskell Café mailing list about implementing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes">a sieve of Eratosthenes in Haskell</a>: <pre> import Data.Int primes :: Int64 -> [Int64] primes how_much = sieve [2..how_much] where sieve (p:x) = p : (if p <= mybound then sieve (remove (p*p) x) else x) where remove what (a:as) | what > how_much = (a:as) | a < what = a:(remove what as) | a == what = (remove (what+step) as) | a > what = a:(remove (what+step) as) remove what [] = [] step = (if (p == 2) then p else (2*p)) sieve [] = [] mybound = ceiling(sqrt(fromIntegral how_much)) --main = print (length (primes 1000000)) main = print (sum (primes 2000000)) </pre> This does not involve costly operations such as modulo or division and 20 iterations of it run at 135 wallclocks seconds - over two times faster than zeroth's Haskell version. Now how about Perl? Since Perl has assignment, we have the advantage that we can create a vector of bits that we will mark with the primes by iterating over all numbers up to the root of the limit. Here is the code: <pre> #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Math::BigInt lib => 'GMP'; my $limit = 2_000_000; my $primes_bitmask = ""; my $loop_to = int(sqrt($limit)); my $sum = 0; my $total_sum = Math::BigInt->new('0'); for my $p (2 .. $loop_to) { if (vec($primes_bitmask, $p, 1) == 0) { $sum += $p; my $i = $p * $p; while ($i < $limit) { vec($primes_bitmask, $i, 1) = 1; } continue { $i += $p; } } } for my $p ($loop_to .. $limit) { if (vec($primes_bitmask, $p, 1) == 0) { if (($sum += $p) > (1 << 30)) { $total_sum += $sum; $sum = 0; } } } $total_sum += $sum; print "$total_sum\n"; </pre> 20 runs of it run at 95 walclock seconds - even faster than the Haskell version. But it gets better. Since all the primes we encounter greater than 2 are not even, we can create a map of their pseduo-halves and conserve on memory and iterations. This is the Perl version: <pre> #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Math::BigInt lib => 'GMP'; my $limit = 2_000_000; my $primes_bitmask = ""; my $loop_to = (int(sqrt($limit)))>>1; my $half_limit = ($limit-1)>>1; my $sum = 0+2; my $total_sum = Math::BigInt->new('0'); for my $half (1 .. $loop_to) { if (vec($primes_bitmask, $half, 1) == 0) { my $p = (($half<<1)+1); $sum += $p; my $i = ($p * $p)>>1; while ($i < $limit) { vec($primes_bitmask, $i, 1) = 1; } continue { $i += $p; } } } for my $half ($loop_to .. $half_limit) { if (vec($primes_bitmask, $half, 1) == 0) { if (($sum += (($half<<1)+1)) > (1 << 30)) { $total_sum += $sum; $sum = 0; } } } $total_sum += $sum; print "$total_sum\n"; </pre> Running this 20 times takes 73 wallclock seconds, close to half that of my Haskell version. Then I wondered how long C will take. Here is a C implementation without the halving: <pre> #include <string.h> #include <math.h> #include <stdint.h> #include <stdio.h> #define limit 2000000 int8_t bitmask[(limit+1)/8]; int main(int argc, char * argv[]) { int p, i; int mark_limit; long long sum = 0; memset(bitmask, '\0', sizeof(bitmask)); mark_limit = (int)sqrt(limit); for (p=2 ; p <= mark_limit ; p++) { if (! ( bitmask[p>>3]&(1 << (p&(8-1))) ) ) { /* It is a prime. */ sum += p; for (i=p*p;i<=limit;i+=p) { bitmask[i>>3] |= (1 << (i&(8-1))); } } } for (; p <= limit; p++) { if (! ( bitmask[p>>3]&(1 << (p&(8-1))) ) ) { sum += p; } } printf("%lli\n", sum); return 0; } </pre> This was too fast to measure with 20 runs alone, so 500 runs of it took 15 seconds, two or three orders of magnitude faster than the fastest Haskell or Perl versions. But naturally, we can apply the halving paradigm there too: <pre> #include <string.h> #include <math.h> #include <stdint.h> #include <stdio.h> #define limit 2000000 int8_t bitmask[(limit+1)/8/2]; int main(int argc, char * argv[]) { int half, p, i; int half_limit; int loop_to; long long sum = 0 + 2; memset(bitmask, '\0', sizeof(bitmask)); loop_to=(((int)(sqrt(limit)))>>1); half_limit = (limit-1)>>1; for (half=1 ; half <= loop_to ; half++) { if (! ( bitmask[half>>3]&(1 << (half&(8-1))) ) ) { /* It is a prime. */ p = (half << 1)+1; sum += p; for (i = ((p*p)>>1) ; i < half_limit ; i+=p ) { bitmask[i>>3] |= (1 << (i&(8-1))); } } } for( ; half < half_limit ; half++) { if (! ( bitmask[half>>3]&(1 << (half&(8-1))) ) ) { sum += (half<<1)+1; } } printf("%lli\n", sum); return 0; } </pre> 500 runs of it take 10 wallclock seconds - 54.35 times per second, and 50% better than the previous C version. And I still haven't applied platform-specific gcc optimisations. I should also note that the executables generated by ghc are extremely large in comparison to their C ones: <pre> $ ls -l c_* haskell_* -rwxr-xr-x 1 shlomi shlomi 6082 2009-12-04 07:46 c_mine -rwxr-xr-x 1 shlomi shlomi 6103 2009-12-04 07:46 c_mine_half -rwxr-xr-x 1 shlomi shlomi 6092 2009-12-04 07:46 c_mine_micro_opt -rwxr-xr-x 1 shlomi shlomi 796825 2009-12-04 07:56 haskell_mine -rwxr-xr-x 1 shlomi shlomi 571717 2009-12-04 07:46 haskell_zeroth </pre> <tt>c_mine_half</tt> is less than 1% the size of <tt>haskell_mine</tt> (and runs faster). When talking about this to other people, they said that Haskell has a very optimised primes sequence generator, which I can try using (which should be over 3 times as fast), and that it has two kinds of integers, which the other type is faster, and that it has a better way to emulate assignment. But the bottom line is that the naïve and intuitive way to write such programs in Haskell is under-performant, even in comparison to Perl, and 100 or 1,000 times as much in comparison to C. I've written this as a separate post and not as a comment to the original blog post because I'm very limited with the markup in the commenting there (I'm going to post a comment there with a link to this blog post, though). I should note that you can find all the code I mentioned inside <a href="http://github.com/shlomif/Project-Euler-Problem-10-Comparison">a dedicated Github repository</a>, and you can experiment with it further. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) problem summary primes project optimize optimise optimization c haskell perl 10 speed optimisation euler http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44006.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/44006.html Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:50:07 GMT Freecell Solver 2.40.0 was Released http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2010/01/freecell-solver-2400-was-released.html <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> version 2.40.0 has been released. It is available in the form of a source tarball from <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">the download page</a>. This release contains a fix to a string overflow with processing the command line arguments, and an optimised command-line preset that can be invoked as <tt>-l blue-yonder</tt> (or <tt>-l by</tt> for short) that solves the Microsoft 32,000 deals in under 100 seconds on a Pentium 4 2.4GHz machine. It also contains some more minor changes: there is now a <tt>Scan:</tt> header with the name of the current soft thread, when debugging under <tt>-s -i</tt>, an off-by-1 iterations count was fixed and the iteration handling callback is now applied globally to all the instances. Finally, <tt>make_pysol_freecell_board.py</tt> has support for generating PySol's and PySolFC's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_%28solitaire%29">"Black Hole" Solitaire</a> deals, intended for my newly released <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/black-hole-solitaire-solver/">Black Hole Solitaire Solver</a>. Enjoy! <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-8433576534342073452?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) speed release optimization security minor solving pysolfc overflow version freecell 2.40.0 pysol buffer solver asciidoc tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-8433576534342073452 Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:33:00 +0000 2010-01-27T12:34:13.248-08:00 XML-Grammar-Fortune version 0.0200 Was Released http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/43620.html I recently released version 0.0200 of the Perl 5 CPAN Module <a href="http://web-cpan.berlios.de/modules/XML-Grammar-Fortune/">XML-Grammar-Fortune</a>. XML-Grammar-Fortune is a module to maintain a collection of Unix-like fortune cookies as XML and convert them to XHTML and plain-text. New in this release are a heavily fixed and enhanced code for rendering the XML to plaintext and a more enhanced META.yml file. XML-Grammar-Fortune was successfully utilised for <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">my collection of Fortune Cookies</a>. