HYDROGEN: Extensibility (by alaric)

As promised, here is the second part of my series on HYDROGEN, where I will discuss extensibility.

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HYDROGEN: Code generation (by alaric)

As promised, here is the first part of my series on HYDROGEN, where I will discuss code generation.

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The Journey Home (by sarah)

"I've hard road to travel and a ruff, ruff way to go..."

Ok so Sunday did not see the smoothest of ways home for me - I started in Gants Hill looking out over London from Clare's gorgous flat. I had been unable to sleep - we'd obviously gone to bed late anyway having chatted half the night away and looking at her photos of Tia Land but more than that my mind raced with ideas of paintings to paint from the songs we'd sung during the day.

Anyway after a couple of cuppas she walked me to the station - I was sad that I still wasn't going to see the kittens that are in another friends house in the area but got to the station in plenty of time and felt good about going home to get stuff done.

The journey across London was fine with a cute little girl keeping everybody entertained on the Hammersmith and City Line and my train was on time at Paddington. But I had 2 changes instead of the none/one.

So making sure I had the correct seat reservation in my hand I moved with the crowd to the train and boarded - and there was bedlam - people arguing and being confused about seat reservations. A couple where confronting a man in orange and yellow robs with flowers around his neck and paint on the bridge of his nose. He moved once he understood it was their seat behind but they where still fussing and blocking things up so I explained it was on their ticket and on the seat and stuff and then it turned out they where upset the man had moved to another reserved seat.

But they had not told him this! And I wasn't entirely happy with how they had said it was their seats I know there was lots of people and it was busy and stuff but a little patients helps - they werent a hundred percent sure of how the reservation system worked either.

Anyway I could just see what was going to happen to this guy he would keep getting slightly annoyed people moving him on so I explained to him about the white tickets and he thanked me - he hadn't known and he went off to find an intagged seat.

Then a bunch of youngish Americans got on (the dude in the robes was from America too San Francisco) - I have to confess it was a very diverse group and I would not have thought they were all together but they where but obviously something had gone wrong one of their seats hadn't got its ticket sticking out of the top so an Austrialian had sat in it thinking it was free!

They were trying to sort this out when a shirty lady told them to move in no uncertain terms and I thought to myself - Aren't we British supposed to be polite? Aren't we supposed to be the nation of queuers? And why is it all the foriegn people who are being tourists and spending money here bulstering our economy are being a lot nicer over confusion of a system they can't really be expected to understand becuase - well its the British rail network and it doesn't work properlly.

Anyway - to my suprise I butted in again only a little bit and stuff got sorted - trueth is it was too many people for the space :/ As trains towards this part of the country were bneing few and far between.

Anyway I settled back for the 40 odd minutes only to find my head phones had broken so had no music.

At Reading it turned out there was a bus to Swindon and not a train and that my ticket wouldn't let me out of the barrier and the only staff memeber was the guy letting people in through the barriers and he wouldn't let me out. With 2 minutes to go and no idea where the 'front' of the station and the waiting bus was I was being to panic but a staff memeber appeared, let me through and looked at me like an idiot when I asked the way to the bus.

But I got there before they started letting people onboard. This was becuase it was slightly delayed.

I had not taken my pain killers due to the stomache pains I was getting but these turned out to be the standard womens thing which was one of the reasons getting to the bus had been so tight in the first place.

Bus sits hurt my back far worse than the train - this is why I don't take the coach - a lady was also sitting next to me so I couldn't stretch out.

When we got to Swindon and she stood up - it turned out she had sat in chewing gum - ooowe yuck! She hadn't noticed so I tapped her and gave her a tissue not that it helped much and then came the next bit of my strangly eventful journey.

I got on the train at Swindon though there seemed to be a little bit of confussion as to which plateform etc... and the train announcements where not coming out onto the plateform and so where muffled nonsense.

But everyone else on board was execting it to go to Cheltenham, Stroud etc... and I so I phoned Al and he set off to meet me in Stroud. And the departure time came and went and we sat there and sat there and sat there and there where no announcements and then about 40 minutes later when people had started shouting on the plateform at the staff they informed us there was no driver and it was going to a 45 minute wait until one arrived.

Then it turned out a little train was due to go to through to all the same stations in 15 minutes instead so with a bit of shoe horning and the upsetting of a large family who had sat in the bit where wheel chairs and that go where told to move so bikes could come on board - this ment some of the kids ended up sitting the opposite end of the train to the perants which the kids werent happy with.

Alot of the people had been on the bus and the over crowded Reading train and tempures were fraying abit - including my own though I ended up in a nice conversation with a girl from York.

