The results of the poll that asked “What do you use most for Clojure development?”
by Rayne on Nov.24, 2009, under Uncategorized
At the end of last month, I began a poll, asking Clojure users which IDEs and editors they use most for Clojure development. I think it’s been up long enough, and I believe that it’s leveled out enough to go ahead and post the results.
I had a total of 295 voters.
As predicted, clojure-mode came out on top with a total of 170 votes, to make up 58% of all the votes.
VimClojure came in second with 45 votes, to make up 15% of all votes.
Enclojure is third with 30 votes, to make up 10% of all votes.
Counterclockwise is forth with 21 votes, making up 7% of all votes.
Other came in 5th with 17 votes, making up 6% of all votes.
La Clojure came in at 12 votes, making up 4% of all votes.
Thanks to everybody who voted for voting.
Running a poll to see what people use most for Clojure development
by Rayne on Oct.31, 2009, under Coding
I’m running a poll here on Acidrayne to find out what people use most for Clojure development. My guesses are that Clojure-Mode and Slime will come out on top by a landslide, but it’s still worth seeing how many people use the other ones listed as well. This poll obviously isn’t going to speak for the entire Clojure community, but I hope a fair number of people will come in and vote.
If you select the ‘other’ category, please comment with an explanation, if you feel like it. You aren’t obligated to do so.
Here’s the poll:
Loading ...Thanks for reading.
A basic explanation of Wicca.
by Rayne on Oct.10, 2009, under Wicca
Wicca is a nature-based religion mostly founded in 1951 by a man named Gerald Gardner, based around old Pagan nature-religion from the past. Wiccans have great reverence for the earth and all it’s creatures, and typically try to make it a better place.
Wicca is a part of a group of religions known as ‘Neo-Pagan’ religions. It’s the largest of the Neo-Pagan religions.
Wiccans typically honor a mother Goddess, usually seen as the Tripple-Goddess representing three different aspects of life, Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Most of the time, they also honor the God of hunting, who is seen as the Goddess’s counter-part. Some Wiccans actually worship many Gods, but even then, a lot of them picture those other Gods as simply different aspects of the main God and Goddess.
The majority of Wiccans believe that there is an incomprehensible power, an Ultimate Deity if you will, that controls all things within the universe. That is all things within the universe. This Ultimate Deity, The One, is so unbelievably complex, that we can only have the vaguest understanding of it’s existence. But we know it’s there, and we want to thank it for what we have, and ask it for what we need (a la praying?). But how can you pray to something that you have only the vaguest understanding of? The answer is what almost all religions do. We take that ultimate deity, and we split it up into more understandable parts. Different deities. So where we have the God and Goddess, Christians have Jesus and Mary, and the Egyptians have… Well, I forget what they have, but you get the point.
Because Wiccans believe these things, we actually end up being a more gentle, easy going religion than Christianity and a lot other religions. Where Christians believe that their ‘God’ is the only God, and everything else is ‘Satan’, Wiccans believe that their God is actually at the very top of the hierarchy, our ‘God’ if you will, as well. Wiccans believe that religions are simply different paths all leading to a common center. We believe everyone is going to the same place when they die. We respect and admire other religions as simply different paths. The only animosity we have against Christianity and some other religions and philosophies is the fact that they deny their followers freedom and happiness.
Wiccans follow something called ‘The Wiccan Rede’, which says “An’ it harm none, do what thou wilt.” or “An’ ye harm none, do what ye will.” depending on the source. This Rede is our code of morality, and we live our lives trying to follow it. It means, do whatever you want to do, as long as you hurt nobody in the process, including yourself. It’s like the ten-commandments, shortened into a single sentence, only much more limiting. You can see how it would be limiting right?
And here is the part we’ve all been waiting for! *applause*
In the beginning, Wicca was just called ‘Witchcraft’. But because of the falsely negative connotations associated with the word ‘Witchcraft’, a lot of people started using the word ‘Wicca’ instead, and that’s basically the norm now. Wiccans are called Wiccans or Witches. To most of us, the term is interchangeable.
