55.1

Yesterday was day +36.

Still amazingly cold in Calgary. I took the bus in as it was just too cold for the car and my sweetie was still feeling the effects of the migraine.

Work was OK. I'm really starting to consider what do I need to do as part of my exit to ensure it is smooth.

The funnest part of the day was doing more work on LQPL. I've been quite strict with myself in doing the behaviour driven development with HUnit. The fascinating thing is I spent about 40 minutes writing tests and then wrote the code to pass most of them in about 5. The even more fascinating thing is how comfortable I feel with the result of the code. The tests are really working like an example based specification, so I can easily explain exactly what is acceptable input to the parser.

I'm now one-tenth of the way through being 55.

Templar's WATCH OUT!

Yesterday was day +32.

So, more than a month of being 55. I thought of doing a retrospective of how the first month was, but I don't really feel like it. Maybe later.

I had quite a good day. I started of with doing a review of an upcoming course I am helping with at the end of the month. It felt like a real accomplishment, as opposed to all those soft airy-fairy management accomplishments I normally have to satisfy myself with. :)

In the afternoon, I made it up to the U. Started off hearing Jonathan Gallagher's talk on Left-Additive Turing Categories, which was a run-up to his thesis defence next thursday. GOOD LUCK JONATHAN!

After, I had a chat with my prof, talked some more about getting the LQPL program going and set up for people and he gave me a paper, "From Reversible to Irreversible Computations" to start looking at. Then, I did some actual Test Driven Development in Haskell for LQPL and the work day was done.

My sweetie and I had a lovely supper and then off home.

JARD

Day +31.

Just Another Regular Day.

Meetings, Bloody Meetings all day long at work.

Yesterday, though, I forgot to mention I had the first meeting of the year with my thesis supervisor. Nice to get back to it. He concurred with my three month plans in general, although we will talk about a few mods (of course! That is why he is my thesis supervisor! ) One thing he is considering getting me involved in is a message passing language that is founded on linear logic. Could be quite cool. We also talked about some possible extensions and improvement to LQPL, although those are likely to be longer term. The biggest mod, which actually requires an update to the plan, is that he thinks it would be best to handle the coproduct case at the same time as the product case in inverse categories. One without the other is like peanut butter without jam. It just doesn't leave you satisfied.

That's actually quite cool as I really prefer to have something complete (hmmm - perfectionism perhaps?) before saying it is ready to go.

Well — off to write more HUnit tests!

HUnit rocks, Cabal rolls

Day +30.

Woke up with a headache today, which was exacerbated by fasting for blood tests this morning. Ah well.

I did get to do some programming and got to add my first unit tests to the LQPL server. My coding to this point has been a spike just to make sure I had what I needed in socket libraries. So, I've done the set up and checked in my first test. Now, on to the standard do the test, refactor to green cycle.

I'm using HUnit which is quite straightforward and lovely to use. As I use Cabal for my build system, my first thought was to use the declarative test system with the cabal configuration file. Sadly, I just could not get that to work (although I shall try again later). Happily, using the cabal defaultMainWithHooks method worked perfectly, other than the deprecated warning every time it ran :).

54 days to go

Day +25.

As the title says, I have 54 days of work left before School goes full-time. 

I am just friggin' excited about this. I am really looking forward to being able to focus my energies primarily on the research, with no work issues to distract me.

My office at home is now fantastically well set up, as I just got a new MacBook Pro (17") and Thunderbolt display. All on it's own, the thunderbolt display is great — the added bonus is that the thunderbolt connection makes it work as a FireWire and USB hub. So, as I take the laptop between home and University, I only have to unplug the power and the thunderbolt connection. Doesn't seem like a big deal, I am sure, but to someone who has been plugging and unplugging almost daily for the last two years, it feels big to me :).

At the U, I have a MacMini, so if I am just going in for an hour or so, I can just leave everything. I also have a spare display that I may bring for the laptop, or just use it's beauty of a 1920x1200 display.

I got to do a bit of Rails programming today. Always nice to move tests from "Error" to "Fail" ;). I think, however, I will have to curtail that soon. I've been working on a proof of concept for a friend and it has been quite a bit of fun. The issue, however, is that it takes away from the little bit of time I have for programming and research related to the PhD.

On that note — status check of the goals:

• Started the LQPL server - loads programs and single steps through code
• Did some "flow" documentation of the main modules created due to separating the server and client code.
• I've been exercising lightly and regularly the last week.

So, progress is happening (yay!)

Happy New Year's Eve!

Day +19.

A lovely day!

First, my sweetie and I went off shopping this morning, where she found a dress for tonight's party. So nice.

I said hello / Happy Birthday to a high-school friend and remembered good times.

I got LQPL stepping through the assembled code in the server version. yayyy!

I did a bunch of bookkeeping.

I feel GOOD!

I'm off to a supper tonight and time with Family.

I wish all of you a wonderful 2012.

The Year After Next Year

Day +18.

First, a small update successfully made to LQPL. It now logs the state of the Quantum Machine after loading a program. Definitely going to get further in January than I originally thought.

At work today, I went through and booked time each week for weekly planning and a separate time for a weekly self-review. Very exciting stuff since I only had three months to worry about!

My sweetie and I had a great talk tonight about life post-Ph.D.. We got ourselves down to a few choices:

• Move to Vancouver for a year — work on art and apps;
• Move to Montréal for a year, upstairs from her parents — work on art and apps;
• Move to Montréal for a year, downstairs — travel and enjoy each other;
• Go back to work for some time and then decide.

I Wrote a Server

Day +15.

Today, I managed to set up the LQPL server to accept TCP connections and to assemble and load compiled LQPL programs. Part of the productivity was due to the greatness of Haskell, part due to being able to use some code from Real World Haskell.

I'm beginning to think my January goals for LQPL are a bit too easy. If so, I'll just do more on inverse products.

Work was non-remarkable. Processed about 90 emails. Had a nice lunch with a friend.

Noticed that carrying items in my pockets just spikes my hip pain immensely. Back to wearing the fanny pack again. We did a 20 minute walk tonight, which was really nice. I'm using an Arnica rub now, and ice, to see how well that can manage the pain. So far, so good, no Tylenol needed.

Exercise is Good!

Day +14.

Three things of note today.

First, my sweetheart gave me the best present ever by canceling a planned Boxing day shopping trip — even resetting the alarm in the middle of the night! This was great as it allowed my to do the first true check-in (via git) of a change in LQPL in a long time. I got rid of a deprecation, switched from mdo to do rec, and added the module that will eventually become the server.

Second, we went out for an early supper. For the last few days, I've been really cutting down on my wheat and dairy, to the point that I felt like a fog was starting to lift yesterday. At supper, though, I ordered a burger (with bun). I felt crappy after eating that. More evidence for me.

Finally, for the second day, I joined my sweetie as she did her exercises. It is a nice feeling. Afterwards, I iced my hip for about 20 minutes and it is probably the best it has been in quite a few days.