Top all-time · #7635
Bill Moorier
Personal blog · abstractnonsense.com · on HN as abstractbillstartupswriting
Bill Moorier's personal blog at abstractnonsense.com covers startups and writing. Since 2007, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 28 times, most often “Life at a startup”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this site mainly for Schemix, a Scheme system patched into the Linux kernel for interactive kernel prototyping. Commenters cite it as a defunct precedent for scripting the kernel.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Personal site of Bill Moorier - abstractnonsense.
Most-linked posts?
- /schemix/5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-10-17
- Life at a startup3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-03-08
What Hacker News says?
The other referenced blog post: http://abstractnonsense.com/life-at-a-startup/ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2302214
Comment linking /life-at-a-startup/
on “Launch”Submitted Life at a startup as a story · 226 points
HN discussionThere was something like this using Scheme, maybe 20 years ago, but I don't remember any details and don't think I ever tried it. Edit: see http://www.abstractnonsense.com/schemix/
Comment linking /schemix/
on “Lunatik: Lunatik is a framework for scripting the Linux kernel with Lua”Submitted I had my head examined... as a story · 165 points
HN discussionThis is my favorite image btw - my eyeballs look awesome ! http://abstractnonsense.com/mri-images/top-to-bottom/0117.jp...
Comment linking /mri-images/top-to-bottom/0117.jpg
on “I had my head examined...”Submitted A shower thought turned into a Collatz visualization as a story · 137 points
HN discussionLots of people -- I'm one of them -- find that switching whole windows seems to pop the mental stack. That's really interesting! I have the opposite problem - switching windows doesn't pop my mental stack, but if there's anything on the screen other than what I'm trying to focus on, it keeps diverting my attention and ruining my concentration. Fullscreen emacs on OSX (without even the system menu bar!) is just aweso…
Comment linking /desktop-2013-02-17.png
on “Slate: a Mac OS X window manager for power users”Submitted Show HN: Experiments in AI-generation of crosswords as a story · 38 points
HN discussionWe're hiring, by the way! Previous to ZeroCater, I was the first engineering hire at Justin.TV: http://abstractnonsense.com/life-at-a-startup If that sounds like the kind of experience you would enjoy, email me (bill@zerocater.com) - we're currently looking for our first engineering hire.
Comment linking /life-at-a-startup
on “ZeroCater (YC W11): Lunch At The Office Doesn’t Have To Be A Complete Pain”Submitted Life At A Startup (part 2) as a story · 33 points
HN discussionFlash's "allow" button is hidden for me (FF3.5, OS X): http://abstractnonsense.com/Screen_shot_2010-01-05_at_1.11.1...
Comment linking /Screen_shot_2010-01-05_at_1.11.11_PM.png
on “Ask HN: What are you working on?”Submitted Timber: A library for realtime pitch detection in web apps as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI have worked with and known adennis4 for 4 years and want to vouch for him. What he's leaving out is that he's incredibly motivated, hard working, and doesn't take no for an answer. He is one of the most outgoing and charismatic guys I know and I'd bet on him to succeed in his ventures through sheer force of will. He isn't a programmer, but he's trying to learn the ropes. He's still no slouch. He is the "everything…
Comment linking /life-at-a-startup/
on “Looking for a Technical CoFounder”Submitted A vesting idea as a story · 9 points
HN discussionThis is what it looks like to me: http://abstractnonsense.com/mm-slides.png I can't find a "download" button. You’ll probably want to full screen it. Fullscreen mode is disabled. You probably need something like allowfullscreen="true" in your embed code. Am I missing a joke? Or is it just broken?
Comment linking /mm-slides.png
on “Whiner Jerkins All Hands Meeting Powerpoint Revealed”Are they using regular Lua? Because LuaJIT can actually be quite fast. Snabb Switch is written mostly in Lua and it features Linux userland ethernet device drivers. http://blog.lukego.com/blog/2013/01/03/snabb-switchs-luajit-... (edit: link to the code https://github.com/SnabbCo/snabbswitch/tree/master/src/apps/... ) btw. there once was a project which added a Scheme interpreter to the Linux kernel. Sadly it's dead…
Comment linking /schemix/
on “Lua support in the NetBSD kernel”Schemix was "a Scheme system implemented as a patch to the Linux kernel ... for exploration of the Linux kernel and for rapid, interactive prototyping of Linux drivers and other new kernel features" http://www.abstractnonsense.com/schemix/ But Schemix has been inactive since 2003.