Most Wiccans do practice some form of what we term for lack of a better word ‘Magic’, on some occasions, but it’s quite rare, and it’s not what you think it is either. Wiccans only use Magic when there is a very real need for magic, and it’s our last resort. Magic is simply building up large amounts of energy, and releasing that energy into the universe to try to manipulate the physical world to our will. It’s about as ‘weird’ as praying is, to be honest. When we use Magic, we are trying to improve our lives and the lives of others around us. But remember, we are bound by the Wiccan Rede. We cannot even attempt to use Magic to harm another person. If it wasn’t called ‘magic’, it probably wouldn’t seem weird at all would it? It wouldn’t seem weirder than praying, because with praying you are trying to accomplish the same thing, only you are asking the God(s) to do it for you. In Magic, we take responsibility ourselves, and try to, with the help of the Gods, reach our goal. We don’t try to claim we have magical powers, and we don’t guarantee that magic always works. Magic is our way of trying to make reaching our goals a little easier, but we still have to work toward our goals in the mundane world.
A good place to find more information about Wicca is the Religious Tolerance site, and Wiccapedia (see what I did there?).
If you’re interested in Wicca, and want to understand it even deeper than any of these websites can explain it, I recommend you purchase Raymond Buckland’s Complete Book Of Witchcraft, or Wicca for One – The Path of Solitary Witchcraft by Raymond Buckland as well.
If you’re Wiccan, and you see any inconsistencies with this post, please comment or send me an email. My email address is Rayne (at) acidrayne (.) net.
Thank you for reading.
Pokémon Corál Release 1!
by Seth on Sep.28, 2009, under Seth's Projects
So, Pokémon Corál is finally in its first release. Sorry for the delay; I quit for a while and just finished back up today.
When you download Release1.rar, you will get the executable, the source, the dialogue/playthrough .odt, the dialogue/playthrough.pdf, and the license (Eclipse 1.0.)
Link: http://s3thst4.acidrayne.net/pokemoncoral/Release1.rar
Hope you enjoy!
~Seth.
Another post about CARM.
by Rayne on Sep.13, 2009, under Religious Discrimination
I made a brief post about CARM a little over a week ago. Their information on Wicca, and their instructions on how to deal with Wiccans is derogatory and senseless. He openly proclaims that Christians believe all religions that aren’t Christianity are absolutely false, and demonic here. Along with that, on the same page, he gives some ignorant story as to why Wicca is evil, and dangerous, and how methods of divination are so dangerous. Give me a fucking break. Does he have any clue what he’s talking about? I don’t think so. I’ve been involved in Wicca, preforming divination, and working Magick occasionally when absolutely necessary for 4 years now, and my life has done nothing but get better because of it. I speak for the thousands of Wiccans around the world when I say, Wicca improves us as human beings. Without the rules and Dogma of a religion like Christianity, we are free to better ourselves in the ways we want to. We are free to form our own beliefs as it pertains to Wicca. We are free.
This man comes up with several little stories about how just researching Wicca caused problems in his life, and it was obviously the work of the devil. Sorry, Mark, but you can’t blame your stupidity and clumsiness on a religion you happen to have problems with.
He also makes a little remark about how the Wiccans might try a spell to remove his (derogatory) information from the site. This leads me to believe he doesn’t know what Magic is, or how we use it, because any Wiccan would know that you can’t mess with free will. The most we would do is ask the Lord and Lady to open up your mind, and show you that the Bible isn’t the end all be all of our time on this planet.
It makes me absolutely sick that this man would sit up there on his Christian throne, and treat us Pagans as if we were lesser beings. He leads the readers of his site to believe that we are evil, but we don’t know we’re evil. C’mon man, give us some credit.
He tells his readers that we are accidentally worshiping the devil, and we must be converted. In order to convert us, he tells his followers to be nice cause you wouldn’t want to get a Wiccan mad right? They might cast a hex on you! He tells them to ask us questions about our spirituality. Apparently, he shows so little respect for our faith, that he actually believes that there are questions that Christians can answer legitimately, but we can’t. He had a set of questions on the site, and I answered them in my last post. Nearly every single one of those questions could be turned around and applied to Christianity with little or no modification.