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) release unix text fortune grammar hacktivity xml-grammar-fortune perl xml fortunes cpan http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/43620.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/43620.html Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:49:53 GMT The CPAN Dependencies of Website Meta Language http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/43345.html In the past few days I resumed work on converting the <a href="http://thewml.org/">Website Meta Language</a> (WML) build-system from the GNU Autotools (also known as "GNU Autohell") to <a href="http://www.cmake.org/">CMake</a>. This involved implementing a lot of the existing makefile and autoconf logic in CMake and Perl. Yesterday, I converted the "wml_common" sub-directory which turned out to contain some ancient versions of CPAN distributions with a forced-upon way to install under the WML prefix. I decided to forego installing all of them and just check for their existence in the perl version that wml uses using some WML and "perl -MMyModule" code. I was able to find all the needed modules in the Mandriva repository, except one - <a href="http://search.cpan.org/dist/File-PathConvert/">File-PathConvert</a> , which I've never heard about. I checked it on CPAN, and saw that it was deprecated and superseded by File::Spec and Cwd. So I grepped the tree for its use and found it was used only in one Perl program which I quickly converted to File::Spec and Cwd. Now, the future build system of Website Meta Language will be simpler and it won't use deprecated modules. Oh! And <a href="http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2010/01/21/firefox-3-6-release/">Firefox 3.6 (Gamma) is out</a>! I've been using the betas and RCs on Mandriva Cooker for some time now, and now I've upgraded to the stable version and it's still great. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) eumm wml language cmake perl firefox gnu autohell website meta cpan http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/43345.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/43345.html Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:22:40 GMT Perl: Using Vim's snipMate for Perl 5 snippets http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/43262.html I noticed that there was some Perl 5 code that I had to type or copy-and-paste again and again on many occasions. So I decided to find a way to put it in one place and then recall it. I thought of writing it myself, but then recalled the <a href="http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2540">snipMate snippets extension for Vim</a> (which <a href="http://www.catonmat.net/blog/vim-plugins-snipmate-vim/">Peteris Krumins covered in a blog post</a>), which allows that. After a little reading, I was able to prepare the snippets. I placed the following under <tt>~/.vim/snippets/perl/_slurp.snippet</tt> : <pre> sub _slurp { my $filename = shift; open my $in, "<", $filename or die "Cannot open '$filename' for slurping - $!"; local $/; my $contents = <$in>; close($in); return $contents; } </pre> And now I can type "_slurp<TAB>" to recall it. The existing "slurp" snippet in <tt>~/.vim/snippets/perl.snippets</tt> is quite evil, with an ugly inline line, typeglobs, and a two args open without a die statement. Thanks, but no thanks. Afterwards I added the following in <tt>~/.vim/snippets/perl/_ltestb.snippet</tt> <pre> local $Test::Builder::Level = $Test::Builder::Level + 1; </pre> And now I can type "_ltestb" (short for "local Test::Builder") and put this line there to create my own custom Test::More/Test::Builder tests. Thus, using snipMate, you can create your own short-hands for commonly-used snippets like that. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) test tip local slurp perl snipmate vim tip builder snippets vim http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/43262.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/43262.html Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:26:13 GMT Report on the TelFOSS "Moose for Beginners" Meeting http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/42895.html Last Sunday, <a href="http://tel.foss.org.il/">Tel Aviv Open Source club (TelFOSS)</a> met to listen to Sawyer's presentation about "Moose for Beginners". Despite the fact that the meeting was well-publicised, very few people came. Sawyer did not prepare a lot of slides and since there were not many questions he finished quickly. After all that, he went to demonstrate how to implement several use cases that the audience has proposed as Moose programs, and despite that we still finished early. I asked about implementing an "XML parser", but in fact I wanted to implement a processor for a certain XML grammar. In any case, he misunderstood and told me to use Parse-RecDescent for that. I've grown to dislike P-RD for most stuff though. In any case, I'm getting tired of the low attendance in TelFOSS meetings. We do so much work in organising and publicising the meetings, and most people don't bother to come. Are the people too busy? Did they run out of steam? Why don't they come? This makes me frustrating and unwilling to further organise the TelFOSS meetings. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) telux telfoss meeting open perl club sawyer moose tel aviv source report http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/42895.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/42895.html Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:35:04 GMT The Quest for a Good Window Manager / Desktop Environment http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/42522.html I'm using Linux (Mandriva Cooker) and have been routinely starting many window managers and desktop environments as the need arises. Lately, I've been working a lot with KDE 4 and I happen to agree with <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/22662/Your_KDE4_Experiences">OSNews.com's assertion that it is slow, sluggish, and has frequent random crashes</a>. I'd like to move to something more usable until the KDE 4 programmers get their act together. Now, I've traditionally used <a href="http://www.icewm.org/">IceWM</a> but it no longer cuts it for me because it does not have a different wallpaper for every virtual desktop. XFCE fails on the same premise. Enlightenment 17 has a different wallpaper per virtual desktop, but its task bar is dysfunctional, if not completely non-existent, and it has many other very annoying quirks. GNOME is just plain annoying (and doesn't have a different-wallpaper-per-virtual-desktop either), and KDE 3 is no longer present on Mandriva. LXDE does not have it either. Now I dislike the concept of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager">tiling window manangers</a>, of which there has been an inflation, recently, and I am looking for a window manager that has stacking. And like I said, it also needs to have a usable task bar, a different wallpaper per virtual desktop and be responsive and stable. Do you have any recommendations? Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) window desktop tiling stacking unix kde 4 x11 wallpaper environment virtual icewm x xfce manager windows workspace linux http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/42522.