Voyeurs to the Center of the Navel (boulder)

Trevor Stone's Journal

Those who can, do. The rest hyperlink.

25th-May-2012 04:09 pm - Alaska

dr_tectonic

So!

kung_fu_monkey and I have been in Alaska for the past week! ( Arctic tales behind the cut )

So yeah, all in all, it's been a very successful vacation. I would recommend it.

Now we're packed up, and this evening we're off to Kenai to fly across the inlet for our red-eye home tonight. I predict a lot of napping tomorrow.

25th-May-2012 02:31 am - Dear Manhattan,

flwyd

I take back what I said previously about you not appreciating tacos. There are many fine authentic Mexican taco trucks, at least in warm weather. Also in warm weather, your citizens apparently hang out in public spaces and bring their unique talents to the public arena, and I'm glad to see this.

However, this trip has strengthened my beliefs about you in two ways:
First, exclusivity is the primary commodity in New York. And frankly, that's just not hip anymore.
Second, New Yorkers can't do anything for themselves. Including, apparently, opening doors and using a restroom sink. I'm not sure if you, Manhattan, are encouraging or responding to this phenomenon. But as a Westerner, it feels pretty awkward to have a guy standing in the bathroom turn on the water for you and then hand you a paper towel.

Tags:exclusive, manhattan, new york, privilege, taco
Location:Manhattan, New York
Mood:quixotic
Music:Whatever the kids are playing in night clubs these days

21st-May-2012 10:16 pm - Either I had too many Mt. Dews today...

mackys

...or The Silent are really interested in some health insurance!

Music:Jag Panzer - The Silent

19th-May-2012 02:19 pm - Arctic Ho

dr_tectonic

Today I have packed up and run to the bank and got all my hairs cut, and shortly we will be off to catch the bus to the airport and thence a plane to Alaska.

My mom & step-dad have been living in Ninilchik, on the Kenai peninsula for the last few years, and we figured we ought to go visit before they leave later this year. (It's much more feasible with two than it was when there were more of us.)

We're staying at a hotel in Anchorage tonight, and then tomorrow morning we'll do the 3.5 hour drive (which is apparently quite scenic) down to meet them and drop off the rental car at the airport in Kenai. (Seasonal demand made it cheaper for my parents to do that than the gas to drive up and pick us up would have been.)

I was excited because we'll be positioned to get about 70% on tomorrow's eclipse, but then I checked the weather report and realized... oh, yeah, while there will be plenty of hours of daylight, we may well not see the sun the entire time we're there. Hurrah for vitamin D pills...

17th-May-2012 10:05 pm - Java debugging old-school with JDB.

mackys

I've been spending a lot of time at work lately debugging Java. The details are not particularly important, other than to note that the popular description of JavaEE as "the new COBOL" is deadly accurate.

Most of you whipper-snappers probably use Eclipse to do your debugging these days. And that works quite well as long as you happened to compile the code you're debugging. But what happens when you didn't compile the code you're debugging? With Eclipse, you're pretty much screwed. Even if you create a fake project and link in the source, it still never really works quite right. Breakpoints often don't break. Eclipse often can't figure out which line you're actually executing. Etc.

So let's talk about going old-school - enter jdb. Never really intended to be more that a proof of concept for the JPDA, it actually turns out to be surprisingly useful when you need to debug something you don't have source code for and/or didn't compile yourself.

One nice thing about jdb is that if you have a JDK, then you have a copy of it. It's been a standard tool since Java 1.2. If you're on Windows, Unix, a Mac and have installed a JDK, then jdb(.exe) will be waiting in $JDK_HOME/bin/.

Another thing you may be surprised to hear about jdb is that it can do remote socket debug just like Eclipse can. This isn't well documented, so I'll give you the magic invocation here:

jdb -connect com.sun.jdi.SocketAttach:hostname=myserver.com,port=8787

(This is of course done after you start the remote program with java -agentlib:jdwp=transport=dt_socket,server=y,address=8000 myClass to allow it to be remote debugged, natch.)

