Wed 10 October 2018
Random VM Name
Something I found to be cute about the docker engine is it's feature to create a random name for your containers, when one is not specified.
I've had some good ones e.g:
objective_galileo
distracted_euclid
Occasionally I'd be spinning up the odd VM and
have to provide some generic name like
dev-sebastien. So instead I thought my own
arbitrary name generation could save some time
here.
Random names
The idea was to combine <adjective>-<pokemon>
and use this as the VM parameter.
Thus defining the following in .create_name.sh
function gen_name()
{
pokemon=(
"pidgey"
"pikachu"
"cubone"
)
adjectives=(
"hungry"
"adorable"
"jittery"
)
select_pokemon=${pokemon[$RANDOM % {#pokemon[@]}] }
select_desc=${adjectives[$RANDOM % {#adjectives[@]}] }
local result=sebastien-$select_desc-$select_pokemon
echo "$result"
}
Call this in your .bash_aliases file.
source .create_name.sh
And every time you run gen_name in your command
line, you'll get a new "vm" name.
I've coupled this with:
create_instance(){
gcloud compute instances create $(gen_name);
}
Here are some of the names of my machines:
sebastien-livid-quagsire
sebastien-lonely-metapod
sebastien-gentle-rattata
Tue 09 October 2018
Foolscap List Ordering
Foolscap was my answer to losing all my notes and forgetting the exact file I saved it.
Was it on Desktop or next to the project?
Thus I decided to write an application that took care of the saving and finding of my notes.
Unordered Lists
One thing I have taken for granted is the ordering of my files in any file system. I only realised how important it was after unordered dictionaries in python allocated my notes random positions on the list.
The random ordering meant if I have note "M" in
mind, it could appear anywhere on the list. So my
eyes would track down n positions in the list to
find "M". An O(n) operation for my eyes.
After growing tired (a whole day of O(n) eye
operations), I wrote the rule to provide me the
list in alphabetical order. This was great my
brain automatically switched to doing a binary
search for note "M". O(log n)
Ordered Lists
Now that finding note "M" was optimised for my eyes, my finger had to press the down key until my cursor was on the note of choice. This wasn't good enough, I was referring to note "M" several times a day and the other notes I'd reference once a month were adding computation time to my finger.
This is where I introduced two of the most powerful rules of Foolscap. Since I tracked the number of views, and time it was last viewed or modified I could implement the following ordering:
1: LastView/Modified/RecentlyCreated
2: MostViewed
3: 2ndMostViewed
4: 3rdMostViewed
5: A
6: Z
This was neat!
I had significantly cut down the amount of time it took for me to get to the notes I was using most frequently.
Search Lists
Searching needed a slightly different ordering since applying the rules above to your search results will likely be meaningless. The meaningless will come from your inability to predict what will appear in the list to begin with.
Python has a neat method for it's strings.
note_title.startswith("text")
Which I used as the initial search feature. A
search by the prefix of my note title. To me this
made sense since my notes are titled by their
subject matter, e.g. "linux", "elastic".
The iteration to this search functionality was to include the conditional:
if "text" in note_title:
I still wanted to provide the user with the result of the initial prefix search as the first result in the list.
This is when I fathomed this solution:
search = [title for title, _ in notes.items()
if query in title]
# Sort by the position the query appears in the title
return sorted(search, key=lambda title: title.index(query))
Pretty neat!
Tue 09 October 2018
Procedural Villages
My inspiration for any tool or project has always been the thought that it could be done better, either that or I'd feel like I would benefit a lot from a missing feature.
In my first embarked I attempted to create a dungeon crawler, full of all the creatures and characters I thought were missing from traditional games.
It was through brute-force of the Roguebasin tutorial where I learnt how to code.
I must have created the same game 4 or 5 times before I decided to scrap the libtcod library and create a game without an interface.
Armed with stdout and turn-based printing, I
implemented feature after feature. One of the
features I was quite proud of was the randomly
generated villages I'd spawn my player into.
Objects
I was aiming for something simple, just populate
the map with houses that the player can interact
with, for this I deconstructed a house into a
rectangle.
class Rect:
def __init__(self, x, y, h, v):
self.x1 = x
self.y1 = y
self.x2 = x + h
self.y2 = y + v
def center(self):
center_x = (self.x1 + self.x2) / 2
center_y = (self.y1 + self.y2) / 2
return (center_x, center_y)
def internal(self, x, y):
"""
[ ][ ][ ][ ]
[ ][X][X][ ]
[ ][X][X][ ]
[ ][X][X][ ]
[ ][ ][ ][ ]
"""
...
return bool()
def edges(self, x, y):
"""
[X][X][X][X]
[X][ ][ ][X]
[X][ ][ ][X]
[X][ ][ ][X]
[X][X][X][X]
"""
...
return bool()
def sides(self, x, y):
"""
[ ][X][X][ ]
[X][ ][ ][X]
[X][ ][ ][X]
[X][ ][ ][X]
[ ][X][X][ ]
"""
...
return bool()
The poorly defined object above could now provide boolean confirmation to a co-ordinates existence in appropriate sections of a rectangle.
From the above Rect class I can place a door on
a Rect.sides() and I can fill the area
defined by Rect.internal() with items.
Empty space: | . |
Wall: | # |
Monster: | m |
Door: | + |
| . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | # | # | + | # | . |
| . | # | m | . | # | . |
| . | # | . | . | # | . |
| . | # | . | . | # | . |
| . | # | # | # | # | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . |
Throwing in some size variations and randomising the house position on the map, (making sure there are no houses intersecting each other). Allowed me to generate maps that looked like these:
Example 1
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | # | # | # | # | # | # | . | # | # | # | # | . | . | . |
| . | # | u | . | . | @ | # | . | # | . | m | # | . | . | . |
| . | + | . | . | . | . | # | . | # | . | . | + | . | . | . |
| . | # | # | # | # | # | # | . | # | # | # | # | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | > | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | # | # | + | # | # | # | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | # | . | . | r | . | # | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | # | . | . | . | . | # | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | # | # | # | # | # | # | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
Example 2
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | # | # | + | # | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | # | . | . | # | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | # | . | . | # | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | # | m | . | # | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | # | # | # | # | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | # | # | # | # |
| . | # | # | # | # | # | # | # | . | . | . | # | . | . | # |
| . | # | . | . | . | . | u | # | . | . | . | + | . | . | # |
| . | + | . | . | . | . | . | # | . | . | . | # | > | . | # |
| . | # | X | . | . | . | . | # | . | . | . | # | . | r | # |
| . | # | # | # | # | # | # | # | . | . | . | # | # | # | # |
| . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |
Unfortunately my code was not beautiful back then. I still think it was a neat idea