Being Bit(ten) and Byting Back

Bit By Bit, Byte by Byte, Char by Char, Word by Word

2006-03-26T20:03:00.000-05:00

Bit By Bit, Byte by Byte, Char by Char, Word by Word For those that dont know, I've moved my blog to wordpress. See you there.

Borders vs. Barns & Nobles

2006-01-28T20:41:00.000-05:00

Border's bookstore at the Carousel Mall seems to have a larger book collection than the one at Barnes & Noble. I don't know if its better because I have'nt been at Border's enough times to make a judgement. However, Barne's and Noble's seems to be more upscale.

Quixtar/Amway

2006-01-26T23:33:00.000-05:00

One of the mailing lists that I belong just had a big thread about this pyramid marketng scheme thing. I thought it would be a good idea to link to this movie about an in vestigation into these guys. Some people I know swear by it, but the moment a potential member starts asking questions, they grow evasive. At that point , the whole thing starts smelling fishy

the weather

2006-01-14T13:17:00.000-05:00

The weather has been great in central New York this last week. It almost felt it was April already. Pity, its changing for the worst this weekend...

FC 4 behaving wierdly

2006-01-08T23:03:00.000-05:00

Something is wrong with my installation of FC4 64-bit installation. I'm not sure what it might be. Either my CPU is overheating and the processor is being throttled or there is someservice that keeps causing to behave erratically. This usually happens when I'm browsing with Firefox. Could it be that 64-bit firefox is causing it? Update: For some reason its working fine now. WTF? Category:Tech

64-bit firefox

2006-01-07T23:44:00.000-05:00

After spending a couple of hours trying to get the JRE to install, I realized that its never going to work on it. There is one last thing that I'm going to try and thats to install the open-source version provided from IBM. If that fails, then I'm going to hang my head in shame and install the 32-bit version of firefox. This so sucks!! Currently listening to Change Your Mind from the album "Hot Fuss" by The Killers and Flames Go Higher from the album "Peace Love Death Metal" by Eagles of Death Metal

geeks love their inner geek.

2006-01-06T21:42:00.000-05:00

According to this site, I'm a Super Geek at 47.53452% rating

Josh Highland's Blog / Journal / Whatever

2005-12-27T23:59:00.000-05:00

This is awesome. This guy makes it look so easy!! I have a 3G iPod that I bought early 2004 and died late this year. I'm going to try and see it the technique here works.

Linux observation.

2005-12-26T18:38:00.000-05:00

Hmmm, while browsing the net on Firefox on Fedora core 4 SMP, my pc started behaving erratically. at first I thought it was because of Firefox, but right now I'm using Firefox on FC4 on a single CPU and its working fine.... Update... Seems like there is a bug in one of the applets, on the taskbar, but not sure about this. Installed the ATI drivers, but the drivers are still for the Mesa GL libraries. ~:-|

Important Questions I need to aswer?

2005-12-26T16:14:00.000-05:00

1) What are the most important problems in your field? 2) Are you working on one of them? 3) Why not?

Delegates in C++ wiithout abusive __delegate keywords.

2005-12-25T22:08:00.000-05:00

Delegates in C++! The solution seems very elegant. I wonder what the performance is compared to C#. Has anyone done comparisons?

Good and Bad Procrastination

2005-12-25T21:14:00.000-05:00

I have a problem with procrastination. So when I came across this essay about procrastination, I read it carefully.

Reading it made me realize that there's hope for me yet.

I think the main point of his essay was that its extremely difficult to tackle problems especially interesting problems and its best not to attack them with the a full-frontal assault but unconventional techniques, use the fascination with a problem as a motivator, but be wary.

Avoid being a modern day Icarus. Fly high but don't go too close to the sun.

I was surprised to read though that making TODO lists is one of the more dangerous symptoms of procrastination. The various types or procrastination are

(a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important.

TODO lists make a person focus on (b), and that eats up time from doing (c) which is worse than (a). Hmm, I just started making TODO lists again.

Anyway, I think my problem is that I suffer from Type A procrastination, i.e. I suffer from doing nothing.

...

2005-12-24T17:54:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to all!!

Black iBook rumor.

2005-12-18T00:24:00.000-05:00

Check this out. This would be awesome if true. I'm probably going to pick up an Intel-based notebook sometime soon.

Outpost Nine :: Good writing stops here

2005-12-17T21:27:00.000-05:00

I just reading the editorials from this guy. He's an American iiving in Japan teaching English to middle school kids and its some of the more hilarious stuff I've read so far.

Notes on what's happening at 12:52 am

2005-12-01T02:03:00.000-05:00

PC acting wierd ... Too much wierd techno on iTunes (actually its electronic) The assembly code is not working .... C# Generics are strange ... I've got too much on my mind right now ... Time for some shut-eye |-)

question everything!: Google Suggest - Racism in the Machine

2005-11-27T23:34:00.000-05:00

An interesting post on the consequences of automated web crawling and modern research in AI.

The new PC rocks ...

2005-11-27T21:18:00.000-05:00

I've finally got a new PC. This is the best I've had yet, and the great thing is that it gives me a lot of flexibility that my notebook did'nt give me. My notebook craze is over. I used to think that a notebook is really cool, but now I'm partial to desktops for home computing. I'm still going to get a notebook, but its definitely going to be the 12" PowerBook when it comes out, and my next monitor will be the Apple 20" FPD. written on my very very humble iMac.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

2005-11-24T00:51:00.000-05:00

Saw this today. A little disjointed with the story line jumping about a bit. Especially at the beginning but I can live with it.

the PG-13 rating is given for the wrong reasons though. Its not because of the rather "dark" scenes but rather suggestive situations in the movie. Should'nt be surprised though. It is a high school movie, after all.

...

