Not Blubbing

I've been trying to get my mind around Haskell for the past little while. That's not a link to Haskell.org, incidentally, but the way people talk about it, Learn You A Haskell For Great Good may as well be the official site. It's referenced so commonly that people usually call it LYAH. The learning process is not easy going, I have to tell you. Probably because it's both the first statically typed, and the first purely functional language I've tried seriously to learn (as you can see by the logo array above). I'm going to keep at it; this isn't anywhere near the first brick wall I've attempted to headbutt through, but I'm observing some disturbing patterns in my thoughts, and I need to get them out.

It's surprising how tempting it is to say "bah, these Monads aren't worth my time; what do I need them for?"

The same thoughts commonly arise about strong typing and purity; it's really really tempting to drop the learning and just run back to Common Lisp/Erlang/Ruby for my programming purposes. The trouble is, this is precisely where the Blub Paradox strikes. Ok, yes fair, I can say "How can these Haskellers get anything done without macros?", but the thoughts I'm having are surprisingly similar to "This is just like Common Lisp, except for all this weird, hairy stuff I don't understand".

I'm not afraid of looking up the hierarchy, it's just unsettling that I can't tell and may be lulling myself into a false sense of superiority. The worst possible outcome here is that my internal biases rob me of power I might otherwise wield. A bad, but certainly tolerable outcome is "wasting" the time it takes to learn new concepts and techniques that are merely as effective (or slightly less effective) than ones I already know. The best case is clambering through the motivational dip to find new techniques I can apply to unilaterally improve my projects, both professional and personal.

Looking at it that way, it's pretty obvious that the correct (but admittedly, seemingly insane) answer is to keep hitting this wall with my head, and hope it collapses before I do.

Debian Follow-up, and StumpWM

Ok, so remember how I said I added some of the latest Ubuntu repos to my Debian sources.list just to hit one or two installs?

Don't do that.

For the love of God, don't. Or, at least, remove them from your sources file afterwards. I was happy enough with the stability of Debian this weekend, so I decided to run my install script (which includes things from audio-editing programs to inkscape, to emacs to several languages). Bad idea, to put it mildly. I had no idea what the hell I was doing at the time, so I just hit y ret a whole bunch of times, and in the process fucked up my sytem. I knew I was boned about the time I saw

removing gnome-network-manager
removing gnome-desktop
removing gnome-tray
removing x-server
[more bad stuff]

whizz by on the terminal window. When I next restarted, I got a friendly little prompt, and that's it. My data was still intact, but I didn't have a network connection for perhaps obvious reasons, so I mounted a usb-stick and got the shit I've been working on for the past day or so off, and prepared to reinstall (I don't know nearly enough about Linux innards to attempt surgery at this point).

I had a thought though; my current installation was Debian Lenny, and there was a "testing" version out called Squeeze ("testing" is in quotes, because by all accounts I've read, it's rock solid by this point). It took a bit of counter-intuitive navigation on the Debian site to get to the squeeze installer, but I guess that's reasonable; they want most people to install the "stable" release, not the "testing" or "unstable" ones. So there, I'm typing to you live from Debian Squeeze, and I have to tell you, it's good. The biggest gripes I had from the last post have been addressed; the new version of Gnome plays nice with two monitors out of the box, and the squeeze repos have more recent installs of the programs I use than Ubuntu. Specifically, I get out-of-the-box apt-get access to emacs23, sbcl 1.0.40, haskell-platform, pacpl and synfig.

So there. Debian beats Ubuntu from my perspective at this point.

At this point, since I was already ass-deep in installs anyway, putting in StumpWM seemed like a logical conclusion. So I did. And I'm in love. It's Emacs for window management. Just as a note, I've found that any software I could describe as "Emacs for [n]" is something I'd probably like. Sadly, between Emacs, Emacs for the web and Emacs for window management, I get the feeling we're about tapped out now. I like GIMP, but it's not exactly "Emacs for images". I've set up a minimal .stumpwmrc file like so

;; Psst, Emacs. This is a -*- lisp -*- file.
(in-package :stumpwm)
(message "Loading rc ...")

