Month: February 2025

Coding

Updated My Coding Tool

Baymax found a pillow. It’s actually Mark’s Steam Deck case, but it works for the cat.

Baymax is going home tomorrow! We’re really going to miss him. Oh, Mark is also going home tomorrow. We’ll miss him a lot too. It’s been nice having Baymie here for about two months! It’s also been nice having Mark here for a few days. Two months would have been even better!

Many days have gone by again since my last post. But I have not been inactive. Mostly inactive, true. But not entirely.

IDE Worries

I’ve been using a web-based application called Code-Server. It’s a clone of VS Code, but without the telemetry. At least that’s how it’s advertised. I think its main strength is that since it’s web-based, I can code from anywhere. Just open a browser, log in, and start. It works with GitHub and has extensions for pretty much every language and tool that you can find on VS Code. Pretty cool. I’ve written a tiny bit of sample Python code as a proof of concept and it’s pretty slick.

One problem: I can’t seem to get FORTRAN working on it.

FORTRAN Woes

Heaven knows I’ve tried. There is a FORTRAN extension or two. I installed one, pasted some FORTRAN code into the IDE, and . . . It didn’t compile. As I recall, the source code was formatted as a FORTRAN program, but the ‘Run” button didn’t appear.

I figured maybe I didn’t have an actual compiler installed on the server hosting the IDE. So I installed one via command line, compiled the little programs I had written (sort of – more detail later), and went back to the IDE to try again. Still nothing. So I gave up.

And It’s Resolved, Mostly

I installed VS Code on Shemp the Mac Studio. I got it hooked up to GitHub, installed a few extensions , brought up my Python demo, and it works great!

That’s as far as I got before I ran out of time. I’ll try it again tomorrow or Sunday.

The good thing about GitHub it that I can install VS Code on any machine I want to use to develop and have them all synchronized with my code libraries. it still kind of prefer my web-based code server, but it just wasn’t working with FORTRAN. And who doesn’t want to code in FORTRAN?

Speaking of which, I had ChatGPT write me a couple of little programs: one to write a list of very large random numbers to a file and another to add them all up. Silly, but it’s a reasonable demo of FORTRAN’s large number handling capabilities. I’ll dig up the source code and post it here:

Here’s the program to generate the random numbers:

program generate_large_random_numbers
    implicit none
    integer, parameter :: dp = kind(1.0d0)
    real(dp) :: number
    integer :: i
    intege :: unit, ios
    real(dp) :: scale
    call random_seed()  ! Initialize the random number generator
 
    unit = 10  ! File unit number
    scale = 1.0e10_dp  ! Scale factor to generate large numbers
 
    ! Open the file for writing
    open(unit, file='numbers.txt', status='replace', action='write', iostat=ios)
    if (ios /= 0) then
        print *, 'Error opening file'
        stop
    end if
 
    ! Generate and write 50 large random numbers
    do i = 1, 50
        call random_number(number)  ! Generate a random number between 0 and 1
        number = number * scale  ! Scale it to a larger range
        write(unit, '(F30.10)', iostat=ios) number
        if (ios /= 0) then
            print *, 'Error writing number ', i
            stop
        end if
    end do
 
    ! Close the file
    close(unit)
 
    print *, '50 large random numbers have been written to numbers.txt'
 
end program generate_large_random_numbers

And here’s the one to sum the numbers up:

program sum_large_numbers
    implicit none
    integer, parameter :: dp = kind(1.0d0)
    real(dp) :: sum
    real(dp) :: number
    integer :: i
    integer :: unit, ios
 
    sum = 0.0_dp
    unit = 10  ! File unit number
 
    ! Open the file for reading
    open(unit, file='numbers.txt', status='old', action='read', iostat=ios)
    if (ios /= 0) then
        print *, 'Error opening file'
        stop
    end if
 
    ! Read and sum the numbers
    do i = 1, 50
        read(unit, *, iostat=ios) number
        if (ios /= 0) then
            print *, 'Error reading number ', i
            stop
        end if
        sum = sum + number
    end do
 
    ! Close the file
    close(unit)
 
    ! Print the result
    print *, 'The sum of the 50 large numbers is: ', sum
 
end program sum_large_numbers

Try ‘em out!

Off-day, Reading

Happy Super Sunday

Here’s Baymax checking out the top of the cabinets. He had his annual shots yesterday and he’s been acting like he doesn’t feel a hundred percent, so this was a good sign. Porculent though he may currently be, he can certainly still jump.

I’m mentioning the big football game in lieu of any coding accomplishments. I’ve been busy busy busy, but not coding coding coding. Don’t worry, dear reader, I’ll get there.

So what have I been doing this past week or so instead? For one, reading. I have a two-book-a-month reading schedule this year and I’ve just gotten to book 2: Writing to Learn, by William Zinsser. It has an interesting premise: we learn by writing. There – I just saved you a few dollars.

But Zinsser tells it in a much more interesting – and wordy – fashion than I do. He quotes extensively from other writers, some of whom were already excellent practicioners of their subject and also excellent writers. Other time, excellent writers address a subject and learn it during the act of writing about it. It’s an interesting premise and an excellent book. More than worth the $5.50 I spent for the Kindle version.

While taking my lifelong hobby of reading back up, I got my Kindles out and assessed their condition. Everything still works fine. The two actual Kindles – my 7th-gen unlit one and my 7th-gen front-lit one, both from 2015, along with my 7-inch 5th-gen Fire Tablet from 2016 – are in great shape, with flawless displays, controls, and batteries. Add to that my iPhone, iPad, and cheapo Android tablet, all of which have the Kindle app, and I never lack for something to read and some device to read it on.

Joanne also recently convinced me by example to start using Goodreads. It’s a great place to track progress and share status with friends (she’s my only friend, natch), but it doesn’t seem to give me the ability to plan my reading order. So I’m using my installation of osTicket to track that on its Tasks list. I have my next 5 books and their completion due dates logged there.

So far, I’m ahead of my 2025 reading plan by a few days. I doubt that will continue indefinitely.

Kickoff is in an hour, so I’m outta here. See you soon.

Coding, Off-day, Swift, Tutorial

Well, then

Here’s today’s good news: I got my 3D printer leveled and working fine again! I hadn’t printed anything on it for months because last time I tried, I just couldn’t level the bed. That pretty much meant I couldn’t print anything. I even thought of declaring my old printer dead and buying a new one. But I gave it just one more chance today and it really wasn’t very hard to level it using my old trusty method of using a piece of paper to set the space between the print head and the bed on all four corners. Of course, I had tried that way back then too, but here we are. At least it’s working now. Pictured above is a tiki drink coaster. It’s the first thing I printed today. Also the only thing. It took a couple hours. My printer is not fast.

I didn’t code for a couple days, and then I did code yesterday but didn’t document anything. There’s not much to document, though, since I have an error somewhere that’s been challenging to find.

The section I worked on was supposed to teach me how to create some graphical elements of the app. It’s pretty slick, but I clearly have a bug somewhere there. Here’s what it’s supposed to look like:

And here’s what my version looks like:

That’s kind of close, I guess, but I definitely missed something somewhere. I hope to figure it out tomorrow and move forward. I’ll report back here.

Nothing more to report. See you tomorrow