Matt Tarbit's Weblog

Bookmark for "Markus 'Notch' Persson Talks Making Minecraft"

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 09:28:01 +0000

Markus 'Notch' Persson Talks Making Minecraft. Nice content-ful Gamasutra interview from last year.

Bookmark for "How to Never Miss a Blog Post"

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:12:00 +0000

How to Never Miss a Blog Post. Nice way to trick yourself into posting more regularly.

Bookmark for "Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide"

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:07:54 +0000

Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide. Have been looking for something like this since watching Ryan Tomayko's Shell Hater's Handbook talk. (Update: Actually pretty sloppy and inaccurate. Give it a miss.)

Toggling relative line-numbering in Vim

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 12:30:31 +0000

With the recent release of Lion, OS X users get access to the latest version of Vim. That includes the new relative line-numbering feature which looks particularly useful given Vim's many line-wise operations (see :help relativenumber for details).

However, it might not be something you want on all the time. Absolute line-numbering is useful in debugging and for providing context, and relative line-numbering could be slightly distracting given that it changes as you move around. So, you might want to toggle between the two modes.

Toggling between absolute and relative isn't as simple as :set relativenumber! though, because norelativenumber just turns off line-numbering rather than falling back to number.

So here's one way of handling things. First set your default numbering:

if exists('+relativenumber')
    set relativenumber
else
    set number
endif

Add a function to toggle between the two modes:

function! ToggleNumbering()
    if exists("+relativenumber")
        if &relativenumber
            set number
        else
            set relativenumber
        endif
    else
        set number!
    endif
endfunc

If the option isn't available, e.g. you're on a version earlier than 7.3, it falls back to toggling line-numbering on or off. If you were so inclined, you could do a version that cycled between the 3 possible states (off, absolute and relative), but I prefer it like this.

Finally, map a keyboard shortcut to trigger the function:

noremap <leader>n :call ToggleNumbering()<cr>

I use <leader> mappings a lot for my own personal shortcuts, but a lot of people seem to prefer the function keys. You can replace <leader>n with <f12> or whatever if that includes you.

Paste that lot into your .vimrc and continue on your merry way.

Bookmark for "Chasing a Sound in your Head"

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 08:27:12 +0000

Chasing a Sound in your Head. On the conflict between videogame realism and videogame conventions. Particularly in RDR and Rockstar's other sandbox games.

It's alive!

Sun, 29 May 2011 10:49:10 +0000

Wheee, I thought this thing was permanently out of commission thanks to circumstances beyond my control, but it was fixable after all. I was this close to replacing it with one of those single-page placeholder sites.

Anyway. Fear ye, fear ye. I have returned.

Bookmark for "GNU Hello"

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:37:24 +0000

GNU Hello. A sample "hello, world" project from the GNU foundation as a demonstration of best practices.

Bookmark for "C-REPL"

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:33:53 +0000

C-REPL. Hacker news thread on interactive interpreters for the C programming language. Other examples mentioned in the comments, such as cint and ccons.

Bookmark for "fish"

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:30:29 +0000

fish. The "friendly interactive shell". Full of interesting ideas but sadly abandoned, riddled with bugs and fundamental flaws. Such a shame.

A quote from Ned Batchelder

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 14:59:25 +0000

“...why does Python have an adjective, when other languages do not? We don't hear about code being Javanese, or Pearly, or Rubinesque. Why don't we speak of code that is C-plush-plush, or PHPleasing?” - Ned Batchelder