Jul 28, 2005
Lisp videos
Why videos of programming languages are useful? Because you'll have the unique opportunity to see real-life hackers in action working with theirs language and environment of choice. I like to learn from books, specially because I can read really fast and skip things that I'm not interest or skim over parts I'm comfortable with. So I'm not usually interested in books-on-tape or video-classes. But is a great thing to see über hackers like Gerald Sussman and Hal Abeson in the videos lectures of SICP. One can learn much more than simply reading a book, specially because their lecture is not a "reading" of the book. The same goes to Lisp. It has a unique model of dynamic development that is difficult to capture on written words. Marco Baringer created a 20 minutes movie showing how to develop a simple application with uncommon web using slime. The movie was so successful that he made another movie (this time it has almost an hour!) showing a few slime features. Another great movie is Rainer Joswig's about Domain Specific Languages in Lisp. It's a response to an article by Martin Fowler. This movie is a great way to see how lisp hackers develop code and why lisp is such a great language. He also has a related article in his blog.Posted at 15:00
Gut strings
I program in a 45+ year-old language, I use fountain pens, paper-based journals, and play the violin (which is an old instrument). Do you still need more proofs I'm old? I'm using unwound gut strings now. :-) Yeah, unwound sheep (but not cheap!) strings. I've been using wound gut strings for 4 years. I started with eudoxas and switched to olives a couple of years ago. I just love then and going back to synthetic strings is just not a choice. A always wanted to try unwound strings to see how they felt like, specially because the violin and viola players I admire most have used strings like that, but I never got the chance. Well, I decided to buy some and they just arrived. My setup is inspired by Heifetz's, so I'm using a Goldbrokat E, plain gut D and A (Pirastro Chorda) and wound gut G (Pirastro Olive). The sound is terrific already and I'm very curious to see how they'll involve during the next week.Posted at 15:00
Jul 27, 2005
Books and more books
I'm on vacation now and although I'm not having as free time as I'd like to have (I still have unfinished projects to complete), I'm studying Lisp in a very "immersive" way. I just got a bunch of great books. One is PAIP (Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp), by Peter Norvig
The other is Paul Graham's ANSI Common Lisp
Of course I have more Lisp/Scheme material (like On Lisp, How to Design Programs, Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation just to cite a few) but this material is more than enough for a long fun time. :-)
Posted at 15:00
Jul 24, 2005
SICP Helpers
I'm starting to study SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) seriously now. Here are a few helpers. There is table to map the video lectures to the textbook here. Solutions for the exercises can be found here and here (just a few). There is a virtual study group here. This is an interesting thread about using python with SICP.Posted at 15:00
Jul 15, 2005
Lançamento da versão 1.0 do manual de instalação do br-cdd
Finalmente a versão "final" do manual de instalação do Debian-BR-CDD foi lançada! Esse foi um trabalho conjunto durante 10+ meses, mas valeu a pena. O resultado está muito bom. Agora eu espero que apareçam as inevitáveis correções de última hora e que em algum ponto o material vá para a gráfica.Posted at 15:00
Jul 14, 2005
Nice tools
Yeah, I really like nice tools like Lisp and fountain pens. To be honest I never was very interested in hand writing until I started a logbook. It is a great tool to have. It helps me to keep focused on the task I'm working. For some people it looks like too much work, but it's not. When I'm composing, programming, or working in some problem, I can find the solutions much faster when I'm writing about the process. A great side effect is that you end up with a history of your thinking and the process involved. This is particularly useful for composition. When I start to compose I just look the logbook to know were I stopped (in term of ideas). And, yes, I do think that electronic logbooks are an anti-pattern. So, after I started the logbook I saw how productive I could be, but since I hate ball-pens I end up looking for nice hydrographic pens. I was looking for pens that can write with a very relaxed grip. The problem is that sometimes I just can't find the particular pen I like on the market! Recently I decided to buy a fountain pen. It just arrived today. Men, this pen is great! It has a very consistent line with a very relaxed grip. Not to mention it looks good. To complete the set, my Moleskine notebook also arrived today.Posted at 15:00
Jul 09, 2005
Trip to Rio
I'm going to Rio de Janeiro to present a paper in a national congress on music research. (the XV Congress of the National Association of Music Research and Post-Graduation). The paper is "Desenvolvimento e implementação de uma linguagem de descrição de alto-nível, extensível e conectável, para composição musical com sistemas de afinação" (Development and implementation of a high-level, extensible, and contactable description language for musical composition using tuning systems). Is that mouthful or what? :-) The basic idea is to develop an interpreter in Scheme to deal with music representation of tuning systems. I started with the top-down idea of 1) describe the language and 2) implement it. But after I started working I was deeply influenced by the lisp culture of doing things bottom-up and decided that using an interpreter to test my ideas was the way to go. The project is basically stalled now, but I intend to resume it, probably in Common Lisp this time.
This trip will be nice because my girlfriend will go with me. Besides attending the congress we plan to do fun things in Rio, including visiting the awesome Confeitaria Colombo, a place I love and would go all the time if I lived in Rio. We will go to Petropolis to visit the Imperial Museum. Petrópolis is a city near Rio de Janeiro built by Brazil's last Emperor, Dom Pedro II, to be his summer residence. Dom Pedro II was a really smart guy. He knew literature, french, English, German, geography, natural sciences, music, dance, painting, among other things. He also know Greek, Latin and Tupi-guarani. He collaborated with the Pasteur Institute in Paris and with the Wagner's theater in Bayreuth. Just to mention a few things. Yeah, this trip will be fun!Posted at 15:00