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/42522.html Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:49:59 GMT Personal Log http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61750.html On Friday, I went to the <a href="http://he.wikipedia.org/">Hebrew Wikipedia</a> meeting that commemorated it having 100,000 entries now. I enjoyed the food there, but left after the first round of lectures. Still, it was a nice refreshment from what I usually did and I had to wake up early to come there on time. Later on that day I worked on <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> and today I wrote <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/1035">a report about it</a> to the mailing list. I also spent a lot of time cleaning up my hard-disk and removing a lot of cruft, both from my home-directory and the main partition. Today was less intensive for me and I mostly rested. However, one of the connectors on my glasses became faulty and as a result the right handle does not hold up properly, and I need to replace it tomorrow. Very annoying. Finally, here are some albums I enjoyed from Jamendo: <ol> <li> <a href="http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/56666">Justin Sound - Justin Sound</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/59248">LadyLau - Sense</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/55493">Yachar - Tú y solo tú</a> </li> </ol> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61750.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61750.html Sat, 16 Jan 2010 19:17:46 GMT New Programs, New Fortunes, and a New Revision of "The Case for Drug Legalisation" http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13974.html I added the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/puzzles/maths/n5-riddle/">5^n riddle page</a> to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/puzzles/">puzzles section</a>. Two new fortunes have been added to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">fortunes' collection</a>: <blockquote> <ul> <li>rindolf: Su-Shee: "I always wonder why the people I hang out with are so pedantic. And then I remember: because they are so pedantic." -- a Perl-ILer. ;-)</li> <li>Zaba: rindolf, because they use warnings</li> <li>* rindolf adds "use Zaba;" to his code.</li> <li>Zaba: oh no, I'm being used!</li> <li>* rindolf adds "abuse Zaba;" to his code.</li> <li>rindolf: Next: "misuse Zaba;"</li> <li>Zaba: ouch!</li> </ul> </blockquote> The English version of <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/drug-legalisation/">"the Case for Drug Legalisation"</a> is now at the second revision with <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/drug-legalisation/#note_about_politicians_supporting_the_prohibition">a note about "Why Politicians Support The Prohibition"</a>. There's now <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/black-hole-solitaire-solver/">an automated solver for Black Hole Solitaire</a> available on the site and I also started maintaining <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/libtap/">libtap</a> again. I also added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits.html#set_xfce_workspaces">a Ruby script for setting the names (and number) of XFCE's workspaces/virtual desktops</a>. Links to some prominent programs were added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/numerical-software/">the Directory of Numerical Software page</a>. The annoying text-on-hover over the sections of all the DocBook/XML-based essays (using the title="" attribute) was eliminated by using a DocBook/XSL customisation. Finally, I performed many changes to the homepage's internals and build system that will allow for an easier maintenance into the future. Update: I wrote <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13974.html?thread=6038#t6038">a comment</a> on how to perform the DocBook/XSL customisation to get rid of the text-on-hover / <tt>title=""</tt> attribute. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) mathematics math fortunes workspaces site desktops web libtap black testing maths prohibition fortune drugs legalization www drug qa hole fish virtual homepage legalisation numerical cookies riddle xfce shlomi puzzle ruby solitaire software http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13974.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13974.html Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:51:39 GMT New Solver for "Black Hole" Solitaire in Perl http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/42309.html I wrote <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/black-hole-solitaire-solver/">a new solver for the solitaire "Black Hole"</a>. Here's the complete story: Yesterday, I was going to play a game on <a href="http://www.brainbashers.com/">Brain Bashers</a> when I remembered the Penguin solitaire variant, which is similar to Freecell and which I wanted to cover on the Cards Wikia. So I did a Google search for "penguin solitaire" and saw it had <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_%28solitaire%29">a page on the wikipedia</a>. There I saw that it was invented by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Parlett">David Parlett</a> and I saw there that he also invented <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_%28solitaire%29">a solitaire called "Black Hole"</a> So I looked for it in <a href="http://pysolfc.sourceforge.net/">PySolFC</a>, read the instructions there and started to play. The game involves putting a card that is one above or below the foundation (wrapping from kings to aces). I noticed that there wasn't any over-populated talon or something like that there, which meant that I could probably build a DFS-based solver for it. So I set out to see if it was possible. The first thing I did was to adapt my PySol/PySolFC game generator to generate the initial board of the PySolFC deals. This turned out to be a very complicated and frustrating task for me, because I had to understand what's going on with the code. But after a lot of playing with it, I was able to get it to generate the initial deals. The changes for that are in the Freecell Solver trunk now. Then I started working on the solver. I decided to write it in Perl 5 because it's a good prototyping language and I know it well. When writing it, I heavily optimised for speed and low memory consumption by using bit fields ( see <a href="http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/vec.html">the vec() function</a> ) and a gigantic hash lookup. Then, after it was written, came the moment of truth: I ran it on the board and it reported success. Great! But what's the solution? So I added some solution tracing logic, to output the cards that should be moved. Then I was able to play it and the game was solved. Yay! I tried it on another game and it also worked. Then I ran it on the first few games. Game #1 was reported as unsolvable, Game #2 was solved after a while, and Game #3 consumed over 15% of my RAM and then was solved. So it seemed to be working nicely. Today I wrapped the code inside its own CPAN package and prepared a nice app-in-a-module and a script for it. he solver's code is made available under the permissive MIT/X11 licence - share and enjoy. And as I mentioned before <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/black-hole-solitaire-solver/">here is its home-page</a>. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) automated patience black perl games hole game cards solver solitaire solvers davi python http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/42309.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/42309.html Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:32:29 GMT libtap-1.02 Was Released http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/42035.html libtap is a C library to implement the <a href="http://testanything.org/">Test Anything Protocol (TAP)</a>, which is used by the test suites of perl 5, CPAN modules and other programs. libtap allows one to write C code that can be analysed by TAP harnesses such as <a href="http://web-cpan.berlios.de/modules/Test-Run/">Test-Run</a>. I started maintaining Nik Clayton's libtap, which he seems to have abandoned <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/libtap/">on my homepage</a>. There's also <a href="http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/web-cpan/libtap/">a Subversion repository</a>. Reading from the NEWS file: <blockquote> tap-1.02: <ol> <li> Add the COPYING file. </li> <li> Now disabling the thread-safety by default (in order to have it add <tt>-DLIBTAP_ENABLE_BROKEN_THREAD_SAFE</tt> . </li> <li> Changed configure.in to configure.ac. </li> </ol> </blockquote> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) test perl release anything qa testing tap new c libtap protocol http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/42035.