The Paper Crane and the Fragile Crystals

"What is love? baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more"
-- Haddaway

On love and the low birthrates

Reference to this post: https://plus.google.com/u/0/100647702320088380533/posts/4f1DuFuVfoz

After reading that I the article above I started to think about what the people in the article above actually thought about long term relationships. This is my POW on love and sex.

If you ask me, I would rather have a long-term relationship than a one-sight-stand with some stranger. I do like to feel that I am loved rather than something shallow, untrue (as a one-night-stand is).

I do not want children though (for reasons that I am not going to discuss here).

Back to the article!

They say that long-term relationships are "Too troublesome" , but I think that this is just an excuse. They rely do want a relationship, it is just that they are afraid of loosing what they have.

It might be by Gaijin-white mindset but the statement that Kishino made seems weird: "I don't earn a huge salary to go on dates and I don't want the responsibility of a woman hoping it might lead to marriage."

I do not think that I have ever heard of anyone here engaging in a relationship because they think they will marry there partner. That is not to say that they will not get married, though.

And this might be due to my cheap-asrsery but if you are in a relationship with someone who loves you, why does the male have to present dough as a token of offering to the female?

Cheeses! I thought that you loved each other! NO! It seems that you are her sugar-daddy now!

Of course I would present gifts to my girl, but I hope that she would not expect me to do so. After all, is she after love or my coin? I want to live in a equal relationship, where we see each other as equals who loves each other, not as a master/slave or provider/user relationship.

It might just be that I have a strange world-view, and that the ideal girl does not exist. Perhaps girl only like dough, and that one-night-stands is what girl rely looking for... What do I know? I am single, have not had a relationship with a girl for many years.

The Paper Crane and The Heavy Objects That Fell

"It is just like inventing the wheel, it has already been done!"
-- Someone...

Introducing SSTS -- The (Super) Simple Type System

So a few days ago I started thinking about GLib and GObject and wondered how easy -- or hard -- it would be to create my own base object system. So the first thing that every good hacker does when faced with such a question is to do it, from scratch, without looking at others code.

So after a few hours I had written my base object type with every function that I would ever need. Than the next day I wrote the first object derived from this base object. (Still not even compiled the code). On the third day I started writing tests and ironed out some compile errors, and than I wrote more tests (this time with the derived object type) and tested everything with valgrind and ironed out every memory leak I could find.

Than, I decided to write a new type, a Map... This is where I found out that all the plane sailing that I have had took an abrupt end, and I was faced with a non-trivial problem:

How do I discern a object that is of the type system from an object that is not? I need to be be able to call the objects destructor if it is, and ordinary free () if it was not.

This lead me -- after some non-help from G+ -- to dig though GLib/GObject C code only to find out that the problem is non-trivial. In GLib/GObject it seems that they use a lookup table to find out if an object is or is not of the type GObject.

Action plan:

There is two ways I could do this:

• The sane and hard way -- basically reimplementing what GLib/GObject does.
• The easy but mad way -- just ask the user for a destruction method/function as a parameter.

The first way would be the hardest to implement, and probably course trouble if I were to use GObjects somewhere. But if I do it that way the user of the library would have less work to do.

If I do it the second way it would mean less work, but the end user would probably not be so pleased to have to specify the destruction method for each map. I may even have to have the user specify it for every item in the map.

If I go with Plan A (The Sane, but hard way) it also solves other inheritance related issues: How to know, in large object hierarchies, what object is what type.

The lookup table would contain pointers to every object that is registered with the system (at run-time), during the registration of the object the object must tell the system what types it is (what objects it has inherited from).

The look-up list would have to have two fields per item: a key (the pointer to the object) and a value that is a list of object-types that the object is.

Any way: for those that are interested in this (Super) Simple Type System it can be found on launchpad.

