Jim Roepcke's weblog have browser, will travel (est. 1999)

links for 2008-04-21

• Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation by Shriram Krishnamurthi
  At present count, over 25 universities use part or all of the book, and some ambitious high-schools use select chapters. Users range from major research universities to liberal arts colleges, from public to private universities, and cover four continents.
  (tags: books compiler computer-science programming scheme book free languages)
• Implementing Type Inference: Not so Hard!
  Discusses and links to the book "Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation by Shriram Krishnamurthi".
  (tags: programming types inference type-inference cat-language)
• Fan Programing Language - JVM Languages (thread on Google Groups)
  This is the thread on the JVM Languages group where the Fan language was announced.
  (tags: programming fan jvm clr)

Feeling different about life and work lately

I think finishing the school year has been very theraputic for me. I feel a lot better than I have in a while, a lot more relaxed, calm, at ease. Things are slowing down and I like it.

That's not to say everything is rosy in my life - far from it, I'm still dealing with customers that refuse to pay significant invoices, those close to me know how that has affected my family. As I mentioned on Twitter last week, I'm going to have to take legal action to get things resolved, and that sucks.

Other than that distraction, I'm feeling more clarity than I have in a while. Specifically, I'm leaning towards making some positive changes to my lifestyle.

Firstly, I need to set a more strict schedule for work. I need better separation between my work time and the rest of my life. My kids need more of my time. They haven't had my time for a long, long time, mostly because my work time hasn't been managed well enough. Some of those problems are ultimately caused by professional issues like the one above, but not all.

Secondly, I need to get over some of my opinions about web development that are impeding my ability to grow and innovate. It's not realistic to avoid web development. The reality is, every software system needs web linkage to succeed, and I need to accept the bad with the good. That doesn't mean I have to become an expert at crafting cross-browser HTML/JS/CSS, but it does mean I need to be more open-minded. The future I hope to create out of my graduate research needs to embrace reality to succeed.

Lots of big thinking going on, it's helping.

Email problems with site5.com

If you've recently sent me email and not received a response, please resend it to (mylastname) at mac.com where (mylastname) is roepcke.

I suspect my ISP is having mail problems. Looking into it.

Update: Here's the chat log from my live-chat with site5.com support. I'm really happy they offer live assistance. The first time I used it I had a much quicker response and better service. The log has been anonymized to protect the support representative. I'm not sure what timezone this log is in...

(3:02:35) Jim Roepcke: E-mail sent to my domain is not getting to me. Why?


(3:02:38) SYSTEM: Please wait for a site operator to respond.

(3:08:38) SYSTEM: Please wait for a site operator to respond.

(3:14:40) SYSTEM: Please wait for a site operator to respond.

(3:20:40) SYSTEM: Please wait for a site operator to respond.

(3:20:40) SYSTEM: Please wait for a site operator to respond.

(3:21:49) support.rep: Hello Jim.

(3:24:19) support.rep: How can I assist you ?

(3:29:26) Jim Roepcke: Hello. My domain roepcke.com is not responding on backstage, and I can't get into its webmail, and no email sent to my domain is getting to me

(3:30:57) support.rep: I apologize for the inconvenience caused, the server is facing few load issues and we are working on this at the moment.

(3:31:24) Jim Roepcke: I think this has been going on for a couple of days

(3:35:11) Jim Roepcke: can you provide any more detail as to what the load issue is caused by, and when this will be fixed?

(3:35:41) support.rep: We are working on this currently and will update you shortly.

(3:35:58) Jim Roepcke: ok

(3:38:11) support.rep: We are restarting all the services as the server is not resonding.

(3:38:35) Jim Roepcke: ok

(4:01:41) Jim Roepcke: is there any new information about the state of the server/services?

(4:42:55) Jim Roepcke: is everything fixed yet?

(6:16:01) SYSTEM: Chat session has been inactive for 20 seconds and has expired.

(6:16:01) SYSTEM: Visitor has left chat.

It seems that mail is back up and running, but I'm guessing it'll take a day or two for bounced emails to make it to me. At least, I hope they bounced and didn't get lost by site5's mail server. If the support rep had been more informative maybe I would know.