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Below are the most recent 24 friends' journal entries.

    Friday, May 24th, 2013
    jerkcity 12:00a
    crazyscot
         		8:38p
    Well, that was useless
     I am quite a heavy Google Maps user. I got an invite to try the new Google Maps.

    I found it completely unusable, at least on my home machine; the CPU pegged out at 100% constantly and whenever I moved, it took many seconds for the screen to update. Even typing into the feedback form took many seconds to show my keystrokes. Thankfully the email welcoming me to the preview program had a return-to-classic link that worked, taking me to a more useful (ordinary-web-based) feedback survey.

    Possibly it's because I'm a Luddite with a five-year-old machine with an elderly graphics card, running Linux where the driver support is often lacking. But I am not really minded to spend $$$ upgrading when my current machine works perfectly adequately for my existing needs, TYVM.

    This entry was originally posted at http://crazyscot.dreamwidth.org/65136.html and has comment count unavailablecomments there.
    Thursday, May 23rd, 2013
    jerkcity 12:00a
    Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013
    lnr
         		4:49p
    Over 2 months!

    Doesn't time fly! Quick post this time. Been a quiet fortnight mostly, but we've had visits from Lindsey and Uncle Pete, have been out for lunch with he NCT group and cake with Ed and Lucy, and we had another nice walk up to the Gogs and Wandlebury. Today was Matthew's first jabs - and he was very brave - but has been alternating sleeping and crying this afternoon poor lamb. Hopefully he'll feel better soon. And we did get a nice cuppa and cake in the deli this morning too.

    For the future I'm hoping to pop into the beer festival for lunch tomorrow, and am looking forward to Steph, Dave and the kids visiting at the bank holiday weekend. I also have an appointment to have a coil fitted next Friday morning (the 31st) and if anyone would like to come and visit and keep baby company for 20 minutes for me in exchange for lunch in Shelford I'd be very grateful!

    Here's a few more pics.

    jerkcity 12:00a
    Tuesday, May 21st, 2013
    jerkcity 12:00a
    Monday, May 20th, 2013
    jerkcity 12:00a
    Sunday, May 19th, 2013
    jerkcity 12:00a
    Saturday, May 18th, 2013
    jerkcity 12:00a
    Friday, May 17th, 2013
    uisgebeatha
         		11:43p
    Eurovision semifinal 2- or, countertenor vampires and smiley Maltese hipsters
     ( Just look at his wee dimply face!Collapse )

    And that's that for the semis! Just making the final preparations for tomorrow's shenanigans, which consists mostly of not drinking the rest of the terrible wine, colouring in flags I missed for the sweepstake (sorry, Armenia! D:) and buying some fine quality poundshop tat. Join me as I ruin social media with my dribblings and lament the favourite not winning with Graham Norton from 8pm!

    Also available at cryptogirl.dreamwidth.org :D
    reddragdiva
         		9:28p
    Moving update.

    Still not really Internetted, but we have severe delays obtaining our phone line (the account in the previous tenant's name is apparently still active, so Zen can't just grab it; agent is on the case) so [personal profile] arkady has paid a swingeing sum for a month's BT wifi. Which injects fucking ads in your HTTP stream. (Here's to HTTPS Everywhere.) I'll see if this works for working from home, which would make half-term somewhat less completely insane.

    Moving stuff to the new house is a quart in a pint pot problem. We still have a Mac G4 with 22" Apple Cinema Display (ADC, so useless without this or similar Mac) to give away, or it goes to THE DUMP! Three Ikea GORM wooden shelves at old house for first taker. The older teen has two boxes and two bags of stuff to move, still waiting on the address it's to go to. I suspect a lot of stuff we did move is actually going to get chucked.

    Freda likes the new house even if it's a lot smaller. It's also stupendously well-located for all sorts of things Freda does (school, Rainbows, church, friends). She also has a plasma lamp for a bedside lamp and nightlight.

    My back hates me so much. Lots of codeine and a bottle of wine helps. Best thing for cleaning is some stuff my (old) landlord actually recommended, from the 99p shop: a mould removing bleach that contains caustic soda. Definitely the most noxious household spray I've ever met.

    This entry was originally posted at DreamWidth and has comment count unavailable comments. You can comment there using your LiveJournal name via OpenID.

    jerkcity 12:00a
    Thursday, May 16th, 2013
    sunflowerinrain
         		4:32p
    Under siege. Send mousies.
     Stripeycat arrived as I came home from getting the car's brakes repaired, and as usual tried to get into the house. I distracted him with a piece of food thrown just off the terrace, but he left it when he heard the door opening and had to be hauled out. For ages he sat in front of the door, pleading. Eventually there was no more noise and no more was a feline nose pressed to the glass, so I thought it was safe to go outside. He was lurking under the table and shot towards the opening door. I only just closed it in time.

    But I need to go out to get the mail!

    This entry was originally posted at http://sunflowerinrain.dreamwidth.org/531028.html. Please comment there using OpenID (yourLJname.livejournal.com) - log in here.
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    jerkcity 12:00a
    fanf
         		12:25a
    Mixfix parsing / chain-associative operators

    Earlier this evening I was reading about parsing user-defined mixfix operators in Agda.

