Tags related to tag mine
23 acid aop api app art blogs bugs bunny burningman c code communication cool creativecommons css design distortion diy drugs emacs fluff funny games guest harmony house icons ideas javascript jungle kawaii livepa mario media meditation meta milestone music mysql-ffi oop palm php podcast politics remix rest s9y scheme self shell spirit tags techno testing trance tutorial twisted unix web wiki writing x0xb0x
Sunday, January 25. 2009
I need your Dicipline
Monday, July 9. 2007
New Selenemacs Packages
Wednesday, November 15. 2006
Version 0.3 of the MySQL FFI for Gambit released
Click on the icon to download the MySQL FFI
Click here to download the tar file
Here is the documentation
I am currently working on a set of macros as a sort of object-relational layer between the DB and scheme. Obviously this not a true object relational... anything, because there are no real (native) objects in scheme. More info forthcoming.
Wednesday, October 25. 2006
Imagine a webserver...
Imagine a webserver that is completely dis-entangled from the filesystem. Where requests are handled as they should be: as requests for representations of resources. Imagine a webserver based on very simple rules that can be composed into more complex rules (url is foo, host is bar, accept-language is baz, method is blarg). Imagine a webserver where typical HTTP headers and methods are understood, but extensions can be easily dealt with. Thats right, a server that could respond to the new FROBNICATE method is possible.
This server, is called zen-garden. zen-garden is my pet project. It is my tilting at a windmill, and it is rapidly approaching a 0.1 release. The fundamental difference between zen-garden and most other webservers is that zen-garden is built, and based around simple rules. You want to log every request to a database table? Write a rule that acts on every request, and writes the request info to the table. You want to run all of your HTML files through Tidy and or gzip to compress them? Write a rule to act on every response that doesn't already have gzip encoding, and has a content-type of text/html. As you can see, the rule-based webserver is a very powerful concept indeed.
Now you might be asking "How do you handle a request for a single page, a single CSS file?" The answer is simple: a rule to output the page or CSS file when the request method is GET, and the URI is /path/to/your/file. But imagine this, instead of making the webserver find the file, load it, and send it across the network, what if you told the webserver it should compile the serving of that file into itself on deploy time? What if part of the deploy is taking a source file in XML and doing some transformations on it, and then compiling the transformations into itself before deploying? But what if all this was developer friendly so that when working in a development environment, you don't have to deal with the daily grind of compile-test-debug, you could make a change to your file, and test it on the spot? zen-gardens host language is Scheme on Gambit, so it is interpreted for a really fast development cycle, but Gambit can also be compiled to C (which of course can be compiled to native code) so when it is time to deploy, your server will be fast.
The crux to zen-garden is the request-chains and request-handlers. A request-handler is a data structure, with 2 important parts: a predicate stating whether or not the handler should execute, and the handler itself. Both of these are functions that return booleans. A request-chain is really just a series of request handlers that are executed in a particular order, split out into 4 convenient phases: initialization, handling, fallback and finalization. A request-handler can be bound to any one of these 4 phases. If a request is not handled during the 'handling' phase, the fallback phase is executed, otherwise it is skipped.
The real interesting thing about this structure is that a request-handler can spawn a new request-chain. So you can have a request-handler that executes when the 'Host' header is set to 'my.foo.domain.com' that spawns a new request-chain. On top of that, there is nothing stopping you from dealing with requests in other ways, in fact, any way you see fit. Don't like my method of predicates and request chains and what have you? Write your own method of doing things. zen-garden is modular in design. Pull out the routine that I use to handle requests, and install your own.
What is in the future of zen-garden? Well, ZSP's, or Zen-Server-Pages, which is a JSP/PHP method of page generation. Unlike these other technologies, I plan on getting the separation of business logic and display logic right. No top-heavy tag libraries with presentational logic getting confused with document structure, yes JSP and the entire J2EE stack, I am looking at you. No business logic tied up with your presentation, dirty, nasty PHP! What else is in the future? My(and other)SQL connection pooling, GD integration, regular expressions, optional continuation based web programming, RESTful resources, specialized preprocessing of CSS and Javascript files (only send the browser the CSS it needs, and you want it to have).
Oh, and it is all under a BSD License.
For now, everything is available in a subversion repository, svn://panda-ba.sanriowasteland.net/zengarden/trunk . You will need the Gambit-C compiler and interpreter as well.
This server, is called zen-garden. zen-garden is my pet project. It is my tilting at a windmill, and it is rapidly approaching a 0.1 release. The fundamental difference between zen-garden and most other webservers is that zen-garden is built, and based around simple rules. You want to log every request to a database table? Write a rule that acts on every request, and writes the request info to the table. You want to run all of your HTML files through Tidy and or gzip to compress them? Write a rule to act on every response that doesn't already have gzip encoding, and has a content-type of text/html. As you can see, the rule-based webserver is a very powerful concept indeed.
Now you might be asking "How do you handle a request for a single page, a single CSS file?" The answer is simple: a rule to output the page or CSS file when the request method is GET, and the URI is /path/to/your/file. But imagine this, instead of making the webserver find the file, load it, and send it across the network, what if you told the webserver it should compile the serving of that file into itself on deploy time? What if part of the deploy is taking a source file in XML and doing some transformations on it, and then compiling the transformations into itself before deploying? But what if all this was developer friendly so that when working in a development environment, you don't have to deal with the daily grind of compile-test-debug, you could make a change to your file, and test it on the spot? zen-gardens host language is Scheme on Gambit, so it is interpreted for a really fast development cycle, but Gambit can also be compiled to C (which of course can be compiled to native code) so when it is time to deploy, your server will be fast.
