Shell Games

[hsmyers]

How about a piece on copymem and its use for in-line assembler?

--hsm

[m i c h a e l]

Today's episode is a short one: the for-all function.

How about a piece on copymem and its use for in-line assembler?

Thanks, hsm! Good idea. Look for it next week :-)

m i c h a e l

[hsmyers]

Great! Then soon I can bring the Awesome Beauty of Fractals(tm) to newLISP!

--hsm

[m i c h a e l]

Friday's episode: loops. Friday's episode: loops. Friday's episode: loops.

Shell Games - Loops

m i c h a e l

[cormullion]

Good job!

This one comes complete with error message at the end, this time:

ERR: value expected in function sequence : >!4>

You're just doing that to make me feel like I'm typing it myself... :)

PS: How are you making these cool videos? A meta-video is requested.

[m i c h a e l]

Good job!

Thank you :-)

This one comes complete with error message at the end, this time:

<blush> Whoops! That one got by me. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, cormullion.

ERR: value expected in function sequence : >!4>

That's a clue ;-)

PS: How are you making these cool videos? A meta-video is requested.

All will be revealed . . .

m i c h a e l

[m i c h a e l]

cormullion,

Sorry to pull a 1984 on you, but:

Shell Games - Loops has always ended correctly.
Shell Games - Loops has never ended in error.
Errors do not occur in Shell Games.
—The Ministry of Truth ;-)

m i c h a e l

[m i c h a e l]

Monday's episode is about reading and writing files:

Shell Games - Reading and Writing Files

m i c h a e l

[m i c h a e l]

Tuesday's episode is filtered and cleaned for your protection:

Shell Games - Clean and Filter

m i c h a e l

[m i c h a e l]

Wednesday's episode can expand your lists:

Shell Games - Expand

m i c h a e l

[m i c h a e l]

(reverse (rotate "T:etator dna esrever su sgnirb yadseu" -1))

Shell Games - Reverse and Rotate

m i c h a e l

[m i c h a e l]

Finally Friday. Starts with finally and ends with Friday:

Shell Games - Starts With and Ends With

hsm: Unfortunately, our PPC Mac prevents me from being able to make the cpymem Shell Games episode :-( Sorry to have falsely raised your hopes. If we ever get an Intel Mac, it'll be the first Shell Game I make ;-)

m i c h a e l

[m i c h a e l]

The Shell Gamer is on vacation this week, but do post any requests for examples you'd like to see as a future Shell Game. You could also catch up on any episodes you may have missed.

m i c h a e l

[rickyboy]

These vids are really nice, Michael! I am very impressed with their coverage, production, and compression (small size). Like Pete, I'd like to know how you did it.

I tried to do something similar, but it is not as nice. I'll post it soon.

[m i c h a e l]

These vids are really nice, Michael!

Thank you, Ricky! I'm glad you like them.

I am very impressed with their coverage, production, and compression (small size).

I'm mostly just copying the examples from the manual and Code Patterns. I know Lutz would like me to make my own examples up, but then Shell Games would likely become a weekly affair as a result. I may need to do that anyway if I run out of examples to copy ;-)

Like Pete, I'd like to know how you did it.

I hope to one day make a video of the entire process, but at this point even the process is in a state of flux. Until then, just know that, like show business, it's a lot of work to make something look and feel real ;-)

I tried to do something similar, but it is not as nice. I'll post it soon.

Looking forward to it.

m i c h a e l

[rickyboy]

Until then, just know that, like show business, it's a lot of work to make something look and feel real ;-)

I totally get what your saying (finally). If I told you how much time I spent trying to get the compression down to your rate (size/time ratio), you could imagine that I finally guessed that you were scripting it off-line. Very clever of you.

I, for my part, did not do that. I used a screen capture of a live session at the newlisp prompt. At first I figured you did the same, then when I tried to stomp my already compressed video and started to lose graphical clarity, I thought "How the hell did Michael do this?" Then, some Google searching yielded some pages on scriptreplay (not that you used this, but it helped me get my mind in the right place) and Pete's comment in the back of my head (the one about Keynote); well, 2 plus 2 and half of my beer downed finally led me to conclude that the presentation was probably an off-line script.

Hats off to you buddy! Not only is all that quite a bit of work, but a great fake-out.

Cheers, --Ricky

[m i c h a e l]

Monday brings with it a new episode of Shell Games: Structuring Applications

Enjoy.

I, for my part, did not do that.

It was a superb performance, Ricky. Impressive typing speed!

I used a screen capture of a live session at the newlisp prompt. At first I figured you did the same, then when I tried to stomp my already compressed video and started to lose graphical clarity, I thought "How the hell did Michael do this?" Then, some Google searching yielded some pages on scriptreplay (not that you used this, but it helped me get my mind in the right place) and Pete's comment in the back of my head (the one about Keynote); well, 2 plus 2 and half of my beer downed finally led me to conclude that the presentation was probably an off-line script.

Off-line, yes. But how? Keynote or similar program? No. Uses newLISP? Yes ;-)

Hats off to you buddy! Not only is all that quite a bit of work, but a great fake-out.

Thank you :-) For me, this is what computers are best used for—making something seem like it could be a real person at the other end (Turing's “Imitation Game”). But as you found, art (the fake) is very difficult to make “come alive,” while the natural world (the real) simply just happens (with all its attendant mistakes).

m i c h a e l

[m i c h a e l]

Tuesday means it's local symbols day!

Shell Games - Local Symbols

m i c h a e l

[m i c h a e l]

Let's speed things up today with memoization:

Shell Games - Memoization

m i c h a e l

[m i c h a e l]

Friday goes out with a whimper with this one-screener:

Shell Games - Upper, Lower, and Title-Casing Strings

The title is longer than the video ;-)

m i c h a e l

[cormullion]

Shell Games - Upper, Lower, and Title-Casing Strings

Due to some strange synchronicity, the interweb is rumbling with title-case scripts at the moment. (started here, I expect, then continued here ). I was going to contribute a title-case script that demonstrated how much better newLISP was than Perl...

But I decided not to. I don't like using title-case much, and wouldn't use it automatically in any case. (I believe it's now more popular in the US than in England...) But someone could step up to the challenge?

[m i c h a e l]

I'm back from the future (see Thursday's Friday post) and have a new episode of Shell Games: the sort function.

m i c h a e l

[m i c h a e l]

Dear Club,

Other projects and responsibilities have forced me to suspend making "Shell Games" for a while. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the meta-video :-)

m i c h a e l

P.S. Funny post by cormullion, and apparently, Rick is a legal genius.

[newdep]

Thank michael for the games... make sure they return ;-)

Great.. great story/programming mixture Curmullion!..hahaha

[rickyboy]

Yes, that is a great story from cormullion. (I wonder if it could be done in the film noir style. :-) If P isn't a professional writer, then he would definitely be missing a calling in life.