The Hobbit Hole

There are only 2 days left on the C4 Engine original license!  The C4 Engine is a technologically advanced engine that is a very good value.  Right now, it’s only $100 with life long updates.  As of October 1, the price goes to $200 with $50/half year subscription fees.  Still an excellent value, but the original offer is superior, I think you would agree.

I’m going to get mine this weekend, probably tonight, after I check with the better half.

It figures this would happen.  I was just about to purchase the Torque Game Engine with its offer going on right now. Still, with Torque going to $150 vs $100 at a yet undisclosed date, the C4 Engine seems more urgent.

Edit: Hm. The product page for TGE seems to be down.  I wonder if the upgrade is going on right now?

Ever since college I’ve been a fan of Strunk & White’s little book. As I was looking through some books on writing to buy, on the back of one I saw this promotional quote:

“Not since The Elements of Style has there been a guide to writing as well presented and readable as this one. A love and respect for the language is evident on every page.”

That’s lofty praise for a book on writing. I read a few pages and thought the writing was good, and the table of contents looked as if it contained worthwhile information.

This book is now almost my favorite book on writing. I still adore the venerable Strunk & White, but Mr. Zinsser’s affection for English is contagious. Whereas Brenda Ueland‘s book was more for motivating someone to write, and not very good at it, this book motivates by example. During the process of describing how writing should be simple and clear, he does it so effectively that you understand him.

The first section devotes itself to establishing the basic tenets of good writing: simplicity, clarity, and affection for words and how they are used. It talks of writing as a craft and these being the tools the master uses to form his prose.

I might have said that this book is my favorite on writing, if not for the middle section. In trying to describe strategies for writing different varieties of pieces, he loses direction and the message becomes diluted. I did enjoy the chapter on writing for technology, but felt it superfluous.

Where the first section talked of details, the last section talks of the writer’s attitude. The advice is to simply concentrate on the writing. Don’t let the vision of the end product derail you, and don’t let the advice of others, especially editors, siphon the soul of your writing. As an honest craftsman, you should always write the best you can.

The book is simple in presentation, concise in advice, but effervescent in inspiration. As mentioned above, his love for writing is contagious and inspires much more than the laissez-faire advice of Brenda Ueland.

Even though the book is intended for those writing non-fiction, I would recommend it for anyone who writes.

Just a little self reminder and a post that might make it into Google’s coffers for future people having problems with Lisp paths, especially in ASDF. Try putting a / at the end.

I’d been pounding my head against this problem while porting CLSQL to Corman Lisp. My idea was simple, put a Corman OODL into sql/corman, so I modified the defsystem to look in the corman subdirectory as such:

#+:cormanlisp
(:module object
    :pathname "corman"
    :components ((:file "select"))
    :depends-on (functional))

And it could not find the file when loading the system. Even more strange is that if I put the select.lisp file directly in the sql directory, it found it. I spent the better part of the weekend pulling apart ASDF and Edi Weitz’s modifications for Corman Lisp to discover that using a / at the end of the pathname is necessary. So now it reads as:

#+:cormanlisp
(:module object
    :pathname "corman/"
    :components ((:file "select"))
    :depends-on (functional))

Ugh! Oh well. Nature of the beast, as they say.

I’ve had it actually ported for a while now, but I finally got around to merging the latest UFFI and my changes. You can grab it here. You will also need to download the Corman patches I’ve made here. I would read this page before using all of this though. It should help understand what these files contain.

It passes all the unit tests for which it has features defined. Unions are not supported by the Corman FFI, so those unit tests have been disabled.

I’ve been working on CLSQL as well, but I’ve run into some major roadblocks. Unfortunately Corman doesn’t support parts of the CLOS MOP, so I’m having to essentially rewrite the OODL layer for Corman Lisp. The functional layer already works though. I’ll post that in the next few days.