Bluish Coder

del.icio.us problems

It looks like del.icio.us is down and have been for most of the day. As a result my category links aren't working. Once it comes back up again things should be fine.

Factor website changes

Slava Pestov has moved the main Factor website to a new machine and is running it on the Factor web server. It's also running the Factor code browser. I've retired the browser I was previously running on factor.modalwebserver.co.nz as a result.

Slava is using Linode to host the site. Linode provides 'User Mode Linux' machines within which you can install Linux and use it for whatever purpose you want. This is what I also use for my websites and what I previously hosted the online Factor browser on. I can highly recommend them. Great service and it gives you much more freedom to do what you want - assuming you don't mind setting everything up yourself of course!

Porting DUIM to Common Lisp

DUIM is the Dylan User Interface Manager, the GUI library used in the Functional Developer Dylan system. Duncan Rose is porting it to Common Lisp.

DUIM is a nice easy to understand user interface framework. I used it quite a bit to develop a number of Dylan programs. Many of my creatures programs and other things for example. It fills a similar space to the LispWorks CLIM library.

Hopefully Deuce will also be ported. Deuce is the emacs-like text editor for the DUIM framework. Thanks to John Pallister for the heads up.

Where did my fitness go?

Not counting the recent seminar, tonight was my first time back grappling in the non-fundamentals class for a while. You know you've been away too long when people look at you and seem amazed that you're actually there! It's interesting what you notice when you come back from a break.

The first, sitting at a desk programming has done nothing for my fitness! What a surprise. I used to be able to last the hour class fine but now I'm gasping for breath after just a couple of rounds.

Next is that everyone has gotten better. Much better. And I haven't. I did alright the first couple of opponents. I was concentrating on using the cuff choke from inside my opponents closed guard. This is a technique I picked up from the Masters of Grappling DVD and at least one GSW member is very good at it so I was keen to learn it. Amazingly I was able to pull it off a few times, and I got some help from said GSW member on how to work around some defences to it.

After that things went downhill and it was pretty much me tapping all night long. I felt very rusty. As they say, there's no such thing as failure, just another learning opportunity. I had much opportunity to learn tonight.

The class was taken by three of the blue belts and they did a great job. One of the drills was to pair up with someone and one person had to do as many submissions as possible in rapid fire, with light resistance from the opponent. That was interesting because it forced me to think about submissions I don't normally do and how to get into position to do them.

Kempo Bushido Ryu

Around 1977 I started Kempo Bushido Ryu, a style of Karate, when I was aged about seven. The subject of Kempo came up on a forum I frequent recently so I thought I'd embarrass myself by posting a couple of 'home movies' of me doing kata from back then:

• kempo1.mpg (~3MB)
• kempo2.mpg (~2.5MB)

These were originally filmed with 'super 8' reel-to-reel film, transferred to VHS a number of years later, and then transferred to the PC, so the quality is not great.

It must be the time of year or something - Last year, just before christmas I posted more 'super 8' from about the same time frame of me on the Bounty to the Pitcairn News blog. Or maybe because it was my birthday today so felt like reminiscing :-)