01:25:28
##forth
<forthBot>
Environment for cleobuline inactive, freeing...
01:56:40
##forth
<cleobuline>
forthBot: LOAD ini.fth
01:56:40
##forth
<forthBot>
File ini.fth with MOON loaded
01:56:58
##forth
<cleobuline>
forthBot: TODAY-CAL-IRC
01:56:58
##forth
<forthBot>
August 2025
01:56:58
##forth
<forthBot>
Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
01:56:59
##forth
<forthBot>
1 2 3
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<forthBot>
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
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<forthBot>
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
01:57:00
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<forthBot>
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
01:57:00
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<forthBot>
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
01:58:09
##forth
<unjust>
forthBot: LOAD ini.fth
01:58:09
##forth
<forthBot>
File ini.fth with MOON loaded
01:58:13
##forth
<unjust>
forthBot: MOON
01:58:14
##forth
<forthBot>
Phase de la lune pour Tue August 12 2025
01:58:14
##forth
<forthBot>
🌖 Gibbeuse decroissante La lune decroit, une nuit douce vous attend ! Illumination 83%
02:13:41
##forth
<fgarcia>
what... is that calcurse? cool
02:15:54
##forth
<tpnix>
I use calcurse also :)
02:36:41
##forth
<cleobuline>
forthBot: S" Un monstre affreux avec des grandes dents des yeux globuleux et des tentacules "S IMAGE
02:37:35
##forth
<xentrac>
forthBot: SEE TODAY-CAL-IRC
02:37:35
##forth
<forthBot>
Error: SEE: Unknown word: TODAY-CAL-IRC
02:37:46
##forth
<xentrac>
forthBot: LOAD ini.fth SEE TODAY-CAL-IRC
02:37:47
##forth
<forthBot>
Error: Error: LOAD: Cannot open file 'ini.fth SEE TODAY-CAL-IRC'
02:38:04
##forth
<cleobuline>
lol
02:40:24
##forth
<cleobuline>
forthBot: SEE TODAY-CAL-IRC
02:40:24
##forth
<forthBot>
: TODAY-CAL-IRC TODAY CAL-IRC-HIGHLIGHT ;
02:42:53
##forth
<cleobuline>
forthBot: SEE CAL-IRC-HIGHLIGHT
02:42:53
##forth
<forthBot>
: CAL-IRC-HIGHLIGHT 2 PICK TODAY-DAY ! 2DUP SWAP MONTH-NAME DROP 32 EMIT NUM-TO-STR CR ." Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su " CR TODAY ZELLER DUP 0 = IF DROP 6 ELSE 1 - THEN DUP OFF ! OFF @ 0 > IF OFF @ 0 DO 32 EMIT 32 EMIT 32 EMIT LOOP THEN DROP 2DUP 2DUP DAYS-IN-MONTH 1 + 1 DO I 10 < IF 32 EMIT 32 EMIT ELSE 32 EMIT THEN I TODAY-DAY @ = IF 22 EMIT I NUM-TO-STR 15 EMIT ELSE I NUM-TO-STR THEN OFF @ I + 7 MOD 0
02:42:53
##forth
<forthBot>
= IF CR THEN LOOP 2DROP 2DROP 2DROP 2DROP CR ;
02:44:21
##forth
<tpnix>
xentrac, how are things with you today ?
02:48:49
##forth
<cleobuline>
forthBot: CLEAR-STACK
02:50:07
##forth
<xentrac>
not dead yet. had crippling belly pains earlier
02:50:14
##forth
<tpnix>
eww
02:51:02
##forth
<tpnix>
I hat that, get them when I have too much gas caused by fermentation of some non meat food
02:51:15
##forth
<tpnix>
so I mainly eat only meat
02:51:39
##forth
<xentrac>
thought it might be gas, took simethicone, took a giant shit, didn't help
02:52:10
##forth
<tpnix>
I woke with a sore ankle thismorning and had to cut my walk short at 3000 steps, it's vanished a couple of hours later
02:52:19
##forth
<xentrac>
that's good!
02:52:39
##forth
<xentrac>
I usually walk a couple of km each day, but today I just stayed in bed mostly
02:52:53
##forth
<tpnix>
so off to the doc to get your stomach checked out ?
