holygoat.co.uk

Unsubscribe

I have unsubscribed from the semantic-web@w3.org list. I subscribed to its predecessor, www-rdf-interest@w3.org, on July 1st 2004. 5 years of following the Semantic Web. So, why am I ‘quittering’ the mailing list? It's too busy, too full of people doing stuff I don't really care about, too many puffed chests and agenda.

I realized that I was pretty much skipping through all of the messages in the past couple of months, marking them as read. I'm just not willing to spend the time any more. Perhaps the content has changed? Probably I have also changed.

In any case: goodbye.

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On benchmarking

So if this is essentially what the benchmark boils down to, are we interested? Will it come as a surprise to anyone that assembly and near-assembly languages can make quick work of it? Or that some others have trouble generating really optimal code? In the latter case, should we care?

…

Oh, and one other thing, since this is nominally a blog (like I ever post!) about lisp. It would have taken the champion c code about an hour and a half to generate the improved image, and 3 hours at the resolution I originally wanted to use. I wasn't going to wait around for that so I wrote some lisp with a better approach. Even counting the time to write the code, I was still ahead as it took only 20 min to run and an hour or so to write.

Take benchmarks with a pinch of salt.

I'm engaged in a thread on the Clojure mailing list right now: one fellow has observed large memory consumption for a trivial program with his particular OS + JVM combination. I took issue with his sky-is-falling proclamation that the JVM is awful and worthless, particularly because I don't even see the same results (and neither does he on Windows).

The only real evaluation of a technology is how well it solves your problem in your situation. This is the root of why scripting languages are (rightly) popular, and also why there is still a place for C, Forth, and everything else down the abstraction stack. Sometimes the tradeoff is worthwhile. (I've even been in the position where writing a program in a low-level language, compiling, debugging, and running it took less time than the equivalent Ruby. C has a place for run-once scripts, too.)

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Chromium nightly for Mac

Brief summary: it seems fast, but it still has issues and is very incomplete. In a couple of years it might replace OmniWeb for me — it has a better basic architecture — but the usability isn't there yet.

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Bike tweaking has begun

Fruitless attempt to find chain lube notwithstanding — at least I enjoyed the Mojo Burger I rode out for — I did get a little fiddling done today. I stripped off Suzuki's fool-proofing warning stickers, checked the tire pressures, and adjusted the rear brake pedal and brake light sensor. The factory position was causing me to engage the rear brake any time my foot wasn't angled out to the side: I don't have the leg strength to keep my foot pulled up that high!

To anyone who stumbled across this thread about adjusting the rear brake: don't forget to adjust the sensor! If you don't, your brake light will be on.

I hope you're appreciating the reports, Anthony….

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Ride report

Anthony wanted a report on my first ride, having just bought a new V-Strom 650.

It's hard to give a narrative report about riding 30 miles in a mostly straight line, so instead I'll give some numerical events in no particular order.

Top speed reached: 55mph. Average speed on El Camino: 35–40mph.
Stalls: one. Must have unintentionally released the clutch whilst sitting at a light.
Times other motorists sounded their horns at me: zero.
Times the bike failed to go into gear from neutral while cars waited behind me: one. Had to rev the engine to get it into first.
Times I forgot to turn off my turn signal, even when trying consciously to remind myself: two.
Times I filtered at a light: four (or so).
Crazy riders on sport bikes observed swinging to sit side saddle at 50mph on San Tomas: one.
Times I dropped my expensive new motor: zero.
License plates on vehicle: zero. They'll be mailed to me at the start of June.
Amount already spent on farkles: $1,386.48, not including clothing or tank bag. Ouch.

I was pleased! The bike is fantastic. Now I'm just waiting for my dodgy back to recover from driving to Fresno so I can head out for another ride…

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Goodbye, Google

Also, that's the Google search sidebar element gone. It didn't work right, and you've got a search box in your browser. It's 2009. Bang.

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Redesign

I'm thinking it's about time I completely redid this site. A long time ago it was much like this, but teal. It's been this way for maybe 5 years: I now live in a different country, and have a different life to the one I had when I started writing. Design has certainly moved on.

In my copious free time, I suppose…

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MD5 in Clojure

A side project in which I am engaging involved generating MD5 sums from strings in Clojure. Here's the code; it's partially cribbed from Java examples on the net, so it's only right I throw it back out.

(ns uk.co.holygoat.util.md5
  (:refer-clojure)
  (:import
     (java.security 
       NoSuchAlgorithmException
       MessageDigest)
     (java.math BigInteger)))

(defn md5-sum
  "Compute the hex MD5 sum of a string."
  [#^String str]
  (let [alg (doto (MessageDigest/getInstance "MD5")
              (.reset)
              (.update (.getBytes str)))]
    (try
      (.toString (new BigInteger 1 (.digest alg)) 16)
      (catch NoSuchAlgorithmException e
        (throw (new RuntimeException e))))))

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