And we sat and sat and then we were off and finiallly I got into Stoud where Al and Jean had obviously been for while :/

It is things like this though that make me want to bang everyones heads together - things would have been far more pleasent from the outset if there had not been pushy arogant people (or disgusting cretins who put chewing gum on top of coach seats!).

There isn't really a point to this post I just felt the need to write about the journey.

Singing Day in Aid of Breast Cancer Research Uk (by sarah)

Yesturday I left the house at 7:30 am and got on the 8:03 train to Paddington - all went smoothly and I had one of my normal random conversations with an interesting person on the train - this time a maths examinar.

Of course due to this being something I had had planned for ever and me being me the weekend had been whitteled down so that I was instead of arriving in London Friday night I was arriving just over an hour late at the venue for my choir reunion. I got into London with 20 minutes to get around the circle line and then do the Fenchurch Street Line out into Essex which is of course impossible.

But I had a good run and thanks to a lift from the station got into Cranham at 11:15 only 3 and 3/4 hours after having left erm... Cranham - different counties obviously 😉

I was cheered on the train by hearing the words peg-it and stack-it which told me I was home!

Anyway I was fortunate that they had started a bit late and then done warm up excersises so had only just started on the first song when I arrived.

The itinary of the day was to learn songs in a music workshop with Pete Churchill and then perform them with Sound Company and raise money for Breast Cancer Research UK in doing so!

I was really looking forward to this singing day and was really sad when I thought I would have to cancel at the last minute. Apart from the fact I would get to meet up with old friends and get to sing I was looking forward to the fact it was going to be gospely type music and that there would be now sheets of music handed out - not being able to read music this is joy for me!

I've done several workshops with Pete Churchill now and thourally enjoyed every single one of them and funnily enough they tend to be the songs I remeber - they definatly make up a large portion of those I sang to Jean whilst breast feeding. The first one was when I was like 19 I think and was a residentual at Wiccan House - I was as always on crutches :/ but it is one of my best memories.

The songs he chooses tend to be fun to sing and very what I would term dynamic.

We learnt:

Stevie Wonder - I am Singing, from Songs in the key of life Jimmy Cliff - hard road to travel Ray Charles - little old sun Curtis Mayfield - people get ready

And he sprung another one on us during the performance to show the audience the process of learning. He's got some interesting ideas about memory and retrieval and muscle memory etc...

Sound Company sang the first half of the concert which was stuff like Chattanoogo choochoo and String of Pearls, Sweet Tea etc... Then Pete sang some songs including one of his own called I've Made Up My Mind which was quiet topical for me really!

I also picked up alot on sort of music history as it where - stuff like People Get Ready being one of the songs that let the slaves know about the 'Freedom train' that ran from the south to the north back when America was divided on slavery.

Again due to my current frame of mind this has set me to planning out another painting, a sort of companion for The Strange Fruit of Intolerance.

Pete's little girl sang one of the solos which was very very cute and she did amazingly well considering it was in another language! Oh yeah the first song he taught us was in 3 languages!

The day was full of dynamic energy and enthusiasm and without music I was on the same footing as everybody else - possibly better off actually as it is how I tend to learn songs anyway. I however was saddened to find just how out of practice I am with the singing - I have lost my coordination ie clapping, moving feet and singing at same time was completely out! This was a skill it took four years of Havering Youth Choir to get and its gone 🙁 though I was starting to get it back by the end of the day!

I was also quiet chuffed to be mistaken for being 10yrs younger than I am by a teenager! and to bump into a friend from Sixth Form College who has just joined Sound Company. Also had a good ole catch up with people.

I really miss singing but I don't want to join the village choir as they don't do a wide enough variety of music - I was asked to join a local 'gospel' choir but they only meet like once a month and they give you music to take away and learn the songs - which is absolutely useless to me - plus they only sing in churches for services which is far to restrictive for me.

I've sort of given up with the guitar becuase I just can't work out how to tune it anymore - I've lost the skill - I can tell its out but not how and therefore what to do with it to get it back in :/ Looks like music is going to have wait until I'm in my 30's :/ twitch

Designing a Hardware Abstraction Layer: A VM for an operating system (by alaric)

It's now quite commonplace to define virtual machines for "userland" code - the Java VM, the CLR, the Parrot virtual machine and 'hidden' VMs that underlie various programming language implementations such as CPython and Scheme 48.

However, it's more unusual to define a virtual machine for running an operating system kernel upon. Which is exactly what I set out to do with HYDROGEN, a kernel-level virtual machine for the ARGON project.

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