2005-11-24T00:44:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving

Sorting out Star Wars some more ...

2005-11-22T22:06:00.000-05:00

While on a recap viewing of the Star Wars trilogies, I noticed how easy it was to take apart C3PO, and put him back together again. R2D2 put him back in episode II and then in Episode V, Chewbacca puts him together after C3P0 gets shot up by the storm troopers. Anyone else notice that too ? Update: This Thanksgiving weekend I saw Return of the Jedi. ( No need for snide remarks for not being at a Thanksgiving dinner, please), completing my recap of the Star Wars world. It got me thinking about the way George Lucas had tied the Episode III to the Episode IV. At the end of Episode III, Bail Organa orders C3PO's memories wiped out, presumably to destroy any chance for Liea to find out about her (in)famous father. Did he order R2D2's memories wiped out too? I don't think so because I don't remember it. Maybe that explains how he knew where to go when C3PO land on Tatooine at the start of Episode III. Another thing that was bothering me was that, in Episode I, Anakin Skywalker left C3PO in his mother's case. In Episode II, viewers find that C3PO is still with the Lars family, Owen Lars must have known about C3PO. Infact, Owen Lars must have grown up with C3PO around. So how come in Episdoe IV, he did'nt seem to recognize C3PO when the Jawas sell it to him? One possible explanation could be that Owen Lars did recognize him, and decided to buy him, so that he could later have the droids memories wiped in Anchorhead.

The Geek Gorgeous Calendar featuring Women in Technology

2005-11-11T22:48:00.000-05:00

Chuckle :-)

A chill ...

2005-10-09T15:15:00.000-04:00

.. is in the air. I guess winter is really on its way.

Firefox

2005-10-08T23:06:00.000-04:00

I've already complained a lot about firefox on the Mac OS X here and here. For some reason it always seems to hang when a large number of pages are open in different tabs in the same window. Follow-up (10/9/05) Apparently Mac OS X is not the only only thats a problem, Firefox just hogs all the CPU cycles on Windows too :-|

Lord of War

2005-10-02T19:33:00.000-04:00

Interesting premise, 3 stars. Not a must see for me. Its okay if you get it on DVD.

Serenity

2005-10-02T14:31:00.000-04:00

Last May, while reading a blog, I found about a short lived TV show called Firefly. The blog described it as a creative mix of Cowboy western drama with SciFi twist with none of the woodenness of the Star Wars Prequels and the sappy feel-good bullshit of Star Trek: TNG.

Intrigued, I went here and got the DVDs, and enjoyed it a lot. The story was pretty much standard fare for the creator of the show, who kind of specialized in brooding heroes (think Angel) and butt-kicking heroines (think Buffy).

Not much of a TV watcher, I only followed those two shows sporadically, but Firefly had me hooked. Its unique vision of mixing story-lines inspired from the old cowboy stories and a futuristic civilization appealed to my favorite kinds of stories. Stories that mixed the past and the future. I went through the DVDs in just a 2 days. The abrupt ending was a disappointment and when I read that a movie version was coming out, I eagerly waited for it.

For people who know Firefly, the story in the movie picks up from the point where TV show left off. The dialogue did seem a bit TV like but I liked the matter-of-fact humor. The other thing I liked about the movie was the fact that special-effects in the movie were not the main characters. This is the one thing that always bothered me about Star Wars. The special effects always overshadowed the characters so much that the real story was always lost. Unlike Star Wars there is only one piece of machinery that was important, and it was the ship. By the ship I don't mean just the machinery, but also the crew that ran it. Serenity didn't insult my intelligence by portraying our heroes (and I'm including the ship here) by showing them to be better than the other characters but by showing that everyone has flaws and everyone has their redeeming qualities. I guess its the imperfections that makes people appealing.

I'm sure that a lot of people are going to disagree with me, but I don't think that the River Tam character was the most important character in the series. I think the really important characters are Malcolm Reynolds and The Operative. They both operate outside the pale of law, representing the necessary evil that organizations or societies must engage in to protect their interests, however honorable they might be. They both have a code of conduct which may appear questionable, but it actually might be superior to those around them.

Personally, I think The Operative was an awesome character. Introduced I think in the second last or last episode, this character just oozed coolness. His unrelenting (some would say ruthless) pursuit of his goals combined with his methodical way of doing things, and understanding of his opponents made him a great character.

Watch the movie. I think people will enjoy it.

Currently reading ...

2005-10-02T13:59:00.000-04:00

"What If? 2: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been" (Berkley Publishing Group) and "Entering Space : Creating a Spacefaring Civilization" (Robert Zubrin)

Stick Figure Ninja

2005-09-17T23:33:00.000-04:00

Check this out. Its really cool!

Firefox - Performance

2005-09-17T20:52:00.000-04:00

I usually use Firefox on my Mac instead of Safari simply because of the availability of A9 and the Google bar for Firefox. But Firefox's performance was really sub-par compared to its performance in Windows and Linux. I read somewhere that some people had disabled Flash from their browsers for performance reasons. I did that last night and the improvement has been an amazing. Now I can browse quite a few tabs compared to the time before I disabled Flash. Update: Maybe its Macromdia's shitty implmentation of the Flash player

Blogging about Blogs

2005-09-17T01:37:00.000-04:00

If you look at my blogroll, you'll notice that there are a whole bunch of blogs by folks who seem to blog on company time, and I wonder if they spend so much time on their blogs during work hours, then how do they get any "real" work done? May be they're smarter, or they make the hours they actually work count more, or they just type on their computers feverishly pretending their busy. :-)

The Legend of Mel, a Real Programmer

2005-09-16T23:50:00.000-04:00

This sounds like an urban myth.

... but then it could be true too.

Got....