;;; Program definitions
(defcommand emacs () () (run-or-raise "emacs" '(:class "Emacs")))
(defcommand browser () () (run-or-raise "conkeror" '(:class "Conkeror")))

;;;Reloading
(defcommand reinit () () (run-commands "reload" "loadrc"))

;;;Keybindings
(define-key *root-map* (kbd "b") "browser")
(define-key *root-map* (kbd "C-q") "quit")
(define-key *root-map* (kbd "C-r") "reinit")

;;;Things that happen on StumpWM startup
(run-shell-command "/usr/bin/trayer --SetDockType false --transparent true --expand false")
(run-shell-command "nm-applet --sm-disable")

just to get everything up and running (trayer is needed to get the nm-applet working so I can has internets).

It's occurred to me that, now that my window manager is a Lisp machine, I could hard-wire "web-jumps" into my environment with Firefox. Not sure if it'd be worth giving up the keyboard shortcuts, but I would get HTML5 support, and all of my scripting would be done in Lisp at that point (rather than a JS/Lisp split). I'm really not up for that this weekend, but I'll keep playing with Stump. So far, it's good stuff.

Debian

I'm temporarily writing in Gedit (lacking the internet connection I'd need to apt-get intall emacs23 and bend it to my will. Already I find myself annoyed by the pretentious little toolbar, tab array and pretty icons at the top of the screen, and the useless little status bar at the bottom. On my widescreen monitor, I probably wouldn't have noticed, but this is a pretty severe infringement of a netbook's screen real-estate.

That's not what I wanted to talk about though.

I ended up installing Debian linux on three of my machines just to find out that it's about the same deal as Ubuntu these days, right down to the window manager. It installs fewer things by default, and you can't download a single-disc installer for it, and you can't REALLY install it without a network connection, but I still tried it. It even accepts apt-get commands, so I don't have to port my startup scripts. Though I did have to add a couple of repositories in order to get apt-get access to pacpl, emacs23 and a version of sbcl that doesn't crash like a champ when trying to install ironclad through quicklisp. This means that I just have the task of presenting you with diff Ubuntu Debian on three different computers, which is significantly easier than reviewing Debian.

The first thing that struck me is that Debian has a working amd64 implementation. Theoretically, Ubuntu does too, but here's the thing. I have two Intel machines (an old Pentium 2 and an Atom) and one AMD64 machine (a Phenom 2 x4). The intel startup disks I burned (for each 9.04, 9.10 and 10.04 Ubuntu) never have a problem. Not once. The install has gone flawlessly each time. The AMD machine is the precise opposite story. Not only did I end up making two copies of each startup disk (one at the standard speed, one at the slowest possible) just to make sure the CDs weren't at fault, but I also tried the same install from a bootable USB key. No dice. Ubuntu does not like AMD, apparently, because it took me no less than 17 attempts to get a single copy of Ubuntu 10.04 working on that computer. Once it worked, it wasn't quite smooth sailing either; it would crash out randomly, and I became convinced through hardware surgery that it was a software problem. My intel machines (including that 8 year old laptop I wrote about a little while back) have never had problems. So, one giant check for Debian.

The missing repos are a bit annoying. Debian by default has access to older versions of some programs I use frequently. This isn't a problem for the most part, until it is. The way I found out was trying to install ironclad through quicklisp, which kept complaining that it didn't have access to sb-byte-rotate (which is an SBCL component that shouldn't need to be installed separately). This was infuriating until I took a look at the output of sbcl --version, only to find out it was 1.0.14. I don't need to be bleeding edge, exactly, but that was a little ridiculous. Now this isn't a huge deal, because all it takes is adding a couple of lines to your .sources file and apt-get updateing, and you're good to go. About 10 minutes after finding out what the issue was, I was sitting on sbcl 1.0.29 (which includes sb-byte-rotate) and merrily quicklisping away. After I did that, I checked back through all the programs I installed and confirmed that Debian has significantly older versions of mplayer, Emacs and conkeror, and it lacks any access to pacpl (even an older version). These out-of-date programs were old enough that fairly significant shortcomings were apparent (some libraries didn't work on SBCL, Emacs lacked some modules I'd gotten used to, and Conkeror lacked some convenience features that you really miss once you're used to them). Again, just adding the ubuntu repos, then installing fixes the problem but it's still not zero-effort, so one small check for Ubuntu.