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/42035.html Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:18:19 GMT bzr is Dog-Slow and Generally Sucks http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/41922.html <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazaar_%28software%29">The Bzr version control system (Bazaar)</a> is a version control system from Canonical Ltd. (the parent company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution). While being open-source, it sucks royally and this is a blog about this. First of all it is excruciatingly slow. Branching <a href="http://burtonini.com/bzr/postr/postr.dev">postr.dev</a> (which is a bzr branch of <a href="http://burtonini.com/blog/computers/postr">the very small postr project</a> takes 2:48 minutes. And that's not all: <pre> shlomi:~/Download/unpack/net/www/TEMP$ cd postr.dev/ shlomi:~/Download/unpack/net/www/TEMP/postr.dev$ du -cs * 4.0K AUTHORS 20K COPYING 80K data 4.0K nautilus 20K po 4.0K postr 4.0K postr.doap 4.0K README 4.0K setup.py 256K src 4.0K TODO 404K total shlomi:~/Download/unpack/net/www/TEMP/postr.dev$ echo "Hello" >> postr shlomi:~/Download/unpack/net/www/TEMP/postr.dev$ time bzr di === modified file 'postr' --- postr 2007-07-19 17:57:09 +0000 +++ postr 2010-01-07 18:00:06 +0000 @@ -42,3 +42,4 @@ for url in sys.argv[1:]: p.add_image_filename(url) reactor.run() +Hello Command exited with non-zero status 1 1.47user 0.08system 0:01.69elapsed 92%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 60080maxresident)k 288inputs+8outputs (0major+5673minor)pagefaults 0swaps shlomi:~/Download/unpack/net/www/TEMP/postr.dev$ time bzr di === modified file 'postr' --- postr 2007-07-19 17:57:09 +0000 +++ postr 2010-01-07 18:00:06 +0000 @@ -42,3 +42,4 @@ for url in sys.argv[1:]: p.add_image_filename(url) reactor.run() +Hello Command exited with non-zero status 1 1.47user 0.07system 0:01.61elapsed 95%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 60096maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs (0major+5672minor)pagefaults 0swaps </pre> So a simple "bzr diff" command takes over 1.6 seconds. I reported <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/498481">a bug in inkscape - "bzr branch lp:inkscape is very slow and emits errors and leaves a broken local repository after exit"</a> It took bzr 3 minutes to try and checkout the Launchpad's Inkscape branch, and it finished with an error and left the repository in an unsuable state. I tried it on my Debian Testing VM and ended up with the same result. To quote <a href="http://dazjorz.com/">Sjors</a>: "Bzr is slower than Subversion in combination with Sourceforge." (and that says a lot.). Recently, <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/12/28/0057231/GNU-Emacs-Switches-From-CVS-To-Bazaar">GNU Emacs switched to Bzr</a>. Now the question is how many decades one will have to wait to "bzr branch" its main repository. Cheers! Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) canonical dazjorz version inkscape bzr emacs svn open slowness linux ubuntu slow control source subversion rant sjors http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/41922.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/41922.html Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:19:11 GMT Next TelFOSS Meeting: Moose, the Perl OOP System on 17-January-2009 http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/41624.html The <a href="http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/telux/">Tel Aviv Open Source Club</a> will host <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_17_January_2010">the talk "Moose, the Perl OOP System" for beginners</a> by Yaron Meiry (Sawyer) on Sunday, 17-January-2009, at 18:00 (note the change of time since last year) in Tel Aviv University, Holcblat Hall No. 007 in the corridor of the exact sciences building (note the change of place from last year). Further details, maps for arrival, etc. can be found on <a href="http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/telux/">the web-site</a> <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_17_January_2010">and in the Wiki</a>. Attendance is free, it is not necessary to RSVP and everyone are welcome. With any other problems, feel free to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/contact-me/">contact the organiser</a>. Abstract <a href="http://moose.perl.org/">Moose</a> is a post-modern Object-Oriented Programming system for Perl 5. It was written since its originator (Stevan Little) was jealous of the capabilities that Perl 6 provided in regards to OOP, and so instead of switching to Ruby, he worked on developing a similar system for Perl 5. Moose drew inspiration from the Object Oriented Programming capabilities of many languages such as Perl 6, Smalltalk, Common Lisp (CLOS), Ruby, Java, OCaml and other languages, while remaining faithful to its Perl 5 roots. About the Lecturer Yaron Meiry is a systems' administrator and a Perl developer. He gives talks about open source, free software, security and programming standards. Yaron has previousl given the <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_28_June_2009">presentation about red flags in programming of very high languages</a> in the Tel Aviv Club. <hr /> We are always looking for people who will volunteer to give presentations on various topic that are related to open source code and to computers. In case you are interested to give a talk, or that you have a suggestion for a talk that interests you, we'll be happy to hear from you. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) announcement activities open source israel telux telfoss meeting foss perl linux moose tel aviv http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/41624.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/41624.html Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:48:18 GMT פגישת קוד-פתוח-תל-אביב: Moose למתחילים - מערכת האובייקטים לפרל http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/41232.html <div dir="rtl" align="right"> <a href="http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/telux/">מועדון הקוד הפתוח התל-אביבי (תלוקס)</a> ייפגש שוב כדי לשמוע את <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_17_January_2010">הרצאתו של ירון מאירי (Sawyer) אודות "Moose, מערכת תכנות מונחה העצמים לשפת פרל (למתחילים)"</a>. ההרצאה תתקיים ביום ראשון, 17 בינואר 2010, בשעה 18:00 (שימו לב לשינוי בשעה משנה שעברה), באולם הולצבלט, מס' 007 במסדרון הבניינים למדעים מדויקים (שימו לב לשינוי במיקום משנה שעברה) באוניברסיטת תל אביב. פרטים נוספים, מפות להגעה וכיוצא בזה, ניתן למצוא <a href="http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/telux/">באתר</a> <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_17_January_2010">ובוויקי</a>. הנוכחות בהרצאה היא חינמית ולא נדרשת הרשמה מראש. <a href="http://moose.perl.org/">Moose</a> הינה מערכת תכנות מונחה-עצמים פוסט-מודרנית לשפה פרל 5. היא נכתבה מכיוון שההוגה המקורי שלה (סטיבן ליטל) קינא במה שפרל 6 סיפקה בנוגע לתכנות מונחה עצמים, ולכן במקום לעבור לרובי הוא שקד על פיתוח מערכת דומה לפרל 5. Moose שאבה השראה מיכולות ה-OOP של שפות רבות כמו פרל 6, Smalltalk, ליספ, רובי, ג'אווה, OCaml ושפות אחרות כשהיא נשארת נאמנה לשורשי ה-פרל 5 שלה. ירון מאירי הינו מנהל מערכות ומפתח פרל. הוא מרצה על קוד פתוח, תוכנה חופשית, אבטחה וסטנדרטים של תכנות. ירון העביר בעבר את <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Tel_Aviv_Meeting_on_28_June_2009">ההרצאה על דגלים אדומים בתכנות עבור שפות עיליות ביותר</a> במועדון התל-אביבי. אנו תמיד מחפשים מרצים שיתנדבו לתת הרצאות בנושאים שונים הקשורים לקוד-פתוח ולמחשבים. במידה שאתם מעוניינים לתת הרצאה, או שיש לכם הצעה להרצאה שמעניינת אתכם, נשמח לשמוע ממכם. </div> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) announcement mobile activities open source israel telux telfoss meeting foss perl linux moose tel aviv phones cellphones http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/41232.