Happy Thanksgiving! Here's SDR 0.7 to celebrate the holiday. Version 0.7 incorporates a number of dance engine refactorings completed shortly after the previous release promised them, as well as (more recently) a number of new call and concept definitions (and test cases) inspired by the C4 calls I am currently studying. I also updated Google ( Read more... )

In a previous post I introduced the "Baker's" square dance concept. By analogy to "Baker's dozen", it was proposed the "Baker's" meant to do 13/12 of the call it modified.

But let's reconsider: a "baker's half dozen" isn't 6 1/2 eggs, it's 7. Let's redefine the "Baker's" concept to mean "one more part" of the call. (Hence the title of this post ( Read more... )

Another holiday, another SDR release. Version 0.6 (now on github!) comes with definitions for almost all of the Mainstream square dance program, excepting thars, stars, and that pesky allemande left. The basic abstract syntax tree representation of calls has been refactored, building on a implicitly-typed expression representation - clearly we're ( Read more... )

[Square Dance primer for computer scientists: square dance calls are (recursive) sequences of basic actions: walk forward, turn around, do a square dance call. "U-turn back" is a square dance call, which means simply "turn around". Some calls take numeric arguments: "square thru N" for N=1 means "pull by"; "pull by" is another square dance ( Read more... )

Over the 4th of July weekend, I released SDR 0.5, now with a GWT/GAE frontend you can check out at square-dance.appspot.com. It's still incomplete -- breathing and collision resolution need to be hooked up, it doesn't do "centers X sides Y" yet, and it's missing lots of call definitions -- but at least there's something tangible to play with that ( Read more... )

I'm one of the painters participating in Somerville Open Studios this weekend: Sat/Sun noon-6pm, 40 Quincy St. Come on by and see some of my paintings! Mars, dogs, square dancers, swamps, and golden spirals will be ably represented. I regret that I wasn't able to complete my ironic juxtaposition painting pitting Fermat's spiral against fibonacci ( Read more... )

I released SDR 0.4 last night (while watching a fabulous Woz on Dancing With the Stars), and JDoctest 1.4. SDR's release mostly signifies that I'm finally moving on from the breathing code; JDoctest has a number of minor improvements.

I've released Square Dance Revolution 0.3. It still doesn't do anything terribly useful yet, but its square dance engine can do a partner trade now (barely). Contrary to the advice I always give others, I haven't developed SDR in the "crappy first draft, then refine" style -- since it's primarily for my own enjoyment, I've spent lovely leisurely ( Read more... )