2005-09-14T01:16:00.000-04:00

this today!!!

Post Summer Blues

2005-09-10T20:24:00.000-04:00

It was a beautiful Saturday morning today, and I just spent it in the office.

... Why does it feel as if I just pissed the entire summer away. Winter is about two months away and I'm already dreading it.

iPod Blues Redux...

2005-08-29T18:30:00.000-04:00

Great! the ONE Comment I get on my iPod blues post is from some spammer trying to sell me some Life Insurance. Who is this "kristal249claire" anyway?

Through My Life, Being Bit(ten) and Byting Back: iPod Blues ...

2005-08-22T22:51:00.000-04:00

Ever since, my iPod gave up on me, I've almost stopped listening and buying music. Life has gone a little boring lately. I can't get myself to fork over the $299 for a new one. I think I'm going to buy one of those iPod Shuffles this time. At least I won't feel so bad they trash themselves

Foobar

2005-08-20T20:20:00.000-04:00

Anyone who programs computers for a living has probably encountered some function called "foo" or a class named "Bar", or some entity called Foobar. I was always curious about where that came from. Turns out that Foobar was a actually a polite spelling of the military term "FUBAR" which means "Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition".

... and reading again

2005-08-15T22:52:00.000-04:00

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6)" (J.K. Rowling)

According to a Harry Potter fan @ work, I've completely missed the point of the book. So now I'm reading every line very carefully.

Currently Reading ...

2005-08-15T22:50:00.000-04:00

"Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective" (Diomidis Spinellis)

Currently Listening to ...

2005-08-15T22:49:00.000-04:00

How It Ends from the album "How It Ends" by Devotchka Check out this trailer too.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4)

2005-08-01T00:54:00.000-04:00

Just finished reading this one today, and I have to admit that I liked it, and this is from a person who actually hated the Lord of the Rings (the book not the movies). The more I read the books, the more I'm convinced that J. K. Rowling's inspiration came from Star Wars Episode IV. Especially, the part when Obi-Wan Kenobi told Luke that Darth Vader had murdered. Think of the references to the Dark Side of magic ( vs. the dark side of the force), Death Eaters (vs Death Star?), tatooed acolytes (vs the tatoos on Darth Maul), extremely powerful good wizards teaching young students (contrast the role of Dumbledore the old teacher and Yoda the ancient Jedi Master), the Rise of the Dark Side after being being beaten by the good wizards (the ancient war between the Jedi and the Sith), and finally think of Tom Riddle changing his name to Lord Voldemort ( Palpatine to Darth Sidious, Anakin to Darth Vader, Count Dooku to Darth Tyranus(?)) I have hunch that in the later books we're going to find out the real story of why Tom Riddle was seduced by the Dark Side and what is his actual relationship with Harry Potter, and what Voldemort really wants is to turn Harry to the Dark Side.

... On to Book V

"Real-time"

2005-07-31T20:55:00.000-04:00

I wish people would stop bandying about "real-time". Real-time means that some task has to happen in some specific hard or soft deadline. The important word here is deadline. Unfortunately, its used to imply the fast response to some event, and that can mean anything. Something fast can mean something happening in an hour or in a second. You need to be specific. For something to be realtime you need to specify a deadline.

Currently Reading ....

2005-07-30T21:40:00.000-04:00

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"

Currently Listening to ...

2005-07-30T21:37:00.000-04:00

Pick Up The Phone from the album "Neon Golden [Bonus Tracks]" by The Notwist Consequence from the album "Neon Golden [Bonus Tracks]" by The Notwist Neon Golden from the album "Neon Golden [Bonus Tracks]" by The Notwist

this is a British band. Just discovered them recently. Not available in the US store, but available in the UK iTunes store (had to buy the CD). A little strange but in a nice kind a way.

iPod Blues ...

2005-07-30T21:36:00.000-04:00

Went to the apple store about my iPod today, and found out that it was totally hosed. They told me that the some component had failed on the iPod and since Apple didn't have a policy to repair iPods the only option was to replace it. And since it was out of warranty (expired Feb 2005) I had to pay about 268 for like equivalent or $299 for a 20 GB color iPod.

... Not sure if I I should be depressed or pissed.

Something about today ...

2005-07-27T23:18:00.000-04:00

I got an email from a recruiter today. He told me a about a job opportunity about a company. Its the same company I work for already. Ironic? Plus, I got an official document today. As usual, it confused my country of birth with my country of citizenship. I guess, most people assume that a person born in a country is automatically a native (and hence a citizen) of that country, even though his or her parents may be there only temporarily. This (among other things) raises an important question, should origin really become such a fundamental determinant in an age when people come and go with so much ease?

Scott Collins' Journal: On Becoming a Video Game Programmer

2005-07-20T00:24:00.000-04:00

.. and there goes my dream of becoming a hobby game programmer. Seems to happening quite a lot these days.

Nissan to Recall 140,000 Murano SUVs - Netscape Autos

2005-07-18T22:27:00.000-04:00

... And I was planning to buy this car :-|

iPod Blues ...

2005-07-17T11:23:00.000-04:00

My 1 1/2 year old iPod finally gave up on me. I tried restoring the file system, but the updater does'nt detect it anymore. I'm not happy :-(. However, it just might the time to buy the new color iPod :-). Anyway, I'm going to take my iPod to the Apple store at the Carousel Mall, and see if I can get it restored.

Nasa's Ramblings in Space: Nerd vs. Geek

2005-07-16T00:17:00.000-04:00

So what does that make me?

Potter Mania...

