Category Archives: Computing

My thoughts and works in computing and programming.

Automagic Code Generation…?

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Another morning. A bit wet but perfect for mlaren racing as the soil gets nicely packed and allows for better traction. Now if only I had the time to start upon that project…

As my systems programming and data structures exams loom ever closer, I continue in my quest of understanding the material better by hacking a few applications. I finally found one idea to test my knowledge of thread programming using the POSIX compliant thread libraries. It will be a simulation of a small development team using an revision control server. One of the servers will be use a locked commit (e.g. Visual SafeSource), and the other will use the better method (e.g. CVS, Subversion). Should be interesting…

For my other system programming, I plan on making a useful pipe, and redirect program. PNP (PNP is Not a Pipe) will let you to execute a command, and pipe or redirect the output to another program or file, while enabling you to see all the output being displayed to the screen.

As for my data structure work… I will get on it as soon as I can.

Talked to Kat yesterday shortly, but that definitely made my day. I promptly ruined my day by being lazy, which made my folks irk. Today, I plan to balance work and study a bit better, and not be such a lazy bum. One good thing was that I started on a Herculean task of figuring the GNU Autotools. Bizarre is the best thing to say, and I am so not used to using any of them. Like I understand Makefiles, and Ant build scripts perfectly. However, all this automatic code generation is making my head spin (not mention my headers).

Well I guess I better get back to hacking… lot of work to do, and so little time. *Climbs back into the cockpit of the mlaren for around lap.*

Drifting in the Ether for While.

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…just passing by partner.

Funny how I have been missing my daily dose of Internet recently… Busy at home is my excuse, but it is a bad one. So I am back for a short while… mainly to grab a look at a few things. Recently I have had that awful mix of boredom and excitement that happens before an exam. Only four days, and two exams and that is it for spring semester 2005.

Some of my friends asked me if I will be taking courses in the summer. As much as I would like to, (honestly summer can be a fun time to learn) I am out of funds. So it is off to work we go for me. Never figured out why does dwarves were so flipping happy.

I miss Kat. Have not talked to her in what seems ages… make that almost two weeks in person. I know I shouldn’t do this… but I really like her for some odd reason. Sigh… oh and don’t give me any of that “oh… l’amour…” because I WILL twist your neck off…. 😉 Most likely we won’t meet up for the summer… so I am sort of depressed about that. We haven’t even chatted online for almost the same amount of time. 🙁 Hope that changes… we I guess we have two shared exams one on Wednesday and Thursday. That is something to look forward too.

Ok it seems that everyone has something to say about the new papacy. So I guess I should add my 2 political cents (*looks around for political officers*)… Being very much conservative (read as: dinosaur for all you liberal-minded hippies ;)), I think that Benedict XVI will do a great job. A friend of the last pope, and well versed in doctrines of the faith, I think this papacy should be a great continuation, maybe even sharpening of John Paul II’s papacy. I really don’t understand all the whining of all those liberally controlled media and activists… if you don’t like the Roman Catoholic church, well that don’t go to it. Want your church? No problem go ahead. Just don’t change ours. Enough on the subject of the new papacy.

I plan to get cracking on the visualizations for a few algorithms and data structures from my course. Should be a fun look into Java, threading, animation, and maybe a glance into understanding these algorithms. Anyhow, I am off need to stretch out my fins, and bound around the etherbeach for a while, and grab a few things. Yes, I view life from the perspective of a playful mudskipper. Why? Because mudskippers are kewl!!! And so are jellyfish.

Bye!

Hanging in the Balance

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What a day… rainy, and very trying with most of the family sick… sigh…

Tomorrow is my first exam of this semester. Looks fairly straightforward, multiple choice + 2 scenarios, all for a UI Design course. Funny how the course itself seems to be a mixture of common sense and corporate marketing lingo… (Translation: bs). I have not really studied for it, but then again it is open book. 😉

Talking about corporate lingo, watched the third part of The Corporation. Very insightful film, and even thought some of the commentators were left-leaning, they do have some good points. Some aspects are downright frightful, and in a curious manner, interesting tidbits of history most people don’t even know about. Unfortunately, they didn’t come up with ideas that are radically are different then what I know already. Consumer pressure (the companies have to follow what the market wants anyways), governmental supervision (yeah right), and rebellion (last ditch desperation); all of these I knew about. I was hoping for something more insightful, subtle and cunning.

Finally, as for my hacking projects… I tried writing an SDL/pthreads program. Now the SDL part came out no problem, but the pthreads took over my system. Mind you 5 treads, that update the position of an object (used bounding rectangles that I moved and they blitted onto the screen); shouldn’t take over that much CPU. I think it has something to do with the redrawing of the screen. Also moving a particular object proved to be impossible by my implementation. In the end, I got a lesson in SDL… and now I have to find a simple application for threads. Yes, I know about SDL Threading… but I needed to practice pthreads specifically. Was going to post it online… but the whole code is a bit messy, and needs reorganization, and fine tuning.

Oh well, tomorrow is a busy day, exams and all. Wish me luck. 😉