The Paper Crane and the Nested Algorithms

"It is so wrong in all the right ways"
-- someone

One of my favourite Vala things

So, I have been trying out different stuff in Vala lately, one of which is the GObject to JSON stuff (more on that in an other post). Today I thought that I would show you some dirty, dirty, dirty things to do with Vala.

Nested lambda functions

So the topic of today is -- as the heading suggests -- nested lambda functions (or closures, if you are so inclined).

using GLib;
using Gtk;


public class MyApp : Gtk.Application {
  static int main (string args[]) {
    MyApp app = new MyApp ();
    return app.run ();
  }
  
  Gtk.Label label;
  Gtk.Window window;
  
  MyApp () {
    
    Object(application_id: "testing.my.application", flags: ApplicationFlags.FLAGS_NONE);
  }
  
  
  protected override void activate () {
    /* Creating a window */
    window = new Gtk.ApplicationWindow (this);
    
    this.build_menues ();
    
    window.set_default_size (400,400);
    this.label = new Gtk.Label ("Hello GTK!");
    window.add (label);
    window.title = "Hello GTK!";
    window.show_all ();
  }
  
  private void build_menues () {
    /* Creating the application menu */
    GLib.Menu app_menu = new GLib.Menu ();
    app_menu.append ("Message", "app.message");
    app_menu.append ("About", "app.about");
    app_menu.append ("Quit", "app.quit");
    
    this.set_app_menu (app_menu);
    
    GLib.SimpleAction quit_action = new GLib.SimpleAction ("quit", null);
    quit_action.activate.connect (() => {
      this.quit();
    });
    this.add_action (quit_action);
    
    GLib.SimpleAction about_action = new GLib.SimpleAction ("about", null);
    about_action.activate.connect (() => {
      Gtk.AboutDialog dialog = new Gtk.AboutDialog();
      dialog.set_destroy_with_parent (true);
      dialog.set_transient_for(this.window);
      dialog.set_modal (true);
      
      dialog.response.connect((response_id) => {
        if (response_id == Gtk.ResponseType.CANCEL ||
            response_id == Gtk.ResponseType.DELETE_EVENT) {
          //dialog.hide_on_delete ();
          dialog.destroy ();
        }
      });
      
      dialog.authors = {"Gustav Hartvigsson", "Some One Else"};
      dialog.program_name = "Hello GTK!";
      dialog.present();
    });
    this.add_action (about_action);
    
    GLib.SimpleAction message_action = new GLib.SimpleAction ("message", null);
    message_action.activate.connect (() => {
      label.set_text ("I have been clicked!");
    });
    this.add_action (message_action);
    
    
  }
  
}

If you look at the highlighted code (line 49-66) you will see nested lambda functions. This is awesome, and something you would expect from a modern, high abstraction level, object oriented language.

Dissection the C code

The C code that this produces (using valac-0.20 main.vala --pkg gtk+-3.0 --pkg gio-2.0 -C ) looks like this:

/* main.c generated by valac 0.20.1, the Vala compiler
 * generated from main.vala, do not modify */


#include <glib.h>
#include <glib-object.h>
#include <gtk/gtk.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <gio/gio.h>


#define TYPE_MY_APP (my_app_get_type ())
#define MY_APP(obj) (G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE_CAST ((obj), TYPE_MY_APP, MyApp))
#define MY_APP_CLASS(klass) (G_TYPE_CHECK_CLASS_CAST ((klass), TYPE_MY_APP, MyAppClass))
#define IS_MY_APP(obj) (G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE_TYPE ((obj), TYPE_MY_APP))
#define IS_MY_APP_CLASS(klass) (G_TYPE_CHECK_CLASS_TYPE ((klass), TYPE_MY_APP))
#define MY_APP_GET_CLASS(obj) (G_TYPE_INSTANCE_GET_CLASS ((obj), TYPE_MY_APP, MyAppClass))