2005-07-15T22:37:00.000-04:00

Just came back from the local Barne's & Nobles. "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter (Paperback))" (J. K. Rowling) is going be released on in about 1 1/2 hours. A lot of kids were there, and some of them (actually the majority of them) were dressed in various Harry/Ron/Hermione outfits. Most of them had the big round glasses. There were plenty of adults too. One of my co-workers, M., will be there around midnight or so. As for me. I think I'll wait for the movie. The fourth one will be out soon. Here's a peek. "Dark and difficult times are ahead, Harry. Soon all of us must face the choice between what is right and what is easy." This dialogue or words to that effect seem to pop up in movies quite a lot. Every notice that?

BBspot - Which File Extension Are You?

2005-07-12T21:23:00.000-04:00

Which File Extension are You? Brought you via here. And here was another great blog brought to you via the same blog. The writer's right. It really is better than Napolean Dynamite.

I Love C++ Exceptions

2005-07-07T22:38:00.000-04:00

this is an article about C++ exceptions I just read. Someone I know was telling me about this code base that he works on. It was designed and written by a bunch of "architects" who were originally C programmers and imagined they were great C++ programmers. His boss thinks that the code is so good they are going to use it again to build their next generation product. The code is a horrendous spaghetti code of if's, else's and multiple copies of the same code in ten different places, functions that are a hundreds of lines long (if not thousands), class interfaces that have 10 to 20 methods. The funny part is that they think its object-oriented just because they use the class keyword. This friend of mine has plenty of ideas to improve matters to clean up. Use more exceptions. Refactor. Make use of patterns, you know actually apply what you learnt in school. Basic stuff. His team shoots down his ideas. They say its "Too much work". And then they wonder why they have so many bugs and are always behind schedule. And then they wonder some more... Such is the lot of all programmers who work for a living.

Disk Space ...

2005-07-04T14:34:00.000-04:00

I'm running out.!! I need to repartition my HD again. Unfortunately, I could'nt figure out a good way to do that from Linux itself. I originally thought about restoring the original factory settings in windows but I already have data on the Windows partition. So I'm going to run the linux installation again and see if I can have a better partition scheme, since I really dont have anything there yet. This time I selected the the "update system" option. I'm hoping it allows me to resize the partition table. Right now its reading the package database. ... If things don't go well as they should I'm seriously start looking at a new PC to buy. ... I don't think "updating the system was a good option. I'm going to go with the "new installation" mode. ... New Installation has started lets see how this one comes out. ... Some how the KDE desktop didn't get installed, I'm really not interested in getting any other desktop GUI. Once this is done, .... I'm really not sure what I want to do right now. I want that DirectX book.

Everyone ...

2005-07-04T00:49:00.000-04:00

A Happy Fourth of July ... Be safe around the fireworks

Linux 9.3 & other news

2005-07-03T22:51:00.000-04:00

Finally, got around to installing Linux on my PC. I have an HP, and since HP had some time in the past announced that they were releasing a notebook with Suse Linux on an experimental basis, I thought that the Suse distribution would be a good bet because if there is one thing I hate about installing a new OS is mucking about with drivers and devices. Anyway the installation went just fine except for one hiccup. I had downloaded the ISO images from some mirror site. Apparently the CD had some problem and it did'nt install the cpp package properly. This is important to me. Because I'm going to be downloading the new Qt 4 framework. I have this habit, that I always write a quick hello world programs in C and Java to make sure that my development environment is working properly. Anyway, I restarted the computer and then booted up Windows. Windows kind of got wierd on me, since Linux had create some new partitions. I just found out that now Windows has only 10 GB of hard drive available for it. Now if I were to install Visual Studio and MSDN that would really eat up hard drive space. Hmmm, I believe that a new PC has got be bought if Linux is to be used. In other news, I'm debating if I should by a 20" LCD HDTV from Samsung or a 30" widescreen TV from Samsung.

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: Longhorn Setup and Deployment Strategies

2005-07-03T20:34:00.000-04:00

It seems as if that with Longhorn, Microsoft is moving to an OS installation procedure that is more akin to the Linux mode. An OS image consisting of just the kernel and with various add-ons added by OEMs and resellers. Much like the way various Linux distributions work.

Who says Microsoft is so full of itself that it can't learn from others, even from its competitors. Click on the link above and read all about it. Brought to you via The Old New Thing.

Qt 4 just Released

2005-07-02T23:08:00.000-04:00

Check out the Qt 4 video just released. (Quicktime Required).

Apple Matters

2005-07-02T20:46:00.000-04:00

This is a rather simplistic article on why Microsoft's party is coming to an end. The author has listed out three "nails" that are going to take down the company.

<Nail 1> Shoddy software practices are forced on programmers due to incompetent managers which in turn produces the mess that is Longhorn. <my response> I think the whole software world is suffering from shoddy software programming because the programmers are doing a shoddy job through out the industry. The programmers and testers at Microsoft are probably no different or no smarter than the ones outside. And programmers who want to do a better job simply can't because its not practical to rewrite thousands of lines of code just because the design is bad. Try justifying to a manager that a working product needs to be reimplemented because its design does'nt look good in UML and you'll know what I mean.

And what makes you think that badly written code has not been in Mac OS X? Just because it looks good? </my response> </Nail 1>

<Nail 2> <snip 1> Steve Jobs. He has Apple humming like fine tuned violin. Tiger is everything Apple promised </snip 1> <snip 2> Apple is going to squeeze out yet another OS before Microsoft can get Longhorn out the door. </snip 2> <snip 3> Then you have this whole Macintel thing going on plus rumors about the iPod/ITMS/movie business all of which draw the attention of the media towards Apple’s successes. </snip 3> <my response> In principle, I agree with what the write has to say about Apple's successes. But I think a lot of it has to do with the media's attention to Apple and it's activities. Apple has always been this quirky, anti-establishment, unconventional company. Its different from the Dells, HPs and Microsofts and very different from the IBMs of the world. Plus, its penchant for secrecy has always fascinated, and people are naturally curious as to what is happening at Apple. Microsoft on the other hand has always open about itself. Evidence: Microsoft's encouragement to its corporate bloggers. I've yet to see a blogger who openly identifies themselves as an Apple employee and writes about it too. Microsoft encourages its employees to blog and its a sign of its maturity that employee can talk about themselves and their employer so openly. Some of them sometimes go over the top about like this one, but in this particular case, I think that has something to do with his job. (Click on the link and scroll down to find his job description).

