Happy things thread!

[Travis B.]

I have a new release of zeptoforth, version 0.1.1 (there was a version 0.1.0, but it was short-lived as it had a significant bug in it, and it lacked some new functionality 0.1.1 includes, namely four-column WORDS and [IF]~[ELSE]~[THEN]) with a new hackaday.io page!

[Raphael]

I've now spent more than six months without buying anything from Amazon, so that the page with the purchases of the last six months in my Amazon account is now empty. Sure, the other online stores where I sometimes buy stuff now probably don't have much better business practices, but at least I'm not helping Jezz Bezos get even richer for now.

[chris_notts]

The garden is now more or less weeded, at least for the next day or so! Thanks to the lockdown, I've got a little done often for a while now. I've selectively left some things though... for example, I have a soft-spot for white dead nettles in spring. I know they're aggressive weeds, but unlike true nettles, which need to be eliminated to avoid ouchies, boo boos, and crying, dead nettles do no short-term harm, the bees love them, and I quite like the flowers as well. I'll pull some of the roots up later in the year...

[Travis B.]

Well, it's been some days since I have done some shameless self-promotion of zeptoforth, and for an essentially unknown project with much better-known competition (Mecrisp-Stellaris) I do like the level of feedback I have gotten, even if it has been things like questions about what "SRT/NCI" means (subroutine threaded / native code inlining) and about what the raison d'être of the project is (after all, Mecrisp-Stellaris already exists and supports far more boards than zeptoforth does).

[dewrad]

Travis, I have to ask, what on earth is zeptoforth(!) ?

[Travis B.]

Travis, I have to ask, what on earth is zeptoforth(!) ?

zeptoforth is a bare metal, native code-compiling Forth implementation for ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers written by myself, aside from a small amount of code borrowed from Mecrisp-Stellaris (with the permission of its author), and a utility program contributed by someone I know via #forth on freenode.

[dewrad]

Travis, I have to ask, what on earth is zeptoforth(!) ?

zeptoforth is a bare metal, native code-compiling Forth implementation for Cortex-M microcontrollers written by myself, aside from a small amount of code borrowed from Mecrisp-Stellaris (with the permission of its author), and a utility program contributed by someone I know via #forth on freenode.

I'm relatively confident that I've just read something in English; but once again for those of us who don't speak hacker?

[Travis B.]

Travis, I have to ask, what on earth is zeptoforth(!) ?

zeptoforth is a bare metal, native code-compiling Forth implementation for Cortex-M microcontrollers written by myself, aside from a small amount of code borrowed from Mecrisp-Stellaris (with the permission of its author), and a utility program contributed by someone I know via #forth on freenode.

I'm relatively confident that I've just read something in English; but once again for those of us who don't speak hacker?

Okay...

Bare metal means something runs on bare hardware, without any operating system or language environment.
Native code-compiling means a compiler compiles code to instructions that are executed by a microprocessor/microcontroller directly, not by a virtual machine, like C and C++ and unlike Java or C#.
Forth is a the Forth programming language, an extensible, stack-oriented programing language.
Cortex-M comprises a group of 32-bit microcontroller architectures designed by Arm Holdings.
Microprocessors are computer processors implemented on a single microchip.
Microcontrollers are microprocessors designed for directly controlling hardware and which are typically small and self-contained, as opposed to relying on external hardware to operate. These are in countless products that one uses every single day.
Mecrisp-Stellaris is another Cortex-M Forth implementation, written by a certain Matthias Koch.

I wonder if that clears anything up, or whether it only makes things more confusing.

[dɮ the phoneme]

I started playing the new Animal Crossing. It's fun and relaxing.

[Raphael]

Travis, do I get this right that it basically means that you're telling the computer directly what to do, instead of telling some high abstraction layer or software thingy what to do, which then tells some other thing what to do, which eventually tells the computer what to do?

[KathTheDragon]

That's about right, Raphael.

Any given computer (more specifically, CPU) can perform a very specific set of actions - code written in terms of those actions is called machine code, and is generally specific to a CPU model (and called the native code for that machine; the analogy is the native language of a person). Languages like C (and Zeptoforth) are written in a way that humans are able to read, and then run through a program called a compiler that figures out which machine code instructions correspond to what the programmer wants to happen. Because each CPU model has its own native code (in principle) there has to be a separate compiler for each CPU model.

[Travis B.]

Travis, do I get this right that it basically means that you're telling the computer directly what to do, instead of telling some high abstraction layer or software thingy what to do, which then tells some other thing what to do, which eventually tells the computer what to do?

Yes - zeptoforth directly interacts with hardware, without any abstraction layer or operating system underneath it, and it compiles Forth code to instructions which are directly executed by hardware, rather than by a virtual machine implemented in software.

[Raphael]

Thank you, Kath and Travis!

[Travis B.]

More progress is being made with zeptoforth - someone kindly contributed a code uploader for those of us who cannot use e4thcom (e.g. Windows users, many xBSD users, despite FreeBSD allegedly being able to execute Linux binaries), along with the addition of double-cell words (e.g. 64-bit arithmetic), XON/XOFF flow control, more/better documentation, and so on.

[Linguoboy]

I decided to use Facebook for its true purpose and asked my friends a dumb question about their least favourite song from their favourite artists. The responses have been great, and prompted me to start googling "worst X song" for various bands, which is even better. People get vicious about pop songs they dislike and I am here for it.

[alynnidalar]

Ooh, that's a great question. Now you've got me pondering it as well.

[Curlyjimsam]

For anyone here into worldbuilding, I'm pleased to announce that I've uploaded a new revision of the great Ethnographical Questionnaire.

Thanks, I've always really appreciated this.

[mèþru]

Is there a site map for bethisad.com?

[chris_notts]

The toadflax has survived! I realise I'm the only person posting much about gardening here, but it is very relaxing, at least when you're not stepping in cat crap. It also teaches you to relax a bit, because it's an art, not a science. You can give a plant everything it "should" want and it dies back, but then it spreads to somewhere it should hate and thrives, or its self-seeded offspring pop up there. Eventually you learn to go with the flow and think hard before removing something that's happy.

I planted wild toadflax, Linaria vulgaris, last year after growing it from seed. It's a common "wild flower" here, and known for spreading quite enthusiastically:



That didn't stop it mostly dying where I planted it though - but it's now back! It's popping up about 4 or 5m away from where it was originally planted. It seems unlikely that it spread so far in one year by the roots without growing anywhere in between, so I suspect seedlings. In any case, I'm happy it's back.

[Linguoboy]

Did my first big shopping in a week, at the Middle Eastern bakery and grocery near me. Two miles each way, so it's a bit of a hike, but it was a lovely day and I managed not to destroy my arms coming back. Normally, I try to practice restraint when I'm there, but between COVID-related stress and not knowing when I could make a return trip, I was like, "Fuck it". Chocolate-covered cashews or chocolate-covered pistachios? How about both, plus chocolate-covered pomegranate seeds? They were out of a few things, but they were things I anticipated they'd be out of so I had a substitution strategy prepared.