Older blog entries for piman (starting at number 14)

I'm tempted to open up this diary again rather than my LiveJournal one, partially because LJ is so slow, and because I don't always feel comfortable talking about programming topics there, since I know no one really cares. It's probably also because I've been reading Advogato a lot more (since k5's "technology" articles have gone waaay downhill), and because I want to get more involved in the free software community.

I think the latter point stems from what I'm learning at UMN at the moment. I'm not actually learning any new programming theory per se (I did learn Scheme, but second semester is Java and I honestly did everything we're learning in there before I hit puberty), but I'm learning how to formalize my programs and thought structures about programs, and also more about discrete mathematics, a subject which I "knew" from programming before, but didn't have the jargon to express. I'm finding myself reading CS research papers and understanding them, and managing to teach myself using them, in addition to tutorials and existing code, which is how I taught myself before. Honestly, this feeling is exhilirating, akin to how good I felt when I wrote my first program, or the first few months after I switched over to UNIX.

Hrm. I appear to have gotten caught up in the middle of the RMS/glibc article here on Advogato. Three comments on one story is the most I've ever made at any discussion site.

In other news, I don't do anything for LJ anymore (although my journal is still there), FreeD&D is now FreeRPG, and I probably won't update for another 6 months.

Been a while. I've been doing work for LiveJournal lately, a Perl module that handles the nitty-gritty of the protocol. Because of this, libFreeDnD hasn't gotten very far :) But I did make a treasure generator I need to clean up and release soon (it's already in my APT archive).

Bleargh. I need to sleep more (I think I say that every diary entry. Heh. Maybe one day I'll listen to myself).

I seem to have a tendency to turn out small but incredibly useful Perl scripts and modules like... some kind of machine that spends all day turning out Perl scripts and modules.

On the other hand, I have a bitch of a time buckling down and working on the big projects I want finished.

This may prove disasterous when I get a job programming. Or if.

Checked in a lot of stuff for libFreeDnD. 0.0.1 release soon, names, items, and major rewrites in spells and new things in dice. I, for some reason, am dreading the loading functions for items.

Maybe I won't sleep tonight :) I got caught up over the weekend, I think.

Going back to the first thing I said, I have some ideas for MetaPT. I'll start implementing it soon. Probably in Perl, of course :)

Well, libFreeDnD is still in CVS. Heh. Hofstadter's (is that spelt right?) law strikes again.

But I'm porting Gnarr and Hackers to a new Perl module I wrote, Getopt::Subref. I'm really surprised no one wrote this earlier, it's a good idea.

I need some way to propogate this module... I want to use it a lot, and I don't want it to be burdensome to get for other people, and I don't have the time (or age) to put in for an official Debian developer application. I guess I could grab a sponsor or something. But I'm sure it's not Policy-compliant.

TODO: 1) FINISH LIBFREEDND, FMH! 2) Port over Gnarr, Hackers, and Lazy Backup to Getopt::Subref. 3) Get some sleep. Lots of it. 4) Finish web page Probably will do in reverse order.

Well, once again, I put off real work for small things. Lazy Backup, because I wanted a backup program. I love Perl.

As for libFreeDnD.... yeah. It needs work. New Years, if I'm lucky, will see 0.0.1.

New funbot on the 16th, it's neato.

I think I need to try and get a new release of libFreeDnD out for dies natales sol invicti. A lot has changed. But I need to work out the new DTDs and clean up all the code. At least the new semantics are cleaner than the old SpellList thing.

Not dead, just close.

Gnarr v1, for making dwarven battle cries.

Number four and a half reed has been released. It's apparently going to be featured in a Japanese Linux magazine or something. That makes me happy.

FreeD&D hasn't been progressing. Work, Joe. Work, Joe. Work, Joe.

Oh yeah, I've made some changes to Funbot, should probably release that.

Stupid depressed me. Oh well.

Hackers 1.0.1 released. Very minor (typo) fixes.

Lots of additions/changes to libFreeDnD.

The Open Gaming Foundation ML has proved very interesting... I think I'll stay outside the fictional safe harbour and see what happens.

Updates to libFreeDnD, a random name generator based off Vaphix/Hackers, but in C. Minor spell updates. Better randomness.

I'm probably going to create an encapsulation class for Spells to use in Spellbooks (which I have a basic structure for already)... probably doubley linked lists yet again. They're so handy.

Note: make dnd_get_spell_level_by_name().

This is actually getting pretty annoying... D&D uses so many containers and the like, it's really nice in XML, but in C it means linked list after linked list.

Maybe I should review my data structures and find something better. *looks for copy of TAoCP3*

Could maybe use glib...