https://w0rp.com/ Recent content on w0rp zone Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Fri, 22 Dec 2023 15:50:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/site-has-been-converted-to-hugo/ Fri, 22 Dec 2023 15:50:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/site-has-been-converted-to-hugo/ As part of simplifying the job of maintaining the sites and apps I run, I have converted w0rp.com to a static HTML site built with Hugo. The conversion simplifies the maintenance of my personal site in the following ways: There’s no Postgres database to maintain any more, just content. There’s no need to maintain and update Python. There’s no need to maintain Python packages and keep them up to date. nginx can be simplified to just serving the content. https://w0rp.com/blog-comment-archive/ Fri, 22 Dec 2023 14:00:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog-comment-archive/ Blog Comment Archive w0rp 12/14/2023 00:00 This page displays an archive of comments from the site before the site was converted to Hugo. Comments were removed so the site can be rendered without the use of any dynamic content or databases. Comments below are preserved exactly as they were before the site was converted. bristolemo.com, the home of Emo in Bristol w0rp 04/20/2022 1:10 a.m. Anonymous 04/20/2022 4 p.m. sounds great. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/video-and-audio-are-great-now/ Tue, 14 Feb 2023 08:14:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/video-and-audio-are-great-now/ I just wanted to write a mini post as a reminder about how great the world is now (in one respect), because <video> and <audio> work fantastically in web browsers these days. There was once a long and crazy battle between .webm and .mp4. It’s a fascinating topic in of itself, but essentially every browser, mobile, and computer vendor was fighting a ding-dong battle about which formats should be used on the web. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/google-once-again-knows-the-fear-of-failure/ Fri, 10 Feb 2023 08:45:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/google-once-again-knows-the-fear-of-failure/ Disclaimer: Be prepared for a lot of candid speech and opinions. This is a personal blog, after all, not a PR statement. None of what you read here should be considered financial or investment advice. Over the past week Google showed a demo of Bard, which its weapon against ChatGPT. I don’t need to link ChatGPT to you, because you’ve already used it. Really, underlying ChatGPT is the threat of OpenAI, and underlying that is the threat of Microsoft. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/merry-christmas-from-dense-analysis/ Sun, 25 Dec 2022 20:44:20 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/merry-christmas-from-dense-analysis/ Merry Christmas to all from the Dense Analysis team! Today ALE has been released as v3.3.0. These GitHub releases don’t mean much in the way of new code, given that most users just follow master anyway, but some users like to tag specific release versions for distribution. In any case, enjoy! ALE has been a project running for over 6 years now, and hopefully the fun will never stop. As ever hsanson does a fine job maintaining ALE. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/bristolemo-com/ Wed, 20 Apr 2022 01:10:22 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/bristolemo-com/ I have owned a domain name for a while now, and now I am doing something serious with it. I have a band, and that band is named Corporate Retreat. This band, and the music of everyone in it, including myself, are now featured prominently on the bristolemo.com website, which I now consider the front page of Emo in Bristol. I personally see the band as a mix of Emo, Neofolk, Shoegaze, and probably a whole lot of other words, but it’s really just “whatever we feel like doing. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/i-am-still-alive/ Tue, 03 Nov 2020 18:50:24 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/i-am-still-alive/ I thought I’d write a post now to let people know that I’m still around, and I will look at ALE issues and pull requests again when I have some time, among other things. I’ve been snowed under with work and busy doing family things. I will always contribute to and manage ALE things until the day I finally die, even if I’m the only user left. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/ale-3-0-four-years-of-ale/ Wed, 09 Sep 2020 22:45:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/ale-3-0-four-years-of-ale/ Just a moment ago, I released version 3.0.0 of ALE. This version of ALE has been released on the four year anniversary of ALE! Four years ago, on this very same day, was when I made the very first git commit for ALE. ALE was originally released in the same week that Vim 8.0 was released. (Search the page for “w0rp.”) In that time, I have gone from being a regular-old developer to a team leader, I am very close to getting married, and the entire world has gone to Hell in a repeat of what happened in 1918. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/i-am-alive/ Fri, 20 Mar 2020 15:14:16 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/i-am-alive/ As of the time of writing, I am alive and well. I had two weeks of holiday where I planned to spend some of that time working on ALE, but plans for everyone across the entire world have obviously changed rather significantly, and my holiday was cut short. I have stocked up on food and I must remain at home for weeks on end now, as I have asthma and can’t put myself at risk of contact with the terrible Coronavirus. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/im-upgrading-my-hard-disk/ Tue, 08 Jan 2019 09:49:22 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/im-upgrading-my-hard-disk/ In case anyone missed the message and wants to know why I’m not on IRC, I’m currently upgrading my server’s hard disk to a higher capacity. Once that’s up and running, I should be able to archive more important Internet content than ever before. I’d like to recommend Clonezilla for being a very good utility for transferring data from disk to image to disk. I should be online again within the next two days or so. