As much as it pains me to look at, I decided to salvage one of the earlier web pages that I ever made. I have long since forgot earlier web pages, but “The NannyMUD Guide” really stood out to me because it was my first serious effort at web development.
It’s nasty sure (big crappy flash animations, talking to myself, awful menu design, crap color scheme,…), but it was an important to me then. Click the link below to check it out.
The NannyMUD Guide
If you float around Computer Science / Programming circles enough, it’s likely that you’ve come across the term “circular queue”. A circular queue is a queue of <something> that is fixed in size, and when the end of the queue has been reached, it circles back to the front and starts pushing items from there. If the head catches up to the tail, the queue is said to be full. In C style languages, circular queues can be implemented using pointers fairly easily. In my case though, I don’t have pointers, so I’m just keeping two variables (head, tail) that tell me where the import parts are.
Some people might wonder “Why on earth are you implementing a queue by hand?”, which is valid question. The answer is because there is now STL-type library in Limbo, so implementation of a queue falls into my lap. I suppose this post doesn’t have much of point, except to say “Use the friggin’ library if it’s available.”. For one, it’s already been done, and two, it’s probably bug free.
Recently in my graduate level operating systems course, we were assigned to make a networked semaphore manager. Essentially, client machines can connect to the semaphore manager and ask it to control access to SOMETHING. In our case, we’re just proving a point, so we’re controlling access standard error. It’s an interesting problem because coding anything over a network is tough. Secondly, creating a reliable semaphore manager is tough on it’s own. To make matters worse, we’re using a hosted environment called Inferno. Inferno was once created by Bell Labs, but is now distributed by Vitanuova. For reference:
Oh, and it’s due in two days. Taking a bit of time off was nice, but probably not the wisest decision.
This weekend I’m charged writing a networked semaphore manager. In other news, I’m hanging out with Kelly all weekend.
Spring Break 2009
Yesterday I decided to abandon Linux on my laptop. Why? I was bored. I’ve been using Linux (Ubuntu) on my laptop(s) since 2005, so I was in need of something different. Of course, there are definitely some other reasons why I switched: stand by actually works, full driver support for my 9600 GT M, full support for finger-print reader, ability to place games.
In addition to the features mentioned above, Windows 7 has some great new additions. First of all Aero is actually useful now. The transparency issues of Vista have all be taken care of. And, it has some sweet new themes too. Ooh, and gestures too! You can grab the top of a window, shake it around vigorously, and all the other windows will minimize to the task bar. Performance-wise, it’s also heads and shoulders about Vista.
I’ve only been using it for a day, and I can’t say enough good things about it.
Uncategorized | jack | 
October 26, 2009 10:33 pm | 
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