Fixing Octave's Plot on the Windows 3.2.4 Release

Out of the box a lot of us Windows users who added all of the Octave-Forge packages are disappointed to find that the plot function produces an invisible window.
Here is the problem and solution:

Realistic solution at this moment, do not install the oct2mat package when you install octave with octave-forge packages if you do not use this package. One one of different solutions is to execute
pkg rebuild -noauto oct2mat
at the octave prompt and then restart octave. The operation results in the oct2mat package not to be auto-loaded in startup. When you want to use oct2mat, execute “pkg load oct2mat” command.

(via octave-forge, via octave-bugs)

EiffelStudio: A Contract for Success

A while back Eiffel Software (formerly ISE) held a contest to come up with a slogan for one of their products, EiffelStudio.
I submitted:

EiffelStudio: A Contract for Success

— Grant Rettke
And won!
They gave me a one-year license for EiffelStudio in return for signing away the slogan.
It was worth it… it is a great language!

Gobo Eiffel Compiler

The Gobo Eiffel Compiler, or gec for short, is an open source command-line Eiffel compiler. The Eiffel community is already equipped with several Eiffel compilers, all supporting their own dialect despite the efforts of standardization of the Eiffel language and kernel library. So why yet another Eiffel compiler? The goal of gec is not to augment the number of incompatible Eiffel compilers but to provide both the open source community and the industry with a compiler fully compatible with ISE Eiffel and compliant with the ECMA Eiffel standard. OK, so what is the benefit of having a clone of ISE Eiffel? First gec is not a clone of ISE Eiffel. It uses different compilation techniques which make the compiler and the compiled applications perform better in some contexts or in some parts of the development cycle. Then, gec also provides an alternative to ISE Eiffel for those who invest a lot in the Eiffel technology and don’t want to be tied to a single vendor.