BLOG HAS MOVED

This blog has now moved to the new address

http://ga.alongi.se

This post will remain here a while until I remove the whole blog (this).
Date of removal: 2009 - 03 - 20

Lambda reduction

So, I have written a visual lambda reduction machine in LISP.

What does it do? It reduces lamdba expressions and shows the intermediate results.
Why did you do it? Because I hope to spread the understanding of lambda expressions and fire a spark of interest in people. Also I hope this will give a small interest in functional programming. So that maybe someone more will join the masses of LISP/Haskell programmers.
Why LISP? Because I wanted to.
Where can I find it? Here.

The code is purely "as is", and I welcome error reports.
/Gf

QuickCheck(ing) the code I C - source

By public request; I pasted the haskell source behind the previous post on pastie (thanks to Dru) for the hint. You can find the source here. As it stands, the code is "as is" and any use is at your own risk. I have also blanked out a part, this is marked with "-- left out intentionally" and -- left out .

This is not the actual source I used during the testing, why? After testing I started trying to develop the test-code into something a bit more generic, as it stands, this is the intermediate evolved source; I believe it typechecks though.

Hope this is enjoyable in any way whatsoever; if not, simply don't look.

Cheers.

QuickCheck(ing) the code i C

As part of my work at Witsbits during the summer, I wrote some C code for processing firewall configuration requests. The set up was straightforward; an URI based request sent to a server was handled by a system written purely in C which forwarded the requests to an appropriate handler function. Legal rules where accepted, translated into netfilter rules and stored in an SQL data base.

The customer would be able to add (I) and delete (II) firewall rules; the add (I) rules had several possible call structures which mixed groups, single ip's and other firewalls. Delete (II) calls could remove rules (if present). Since the add (I) calls had several different possible (legal) combinations, the code naturally became case-testing with a lot of "if(...)".. "switch(..)" etc. As a Haskell:er I wanted several ways of reassuring myself that the code I wrote behaved itself nicely and didn't mess things up. With this in mind, I started early by writing the foundation of a haskell program in parallel to the code I was writing in C. This proved to be quite helpful since it forced me to think extra carefully about what calls where legal and how I would check that a call was legal in an efficient way.

As the project progressed, I soon had a full fledged working haskell program using QuickCheck, Network libraries (HTTP,TCP,URI) and Codec.Binary.Base64.String with yet other minor auxiliary libraries. The haskell program identified itself to the firewall server, and generated valid and invalid packets on the fly, sending them across the network and recording the replies. The server, which handled the requests and replied with 200, 201 or 404 if something went wrong, also output a lot of debug info.

So, the haskell program was running controlled randomized test cases against a server! And voila, I was swatting bugs in my C code with minimal effort.

The greatest effort was put into learning to use the Network libraries properly; but besides that I must say this worked as a charm. Next time I'm faced with writing C code for a web based system, I'll start equally early on the Haskell program that will be testing it.

QuickCheck just made it quicker to find the bugs.

/Gianfranco

Pulling the plug on the Unified Ebook Search Engine

The Unified Ebook Search Engine fell dead silent (literally). After frequent mails to the parties involved and no replies; I'm pulling the plug on this project.

Someone else who is interested; contact me: I have the Java source waiting.
Sadly....

Adequate PDF support for the Cybook Gen 3

Finally a new firmware release which fixed the horrible PDF support. One may now zoom at various levels and pan faster on a page. The firmware also fixes various other things.
What I am personally waiting for now is a shorter startup time. Here is the text from the Official Bookeen blog (English version)

What's New in Version 1.2 (Build 796)

* New: user interface now available in 6 languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian & Dutch).
* Improvement: reduced power consumption.
* Improvement: reduced memory usage.
* New: zoom menu for PDF files.
* Improvement: fast panning within PDF files.
* Improvement: general stability and performance.
* Fix: SD card detection.
* Fix: last page saved for files with UTF8 (non ANSI) names.
* New: possibility to restore factory settings (also deletes personal data in internal memory). To do so, press volume- while switching off.

Project page for the Unified Ebook Search Engine

I have created two pages for the UESE, one main page and one tools page which should receive continuous updates as the blog.

The idea is to gather some kind of "face" outwards so that ebook sellers can find the page and read about this, without me having to explain everything each time I contact a seller or a seller contacts me.