Matt, and other Christians who might be reading this. I don’t and never will apply Mark’s attitude to Christianity, and pretend that every Christian is the same as he is. In my experience, most are, but a lot aren’t. This happens when the majority of the world is happy calling themselves Christian with little or no knowledge of what the term means. Just please, understand. The Bible doesn’t answer all questions. It is doesn’t prove Christianity is true, and you can wave that Bible around for all eternity, and it will still be no more legitimate than Wicca, or any other religion is. It’s a piece of written text, in which half the information has been proven false by science.
When someone asks a Wiccan a question, we answer honestly from our beliefs, and what we have learned over time. Christians answer by tossing a Bible verse in the air, and expecting it to be a solid rule. It doesn’t work like that. It’s a book, not a get-out-of-jail-free card. I don’t see how you can say that Christianity is the only viable religion when all you have on your side is a pretty little best-selling book.
Wiccans more than anybody just want everybody to be happy, and live in peace and spiritual harmony. We love Christians, and members of all other religions, whether we agree with their theology and beliefs or not. It doesn’t matter. We are all connected. We are all one. We need to wake up and realize it before it’s too late. We don’t ask much of Christians. We leave you guys alone, because the only problem we have with you is the fact that you wont leave anybody else alone. All we as Wiccans ask, is please, leave us the fuck alone! We don’t need to be converted, and we don’t want to be converted. Your beliefs mean nothing to us. You cannot fight and convert us with your so-called truth because we don’t subscribe to that truth. Your religion is on the same level as all other religions, not higher or better. Your rules are not solid fact, and what you believe cannot be pressed upon another as the truth because we know what the real truth is, and that is that we are all spiritually equal, and not a single one of us is better than the other, and not a single religion is right for everyone, or better than another.
They are all just paths leading to a common center, why can’t we just choose the ones we want to choose?
I hope Christians don’t take offense to this post if they read it, but you have to understand where I’m coming from. You have to step out of your warm and cozy little Christian shell and see that everything is not so black and white. You must wake up.
Thank you for reading, and blessed be.
-Rayne
Pokémon Corál!
by Seth on Sep.08, 2009, under Seth's Projects
Pokémon Corál is a text-based RPG written in C#. It is a Console application, of course.
I’m writing dialogue before programming this time, so it should be more organized.
I have an Update engine that checks if an update is available.
I currently have established a map system that looks like so:
Press Enter to move. X|G|G|G
Press Enter to move. G|X|G|G
and so forth. I hope to get the first release out by the 12th.
Not really much else to type here, but I will include the TODO list. Soon, I’ll write a basic site on my portion of acidrayne, and I’ll provide the link.
Blessed be,
~Seth.
TODO List:
Update engine. (Check)
Battle engine.
Save System.
Introduction.
Route 1 (10 spaces)
Pokémon Rest Stop.
Route 2 (10 spaces)
Pokémon Side-quest
CARM is garbage.
by Rayne on Sep.04, 2009, under Religious Discrimination
CARM is Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry, and as far as I can tell, it’s an entire website almost completely focused on revealing other religions as evil garbage, surely the work of the devil. I took personal offense at their evaluation of Wicca. They have done nothing but ridiculed themselves further in the eyes of Wiccans, by continuing the age old tradition of attempting to destroy something they do not understand. As an educational experience for Christians and Pagans alike, I suggest you read this highly biased information on Wicca from CARM, to show you a prime example of the type of Christians that Wiccans have animosity against. The man writing it, Mark Slick I believe his name is, claims to have researched Wicca, but appears to know very little about it. Most of what he says focuses on Magic, which in reality is a very small part of Wicca as a whole, and what he does say about it is completely wrong. I’m not going to address everything he said, because any experienced Wiccan will be able to see the ignorance in his word.
