• M-(  wrap parens around something. Also for { [ “
• M-s  remove parens from something
• M-S-s  split sexpr into two
• M-S-j  join sexprs
• C-q ♦  just do what I say, dammit! force insert of paren or bracket ♦
• C-u DEL  force delete paren or bracket

“Barfage and slurpage” - ()‘s expand, {}‘s contract:

• M-)  move right paren rightward
• C-}  move right paren leftwards
• C-(  move left paren leftwards
• C-{ move left paren rightwards

My first Clojure book wasn’t even about Clojure, it was about Lisp! One Sunday afternoon I was lurking in the computer section of a local bookshop (a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon), and came across Land of Lisp.  I’d heard about Lisp, that “obsolete” language that used to be used for Artificial Intelligence but who uses it nowadays? Anyway, the cover was colourful and the cartoons were great, and before I knew it I’d read a couple of chapters and wanted to know about this Lisp stuff and I bought the book.

But after reading it for a while and getting sidetracked by Scheme and the greatest book every written about programming, Land of Lisp languished on my bookshelf. The example used in the book (yet another game) didn’t relate to my day-to-day use of programming. I was getting lost because I wasn’t doing any exercises, and Lisp just didn’t seem to be an acceptable Lisp.

Seven Languages in Seven Weeks pointed me towards Erlang, Haskell and Clojure. Ah-hah! Clojure – runs on the JVM (so I can use it machines where I can’t/don’t want to install stuff, just like JRuby). A modern Lisp with cleaned up syntax that has access to all the Java libraries for doing real world stuff. I’m hooked!

At a Ruby on Rails Oceania (RORO) meetup someone was raving about The Joy of Clojure. So I drank from the firehose and my brain exploded and nothing made sense. As Steve Yegge (a fellow Googler) says in the intro, “you’ll learn fast” – but only if you’re already comfortable with Lisp. The book moves too fast, the explanations are cryptic, and it seems to bounce all over the place. Another book to languish on my book shelf.

My next book Practical Clojure was where things started to make sense. It’s more directed at beginners and just explains how the language works. But it’s a thin book (not enough detail) and some sections just seem to be reprints of the API (function foo does this and here’s a 5 line example; function bar does this and here’s a 5 line example). No real digging into the how and why of using Clojure.

And onto my favourite Clojure book – Clojure Programming by Emerick et al. Like many O’Reilly books it’s definitive. Lots of detailed examples, clear explanations, great diagrams, coverage of related areas (eg Clojure for web programming). Example code comparing how you do things in Clojure with other languages (Java, Python, Ruby). This is the book where I’ve really started to understand Clojure.

Now I’m working through the 4clojure problem list (really interesting). Then I’ll probably buy some more books from The Clojure Bookshelf. And continue reading Paul Graham’s On Lisp (I got it printed through Lulu). And one day I’ll reach enlightenment :-)

:bu <tab>    - select a buffer
:buN         - select buffer N
:ls          - list buffers
:sb tab      - split screen on another buffer
:sbN         - split screen on buffer N
:only        - make this the only buffer (ie maximise)
^w^o         - make this the only buffer (ie maximise)
:ball        - split screen on all buffers
:hide        - hide this buffer
:bdel        - remove buffer from list

Vim buffers don’t seem as flexible as the Emacs equivalent, but then nothing is as flexible as Emacs:

http://xkcd.com/378/

% convert -debug all -log "%u %m:%l %e" test.pdf test.tif 2>&1 | less

This gives errors like this:

0.000u module.c:1278 unable to load module `/usr/lib/ImageMagick-6.7.5/modules-Q16/coders/pdf.la': libgs.so.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

So, I downloaded and unpacked a RHEL ghostscript rpm – it turns out that the rpms have symlinks to libgs.so in the package, but no libgs.so :-(

/var/tmp/usr/lib # ls -al libgs.so*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    13 Mar 28 20:41 libgs.so -> libgs.so.8.15
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    13 Mar 28 20:41 libgs.so.8 -> libgs.so.8.15

Easy you think, just install something like libgs.123.rpm, and everything will work. But there isn’t such an rpm…

So, download the ghostscript source, build it as a shared library (using the not quite obvious make so), copy the lib to /usr/lib, fix up the symlinks. Then all is  happiness and light:

% cd /var/tmp
% wget http://downloads.ghostscript.com/public/ghostscript-8.71.tar.xz
% tar zxvf ghostscript-8.71.tar.xz
% cd ghostscript-8.71
% ./configure
% make so
% rm -i /usr/lib/libgs.so*
% cp sobin/libgs.so.8.71 /usr/lib
% ln -s libgs.so.8.71 libgs.so
% ln -s libgs.so.8.71 libgs.so.8

Oh the pain – why can’t the world just use The Universal Operation System – Debian?!

Anyway, Ruby stole everything good from Perl; … for the most part, Ruby took Perl’s string processing and Unix integration as-is, meaning the syntax is identical, and so right there, before anything else happens, you already have the Best of Perl. And that’s a great start, especially if you don’t take the Rest of Perl.

But then Matz took the best of list processing from Lisp, and the best of OO from Smalltalk and other languages, and the best of iterators from CLU, and pretty much the best of everything from everyone. And he somehow made it all work together so well that you don’t even notice that it has all that stuff.

Well it turns out that you can split screens in Screen, here’s how to you do it:

• C-a S to split
• C-a X to unsplit (and remove the current region)
• C-a Q to make the current region the only region

Also, you can bind some keys to move between regions; add these settings to your ~/.screenrc:

bind j focus down
bind k focus up
bind t focus top
bind b focus bottom

Then you can do things like C-a j to move down a region, C-a k to move up a region.

By the way, you can split screens in GNU Screen.

:: MySQl DB user
set dbuser=xxxx

:: MySQl DB users password
set dbpass=xxxx

:: Switch to the MySQL data directory and collect the folder names
pushd "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\data"

:: Loop through the folders and use the fnames for the sql filenames, collects all databases automatically this way

echo "hello"

echo "Pass each name to mysqldump.exe and output an individual .sql file for each"

FOR /D %%F IN (*) DO (
"C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\bin\mysqldump.exe" --user=%dbuser% --password=%dbpass% --databases %%F > "C:\SQLBackup\%%F.%backupdate%.sql"
)

After you’ve made changes in vimdiff :diffupdate will recalculate the diffs.

Vimdiff in Action

Here’s the description of the group:

A group for practitioners of the Filipino art of Balintawak Arnis (stick fighting). Arnis (also known as Esgrima or Kali) is a very practical martial art that involves sticks, striking, grappling or improvised weapons. It is becoming more popular (for example the Jason Bourne movies or other movies) and is usually practiced outdoors rather than in a gym. Beginners are always welcome, or you can just come along and watch the action!

Watch some videos of stick fighting.