typedef struct _MyApp MyApp;
typedef struct _MyAppClass MyAppClass;
typedef struct _MyAppPrivate MyAppPrivate;
#define _g_object_unref0(var) ((var == NULL) ? NULL : (var = (g_object_unref (var), NULL)))
typedef struct _Block1Data Block1Data;

struct _MyApp {
 GtkApplication parent_instance;
 MyAppPrivate * priv;
};

struct _MyAppClass {
 GtkApplicationClass parent_class;
};

struct _MyAppPrivate {
 GtkLabel* label;
 GtkWindow* window;
};

struct _Block1Data {
 int _ref_count_;
 MyApp * self;
 GtkAboutDialog* dialog;
};


static gpointer my_app_parent_class = NULL;

GType my_app_get_type (void) G_GNUC_CONST;
#define MY_APP_GET_PRIVATE(o) (G_TYPE_INSTANCE_GET_PRIVATE ((o), TYPE_MY_APP, MyAppPrivate))
enum  {
 MY_APP_DUMMY_PROPERTY
};
static gint my_app_main (const gchar* args, int args_length1);
static MyApp* my_app_new (void);
static MyApp* my_app_construct (GType object_type);
static void my_app_real_activate (GApplication* base);
static void my_app_build_menues (MyApp* self);
static void __lambda2_ (MyApp* self);
static void ___lambda2__g_simple_action_activate (GSimpleAction* _sender, GVariant* parameter, gpointer self);
static void __lambda3_ (MyApp* self);
static Block1Data* block1_data_ref (Block1Data* _data1_);
static void block1_data_unref (void * _userdata_);
static void __lambda4_ (Block1Data* _data1_, gint response_id);
static void ___lambda4__gtk_dialog_response (GtkDialog* _sender, gint response_id, gpointer self);
static void ___lambda3__g_simple_action_activate (GSimpleAction* _sender, GVariant* parameter, gpointer self);
static void __lambda5_ (MyApp* self);
static void ___lambda5__g_simple_action_activate (GSimpleAction* _sender, GVariant* parameter, gpointer self);
static void my_app_finalize (GObject* obj);
static void _vala_array_destroy (gpointer array, gint array_length, GDestroyNotify destroy_func);
static void _vala_array_free (gpointer array, gint array_length, GDestroyNotify destroy_func);


static gint my_app_main (const gchar* args, int args_length1) {
 gint result = 0;
 MyApp* _tmp0_;
 MyApp* app;
 gint _tmp1_ = 0;
 _tmp0_ = my_app_new ();
 app = _tmp0_;
 _tmp1_ = g_application_run ((GApplication*) app, 0, NULL);
 result = _tmp1_;
 _g_object_unref0 (app);
 return result;
}


int main (int argc, char ** argv) {
 g_type_init ();
 return my_app_main (argv, argc);
}


static MyApp* my_app_construct (GType object_type) {
 MyApp * self = NULL;
 self = (MyApp*) g_object_new (object_type, "application-id", "testing.my.application", "flags", G_APPLICATION_FLAGS_NONE, NULL);
 return self;
}


static MyApp* my_app_new (void) {
 return my_app_construct (TYPE_MY_APP);
}


static void my_app_real_activate (GApplication* base) {
 MyApp * self;
 GtkApplicationWindow* _tmp0_;
 GtkWindow* _tmp1_;
 GtkLabel* _tmp2_;
 GtkWindow* _tmp3_;
 GtkLabel* _tmp4_;
 GtkWindow* _tmp5_;
 GtkWindow* _tmp6_;
 self = (MyApp*) base;
 _tmp0_ = (GtkApplicationWindow*) gtk_application_window_new ((GtkApplication*) self);
 g_object_ref_sink (_tmp0_);
 _g_object_unref0 (self->priv->window);
 self->priv->window = (GtkWindow*) _tmp0_;
 my_app_build_menues (self);
 _tmp1_ = self->priv->window;
 gtk_window_set_default_size (_tmp1_, 400, 400);
 _tmp2_ = (GtkLabel*) gtk_label_new ("Hello GTK!");
 g_object_ref_sink (_tmp2_);
 _g_object_unref0 (self->priv->label);
 self->priv->label = _tmp2_;
 _tmp3_ = self->priv->window;
 _tmp4_ = self->priv->label;
 gtk_container_add ((GtkContainer*) _tmp3_, (GtkWidget*) _tmp4_);
 _tmp5_ = self->priv->window;
 gtk_window_set_title (_tmp5_, "Hello GTK!");
 _tmp6_ = self->priv->window;
 gtk_widget_show_all ((GtkWidget*) _tmp6_);
}