Mark obviously thought he was being slick (no pun intended.) when he wrote this list of questions for Christians to ask Wiccans. As if we couldn’t answer the questions without faltering. If you’ll notice, and this is something I find very amusing, most of these questions actually apply, unmodified, to Christianity. I compiled a list of answer to his questions.
Questions for Wiccans, answered.
1. The Gods and Goddesses of Wicca are generally believed to just be our personal human expressions of an ultimate deity that is everything, and controls everything around us.
2. I don’t /know/ they exist, but I believe they exist, and I have faith that they exist just like you have faith God exists.
3. Wicca is a religion that encourages it’s followers to modify general beliefs to fit what they, themselves, really believe. Unlike Christianity, we don’t any hard and fast rules that tell our followers what to believe, because we all believe that no matter what we believe we are still believing in the same ultimate deity, and we’re all going to the same place regardless. It’s all about finding your personal path to spiritual enlightenment.
4. I think that it’s the best path for me, and I wish others would open their eyes and see the beauty of it. I think it’s a beautiful thing, and it’s truly a path for modern society.
5. Your personal belief are of your own invention, drawn from what you as an individual have learned from evaluating our existence, and this life. Read number 3. It doesn’t matter what you believe in, nearly every Wiccan believes that you /should/ personalize Wicca because Wicca doesn’t have any hard and fast rules telling you what to believe like some religions. We’re all going to the same place when we die.
6. Most forms of Wicca are non-verifiable ideas, just like Christianity.
7. Why would they be? What is your definition of good? What if our definition doesn’t fit the God’s definition? We believe that the forces we manipulate are just natural forces. Simply the forces of nature. Nature is everything, good, bad, white, black, yellow, green, wood, water, et al. Magic can be used for any purpose, but not by Wiccans. Wiccans are bound by the Wiccan Rede to only use Magic for the purpose of good. No harm to anyone including ourselves can come from it. If we defy that, our one and only law, we aren’t really Wiccans at all. I don’t think the person writing these questions, and all of CARM’s information on Wicca really knows what he is talking about. At the very least, he had little to no understanding of the Magic we believe in and practice.
8. How do you know that the Bible wasn’t just another literary text? We don’t subscribe to your Christian theology, and we don’t believe in a deity of ultimate evil such as Satanism. We believe there are harmful spirits out there, and we do protect ourselves from them. The God and Goddess is /everything/, good, evil, et al. They embody all things, but because they /are/ everything, they are also nothing. They love us, and all their creations. Everything in existence is linked together by spirit. Everything is linked by love.
9. Once again, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. The rituals we do are nothing but symbolism to help us connect with the God and Goddess, the ultimate deity, and in turn, Nature. The tools we use are not necessary, but we use them to set the correct mood for us to enter the state we need to be in to commune with the Gods, and perform our workings. Our rituals are no more esoteric than some of the traditions upheld within the Christian church. As a side note, I don’t use knives in my rituals unless I’m carving something, or need to slice an apple. Of course you would nit pick an Athame ritual knife out of the whole thing just to make Wicca look sinister.
Most of the answers I’ve provided for this questions are something most Wiccans will agree upon.
Christians, please don’t be like the people who created this site, you have got to understand that there is something better out there. This kind of attitude towards other religions is old, outdated, and very undesirable. We try to not go around judging your faith, and when we do, it’s usually in defense to you ridiculing ours. We just want peace and love and spiritual harmony in this world. Why can’t we have that? Why can’t we just get along.
Thank you for reading.
Blessed be.
Setting up Emacs, Slime, and clojure-mode manually on Linux.
by Rayne on Aug.19, 2009, under Coding
Although there are several plugin currently out, and in development for all the popular Editors, most people just use Emacs, Slime, and Clojure-mode. Slime is Superior Lisp Interaction Mode, it’s extremely popular among Clojure and Common-Lisp users. First of all, download and install the latest version of Emacs. The machine I’m using in this tutorial is Ubuntu Hardy, but it should work for Windows with a little modification.
