An investigation

Recently, I was lamenting that Hyatt's development had fallen to the wayside.  Part of the problem was the question of the data format; no matter how many times I reinvented the wheel, it seemed to end up unacceptably square.  In the end, I decided to see what specific standards and formats had come before.  So I googled "tabular data format".  Imagine my surprise when I found that the top result* was a recently-expired patent.  As someone who's recently realized just how bullshit patents have gotten (Hi, Apple!) (note to self: record the patent song), I figured it would be nice to test to what extent the patent in question is valid.  There can be no question as to the utility or novelty of tabular computing, but I'm curious about how the PHOSITA test works out.  (With the caveat that I am both a novice, and working with much nicer languages than were around two decades ago.  So, you know, it's a bit all over the map.  However, I want Hyatt, so at least I probably shouldn't be intentionally sabotaging myself.)

*Due to Google's all-seeing eye** personalizing the search results, this was actually my second result, but viewing the results with no personalization had it as the top result.

**I mean no disrespect, o great and terrible overlord!

I've got what I think is a neat idea...

I'm going to sit on it until I get my first paycheck of the year, and work on stuff behind the scenes, like.

I'm not sure how that was supposed to be punctuated.  But things will be happening, oh yes.

Some hyatt revelations

Functions should be handled by the output domain.  This is because function execution should, in essence, propagate inward: one function has other functions as arguments, and each of those arguments is typed, so that domain is queried if the argument is the result of a function evaluation.

EDIT: actually, that might be the opposite of how I wanted to do it.  I'll need some hypothetical situations to buffer up my position (the issue is overloading).  Either way, good on me for remembering about the existence of vector domains, which make this whole setup much more sensible.

EDITx2: Functions are identified by signature, which means that they should be stored by parameter domain and name.  To determine functions higher up, first find the output domain, and feed that to the function in question.

To-Do for Hyatt, at the moment

Transition code outside of domain.py to use the new "terquid" class. EDIT: maybe done.  To the extent that it's not done, related tasks not detailed here have a higher priority.
Change the serialization and deserialization methods to support empty terquids.  EDIT: done.
Give terquids exceptional support, or vice-versa.  EDIT: exceptionals are now a subclass of terquid (but see below)
Think of a better name than "terquid".  EDIT: terquid is now "mem"

Yay! Progress!

Work continues apace on Hyatt, the RDBMS for elitists.  The constraint model has been cleaned up.  It now features fewer irrelevant functions and a robust logical model that will give most of the people who attempt to use it fits.  Next, I need to do some work to get vector domains into a sensible place, and to overhaul the function specification system for domains.

Current idea for that last one: function specs consist of a tuple of the function itself, and the domain of any arguments beyond the first one.  The first one must be of the defined domain.  To allow binary functions such as addition, there'll be a dummy object that gets replaced with the domain in question during class creation.  Ugh... something is fishy with all that...

Idea: domains are created solely as specifications of permissible data, using several validation functions, with default constraint objects.  (In other words, they have a default coercer, which can be overridden in specific instances.)  Functions register themselves with domains after those domains exist.

Hi All (So, just Jon)

I've decided that my blogs are too diffuse.  Anybody who's looked at my profile is probably going "No... really?  You think so?".  I've decided to repurpose my "progress" blog into a sort of personal hub.  My current plan is to abandon most of my blogs.  Either they've served their purpose (the whole vampire thing doesn't really need updates), or I think I can realistically aggregate them here.  (First Circle was a failed experiment, with its spiritual successor at the GDL forums—go there, by the way—and well, politics is personal.  The way things work out, I really love that "almost genocide" crack, but it only works on a political blog, and I don't do enough politics posts to justify making Le Blog Pour Le Blog my main blog.  So, writing goes over at Pepto-Bismol, everything else goes here, more or less.)

I'd better update the other blogs with this information.

This is my most 'me'-y blog, so this post goes here

I am extremely honest. This has gotten me in trouble in the past. I wish I meant that I exposed some wrongdoing and got unjustly punished for it, or something heroic like that. No. I have a psychological aversion to lying. It screwed me up on a writing assignment in elementary school, and it's screwing me up now.

Then, I had to pretend that I saw some meaning in a novella about the Iditarod, or something. I didn't see the meaning, so I talked to the teacher about it. She told me what meaning I was supposed to see. Knowing that, I could write up the one-page-or-so assignment on the novella. I could not, however, refrain from pointing out that I still didn't see the alleged meaning. I don't actually know if it wasn't there, in retrospect. Point is, blunt honesty. Not endearing.