Positive media attention is factor in Apple's ability to wow. Microsoft does'nt get that simply because everyone wants some one to blame, even when its their own fault. </my response> </Nail 2>

<Nail 3> Linux <my response> As much as I like Linux, I've yet to see how someone can make money of it. And no providing support for it does'nt count. The GPL code is so expansive, that it practically forces a professional development company to publicize its code and in a competitive business enviroment that just does'nt make sense. Peronally, I think Linux is best for students and researchers to try out new ideas and then let companies Microsoft to implement those innovations in their products. In my opinion, the GPL needs to be revised so that people have more flexibility. One way could be to use the license that Qt operates under. </my response> </Nail 3>

<Nail 4> Mindshare <my response> The author defines mindshare as "the extent to which people know about a phenomenon". As unfortunate as it is, mindshare is'nt what gets applications developed for OS'es. Its the C#, Java, HTML, ASP and script programmers who actually develop applications, and if Apple does'nt have any of that mindshare, then the mindshare of people who own iPods, buy music from iTunes and rave about MacOS X really does'nt count. Secondly, the money comes from corporate customers and while consumers appreciate the bells and whistles in a OS and how "cool" something looks, corporate customers are just not going to be buy stuff just because it looks good. My employer is still using Windows 2000 as the corporate desktop, because it just works for everything they need. That's why they have'nt shifted to Windows XP, and they won't until they absolutely have to. Microsoft knows that its money comes from corporate customers and it does'nt have the luxury that that Apple has in saying to customers that "we're transitioning and you better cough up the money to buy new stuff, and if you can't do that, well tough. " </my response> </Nail 4>

<Nail 5> Games <my response> I'm not sure how this is going to be a cause in Microsoft's demise. In my opinion, Microsoft has done a pretty good job in creating a gaming platform for Windows, ala DirectX. The only thing that I don't like about DirectX was the COM programming model that is used to expose functionality. I've never been a fan of COM, and I always thought it was just too cumbersome to use. But it is possible to roll and decent framework, and wrap those COM interfaces, and you can build some pretty decent games. Not to mention that the DirectX games can be easily be made using the standard tools that Microsoft provides (Visual Studio). In theory that means that something that runs on a PC, runs on an XBox. XBox is a pretty decent console and I think the new console is definitely going to help Microsoft retain customers that might gravitate to alternatives like a Mac. Contrast this with Sony's console. Yes its got the largest games, but I'm pretty sure that people out there are working on porting the large variety of games for the PC to the XBox. Personally, I can't wait for the XBox 360 to come out. </my response> </Nail 5>

Thats about it for my thoughts on the subject. Read another rebuttal here.

Different Kinds of Bugs

2005-07-02T12:05:00.000-04:00

This is a Bohr Bug . The opposite of a Bohr Bug is a heisenbug, requiring indirect debugging. A rather insidious form of a Bohr Bug is a mandelbug. The most irritating kind of bug is a schroedinbug. I hate these kinds of bugs. I think I've got one on my plate right now.

2morrow ...

2005-07-01T22:20:00.000-04:00

I'm going to start another attempt to start three-way split in my computing personality.

...Does that make any sense?

Backing up files

2005-06-28T23:01:00.000-04:00

Making a big backup and cleaning up some old data on my PC, I realized I had accumulated about 6 GB of data inspite of (inconsistent effort I have to admit) to delete stuff that I thought was no longer needed. Most of the stuff, were pdfs and html files that I thought were interesting and downloaded to read later, but I never got around to reading most because they lost their interest at the time. Anyway I deleted about 2 gigs, and I still have about 4 gigs left, which I'm now transferring to another computer. I'm pretty sure there is plenty of junk in that 4 G that I probably should get rid off. In other news, I download the new iTunes software that supports pod-casts, and it deleted all my playlists. I'm kinda pissed right now.

Paying Bills ...

2005-06-26T22:30:00.000-04:00

Obviously, I don't have much to say right now.

Do neophytes have an aversion to command-line tools? (Redux)

2005-06-19T15:11:00.000-04:00

I wrote a comment about people not using command-line tools to learn different languages and prefering IDEs (click on the thiss to read it).

Here's another reason why someone should prefer command-line tools to IDEs. IDEs tend to provide features for coding, building and debugging that are used most commonly, i.e. tool developers tend to focus on the lowest common denominator. More often than not, tool developers totally dumb down the tool, and many cool features that should be part of the tool set get obscured behind a slick IDE user interface.

For example, I just wrote a four different modules in C++ and C#, for a little project I'm working on. I tried to figure out how to add C# modules in one assembly through the IDE, but the C++ compiler that I was using to link the four modules with, kept telling me that it could'nt add the C# modules because they are already assemblies. Finally, I gave up and wrote a small makefile to manually compile and link all my modules. It took me about ten minutes. The ten minutes I should have spent before the forty minutes.

On a high tonite ...

2005-06-19T02:03:00.000-04:00

Just came back from a Junoon concert. Great Music, Great Food, Great Time, and feeling nostalgic about a great time I once had in circumstances similar to tonight. Good Night!

