ishani.org v.2016

Dusting off ClangVSx

For most of 2012 I kept a reasonably up-to-date Windows build of the Clang/LLVM C++ compiler available on this site - it fetched in a fair amount of traffic, as the Clang maintainers had no official Windows version hosted on their site.

Parallel to that, I had written an add-in for Visual Studio - ClangVSX - that could act as a compiler bridge, getting VS projects built via Clang using project setting translation. It also gained some traction as a way for curious VS developers to dip their toes into Clang's feature set.

Topbar

Both of these endeavours became dormant over the last year or so; the former was replaced by Team Clang having pre-built Windows binaries finally shipping next to the other compiler downloads, and the latter entropied due to other work/life commitments.

However, to .. I dunno .. celebrate 2015 ..? I figured it might be nice to blow the cobwebs out and offer an updated Visual Studio 2013-compliant add-in and a full, fresh build of Clang 3.5.1 to use with it.

One major new feature supported is Clang's auto-vectorizer analysis and optimisation tools - a nice complement to Visual Studio's own.

Check the ClangVSX page for downloads!

Gfycat in Jekyll

I'm now up to 4 different ways to embed videos into this blog; the latest being Gfycat, a neat mid-point between full-blown YouTube or Vimeo iframes and hosting various HTML5 video formats myself.

Previously I had hacked around with BetterTube to add Vimeo support and am using Brandon Mathis' HTML5 video embed code for the latter.

.. however I couldn't find anything suitable for Gfycat, so I wrote a very simple plug-in to let me specify assets via the generated (adjective)(adjective)(animal) names, eg.

{% gfycat FrequentDependableJackal %}

I used it in the previous post to display the galaxy map zoom-out from a No Man's Sky 2014 trailer.

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Lost In Space

Here are some quick n' easy ways to stop updating a personal blog for 3 months:

  • Start a new job.
  • Begin major feature work on complex project.
  • Have project enter major crunch period.
  • Go to Las Vegas.
  • Go on holiday.

For guaranteed results, I recommend doing all five in roughly that order. The latter chunk of 2014 was quite the thrill ride.

Despite work mostly overwhelming all my free time, I can at least now scratch "Get Shaders I've Written To Feature In A Music Video Live On A Stage In Vegas" off my bucket list.

Working with Jekyll

After moving the site to use Jekyll I needed to sort out some process for writing, generating and uploading the static content.

While there is the ultimate goal of getting it sat on a git repo server-side with a magic post-commit hook to do generation and deployment, at the moment I'm playing on Hard Mode by doing it all manually on my Windows desktop.

SyncBack

I use Sublime Text, Abyss X1, SyncBack to do so, like this!

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