Here's a quick cheat-sheet to get you started with the obvious stuff:

stop in com.mydomain.mypackage.myclass.mymethod         # Set breakpoint on method entry
clear   # List (no args) or clear (with args) breakpoints
use /home/mydir/sourcecodedir/     # Set source code path
list    # List source code lines
next    # steps OVER method calls
step    # steps INTO method calls
step up # run until current method returns
cont    # continue exection after breakpoint
print (somevar)   # Show current value of somevar

All pretty standard, I know. But it should be noted that all of the above work whether you have source code or not, which beats the hell out of Eclipse. Now, how about some stuff that's a little more fun?

classpath     # Print JVM's classpath
disablegc (expr)   # prevent garbage collection of an object
classes                   # list all currently loaded classes
class org.package.class   # show details of named class
methods com.this.class    # list a class's methods
fields com.that.class     # list a class's fields
eval (java expression)  # Run arbitrary java code, alter program state at will
redefine com.some.class newcode.class  # Load new .class file to redefine an existing class

Some interesting possibilities there, eh? eval is particularly fun. Need to delete an item out of a HashMap? Just eval myHashMap.remove("thiskey") and you're done. (And yes, Eclipse's debug perspective can do this too if you know how... but how many people do?)

The possibilities for redefine are especially amusing to contemplate...

Music:Pearl Jam - Bugs

16th-May-2012 04:54 pm - Farming

dr_tectonic

Sunday Jerry & I drove up to Nick & Jackie's new place, outside Ft. Lupton. Which is a farm. Like, a for-really one. With goats and chickens and turkeys and geese and rabbits and dogs and cats and possibly other critters, but those are the ones I noted.

We got a tour around, and then we helped plant stuff. We dug holes and put fruit trees in along one end of the plowed field, and then started staking out plots for vegetables at the other end. I got to exercise my geometry/logistics skills, but it's pretty hard to keep your rectangles square when everything is being measured in terms of "okay, so this rectangle starts 3 feet from the end of that one, and then we go 5 feet past the end of this other one", and by the end of it we had about six feet less than we were supposed to. (I don't think it helped that the field wasn't particularly square and was missing a corner.) But, as Jackie put it, "the nice thing about veggies is you can just squish 'em a little closer together," so I guess it'll all work out in the end.

It was fun! (Other than whatever I did to my right hamstring. Ow.) I hadn't realized how many farm critters don't need to be fenced in to keep them at home; with all the birds, the fencing is much more about keeping other critters *out*.

The male turkeys are funny, because they'll puff themselves up and stalk about trying to impress you, but if they get too pushy you can just pick them up and give them a hug and literally deflate them, and then they go sulk for a bit.

Jerry got a lovely sunburn on his neck. I got some pink on my nose & face.

Also, there's lots of poop on a farm.

15th-May-2012 10:04 pm - WaRP: Wanton Role Playing

flwyd

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Over the Edge, the roleplaying game of surreal danger, Atlas Games is open sourcing the game's core rules as WaRP: Wanton Role-Playing System. The Open Game License is a popular "open source" license for role playing games, introduced by Wizards of the Coast when they released Dungeons & Dragons version 3.

Over the Edge has a very simple and flexible rule system that's designed to let you play any character you can imagine and tell any story you like. I've created Over the Edge characters as mundane as a mystical soup-makin' chef from New Orleans and as wacky as a sentient trench coat who psychically controls the person wearing him, questing for his lost wife (a fedora) and their two young boots. I've also wanted to play Count Von Count in a one shot :-)

Over the Edge is set in the imaginary island of Al Amarja. It's a place full of conspiracies and fringe science and street gangs and ancient mysteries. It's a great place to play, and the WaRP system can expand the playground to anywhere you can imagine. Space westerns? High fantasy? Regency romance? International thriller? Blaxploitation? Give it a go! And with the OGL rules, you can send all your players a link to a PDF so they can arrive at your house ready to play.

Tags:game, open source, over the edge, rpg, warp
Location:Al Amarja
Mood:quixotic
Music:KGNU - Jazz and Beyond

13th-May-2012 01:23 am - GMing

dr_tectonic

Second Star Wars gaming session tonight.

After a full day of prep, we sat down and went through only the first layer of what I had ready. Which is exciting! Because now next time I've already got a bunch of stuff ready, and I can just work on cleaning it up and making it a little deeper, rather than needing to come up with lots and lots of completely new encounter concepts.

Home base has been established. Plots were thickened and mysteries exposed. Also, following the Gumshoe model / Alexandrian method, I didn't make the PCs roll to find clues, I just had them find everything that was there to be found by looking. This works REALLY WELL. I recommend it.

This page was loaded May 26th 2012, 3:01 am GMT.