I'm getting back to work after a very enjoyable holiday break. I was able to play a significant amount of Super Mario Galaxy while I was on vacation; it's a very good game, and (IMO) better than Super Mario Sunshine, but still not as good as Super Mario 64.
I'm teaching a Compilers course in the Spring, so I'm beginning to get things ready. Today I played around with JFlex and CUP, which are Java equivalents to the ubuquitous lex and yacc. As much as I enjoy the occasional bout of C hacking, Java is a much better teaching language. I put together a simple JFlex/CUP example that demonstrates integrating a JFlex lexer and a CUP parser. JFlex and CUP are designed to work together, so it wasn't a huge task.
Next task is to investigate using Jasmin to compile generated JVM bytecode.
My colleague Dave Babcock and I are working on a paper to submit to ITiCSE 2008. It will describe a nifty sequence of CS1 programming labs and assignments. Getting stuff published in CSEd conferences is always a crap shoot, so we'll see what happens.
WXPN radio started broadcasting in the York/Lancaster area in the Fall, and I've been enjoying it a great deal. One important musical discovery I made via XPN is Neko Case: her most recent album, Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, is one of the most brilliant things I've heard in a long time.
A major event is going take place in February...more later!