Project Aardvark

2005-06-17T21:30:00.000-04:00

I've been following this blog pretty regularly. I liked this post about the End-to-End demo. I just went through one yesterday. Fortunately, mine did'nt crash when demo'ed for the for the boss, and is feature complete for the current milestone. Its late by about 3 weeks though (:-$)

Movies in in 30 seconds with bunnies.

2005-06-13T22:01:00.000-04:00

For those of you who only have 30 seconds to watch a movie Jaws Pulp Fiction or the Exorcist

Finished Reading ...

2005-06-11T22:30:00.000-04:00

"Life of Pi" (Yann Martel)

I had mixed feelings when I finished reading this book. I'm not sure what to make of it. I've always been ambivalent of books that espouse a spiritual story. I was raised to believe that prayer and contemplation have a role to play in a person's life. It was meant to give you a more contemplative view of life and the world. I always nodded my head in agreement but I had a nagging hunch this spiritual stuff was a just a scam to make me adopt a fatalistic view of life, to accept one's lot in life, to suffer in silence.

Yet this story does have a resonance with me. Its Pi's unflinching faith in his spirit, in various deities, and in the forces of a (benign?) natural order, that gets him through the long crossing through the Pacific. Perhaps, Yann Martel in this story, is hinting that people should not limit their spiritual exploration to some exclusive and absolute belief set, but to have a more utilitarian view of religion and worship. In other words, an adaptive religion. Pick a religion for the occasion and run with it. Because no one has a monopoly of the whole truth (if there is one).

Do neophytes have an aversion to command-line tools?

2005-06-08T22:06:00.000-04:00

An excellent posting that mentions how people have an aversion of using SDKs and command-line tools! My sentiments, exactly! I think people need to get to a more command line mentality. Its time to take back the art of computer programming and to make it the way it was originally meant to be! A black text-mode screen with glowing green letters and cryptic command line tools. I'm sick of these wannabe programmers who can only program using an IDE.

Currently Listening to ...

2005-06-08T21:57:00.000-04:00

White Shadows from the album "X & Y" by Coldplay Talk from the album "X & Y" by Coldplay A Message from the album "X & Y" by Coldplay This album is just fabulous. :-)

Firefox on Mac OS X

2005-06-08T21:46:00.000-04:00

When I fired up my Mac and waited it for the OS to load up. While I waited for it to boot. I hooked my iPod to the computer. The desktop came. OS X launches iTunes automatically as soon as it detects that an iPod has been attached. This gets a little confusing for me because icons for Firefox, Safari and iTunes and side-by-side in Finder. And so I accidently clicked on Safari. Before Firefox was released I used to use Safari. I thought it was a nice simple, slick browser for the Mac. The reason why I finally switched from Safari to Firefox, was because of the A9.com toolbar. Today, when I launched Safari, instead I realized how smooth and effficient its rendering was and that it did'nt have any of the "cluckiness" and unresponsiveness that Firefox has sometimes.

I kind of miss that now ...

And so it comes to pass... Mactel is here! :-|

2005-06-06T21:20:00.000-04:00

Read all about it

What Video Game Character Am I?

2005-06-05T22:26:00.000-04:00

I am a Breakout Bat. I am an abstract sort of creature, who dislikes any sort of restraint. If you try to pigeonhole me, I'll break the box, and come back for more. I don't have any particular ambitions, I just drift, but I am adept at keeping life going along. What Video Game Character Are You?

Musings on a hot Sunday Morning...

2005-06-05T08:49:00.000-04:00

Its a very hot Sunday today at 8:47 am. Whoever might be reading this must be wondering what I'm doing up so early on a Sunday morning anyway. I don't know either. I've never been able to figure out what motivates me to get up early on an off day and yet I can't seem to wake up on working day. When I was a kid, I always woke up before 9 am in the morning to watch the 9 am cartoons that were on televisions without anyone waking me up. On a school day getting out of bed was the worst thing to happen and it happened 5 days a week...

Anyway, having woken up so early, I just threw in my 2 week old laundry in the washer. While putting my clothes in, I wondered the why the management of my apartment complex just put in three washers and three dryers. Three doesn't make any sense. An average person would generally use at least 2 washers. One for his or her white clothes and one for his or her colored clothes. This means that only one person can use the washers at any one time, because another person trying to use the laundry facilities will on average not use the facilities for half his or her load in the washer and then wait for another washer to be free to wash the next half. The potential user would rather wait for at least two washers to become available before it becomes viable to do laundry. So effectively, only two washers are used at any one time on average. The management should either remove the third washer or add another one.

Follow up on my last post about Apple switching to Intel chips

2005-06-05T08:03:00.000-04:00

One of the readers of this blog commented about the rumored switch like this

" I think they will come out with a tablet PC using Intel XScale chips. It would be bad if they make an announcement that they are switching to Intel platform coz' then nobody would buy anything untill they actually come out with something. If they do come out with a machine right away then they won't have any programs that run on it. But, for a tablet PC you don't need that many programs, not like people are going to use it for Adobe Photoshop. So, they can start selling this and indicating to the developers that they start porting their applications to x86, leading to a smooth transition... But well, all this is just a guess."

I'm more inclined to think Apple will be moving their mobile products like an "iTablet" or a "PowerTablet" to an Intel Platform. Even if they do an announcement, I dont think its going to happen until next year or even later. The main problem Apple has is that the PowerPC processor is just not suitable for those kinds of devices because of the heat the processors generate, and IBM does'nt have the business incentive to make that happen given the low volumes of computers, Apple ships.

Having said that, the situation might change by next year. Both Sony and Microsoft are coming out with new consoles. The Playstation 3 has the new Cell processor developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba. The XBox 360 has the a new processor developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft. Both of the these processors are based on PowerPC technology. So there is a chance that the Apple will announce that it will be building new Macs on the Cell to take advantage of low-power consumption of the Cell processor. These consoles are definitely going to sell and give IBM the sufficient volumes to make the necessary enhancements to the processors that Apple needs.