static void __lambda2_ (MyApp* self) {
 g_application_quit ((GApplication*) self);
}


static void ___lambda2__g_simple_action_activate (GSimpleAction* _sender, GVariant* parameter, gpointer self) {
 __lambda2_ (self);
}


static Block1Data* block1_data_ref (Block1Data* _data1_) {
 g_atomic_int_inc (&_data1_->_ref_count_);
 return _data1_;
}


static void block1_data_unref (void * _userdata_) {
 Block1Data* _data1_;
 _data1_ = (Block1Data*) _userdata_;
 if (g_atomic_int_dec_and_test (&_data1_->_ref_count_)) {
  MyApp * self;
  self = _data1_->self;
  _g_object_unref0 (_data1_->dialog);
  _g_object_unref0 (self);
  g_slice_free (Block1Data, _data1_);
 }
}


static void __lambda4_ (Block1Data* _data1_, gint response_id) {
 MyApp * self;
 gboolean _tmp0_ = FALSE;
 gint _tmp1_;
 gboolean _tmp3_;
 self = _data1_->self;
 _tmp1_ = response_id;
 if (_tmp1_ == ((gint) GTK_RESPONSE_CANCEL)) {
  _tmp0_ = TRUE;
 } else {
  gint _tmp2_;
  _tmp2_ = response_id;
  _tmp0_ = _tmp2_ == ((gint) GTK_RESPONSE_DELETE_EVENT);
 }
 _tmp3_ = _tmp0_;
 if (_tmp3_) {
  gtk_widget_destroy ((GtkWidget*) _data1_->dialog);
 }
}


static void ___lambda4__gtk_dialog_response (GtkDialog* _sender, gint response_id, gpointer self) {
 __lambda4_ (self, response_id);
}


static void __lambda3_ (MyApp* self) {
 Block1Data* _data1_;
 GtkAboutDialog* _tmp0_;
 GtkWindow* _tmp1_;
 gchar* _tmp2_;
 gchar* _tmp3_;
 gchar** _tmp4_ = NULL;
 gchar** _tmp5_;
 gint _tmp5__length1;
 _data1_ = g_slice_new0 (Block1Data);
 _data1_->_ref_count_ = 1;
 _data1_->self = g_object_ref (self);
 _tmp0_ = (GtkAboutDialog*) gtk_about_dialog_new ();
 g_object_ref_sink (_tmp0_);
 _data1_->dialog = _tmp0_;
 gtk_window_set_destroy_with_parent ((GtkWindow*) _data1_->dialog, TRUE);
 _tmp1_ = self->priv->window;
 gtk_window_set_transient_for ((GtkWindow*) _data1_->dialog, _tmp1_);
 gtk_window_set_modal ((GtkWindow*) _data1_->dialog, TRUE);
 g_signal_connect_data ((GtkDialog*) _data1_->dialog, "response", (GCallback) ___lambda4__gtk_dialog_response, block1_data_ref (_data1_), (GClosureNotify) block1_data_unref, 0);
 _tmp2_ = g_strdup ("Gustav Hartvigsson");
 _tmp3_ = g_strdup ("Some One Else");
 _tmp4_ = g_new0 (gchar*, 2 + 1);
 _tmp4_[0] = _tmp2_;
 _tmp4_[1] = _tmp3_;
 _tmp5_ = _tmp4_;
 _tmp5__length1 = 2;
 gtk_about_dialog_set_authors (_data1_->dialog, _tmp5_);
 _tmp5_ = (_vala_array_free (_tmp5_, _tmp5__length1, (GDestroyNotify) g_free), NULL);
 gtk_about_dialog_set_program_name (_data1_->dialog, "Hello GTK!");
 gtk_window_present ((GtkWindow*) _data1_->dialog);
 block1_data_unref (_data1_);
 _data1_ = NULL;
}


