Ocaml fever

Twitching to learn a new language. I want something that has computational power of C, and the contemporary advances in Computer Science that ruby contains.

Ocaml seems suitable.

A quick dump of research sources:
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists/chapter1.html
http://blog.camlcity.org/blog/ocamlnet3_mp.html
http://flint.cs.yale.edu/cs421/case-for-ml.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_Caml
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~fangohr/software/ocamltutorial/index.html

Ruby Princess number 45232

Its funny what lack of sleep does to a person. There's this guy writing a ruby guide on freenode #ruby. I had earlier proofread the first chapters of this guys guide. Haha.

...
09:00 < krainbolt> What are some of the bad sides of Ruby? The problems, if you will?
...
10:53 < csmrfx> krainbolt absolutely none. While ruby is not perfect, its still the best.
10:56 < krainbolt> That has to be a joke.
10:56 < krainbolt> Please tell me you're joking.
10:56 < csmrfx> No.
10:56 < krainbolt> Oh jesus.
10:57 < krainbolt> That was a quick ignore.
10:57 < csmrfx> Keep religion out of this.
10:57 < csmrfx> krainbolt wasnt such a mellow guy after all...
10:58 < csmrfx> ...lol I even proof read his silly commie guide for him.
10:58 < csmrfx> Talk about rockstars...
10:58 < krainbolt> This is why I have a part in my guide about fanatics in the community. Absolutely none, jesus christ.
10:59 < csmrfx> krainbolt better also add that the guide was written by a person with no sense of irony
11:00 < csmrfx> Oh well, live'n'learn
...

Irb tab-completion

Wowza! I just had a brief peek at The Ruby Way -book by Hal Fulton. It's chock full of tasty tips, such as this one: Irb tab completion. Check it out!

Just paste this into your .irbrc:

IRB.conf[:AUTO_INDENT] = true
IRB.conf[:USE_READLINE] = true
IRB.conf[:LOAD_MODULES] ||= []
IRB.conf[:LOAD_MODULES] |= ['irb/completion']

OpenGL with Ruby

To do 3D in ruby with OpenGL. Is it possible? It certainly sounds dreamy. It is time to find out!

Ruby OpenGL bindings - http://ruby-opengl.rubyforge.org/
Simple: require "opengl"

OpenSceneGraph
I found OpenSceneGraph after a brief inquiry into approaching OpenGL. OpenSceneGraph is a open high-level OpenGL library. http://www.openscenegraph.org

Windowing
http://ruby-glfw.rubyforge.org/
http://www.kmc.gr.jp/~ohai/index.en.html

Alternatives
Hm, maybe SDL would be easier for simple 3D apps: http://www.kmc.gr.jp/~ohai/rubysdl.en.html

Scan Processor Studies -related
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/samplecode/PBORenderToVertexArray/index.html - read readme.txt!
http://www.mathematik.uni-dortmund.de/~goeddeke/gpgpu/tutorial3.html
http://github.com/xaviershay/socialbeat
http://www.lighthouse3d.com/opengl/index.shtml

Ruby gem install troubleshooting

So, often its the little things that fail. Here is a troubleshooting list.

Simple snafu's

• require "rubygems" #before requiring gem?


• See if gem shows with '$:' command inside Irb. If not, it's not installed.


• If in irb, and installing gems, you must restart it.

Often forgot

• extconf.rb:8:in `require’: no such file to load — mkmf (LoadError)? -- On Debian and Ubuntus installing ruby and gem doesnt install mkmf. Install ruby-dev -package, too (sudo apt-get install ruby1.91.-dev for example)


• On Ubuntus Assert 'sudo gem install blah'. Not as user.


• On Debians, rubygems may need to be installed outside apt (rails, etc).

To be updated.

Epiphany Wishlist

Epiphany is currently my favourite browser. The version 2.26.1 is light, fast and renders HTML and SVG very well. It is based on gecko engine. It is faster than Opera, not to mention Firefox.

Here is my Epiphany feature wishlist:

- Quick menu with Javascript on|off, Java on|off, cookies accept all|ask|none, clear cache and clear cookies -options.
- Clear LSO (Flash cookies)
- Drag-n-drop of tabs between Epiphany windows.

Thank you Epiphany developers!