In any case, I think Apple is in a much stronger position now with its OS than it was 10 years ago when it switched from 680x0 processors to the the PowerPC processors. Given the BSD core of the Mac it should'nt be too hard to move to any processor. I read somewhere that original OS on which the Mac OS X is based is the NeXT operating system which was originally running on an Intel platform when it was acquired by Apple. And internally they have versions of the OS X on an Intel machine.

The Apple WWDC will be happening soon, and hopefully everything will be cleared up soon.

Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips | CNET News.com

2005-06-04T22:15:00.000-04:00

Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips | CNET News.com This is interesting! Here I was debating whether I should get the new the PowerMac G5, and then rumors start swirling that Macs will be going to Intel. The main reason why I wanted a new Mac was to replace my iMac. I think its by far a better computing platform, in terms of looks and functionality. The fact that it takes care of my music, and pictures and videos seamlessly is amazing. As a developer, who prefers to work on open architectures like Linux and BSD, I think Apple delivers a lot more to the C/C++ coder in me than say an equivalent product from Microsoft. One a more personal level I really don't care. After all, I almost never program at a level where I have to deal with assembly. As a rule I prefer to program in simple vanilla C or C++, that I think should be portable across all compilers, so as long as a good compiler implementation is around, I really don't care if the underlying platform is from Intel or IBM. To me the big 100-million dollar question is whether I should go ahead and buy a copy of the OS X knowing that its going to be obsolete by next year or in 2007, when they come out with a new version of the OS, or wait until the next version come out. I wanted to buy a Windows Box too, but I think I will wait until Longhorn is released. I've read some reports that its going to be spectacular. This is what another Robert Scoble had to say about it and another post from the him. and here's what Russel Beattie had to say. and another blogger who says that the rumor is wrong. Shit more decisions to make.

Blogthings - Your Geek Profile

2005-06-02T21:19:00.000-04:00

Your Geek Profile:

Movie Geekiness: High

Music Geekiness: High

Academic Geekiness: Moderate

Fashion Geekiness: Moderate

Gamer Geekiness: Moderate

Internet Geekiness: Moderate

Geekiness in Love: Low

General Geekiness: Low

SciFi Geekiness: None

How Geeky Are You?

The Lock Statement in C#....

2005-05-30T22:28:00.000-04:00

Need to remember this From MSDN ... lock(x); is precisely equivalent to in C# ... System.Threading.Monitor.Enter(x); try{

//...

}catch {

//...

} finally{

System.Threading.Exit(x);

} and in C++/ System::Thread::Monitor::Enter(x); try{ } __finally{

System::Threading::Monitor::Exit(x);

}

Apple - QuickTime - HD Gallery - Serenity

2005-05-30T16:37:00.000-04:00

Apple - QuickTime - HD Gallery - Serenity: Its official, I am now a fan of Firefly, and looking forward to the movie.

Something to remember about deadlocks

2005-05-30T15:31:00.000-04:00

Somebody once said to me that "In theory, theory and practice go together. In practice, they rarely do.".

Yesterday, while working on interfacing module for a digital radiography panel we use in our product (Yes, I was working over long weekend. And I need some sympathy please!:'( ), I ran into one of those rare situations where forgetting your OS theory is detrimental to your long-term sanity.

I ran into a very subtle situation where two of the three threads were deadlocking and freezing up the application. I don't want to rehash the whole story here, the memory is too raw and painful right now. I figured out in the end what was going on after a couple of hours when I saw some undergrad notes on an OS course on some CS department on deadlocks. And I cursed myself for not remembering those. OS theory was always something that bored me, and yesterday I wished I had paid more attention in class.

So what I'm going to do now is to write those conditions on my blog, in the faint hope that I can remember them the next time I'm working on a long weekend thinking about the beautiful day outside. The three conditions for a deadlock to occur are: [drum roll here] i) Mutual Exclusion: Only one resource may use a resource at a time. ii) Hold-and-Wait: A process may hold allocated resources while awaiting assignment of others iii) No Pre-emption: No resource can be forcibly removed from a process holding it.

Now, in a multithreaded application, these conditions are good thing, however, if the fourth condition is satisfied, then you're locked in the deadly embrace of death

iv) Circular Wait: A closed chain of processes exists, such that each process holds at least one resource needed by the next process in the chain.

On another note, I've always wondered if there is a better way to design a multithreaded application in OO context. A thread is a thread of execution and somehow that's always smelled of a procedural function to me. The question I have is that in a well-designed OO design, should'nt all objects be active, and all messages asynchronous?

The Old New Thing : When is x/2 different from x>>1?

2005-05-27T22:24:00.000-04:00

The Old New Thing : When is x/2 different from x>>1? This is an interesting point. I always thought it was a good optimization. I never considered what the effect would be on negative numbers. The moral of the story is right though. Its always a better idea to write what you mean first and then fiddle around with various optimizations later when doing code reviews or something.

Bug Bash

2005-05-25T20:07:00.000-04:00

Bug Bash: Here's something I discovered today. A new comic strip for Geeks by a geek.

About Movies, Music and other Mundane things today...

2005-05-21T17:40:00.000-04:00

First about “Revenge of the Sith”... Finally saw Star Wars Episode III. I was'nt able to go see the movie on opening night at the Carousel Mall like I had originally planned too. It was just too late in the evening. I heard from some of the coops at the office that the fans over there were in full Star Wars regalia. I'd like to have seen that.

So what did I think of the “ROTS”? It was certainly better than AOTC and TPM. If I were to rank them in order of how I like them, it would be something like this. 1. The Empire Strikes Back 2. The Return of the Jedi. 3. A New Hope, The Revenge of the Sith (tied for 3rd place). 4. Attack of the Clones 5. The Phantom Menace.