static void ___lambda3__g_simple_action_activate (GSimpleAction* _sender, GVariant* parameter, gpointer self) {
 __lambda3_ (self);
}


static void __lambda5_ (MyApp* self) {
 GtkLabel* _tmp0_;
 _tmp0_ = self->priv->label;
 gtk_label_set_text (_tmp0_, "I have been clicked!");
}


static void ___lambda5__g_simple_action_activate (GSimpleAction* _sender, GVariant* parameter, gpointer self) {
 __lambda5_ (self);
}


static void my_app_build_menues (MyApp* self) {
 GMenu* _tmp0_;
 GMenu* app_menu;
 GSimpleAction* _tmp1_;
 GSimpleAction* quit_action;
 GSimpleAction* _tmp2_;
 GSimpleAction* about_action;
 GSimpleAction* _tmp3_;
 GSimpleAction* message_action;
 g_return_if_fail (self != NULL);
 _tmp0_ = g_menu_new ();
 app_menu = _tmp0_;
 g_menu_append (app_menu, "Message", "app.message");
 g_menu_append (app_menu, "About", "app.about");
 g_menu_append (app_menu, "Quit", "app.quit");
 gtk_application_set_app_menu ((GtkApplication*) self, (GMenuModel*) app_menu);
 _tmp1_ = g_simple_action_new ("quit", NULL);
 quit_action = _tmp1_;
 g_signal_connect_object (quit_action, "activate", (GCallback) ___lambda2__g_simple_action_activate, self, 0);
 g_action_map_add_action ((GActionMap*) self, (GAction*) quit_action);
 _tmp2_ = g_simple_action_new ("about", NULL);
 about_action = _tmp2_;
 g_signal_connect_object (about_action, "activate", (GCallback) ___lambda3__g_simple_action_activate, self, 0);
 g_action_map_add_action ((GActionMap*) self, (GAction*) about_action);
 _tmp3_ = g_simple_action_new ("message", NULL);
 message_action = _tmp3_;
 g_signal_connect_object (message_action, "activate", (GCallback) ___lambda5__g_simple_action_activate, self, 0);
 g_action_map_add_action ((GActionMap*) self, (GAction*) message_action);
 _g_object_unref0 (message_action);
 _g_object_unref0 (about_action);
 _g_object_unref0 (quit_action);
 _g_object_unref0 (app_menu);
}


static void my_app_class_init (MyAppClass * klass) {
 my_app_parent_class = g_type_class_peek_parent (klass);
 g_type_class_add_private (klass, sizeof (MyAppPrivate));
 G_APPLICATION_CLASS (klass)->activate = my_app_real_activate;
 G_OBJECT_CLASS (klass)->finalize = my_app_finalize;
}


static void my_app_instance_init (MyApp * self) {
 self->priv = MY_APP_GET_PRIVATE (self);
}


static void my_app_finalize (GObject* obj) {
 MyApp * self;
 self = G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE_CAST (obj, TYPE_MY_APP, MyApp);
 _g_object_unref0 (self->priv->label);
 _g_object_unref0 (self->priv->window);
 G_OBJECT_CLASS (my_app_parent_class)->finalize (obj);
}


