Saturday, December 15, 2007

Dead blog?

I suppose a year-and-a-half without an update qualifies as a dead blog. I've even dropped off the blog roll at Planet Lisp due to inactivity. Sniff.

Anyway, I've been busy in that time. I've joined RedHat where I'm working on the Frysk debugger/system profiler tool. It's all written in Java, which is an interesting experience for this old Lisper. We're using compiled Java via gcj, which gives you the worst of both worlds: you're stuck writing in Java, but you don't have the rapid turn-around advantages of a byte-coded language. Oh well. Compilation is getting faster as gcj adapts ecj and other Java compiler technology. Otherwise the project is a lot of fun and has to deal with many thorny, low-level issues. Smart colleagues are a requirement for a good job experience, and RedHat sure has 'em.

I've been indulging my old passion for real-time computer projects in a big way. I've made some contributions to Open Scene Graph, and I have become a committer on the FlightGear flight simulator project. Why waste time flying around in Microsoft Flight Simulator when you could be coding?