The crux to zen-garden is the request-chains and request-handlers. A request-handler is a data structure, with 2 important parts: a predicate stating whether or not the handler should execute, and the handler itself. Both of these are functions that return booleans. A request-chain is really just a series of request handlers that are executed in a particular order, split out into 4 convenient phases: initialization, handling, fallback and finalization. A request-handler can be bound to any one of these 4 phases. If a request is not handled during the 'handling' phase, the fallback phase is executed, otherwise it is skipped.
The real interesting thing about this structure is that a request-handler can spawn a new request-chain. So you can have a request-handler that executes when the 'Host' header is set to 'my.foo.domain.com' that spawns a new request-chain. On top of that, there is nothing stopping you from dealing with requests in other ways, in fact, any way you see fit. Don't like my method of predicates and request chains and what have you? Write your own method of doing things. zen-garden is modular in design. Pull out the routine that I use to handle requests, and install your own.
What is in the future of zen-garden? Well, ZSP's, or Zen-Server-Pages, which is a JSP/PHP method of page generation. Unlike these other technologies, I plan on getting the separation of business logic and display logic right. No top-heavy tag libraries with presentational logic getting confused with document structure, yes JSP and the entire J2EE stack, I am looking at you. No business logic tied up with your presentation, dirty, nasty PHP! What else is in the future? My(and other)SQL connection pooling, GD integration, regular expressions, optional continuation based web programming, RESTful resources, specialized preprocessing of CSS and Javascript files (only send the browser the CSS it needs, and you want it to have).
Oh, and it is all under a BSD License.
For now, everything is available in a subversion repository, svn://panda-ba.sanriowasteland.net/zengarden/trunk . You will need the Gambit-C compiler and interpreter as well.
Sunday, September 10. 2006
Burning Man 06 - The Music
I loved the music at Burning Man this year. Or rather, I loved the music at our camp. It was filled with spontaneity. We had a couple of Chiko boys camping with us that were guitar players and singers. They had a great sense of humor. My favorite was when Burke would regail us with his "Toadstool" song. I took video of it, for some reason it doesn't sync right though.
Tyler was camping with us and brought his Drum. Joe had his drum too so they shared information back and forth on how to play and taught a little bit to Julie.
One of my favorite moments was when the biggest dust devil ever hit our camp. We were taking turns holding down the shade structure when Tyler started drumming on the top of the uhaul trailer. I joined in from the inside with a kick drum sound. Next thing you know, Dan and Jonnay are playing along. Someone heard one of the neighbors on his bongo playing along with us. It was a ton of fun and a nice reprieve from the stress of the weather.
One night through the tent walls there was a fun round of Row, row, row your boat. I have no idea who we were singing along with.
Before the shade went down, we had a party during the day and dave set up his sound system and turntables. I had a blast spinning there! Hell, when else would I get a chance to spin with my bra showing except there. The only difficult part of the set was when the wind hit and the parachute knocked the monitor onto the turntables. Fortunately I got my hands under there just in time, everything thinks the needle didn't skip at all, but it did a little. I was stuck there yelling until someone finally saw me. Definately a highlight to watch people walking down the street dancing to my tunes and people thanking me for my set.
James, Dave and I played tag team on Friday night when we had a party at our camp. I LOVE to hear Dave spin, even better to play with him. I had never heard James play before, I need a cd from that boy. I just wish I had of been in full control of my faculties that night, cause I sucked hard. Travis got on the decks and Jonnay took control of the eq. It was fun to watch them have so much fun and play like that together.
The next day Dave gave me a dj tutorial. It was extremely helpful. I wish we had of had more time to work on it though.
We had a rave camp down the street a block away from us. I loved hearing their music. I loved the music they played, they played everything that I have on vinyl. The problem was that they had 5000 visitors a day. Which meant, we had to go find new porta potties cause they filled up pretty quick. Ewww.
The only bad thing about the music this year is that I missed seeing Freq Nasty yet again. There is always next year...or the warehouse.
Tyler was camping with us and brought his Drum. Joe had his drum too so they shared information back and forth on how to play and taught a little bit to Julie.
One of my favorite moments was when the biggest dust devil ever hit our camp. We were taking turns holding down the shade structure when Tyler started drumming on the top of the uhaul trailer. I joined in from the inside with a kick drum sound. Next thing you know, Dan and Jonnay are playing along. Someone heard one of the neighbors on his bongo playing along with us. It was a ton of fun and a nice reprieve from the stress of the weather.
One night through the tent walls there was a fun round of Row, row, row your boat. I have no idea who we were singing along with.
Before the shade went down, we had a party during the day and dave set up his sound system and turntables. I had a blast spinning there! Hell, when else would I get a chance to spin with my bra showing except there. The only difficult part of the set was when the wind hit and the parachute knocked the monitor onto the turntables. Fortunately I got my hands under there just in time, everything thinks the needle didn't skip at all, but it did a little. I was stuck there yelling until someone finally saw me. Definately a highlight to watch people walking down the street dancing to my tunes and people thanking me for my set.
Spontaneity Rules! U-Haul Drum Circle!
The next day Dave gave me a dj tutorial. It was extremely helpful. I wish we had of had more time to work on it though.
We had a rave camp down the street a block away from us. I loved hearing their music. I loved the music they played, they played everything that I have on vinyl. The problem was that they had 5000 visitors a day. Which meant, we had to go find new porta potties cause they filled up pretty quick. Ewww.
The only bad thing about the music this year is that I missed seeing Freq Nasty yet again. There is always next year...or the warehouse.
 |  |
| Me, before the big shade (and monitor) fell | James on the decks |  |  |
| Xim in the Mix | Jonnay on EQ and Volume, Travis on Beatmixing |