finishing out decadv

Author: nilaykumar

content-org/garden/december-adventure.org

@@ -10,16 +10,17 @@ Found out about the December adventure on Mastodon (likely from folks over at
 better late than never. Here's a bit [[https://eli.li/december-adventure][about it]], but the idea is just to pick a
 project or a few, work on them, and log your progress.
 
-I've taken the liberty of retroactively logging the days I missed.
+Now that December's over, I've written a short [[retrospective][retrospective]] at the bottom of
+the page.
 
 #+ATTR_HTML: :class calendar-table
 | 日 | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 |
 |----+----+----+----+----+----+----|
-|    | [[december 1][01]] | [[december 2 - 3][02]] | [[december 2 - 3][03]] | [[december 4][04]] | [[december 5][05]] | [[december 6][06]] |
+|    | 01 | 02 | 03 | [[december 4][04]] | [[december 5][05]] | [[december 6][06]] |
 | [[december 7][07]] | [[december 8][08]] | [[december 9][09]] | [[december 10][10]] | [[December 11][11]] | [[december 12][12]] | [[december 13][13]] |
-| [[december 14-18][14]] | [[december 14-18][15]] | [[december 14-18][16]] | [[*december 14-18][17]] | [[december 14-18][18]] | [[december 19][19]] | [[december 20][20]] |
+| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | [[december 19][19]] | [[december 20][20]] |
 | [[december 21][21]] | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
-| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |    |    |    |
+| 28 | 29 | [[december 30][30]] | [[december 31][31]] |    |    |    |
 
 * december 1
 Traveling back from Tokyo. I'm not very good at getting things done on the
@@ -807,6 +808,158 @@ Things are getting busy as the end of December approaches, so I don't know if
 I'll be able to get to it... but it would be great to learn enough about
 tree-sitter grammars to submit a patch.
 
