January 2012
5 posts
6 tags
Hackathon in Delft: Gone!
I’ve been at it again. In the previous autumn/winter season, I spent a month in Delft, hacking on the Stratego/Spoofax program transformation infrastructure.
Now that another winter is here, I’ve had the good fortune to repeat what is slowly becoming a tradition. This year I even found time to reserve two months for a more extended hackathon.
Many really good things came of out of...
5 tags
An Eclipse Console for Spoofax
More good news, everyone! I have found time to integrate the command line shell for Spoofax into Eclipse. You can now have all sorts of tricky conversations with the Spoofax interpreter inside a perfectly innocent-looking Eclipse console:
As you can see, there are still rough edges to be ironed out. One of them is clearly the color palette. Another is the lack of inline rules, which are not...
A Command Line Interpreter for Spoofax
Updated with screenshot! Also take a look at the Eclipse Shell.
Good news, boys and girls! If you happen to be a Stratego and/or Spoofax user, you might appreciate that I finally took some time to piece together an interactive command line interpreter—-a REPL—-for Spoofax.
There are numerous other things you can do in the shell. The help “page” gives a short...
“One downside to the Kindle is that you can no longer throw a bad book across the...”
– Lisa L
A Year of Kindle
I’ve had my Kindle for exactly a year now. My experience so far: it’s really great! After a multi-year long lull where I didn’t do any reading (except for school and work), I’m now back into a rather steady reading pace.
A few highlights from 2011:
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Too Big to Fail, Andrew Ross Sorkin
The Big Short, Michael Lewis
Liar’s Poker,...
December 2011
2 posts
“Hold snudlene på dåkkår!”
– Håvard Sørbø
July 2011
1 post
“Men etter noen måneder måtte vi se inn i realitetens blodskutte øyne.”
– John Ivan Wiik
April 2011
1 post
“… long before any human race as we know had shambled out of apedom.”
– Howard Phillips “H. P.” Lovecraft
February 2011
2 posts
“Gjør som meg: spis deg tjukk, så fryser du ikke.”
– Uno Wackelin
“How can NASA send a spacecraft billions of miles through the solar system and...”
– Ed Weiler, NASA Science Mission Directorate
January 2011
1 post
“It’s not the end, but really the journey that matters, in the end.”
– Lennart Kats paraphrasing Ursula K. Le Guin
December 2010
1 post
Merging a Mercurial repository back into...
In a recent project, I forked an upstream SVN repository into a new Mercurial repo, to do some exploratory programming. The exploration proved very fruitful, so I decided to merge the code back into the upstream SVN repo.
Should be simple, right? Wrong. For posterity, here’s a high-level walkthrough that might also be of interest to others.
The Premise
Your case might differ from mine,...
November 2010
1 post
7 tags
Hackathon in Delft: Go!
It’s that time of the year again. The glorious month of intensive parser implementation, compiler engineering and language workbenches — the essentials of any IDE — has arrived. I’ve retreated to the TU Delft campus for the month of November to hack on interactive language infrastructure for our startup, and to think big thoughts about IDEs and DSLs in general.
Our...
October 2010
4 posts
4 tags
DIY: Fixing the MSN connector for Empathy
I just got bitten by bug 663670: empathy doesn’t connect to msn - blocked connection.
It turns out that Microsoft made changes on the server side two days ago that crashes telepathy-butterfly, the MSN connector used by Empathy.
Fortunately, the fix is simple.
# sudo nano /usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/papyon/service/description/SingleSignOn/RequestMultipleSecurityTokens.py
Then goto...
“Det er fakta. Men det er ikke rett.”
– meg selv
“Ingenting i livet er gratis. Ikkje ein gong det besta.”
– Håvard Sørbø
11 tags
Prototype of a Scannerless, Generalized...
Need a Scannerless, Generalized Left-to-right Rightmost (SGLR) derivation parser for JavaScript? Then my JSGLR-GWT proof-of-concept might interest you. (If you don’t know what a scannerless GLR parser is, then you are probably not interested in writing modular grammars for your programming language implementation anyway — or you might want to read a few sections down).
A word of...
September 2010
2 posts
“Ahhh! Thermite; the stuff that dreams are made of!”
– Kurt Kristian Lyngholm
8 tags
Great things in the Eclipse JDT
Since we started with the KolibriFX project six months ago, I have programmed a lot of Scala and Java, plus some Stratego and JavaScript. I love programming in Scala and Stratego because my implementations are shorter and usually a lot easier to reason about. I often get this warm, fuzzy feeling of having captured something tricky in an elegant fashion.
However, in day-to-day programming, Java...
August 2010
4 posts
5 tags
“Parsing is considered a solved problem. Unfortunately, this view is naïve,...”
– Al Bessey, Ken Block, Ben Chelf, Andy Chou, Bryan Fulton, Seth Hallem, Charles Henri-Gros, Asya Kamsky, Scott McPeak, Dawson Engler, in A Few Billion Lines of Code Later: Using Static Analysis to Find Bugs in the Real World.
