Janko in a Jar

Image via WikipediaForth is “a little” different than you everyday programming language. Basically it’s different on so many levels. If you ever wondered what it’s like, but didn’t have time or a reason to invest to get/learn/do-enought-to-get-the-feel it — now internets offer you a free ticket to get a taste of it.

Samuel from Falvotech made a video where he coded a HTML parser in gForth, he seems a very fluent Forth programmer and it’s a joy to watch him code (to me at least):

Click here for article and here for the video

I do some coding in Factor which is one of incarnations of Forth but it’s still different in many ways and was always interested how his raw-metal father Forth is. This video was super interesting to me. The core rules are very known to me as it’s the same as in Factor so I could easily follow it, I hope it will be approximately the same for you.

I hope you won’t focus only on “uh how low level is this” and “what crazy stuff is he doing with return stack?” (in few positions of the video) and so miss some things that are pure beauty of the concepts here (like what concatenation brings you). Well, your loss if you do..

I am making some portal. It is a sort of the portal where people will need to register and fill in some info. They have to have an option to login at any later date and modify their info but this will not be like everyday or even every month thing. It seems stupid to me that people have to create and remember a new username/password for every utility that they need limited access to very rarely then.

So I am making some variant of user authentication system for them that doesn’t use usernames or password. The point is that it’s much more minimal to make and use than the standard hog of stuff you have to do to make a usable user authentication system.

So what elements does normal system need:

• verification email with a link and functionality to accept verification
• login (username/password) form and functionality
• forgot password link, form and functionality
• change password form and functionality
• logout link

This no-login system is basically like a one-time-password system where it is not limited to one-time, because it would be impractical and it has no reason to be.

So how does it work: When you register to the web-app you receive an email. In it there is a link, you click it and you are “logined” into the web-app. When you need that web-app user area again you open the email and click it again (or you bookmark it, or whatever). But you can delete (loose) the email at any time and when you need access again you go to web-app and fill in your email into “get me a new key” form and you receive another link on email that you can use as long as you want and then delete too (if you want).

So what elements does this system need:

• sending out email with the link - 80% the same for the first time (registration) and for all “get me new key” times
• “get me new key” form and functionality
• logout link

you don’t need verification via email - because the email with the key link is also a verification of their email
you don’t need login form and functionality - obviously
you don’t need forgot password link, form and functionality - because you are meant to forget it and you use “get me new key” anyway
you don’t need change password form and functionality - because there is no password

So it has some pluses, but I will see how it performs in real. If you see any weaknesses go ahead and tell me!

This is the new screen-shot of Ask Robi. Now I need to get a new VPS so I can install it there and give it to few beta testers to trash it a little.

If anyone wants to be a beta tester write me to janko DOT itm AT gmail DOT com.

btw: Ask Robi is not a chatbot. I made a chatbot years ago and in my oppinion they are basically usseles. This is more like a sort of wikipedia that communicates.

I have the standalone version of QUBIDRAW FIND activities finished. It consists of four activities and has 16 qubi-pics included in SWF itself so it can be published on any website. If you want to put it on your website you are welcome to do so. I took some more time to do the various slide-in/out and fade-in/out stuff than I do usually. I made something I called “async functions” (which were basically classes) that handled this stuff rather nicely. Because it’s a total mess to code it into main loop manually.

I can’t figure out if “NEW ITEM” and “SINGLE ITEM” activities need any instructions or will people know what to do in them. Did you get what you have to do when you first saw them??

It’s made in Haxe as all flash QUBIDRAW is.

I finally took some time to play with Factor. I approached it with some scepticism because after looking at various examples I wasn’t sure if I really want to shuffle the stack instead of use the ( old boring ) variables.

This is an much repeated example of sq (square) word (function) in Factor.

: sq dup * ;

Well, I came with scepticism but left enthusiastic. When I was thinking out cutoff word I thought to myself that factor is cool as a brain exercise, like tetris, but that it’s probably more practical to just use something less exciting where you don’t have to think so much to write a simple function. At 3-rd word getto code sort of fell together in few seconds and I tried it and it even worked. From then on things just got nicer and nicer (see the source file below).

: cutto ( sub str1 -- str2 ) dup >r dup length >r start r> r> subseq ;
: cutoff ( sub str1 -- str2 ) dupd cutto dup >r length swap length swap r> subseq ;
: getto ( sub str1 -- str2 ) tuck start 0 swap rot subseq ;
: cut-to swap cutto ;
: cut-off swap cutoff ;
: get-to swap getto ;
: snatch-to dupd get-to swap ;

What I want to do here? I want to prepare few words that will help me extract stuff out of a string in a reasonably elegant way.

