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Delayed Publication Publication & Postmortem & Potential Reanimation: AutoCLaracterization Library

Last summer – that is, 2023 – I wrote version 0.1 of AutoCLaracterization! “Automatic characterization tests in Common Lisp (targeting 5am). Or almost automatic, at any rate.” …

Publication & Postmortem: SPICLUM Library

A drawing showing the evolution of different types of spears, one of which is the spiculum.

I’ve finished version 0.0 of SPICLUM! “System Prevalence In Common Lisp Using MOP, pronounced however spiculum’s pronounced. In case you’d like to disregard the collective wisdom of roughly sixty years of database usage, and instead keep an object store in memory, serialize to and from text files, and rely on as much automagic as possible.” …

Learning to Program with the Wizard Book: First Pass

In this report I first detail the journey of my first pass through SICP in three parts, from piqued interest to conclusion (with a brief analysis of the data I gathered underway). Following that, I reflect on my learning and the contents and approach of SICP before concluding that SICP is fantastic.

Kinesthetic Sensations: the Making of a Toy Drawing Program

Renaissance painting of Apollo playing the viola.

I recently made four small arcade games using pygame & python, where the graphics were drawn by hand-code rather than external drawing programs. While the next planned game calls for more advanced graphics, I want to continue using my monochrome pygame-drawn approach. After I realized that a drawing program and the mapmaker program from my breakout game are roughly equal, I then experienced a bodily rush holding the structure of the future drawing program as a kinesthetic sensation, and as a result made a toy-sized drawing program (PaintyPaint) in a couple of hours.

Failure through Fixation

https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/11033123455/

I recently experienced Einstellung and, despite realizing what was happening, I had no good strategy prepared for it and ended up handling the event in a suboptimal manner. The rest of this report details the particular Einstellung experience, but also ties in a few other aspects of learning and problem-solving.