October 31, 2004 01:29 am (permalink)

Canada .....

Ok, so I planned a road trip from Boston to Los Angeles - and guess where I am right now: in Canda ....

There's one cool thing I learned about the Canadians so far: the first motel I stopped had free wireless internet access - this it the first time I could go online since leaving Boston :-)

It's still a very long way to drive, but if everything works fine, I'll be in Vancouver tomorrow and in Los Angeles somewhere around late Wednesday evening or early Thursday morning or so. Maybe I'll also stay another day in Vancouver and/or Victoria and then take the train from Seattle - after spending 70 hours in a train I'm not scared of long train journeys anymore ....

Oh, and before I forget this: after that stupid hotel totally fucked up my trip and I was forced to take that train, I did some really exciting hacking on the long way west, will post more info when I'm back at home.

Posted by martin at October 31, 2004 01:29 am.

October 14, 2004 3:49 pm (permalink)

So this is it, my last "real" night before flying to Boston - at least it's the last night where I can go to the pub and party. I need to leave around 4:30 am on saturday morning, so the next night will be really short.

I'm really looking forward to the Boston trip, it'll be so cool to meet all these great people from our team again :-)

After that week in Boston, I'll make an exciting road trip to Los Angeles, driving all the way through the country. So here's my schedule:

10/23
Leaving Boston, as early in the morning as possible drive till south of Washington, DC.
10/24
Take the Blue Ridge Parkway (parallel to I-81) through the Appalachian Mountains, stay in the mountains till dawn. After dark, drive another 100-150 miles south
10/25
It's about another 150 miles till Clemson, SC. Arrive there around noon, visit my friends Olli and Ama.
10/27, 10/28, 10/29, 10/30
Drive west till the Grand Canyon. Probably stop in Memphis (TN), Oklahoma City (OK) and Roswell (NM).
10/31
Grand Canyon
11/01
Leave the Grand Canyon, drive north till somewhere around Sacramento, CA (about 600 miles)
11/02
Get up early, take US 101 south and cross the Golden Gate Bridge (about 150-200 miles with the 101 sightseeing detour; 91 direct). Spend the day in San Francisco.
11/03
Leave early and drive to LA (381 miles). Visit Jackson and Todd.
11/06
Fly back to Boston, spend a night in Boston.
Posted by martin at October 14, 2004 3:49 pm.

October 10, 2004 10:00 pm (permalink)

Go West

It's just one week till our second Mono team meeting in Boston and I'm already very excited about it :-)

Like last time, I'm also combining it with some vacations again and spend the two weeks after the meeting on the road. I'm leaving Boston on the 23rd, the Saturday after our meeting and start driving south. My first stop is Clemson, SC where I'll visit my friend Olli who's currently visiting his american girl friend. After a few days, I'll hit the road again and start driving west.

I still need to find some historical maps and driving directions, since I want to follow the ledgendary Route 66 from St. Louis till Santa Monica. I don't think I'll visit Las Vegas this time, that'd be just too expensive, but I definitely want to see the Grand Canyon and - if time (and gas price) - permits, take the US 101 south over the Golden Gate Bridge ....

Posted by martin at October 10, 2004 10:00 pm.

October 10, 2004 9:49 pm (permalink)

Type parameters now have "owners"

Some people were already started wondering whether I'm still alive - I didn't blog since a month or so ....

As you can see now, I am - I was just, well, very busy with generics. Just finished a rather huge rewrite of the runtime code which is dealing with generics and I'm also preparing for my trip to Boston.

The big change is that a type parameter is now more than just a number - it also has an owner: the corresponding generic type definition or generic method. This is important if you look at the following example:

public interface IFoo<x> { } public class Test { public void Hello<t> (IFoo<t> foo) { InsertAll (foo); } public void InsertAll<u> (IFoo<u> bar) { } }

Here, foo and bar have two different types: IFoo<T> and IFoo<U>. The old runtime could not distinguish them since the internal representation of T and U was just a number: they were both the first method type parameter in some generic method.

This required some larger changes in all code which was parsing the metadata since a type parameter is indeed just a number in the metadata. However, I solved this problem by passing a MonoGenericContainer (pointing to the current generic type / method) to all methods which are parsing metadata.

Posted by martin at October 10, 2004 9:49 pm.