02:53:12
##forth
<tpnix>
yeah, it's walk or die I think
02:53:14
##forth
<xentrac>
it's better now. this is the fourth time it's happened
02:53:20
##forth
<tpnix>
ahh cool
02:53:25
##forth
<xentrac>
new feature this year
02:54:29
##forth
<tpnix>
then I had the kernel pop up a error re the alacritty terminal blocking and drop out of Xwindows to tell me, right in the middle of a AI session on my Forth LSP
02:54:38
##forth
<tpnix>
hah
02:55:01
##forth
<tpnix>
somehow the second RTC3060 in this PC had vanished
02:55:24
##forth
<tpnix>
I need both to run 30GB AI images at a reasonable rate
02:55:45
##forth
<tpnix>
so I tested each card individually and they were fine
02:56:14
##forth
<tpnix>
then swaped them in their PCI-E slots and now they both work!
03:16:11
##forth
<cleobuline>
forthBot: TODAY .S
03:16:11
##forth
<forthBot>
<5> 2025 2025 12 8 2025
03:16:30
##forth
<cleobuline>
forthBot: CLEAR-STACK
03:16:32
##forth
<cleobuline>
forthBot: TODAY .S
03:16:32
##forth
<forthBot>
<5> 2025 2025 12 8 2025
03:18:56
##forth
<cleobuline>
forthBot: CLEAR-STACK
03:19:04
##forth
<cleobuline>
forthBot: LOAD ini.fth
03:19:04
##forth
<forthBot>
File ini.fth with MOON loaded
03:19:07
##forth
<cleobuline>
forthBot: TODAY .S
03:19:08
##forth
<forthBot>
<3> 12 8 2025
03:58:13
##forth
<forthBot>
Environment for unjust inactive, freeing...
04:26:26
##forth
<fgarcia>
forthBot DUP
04:26:50
##forth
<fgarcia>
forthBot .
04:26:57
##forth
<fgarcia>
aw
04:27:38
##forth
<fgarcia>
forthBot: 6 7 * .
04:27:38
##forth
<forthBot>
42
04:37:46
##forth
<forthBot>
Environment for xentrac inactive, freeing...
05:19:07
##forth
<forthBot>
Environment for cleobuline inactive, freeing...
06:27:38
##forth
<forthBot>
Environment for fgarcia inactive, freeing...
08:31:33
##forth
<veltas>
tpnix: Funny that
08:32:54
##forth
<xentrac>
tpnix: congratulations on getting them to work again! does each one have 16GiB?
08:33:24
##forth
<xentrac>
I didn't realize you could run a 30GB model split across two cards like that
08:33:30
##forth
<tpnix>
xentrac, no they only have 12GB vram each
08:33:59
##forth
<tpnix>
it also uses about 30% cpu and some ram in the pc
08:34:42
##forth
<tpnix>
but today I've realised that it's false economy, it's far rar cheaper to use a online AI such as Kimi-K2
08:35:06
##forth
<tpnix>
so I've been doing that the last few hours and OMG the speed!
08:36:32
##forth
<tpnix>
so I probably wasted about $900 AUD on a couple of RTX3060's, but then I dont always have the Internet available, so even a slow 30GB AI is still better than a omline Google
08:36:53
##forth
<xentrac>
well, there are a lot of experiments you can do on a self-hosted AI
08:37:07
##forth
<tpnix>
and it's ok as a 'pair programmer' on small tasks and educating me
08:37:18
##forth
<xentrac>
abliteration and loras and that kind of thing
08:37:33
##forth
<tpnix>
I kind like having it actually, even to online is WAY better
08:37:47
##forth
<xentrac>
and you know it isn't building up a psychological profile to use to sell you things later
08:38:21
##forth
<tpnix>
that also,
08:39:07
##forth
<tpnix>
but there are unrestricted AI models about so I dont have to 'jail break' one to escape tyranical censorship
08:39:35
##forth
<xentrac>
for now
08:39:46
##forth
<tpnix>
and the RTX3060 is pretty good, only 170W max
08:39:49
##forth
<tpnix>
true
08:40:19
##forth
<tpnix>
I guess Id do it again as I like to be independent and not have to rely o the Internet
08:40:53
##forth
<xentrac>
yeah
08:41:04
##forth
<xentrac>
have you tried asking Kimi about Tiananmen Square?
