Clojure: Getting Started in 5 Simple Steps

More than anything, this post succinctly describes how to get up and running with Clojure + Emacs. Virtually no thinking is required if you are working from a default install of Ubuntu, and not much more is required for any linux distro – you just need to know how to use your package manager.

Furthermore, if any of these steps would cause you trouble (deleting .emacs* comes to mind), you probably already know how to handle it.

Wiping Data (or Secure Deletion) from Linux

WARNING: This blog post was posted at approximately 3 AM. As a result, it is not very well defined. Had I been thinking, I would have been more to the point. As it is, I may repost more info about the Seagate HD when it is successfully RMAd.

One of my hard drives is making sounds that indicate that it could fail at any time; In order to prevent any losses, I ordered a new drive. I spent a while copying all of my data from one drive to the next (I generally have 2 drives in my computer at a given time; the drive closer to failure contains data that is broadly available online, so losses should be minimal if anything happens, while my personal data is semiannually burned to disc and regularly synced to my brother’s computer). At any rate, I finished the migration, and started updating my install on the new drive.

The next morning I got up and found that my computer was making a horribly disturbing sound. The update process had blocked on a prompt for my acceptance of a license agreement.

Resizing windows in Gnome

I’ve been using fluxbox for a year or two, but I’ve decided to give another WM a shot for a while.  However, just because I am trying something out doesn’t mean that I want to change my usual bindings.

I’ve been using gnome for a day or so now.  Instead of rebinding all of my application startup keys, I’ve mostly been using ALT+F2 to launch whatever I want, which is pretty effective.

Anyway, to get to the point, Gnome’s default resizing operation is ALT+Middle click as opposed to ALT+Right click (ALT+Left click is move, which is pretty standard). 

Why Gentoo?

Not many people know that I run Gentoo (a source-based linux distribution) at home. Largely this is because most people don’t care. But for those who may care, I’ve decided to explain how Gentoo is better, at least for me.

Gentoo is known for taking a lot of time to set up – which is well deserved. Gentoo typically takes 1-3 days to complete a full install, and requires more work in maintenance than most other distros.

However, as I developer, I find that it is quite nice.

Xorg 1.5 – a step in the right direction

Interestingly enough, I recently upgraded to xorg-server 1.5 from 1.3. I removed my xorg file, and it works passably. It’s choice of graphics drivers is a little annoying – I’ve been using radeonhd and getting 3-5000 frames in glxgears. Now I’m getting about 1000, and it pegs my cpu.

However, all functionality on my mouse is auto detected – horizontal and vertical scrolling, backwards and forwards buttons. This means that my previous posts on scrolling are now obsolete – but that is life.

Software testing – Virtual Machine resources

Cross platform software can be difficult to debug.  Having a set of virtual machines on hand that can be used for testing can be quite handy.  Here are a few resources I’ve found for pre-made disk images.

VMWare Player images (seems to have much less variety):

ThoughtPolice

Gentoo (didn’t find a VirtualBox image)

VirtualBox images (large variety):

VirtualBoxImages (mainly torrents, large index)

VirtualBox Images (direct download, hosted on sourceforge)

HelpDeskLive (older)

I think that should cover most open-source OSs.

As far as windows goes, one option is to roll your own and save it in its initial state.  If you have access to the MSDN, most OS releases are quite readily available.

Linux vs. Mac vs. Windows

My standpoint on Linux vs. Mac vs. Windows: strengths of various operating systems, with Linux being the standard of comparison.

A quote from Facebook:

“I highly recommend MAC – they are fabulous, and things of beauty. And personally, I would stay away from Linux – not the most enjoyable OS to work with. Then again, with all the updating of packages and stuff – that might really appeal to you:)”

Off the top of my head; posted in response

My Moustache

Here’s a fun little pre-barbershop tune; the original lyrics are a bit out of date, but I think that the revision is excellent.  My mom found it for my quartet back in high school.

Original Lyrics:

1. My moustache is growing, its genial warmth bestowing; its beauty charms the eye of all Broadway. Come forth like a fairy so light and so airy, and ramble o’er my upper lip so gay.

VLC DVD Scaling Problems

I recently had some problems getting VLC to scale properly with DVDs.  I added the xv flag and that fixed it…

That’s pretty easy, but I didn’t find it anywhere.  Hopefully this will be of some help to some soul like me, but hopefully not the future me.

To state in more general terms; if VLC is compiled with the wrong options, it will not be able to scale dvd video properly.

A little Clojure

Clojure is a new Lisp on the block.  It runs on the JVM, giving it full access to any Java library (and its complement), but it leans more towards the functional paradigm, so data structures are immutable (a big boon for concurrent programming, as locks become obsolete).

In addition to supporting the usual data types of Lisp, Clojure has added syntactic support for vectors, maps and sets.  Some sacrifices have been made for performance; in order to have immutable data structures, it returns a new data structure for each mutation.  However, because the parent data structure is immutable, much of the structure can be shared. Performance-wise, Rich Hickey has stated that “I’ve tried to keep [operations] all within 1 to 4 times [the equivalent] Java data structure, [but lookup times are frequently faster]“.