Projects

Old Ideas: My DroidWars VM

Published · 3min

Years and years ago, I started work on a game I called “DroidWars”. It was based on some misunderstood third-hand information I got about Core Wars, and rather than having program battle each other directly, each of the programs controlled a robot in a 2D virtual world.

It was written …

Projects

Thoughts on Bugtracking

Published · 5min

At Blacknight, we use our own custom bugtracking software, GrassSnake. It’s something I wrote over the course of a few days on my own time and which I’ve been working on whenever I’ve had a free moment, which, in fairness, isn’t all that often.

It’s …

Coding

Quick hacks: Python netstring reader

Published · 2min

I’m writing a proof-of-concept server for a less jokey version of the SRGP. The protocol is more or less SRGP, but it doesn’t use MIME-style headers each request is made up of a series of netstrings. The header and body sections are terminated with empty netstrings, i …

Coding

A reasonable XML RPC envelope protocol, and asynchronous calls

Published · 11min

Note

This is juvenile, but it’s still better than XML-RPC. Here is the original post.

Sometimes something you do as a joke can yield interesting results.

About a year or so ago, I was feeling bored and decided to see how much of a diet I could put …

Coding

Messing with Standard ML and Moscow ML, part one: The core language

Published · 8min

Note

A cache of the original post is here.

I was playing with Moscow ML because I’ve wanted to give Standard ML a bash for a while now, but I could never get SML/NJ to play nice for me back when I tried it first on Windows. That …

Tools

From my ~/bin: find-duplicates

Published · 5min

Note

This one was relatively populate for whatever reason. I’d recommend you use something like duff these days, though find-duplicates still works better in some circumstances.

I’m still kind of happy with this code though. Here is a cache of the original post.

This is is starting to …

Humour

I’m in yr datacentur…

Published · 1min

I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help myself…

I'm in yr datacentur, killin' yr chillin'

It may or may not concern this

Disclosure: I’m senior developer at Blacknight Solutions, one of their competitors, but this post is simply meant in good-humoured jest. We all have our bad days…

Oh, and did I mention …

FreeBSD

Fixing a FreeBSD annoyance: shell editing keybindings

Published · 2min

Unlike all the other systems I use, FreeBSD is lacking in one tiny little area: default shell keybindings. Specifically, there’s no keybindings associated with the arrow keys when CTRL is held down.

I’m used to being able to move back a word with CTRL+LeftArrow is pressed, being …

Systems Administration

Merging .iso files on Debian, Ubuntu, and most likely Linux in general

Published · 1min

I hardly ever have to do this, so I can never remember precisely how to do it. Hopefully by noting it here, I won’t forget again.

Specifically, I want to do this so that I can create a single DVD image from the FreeBSD 6.3 CD images I …

Systems Administration

Building an RPM package: a guide for the unwilling

Published · 7min

Some day, if you’re a software developer and develop software than runs on Linux, you will end up, whether you like it or not, having to build an RPM file.

I’ve just spent an absolutely inordinate amount of time working out how to do this. It wasn’t …

Coding

A RELAX NG compact schema for RSD

Published · 1min

I was feeling a bit bored last night and decided to write a schema for RSD in RELAX NG compact syntax. RSD is about five years old at this point, and nobody ever seems to have got around to writing one, so this might help somebody who wanted to make …

Coding

Moving from SVK to Bazaar-NG

Published · 3min

I exported my projects from SVK‘s hidden Subeversion repository on Saturday using tailor. I was expecting it to be simple, but it was anything but! Mind you, this is probably my fault.

I just wanted to get it working, so I read the documentation accompanying tailor to figure out …

Tech

I’m finally happy with my terminal colours

Published · 1min

It’s been seven years since I’ve had a set of terminal colours that I’ve liked, but I think I’ve finally worked out the colour scheme I used to have back then. Here’s what I’m using now:

Palette element Colour Description
Text #A4CC28 Lime
Background …
Fiction

The monologue

Published · 2min

[Original available here.]

I’m working on a monologue for a story I’m writing. Here’s what I have right now. The story’s metaphysical sci-fi. The character making the speech is meant to speak in a rather flowery and grandiloquent manner, so ignore that. What I want to …

Databases

SQL Tricks: SUM(), then COALESCE()

Published · 2min

Seeing as I’m after doing this for the umpteenth time just now, I thought I’d note it here. There’s no chance of me forgetting it, but somebody who doesn’t know the trick might find it useful.

I have to write quite a few reports where I …

Projects

GrassSnake, my bug tracker

Published · 2min

[Note: I haven’t been able to recover the screenshots.]

I thought I’d post up a few screenshots of GrassSnake, the bug tracker I wrote for my own use, and which we also use with work after we got rid of phpBugTracker, a piece of software nobody liked or …

Humour

I is yr redundant powur suplai…

Published · 1min

Note

The original post is here.

I is yr redundant powur suplai, powurin' yr datacentur (hai, I can has break now?)

Not that this has anything to do with the power supply problems a certain Irish hosting company had recently or anything…

With kudos to Podge for the idea.

(The photo is derived from this one under this Creative Commons license.)

Update: Hmmm… it appears …

Asshats

Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam

Published · 14min

Note

The original is here, and it has some comments worth reading.

I’m, of course, referencing Risteárd Ó Bodchroitheadoir‘s (aren’t cross-linguistic puns a fine thing!) latest piece, “We Can Do Without Irish“. As with other pieces, whether I agree with the writer’s points or not is …

Asshats

Fisking Kevin Myers: “Why I believe same-sex unions can never be called a marriage”

Published · 12min

Note

This could’ve been written better, but I still stand by just about everything in it. I’ve vague recollections of just hammering the thing out and posting it. Myers was and remains somebody who ought to have been a wankstain on his father’s underpants. I’m glad …

Projects

Reactor

Published · 3min

Reactor is a game I’ve been meaning to write for a while. It’s a conversion of a board game I originally wrote on the C-64 called Reaction (not to be confused with Reaxion, a rather good tile flipping game).

Here’s some graphics I knocked out showing the …

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