4 tags
What do I use my smartphone for?
Last week, Espen asked me: “what have you used your phone for in the last seven days? Name all applications”. For most of those seven days, I was on vacation, so the usage pattern is a bit skewed. Anyway, here goes:
Calendar — trying to schedule visits to friends.
E-mail — offering support and receiving spam.
SMS — duh
Calling — yes! actually.
Bonsai...
4 tags
Video: visualization of all nuclear tests from...
Thanks to Håvard, I came across this wonderful video by Isao Hashimoto[1]. It’s a vizualisation, video game-style, of all nuclear explosions since 1945.
The data was gathered by Nils-Olov Bergkvist and Ragnhild Ferm for their report “Nuclear Explosions 1945-1998”, copublished by FOI and SIPRI.
[1] By way of Gizmondo and Discover Magazine’s aptly named article...
2 tags
“Noen tyskere, fullt bevæpnet, kom forresten med toget — med gyldig...”
– Odd Børretzen, om den tyske invasjonen.
July 2010
6 posts
5 tags
Live x86 Code Instrumentation with Frida
Since I moved to Oslo in February, I’ve had the pleasure of working together with Ole André Vadla Ravnås (say that ten times quick, or optimize and use @oleavr). In our not-so-ample spare time, we’ve been hacking on the Frida project that Ole André and Håvard started a while ago.
The Frida IRE is a free, interactive disassembler and reverse-engineering environment that we’re...
4 tags
Native Spotify for Linux (almost)
Today, the Spotify people announced a preview of a native Spotify for Linux. I downloaded it, and tried it Ubuntu Karmic at work.
Unfortunately, it still requires some work. Exhibit #1:
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x00007ffff6f3e49c in QMetaObject::indexOfSignal(char const*) const () from
/usr/lib/libQtCore.so.4
(gdb) bt
#0 0x00007ffff6f3e49c in...
6 tags
Configuring default user and key for remote SSH...
Yet again I found myself in need of configuring ssh to use a specific username and identity key when connecting to a specific remote server, and yet again, I had forgotten how to. Either a case of Teflon brains, or not enough regular practice — hopefully the latter;P
So, as a mental note for later, this is how you configure ssh to automatically use specific (i.e., different than your...
“Me transmitte sursum caledoni.”
– Unknown, classically trained Trekkie.
4 tags
4 tags
“Alt jeg sier, inviterer til sympati.”
– Håvard Sørbø
June 2010
3 posts
5 tags
Datalagringsdirektivet og fildeling
Til leseren: I det følgende tillater jeg meg å bruke virkemiddelet eder og galle. Hvis dette fremstår som sterk kost, blant det gjerne ut med melk eller noe alkalisk.
At datalagringsdirektivet (DLD) er helt ubrukelig mot datakriminelle og terrorister med IQ over potteplantenivå, det er godt kjent. At DLD kan fungere utmerket mot ulovlig fildeling, det er litt mindre i vinden.
Den 5 februar...
4 tags
Recovering from a broken apt-get upgrade
When doing the usual apt-get upgrade, I had a harddrive failure which resulted in an aborted upgrade.
After a reboot, I got the usual unmet dependencies, and the friendly suggestion to run apt-get -f install to continue. Doing so gave me another friendly unable to execute installed pre-removal script all the time, even though I tried forcing dpkg to cooperate:
root@nimbus:~# dpkg --purge...
7 tags
Mercurial, the helpful
Did a quick build fix checkin after a su - hudson a few minutes ago. The EDITOR and VISUAL environment vars were all of a sudden unset, so Mercurial decided to be helpful:
$ hg ci
Select an editor. To change later, run 'select-editor'.
1. /bin/ed
2. /bin/nano <---- easiest
3. /usr/bin/emacs22
4. /usr/bin/vim.tiny
Choose 1-4 [2]:
So, to all you Emacs, ed and Vim fanatics in...
May 2010
2 posts
The sci-fi of 2010
Set up an EC2 account with Amazon Web Services yesterday. It went pretty much like this:
Provide e-mail and desired password.
Provide credit card payment details.
Provide phone number.
Observe freshly generated web page with a four digit random PIN.
Receive an automated call from +18872510696, that wants the PIN shown on the web.
State the PIN loudly and clearly into the phone.
Observe...
4 tags
Hvordan bli kvitt "Setting locale failed" i Ubuntu
Jeg (re)installerer Ubuntu så sjelden at dette glemmer jeg alltid ut. Huskeliste til neste gang (og for andre som har samme problemet).
Legg til språkpakkene for nynorsk og bokmål, henholdsvis:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall language-pack-nn
sudo apt-get install --reinstall language-pack-nb
Legg til følgende linjer i fila /var/lib/locales/supported.d/local:
nb_NO.UTF-8 UTF-8
nn_NO.UTF-8...
