A view from the hill

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Finally, I wanted to give the not-so-new-by-now SBCL 1.0 a whirl. Google led me to Peter van Eynde's Dapper packages, which you can install if you add the last of the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

root@elendil:~# grep cl-dapper /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://people.debian.org/~pvaneynd/cl-dapper-packages ./

Unfortunately, on Dapper this breaks CL-SQL or more exactly the version 3.53 it is shipping with. SBCL, or more exactly PCL barfs

When attempting to set the slot's value to (OR NULL T) (SETF of SLOT-VALUE),
the slot TYPE is missing from the object
#<CLSQL-SYS::VIEW-CLASS-DIRECT-SLOT-DEFINITION CLSQL-SYS::VIEW-DATABASE>.
[Condition of type SIMPLE-ERROR]

I haven't seen any complaint about this on the CL-SQL mailing list, so I guess I'm the only one using such an old CL-SQL version with the shiny new SBCL. So, currently I have a broken CMUCL on Debian Sarge and a broken CL-SQL on Ubuntu Dapper. Sigh.

Update:Manually switching to CLSQL solved the problem. Just in case you have relied on Debian or Ubuntu to supply you with the right packages, I found replacing them to be dead easy. I just 'apt-get remove'd cl-sql, but left cl-uffi and cl-md5 in place. Then, I untar'ed the source archive of CLSQL to /usr/local/src/clsql/. One link from there to /usr/share/common-lisp/source and a 'cd /usr/share/common-lisp/systems/ ; for i in ../source/*.asd; ln -s $i . ; done' later, SBCL 1.0 loaded CLSQL 3.8 like a charm.

So, der Sturm ist, was mich betrifft zumindest, erstmal weitgehend vorüber. Aber gestern abend war Bahn fahren endlich mal wieder spannend. Erst sah es ja so aus, als würde es sehr öde werden: als ich um 18.10Uhr am Bahnhof ankam, war der 601er, Abfahrt 18:36, noch nicht einmal als verspätet gemeldet. Das änderte sich dann kurze Zeit später: erst hieß es 10 Minuten Verspätung (zwanzig Minuten zum normalen Eintreffen um 18:24), dann 15 Minuten. Und als es dann 18:50 war, kam dann die Ansage, dass nun gar nix mehr in oder aus Richtung Frankfurt gehen würde. Nächste Fahrt nach Karlsruhe sollte dann mit der RBB um 19:10 sein. Hmm. Und dann hieß es, der 601er würde doch noch kommen, sie würden ihn "in Kürze erwarten". Effektiv war es dann so 19:40 endlich da. Wir haben dann noch auf den Zug nach Stuttgart gewartet. Als es dann endlich los ging, kam dann die nächste Überraschung: "Wir haben zur Zeit 85 Minuten Verspätung. Das wird sich auch noch erhöhen, da wir leider nur eine Erlaubnis haben, mit 50km/h durch die Gegend zu zuckeln." (OT Zugchef). Gott sei Dank ging es dann ab dem Tunnel wieder schneller. Wenig komisch für viele andere im Zug war natürlich, dass die ganzen Anschlüsse ausfielen. Dafür haben Sie dann für den 601er beschlossen, dass er dann in Müllheim und in Bad Krozingen(!) halten würde -- ein ICE im DB Regio-Einsatz. Ich hoffe, die Leute sind sicher nach Hause gekommen.

The readers's poll on plattentests.de is over. "Good evening, Germany. And here are the results of the German (readers) jury." "Sorry, could you repeat that?" "Yes, here are the results of the German (editorial staff) jury." "Thank you, Germany!"

Here's what I voted:

Looking for a present, I recently stumbled upon the book "How soon is never?" by Marc Spitz. In case you liked the band The Smiths some twenty years ago ... No. Let me try to put it otherwise. Around 1986 there was no one listening to the Smiths, you would have been hating or loving them. So, if you happened to love the Smiths, "How soon is never?" is interesting as it tells the story of some ex-Smiths-fan-become-rock-journalist's life. If you like to check out what your life might have been like in case it had not provided to get over the Smiths, that is. Or perhaps you know that already.

Anyway. Naturally reading the book led me to dig out my old CDs (I own only "Louder than bombs" on vinyl. It was the first Smiths album I bought - in 1987, I think - , although that doesn't really explain it, as I think that I already owned my CD player, which btw. is still the same today). It's true what Marc writes, also in 2007 that music is still worth listening to. Similarly for my favourite other band of that time, the The Woodentops -- their live album from 1987, "Live Hypnobeat Live" is still unbelievable wrt. its intensity -- and speed, of course. I did some web searching and discovered that they seem to have played some concerts again, last year, surprisingly. If they were to play in Germany again (I saw them in 1987 in Oberhausen), I would probably travel quite some distance. There is even a new website (Woodentops portal) on which one can download MP3s of old material, including raw live material.

Today, I finally gave the port of the Lotus Notes client for Linux a try. Don't. Waste. Your. Time. I should have believed the PDF they've put alongside the zip files: One way to read the system requirement would have been "if your system isn't mine, this ain't gonna work out." And so it did (or didn't). Installation aborts. Crashes. Unable to complete the configuration. And our Notes guru even sat beside me. Actually, I think this experience is the last proof (if I ever needed one) that Notes is such a bloated application that even such a large company is utterly doomed to fail to do it right. And did I mention that Notes on Linux is a Workplace Application, i.e. built atop of Eclipse? I guess that port is sponsored by Intel or at least the hardware department of IBM, huh?

Da hat man mal endlich ein bisschen Urlaub, die Skier sind gewachst und dann ist es am Jahresende so warm, dass man im T-Shirt durch die Stadt laufen könnte (okay, fast). Aber mit dem neuen Jahr scheint endlich auch der Winter ein Einsehen zu haben -- aktuell sagt der Schneebericht vom Liftverbund Feldberg, dass 30cm Schnee liegen würden. Nicht viel, aber mal sehen, was draus wird.