08:41:08
##forth
<veltas>
Self-hosting is a way of life
08:41:30
##forth
<veltas>
Have you tried asking me about Tiananmen Square?
08:42:11
##forth
<xentrac>
I haven't, actually. What do you think about Tiananmen Square, veltas?
08:42:37
##forth
<veltas>
Not much really I wasn't there
08:42:45
##forth
<xentrac>
You can go
08:42:52
##forth
<xentrac>
it's open to the public
08:43:01
##forth
<veltas>
There's a famous picture of a guy standing in front of a tank, but nothing happened to him if I remember right
08:43:29
##forth
<xentrac>
oh, no, he got turned into hamburger
08:43:36
##forth
<veltas>
I think as far as I know it was a violent crackdown on some student protests
08:44:03
##forth
<tpnix>
I think it's a distraction to ask an ai about subjects that are propably propaganda
08:44:22
##forth
<xentrac>
it's interesting because it shows you that the propaganda is in the AI
08:44:42
##forth
<xentrac>
which is useful information as more and more things become neural-network-mediated
08:44:42
##forth
<tpnix>
ask an AI if the USA gave diseased blankets to the indians ?
08:45:22
##forth
<xentrac>
I'm pretty sure Kimi will answer that one correctly
08:45:22
##forth
<tpnix>
one has to stick to code to get the best out of an ai, everything else is subject to censorchip and propaganda
08:45:57
##forth
<tpnix>
I dont really care what has hapened before to others, nothing I can do about it
08:46:28
##forth
<veltas>
I think there's definitely some propaganda in there
08:46:31
##forth
<tpnix>
I cant take on the USA or china for wrongs they may have comitted, and I'm pretty sure they dont give a tinlers cuss what I think
08:46:45
##forth
<tpnix>
tinkers
08:46:54
##forth
<tpnix>
just keep the hitech coming!
08:47:04
##forth
<veltas>
Everyone seems to remember the tank guy getting crushed, it's even talked about in r/MandelaEffect
08:47:15
##forth
<veltas>
There's no evidence what happened to him
08:47:39
##forth
<veltas>
He's just one guy anyway, that's not the point
08:47:49
##forth
<xentrac>
oh, sure, there's no evidence of his personal fate
08:48:02
##forth
<xentrac>
but he wasn't there the next day, and a lot of hamburger was
08:48:06
##forth
<tpnix>
yeah, but who remembers the cavalry running down Indian children and women in sabre charges ?
08:48:13
##forth
<tpnix>
Im sure the indians do
08:48:14
##forth
<veltas>
tpnix: Is that tinker as in a traveller?
08:48:31
##forth
<veltas>
I found out recently I think travellers are also known as tinkers or something
08:48:36
##forth
<veltas>
Or were a very long time ago, anyway
08:48:50
##forth
<xentrac>
well, tinkers typically did travel
08:48:58
##forth
<xentrac>
but not all travelers tinker
08:49:01
##forth
<veltas>
I mean traveller as in Irish Travellers
08:49:07
##forth
<tpnix>
no a 'tinker' was the traveling handyman in the 1800s- 19xx that fixed your pots and pans and stuff
08:49:14
##forth
<veltas>
Okay
08:49:48
##forth
<xentrac>
I imagine that a lot of Irish Travellers worked as tinkers in the past too
08:49:57
##forth
<veltas>
They absolutely did
08:49:59
##forth
<tpnix>
people had to keep their pots and pans, because they were handmade and expensive, so when they had a crack or hole, they had to be repaired
08:50:18
##forth
<tpnix>
they couldnt get a new one at kmart for $5
08:50:41
##forth
<xentrac>
right, so a little bit of tin and a soldering iron and it's all good
08:50:44
##forth
<veltas>
Wikipedia is actually surprisingly truthful (or was?) about a lot of controversial cover-ups that make the west look bad
08:50:53
##forth
<tpnix>
wikipedia ?? that bastion of honest truth ... no bs there ;-)
08:51:17
##forth
<tpnix>
yah and some rivets
08:51:19
##forth
<xentrac>
yeah, WP is generally pretty good at not having any BS
08:51:25
##forth
<veltas>
Wikipedia is definitely biased but their process keeps them relatively honest about 99% of controversial subjects
08:51:29
##forth
<tpnix>
the tinker probably made all that stuff
08:51:52
##forth
<veltas>
But at the same time they have things in their process that encourage bias
08:51:53
##forth
<xentrac>
not perfect, but all it takes is one editor who isn't willing to put up with the BS to make it very difficult to keep around
08:52:19
##forth
<xentrac>
yeah, their definition of "reliable sources" is famously subject to gaming. also "notability"
08:52:31
##forth
<tpnix>
I used to work for AAP-Reuters .. I can tell you about everyday bs !
