where/how to add trigger blocker here

[trogluddite]

simple visual modularity,

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Cut the green wire to de-fuse the bomb!

Ironically though, the problem you posted to start the thread had nothing to do with Ruby syntax - might have been a redundant parenthesis here or there, but it was perfectly formatted code (better style than many of the User Guide examples, in fact). I believe even Myco admitted to being a little non-plussed by the slightly odd trigger behaviour at the Ruby inputs, just like I was at first - but that's just one more "exception to the trigger rules" to add to the list we already had.

If you can put together that code, you're half-way there already - don't let the hundreds of Ruby methods fool you into thinking it's more complex than it really is. Not even the top Ruby programmers would expect to remember more than a fraction of the available methods and classes. The real key to Ruby is to know just enough to be able to make sense of the API documents - the rest is just Google!

But if that's not your cup of tea - why worry? You now know one important new rule - triggers behave slightly differently around Ruby prim's - so carry on with 'visual modular', there's plenty of folks still making modules. If they've got Ruby in them - who cares, so long as you know what the inputs and outputs do? Maybe just needs a little extra playing with the trigger counters to learn the quirks, just like any other new module.

BTW - are in nature "divisions by zero" (in terms of programming solutions) present?

Yes, because human ingenuity is as much part of nature as a bacterium or virus - and divide by zero's are a lot quicker and less painful to deal with than the little buggers that just gave me four days confined to my bed!

[tester]

Ehm... I speak english although it's not my native lang. Ruby (or to be precise - "yet another different language") is for me like learning chinese. Chinese is... different, although all langs express similar meaning (In all langs you can ask for cup of tea?). Sure - chinese is simple. Hebrew too. I have no free slots in my brain to deal with it right now...

As for divisions by zero in nature I meant natural flows not constructs like humans.

BTW I usually cut the blue or red one

[trogluddite]

That's what makes the forums so useful I think. There's always folks around to help with implementation - so more "learning space" can be saved for the creative part of conceiving good plugin ideas. Some, like me, are more akin to "construction engineers", whereas others contribute more by being "architects".

There has long been a debate whether computing languages should be made more akin to human languages and thought - to ease the interface between us. On one hand, some say that they should be, so that programming is more accessible to those without years of training. Others say that this is nonsense - to make computers "think" like a human would only limit their capabilities, having "non-human" ways of doing things is exactly what makes them such useful machines.
The difference of course is that computers do not deal with "meaning" - the rules for 'divide by zero' are pre-set in the CPU and blindly followed, whereas we can drive ourselves insane attempting to understand its meaning in the material world.

But, no, I don't think really "divide by zero" has any useful meaning in the 'material' world, really - besides maybe telling us where is the point that our physical theories are no longer useful. But that is also true of most mathematical concepts - fractions, for example. What is half of an atom? - there's no such thing, as soon as it is not a "whole atom", it resolves into parts which are each some other kind of object entirely. Maths fails us here because it deals in quantities, but the change is really one of quality - category error.
Same with divide by zero. We treat zero as if it were just like any other number. But in the material world it represents the huge qualitative difference between "something" and "nothing". In medieval times, the nature of zero led to many heated philosophical debates - including zealous religious leaders, who could not tolerate the concept of "nothingness" because it implied an absence of God. Using zero as a 'placeholder' when writing decimal numbers was tolerated, but treating it as a member of the 'real numbers' was considered by them to be heresy.

[tester]

So - if "dividing by zero" is nothing found in so called "nature" we could presume two interesting things. "Dividing by zero" as an indicator of other abstract intelligence (i.e. artifictial marker) in universe - instead of looking for regularities (which are common to pulsars and other sort of stuff too). If nature does not uses division by zero, and is so effective in making solutions (well it made even us, humans), then how it would look/work a "natural" computer language without "zero" computations? BTW, nature is pretty smart in dealing with infinities on the other hand.

But - yes, I agree, that's what makes the forums so useful. Implementations vs creativity. Speaking of which - Trog - do you know what is going on with SM forum? User control panel is not working (and some other functions too), devs (are the devs from FS still the same devs as from SM?) ignore user's requests (malc also did not replied when I asked about the status of the forum), and the whole thing starts to be a little bit strange, since we (FS'ers) are next in that food chain... Is there some content merge scenario on the go, or lack of skills/man power?

[trogluddite]

Trog - do you know what is going on with SM forum?

Don't know for sure, but I don't think anything sinister - just natural decay due to lack of maintenance, I would guess. Those hard-drives will have done a lot of hard-work over the years, so sooner or later, they're going to start failing.

Seems that adding attachments is the main casualty - but maybe that is just a sign that the space allocated on the forum server is running low. Server space costs money, so it wouldn't be surprising for DSPr to no longer add more space for an obsolete product. Even the moderator areas seem to be malfunctioning sometimes. Sorting out spam is getting harder and harder because I have to search the posts by hand sometimes - the 'reported post' linking for mod's doesn't seem to work very often.

Sad, but all that the dev's promised us was that they wouldn't erase it all, and would stop interfering with our posts - so AFAIK they have kept to their word. Malc has little enough time to even visit here, so major surgery to the SM forums is very unlikely.

Might be worth being careful though - if no-one is watching over it, then hacker attacks to the forum php/html code etc. might pass without notice or treatment. Now that I think of it, I'll raise that one with Malc, as many of us probably use the same login details and e-mail for both forums - at the very least, data security is worthy of his attention.

[tester]

Hmm... 100GB freespace plus stable multiple SQLs plus no transfer limits and plus other bonuses (and plus stability tested over the years) seems to be not so expensive here (we use this one, so "lack of space and high costs" is somewhat funny explanation to me... Would be even cheaper to buy per few people such hosting service for multiple websites, and carry them over next 10-20 years...

As for SM forum/data, what is worth is the textual content, that explains a lot of topics, and attachements, that are still valid for FS. So it would be worth to perform a "test migration" of data, to make an archive consolidated with fully operational forum.

[trogluddite]

somewhat funny explanation to me

...was not an explanation, just some guesses!

[tester]

No worries, I'm not attached/emotional on that.