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    Greenwich Mean Time GMT

    Week 10, '23

    I'm going to take my horse to the old town road and ride until I can't.

    I think I'll have to stop eating vegetarian as it has presented as me just not eating anything at all. It all went well except that one evening last week when I literally forgot tuna is not a vegetable. I do enjoy a dietary restriction, though. It's a fine hobby. Perhaps i'll start eating kosher.

    Spent most of the week drinking way too much coffee because of the new espresso machine and grinder. I keep wiring myself up to the highest degree and then freaking out. Feeling super anxious and wondering why as I top up my v60 with espresso. I should probably start drinking alcohol again, to bring this coffee consumption back under control. Also I must think of my readers. The engagement's just not the same as back when I took meth. Those were the days, JetPack stats off the chart.

    Another blessed week of doing very little. I'm writing a parser for KDL right now. Getting into Common Lisp like this has made me understand why people might enjoy missionary work. When you are possession of such light, such joy it feels wrong not to share it. Especially when all somebody would have to do to reach this same heightened state is to let it into their life, accept it, let it save them. I've got a print copy of the specification sitting on my kitchen table. I read it in the mornings over coffee.

    qoqew-miwid-juyev.png

    Figure 1: current status

    Is Funky Cold Medina based on a true story?

    Anyway, have a good week.

    Greenwich Mean Time GMT

    Week 09, '23

    My updates this year seem to be "worked; wrote common lisp; canceled plans to leave house". This week is the same. It was my birthday. As you know. I was planning on eating cheese in the bath like on new years, but instead I spent the day shopping for a new espresso machine and then getting the espresso machine and then looking at the espresso machine. I was meant to go out on Tuesday night but I have some really bad gender-dysphoria-going-on-agoraphobia type thing at the moment that has kept me safe and quiet in my home. My home has no bubble bath in it. It has coffee. The problem with the new espresso machine is it's very good, and now I need a new grinder. It's funny how these kinds thing work. Tier one, you pay a little but you have to do everything yourself. Tier two, you pay a bunch more money but everything is done for you. Tier three, you pay an extremely foolish amount of money and you get to do everything yourself. There is a pair of zuchinis on my kitchen table and I don't know what to do about it. At work I published a post on the internal blogging platform. I mentioned it had been my birthday and explained that everybody who didn't wish me a happy birthday is now on a list. Afterwards people DM'd me on various communication systems wishing me a happy birthday. Do they think that gets them taken off the list? The list is immutable. There is no way off the list. I have a headache. I'm probably dehydrated. I've probably never wished any of them a happy birthday. Not sure if the headache is getting worse or if it's more noticeable now that I'm trying to write. Maybe it's a lack of oxygen. That's not just for coffee, that tier system. Other things too. Many hobbies and crafts are like that, aren't they? I'd crack open a window but it sure is cold in here. There isn't really a list for people who didn't wish me a happy birthday. Maybe I could go for a walk. OK, I'll turn the heating on and crack open a window. I ate two eggs today. Two eggs ought to be enough for anyone. I guess it's 6pm and two eggs isn't enough for anyone. OK. I guess I'll spiralize them, the courgettes, eat them with cheese.

    Greenwich Mean Time GMT

    Week 08, '23

    The week

    By the end of the week I'd got sick and had to take a couple days off. Moments about a point.

    It's my birthday next week. I'll be taking some time off to eat cheese in the bath. This is how I celebrate all events in 2023. New Year's - cheddar in the bath. Birthday - cheddar in the bath. Vernal equinox - ossau iraty in the shower. Easter - soak inside hot burrata for 3 days and emerge reborn. May day - brebis.

    There was an event on Friday evening that I was meant to be attending with dearest Duckie and Pixie, but it was cancelled at the last minute. Luckily I had a backup plan which was just as enjoyable: doing literally nothing at all. 😌

    On Saturday I tidied my entire apartment. Floors have been steamed. Walls have been scrubbed. There is so much space. It's fun to tidy the apartment and then rotate the sofa. It's like moving home. While I was tidying I kept breaking my own heart, telling myself things I know not to true. I mean, it is true that I have said no to a wonderful life. The only problem is it would not have been my life.