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/41232.html Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:52:46 GMT Legal: ACTA and Software Patents in Israel http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/41125.html This post is about two legal matters. The first is about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement">ACTA, the so-called "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement"</a>, which is a trade agreement that aims to criminalise a lot of the openness of the Internet under the guise of fighting counterfeited goods. Michael Geist has <a href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/">an analysis of the provisions of ACTA</a> and <a href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/tags/anti-counterfeiting+trade+agreement">tracks its progress</a>. This is worrying and one should better take a look. The other issue is <a href="http://hamakor.org.il/pipermail/discussions/2009-December/000907.html">Software patents in Israel</a> (see <a href="http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Israel">"Fight Software Patents"'s wiki entry about Israel</a> and <a href="http://www.justice.gov.il/MOJHeb/RashamHaptentim/News/kol+kore.htm">the official call for opinions on the Israel Justice ministry site</a>). I started preparing <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/israeli-soft-patents-temp-j4y8u3/">my own statement document</a>, which is still incomplete and there's <a href="http://hamakor.org.il/pipermail/discussions/2009-December/000909.html">a letter that Jonathan Klinger (attorney in law) has prepared)</a>. Hope we can stop this madness. Happy new civil year! Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) legal patents israel software news acta http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/41125.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/41125.html Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:54:53 GMT Conclusion of the Open Letter to the Israeli Government about Drug Legalisation http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61686.html I <a href="http://shlomif.livejournal.com/60773.html">announced that I sent an E-mail to the Israeli Prime Minister and the Minister of Internal Defence about drug legalisation</a> earlier on this blog. The E-mail was sent in 18 October, 2009 and I didn't receive a reply, including not an acknowledgement, an automated response or a bounce. It was obviously ignored. As a result, I have to conclude that the respected gentlemen have failed to respond to me (a citizen and resident of Israel) on such an important issue and are not fulfilling their duties as government officials. Don't re-elect them - they don't care about you. Happy new civil year, everybody! Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61686.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61686.html Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:45:09 GMT Cygwin and Perl Save the Day! http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/40841.html In my house, we have a Windows XP desktop computer that serves the family (while I'm normally using my Linux desktop machine.). A few days ago my father complained that drive C:\ there, which contains all the programs is almost completely occupied, and said we need to remove programs from it. Now this drive is roughly 45 GB in size, so it seemed unlikely to me that it became entirely full because of the executables. I decided to investigate. I switched to my account, started a <a href="http://www.cygwin.com/">cygwin</a> shell, and ran <tt>\du . > ~/du.txt</tt> from the C:\. What du does is report the size of every directory starting from the input path recursively. Then I ran <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits.html#du-output-analyser">my du-output-analyser written in Perl to analyse the results</a>, and eventually found out that 20,000,000 (20 million) 1 KB blocks are being occupied by a directory containing photos. Then I sent a report for my father announcing it. This just goes to show how much people who are not familiar with the UNIX command line and with programming are missing and are much more helpless than the more clueful UNIX power-users. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) analysis cygwin perl disk du unix capacity windows http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/40841.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/40841.html Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:14:13 GMT Vim Tip: Finding the First Non-Matching Line from the Cursor http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/40557.html For a long time I've been viewing and editing vim text files, for example those of the UNIX find output or of archive contents, that contained many consecutive lines of similar data. What I wanted to do is find the line where these consecutive data end where there was something else instead. Among the workarounds I tried was to jump to the end of the file (using <tt>G</tt>) and then search backwards for the last matching line (which may not be very reliable). But a few days ago I decided that I had enough and sought a better way, and I indeed found one. You can do it using a negated pattern. If for example you enter <tt>/ home\/shlomi\/$Arcs\/$\@!</tt> you will find the first line that contains "home/shlomi" that is not followed by "home/shlomi/Arcs/". For information see <a href="http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/pattern.html#/\@!"><tt>:help \@!</tt></a>. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) regular find tip regex next tech tech tip matching perl vim tip vim line expressions http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/40557.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/40557.html Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:47:14 GMT KDE 4 Tip for KMail, Kopete, etc.: Right-aligning Text http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/40434.html For a long time, I've been bothered by the fact that on the Linux/Unix KDE 4 desktop on applications such as <a href="http://userbase.kde.org/Kmail">KMail</a>, and <a href="http://kopete.kde.org/">Kopete</a>, the Hebrew text was left-aligned. I expected it to be right-aligned when it encounters a leading right-to-left text, like it was on KDE 3, or now is the case in Kate (the KDE text editor). However, there is a way to align the text to the right for display. To do so, press Right-Ctrl and Right-Shift on the keyboard (possibly while selecting the text). Like in Windows. It's much better in KMail than in Kopete, where you have to right-align the text this way after every message. But at least it makes life with KMail much more bearable. And please try to reproduce and comment on my <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215397">"Hebrew Messages are Displayed with Jumpy Margins" bug in KMail</a>. Cheers and a happy new calendar year. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) bidi tip tech hebrew rtl tech tip right kde kmail align 4 arabic kopete qt http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/40434.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/40434.html Tue, 29 Dec 2009 21:16:15 GMT Freecell Solver 2.38.0 was Released http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2009/12/freecell-solver-2380-was-released.html <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> version 2.38.0 has been released. It is available in the form of a source tarball from <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">the download page</a>. This is a minor release which makes sure one can build Freecell Solver outside the source distribution (e.g: <tt>mkdir build ; cd build ; cmake ..</tt>) without AsciiDoc, adds a <tt>--pysfolfc</tt> (or an <tt>-F</tt> for short) flag to make_pysol_freecell_board.py and fixes one of the help displays. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-7785436137799708630?