08:52:34
##forth
<veltas>
I've seen cases where that becomes a popularity contest, and wikipedia has some clear leanings on average
08:52:40
##forth
<tpnix>
and nutty reporters
08:52:50
##forth
<xentrac>
yeah, occasionally it does
08:52:54
##forth
<tpnix>
and corruption
08:53:02
##forth
<veltas>
Also even if Wikipedia was centrist it would be biased, so many things are very subjective
08:53:05
##forth
<xentrac>
especially on current events where it isn't very clear yet what the truth is
08:53:29
##forth
<xentrac>
well, the idea of NPOV isn't to be centrist; it's to present all reasonable points of view
08:53:59
##forth
<veltas>
It's impossible to tell the 'truth' about things that are inherently subjective
08:54:17
##forth
<veltas>
I'm not so cynical as to say Wikipedia is terrible
08:54:22
##forth
<tpnix>
so Im using 'aider' a very sophisticated agentic editor
08:54:48
##forth
<veltas>
Also the refereneces are great, you can go do more research straight from there or at least know if they've got bad sources
08:55:19
##forth
<xentrac>
is "aider" free software?
08:55:37
##forth
<tpnix>
and this afternoon I started with gemini-2.5-pro-preview-06-05 because it's 79% correct and 100% compatible with aider
08:55:45
##forth
<tpnix>
yeah it's floss
08:56:02
##forth
<xentrac>
I should give it a try. I've been wanting to see what the agentic hype is about
08:56:21
##forth
<xentrac>
even though Antirez says you still get better results by non-agentic workflows
08:56:24
##forth
<tpnix>
but my first coding query, which was sorted perfectly cost me $0.50 !
08:57:10
##forth
<xentrac>
oof, that's kind of prohibitive
08:57:33
##forth
<xentrac>
Antirez is the guy that wrote Redis, FWIW
08:58:02
##forth
<tpnix>
so then I went to Kimi K2 which is 60% correct and 92% compatible and insantly fast! and my next complex code fix cost me $0.02 !
08:58:26
##forth
<xentrac>
hosted by Kimi, or where?
08:58:38
##forth
<xentrac>
you're in the US, right?
08:58:45
##forth
<tpnix>
via openrouter which aider recommends
08:58:55
##forth
<tpnix>
no Im in australia
08:59:04
##forth
<tpnix>
being a oker
08:59:11
##forth
<tpnix>
in rural NSW, mate!
08:59:20
##forth
<xentrac>
oh, so there's no political foofaraw with paying Chinese AI companies
08:59:31
##forth
<xentrac>
I've never been to Australia
08:59:42
##forth
<xentrac>
I'd like to go!
08:59:42
##forth
<tpnix>
there is polits everywhere I fear
09:00:00
##forth
<tpnix>
why < just go to arizona, close enough
09:00:27
##forth
<xentrac>
okay but in the US there was talk a few months ago of prosecuting Americans who downloaded DeepSeek models
09:00:28
##forth
<tpnix>
remember, settlers went to maine, prisoners went to australia
09:01:05
##forth
<xentrac>
"if you love somebody, set them free"
09:01:06
##forth
<tpnix>
we vascillate between hating china and being their friend because we have raw materials to sell
09:01:50
##forth
<tpnix>
I personally think that china will take over all tech and inovation and the west (with me in it) will collapse
09:02:12
##forth
<tpnix>
so Im making hay while the sun shines
09:02:28
##forth
<tpnix>
and I'm in the twilight years of my lifr
09:02:29
##forth
<xentrac>
I don't think so. the US could take over all tech and innovation because the world's smartest people could immigrate there, and did
09:02:55
##forth
<veltas>
That Tiananmen Wikipedia article looks pretty reasonable to me
09:02:59
##forth
<tpnix>
xentrac, hos the stomach been since we spoke earlier ?
