Build Date: Thu May 16 01:30:05 2024 UTC
hhahaha! That made me spill beer on my keyboard.
-- Ratsnatcher
LEARN FORTH
1999-10-03 14:07:49
dewdz! I finally found a good Forth tutorial on the WEB! Praise be to Jesus!
I'm trying desperately to learn Forth real hard, in order to break my brain the final last bits and become the ultimate Bad Person of the Future. I think I pointed this out before, but it bears repeating: Forth is the horrible drunken rogue elephant of the programming world. Future space dictators will use Forth to program their legions of oppress-o-bots because it will make them EXTRA RUTHLESS and UNPREDICTABLE.
Anyways, learning Forth is hard. Not just because it's CRAZY in a tuneless-piping-of-idiots Lovecraftian way, but also because there AREN'T any good learning references on the Web. Maybe trying to explain Forth drives already unstable programmers over the edge into the realm of madness, where invisible demons drag them through the street and gnaw on their bones. So, like, they can't finish that Forth tutorial page or whatever. I dunno. This is just a theory.
Well, anywho, just when I was about to despair and go back to some prosaic and sane language like Python, I found the pForth Web page on Google. The Web site is GREAT. pForth is an implementation of Forth that is GREAT. (It's public domain, even.) But the most GREAT thing is that there's a FORTH TUTORIAL available.
The tutorial is good and easy and I was able to go through it in a couple of hours. I don't think it teaches you everything you need to know about Forth, but I think it gives you a good enough starting point to be able to teach yourself the rest. At least, I think so.
If doing the tutorial makes Forth too easy and prosaic, try doing it in FRENCH instead. Pretend you're a mad reclusive Quebecois robotics expert with a rocket launcher and a dream. I dunno, maybe it could help.
Rock the house and LEARN FORTH.
T O P S T O R I E S
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
Mozart to be inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame
Joining such hard-rocking inductees as Abba, Chet Atkins, Nat King Cole, and Neil Diamond, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is proud to induct Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (More...)
Gary Busey definitely involved in a hit and run accident
Gary Busey was definitely involved in a hit-and-run accident, but won't face any charges because he's rich and famous. (More...)
Gary Busey allegedly involved in Malibu hit-and-run
"Sir! You hit my car! I need your information!" the woman yelled at Gary Busey driving a battered Volvo station wagon before he sped off. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
The Walken / Country Bear Conspiracy
As has been recently reported in the PDJ, Christopher Walken, evil s00per villain extraordinaire, will be appearing next month in Disney's newest release, The Country Bear Movie. Always playing some wicked and very disturbed badass in movies like Sleepy Hollow, Illuminata, The Prophecy I, II, III, Pulp Fiction, Batman Returns, The Milagro Beanfield War, A View to a Kill, The Dogs of War, Heaven's Gate, and The Deer Hunter, Walken is unsuprisingly a big favorite in the PDJ news room. (More...)
About 14 years ago when I was on a road trip and stopped in Seattle, I was invited to a party. At this party there were these little tiny glasses sitting in a flat-bottomed bowl of ice. Thin cylinders about an inch in diameter and 4 inches tall, with thick glass at the bottom. Into these were poured frozen AKVAVIT... also known as the water of life. (More...)
NASA's Mars missions keep blowing up and crashing, but dammit, when you reach for the stars you have to expect a few minor setbacks. Drink a toast to the men and women of NASA! Toast them with a Lost Probe mixed up with your own two (or three) hands! (More...)
It’s election night. My wife and I are holed-up in this hotel that my political party has rented out for the evening. Outside, people are being violently beaten for whom they voted for. Is this South Africa? Perhaps we’re in Haiti or some Southern state during the 60’s. Of all the places where this sort of thing happens, it’s mind-boggling that we are in Portland, Maine. (More...)
The Innocent San Francisco Mule
Flesh and Abby have moved to an isolated rural location in the United States - equipped only with their sense of adventure. Recently they came down off the mountain briefly to file this report? (More...)
Three Days and 25 Spocktails: A Cautionary Tale
Johnnie Royale picked me up from the dental surgery. I felt warm, safe, cradled in the anathesia's loving embrace. The pharmacy downstairs gave me a bottle of Vicodin and a few instructions: take it with food, don't mix with alcohol, don't operate heavy machinery. I put it in my pocket and we left. "Do you want to go home, or do you want to go to a bar?" asked Johnnie. (More...)