Now, I have to write a cover letter for a professional seminar. This requires a level of interest that I reserve for [REDACTED]. A level of interest that I feel totally unqualified to fake. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Random Things

Weight is around 180 now. I laugh at people who talk about diets! Laugh! Over and over, until their spirits are crushed!

Got another project, slow going. Trying to work on Hyatt and game.

25 Days Later: Like 28 Days Later, but on a leaner budget

So, my weight is hovering around 185 now, which is great progress, overall.

I checked in with Ramla. Will have to check in once more, to see if I should tweak my schedule any.

Been rewriting Hyatt in a form of Hungarian Notation of MY OWN DEVISING *THUNDERCLAP*.

Game project has a better name now, I think. However, I need to get to coding the scaffold that it rests on.

After about a week...

Weight is eh, somewhat to be expected. Should go walk tomorrow first thing after breakfast.

Been coding up improvements to Hyatt that separate disk I/O from orthogonal operations. Need to work out the right way to break up data to avoid latency in large tables.

Thinking about porting Meritous to Python, more as a way to check my understanding than because of any special properties of either.

Today

Frantic bike-ride... No progress on serious code, but coded up a ludicrous multiplication module just for the heck of it. Plan to upload it to Launchpad once it comes back online. (Here)

Should get back to Hyatt... have giant list of functions to implement.

Not much has happened

Been tweaking Hyatt's code a bit. Walked for a while today, weight is a bit iffy.

The Man Who Was Thursday is an amazing book and you should read it, by the way.

Next big step in Hyatt is to make string handle 'exceptional values'. Setting up handlers properly will enable me to implement the 'pointer' internal type, which will make setting up a variety of things much more sane.

AARGH

Have to rewrite columns to support domains, which means reading about domains, which means I have to read up on category theory again.

Weight is okay, really should get in touch with Ramla, Wintendo setup successful...

Thought...

Thinking of porting Hyatt to Lua if speed is unsatisfactory, and running tests. Of course, this presupposes that I have a Hyatt to port, which I don't really yet.

July 7, 2009

Made some modifications to Hyatt. I... forgot some important code. Point is, it's in there now.

There's some stuff I've been meaning to take care of that I won't say much about. It doesn't occur to me that there's much for me to do today... really, besides this, finally getting the MBR set up, and, eh, classes...

EDIT: HOLY SHIT I JUST GOT THE DEAN'S BOOK I WANTED

AWESOME

Update for July 6, 2009

Decided to scrap one of the fancier bits of Hyatt-NG, for the moment. It could work later, but not for this. In essence, constructing many independent trees manages to be easier than my supa-fancy sing-and-dancy idea.

Unloaded dishwasher, need to find stuff in order to vacuum.

Stuff on July 6, 2009

So, Hyatt's primitive table type is set. I believe I've got two or three more types to set up before I'm through.

Got some chores, off to do them. More stuff later.

Progress For July 5, 2009

Need to fix up the storage for Hyatt-NG some more. The indexing was full of bugs. (Later: think I'm finished fixing it.) It occurs to me that I don't really know much about concurrency-related stuff, which is... kind of important to Hyatt.

Tonight, working on pad.

Will have to get to work on winstallation.

That's not what they mean by water weight...

"For the heck of it, I shall weigh myself now."

*showers*

"For the heck of it, I shall weigh myself again. ... That's five pounds more."

*blowdries*

"Much better."

Nearly done with the storage part of Hyatt-NG. I just want to be able to mass-index it, and .hgc should be set as a file format. Since that takes care of the 'geometry' of tables, the next step is coding in constraints, I think.

Weight loss efforts are... failing to make any kind of logical sense. Yesterday, I lost way more weight than I was trying for. We'll see how that all works out. (*Gets mobbed by angry female friends*)

Hell, if I lose another ten pounds, I might go for five more, just to fuck with stuff.

Anyway, I've yet to get the pad working, though dad believes that the modification he's had me do should eliminate noise. Then, I might want to switch back to capacitance instead of shorting myself across the detection circuit. (However, I'd like to do so in a way that avoids slippage.) Also, some of the velcro ripped up the yoga mat, and we've yet to superglue it back together.

Oh, also: tomorrow, plan to work on getting the tower to dual-boot, if the weather is good.

'Nother update

Actually coded up stuff for reading data from the files for Hyatt-NG. Thinking of giving them the extension ".hgc" because not much seems to use it. It shouldn't be too hard to set up modify, insert, append, and delete methods now. (Although the __init__ stuff needs some checks. Currently, it can't handle... a great many things.)

Weight is... okay, currently. I'm going to have some milk soon... so hungry...