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/vim-script-for-the-javascripter/ Wed, 22 Aug 2018 23:23:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/vim-script-for-the-javascripter/ This article provides a quick reference for how to write Vim script for people who are already familiar with JavaScript. For the sake of brevity, I will refer to Vim script by another common name, “VimL,” throughout the rest of this article. If you use Vim as your editor, and want to write your own plugins or just automate certain tasks, it’s worth learning how to write VimL. Vim’s own scripting language is guaranteed to work on every platform that Vim runs on. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/ale-2-0-and-breaking-changes/ Sun, 03 Jun 2018 21:20:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/ale-2-0-and-breaking-changes/ Only just a few days ago, ALE reached 5,000 stars on GitHub. I believe that a measure is only good if it doesn’t become a target. While the number of stars my projects get on GitHub isn’t a target for me, I do appreciate the support from the fans of the project. Seeing that little counter of stars go up so the over time gives me a little warm feeling inside, and encourages me to continue working on the project. https://w0rp.com/presentation/parametric-polymorphism-and-d/ Sat, 26 May 2018 21:38:23 +0000 https://w0rp.com/presentation/parametric-polymorphism-and-d/ Parametric Polymorphism and The D Programming Language What Do We Want from Programming Languages? Conciseness Readability Performance Correctness Why Is This Hard to Achieve? Conciseness and readability are more achievable when a language requires fewer type annotations in order to work. Performance and correctness are more achievable with the presence of type information. Achieving all of our goals requires a concise way of expressing operations of types of objects generically. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/you-fix-it/ Sun, 04 Mar 2018 15:02:58 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/you-fix-it/ I’ve been working on a moderately successful Vim plugin for a while, called ALE. All the while, I’ve been musing about what my responsibilities are, having written a plugin that people like, and where people create issues on GitHub asking for new features, or reporting bugs. Owners of GitHub projects are expected to merge pull requests from others, fix bugs, and make the software better. However, this social expectation is the opposite of the legal obligations, or the lack thereof, presented in software licences. https://w0rp.com/presentation/migrating/ Sun, 19 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/presentation/migrating/ Migrating Python Web Applications to Python 3 Follow along here: w0rp.com/migrating Who am I? Andrew Wray, Senior Developer at Wazoku Ltd (Wazoku is hiring!) Python programmer since 2008 (Just before 3.0 release) Passions: Programming, language, music What do I work on? During the day ... Spotlight: a single page web application Built with Django and Angular Ran on Python 2.7, now runs on 3.6! ... but at night! ALE — A Vim plugin for checking and fixing your code Songs and poems ALE: https://github. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/a-year-of-ale/ Sat, 11 Nov 2017 19:06:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/a-year-of-ale/ It’s been a little over a year now since I started working on what is arguably my first ever successful open source project, ALE. It’s very ironic that I’ve been working on ALE for over a year, given that I’ve been teetotal my entire life. (This is actually mentioned way at the end of the help file, for those who bother to read it.) Some friends had told me that I should write up my experience with working on ALE so far. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/importance-of-intuition/ Tue, 01 Mar 2016 23:20:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/importance-of-intuition/ Humans have fantastic brains capable of solving problems quickly and in amazing ways. Computers can solve a great number of problems more quickly than humans, but problem solving in humans and computers works in vastly different means. Richard Feynman said it best. [A computer is] a glorified, high-class, very fast but stupid filing system. — Richard Feynman, one of the greatest men in history Computers use brute force methods to solve problems. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/writing-exceptional-nogc-code/ Sun, 12 Apr 2015 17:17:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/writing-exceptional-nogc-code/ Update: D now supports an experimental @nogc exception mechanism. Consider using this instead: https://dlang.org/changelog/2.079.0.html#dip1008 The D programming language offers an interesting feature I really like, as of recent compiler versions. You can add a @nogc annotation to functions to disable garbage collector allocations for a function, and the compiler will check for any such allocations and return a compile time error if the function causes any allocations. This feature is useful, as the language contains many features which use the garbage collector, and it can be sometimes difficult for a human to detect all of those allocations. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/an-raii-constructor-by-another-name-is-just-as-sweet/ Thu, 09 Apr 2015 23:00:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/an-raii-constructor-by-another-name-is-just-as-sweet/ I’m going to talk about RAII in D, which should be a familiar term to anyone familiar with C++. It is one of the more unfortunately named, but incredibly useful idioms for managing resources. In particular, I’m going to show how a feature of D I once thought was an annoyance, turns out to be quite essential, and how another feature of D I once thought could be a problem turns out not to be a problem at all. