Bits, No Pieces

Some friends of mine hang out on monkey.org. Today, while trying to remember what I was looking for, I was clicking randomly amongst the user pages of other folks there and found Rayzor, a Common Lisp ray tracer that looks neat. It uses CMUCL, but the author says it should port pretty easily.

Also, thanks to Matt, this NY Times article on Schenectady (log in required, no-cost registration). It's shorter than I would have preferred, but then what's there to write about? It fairly accurately describes Schenectady's decline, but I would have liked if it had gone into more historical detail rather than the policy angle. Policy is important, and it plays a part in why Schenectady is like it is now, as well as what can be done to revitalize Schenectady, but I believe that the story of Upstate New York is a story of many once-great cities now facing Schenectady's reality. Without that context, I don't see how any policy move will be anything other than half-hearted. Maybe I'll write up a longer piece that better describes what I'm thinking.

Just downloaded and installed the latest w.bloggar build, v3.03. Seems a bit faster on loading, and has title support, which is nice. This post is powered by w.bloggar.

In other software news, WinEdt Team just released WinEdt 5.4. They're calling it a beta on the website, but it feels like a finished release to me. I haven't had a chance to seriously exercise it yet, but there are a few Windows XP improvements that I noticed right off the bat.