Comment linking /schemix/
on “Scriptable Operating Systems with Lua [pdf]”How would you like to have a REPL for kernel development, like on the Lisp Machines? (Yes, that's a rhetorical question!) Take TCC with your point 1 above. Mix it with the ideas from Schemix ( http://abstractnonsense.com/schemix/ ). Now you can iteratively development a kernel driver! I hacked on Schemix a while back, updating it to 2.6 module system (unfortunately lost the source code before it got uploaded). It's…
Comment linking /schemix/
on “PicoC: a very small C interpreter for scripting”Years ago, there was a project for Linux (now defunct) that used Scheme to script the Linux kernel. http://www.abstractnonsense.com/schemix/
Comment linking /schemix/
on “Scriptable operating systems with Lua (2014) [pdf]”From their (estimated) first year of traffic, it looks like Wolfram Alpha is in the "trough of sorrow" right now: http://abstractnonsense.com/w_alpha.png
Comment linking /w_alpha.png
on “Happy 1st Birthday, Wolfram Alpha”This is modest if not simple by hacker standards I'm not so sure about that ;-) My setup is simpler than yours: I do all my development on one machine - a macbook pro (Tiger, haven't got around to upgrading yet). I run only three applications pretty much all the time, and they're all full-screen - Firefox, Emacs and iTunes, and alt-tab between them. Occasionally I also start a Terminal, if I want to ssh into a serve…
Comment linking /workspace.jpg
on “Ask HN: Your Hacker Workspace”I'm sure my desktop would look pretty stark to most people. That's the way I like it though. Basically I only ever have two windows open, both maximized - Emacs and FireFox. I spend 90% of my time in Emacs - this is what it looks like: http://abstractnonsense.com/desktop.png (that's not my code btw - it's a random python library). If I knew of a way to hide even more superfluous stuff (window decorations, the menu b…
Comment linking /desktop.png
on “Hackers' screen shots”I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes out of xobni. I've heard nothing but good things about the team. btw, the blog header doesn't render correctly on FF/ubuntu: http://abstractnonsense.com/xobni-bad-rendering.png
Comment linking /xobni-bad-rendering.png
on “YC's Xobni: Lessons learned in the last 14 months”For those are interested, I am sure it has been brought up before, the inverse has been brought up before, an in-kernel Scheme for debugging and some more crazy testing, schemix. [0] Unfortunately, the project is long since deprecated. [0] http://www.abstractnonsense.com/schemix/
Comment linking /schemix/
on “Why not port the Linux kernel to Common Lisp? (2009)”This is what my desktop looks like for more than 90% of the time: http://abstractnonsense.com/desktop.png If emacs wasn't taking up the whole screen, I'd have a scrollbar running down the middle of the screen, which would be really visually distracting. I used virtual desktops a lot back when I used Linux for my desktop os. They're great, and I'm sure I'll use them again when I upgrade from Tiger. But, for me at lea…
Comment linking /desktop.png
on “My Mac Mini”Common Lisp: http://abstractnonsense.com/math.html It also handles function calls; sin(x) becomes (sin x). For example: * (infix-to-prefix '(1 + sin(3 + x) * 42)) (+ 1 (* (SIN (+ 3 X)) 42)) If you want the input to be a string, just use read-from-string and add parens at each end of the input string.
Comment linking /math.html
on “How many of lines of code for infix-to-prefix?”http://abstractnonsense.com/datejs.png
Comment linking /datejs.png
on “Datejs: A Truly Slick Date Script”Your web pages do not render correctly in firefox: http://abstractnonsense.com/juwo.png
Comment linking /juwo.png
on “juwo beta is released (at last!). Please use it and help improve it!”
