He has a nice Slashdot-style blog. To do something like this, I would need to define the following behavior:

- remember.el should remember to a single page (or depending on the year) - remember.el should xref an index entry, not a separate heading - remember.el should also insert category icons

 <sachac> Hmm. That gives me another nifty ERC idea - if we annotate BBDB records with timezones, we should be able to
          greet people good morning/day/evening appropriately. Plus points for greetings in native languages! ;)
 <sachac> Now that's just insane, really. <laugh>
 <arete> *augh*
 <arete> laugh too
 <arete> sacha: I'm sure you'll have it done by tomorrow ;)
 <myrkraverk> sachac: that could be nice, yes
 <myrkraverk> ,there is also an evil place without a name -- it does not have emacs
 <fsbot> Added entry to the term "there"
 <plaisthos> ,now
 <fsbot> try:  Acknowledgments NowPlaying PostItNow WikiAcknowledgments WikiNow
 <sachac> arete: Well, I've been thinking of rule-based matching on privmsgs received, with responses suggested in another
          buffer for easy selection with keysequence or mouse... =)
 <Lukhas> sachac: good idea
 <arete> hehe yeah, saw you mention it the other day
 <arete> just one step away from eliza =P
 <sachac> arete: I'm just thinking of how to do it nicely so that the matches don't take a terribly long time. I suppose
          match-string is my friend. I can build the regexp at the start, match it constantly, then match again based on
          the match string...
 <delYsid> ,df rx
 <fsbot> rx is a Lisp macro in `rx'.
 <fsbot> (rx REGEXP)
 <fsbot> Translate a regular expression REGEXP in sexp form to a regexp string.
 <fsbot> See also `rx-to-string' for how to do such a translation at run-time.
 <fsbot> The following are valid subforms of regular expressions in sexp
 <fsbot> notation.
 <fsbot> STRING ..[Type ,more]
 <sachac> arete: ... but of course that means I'll be working as a stateless machine for now. Oh well. Actually, no, the
          functions can keep state on their own; I just won't be able to add new keywords without recompiling the regular
          expression, which shouldn't be too hard.
 <myrkraverk> sachac: I guess the best way for the greeting is some standard text that gets translated at other ercs
 <arete> don't forget to weight the chosen responses so you don't have to look through them all each time the same choices
         come up =)
 <delYsid> sachac: use rx-to-string and a variable...
 <sachac> myrkraverk: Actually, that will hook into my "hi" thing...
 <myrkraverk> oh, k, then
 <sachac> myrkraverk: ERC should not only check which of your pals are online, but also which you haven't greeted yet, and
          people who aren't pals but who have greated you specifically. =)
 <sachac> I haven't written said "hi" thing yet, though.
 <sachac> Err.
 <sachac> Greeted.
 <sachac> Grrr.
 <sachac> myrkraverk: Ideally, ERC should compile a list of people to say Hi to, and hi them all on one line, appending a
          generic ", world" at the end or something like that. =)
 <sachac> myrkraverk: An extension to BBDB could have custom greetings for hi. For example, I greet some people in other
          languages.
 <myrkraverk> sachac: you have too many ppl to say hi to ;)
 <sachac> myrkraverk: It's a proof of concept! ;)
 <sachac> myrkraverk: If you tie that in with the funky timezone thing, that would be, well, pretty funky.
 <myrkraverk> btw, can erc let me know when someone is online?
 <arete> sacha: don't' forget the automated reply to a greeting =)
 <sachac> myrkraverk: However, the timezone thing could be done without the funky hi thing...
 <myrkraverk> hmm
 <sachac> arete: My proposed system wouldn't be entirely automated. It would suggest responses, but it would allow the
          user to actually change them or select a different response from the buffer.
 <zeDek> howdy sachac
 <sachac> arete: I'm thinking of a circular queue of 5 to 10 (of course, configurable) possible replies.
 <sachac> zeDek: howdy zeDek
 <sachac> Well, that's an easy way around it - just echo the greeting... ;)
 * sachac is the resident bot-in-training. ;)
 <zeDek> lol
 <myrkraverk> sachac: btw, I have a photo now on orkut (like you care :P )
 <arete> *chuckle*
 <Lukhas> zeDek: did you find time to send me the new color-theme ? :)
 <zeDek> Lukhas, ok wait
 <Lukhas> thanks
 <sachac> arete: I'm interested in this because I stay on a few help channels. My hippie-expansion from BBDB is pretty
          useful for expanding factoids, but (a) I don't want to have to remember what to expand, and (b) I want to be
          able to deal with questions I might not have paid attention to. ;)
 * zeDek was migrating old gnusfr.org and emacsfr.org
 <Lukhas> lukhas -> free point fr
 <sachac> myrkraverk: I'll check that out when I get around to starting up a graphical browser...
 <Lukhas> did you find hosting room ?
 <arete> sacha: now there is a more productive use of it =)
 <arete> I can never remember what keyword fsbot wants
 <sachac> delYsid: Hmmm, that should be interesting.
 <sachac> arete: The human still filters the automatic responses, of course. =)
 <delYsid> I use it in chess-ics for a very complicated re (760 chars)
 <sachac> arete: And automatic responses can be of the form <name>: <canned response> already...
 <sachac> arete: Naturally, if we allow functions and strings as canned responses, then we can even have a state machine.
 <arete> yumm, pseudo-AI assisted irc help
 <zeDek> Lukhas,
 <sachac> arete: Yeah, something like that. <laugh>
 <zeDek> Lukhas, done
 <sachac> arete: Worth hacking on in my spare time, I think.

Tip from delysid.

../../sitelogs/sacha.sachachua.com-access_log

Programming fundamentals

Everytime a programming exercise or project comes up I hear a lot of my classmates crying out in horror or dismay. I hear them complain about how hard is or even that it's impossible to create. And yet I see a few of us who don't care how complicated a project is, we just know that everyhting is doable. I believe the reason for this is that others still don't know what we've come to realize, <b>you don't solve a problem as a whole, you break it into small pieces, and those small pieces into smaller pieces, until all you have are just a lot of small, easy to solve problems.</b> When you've come to that point all you need then is time. Fact is, There's no programming project that can't be reduced into a series of simple arithmetic, true or false questions, and the separating and combining of strings. The trick of course is to be able to see the problems as a combination of smaller pieces, that's the skill that separates a coding wizard from a wannabe.

Take my <nop>PusoyDos as an example. I didn't program it all in one get go, I did it in pieces. First and foremost problem I had to solve was how to deal th ecards to the players. Eventually I was able to break it down into just a randomizing function, a few arithmetics, true or false question and string combination to create the values of the cards, and a boolean statement to pass it into the designated players. And I just went on from there.

Programming is actually simple, if you just look at it the right way. </blockquote>

Awwwww. =D

Of course, Jino's outlook on programming is completely not my fault, but I hope other people reading this feel encouraged.

Jino's World 2.0