09:03:26
##forth
<veltas>
It seems aware of the propaganda surrounding it and discusses it pretty factually, as much as anyone can given the lack of accurate info
09:03:33
##forth
<xentrac>
yup
09:03:50
##forth
<xentrac>
China is not so open, so 80% of the world's smartest people (or 40% if you have a really exaggerated view of the influence of genes on intelligence) have to go somewhere else, and that isn't going to be the US
09:03:54
##forth
<xentrac>
anymore
09:04:10
##forth
<xentrac>
stomach's been fine, thanks! I slept a few more hours
09:04:11
##forth
<tpnix>
well I wont argue, I mean who makes friends by arguing politics
09:04:22
##forth
<tpnix>
good to hear!
09:04:22
##forth
<xentrac>
haha sorry
09:04:43
##forth
<xentrac>
anyway I do think the US in particular is cruising for a bruising
09:04:43
##forth
<tpnix>
Ive also switched to nixos in the last 2 weeks
09:05:12
##forth
<xentrac>
but also I don't see how national sovereignty is going to survive drone warfare
09:05:15
##forth
<tpnix>
yeah, they better watch it
09:05:36
##forth
<xentrac>
in the US, China, or anywhere else
09:05:57
##forth
<xentrac>
borders can keep you in or out but they can't keep you safe anymore
09:08:06
##forth
<tpnix>
yeah
09:08:29
##forth
<tpnix>
the big oceans that kept America safe wont do that anymore
09:08:41
##forth
<veltas>
How's nixos?
09:08:44
##forth
<tpnix>
anyway ...
09:08:52
##forth
<tpnix>
simply awesome!
09:09:04
##forth
<veltas>
What's different?
09:09:10
##forth
<xentrac>
there's some politics in nixos this year. eelco resigned
09:09:16
##forth
<tpnix>
it's so different, and I've run practically every unix os out there
09:09:43
##forth
<tpnix>
who is eelco ?
09:10:19
##forth
<tpnix>
veltas you cant get into the innards as every app has it's own directory and is controlled by a db
09:10:29
##forth
<tpnix>
and it's all read only
09:10:46
##forth
<tpnix>
apart from /etc /home and so on
09:11:21
##forth
<tpnix>
Eelco Dolstra, author of the Nix package manager, announced his resignation as head of the board of directors of the NixOS Foundation
09:11:44
##forth
<tpnix>
ahh he invented it as a PHD project
09:11:48
##forth
<veltas>
How 'bloated' is it?
09:12:46
##forth
<veltas>
I mean like how does its hard drive footprint compare?
09:13:27
##forth
<tpnix>
it's pretty big
09:13:58
##forth
<veltas>
Have you noticed any visible benefits from the immutability?
09:14:32
##forth
<tpnix>
but I cant say as Im about to save my home dir and reinstall it tomorrow, and 'df -h' = 350 GB and shouldnt be more than 50GB max
09:14:39
##forth
<xentrac>
you can have multiple versions of any application or library installed concurrently
09:14:53
##forth
<xentrac>
it's sort of like Docker or virtualenv done right
09:15:03
##forth
<tpnix>
it's designed to be reproducable with just one file
09:15:08
##forth
<tpnix>
trie
09:15:10
##forth
<tpnix>
true
09:15:55
##forth
<xentrac>
but with Docker you only have oe thing in the container. with Nix you can make a namespace combining whichever set of them you want
09:16:17
##forth
<veltas>
I think OS's and distros are something I stopped playing with eventually, lost interest
09:16:22
##forth
<tpnix>
veltas, it's so easy to just reboot to a prev config, as every time the system is rebuilt, everything is rebuilt and it goes into the boot list, dated and with a item number
09:16:29
##forth
<veltas>
I did care at some point long ago and then settled on Linux and stopped thinking about it
09:16:55
##forth
<tpnix>
yeah, I had also, but NixOS has rekindled my pc fun, ... honestly
09:17:15
##forth
<tpnix>
it's Linux just like any other
09:17:29
##forth
<tpnix>
but the package manager is NIX
09:17:31
##forth
<xentrac>
I think the strongest appeal is if you want to be able to reproduce a testing environment exactly
09:17:37
##forth
<tpnix>
true
09:18:20
##forth
<tpnix>
a guy couldnt get his ollama setup working with his nvidia card, so I sent him my config,nix and that got it working, it was that easy
09:20:11
##forth
<veltas>
xterm: where 'small' is bigger than 'normal', and 'medium' is 'small'.