Make a directory where you will put all of the Clojure-related stuff. Mine is located at /home/rayne/clojure. A lot of people use a special folder for all their emacs lisp (.el) files, but I put all clojure-related emacs lisp files in their own folders in my Clojure directory. I also have a folder called /home/rayne/clojure/clojure where Clojure itself is kept.
Download and install Clojure. For this you will need to install Git. You could also alternatively, download the binary package of version 1.0 that Rich hosts on Github, but most people just get it from Git. Create your clojure directory in your home folder. For this tutorial, my folder will be the example folder. Switch to the new clojure directory, and type:
$ git clone git://github.com/richhickey/clojure.git
Once that’s finished, switch to clojure/clojure and simply type:
$ ant
This assumes you have Ant installed, and the JDK installed as well. These are all the things you need to build Clojure, nothing more.
Now you need to install Clojure-mode, swank-clojure, and Clojure-contrib. Go back to your primary /home/user/clojure directory, and type:
$ git clone git://github.com/jochu/clojure-mode.git
$ git clone git://github.com/richhickey/clojure-contrib.git
$ git clone git://github.com/jochu/swank-clojure.git
After all those are done, download and install the latest CVS snapshot of slime from here. Extract that, and change the name of the extracted to “slime” because it’s much easier to type.
Now, open up your .emacs file. If you don’t have one, you’ll need to creat a file named .emacs in your home directory. Inside of the .emacs file, put:
(add-to-list 'load-path "/home/rayne/clojure/slime/")
(require 'slime)
(add-to-list 'load-path "/home/rayne/clojure/swank-clojure/swank-clojure.el")
(add-to-list 'load-path "/home/rayne/clojure/clojure-mode")
(add-to-list 'load-path "/home/rayne/clojure/swank-clojure")
(setq swank-clojure-jar-path "/home/rayne/clojure/clojure/clojure.jar")
(setq swank-clojure-extra-classpaths (list "/home/rayne/clojure/clojure-contrib/clojure-contrib.jar"))
(require 'swank-clojure-autoload)
(autoload 'clojure-mode "clojure-mode" "A major mode for Clojure" t)
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.clj$" . clojure-mode))
Make sure you change the paths to the paths you used. I’m sure this isn’t the most elegant way to do this, but it works, and I’m not an Emac Lisp guy.
After this is set up, run M-x (Alt-x) and type slime to start slime up. Clojure-mode should auto-load when you open a .clj file, so don’t worry about that.
Have fun, and enjoy Clojure!
If you have any suggestions, please comment and let me know.
Interesting changes in myself since becoming Wiccan
by Rayne on Aug.16, 2009, under Wicca
If you so much as glance at this blog every now and then, you’ll note that recently, I became Wiccan. I explain a little of what that means in my previous blog post, which you might find interesting. What I find most fascinating, is the effect that Wicca has had on me. When my temper starts to get out of hand, and I’m about to flip shit, the Wiccan Rede sounds in my head: “An it harm none, do what thou wilt.”.
When I was an Atheist, I was Satanist in that I encouraged indulgence in most physical pleasures, and I still do, but now I only encourage ones that cause no harm to anyone, including myself. That prevents me from using drugs, and killing myself via alcoholic poisoning. As a matter of fact, it prevents me from killing myself regardless! The rule of three also comes in when I feel like slashing someones tires. I picture someone three times worse happening to the car I drive. I slash their tires, my engine explodes. That wouldn’t be fun!
I’ll also note that I’ve been able to respect religions much more. I used to have absolutely no respect for Christians at all. Now, I can debate with them in peace, and when they ridicule me for being Wiccan, and not having their beliefs, I can simply say “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, and I hope you eventually open up your eyes and your mind, and see that the world isn’t as black and white as the church likes to paint it.” and continue on my way.
I no longer feel so alone either. I always have someone to talk to in the Gods. Someone to pray to, someone who I’m not afraid of, someone who I know isn’t judging me, and only wants me to be safe and happy. When I prayed to the Christian God, I always had to wonder if he would help me because I did this and that earlier today. If I listen to this music, or watch this movie, am I going to hell? It’s sad that people have to live that way.