GType my_app_get_type (void) {
 static volatile gsize my_app_type_id__volatile = 0;
 if (g_once_init_enter (&my_app_type_id__volatile)) {
  static const GTypeInfo g_define_type_info = { sizeof (MyAppClass), (GBaseInitFunc) NULL, (GBaseFinalizeFunc) NULL, (GClassInitFunc) my_app_class_init, (GClassFinalizeFunc) NULL, NULL, sizeof (MyApp), 0, (GInstanceInitFunc) my_app_instance_init, NULL };
  GType my_app_type_id;
  my_app_type_id = g_type_register_static (GTK_TYPE_APPLICATION, "MyApp", &g_define_type_info, 0);
  g_once_init_leave (&my_app_type_id__volatile, my_app_type_id);
 }
 return my_app_type_id__volatile;
}


static void _vala_array_destroy (gpointer array, gint array_length, GDestroyNotify destroy_func) {
 if ((array != NULL) && (destroy_func != NULL)) {
  int i;
  for (i = 0; i < array_length; i = i + 1) {
   if (((gpointer*) array)[i] != NULL) {
    destroy_func (((gpointer*) array)[i]);
   }
  }
 }
}


static void _vala_array_free (gpointer array, gint array_length, GDestroyNotify destroy_func) {
 _vala_array_destroy (array, array_length, destroy_func);
 g_free (array);
}

If we look at the function my_app_build_menues (line 245) you will see that on line 264 the action is added to the self object (equivilant to this in the vala code). The action adding just passes a function pointer to the function ___lambda3__g_simple_action_activate, and if we follow the path we will see that that function on line 228 calls an other function on line 193.

In the function prior mentioned ( __lambda3 () ) we can see that on line 211 there is another string-up to the function ___lambda4__gtk_dialog_response () on line 187 that runs the function on line 166.

This is what nested lambdas in Vala look like. it is scary and beautiful at the same time. I have no idea if lambdas are slower than just creating a function and using them as parameters to the action/callback/delegates, I just wanted to show of some of the sexy and dirty internals of Vala.

The paper crane and the abyss of terror.

"I Have a dark secret"
-- Someone

On the bombing in Boston.

I have not been watching or listening to the news these last few days, I must admit. But I have been on G+ and watched others react: some were horrified some were concerned, not only for those that lost limb and life and the possibility of it happening again, but also of the apparent overreaction of the authorities.

This last point is where I will start.

If I were the bomber

What was strange with this bombing was that no one claimed responsibility when it happened, so it was not rely an act of terrorism in that sense. That made me think that this was a lone crazy person (or a few).

It turned out that this was the work of an Islamist, young and disillusioned. more on this from ThunderF00t: here .

Any way... If I were the bomber, and I was a lone, crazy person, I would have been trilled to see the reaction of the authorities. A few dead and hurt is one thing, but having the whole city turned into a war-zone like place would have made me exalted because I would have caused fear and a living hell for the people in the city. Not only that but the loss to the economy would be great too. I would have won.

That is the point: the bomber won and the authorities lost, big.

The fact that he was arrested is of little importance here, the bomber won.

Why bombs?

The reason why bombs are so widely used by terrorists and other nutters is twofold: 1) confusion and 2) chock and awe.

The confusion caused by a bomb is a bit thrilling for the bomber, it makes it hard for authoresses to gather a comprehensive picture of what happened. And a clever bomber would have placed bombs in such a way that when paramedics arrive they are taken out causing more confusion.

Shock and Awe is something that is at the root of some acts of terror, it is the act of trying to make the target (be it a city, a state or a person) come around to your point of view. This is why Islamist terrorists are use bombs, they see it as a good way to chock (and awe) people into submission.

Aft word

I think I should make it clear that I think that bombing people is an act of cowardice. I do not condone the killing of others, at all for the matter (well perhaps a few).

So, what is my dark secret? I can put myself in the shoes of a mad man with his mind set on destruction. The colour red for anger, green for envy and black for murder is all they can see.

That is my secret.

Also: The latest Doctor Who was awesome.