09:20:42
##forth
<
tpnix>
veltas, NixOS is controlled by *one* config file and you just add the app name from https://search.nixos.org/ to it and run "nixos-rebuild switch" and it gets the app and rebuilds the system to suit
09:21:10
##forth
<tpnix>
search.nix.org has 120,000 apps!
09:21:22
##forth
<veltas>
There's nothing wrong with using a hyped project
09:21:25
##forth
<tpnix>
compare to about 30,000 for debian etc
09:22:04
##forth
<veltas>
I'm stuck in the Debian mindset, I'll probably have to leave eventually as they become less relevant
09:22:10
##forth
<veltas>
Hoping to stick around for a decade more at least
09:22:40
##forth
<tpnix>
Ive had a fw issues, one was I just cant easily install a tarball, run 'configure, make, make install' anymore
09:22:50
##forth
<veltas>
Arch Linux was really good for a while because all the cool people were using it, now it seems stagnant compared to the gold years
09:22:51
##forth
<xentrac>
if anything I see Debian as getting more and more relevant over time
09:23:07
##forth
<veltas>
I'll have to pick up a new meme distro eventually
09:23:15
##forth
<veltas>
Yeah xentrac?
09:23:43
##forth
<xentrac>
well, they recently revised the social contract to be able to ship Wi-Fi firmware, which was Ubuntu's main advantage
09:23:58
##forth
<xentrac>
and Ubuntu has been getting increasingly obnoxious with "snaps" that auto-update
09:24:10
##forth
<veltas>
Yeah true, that's one of the reasons I don't use Ubuntu
09:24:25
##forth
<tpnix>
ubuntu! gah, I was running that for a few months before NixOS and dont like it
09:24:31
##forth
<veltas>
NixOS is basically SnapsOS though but with stronger guarantees
09:24:44
##forth
<xentrac>
and no auto-updating
09:25:10
##forth
<xentrac>
and Debian is kind of like a hard core of the free-software movement that isn't dependent on the fractious FSF
09:25:51
##forth
<veltas>
That movement is all eccentrics
09:26:08
##forth
<veltas>
Currently that kind of person is mostly distracted by rewriting things in Rust at the moment
09:26:30
##forth
<veltas>
Psy-op if I ever saw one
09:26:34
##forth
<xentrac>
haha
09:27:05
##forth
<veltas>
On that bombshell I've got some work to do, have fun people
09:27:50
##forth
<xentrac>
you too
09:28:12
##forth
<xentrac>
nothing new has ever been done except by eccentrics
09:30:15
##forth
<tpnix>
haha, right
09:46:53
##forth
<xentrac>
right now I'm reorganizing my notes that I'd written on my cellphone. I'd written about 40000 words on topics like cuckoo hashing, Darwen & Date's book on relational databases, the self-contradictory nature of philosophical subjectivism, and reconstructing letterform SDFs by morphologically dilating a skeleton
09:47:07
##forth
<xentrac>
in a lot of cases with calculations and computations I'd done on the cellphone
09:49:22
##forth
<xentrac>
but the cellphone sucks at editing, so this was just in one giant text file. so I've been splitting it into separate Markdown files. I have 46 so far and I'm about 75% done
09:51:18
##forth
<tpnix>
wow
09:58:22
##forth
<xentrac>
for programming on the phone I've mostly been using vi and either Python or LuaJIT
09:58:34
##forth
<xentrac>
but when you're programming the amount of text is smaller than when you're writing
09:59:52
##forth
<xentrac>
Emacs is a lot more comfortable for slinging around paragraphs and stuff
10:17:37
##forth
<tpnix>
ahh, another dedicated emacs user
10:23:40
##forth
<xentrac>
well, it's less work than the alternatives I've tried for this kind of thing, I think
10:30:25
##forth
<tpnix>
yeah it's a personal taste. I started with VIM, poorly, never used it properly but then Im a electronics tech, not a real programmer
10:31:22
##forth
<tpnix>
then I went to neovim and vibe coded a plugin, which works well, but nvim has problems, so I went to Helix (vim like) and stayed
10:36:10
##forth
<xentrac>
oh, I started using vi because at my first tech job in 01996 it took 45 seconds to start Emacs from the NFS server
10:36:18
##forth
<xentrac>
which was an unacceptable delay for answering an email
10:36:50
##forth
<xentrac>
I switched to vim on my Linux box at home because my roommate told me it was better than elvis