April 2010
5 posts
Handheld Ultrasound, Didactics and Bootstrapping
A few months back, GE announced their first handheld ultrasound device, the Vscan. It’s developed by GE Vingmed in Horten, by a team lead by Kjell Kristoffersen. For a more thorough background, check out TU (Norwegian only).
The device looks rather slick, and transports pretty easily. The estimated sales price is said to be around $10,000, which puts it at the lower end of the price...
Ads on mobile apps
The battle between Apple and everyone else is certainly heating up, especially in the mobile space. Physorg has a short writeup of the storm that’s brewing in mobile ads. One of the quotes by Rob Enderle caught my attention:
Analyst Rob Enderle of Silicon Valley’s Enderle Group said “iAds looks brilliant to me and solidly in Google’s space.
“This is something...
6 tags
English as a Programming Language, part I
Together with Einar, I’ve been deeply immersed in domain analysis for our upcoming trading language for the past month — i.e., analyzing the domain of trading. One of the crucial things we’ve been focusing on, is the rich vocabulary you are likely to hear when listening to traders working together. Their vocabulary captures how trading ideas are transmitted between humans. As the...
5 tags
Tanker om datalagringsdirektivet og barneporno
Datalagringsdirektivets overordnede formål er å bekjempe alvorlig kriminalitet.
Til dette er det foreslåtte direktivet helt uten dokumentert effekt. Det er synd, fordi det er et direktiv som utgjør en stor inngripen i folks hverdag. Folk flest er villige til å akseptere ubehageligheter hvis vi får noe igjen for det — jfr flyplasskontroller. Men med datalagringsdirektivet (DLD) har vi...
3 tags
Hva heter dagen før Skjærtorsdag?
Det fine med å navngi ting, er at det ofte gjør ting lettere og raskere å snakke om. Men så viser det seg at ikke alle navnbare ting har fått gode navn enda. Hvertfall ikke utbredte navn. Ett slikt eksempel er dagen før Skjærtorsdag.
Følgende forslag til navngiving har kommet inn:
Feilnavigeringsonsdag
Slipeonsdag
Kvessonsdag
Alle tre navn har den gode egenskapen at de forklarer det ganske...
March 2010
1 post
What am I up to anyway?
This is a response to the usual “what are you up to anyway” question that I’ve been getting so frequently as of late. If you haven’t been wanting to ask me that, stop reading now:)
A few months ago now, back in December, I finished medical school, and got my M.D. The next logical step would have been to complete a residency, get my permanent license, and live happily as a...
February 2010
4 posts
3 tags
Found new apartment
Finally found a new apartment. Closest neighbour: the Iranian Embassy. Yesterda on the evening news I saw my new apt in the background of a demonstration full of irate iranians. Bodes well:) Other than random demos, street appears quiet. Tram is just outside. Walking distance to the Frogner and Skøyen area, which provide a selection of super markets, bars, restaurants, and various entertainment. A...
DOS-mode
This week, I’ve been in “DOS mode” (you put on your headset, crank up the volume, open a terminal window and enter into the world of the command prompt).
Through the radio, Norwegian comedians Atle Antonsen and Johan Golden have on several occasions pointed out the hazards of DOS (Norwegian only).
The peril of entering DOS has been known for a very long time, however. I...
4 tags
Started playing Pendragon
New town. New life. New friends. All mixed in with old friends and old habits (which die hard).
Had a great evening on Monday, playing Pendragon for the first time. Can’t believe I’ve never actually gotten around to playing it before now. It’s pretty epic. It’s pretty well-designed and it’s pretty detailed. I like it.
In short, Pendragon is set to mythical Britain...
6 tags
On the sorry state of Java (and Scala) packaging
Now that I’m back in Developerland for a while, it’s all coming back to me. The hatred for the release engineering process. The hatred for other people who probably hate the release engineering process as much as myself, and therefore don’t do a good job with it, either.
Case in point (any involved parties, don’t take it personally): Trying to take Akka Actors for a spin,...
January 2010
2 posts
“I also forgot to back it up so I need a few days to get things up and running.”
– Håvard Sørbø, 5 months ago.
1 tag
Moving to Oslo
I presently enjoy my final Saturday evening in our sofa in Welhavensgate, listening to Rach III, watching Håvard simulate working. It almost feels a bit sad to leave this behind.
After nearly 13 years, I am moving away from Bergen. It’s somewhat disingenuous to say that I’ve lived here for 13 years. I first arrived in the autumn of 1997, to attend university. However, in the...
November 2009
2 posts
“I love the smell of lack of atmosphere in the morning.”
– Håvard Sørbø
dr David, PhD
I had the pleasure of attending the defense and subsequent party of Valentin David yesterday. It was quite an event, featuring Johnathan Maletic and Bjarne Stroustrup as opponents. Stian took some pictures.