In the same vein of missing repos, almost to the point that it should be the same objection, Debian really doesn't want you using proprietary drivers. This is ok, I like the initiative of aggressively pushing for open software. Except that my 8 year old guinea pig has a Broadcom wireless card that I need the bcm43 drivers to use. And my netbook has some Intel branded card that I still haven't gotten working. Wireless is important, guys. We don't all have (or want to have) a web of CAT5 running the floor of our computer and living rooms. Ubuntu solves this by leaving the proprietary drivers out, but gives you a simple interface for turning them on if it detects you have some proprietary hardware in your machine. On Debian, you need to research the problem, enable the correct repos and install these drivers yourself. A check for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu has out-of-the-box support for multiple monitors. Debian does too, except that by default, it just mirrors your screen, which isn't what I want. I got it working after about twenty minutes of reading up on the issue. It required some xrandr trickery, and a one-line change to xorg.conf (which thankfully didn't error out, otherwise I would have stuck with one screen). I suppose I could have just upgraded Gnome, but I'm looking to switch over to stumpwm in the near future anyway, so I want a way of using multiple monitors with X11 that doesn't depend on a specific window manager. This is still a small check for Ubuntu (the functionality's there in both, but it's effortless in Ubuntu and flexible in Debian).

So there. The way it looks to break down is that Debian stays on my AMD machine at home, and I keep Ubuntu on the various Intel machines I own. It shouldn't be too big a pain in the ass, given their similarities, they're almost silently interoperable and I finally have a working home behemoth.

The next step is putting stumpwm and xmonad through their paces. I need a tiling window manager.

In other news, I've started studying up on Haskell (as evidenced by additions to the right sidebar). It started with a question on programmers.SE about Erlang code. It yielded no answers, but a german guy came by and suggested Haskell instead. I dismissed it as another instance of language biggotry, but after a conversation with him (and a healthy amount of research on the language), I've decided it's certainly worth learning. I'm not giving up on Erlang, mind you, Yaws is just too good an app to pass up, but Haskell has some of my mindshare now, and its package manager is full of useful stuff from PDF generators to web markup utilities to language interop facilities (including one for interfacing with Erlang processes).

It's going to be a long December.

Thoughts on Cooks [sic] Source

No programming discussion this time. Just some thoughts I had today.

So I caught wind of this during my daily Reddit trawl at lunch, and I didn't think much of it. Then I noticed Neil Gaiman and Wil Wheaton were chiming in via twitter. Then I saw a link to the magazine's FaceBook page which was in the process of defacement. I chuckled about it, then I went back to work. When I got home, it was still happening. The FB was up to 2200 "friends", the discussion group was filled with people now investigating Cooks Source articles from the archives under suspicion that Gaudio wasn't the first victim of this editor (she wasn't, by the way).

The flippant, asinine email (which I won't copy here; you can find it easily enough by now) probably fueled internet anger more than any kind of legal offense, but this didn't stop people from writing things like "thief", "plagiarist" and "copyright infringement" on the Cooks Source wall. Many of them also wrote "Twatwaffle", and various Chuck Norris/Monty Python references, but hey, this is the internet. Well, while online content certainly isn't 'public domain' as Ms Griggs claimed, the accusations don't seem fair.

First, she's not a thief. In the same way that someone who downloads a movie illegally isn't a thief. That is an offense, but stealing ain't the right one because the victim isn't actually being deprived of anything when someone makes a copy (many argue that they're deprived of potential profits, but even if that held water legally, it's a moot point in this case because Gaudio's blog is free).