10:37:23
##forth
<xentrac>
mostly I used Vim on Windows NT because it crashed a lot and Emacs's auto-save files were always 30 seconds out of date
10:37:41
##forth
<xentrac>
but for programming Emacs was usually better. Possibly with LSP that's changed
10:38:16
##forth
<xentrac>
but also I think for this kind of large-scale text reorganization and reformatting Emacs is a little more convenient and less fiddly
10:38:56
##forth
<xentrac>
maybe that's just because I still don't really know the Vim commands for managing multiple buffers, which in Emacs are very convenient with ido-mode
10:40:04
##forth
<tpnix>
I thin lisp is awesome and sometimes wish Id gone the emacs way, but I dont know lisp well, tho I've been learning racket
13:04:21
##forth
<xentrac>
yeah, I've maybe written a thousand lines of Emacs Lisp in my life
13:05:42
##forth
<xentrac>
it's a perfectly acceptable scripting language. the differences from something like Python, JS, or Lua are mostly superficial
13:06:19
##forth
<xentrac>
I mean you write (f a b) instead of f(a, b)
13:06:33
##forth
<xentrac>
or were; recently they added native-code compilation to Emacs Lisp which theoretically ought to make it super fast
13:06:56
##forth
<xentrac>
in practice I haven't noticed a difference. it's been a long time since being Eight Megs was enough to make something Constantly Swap
13:09:03
##forth
<xentrac>
I'm in a funny position with respect to "do I know Lisp well". I'm not nearly as comfortable in any Lisp as I am in C or Python, but I did write a Scheme compiler in itself
14:06:22
##forth
<veltas>
I've been looking at writing a tape loading word in Forth, for ZX Spectrum
14:07:09
##forth
<veltas>
Using just standard Forth apart from the port input and disabling interrupts for the duration
14:07:23
##forth
<veltas>
One of the curious problems is accurate timing
14:07:56
##forth
<veltas>
But basically I can sort of expect the loop to take about the same amount of time when it's used, and there's a pilot signal I can use to self-synchronise, and measure the frequency modulation relative to that
14:08:33
##forth
<veltas>
So a very dirty hacky approach is possible, maybe
14:08:57
##forth
<veltas>
With some tolerance for unreliable cassette tapes
14:09:39
##forth
<veltas>
Generating the signal is much easier than reading it, at least
14:11:12
##forth
<veltas>
And also been thinking about how to achieve a reasonable block editing experience on the limited screen space
14:12:06
##forth
<veltas>
And whether cross-compiling itself is possible on a 48K machine, should be...
14:13:54
##forth
<veltas>
There are some words that come out quite pleasant .... : SYNC BEGIN EDGE UNTIL ;
14:13:59
##forth
<xentrac>
nice
14:14:16
##forth
<xentrac>
cross-compiling itself should be fairly straightforward if you're willing to rely on an external storage medium
14:14:38
##forth
<veltas>
The program is stored on tape, so the goal is to write a new build to tape
14:14:46
##forth
<veltas>
Audio cassette tapes
14:15:17
##forth
<xentrac>
right, but I mean, you could also use the tape for auxiliary storage if you're willing to rewind it during the build process
14:15:26
##forth
<veltas>
Correct
14:16:05
##forth
<veltas>
And the plan is to use the spectrum's file names to encode block numbers, so I can save/load blocks individually to audio files
14:17:01
##forth
<veltas>
Unfortunately I've tried that with real hardware and it's unreadable, to me anyway
14:17:16
##forth
<xentrac>
it's not great even on a web page
14:17:17
##forth
<veltas>
So I'm just going to make do with 32 columns, 24 rows
14:17:32
##forth
<veltas>
And the built-in font bitmap
14:17:58
##forth
<xentrac>
32 columns would feel pretty cramped to me, but de gustibus non est disputandum
14:18:05
##forth
<veltas>
The only reliable way to increase number of chars on a row is to use variable-width font, but that's not Forthy enough
14:18:27
##forth
<veltas>
Although it is not hard to do, and I did write a ZX Spectrum app with variable width chars
14:18:29
##forth
<xentrac>
doesn't it have a 256×192 framebuffer that you can write arbitrary bit patterns to?