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) 2.38.0 version freecell release pysol solving solver minor pysolfc asciidoc tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-7785436137799708630 Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:54:00 +0000 2009-12-29T10:55:10.158-08:00 Directory Tree Traversal In Various Languages, C# and a funny IRC conversation http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/40163.html While looking for some sample C#/.NET code (more about it below) and doing a search I stumbled upon <a href="http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Walk_Directory_Tree">this page in Rosetta Code that contains directory tree traversal codes in various languages</a>. I've been meaning to do a comparative blog post comparing File::Find, File-Find-Object and File-Next to directory tree walking APIs in other languages, but now it will be easier. Of course, the page is not perfect - for Perl, it only gives an example using File::Find (guess I'll have to add the other ones) and in many cases (such as C) it gives a custom, recursive solution instead of using an API such as libfts. Still it's a pretty cool page. Now I fear I'll get the feeling that "it' s already been done and so I shouldn't do it" and so won't write that post. The reason I was looking for C# information was that one of my Perl programs ran too slowly. It was written to find a good heuristic for <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a>, and used <a href="http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/1026">a menial algorithm</a>: check the most optimal solution for the first iteration with starting quotas between 100 and 1,000; Then using the result, check them for the second iteration, etc. The Perl program used <a href="http://pdl.perl.org/">PDL (the Perl Data Language)</a>, but: 1. It was wrapped in a lot of Perl OO code and 2. it had a lot of pure-Perl algorithmic code that I did not figure out how to properly PDLise yet. As a result, I was looking for a faster language to port it to. I originally considered using C, which I know pretty well, but then thought about trying out C#/.NET using its <a href="http://www.mono-project.com/">open-source Mono implementation</a>. At the end I spent a day and a bit of the evening beforehand writing 409 SLOCs of C# code, and 113 SLOCs of testing Perl code for the task (according to <a href="http://www.dwheeler.com/sloccount/">SLOCCount by David A. Wheeler</a>) and that was after being delayed due to many web searches to find out how to do a lot of stuff. The reason I wrote the testing code in Perl was because I lacked the energy to learn NUnit, but now that I think of it it may be useful to test the original Perl version (which is still of some utility to me) too. At the end of the day, the C# code worked and worked well. Mono programs start up quickly, and the C# code I wrote ran much more quickly than the Perl one, which saved me the time of waiting for so long. I think I like C# so far. It seems much nicer than Java, and with less protocols and some syntax niceties and useful APIs and it also starts up much more quickly. I still find that writing Perl 5 code is quicker, but if your Perl/CPython/CRuby/etc. code is under-performant, then C# and .NET would be viable choices. (I should note that I've still barely scratched the surface here. A single-threaded 409-line-strong command-line program is hardly indicative of any possible advantages or alterantively pitfalls you may run into with C# and .NET. But so far what I tried worked and nicely.) And finally, a funny IRC conversation. It's been a while since there was something on Freenode's #perl that I found really funny, but now the wait is over: <ul> <li>Enl apeiron: because I write client side (Provider) which sends push messages to the phone and checks for new mail in perl</li> <li>rindolf Enl: a cellphone?</li> <li>apeiron No, a rotary POTS phone that's capable of receiving email, rindolf.</li> <li>Enl rindolf: iphone, yep</li> <li>rindolf apeiron: :-) apeiron++</li> <li>rindolf apeiron: I want a phone like that!</li> <li>rindolf apeiron: do you sell them?</li> <li>apeiron rindolf, Yes, and I have some oceanfront property for you, too.</li> <li>rindolf apeiron: would you accept some of my copious gold bars in return?</li> <li>apeiron rindolf, No. I only deal in Latinum!</li> <li>rindolf apeiron: Latinum.</li> <li>rindolf apeiron: gold-pressed Latinum?</li> <li>apeiron yes.</li> <li>rindolf apeiron: I only have silver-pressed Latinum.</li> <li>Enl rindolf: get an iPhone, lol</li> <li>rindolf apeiron: would you accept LeoNerd and nanonyme as substitutes ? You can sell them for mucho Latinum.</li> <li>apeiron heh</li> <li>rindolf Enl: iPhones are worthless.</li> <li>* rindolf conspires to steal the ApeironPhones.</li> <li>rindolf I didn't say I was honest.</li> <li>* apeiron jealously guards his G1</li> <li>Enl rindolf: now really</li> <li>rindolf Enl: you should get an ApeironPhone too.</li> <li>rindolf Enl: chicks love it.</li> <li>apeiron what</li> <li>Enl rindolf: pff, chicks dont matter</li> <li>rindolf I would kill for an ApeironPhone!</li> <li>Su-Shee ahaem?</li> <li>* rindolf kills Su-Shee and takes her ApeironPhone.</li> <li>apeiron ...</li> <li>apeiron wtf.</li> <li>go|dfish hahaha</li> <li>* rindolf uses his RindolfMindReading™ to see who else has an ApeironPhone.</li> <li>apeiron Put down the acid, Shlomi. o.o</li> <li>huf like that'll help</li> <li>huf he's still got ~8 hrs on it</li> <li>Su-Shee rindolf: I have an apeiron-phone?</li> <li>rindolf Su-Shee: you had one.</li> <li>rindolf Su-Shee: before you died.</li> </ul> Hope you enjoyed this entry. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) find dot-net ffo apeiron phone humor object irc file-find-object mono file funny c-sharp humour traversal perl directory rosetta code joke http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/40163.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/40163.html Sat, 26 Dec 2009 20:33:11 GMT New Text for "the Blue Rabbit's Log", The Parable of the Elephant in the Circus, Directory of Numeri http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13575.html New text was added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Blue-Rabbit-Log/part-1.html">the Blue Rabbit Log screenplay</a>: <blockquote> [ A crowded pub in the role-played world. The Blue Rabbits enter. ] Clover: OK, now that our horses are in the stable, we can get some rest. [Hands some coins to the pub-man] Meals and drinks for the six of us. Guy sitting on a stool at the bar (Guy #1): hey, I think I recognise you. You're The Blue Rabbit Adventuring company, right? Clover: yes, we are. [does a rudimentary bow] Clover, at your service! Guy #1: hell, I ain't need your service! Guy #2: yeah, we don't need no adventurers' service here. Guy #1: yeah, problem with adventurers - they are trouble makers. They create troubles where none exist before so they can solve them later. Guy #2: yeah! [and he shakes mugs with Guy #1] </blockquote> The <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/art/">Computer Art page</a> was made more semantic and accessible. I added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/contributions/#mandriva">my contributions to Mandriva</a> to the "Contributions Made to External Open-Source Projects" page. A <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/numerical-software/">new mini-directory of prominent Numerical Software</a> (currently heavily incomplete) has been added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/">Open Source resources section</a>. The <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/shlomif.html">"shlomif" collection of fortunes</a> which was getting very big and out of control has span-out <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/sharp-perl.html">the Freenode #perl fortune cookies</a> and <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/sharp-programming.html">the Freenode ##programming fortune cookies</a>. There are some new fortunes there. I added the text of <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/psychology/elephant-in-the-circus/">the parable of the Elephant in the Circus</a>: <blockquote> I once walked to a circus and saw a huge elephant tied to a small poll with a rope, just standing there. So I wondered why is the elephant so obedient and doesn't break away from the stick with all of its enormous strength and mass. So they told me this story: once when the elephant was very young, it was tied to the pole the same way. Naturally, it didn't like that and tried to escape, but try as it might, the rope and the pole were too strong for it. So the elephant eventually gave up. </blockquote> Finally, the section navigation menus of the various sections are now formatted in a nice, expandable, GUI-like tree (assuming JavaScript is enabled). If JavaScript is not enabled, there's a standard HTML fallback. This is thanks to <a href="http://bassistance.de/jquery-plugins/jquery-plugin-treeview/">jQuery TreeView Plugin</a> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) blue parody circus www navigation site elephant fish tree log screenplay treeview javascript ads web homepage numerical menu frpg cookies parable mandriva shlomi freenode fortune #perl rabbit role playing games frp jquery software rpg http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13575.