Fan-out

Most of my big projects seem to go through a “fan out” phase, where the to-do list grows very quickly. This is a scary phase of the project — one where it feels as though things are accelerating out of control, and where success seems as though it could be in doubt. The compiler seems to be entering this phase now.

While this phase feels dangerous, I think the more dangerous phases come earlier, when I’m more confident.

Do you experience fan-out? I’m curious whether this is an artifact of how I approach projects, or whether it is a more universal experience.

First Success

I just managed to get through an ordinary make of a real program (zenity, which for some reason is my standard test) using gcc as a server. Yay! It is, as predicted, about twice as fast as an ordinary make.

Now pile on the caveats.

Compiler Progress

I’ve been working steadily on the incremental compiler project these last couple of months, but not blogging about it. So, time for a status report.

I made a branch in the GCC repository, cleaned up my existing patches, and checked it all in. There’s a short web page describing the project on the GCC wiki (branch details there).

I’ve also written a rough draft of the support code for “decl smashing”, and also changed the parser to consider “per-declaration hunks”.

The idea behind per-declaration hunks is that, for code written by the user, we get better incremental behavior if we consider each hunk to hold a single declaration or definition, rather than the previous rule of “everything between two file change events”. The former is better because it means that a change is isolated to its containing declaration and uses of that declaration (and we can do even better here, perhaps, with a bit more analysis); the latter is better for system headers and the like because it has lower overhead.

Finally, I’ve started server-izing GCC. This part should be ready for real testing pretty soon.

Dessert Sushi

dessert sushi

We’ve been making (vegetarian) sushi lately and a month ago or so I had the idea to make dessert sushi. “I’m a top-chef-worthy genius,” I thought. “Gordon Ramsay will never call me a donkey!”

Of course then I googled and found that only a couple million people did this first. Then when he was visiting, Manu bought us a veggie sushi book and it has a whole section on dessert sushi. On my birthday we made some; the above photo shows a few — some with mango and kiwi, some with chocolate shavings and raspberry, and some with chocolate sauce.

Death at a Funeral

The title of this movie brought to mind the title of Chris Shera’s PhD thesis, “listening to the ear”.

There were a couple moments where this film appeared ready to veer into the dark and disturbing. But, luckily (and I hope this doesn’t spoil it for you — perhaps someone enjoys that feeling), it did not. Also I did not like the use (I counted twice) of the phrase “a gay”. Somehow that sounds mildly homophobic to me, a fact I find somewhat curious and interesting, but that thought nevertheless doesn’t render the phrase more acceptable.

Anyway, overall it was pretty funny, and one scene at least was hilarious. I laughed out loud a few times.

Superbad

I heard this was hilarious and great, so I went to see it. It is pretty funny (but not hilarious) and the actors do a very good job. It is kind of vulgar and not always in a funny way.

DVR

Comcast had a trial offer where you could get a DVR machine rent-free for a year, so we dropped by their office and picked one up. These machines are as nice as people say — much, much friendlier than plain TV or VCRs. It only took a couple of weeks for it to change how I watch TV.

While playing with it, though, I’m reminded once again why I first turned to free software all those years ago. I’d like to be able to hack the machine a little… say, upload my favorite DVDs, or add more disk space, or get a second one and be able to share videos between the two.

Maybe I should get a Neuros OSD box. Anybody try one of these? Or of course I could set up MythTV, though that seems more expensive (given that I have basically no usable hardware).

Bourne Ultimatum

A solid addition to the Bourne series. I’ve enjoyed all of these, they are some of my favorite action films. The story in this one is a bit flimsier than the others, but no matter. I got what I was expecting when I bought my ticket.

Incidentally, a few years ago, after the first movie, I read The Bourne Identity. Awful book. Avoid it if you can.

Mount Ida

Last weekend we stayed in Estes Park and were finally able to get to the Mount Ida trailhead early enough to summit. We’ve been trying to do this for a few years but usually arrive too late, and get scared off by the weather. Here’s a photo of Elyn on the summit; you can see the gathering storm. We got down below treeline just as the lightning started.

Elyn on Mount Ida

The Simpsons

This had a lot of funny moments but was somehow less funny than I was expecting. It doesn’t matter, though, since watching it is mandatory.