Automated updates: 2022-02-21

2022-02-21-language.md

@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: Developer Journal, Mother Language Day
+date: 2022-02-21 06:42:05-0500
+categories:
+tags: [programming, project, devjournal]
+summary: Progress on assorted projects
+thumbnail: /blog/assets/Mother-Tongue-Day-Islamabad.png
+proofed: true
+---
+
+Today is [International Mother Language Day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mother_Language_Day), a celebration promoting linguistic and cultural diversity.  It derives from the Bengali language movement in Bangladesh.
+
+It's probably no secret that I'm a fan of human language, so I appreciate dedicated days like this one.
+
+![Islamabad demonstration supporting the Punjabi language](/blog/assets/Mother-Tongue-Day-Islamabad.png "Without language, we would have no puns or wordplay")
+
+You don't need to learn a new language now, though.  You can wait until after I ramble about projects.
+
+## Morning Dashboard
+
+{% github jcolag/dash %}
+
+It turns out that, [a couple of weeks ago]({% post_url 2022-02-07-cripple-creek %}), when I said that I updated the **Morning Dashboard** to visually note freezing rain with the ice cube 🧊 emoji...that was a lie.  Or rather, I definitely did the work, but I guess committed something else in its place.
+
+Anyway, that update is now available, though that's still a mediocre choice of emoji that doesn't necessarily have a better option.
+
+Also, when Thunderbird is running, the script is unable to open the database, so it makes a copy.  It had been making that copy in its local folder, but that's unsatisfying, especially when checking the repository status to make sure that I haven't missed anything that needs publishing.  So, it's now smart enough to put the copy in the system's temporary folder.
+
+## Entropy Arbitrage
+
+{% github jcolag/entropy-arbitrage-code %}
+
+When I started [writing Jekyll plugins]({% post_url 2021-07-21-jekyll %}) for the blog, last summer, I said the following in passing about the range of possibilities that the ability could enable.
+
+ > More useful whenever I embed video or a book from the Internet Archive, I need to look up the syntax and rescale everything, whereas a plugin can do that automatically.
+
+...And then I never did that, even though it's mostly trivial, while the alternative isn't at all readable.
+
+```html
+<iframe
+  src="https://archive.org/embed/VIDEO_PATH"
+  width="740"
+  height="555"
+  frameborder="0"
+  webkitallowfullscreen="true"
+  mozallowfullscreen="true"
+  allowfullscreen
+>
+</iframe>
+```
+
+I put one of those frames together every few weeks, and I always forget to update the height and width, forget to reformat, or something, on the first try.  More embarrassing than that, there's only one piece of this that ever changes:  The last component of the URL path.
+
+So, there's now an `archive` plugin, which generates the whole `iframe` tag, and a test script.
+
+You'll also find an update to the fake-link plugin.  I noticed that I stupidly kept the same title text as the fake-button plugin, and "this button doesn't do anything" isn't nearly as useful as "this link doesn't go anywhere."  The latter should now appear.
+
+## Library Updates
+
+I needed to bump library versions for [**RenewDB**](https://github.com/jcolag/RenewDB), [**Fýlakas Onomáton**](https://github.com/jcolag/fylakas-onomaton), [**Bicker**](https://github.com/jcolag/Bicker), and [**Generic Board Game**](https://github.com/jcolag/generic-board-game).
+
+## Unexpected Bonus:  Thue
+
+{% github jcolag/Thue %}
+
+Maybe oddly, I think, I should also mention that **Thue**'s repository has recently gotten a fair amount of attention...but not from me.  Specifically, over the past few days, about a dozen people have "starred" the language interpreter on GitHub.
+
+Oddly, I haven't touched the repository in nearly eight years, nor have I modified the code since long before that.  My best guess is that someone must have mentioned it, somewhere, and so a bunch of younger people might be discovering the language for the first time.  I can't find the reference driving this, though, so it's still a mystery.
+
+Also mysterious, it's only about two hundred lines of C code with minimal comments, when there are far better languages today to handle text conversions.  That's a peculiar thing to interest a bunch of people all at once.
+
+Incidentally, I wrote about the [toy programming languages that I have developed]({% post_url 2020-01-05-proglang %}), early in the life of the blog, for anybody who would like a "guided tour."
+
+## Next
+
+I have a (small) new project, roughly similar in nature to the [Daily Nonogram]({% post_url 2021-02-21-nonogram %}) that'll probably get published this week.  Working with the Daily Nonogram code revealed a couple of bugs that need fixing, too.
+
+* * *
+
+**Credits**:  The header image is [Mother Tongue Day, Islamabad](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mother_Tongue_Day,_Islamabad.JPG) by [Khalid Mahmood](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Khalid_Mahmood), made available under the terms of the [Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en) license.