+* december 22-29
+Busy playing mahjong (both riichi and filipino) with family, no adventuring.
+
+* december 30
+Obtained a hand-me-down 35mm film camera! It's a 1969 Nikon F (apparently a
+legendary SLR) with a 55mm f/1.2 lens. Here's a picture of it, taken with my
+Fujifilm X-S10:
+
+#+ATTR_HTML: :alt a vintage film camera sits among scattered mahjong tiles
+[[file:images/december-adventure-2025/nikon-f.jpg]]
+
+I'm still very new to photography, so using a fully manual camera with no
+feedback until the films are developed is probably not a great idea. On the
+other hand, sometimes being thrown into the deep end can be a good way to learn
+a new hobby quickly. I picked up 2 rolls of Fujifilm 200 and I've been taking a
+few photos -- probably horribly underexposed. The viewfinder on the camera had a
+mercury-battery powered light meter but the batteries are of course long dead
+(I've read that these light meters tend to become inaccurate after so many
+years anyway), so I'm currently using a light meter app on my phone to estimate
+what my shutter speeds should be.
+
+I hope the pictures I've been taking actually come out okay. The worst would be
+to for the film to be completely blank or something when I get it developed. I
+am fairly confident that the camera's functioning fine, though. The Nikon F is
+incredibly robust (full metal construction) to the point that there are stories
+of it deflecting bullets in war zones. Having grown up with digital cameras and
+rechargeable batteries, it's amazing that a bit of chemically treated paper
+together with a purely mechanical contraption of metal and mirrors can take such
+incredible photos.
+
+If the first roll comes out alright, I'm hoping to use the Nikon F to learn the
+basics of film photography over the next few months. It's quite heavy
+(especially when you're used to a modern mirrorless with a small prime lens), so
+I probably won't be travelling with it. Instead, I might try to just document
+everyday life. Given how many photos I take while traveling, it's probably for
+the better anyway -- film is an expensive hobby...
+
+To keep track of my photography learnings (be it digital or film), I've started
+a [[https://pixelfed.social/knees][Pixelfed account]]. It's currently a bit bare, but I'll start working through my
+old RAWs and posting the ones I'm proud of.
+
+* december 31
+Let's take a look at the tree-sitter =grammar.js= for =uxntal=, which can be found at
+the top-level of the repository [[https://github.com/tree-sitter-grammars/tree-sitter-uxntal][here]]. The structure is fairly straightforward
+(see also the [[https://tree-sitter.github.io/tree-sitter/creating-parsers/2-the-grammar-dsl.html][documentation]]). The snippet
+#+begin_src js
+rules: {
+  program: $ => repeat(
+    choice(
+      $.macro,
+      $.include,
+      $.memory_execution,
+      $.subroutine,
+    ),
+  ),
+#+end_src
+specifies (using =repeat= and =choice=) that a program consists of
+arbitrary sequences of the four specified nodes. These nodes must in turn be
+defined. The memory execution node, for example, consists of an absolute pad
+operation followed by an arbitrary sequence of non-toplevel-statements (which
+must be defined as well):
+#+begin_src js
+memory_execution: $ => seq(
+  $.absolute_pad_operation,
+  repeat($._non_toplevel_statement),
+),
+#+end_src
+The absolute pad operation, in turn, is just the symbol "|" followed by a
+number (which is described by regex as a 1- to 4-digit hexadecimal):
+#+begin_src js
+absolute_pad_operation: $ => seq('|', $.number),
+number: _ => /[\da-f]{1,4}\s/,
+#+end_src
+
+In order to test out changes to the grammar we need to ensure that the tree-sitter
+command-line interface is installed. Then, in the project directory, we can run
+#+begin_src sh
+tree-sitter generate
+#+end_src
+to generate the parser from the modified =grammar.js=, and
+#+begin_src sh
+tree-sitter parse source.tal
+#+end_src
+to display the syntax tree for a file =source.tal=.
+
+The =tree-sitter-uxntal= repository comes with a folder of =uxntal= code examples,
+but I think they're a bit old. I put together my own folder of examples
+consisting of the =projects/examples= from the =uxn= repository, together with the
+examples shown (via wasm?) on the =uxntal= [[https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/uxntal.html][homepage]]. These programs should be safe
+to assume as "valid" (I understand that there's no such thing as an invalid
+=uxntal= program, but there seems to be a fairly conventional coding style that
+=tree-sitter= should be able to understand). I then ran
+#+begin_src sh
+tree-sitter parse examples/**/*.tal
+#+end_src
+to parse all the source files I'd collected. You can also add the =-q= flag if
+you're only interested in parse errors.
+
+I got a whole bunch of errors, mostly to do with the usage of angle brackets in
+label names, but also the syntax of anonymous labels ={  }=. If we take a look at
+the definition of =label= in our grammar, we'll see that it refers to =identifier=,
+which is in turn defined by
+#+begin_src js
+identifier: _ => token(prec(-1, /[0-9]?[a-zA-Z_:*/][/]*[a-zA-Z0-9_:#*\-]*/)),
+#+end_src
+which you'll notice does not permit angle brackets. I'm no regex expert but I
+think we can fix this by throwing in =<>= both before and after a sublabel =/= as
+#+begin_src js
+identifier: _ => token(prec(-1, /[0-9]?[a-zA-Z_:<>*/][/]*[a-zA-Z0-9_:#<>*\-]*/)),
+#+end_src
+For the anonymous labels we can introduce some new syntax
+#+begin_src js
+anonymous_label: $ => seq(
+  '{',
+  repeat($._non_toplevel_statement),
+  '}',
+),
+#+end_src
+and then add in the anonymous label into the list of non-toplevel-statements. 
+
+These two are not the only errors (and my solutions are probably not even 100%
+correct), but this is roughly how I'm approaching modifying the grammar. I've
+been playing with this in between end-of-year holiday busyness, so I hope
+to get some time soon to sit down and attack this more seriously.
+
+* retrospective
+I'm really glad I did the december adventure this year. It gave me a healthy bit
+of motivation to work on or learn about things that I'm interested in but often
+don't have the energy to get around to. One of the big takeaways is that I'm
+easily nerd-sniped by all sorts of different cool things, which leads me to
+starting a lot of projects. Here's a list of things I got interested enough in
+to start (or at least write about) this month:
+  - photography and editing photos
+  - the kakuji script from the japanese edo period
+  - basic graphics programming with raylib in c
+  - writing my own static site generator to move away from the complexity of
+    hugo and org-mode
+  - learning the very basics of my first assembly/stack language uxntal
+  - learning about the tree-sitter parser generator library and its grammars
+  - an emacs tree-sitter major mode for uxntal
+It's tough to focus on a single idea and actually complete a project with a
+work-fried brain split among chores and errands.
+
+With these observations in mind... in 2026 I'd like to:
+- continue adding to this digital garden/memex. It's a bit of a different format
+  from the december adventure, but I'd like to continue recording small bits of
+  things I find interesting, daily if possible
+- start more creative projects! Do more photography, learn the basics of
+  sketching/drawing, write a tiny game, ...
+- try to focus on finishing projects. Not necessarily right away (breaks are
+  good), but eventually. Even if the project scopes are tiny!
+  
 -----
 
 Down here I'm collecting the little project ideas that tend to pop into