Vomit-induced implementations of the 9P protocol in Chicken Scheme (by alaric)

Last Saturday, I came down with what I suspect was Norovirus - the rest of the family (apart from the baby) having come down with it on Thursday and me having spent the past few days mopping up after them, this was probably unavoidable; although I'd tried my best by wearing a respirator when performing clean-up operations (it was also nice to not have to smell what I was clearing up...).

But, it meant I spent Monday off of work recuperating. I was too weak and exhausted to do any work from home, but I was bored senseless of just lying there on the sofa, so I decided to try and extend Chicken Scheme's 9p egg, which is a client implementation of the 9P2000 file server protocol, to also be able to act as a server.

This is something I want for Ugarit; it means that a Chicken Scheme app will be able to provide a virtual filesystem that can be mounted from a computer and used like your "real" filesystem. In particular, I want to be able to let people access their backed-up snapshots from a Ugarit vault as a live read-only filesystem, rather than needing to go in and manually "restore" their desired files back into the filesystem to access them. And it'll really come into its own when I implement archive mode, as it will make it possible to actually use the Ugarit archive seamlessly.

Unfortunately, being rather fuzzy-headed, I kept making rookie mistakes, but I eventually managed to get the core protocol implementation working. In doing so, I found out that a 9P server that puts incorrect lengths in the stat structures returned from directory reads causes 9P mounts in Linux to "hang" in a way that can't be unmounted and you need to power-cycle the machine as it won't even shut down cleanly... so be careful of that when mounting the few public 9P servers out there!

In order to test it, and as a utility for Chicken apps that would like to provide a 9P "control/status filesystem" in the manner of wmii et al, I started to write a simplified high-level virtual filesystem server library on top of the core server implementation. At the point where I made this status update to my friends in the Chicken Scheme IRC channel, directory listings weren't working (they now are), but you can see the idea - create a filesystem object from Scheme and register files and directories in it, and it appears as a live filesystem under UNIX.

Now I'm feeling a bit better today I've realised several other rookie errors I've made (not ones that cause bugs, I hope, but ones that complicated the code unnecessarily) - I'll fix those up before I submit all of my changes to the 9p egg's maintainer for merging in...

Then it'll be time to start on the Ugarit integration. THAT will be fun 🙂

Monster Creation (by sarah)

I have made a short film about the creation of the Muse Monsters from my Monster Writing Game - they turn out to have a complex belief system - some of which is portrayed in this video. Also I like the effect I got with a bamboo flute I picked up a few years ago.

Video is up under Creative Commons Attribution which means as long as you say where you got the material from you can use it in your own creations 🙂

Happiness is Family Shaped (by sarah)

Excitement (by sarah)

For the first time since I had Jean really, I am starting to be excited about my future and to see something like a career forming. I am not forcing anything, I am not planning or going down approved routes - I am just going with the flow.

I am creating... well STUFF, art, craft, writing and finding people want me to share in the form of workshops more and more. I am getting more short stories and things published and winning awards. I am using my art to communicate science concepts and helping instill a love of learning.

I am so excited that today I actually got some material for my mum to help me make a new skirt for the Poetry Festival which is currently happening in Cheltenham - I am reading on Friday at the Muffin Man and then I am going to be running two lots of childrens' workshops.

I have also very nearly gotten the contacts of all my close school friends - there are still some wholes but it is getting there 🙂

I feel I have achieved more since January than I have done in the last six years. I am finishing off projects and starting ones I'd wanted to do. Our debts are whittling away nicely and I have my purple carpet and a purple butterfly on the outside of the house. Alaric, David and my Dad have worked so hard on the house - it is starting to be lovely 🙂

I fear slightly writing this incase it all suddenly tilts again but it is all feeling just so right. I still feel sad about science and my health but I can do science later on and the health stuff I have things in place to deal with now - no I am not going to be an explorer ever again, trapsing up mountians but I have the memories of when I did and you know there is alot of fantastic stuff I can still see - even if it is from the lense of someone elses camera.

Life is good at last.

Havering Youth Circuit Choir (by sarah)

Back when I was about 13 I joined a choir/singing group based at Upminster Methodist church - this would have been in the mid 90's I suppose. We primarily did religous musicals like Witness. I just find myself wondering where everybody is these days and what they have been up too.

I am really rubbish with names though so only remember that there was like John, Clare (not sure how it was spelt), Martin and so on. I even went on camps and things with these guys - me and my school posse were basically the youngest members. I bumped into the Clare whilst at Uni at a pub but she was still that older cool person so didn't really establish contact with her and that itself is now an age ago.

Basically I'm posting this because I tried googling and didn't find anything but now there is something so if someone else tries hopefully they will find this post 🙂