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13575.html Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:00:13 GMT Human Rights March in Tel Aviv http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61403.html There will be <a href="http://noway.org.il/">a human rights march in Tel Aviv this Friday (11-December-2009)</a> (here's some <a href="http://noway.org.il/?page_id=81">information in English</a>). I was asked to publicise it, and I may attend too. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61403.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61403.html Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:04:57 GMT Freecell Solver 2.36.0 was Released http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2009/11/freecell-solver-2360-was-released.html <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> version 2.36.0 has been released. It is available in the form of a source tarball from <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">the download page</a>. The main highlight of this release is that the plaintext documentation that was part of the source distribution were converted to <a href="http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/">AsciiDoc</a>, a lightweight markup language that allows the plaintext and human-readable sources to be converted to HTML, to DocBook/XML, to PDF and to other formats. As a result, they are now also available online in HTML formats. Furthermore, the process for getting the test suite and benchmarking process up and running were considerably simplified, thanks to the input received by <a href="http://pythack.com/">Dimitri Leca (Pythack)</a>. Finally, there are some other more minor improvements. This release has been delayed quite a bit due to some neglect on the part of the main maintainer, but we hope you find what's new satisfying enough. Happy solving! <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-669809752179112214?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) xhtml documentation release solving version freecell docbook pdf xml 2.36.0 solver html asciidoc tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-669809752179112214 Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:27:00 +0000 2009-11-27T11:28:39.107-08:00 Why Chinese May Not Become the Next International Language? http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61082.html A lot of people I've talked about have been thinking that if and when China becomes the next superpower, then Chinese will displace English as the next international language (or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca">Lingue Franca</a>, which is a common second, non-mother language). People say: "before English, there was French, and before that, people used Latin", so it's possible English will be displaced too. This is all well and sound, but there is some historical evidence that shows that often the local (or in our case - global) superpower has displaced another while the lingua franca has not changed. As a result, it is not certain that English will be displaced by Chinese even if China becomes more dominant. For example, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_language">Aramaic</a> was used as the lingua franca in the Near East during the reign of several empires: <ol> <li> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Assyrian_Empire">The Assyrian empire</a> - in <a href="http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt09b18.htm">the Old Testament</a>, the Jewish diplomats ask the Assyrian diplomat who came to Jerusalem to speak "Aramaic" instead of "Jehudan", so the rest of the Jeudans won't understand. </li> <li> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaldea">The Chaldean Empire</a> (also known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Babylonian_Empire">the Neo-Babylonian Empire</a>). After being exiled to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia">Mesophotomia</a>, the Judeans interacted with their non-Judean peers in Aramaic, which they retained after some of them returned to Judea. </li> <li> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_empire">The Persian Empire</a>. </li> <li> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_period">The Hellenistic Period</a> </li> <li> Aramaic was also spoken at the simultaneous times of The Roman Empire, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthian_Empire">Parthian empire</a> and the Persian empires. Jesus and his disciples used Aramaic as their native tongue, and it was also extensively used for writing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud">the Talmud</a>. </li> </ol> Greek was similarly extensively used after the end of the Hellenistic Period, well into the middle ages. I can also think of some reasons which will make it difficult for Chinese to displace English: <ol> <li> Chinese does not have an alphabet, but instead is using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character">a complex logogram</a> which contains thousands of glyphs that are hard to learn and memorise, especially for adults. Furthermore, from what someone once told me, that still does not make Chinese books shorter, as they tend to be roughly the same length as their English originals. </li> <li> Chinese has a poor selection of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense">grammatical tenses</a>. Whereas English has "to go", "went", "is going", "was going", "going", "go!" and also distinguishes between singular, plural and first, second and third person, Chinese only has one form for all of these. While, they have some optional modifiers, they tend not to use them. That may make Chinese poorly expressive for today's needs. A Chinese correspondent told me that Chinese people tend not to think of time a lot, in a classic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity">Sapir-Whorf sense</a>. </li> <li> China has many English speakers, though their English often tends to not be very good. I was told it is the country with the largest number of English speakers in the world (by volume), but naturally, this will require a citation. </li> </ol> So I think that for better or for worse, Chinese will not displace English as the international language, regardless of how much some people think it is likely to happen. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61082.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/61082.html Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:29:45 GMT Second Revision of "Create a Great Personal Home Site" http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13361.html The <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/web/create-a-great-personal-homesite/rev2.html">second revision of the essay "Create a Great Personal Home Site"</a> has now been finally published and is available for public viewing: <blockquote> It's amazing how much has changed since I've published this article a few years ago. The most important trend was probably that personal blogs seem to have become much more prevalent than personal web-sites up to the point that some people referred to www.shlomifish.org as a blog. I have been annoyed at this to some extent, and even wrote <a href="$(ROOT)/philosophy/computers/web/homepage-vs-blog/">an entire essay about the distinction between a home page and a blog</a> and why this homepage is not a blog. Nevertheless, as <a href="$(ROOT)/me/blogs/">an active blogger</a>, it's not that I hate blogs or try to underrate them - it's just that I think that I invest more effort and rigour in writing articles or essays on my home page, than I do on the various random stuff I post to my blogs. (Or to other similar public channels, such as mailing lists, web forums, comments on other people's blogs, etc.). I also feel that it is easier to find posts on my personal web-site than on most people's blogs. </blockquote> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) home www homesite blogs site fish flash create xhtml web homepage articles html essay blog personal shlomi great article essays http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13361.