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/you-cant-do-that/ Fri, 18 Jul 2014 17:00:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/you-cant-do-that/ I watched a talk by a good programmer recently, Adam D. Ruppe. In the talk, Adam had this to say. There [are] people who ask questions, "What happens if I do this?" [...] Well, my philosophy is to just do it. — Adam D. Ruppe, D Hacker I came to a problem at work where I had a filter for a region for lists of articles, and I wanted to get the same query, only where the filter for the region was reversed, so I could show “around the world” news on the site. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/my-minor-spiritual-music-project/ Sat, 29 Mar 2014 12:15:42 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/my-minor-spiritual-music-project/ What Is This All About? Jason Scott, computer historian and archivist, has said on several occasions that it is important to try and preserve your own digital history. As far as the history of popular or important figures goes, someone else will probably make an effort. When it comes to things that probably only hold some significance to you, you might be on your own. I am going to make a small attempt to make mention of something I did, which was of interest at least to myself. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/english-language-and-programming/ Sun, 23 Mar 2014 20:37:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/english-language-and-programming/ Programming is an art form, and I believe there exists such a thing as “beautiful code.” Beautiful code has the appearance of elegance in its design. Its form is concise, expressive, and one of its attributes is a good use of language. Not just in the use of the syntax of a programming language, but in its representation in natural languages. The lingua franca of computer programming is English. More specifically American English. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/open-the-floodgates/ Sun, 16 Feb 2014 01:06:16 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/open-the-floodgates/ Update December 21st 2023: I converted this entire site to Hugo templates and remove the comment form so there’s one less thing to maintain. I have added the ability to comment on articles on this blog site, rendering in what I hope will be a pleasing manner. IP addresses for comments will be logged for the purpose of banning spammers and so on. Comments are encouraged to be anonymous, but a pseudonym can be used. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/what-did-i-find-best-in-2013/ Sat, 11 Jan 2014 17:29:44 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/what-did-i-find-best-in-2013/ I thought about creating lists of my “favourite things over 2013,” but I realised that no matter which category I picked, I found it hard to create a top 10, whether it was films, music, TV shows, or anything else. So instead I think I’ll pick out what I think was best in each in 2013. TV Only one series really stands out to me in 2013, and that is the final season of Breaking Bad. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/my-wishes-for-the-tech-world-of-2014/ Sat, 11 Jan 2014 16:10:35 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/my-wishes-for-the-tech-world-of-2014/ We’re almost a couple of weeks into 2014 now. With each passing year, technology advances and I do believe that the world in general gets better. I have hope for the future, and there are some ways I would like to see the tech side of this world improve over the coming year. So, without wasting any more time, allow me to state my wishes. The D Programming Language Gains in Popularity The D Programming Language is a great programming language which I believe has a ton of potential for a number of areas. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/immutable-interfaces-and-covariant/ Sun, 08 Sep 2013 21:09:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/immutable-interfaces-and-covariant/ When writing data structures, you want your API for using your data structures to be as concise and easy to understand as possible, while providing as much safety as you can possibly get, without there being a huge amount of mental overhead. Today, let’s look at a simple example which shows how the Immutable Interface pattern and also covariant return types can help you write code which is more understandable, while also providing safety benefits when working with concurrent code, and perhaps even some additional performance overhead benefits. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/a-quick-but-important-improvement-for/ Tue, 19 Feb 2013 22:28:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/a-quick-but-important-improvement-for/ Dear all Java Developers, please stop doing this. public void List<MyObject> getValues() { return new ArrayList(privateList); } Please start doing this instead. public void Collection<MyObject> getValues() { return Collections.unmodifiableCollection(privateList); } Here are the reasons why. Both List and Set are sub-interfaces of Collection, so both work. Forward ranges are better than random access ranges in most cases. You will cut your memory usage by more than half for any object which has a method like this. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/option-types-in-d-programming-language/ Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:24:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/option-types-in-d-programming-language/ In a recent, I explained in some detail how D can often save you from the horrors of null. Here is the short version: No null for primitives. (Effectively) no null for arrays or maps. No null for structs. If D code is properly written, and often this will imply making appropriate use of generics, then null should appear far less in your D code than in, say, your Java code. https://w0rp.com/blog/post/null-and-d-programming-language/ Sat, 09 Feb 2013 20:09:00 +0000 https://w0rp.com/blog/post/null-and-d-programming-language/ The problem with null Throughout my life as a programmer, I constantly experience one problem. I don’t like null. I imagine that the existence of null is the number one cause of headaches for all programmers around the world. The creator of the null reference names it The Billion Dollar Mistake. The problem with null is quite obvious. Every object that could possibly be null is a bomb waiting to go off.