(Introductory note: This post marks the beginning of a new series on this blog, aptly titled “Recently read.” Every now and then I will try to verbalize afterthoughts inspired by the books I happen to read, and post them here. I hope these recommendations or anti-recommmendations might turn out to be useful for someone.)

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stol’n on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
That I to manhood am arrived so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu’th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure ev’n
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav’n:
  All is, if I have grace to use it so,
  As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.

I’ve just packaged up the Common Lisp netstring handling code that I wrote a week ago into a neat library. Unsurprisingly enough, it is called cl-netstrings and has its own home on the Web. It’s even asdf-installable! I wonder whether this one turns out to be useful for anybody besides me…

If you are reading this on a box that does not have an impressive amount of RAM (say, 512 MB or less) and is running a fairly recent Linux, then for goodness sake, drop everything you are doing right now and follow the instructions in this entry. I’m going to show you how to make your system use the memory in a more efficient way, yielding an effect almost equivalent to increasing its amount — with no expenses whatsoever! Sounds good? Read on.

It has just occurred to me that the best way to throwing things out of one’s mind is to let it be absorbed by something else. I guess this is oft-overlooked fact, even though it seems to be quite obvious. In particular, forcing oneself not to think about something is not a wise strategy, since it leads to mental strain and thinking more and more, eventually yielding dejectedness that can be hard to get over.

Let’s try:

(let ((s (socket-stream
          (socket-connect "localhost" 10081
                          :element-type '(unsigned-byte 8)))))
  (write-netstring "{\"method\":\"ping\",\"params\":[],\"id\":1}" s)
  (finish-output s)
  (princ (read-netstring s))
  (close s))
; { "result": "pong" }
; --> T

What is there left for me to do in this life?
Did I achieve what I had set in my sights?
Am I a happy man, or is this sinking sand?
Was it all worth it?—was it all worth it?

— Queen

The first version of the document I’ve been writing about a couple of days ago is now ready for public review. I’ll be making an initial attempt at the implementation once I return from the European Common Lisp Meeting ‘08 and write a report.

Not until the next tournament, that is. My achievements in the 12th Scrabble Championship of Warsaw can be described as “mediocre” at best; four won, one drawn and seven lost games mean that my general rating will drop down by two points or so. Oh well. Everybody knows it’s a stupid game. ;-) At least I’ve managed to get a decent small score, with an average of 377 points per game.

LaTeX + Beamer (for typesetting the presentation in a visually pleasant, clean, simple and consistent way) + KeyJNote (for presenting it stylishly to the audience) = a recipe for success. In particular, KeyJNote, which I found only yesterday, seems to be a fine and tremendously useful piece of software, despite being very young. The only annoyance I have found in it is that it doesn’t respond to Alt-Tab when in fullscreen mode. On the typographical side, I used the progressbar Beamer theme and the Torunian Antiqua font, both to great effect.