    I'll pop off to the market now to see if they have any paneer. If not, i'll try my luck with lemon juice and a bucket of milk.

    Questions

    • What is the most springtime of the cheeses?

    Tips

    • With a clean rabbit and a tidy home you can do anything.
    • If you think of something that makes you laugh, try adding it as a reminder so one day you wake up to a notification like:

    DUE TODAY
    yahoo stands for yet another hoo

    • Listening to highly melodic music you know well through distortion and delay and ring modulators feels very good. Much like rubbing your hands against the bark of a strong tree.
    • Writing the song "Nature Boy" is a greater thing in life than learning to love and be loved in return.
    Greenwich Mean Time GMT

    Getting Started with Common Lisp in 2023

    So you've written hundreds of thousands of lines of Emacs Lisp and you want to use that dark power for good. You've tried every scheme implementation you can find, but they all feel kind of hollow and empty in a way you can't explain.[1] You've tried Clojure but you've never managed to get past the "setting up your first Clojure project" stage because there are too many choices and they all seem to be the wrong choice for different reasons. Well, that's a remarkable fucking coincidence… this post's for you!

    If that doesn't sound like you I've got some good news and some bad news. Good news: you aren't me. Bad news: this post is not for you. On reflection, I think that's two pieces of good news.

    1. Install Steel Bank Common Lisp

    There are many implementations of the common lisp specification. sbcl is lovely. It's open source and actively maintained. It will serve you well on nearly any system you have. Let's use that.

    It's in most package repositories under the name sbcl.

    # with homebrew on mac or linux
brew install sbcl

# or, with macports on mac
sudo port install sbcl

# or, with pacman on arch linux/steamos 3
sudo pacman -S sbcl

# or, dnf on fedora
sudo dnf install sbcl

# apt on ubuntu/debian/raspberry pi os
sudo apt install sbcl

# netbsd
sudo pkgin install sbcl

# ... etc

    There are .msi installers for Windows available on sourceforge.

    2. Install Quicklisp

    There are many ways to handle packaging in the common lisp world. Quicklisp has been around for over a decade. It's ubiquitous and it's reliable, so let's use that.

    # get quicklisp
curl -O https://beta.quicklisp.org/quicklisp.lisp

# install it
sbcl --load quicklisp.lisp \
     --eval '(quicklisp-quickstart:install)' \
     --eval '(quicklisp:add-to-init-file)' \
     --quit

# remove the quickstart script
rm quicklisp.lisp

    You'll get a prompt telling you it's going to add something to your \~/.sbclrc, that'll make sure quicklisp can be used any time you want to install a dependency. You can install libraries by running sbcl --eval '(ql:quickload "package-name").

    3. Get your text editor ready

    Yeah, let's get all those swanky text editor features set up. This will depend on what editor you're using.

    Emacs

    This is how I've configured Emacs to use sbcl and SLIME[2] as my inferior lisp:

    (use-package inf-lisp :config (setq inferior-lisp-program "sbcl"))
(use-package slime :elpaca t
  :config
  (setq slime-contribs '(slime-fancy slime-autodoc slime-asdf slime-quicklisp)))

    I'm using use-package and elpaca to manage my packages. You can use :ensure t here instead if you are using the vanilla emacs package management. If you're using something else, you'll need to do a little research.

    M-x slime will now start a lisp REPL. You can C-x C-e to send the last expression to the repl to be evaluated, C-c C-c to send the current defun. It's really powerful and cool! It makes Common Lisp almost as fun to write as emacs lisp[3]! Check out the manual when you are ready to know more.

    The quicklisp contrib here lets you load systems into the repl by pressing , then typing ql then hitting enter and typing the name of the package. It'll show you all the packages it knows about, even ones you haven't installed. It's really fast, wow.

    Visual Studio Code

    I've heard good things[4] about ALIVE, which is a SLIME-like for Visual Studio Code.

