Happy things thread!

[Travis B.]

I don't think I could handle driving on the left-side of the road.

Also, have a nice trip!

[hwhatting]

For example, when you're at a left hand turn at an intersection with cars in the opposite direction also turning left, WHICH SIDE DO YOU PASS THEM ON??!!!!!

Now that you ask me, I wouldn't even be able to answer, neither for the equivalent situation with right-side traffic. But I'm sure I'd be able to handle it in practice, just not in theory.

[Linguoboy]

It is pouring with rain today and my flatmate asked his boss for permission to go in later so that he could give me a ride. He's also taking me home tonight.

[Travis B.]

I got release 0.33.0 of zeptoforth out, which now includes a brand-spanking-new "action" scheduler which allows very fast lightweight asynchronous operation within a single task which allows "actions" to send messages to one another synchronously; e.g. on the STM32F746 with one "action" sending messages to another "action" which continually receives them it does so at a rate if 27 kHz (on the RP2040 it does so at a slower but still considerable rate of 13 kHz). Of course, in a more realistic test of 32 "actions" continually randomly sending messages to 32 other "actions" which continually receive them, on the STM32F746 it goes at a rate of about 15 kHz (and on the RP2040 it send messages at a similar rate relative to its rate at sending for one "action" only). Of course, "actions" are not tasks - they do not have stacks or dictionary spaces of their own, so they are far lighter-weight than tasks, and they are limited to communicating via messages with other "actions" that are operating within the same task (so they cannot send messages across cores on the RP2040). (The name "action" was chosen partly for lack of a better name - I used the same name for a similar but far more limited construct in older versions of zeptoforth, but now with their ability to send and receive messages which they lacked before, the similarity of the name to "actor" is apropos, even though strictly speaking these are not actors because message-sending is purely synchronous.)

[alice]

I went to vote today, and I was allowed to keep the pencil I was given to mark the ballot paper!

[Raphael]

Pencil? Sounds odd. It's the standard to use ballpoint pens here. Casting your vote by making a mark that can be removed with a simple eraser seems risky to me. But anyway, I'm happy for you!

[Linguoboy]

Made it to lunch and back right before the rain!

(Yes, I know a lot of these are rain-related. It's been raining a lot here lately.)

[Richard W]

I went to vote today, and I was allowed to keep the pencil I was given to mark the ballot paper!

I was instructed to recycle mine. I presume it was a Covid precaution. It wasn't the usual type of ballot box pencil, but the lead was of the usual type.

[alice]

Casting your vote by making a mark that can be removed with a simple eraser seems risky to me.

Removing someone's vote like that is known as tampering with ballots, and we don't do it here.

[Linguoboy]

It was a damn good weekend. Saturday night I had a cocktail party for 14 people which went pretty well. It was a late night, but I still felt good enough Sunday to schedule an afternoon hookup. (It was a second time with someone, and I managed not to fall asleep on him this go round!) Afterwards, I texted one of my friends in the area to see if he wanted to get some dinner. He did, and took me to his favourite restaurant nearby, which turned out to be terrific. When then went back and hung out at his place for a while, which is something I've wanted to do for a long time but which he's been resistant to. He thanked me for helping him expand his comfort zone and said he had fun.

[Travis B.]

I have been putting together a Getting Started with zeptoforth guide on zeptoforth's wiki on GitHub, which has been going quite well (even though one person told me it was all way too complex). Before this I haven't really had a good source of what one needs to know to get started with zeptoforth in one place. I will probably be adding more to it in the near future.

[Linguoboy]

So one of the guests at the cocktail party messaged me this morning to say he'd tested positive for COVID. So far, though, no one else has. (I stopped by the campus testing centre and did a rapid test before work.) Fingers crossed it stays that way.

As a byproduct, as I was texting all the attendees to let them know, I was able to clear up a misunderstanding between two of them. (Sunday my friend told me "I think so-and-so doesn't like me". So I asked the guy outright and he was like, "I thought he knew I was flirting" and asked me to pass on his number so he could apologise.)

[Travis B.]

I have in close succession put out releases 0.34.0 and 0.35.0 of zeptoforth, which add a new, user-friendly 'pin' module for controlling GPIO pins in as uniform a fashion across platforms as possible, revamp the 'led' module to it as uniform across platforms as possible, and revamp the 'pool' module to make it be more in line with the other modules in zeptoforth such as the 'heap' module and fix an important bug in it. I have also continued work on Getting Started with zeptoforth, revising it some to put more "easy" content such as how to use the 'led' module and the 'pin module closer to the top, along with creating a new wiki page Memory Management with zeptoforth, which outlines managing memory under zeptoforth (I just thought of some more content to add to it, which I will try to not forget).

[Travis B.]

Someone posted zeptoforth (specifically both its hackaday.io page and its GitHub) to a Forth group on Facebook all on their own!

[Vardelm]

Someone posted zeptoforth (specifically both its hackaday.io page and its GitHub) to a Forth group on Facebook all on their own!

Grats! That's gotta feel good!

[Travis B.]

Someone posted zeptoforth (specifically both its hackaday.io page and its GitHub) to a Forth group on Facebook all on their own!

Grats! That's gotta feel good!

And today at a Zoom meeting one of the participants had used the zeptoforth kernel as an example of their disassembler in action (but unfortunately were cut off just before they could present that part).

[Vardelm]

Someone posted zeptoforth (specifically both its hackaday.io page and its GitHub) to a Forth group on Facebook all on their own!

Grats! That's gotta feel good!

And today at a Zoom meeting one of the participants had used the zeptoforth kernel as an example of their disassembler in action (but unfortunately were caught off just before they could present that part).

That's gotta (almost) feel as good!

[Vardelm]

Watching live Irish music in a pub in Galway tonight, plus hearing our tour bus driver speaking fluent Irish today and being surrounded by signs in Irish are GREAT motivation for my Dwarven conlang.

What a massively fun vacation day!

[Travis B.]

Watching live Irish music in a pub in Galway tonight, plus hearing our tour bus driver speaking fluent Irish today and being surrounded by signs in Irish are GREAT motivation for my Dwarven conlang.

What a massively fun vacation day!

Nice!

[Man in Space]

I finally, finally got the wordlists for my relay conlangs up.