No peace unto the wicked…

Wow. The harassment begins. Looks like my delta for posts before harassment begins is 4 days…

Here’s whats up:

1. CPS: I CPSed the subset of Scheme we’re working with high up in the compilation chain;

   this way, closure building and representation decisions that get made late in the chain will take care of the

   procedural representation of continuations I’m making use of (why? because I have lambda, why else?). Brooke

   (partner in crime in this endeavor) and I attempted to integrate my code into the rest of the compiler

   today, and I didn’t do a thorough job testing. After chatting with Amr this afternoon, I intend to heed his advice: keep

   it simple. I have some tools that traverse the tree looking for “simple” expressions in head and tail position, and

   it isn’t trivial. It isn’t horrendous, either, but it’s complex enough that when things don’t “just work,” I’m at a loss.

   Point being: time to throw some things out, start simple, put the code in a test harness, and do it right from the getgo. Well, that’s not

   entirely true: I’m going to simplify the “simple?” tests, and see if catching more things in the “complex-head-position” type continuation

   rules solves any of my problems.

2. The summer course I was teaching has shrunk–disasterously. Things are up in the air (today) as to what exactly is happening.

   I’m faced with a possible opportunity to teach C212, our second course in the majors sequence, while still mentoring a few kids in the LEGO stuff.

   Basically, teaching a full-on course in 8 weeks (daily lecture) while also assisting in the mentoring of some high school students in a research experience.

   Without going into too much painful detail, my options are basically:

   1. Relax, enjoy the summer, and spend lots of time with one or two motivated (I hope) students

      on research projects of our devising, focusing around agent-based stuff with the LEGO Mindstorms kit/Star LOGO/Anything cool.

      This option has no cash available for Brooke, who was planning on co-teaching the summer course.

   2. Panic, stress out, teach C212, leave most of summer LEGO stuff to Brooke. Come in and help out, but most of the mentoring falls to her.

      Includes cash for Brooke. Not much time available for me to, say, pack up the apartment and get ready for the move to the UK. Involves teaching for the

      seven weeks before I leave 4x/week, with possible responsibilities for checking in on labs, etc.

   Suggestions? Number 1 seems like the obvious thing, and number 2 would be good experience, a good challenge, and something I haven’t done before. I’d enjoy it,

   in a certain perverse way. I probably would not enjoy the life pressure that would result.

3. I bought a digital camera. And, a new CDRW is in the mail. These have nothing to do wiith my research, exactly, although the CDRW is a critical

   thing w.r.t. getting data overseas. And having a copy preserved here (backups!).

?