    You aready have Quicklisp installed so you can run this to get all the dependencies:

    sbcl --eval '(ql:quickload "bordeaux-threads")' \
     --eval '(ql:quickload "usocket")' \
     --eval '(ql:quickload "cl-json")' \
     --eval '(ql:quickload "flexi-streams")' \
     --quit

    Then you can install the extension from within Visual Studio Code and you should be good to go! There's a LOT of information about using Alive on the Common Lisp cookbook page about it.

    If you run into any trouble, check ALIVE's overview on the Visual Studio Marketplace.

    4. Start writing some damn lisp!!!!

    If you're looking for a good book to get started, I don't believe there's anything better than the gigamonkeys book. I first went through it about 15 years ago and had a great time, though I didn't understand much of what I was doing back then. I'm just about to go through it again. Join me!

    If you're knew to lisp altogether, the mini-tutorials on lisp-lang.org will be helpful for you.

    I'd recommend keeping all your source code in \~/common-lisp/. That folder is automatically picked up by asdf and quicklisp so you'll be able to more easily define and use your own systems when the time comes. That's a topic for another blog post.

    Resources of interest

    Here are some cool things to know about:

    Practical Common Lisp

    The gigamonkeys book mentioned above

    CLOG

    This is a really cool UI kit for building GUIs with common lisp that can run on computers and phones!

    Includine

    A library/environment for DSP and composing scores in Lisp. bonkers.

    CLiki

    The common lisp wiki, full of information

    Common Lisp Cookbook

    Thorough, helpful articles and a lot of good links.

    1. Except CHICKEN, of course, because it rules. ↩︎

    2. In the original version of the post, I had a bit here about overriding the slime-words-of-encouragement to remove the one that calls you brother, but then a few hours later the maintainer of SLIME pushed a commit that deletes it!

      I still like some of the ones I added, though:

      (mapc (apply-partially #'add-to-list 'slime-words-of-encouragement)
'("Come on, let's go."
  "Vamos."
  "A ver."
  "You'll always find me in the REPL at parties."
  "OK, let me have it."))

      It keeps all the originals and adds these few extra silly ones. ↩︎

    3. Not quite, though. Nothing is as fun to write as emacs lisp. Emacs lisp is literally the best programming language in the world.

      The example of how I've configured SLIME is trimmed down for the post. The full version has a lot of extra fancy stuff. You can see here: docfiles/setup ↩︎

    4. The "good things" are that it:

      1. exists
      2. works
      ↩︎
    Greenwich Mean Time GMT

    Week 07, '23

    Let's see, let's see…

    Got some good stuff finished at the coal mine. Had a little break-up. Have spent the whole weekend eating smoked mackerel, playing mario and writing emacs lisp. There was also a bath on Sunday.

    Becky Avery thinks it's over for me. All vegetable curries and a water please thank-you from here on out. Maybe she's right. Though I am planning on drinking an entire bottle of Patrón on March 2nd. Should probably take that day as annual leave.

    Light week, as has been the pattern so far this year. My days have been intense but it's all work stuff and I have no interest in discussing it here.

    computer

    I spent most of Saturday writing hundreds of lines of lisp to make it so I can see my calendar events in Org and take notes on them that will not go away when the list is updated. Here's what it does:

    1. Grab my work calendar from the Google website
    2. Filter out anything that's older or newer than 7 days from today
    3. Open up the .org file and store all the current event IDs (as current-event-ids)
    4. Go through the events from the Google calendar and a. if they exist: update their details (time, video-call, link) b. if they don't: create them (adding their meeting description in a quote block)
    5. Compare the IDs from the calendar with the current-event-ids
    6. Archive any events that were not in the calendar

    This way it keeps all my old notes using Org's normal archive functions, and my current notes appear alongside the meeting when I look at it in the agenda or on Beorg on my telephone. It's great. It even converts Google Calendar's html into Org syntax. lol. haha.

    screenshot of an org-mode meeting at describe above. shows the properties of the meeting as org-mode properties, the meeting notes and my personal notes on the meeting.

    Figure 1: ✅ CANCELLED

    ok

    Anyway i'm handling the inevitable end of that relationship by writing emacs lisp. I haven't eaten today. I'll go for a walk.

    good bye