Author: grant

Battery drain hose location

While installing the power hookup for the Gerbings coat I managed to dislodge the battery drain hose by lifting up the battery (because I wanted to look at it).
Brooke explained that:

The battery vent/drain hose attaches on the right side (as you sit on the bike) and should go to the same place the gas tank filler neck drain hose and the fuel sender drain hose go to. There’s a bracket down near the right foot peg back in somewhere between/near the swing arm and frame. It should be easy to see with the right side panel off the bike.

He was right. Took off the one-screwed-on side panel and the bracket is right there along with the two other tubes. The drain now faces where it should… the ground.
(via C.O.G.)

Custom display sizes with Remote Desktop Connection

Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection is a nice piece of software. Wondering how to configure a desktop size so that it would fit perfectly into rotated monitor, I found the directions hereto be very simple: 

To set a custom display resolution in an .rdp file

Open the .rdp file in a text editor. Add or change the following settings:

desktopwidth:i:<value>

desktopheight:i:<value>

where <value> is the resolution, such as 1680 or 1050.

The articles goes into detail about other ways to set the values.

Enhanced Ocaml Documentation Version 3.12

The Enhanced Ocaml Documentation is provided by Hendrik Tews; basically it visually highlights any difference between the previous and current version of the documentation. Here is how he does it:

I diff the txt versions of the reference manual and change the html version by hand. For the grammar rule index I use a tool and manual editing.

–Hendrik Tews
Wow. What a labor of love. Be sure to give him a hand!
(via Caml-list)

Resources for Learning CamlP4

For an accessible introduction to modern (>= 3.10) Camlp4, you may be interested in Jake Donham’s blog post series “Reading Camlp4” : http://ambassadortothecomputers.blogspot.com/search/label/camlp4
You will also find valuable (though incomplete) information on the camlp4 wiki : http://brion.inria.fr/gallium/index.php/Camlp4
The older version of camlp4 (< 3.10, now called camlp5) also provides a documentation http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/tutorial-camlp4/index.html , and you can also use to Martin Jambon’s tutorial
http://martin.jambon.free.fr/extend-ocaml-syntax.html (for the older camlp4).

— bluestorm

You can also see the articles in sequence at
http://ambassadortothecomputers.blogspot.com/p/reading-camlp4.html

which I recommend since later articles depend on earlier material.

— Jake Donham

Shameless self-plug, but I wrote a blog post this summer about my experience figuring out how to do it. I provide a walk-through and explanation of a minimal syntax extension which adds lazy list pattern matching support based on Batteries. The URL:
http://www.elehack.net/michael/blog/2010/06/ocaml-syntax-extension
I do assume a basic knowledge of parsing context-free grammars, but a generic tutorial on parsing with a tool such as Yacc can fill in that gap. The Wikipedia article[1] may also be helpful.
Once you’ve lept the hurdle of figuring out what pieces you need to write and build a syntax extension, the remaining tricky part is to figure out what pieces of the grammar you need to extend to accomplish your objective. For that, I consult the definition of the OCaml parser in Camlp4OCamlParser.ml in the OCaml source tree.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-free_grammar

— Michael Ekstrand

If you consider yourself as a n00b, don’t start by camlp4. This is probably the most difficult part of OCaml — and to program camlp4 you need to use OCaml standard syntax (or revised syntax, it depends if you
use antiquotations).
If you still want to follow the hard path, as suggested elsewhere, Jake Donham’s blog posts are very good:
http://ambassadortothecomputers.blogspot.com/p/reading-camlp4.html
Or if you are around, there is a tutorial session at CUFP:
http://cufp.org/conference/sessions/2010/camlp4-and-template-haskell.
(but you need to subscribe).

— Sylvain Le Gall
(via Caml-list)

Racket on Racket?

There is a precedent for hosting other languages on top of Racket by compiling their syntax down to Racket. What got me thinking other languages on Racket was Shriram’s P4P article, and also to some degree a discussion surrounding Gambit’s SIX. It got me wondering…
Would PLT have anything to gain from providing a non-parenthesized language created specifically for Racket? What I mean is take Racket, remove the stuff too hard to do without parens, and offer that up as an “official” Racket language. This is not the same as implementing Java on Racket.
How difficult would it be to “come up with” such a language? I’m totally ignorant regarding language design. Would it be interesting… or boring and a waste of time?

Its really more of a sportbike…

Lately I’ve begun to notice that the seating position on the Connie really leans more towards an aggressive crouch than laid-back sitting-up-high relaxed. Coincidentally Stephen posted this on an unrelated topic:

Balance and adjustment are important on the Connie, she is after all more of a sport bike than a touring machine.

Point taken!
(via Stephen M on concourstech)