Second, she's not a plagiarist. She might be an idiot with a tin ear for period-piece writing, a poor editor, a worse speller, and a self-righteous, uninformed ass, but she did credit Gaudio for the article (whereas plagiarism would have entailed putting someone else's name on the byline).

The third accusation of "copyright infringement", is prickly too. It's not that she didn't do it, according to the letter of current law, it's pretty clear she did. And to be fair, this is pretty much the one place where I feel copyright is approaching a good thing (someone reproducing others' works without permission or compensation and for the express purpose of making money by it). I'm still torn between the implications here, because the outrage tells me that even while ACTA is on many minds, and most folks I talk to complain about how restrictive current copyright is, a very vocal part of the internet still considers it a good thing. The really worrying part for me is that a CC-attribution-share-alike license (which all of my online work has been released under) would expressly allow what happened here.

I hate to be the killjoy, or to call down the internet thunder, but I wouldn't have a problem with that part of what she did. Endorsing an open culture doesn't just work when you argue against DRM on music and games, or when someone tries to shut down Pirate Bay, or when people hell-bent on censorship cry "DMCA!" without cause. It means that everyone gets access to your stuff too.

By all means, continue trolling. Assholes deserve to be slapped around just for being assholes, doubly so when they're also grossly incompetent and quick to resort to the "N years experience" argument. But I'm going to go on record as saying that I think reproducing work you find online isn't a bad thing. If it is, it shouldn't be a bad thing. The entire advantage that the internet has over traditional media is that digital copying lets information fly around the globe at almost the speed of light. If you invoke copyright, you slow that information down by artificial means. It's at once inefficient and depressing that people would suffer the lack of light-speed just to keep their ideas under control.

Plagiarism sucks, self-righteous assholes suck, but copying shouldn't.

OS Experiments and Project Update

As much as I like sitting at post number 42, it's time for an update.

I've been testing another distro of linux (well, not another distro, really. An Ubuntu derivative called Crunchbang), and I really thought it was going to unseat Ubuntu as my OS of choice. The main killer, it turns out, was xorg.conf.

First, the good stuff. It's simple, it has better keyboard support for launching programs than Ubuntu, and its performance is through the roof. It actually flies on the toy laptop I have lying around for this kind of experimentation (a Compaq Presario R3000 I picked up for $20 about two years ago. It has a 1.4ghz processor, a whopping 256 megs of ram and a 5400rpm, 30gb hard drive). Even with those specs, Crunchbang is usable. So I was all psyched up to install it on my netbook to get a bit more performance out of it, just because I do actually do some development on it when I'm out and about. Two things are making it unacceptable though.

One, and this is the main one, xorg.conf. To the Linux veterans this is probably a joke, but it's pretty difficult for the newbs. There was sparse information on configuring monitors this way back when it was mandatory, and you could never be sure that you were pasting the appropriate things because, apparently, different distros had different conventions about it. When I searched (and I mean everywhere; old linux sites, the various StackExchange sites, the Ubuntu docs and the Ubuntu forums), all I found were horribly outdated pointers, and one or two comments about how "xorg.conf isn't really used anymore, just use xrandr". Which is great, except that xrandr doesn't seem to auto-detect additional monitors in Crunchbang, so I still need to know how to configure them the old way. The other common instruction I found was to copy-paste existing parts of your current conf file. Which I'm sure was great advice at one point, but current Ubuntu/cruchbang xorgs look something like

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Default Screen"
        Monitor         "Configured Monitor"
        Device          "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

which doesn't seem to contain useful information. All it tells me is that all these options are now configured elsewhere, and I have no idea where that is. The other big problem with xorg.conf editing is that you have to restart the X server each time you want to test it out, and (at least on Crunchbang and Ubuntu) the error messages you get aren't exactly useful. They basically say "there was an error in your xorg.conf".

Thank you.

Which section and line would be useful.