( scratchpad ) "<A c=123&..><B c=234&..><C c=345&..><D c=456&..><E c=567&..>"
 			"<B" cut-to "c=" cut-off "&" snatch-to
 			"<D" cut-to "c=" cut-off "&" get-to .s
"234"
"456"

I don’t know, but this seems very elegant to me.

click to see the full progress, comments and usage examples of these words

After I posted it on IRC channel #concatenative elasticdog quickly posted a lot more elegant variations of my tree base words:

: cutto tuck start tail ;
: cutoff swap split1 nip ;
: getto swap split1 drop ;

Beauty!!!

Arsecast got a new episode + an interview with Moonpod’s Nick - go there

I opened a new blog called Indie Game Videos - go there too

What is an -Arsecast-?

It’s a series of podcasts about indie and retro remake games. It’s really great fun to listen too. The author probably escaped from something like monty python. I also like it because he knows how to be critical to games so it doesn’t get all soapy.

Slovenia (where I live) is mentioned in the interview too… Slovenia is small country so we genetically get very happy when anyone even mentions us no matter what he/she says

What is -Indie Game Videos-?

Exactly that.

I just read latest post of the “Gibbage Gibbage guy” who is probably just looking down at my house right now. Then I went to my statCounter to check my stats myself and what did I see? allmost exactly the same picture of my visitors as he has it?!? Look for yourself. This below is screen of mine, you must use all match-3 skills of your brain to spot that there actually is a difference.. go here to see his pics.

I am writing an online turn-based strategy game in my free time (which I don’t have). So I am trying some strategy games in my free time (which I don’t have, remember). Funny thing is that while I really enjoy writing and planing my strategy game I am too lazy to play almost any of them for long. Especially the real time strategies seem to bore me after 10min (darwinia)… select some units… move them over here… oops too far… move them back a little… they are getting killed in the meantime….quickly scroll the map select some more units to help them… scroll back… click… uh my first unit group is gone already.. huh…

OK, but there seem to be ones that get my brain clicking even after I am having programing php-noodles programming marathon for 4 weeks.

Today I tried Battalion (an online (free) turn based strategy game made in flash) and it was great. My tired brains got in quickly which is not so often at such games and I was kicking butt of the blue enemy in no time.

What I Liked:

• Everything is very very natural and obvious (this is a big rarity IMO)
  
• Game-Play is very visual - not a tons of numbers and math to do to understand
• Game-Play is very visual (again) - even looking at people playing the game is interesting
• I liked the strategy/game-play that it features (quite active)
• Graphics have a Sprite Attack signature all over… in a good way.. and because of all pixels takes that typical “flash look” away.
• Good idea and very well executed

What I didn’t like:

• There were not a lot of people there which is a little like sad because it’s really very nice game… but there were around 9 so still some to play with. Game is running for quite some time so I wonder how things were standing in earlier days (If anyone knows please tell).

What can I say… visit the game and you won’t be sorry. If you see anyone with nick jankoM2 battle me, but as I said I have no free time for at least 1 month, but I am sure to play it some more.

I live in Slovenia. It is small and reasonably nice country that has almost exactly 2000000 people (And we just made 1 one of them this year, yey me and my wife!). As I have been told there is a bunch of cities in the world that have more people than our country. But being small is also about being agile… and with upcoming energy crisis we already started converting our motor-ways to deal with it.

BTW: I will start a simple “travel to Slovenia” website soon (with my wacky sister doing videos and photos) so you will have a chance to find out more interesting facts about us 2MP (MillionPeople), our surroundings and what interesting things you can do around here - especially in eco-turistic (ok and urban-turistic) ways. Bye..

No, not Qatfish but the Big Fish. A year or more ago someone on indiegamer forum asked “what games are you waiting to get released the most” and allmost everybody said “next game from PomPom”. Well now you have it, you can get “Bliss Island” under new releases on Big Fish Games.

This post might sound like it’s meant in cynical note but it’s not… I played the game and while I can hear faithfull shmu-pom-ers crying in pain I see nothing wrong with this game. It is different and unique, it is interesting and fun. The only potentially negative comment about it from me could be that it’s seems allmost too experimental in gameplay to have all this polish and high production value. Good Luck PomPom.

You know there are these little occurrences in our lives that make us laugh or at least giggle inside every time we meet them. One of such unintentional creatures is entertaining me aprox. once per month for 5 years now. It just did it again… so I decided that it had finally earned a blog-post (5 years is long period). I don’t know if it’s really funny… if it is it’s more of a “British humor” funny.

When I (for the first time) ordered web-hosting services (back in 2001) at some company abroad I of course got a bunch of passwords… mySQL, FTP, Qmail, SSH (yep, I had a webmasters account)… and with it a bunch of instructions. SSH (Secure SHell) is of course the most important password and instructions said something like: “Change this password OFTEN (like every 14 days) or you will….” and the password was preset to ‘ChangeMeOften2001!!’…. well guess what … it still is … and every time I have to login to my ssh account (just distant enough that I forget about it) I am amused once again (stupid me).