Christians can say what they want about how I live my life, and they can call me a devil-worshiper, or a heathen, or just plain ol’ hate me, that’s fine with me, because I can stand at my alter in a consecrated circle and that the Gods dearly for giving me an alternate path, and not making me live my life as a Christian man.
Thank you for reading, and blessed be.
-Rayne
My move to Wicca.
by Rayne on Aug.09, 2009, under Wicca
Since I was capable of understanding that Christianity wasn’t the only religion worth talking about, despite what people might lead you to believe, I’ve always studied various alternate religions, and for a long time, I settled on Atheism. Around 2 years ago, I called myself Wiccan, and I read a lot about Wicca. Eventually Wicca just faded into the background and stopped mattering. For a long time in my Atheist phase, I really wasn’t an Atheist at all, but I just didn’t realize it. My beliefs have never really found a home in any religion.
A few weeks ago, I started reading into Wicca again. Wicca is a nature-based religion that predates Christianity, and was popularized during the 50’s by Gerald B. Gardener. I realized, that what I never understood before, I could understand now. I was too young to really grasp the concept of Wicca, and really understand the point of it. I can understand this now.
I thought about it for a while. One day, a couple of weeks ago, it was pouring down rain outside. I’m rather weather savvy, and I knew that there was no danger from this shower, and that it was just rain. I grabbed an umbrella and took a walk in the rain. There is a bank leading off down to the highway beside my house. It’s not very far down, maybe 30-40 feet or so. I was standing on the edge of that bank, and looking all around me as the rain poured, and I realized that being a Witch was what I was meant to do. Wicca is the path for me. It always has been, and always will be.
Individual religions mean very little if you get to look upon those religions in the abstract. Religions are just different paths that humans can take to lead them to a common center. We’re all going to the same place when we die, that’s inevitable no matter what we believe in, or don’t believe in.
I, and many other Wiccans tend to believe that there is a single, incomprehensible force that controls everything around us, that us humans only have the vaguest understanding of. What matters is that we know that this force exists, and we want to thank it for what we have, and ask it for what we need. In order for us to relate to this force, we break it down into different deities or God/desses, making the basis for all religions. If you look around yourself, you will see duality in all life. Male and Female. In animals, humans, even plants. There is a duality in everything. As Raymond Buckland said “I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t have both a mother and a father.”, loosely quoted. If there is a duality in everything, shouldn’t there also be duality with the Gods? So Wicca has a primary God and a Goddess. Of course some Wiccans figure in hundreds of other deities as well as the main God and Goddess. The most important thing, is most Wiccans believe that the God and Goddess are just our human vision of that incomprehensible force. It’s hard to pray to something so impossible to understand. Christianity has Jesus and Mary as their vision of that force. For Egyptians,Isis and Osiris; Hindus, Shiva and Parvati, etc. In virtually all instances, the ultimate deity (incomprehensible force) is equated as male and female. This is natural, because everywhere in nature you find duality. In the Craft, this force is represented the same way, as a God and a Goddess.
Wiccans are not Anti-Christian, as a lot of Christians seem to believe. The only thing Wiccans have against Christians, goes for several other philosophies as well. That being that they claim to be the one right, and only way, and they deny their followers happiness and freedom. Christianity is full of dogma that is completely unnecessary. The Craft is a joyous religion. We don’t have the gloom and doom that comes from Christianity. We don’t have a concept of sin, or a hell, there is no point in all that non-sense. We believe that we pay for our wrong-doings in this life, and not in another life.
There is not a single path that is right for everybody. I just wish people would wake up and see religions for what they really are… Nothing but paths leading to that common center. This world will be in religious turmoil until we do realize that. Wiccans are there, when will Christians be?
Thank you for reading.
Blessed be
-Rayne
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It's raining bullshit!
Welcome to the Coder's Secks Hut. Where the secks is free, and the blood comes in buckets! Stay a while.
