Stick a Fork in It

Longest... Beta release... Ever.

After seven long years of limbo, I finally managed to work my way through the bazillion small things that needed to be completed before officially releasing version 6.30 of CLIPS.

Whew!

The major new feature in 6.30 is performance improvements, but this marks the first release where the distribution CLIPS executables—both Windows and Mac OS X—are code signed. The warnings you get when attempting to download and run unsigned executables from the Internet are pretty intimidating, so while the signing may go unnoticed by many, I’m glad I took the time and effort to get it done.

The CLIPS documentation has gotten a facelift as well. The box headers that for some reason we thought looked good twenty years ago are gone; spacing has been adjusted to improved readability; and the diagrams and tables have been updated with a modern look.

Now to decide what’s next for CLIPS…

Sir Terry Pratchett 1948-2015

One of my favorite authors; a master wordsmith of humor and satire.

I can’t think of anyone who did what he did as well as he did. Douglas Adams comes to mind, but he was neither as prolific nor consistently entertaining as Pratchett who, at the time of his death, had forty published novels in the Discworld series.

You know someone’s good at what they do when the only people who could fill their shoes are dead.

Culinary Help Desk

If questions about common activities were as inane as some programming questions I’ve seen:

I tried to make a peanut butter sandwich and couldn't figure out how to do it. Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong? I need an answer ASAP. I'm hungry.