Even if you drill down further into the error log, it typically (again, for me at least) just said that the error was a missing EndSection on the last line, even though there were no missing EndSections, and the last line consisted of nothing else. It took me something like two hours to track down enough info about the basics to get the screen mirrored on an external monitor (before that, the extra screen was just displaying various seizure-encouraging light patterns). Xrandr still doesn't see the extra monitor by the way, so I still have to muck about further with xorg.conf.

Second, and this is the tiny problem almost not worth mentioning, but it's not an issue in plain Ubuntu. Crunchbang doesn't have apt-get access to emacs23. If I want to apt-get install emacs, it gives me version 22.1 or so. I could spend a bit of time figuring out how to script a wget to the GNU ftp site, then run the appropriate commands to untar and install it properly (it's probably just make and make install, though I've never had to do it so I don't know), but my fucking around time-budget is officially used up for this week.

So there. That's why I'm keeping Ubuntu 10.x. For what it's worth, until I hit the iceberg that is xorg.conf, this was going to be a blog post about why I switched. Seriously, I had notes ready and everything. So if you don't need more than one monitor for whatever reason, or you're a xorg wizard and still on Ubuntu, give it a try.

Other than my OS experimentation, I've also been toying with the formlet system I shamelessly lifted out of PLT Racket (still at the GitHub page, but now there's documentation), and I also released that CSS module I wrote about a little while back. I honestly wasn't going to, but those 12 or so lines of code found their way into every single project I've worked on since. Code reuse is good, I hear. The project page is here, and it is likewise accompanied by a nice little Markdown-enabled documentation sheet.

The big additions since you last saw these projects are

Formlets now support recaptcha.

You like how I'm adding high level support like this before the thing can even generate checkboxes, huh? Well, it might be a bit dumb, but I feel no shame in admitting that the order of operations is self-centered. Which is to say, I add features as I need them, not as they make sense in theory. It just so happens that I had call for text inputs, textareas, passwords and recaptcha before one of my projects called for checkboxes, radio buttons or select boxes. I'm sure it'll change soon.

CSS compilation

This one's obviously from the css generator. Basically, a task called for a several-hundred-line stylesheet. While it wasn't performing too badly, I realized that eventually, there would be a call for CSS that you could cache (as opposed to the inline styles then generated by cl-css). So, I added compile-css, which takes a file path and some cl-css-able s-expressions and outputs them as flat CSS. Tadaah! If you're running Hunchentoot (or any other server really, cl-css is simple enough that I can confidently call it portable) from behind Apache or nginx, you can now have the front-facing server serve out a flat-file stylesheet and still get the benefit of declaring your CSS more succinctly in Lisp.

Documentation

Like I said earlier, there's some simple docs included with both projects which you can thank GitHub for. The main reason I wrote them was seriously because there's this little notice that tries to guilt you into putting in a README if you don't have one already. It supports markdown, textile, rdoc, and a bunch of other psuedo-markup languages meant for displaying plaintext while still supporting automatic conversion to HTML. Mine are written in markdown, mainly because I'm already familiar with it, and I managed to find a decent Emacs editing mode for it.

ASDF-ability

I'm probably late to this party, given that quicklisp is now in public beta stages, but I set up ASDF packages for both formlets and cl-css, and hooked them up to the CLiki. So unless it (the CLiki, I mean) goes down again, you can install them both by doing

(require 'asdf)
(require 'asdf-install)
(asdf-install:install 'cl-css)
(asdf-install:install 'formlets)

EDIT: Ok, so ASDF-ability doesn't seem to be playing nice at the moment. I swear I tested the things out by installing them that way myself. I'll see what's up later today. EDIT2: Still not sure what's going on here. It looks like ASDF doesn't like https? EDIT3: Ok, so ASDF seems to assume that all well-formed web addresses start with "http://", which means that google docs, github and other hosts that use https:// are a no go. The current solution I'm resorting to is just chucking cl-css and formlets tarballs up on my linode. CLiki has been updated, so the ASDF packages finally work. Now I neet to talk to Zach to get this stuff added to quicklisp...