14:18:37
##forth
<veltas>
Yes
14:19:02
##forth
<xentrac>
so you could use 5×8 or something if you wanted
14:19:28
##forth
<xentrac>
I had the impression that I'd used 5×8 terminals when I was a kid but I went back last week and looked at their fonts
14:19:33
##forth
<xentrac>
they were not 5×8
14:19:52
##forth
<veltas>
It's slightly easier to write to 8x8 (because each row is a byte), but I'm still not sure how readable it would be
14:20:06
##forth
<veltas>
at 5x8
14:20:26
##forth
<xentrac>
I feel like the 8-row constraint is worse than the 5-column constraint
14:20:48
##forth
<xentrac>
because g, y, q, and p are more common than m and w
14:21:14
##forth
<xentrac>
you can't do a decent g, y, q, or p in 8 rows of pixels
14:21:50
##forth
<xentrac>
or, if you can, I haven't seen it done
14:22:17
##forth
<veltas>
Benchmark characters are # and @
14:22:29
##forth
<veltas>
Which suffer a lot from going smaller than 8x8
14:22:36
##forth
<veltas>
And are very common chars in forth code
14:23:51
##forth
<xentrac>
but that's 4×6
14:25:17
##forth
<veltas>
Could replace it with something that looks a bit like lb maybe with the round parts of b joining to the l
14:25:35
##forth
<veltas>
That is where the # comes from I think(?), a shorthand for lb
14:26:05
##forth
<xentrac>
interesting idea!
14:26:16
##forth
<xentrac>
heh, you could use £ :-)
14:26:58
##forth
<xentrac>
apparently the most common name for "#" is "hashtag" now
14:27:23
##forth
<veltas>
Only as sad as the etymology of 'ampersand'
14:28:53
##forth
<veltas>
libra.chat
14:29:00
##forth
<xentrac>
haha
14:33:22
##forth
<xentrac>
if it were me, I'd be tempted to replace # with a completely different glyph
15:54:59
##forth
<olle>
Did anyone ever do a two-pass Forth? First pass into tokens, then execute the token stream instead of string stream?
15:56:17
##forth
<xentrac>
sure, Open Firmware works that way
15:56:50
##forth
<xentrac>
maybe the Forth with the largest deployed base in history, since it was on the OLPC XO. I think it's in NetBSD too
15:57:03
##forth
<olle>
Hm link, xentrac ?
15:57:19
##forth
<xentrac>
oh also PowerPC Macs
15:57:43
##forth
<olle>
Nice thank you :)
16:13:45
##forth
<olle>
I was thinking of extending my tiny forth with symbols and messages, like
16:14:02
##forth
<olle>
'Hello :say --> Sym(Hello) Message(say)
16:14:20
##forth
<olle>
Dunno if that makes much sense yet.
16:15:30
##forth
<xentrac>
there are a lot of ways you could realize that, but certainly the overall idea makes sense!
16:21:12
##forth
<olle>
I have a couple of use-cases, e.g. a wrapper around PHPUnit to reduce boiler plate. But we'll see. :)
16:21:33
##forth
<olle>
A basic SCUMM engine i JS would be another use-case.
16:21:36
##forth
<olle>
in*
16:24:43
##forth
<xentrac>
that'd be awesome :-D
16:25:47
##forth
<olle>
It would! Tho perhaps dialoge trees are better expressed with S-expr
16:26:16
##forth
<xentrac>
I've been finding "immediate-mode GUIs" to be an inspiration for representing that kind of thing as code instead of as data
16:26:40
##forth
<xentrac>
in a sense an "obarray" or "symbol table" is a Forth dictionary without the definitions
16:28:21
##forth
<olle>
Hm
16:29:52
##forth
<xentrac>
presumably the reason Chuck used ' to get the xt of a word was because he was thinking of Lisp
16:30:40
##forth
<olle>
Good point.