    Mixfix operators are actually quite common though they are usually called something else. The Danielsson and Norell paper describes operators using a notation in which underscores are placeholders for the operands, so (using examples from C) we have

    • postfix operators
      • _ ++
      • _ .member
    • prefix operators
      • ! _
      • & _
    • infix operators
      • _ + _
      • _ == _

    There are also circumfix operators, of which the most common example is (_) which boringly does nothing. Mathematical notation has some more fun examples, such as ceiling ⎡_⎤ and floor ⎣_⎦.

    Mixfix operators have a combination of fixities. C has a few examples:

    • _ [ _ ]
    • _ ? _ : _
    You can also regard function call syntax as a variable-arity mixfix operator :-)

    The clever part of the paper is how it handles precedence in a way that is reasonably easy for a programmer to understand when defining operators, and which allows for composing libraries which might have overlapping sets of operator definitions.

    One thing that their mixfix parser does not get funky about is associativity: it supports the usual left-, right-, and non-associative operators. One of my favourite syntactic features is chained relational operators, as found in BCPL and Python. (For fun I added the feature to Lua - see this and the following two patches.) You can write an expression like 

        a OP b OP c OP d
    which is equivalent to 
        a OP b && b OP c && c OP d
    except that each operand is evaluated at most once. (Though unfortunately BCPL may evaluate inner operands twice.) This is not just short-cutting variable-arity comparison because the operators can differ.

    So I wonder, are there other examples of chain-associative operators? They might have a different underlying reduction operator instead of &&, perhaps, which would imply different short-cut behaviour.

    Perhaps an answer would come to mind if I understood more of the category-theory algebraic functional programming stuff like bananas and lenses and what have you...

    Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
    reddragdiva
         		7:14p
    The fun is in full progress.

    Can anyone get to E17 over the next few days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and help us with cleaning our old house? LOVE YOU LONG TIME.

    We got the keys OK. Survived the day of box lugging with only a slightly screaming in agony back and one waffer-thin car crash. Here's to hire companies who rush to take care of all the details for you; I should only have to pay the £250 excess. Happy customer of Enterprise here, highly recommending them. (Pro tip: Always book online — if they don't have the size you booked in stock, you get a free upgrade.)

    Internet will be patchy indeed. [personal profile] arkady and I have phones. Monday I'm back in the office. The phone line account for the previous tenant is apparently still active, so Zen can't just grab it; waiting for the real estate to ask the landlord to ask BT about that, tralala.

    Also can't work out how to switch on the hot water. There's an immersion heater (= horribly expensive storage heater powered by electricity rather than gas), but there's also a gas boiler which has no power.

    This entry was originally posted at DreamWidth and has comment count unavailable comments. You can comment there using your LiveJournal name via OpenID.

    sunflowerinrain
         		11:37a
    Busy. Reports later.
     The singing course at Musatelier was musically fantastic.
    Mc2 The Band gigs the previous week went very well, too, and many people asked them to come back in August.

    Almost finished the clearing-up.

    Woefully behind with other things which needed doing, such as tax return, appintment to sort out insurance, appointment with dentist, and getting the car's brakes fixed. The last is going to cost EUR200 instead of EUR69 because continuing to use the car with aged brake-pads has resulted in scratched discs. Yes, I know I should have got it done when I came back from England, but first I was horribly ill and then there wasn't time!

    And now another concert at Musatelier to arrange - Sisu, on Friday 28 June. Must get started on the posters; before or after logging on to the French tax site, that is the question. And the answer is - after another cup of tea.

    This entry was originally posted at http://sunflowerinrain.dreamwidth.org/530350.html. Please comment there using OpenID (yourLJname.livejournal.com) - log in here.
    Read comments at Dreamwidth.
    jerkcity 12:00a
    Tuesday, May 14th, 2013
    lnr
         		7:20p
    Leather sofa free to a good home - gone to charity

    Have ordered a new sofa bed - anyone want our old sofa? It's a big comfy 3 seater in pale green leather. Fits through doorways if you take the feet off but probably needs a van to move it. Available in about 3 weeks time.

    Can try take photos and measurements if you're interested.

    Measurements: 205 cm long by 95 cm deep by 85 cm tall - approx max dimensions


    (Just waiting for them o arrange collection)

    jerkcity 12:00a
    Monday, May 13th, 2013
    jerkcity 12:00a
    Sunday, May 12th, 2013
    reddragdiva
         		7:27p
    Moving house is made of cock and bureaucracy.
    • And the XFree86 Memorial Award for Community Management goes to ... GNOME, attempting to shake off those last straggling users, who are just a pack of trolls after all.

    Moving house is made of cock and bureaucracy. Without the cock. One week till we have to be out of here and gone, and I hope to finally collect the damn keys tomorrow, at which point I hire a van and move as much as possible, getting the professionals in to handle the piano and whatever else is left. At which point we polish this place to perfection.

    Apart from the delays, [personal profile] arkady has largely been ill the last couple of weeks, with a cold and a secondary infection. Recovering a bit now.

    The older teen's room is finally being cleansed. Freda has adopted her sister's old netbook with a 19" monitor hooked to it and is delighting in having something faster to play her Flash games on than the ancient Mac G4, which is being adopted by hooverpig. The lounge is a sea of boxes.

    I am exhausted. I want a magical teleport to this time next week when everything will be JUST FINE AND ALL DONE.

    This entry was originally posted at DreamWidth and has comment count unavailable comments. You can comment there using your LiveJournal name via OpenID.

    jerkcity 12:00a
    Saturday, May 11th, 2013
    jerkcity 12:00a
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