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13361.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:05:57 GMT New Material for the Stories and a Page for the XML-Grammar Project http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13181.html The texts of the lists of stories and their descriptions in the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/">Humour page</a> and its <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/stories/">Stories section</a> were merged, updated and enhanced. There are new <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/facts/Chuck-Norris/">Chuck Norris Factoids</a>: <blockquote> Chuck Norris is the greatest man in history. He killed all the great men who could ever pose a competition. </blockquote> There's also a new <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/facts/XSLT/">factoid about XSLT</a>: <blockquote> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil redirects to XSLT. </blockquote> The text of <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Pope/">"The Pope Died on Sunday"</a> was converted to XML-Grammar-Fiction (see below) and was continued a little. The story is written in Hebrew, and there is still no English translation. The original <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Blue-Rabbit-Log/">screenplay "The Blue Rabbit's Log"</a> has new text and its ideas page has also been updated: <blockquote> [ Mordox disappears. The Blue Rabbits arrive. Bryte sees Galku who tries to look innocent, but Bryte rushes to him and lifts him up in the air. ] Clover: you, where's Mordox? Tell us what you know! Galku: What are you looking at me? I'm completely innocent! Galku: See no incredible selfishness and total in-consideration of everybody else's welfare and interests. Hear no incredible selfishness and total in-consideration of everybody else's welfare and interests. Bryte: you mean "See no evil - hear no evil"? Galku: I knew it was a good definition. </blockquote> There's also some new text in <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/">Star Trek: "We, the Living Dead"</a>: <blockquote> [ Katie is sitting on a table in DS9. She is busy writing something on a qwerty-like keyboard attached to a small text pad. Jake approaches her. ] Jake: Katie, oh there you are. I thought that OTF-1 left DS9 already. Katie: yes, it did, I'm still technically working for them. Jake: really, how? Katie: with the marvels of technology: remote access and Q-ness. Jake: Q-ness? Katie: yes, check this out. [ Katie stands up, makes a gesture with her hand. A portal appears near the ground showing a different part of DS9. She steps into it, and the portal closes. A few moments later, a normal Star-Trek door opens and Katie steps out of it. ] Katie: tada! Jake: wow! So you are now "Qatie" with a Q? Katie: Qatie [with a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qoph">Qoph</a> sound] heh, I like it. </blockquote> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">The XML sources of the fortunes cookie files</a> are now viewable as HTML from the web, and naturally, there are newer entries. There's <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/art/slogans/#wdym">a new design for graphics</a> based on an old aphorism of me. There's now a <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/XML-Grammar/">page for the Web-CPAN XML-Grammar meta-project</a>, which aims to create re-usable XML grammars and related tools for various purposes, and there's a page for <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/XML-Grammar/Fiction/">the XML-Grammar-Fiction module</a> for writing works of prose. The page design and layout were slightly improved with some important links at the bottom (Web 2.0-style), old cruft removed from the left side bar, and other changes. Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) facts home www homesite site humour fish stories norris web homepage xml cpanhq grammar perl chuck shlomi screenplays humor fiction web fiction http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13181.html http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_hsite/13181.html Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:21:31 GMT Open Letter to the Government (Resend): Drug Legalisation http://shlomif.livejournal.com/60773.html (English translation follows) <div dir="rtl" align="right"> (מכתב זה מיועד לראש הממשלה, מר בנימין נתניהו ולשר לבטחון-הפנים, מר יצחק אהרונוביץ') לכבוד האדונים הנכבדים, שלחתי מכתב זה אליכם בארבעה בדצמבר [צריך להיות ספטמבר], ולא קיבלתי שום תשובה - אפילו לא אוטומטית. מכיוון שזה היה קרוב לתקופת החגים העבריים, הרי שאני אתן לכם להנות מהספק, ומקווה שתענו לי הפעם. אודה אם תוכלו להשיב לי במידה שקיבלתם הודעה זאת. בנוסף, ראוי לציין שזהו מכתב פתוח שעומד להתפרסם <a href="http://shlomif.livejournal.com/">ביומן-הרשת (בלוג) שלי</a> שמי הוא שלומי פיש ואני מפתח תוכנה, פעיל קוד מקור ותוכן פתוחים, וכותב של מאמרים, מסות, וסיפורים הומוריסטיים. מזה זמן רב אני בטוח שמדינת ישראל (כשאר מדינות העולם) עושה טעות בכך שיש בה איסור על הסמים הלא חוקיים (כמו מריחואנה, חשיש, קוקאין, הרואין). בעוד שמעולם לא נגעתי בסמים האלה, ואינני מעודד את צריכתם, הרי שאני מאמין שהאיסור על הסמים הוא גרוע שבעתיים מ"בעייית השימוש סמים" עצמה, ואף מחמיר אותה. על מנת לשכנע אתכם, אני מצרף בזאת מאמר שכתבתי בשם "נגד האיסור על הסמים" בפורמטים של HTML, ו-PDF. (כדי למנוע בזבוז נייר, בבקשה אל תדפיסו אותם.) ניתן למצוא את המאמר הזה באנגלית, ובעברית באתר-הבית שלי באינטרנט בכתובת: <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/drug-legalisation/">http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/drug-legalisation/</a> אשמח לשמוע כל הערות שיש לכם על המאמר. אנא חזרו אליי עם דעתכם על ההצעה שלי להפיכת הסמים בישראל לחוקיים. בכבוד רב, -- שלומי פיש </div> And here is the English translation: (This letter is intended to the Prime Minister, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu and to the Minister of Internal Security, Mr. Yitzhak Aharonovich). Dear Sirs, I sent this letter to you on the 4th of December [should be September], and I did not get a reply - not even an automated one. Since it was close to the Jewish holidays season, then I shall give you the benefit of the doubt, and hope you will reply to me this time. I whould be thankful if you can acknowledge that you have received this message. Moreover, one should note that it is an open letter that is going to be publicised on <a href="http://shlomif.livejournal.com/">my weblog</a>. My name is Shlomi Fish, and I am a software developer, open source and content activist, and writer of articles, essays and humorous stories. For a long time, I am sure that Israel (like the other countries of the world) is making a mistake in the fact that it enforces a prohibition on illegal narcotics (such as Marijuana, Hash, Cocaine, and Heroin). While I never touched these drugs, and I do not encourage their consumption, I believe that the prohibition on drugs is much worse than the "Drug Abuse Problem" itself, and even amplifies it. In order to convince you, I am attaching an essay I wrote called "The Case for Drug Legalisation", in HTML and PDF formats. (In order to prevent the waste of paper, please don't print it.) One can find this essay in English and in Hebrew on my Internet home-site in the address: <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/drug-legalisation/">http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/drug-legalisation/</a> I will be happy to hear any comments you have on the essay. Please return to me with your opinion on my suggestion to make drugs in Israel, legal. Best regards, -- Shlomi Fish <hr /> I sent this message on 18-October-2009 (two weeks ago), and did not get a reply, an acknowledgement or a automated response. It is very unlikely that it would have been discarded as spam. How much longer do you think I should wait? Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) http://shlomif.livejournal.com/60773.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/60773.html Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:21:16 GMT