The woodenness of the characters was still there. but the visuals and acting especially of the Anakin Skywalker was very dark, which was surprising considering that this is a movie that likes to have furry and cuddly creatures. Think Ewoks, Wookies, and Jabba the Hut. Okay, maybe not Jabba the Hutt. Jar-Jar Binks was also a candidate of the list, but I decided to exclude him from the list. Personally, I think he was one of the most annoying characters of the prequels.

One of the nice things, the movie had was the appearance of Chewbacca. I thought that was a little necessary, to bring that Han Solo link in the movie. I was hoping that they would have a Han Solo role in the movie, since I always thought his was the best role in the movie.

Another thing that I found interesting was the fact that in every direct engagement with the Jedis, the Sith lords are defeated in this movie. Mace Windu almost killed Palpatine, had it not been for Anakin, and then the final fights with Yoda vs. Palpatine, and Anakin/Vader vs. Kenobi. So if the Sith were so powerful, how come when it came to facing off the real masters (Yoda, Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi) they were a bunch of losers. I guess the Lucas' wanted to emphasize that no matter how solid a victory the bad guys achieve, its only temporary. The good guys always win in the end.

There was a lot of dialog in the movie that seemed to be gleaned off current events. People who follow the news must have seen the parallels. I'm not going to comment on that because as a rule I do'nt do that on this blog, but its pretty obvious where George Lucas' political leanings are.

The film also a explains why R2D2 and C3PO have no recollection of Anakin and Tatooine. That's because Senator Bail Organa has C3PO to be memory wiped. I guess its because of the fact that Anakin had constructed C3PO. I'm not so sure about R2D2. Was he memory wiped or not. I guess I'll have to get the book adaptation of the movie. I saw that in Barnes and Noble last night.

I thought that the Anakin/Vader 's hysterics at the end of the movie were a little over the top, but thats understandable. The man lost his wife and kids. What do you expect? But I liked the part where Anakin/Vader talks to Padme on to Mustaphar (<--did I get that right?) and tells her that he can take over the Republic and depose the emperor. He uses the same line with Luke in Empire Strikes Back. This raises an interesting question. Was Anakin really looking for a chance to rule with his family. We all seem to think Anakin had turned to evil and all, but was it really evil? It could have been a means to an end where he could finally get the power that he need to bring his visions of better world (well galaxy in his case). Am I being a moral relativist here?

If you look at the whole Star Wars thing objectively, you have to admit that the Empire did bring order and peace to the Galaxy, and instead of the cronyism of the Republic, the Emperor established a real meritocracy. I'm sure readers will remember that Boba Fett addressed Han Solo with a respectful “Captain Solo”, since Han Solo was an ex-Imperial Officer candidate. The only bad thing about the Empire, I think was that they were a human centric culture, meaning that they preferred humans over non-human cultures and races. I guess there are many people who would prefer that sort of setup

Well now that we've met all the various Sith Lords, who was my favorite Sith Lord. I think Darth Maul was the coolest Sith Lord. The crown of horns, tatooed face, flaming eyes, and menacing teeth were really amazing. Gave him that look that said, I'm a mean m^&*&^**&f*&%&^%&%. I wish they had given Darth Maul a more prominent role, through the episodes.

Darth Vader, had this regal powerful bearing about him, that sort of portrayed power. His personality was an extremely controlling and imposed itself.

Count Dooku (Darth Tyranus) looked and sounded like a stop-gap arrangement.

Darth Sidious, seemed to be more of a string puller then a real warrior.

Thats about it on what I have to say about Episode III. Comments are welcome.

On to other things.... Just discovered a new band called “Mere”. Some very nice music. Click here to visit the site. They've got some sample songs, and some songs can be bought of PayPal.

Currently listening too.

dont_want_to_be_saved by Mere Anything at All by Mere

Saving your Regrets by Mere (this is a good one)

Black to White to Gray by Mere

Musings for the day....

2005-05-20T22:41:00.000-04:00

My apartment is a mess!! My neighbor upstairs, is really excited about something. He or she has been stomping all over the place since I came home from work! Needless to say it's driving me nuts. Currently Listening to... A Favor House Atlantic from the album "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3" by Coheed and Cambria Speed of Sound from the album "Speed of Sound - Single" by Coldplay There album is coming out soon! Currently reading (again) "Life of Pi" (Yann Martel)

Hitch hiking to see the "Hitch hiker's guide to the Galaxy" ... (and back again)

2005-04-30T16:48:00.000-04:00

today is the day.

...

Saw the movie today. I think I like the book better. Salon.com had a nice review saying that it was gentle. Another review ( don't remember where) called it uneven. I think I'm going to call it disjointed. For those of you who have read the book, the story pretty much follows the story of the first book, starting with demolishing Dent's house and ending when the four protagonists plus marvin head to the restaurant at the end of the book.

Trillian's part wasn't so important in book, but the film bumps it up a little, with a little love triangle between Arthur, Zaphod and Trilian. Mos Def played the Ford's part really well. My personal favorite was the second and third book of the series, and I was disappointed when the movie ended where it did. I guess if the movie does well they might make a sequel. I think the opening sequence was a little too long. I understand the book had a little chapter in setting the tone of the book, but for the movie I thought it was a little too long. The movie should have begun with Arthur Dent waking up.

Plus the way Zaphod's other head was attached was kind of silly. In the book I always thought that he was a two headed person with a head surgically attached side by side with his original head. Trillian's role was played very well, but I think a better film could have been made if the filmmakers had avoided the whole party scene in Islington. That kind of broke the tempo of the movie as they were rescued from the Vogon constructor fleet.

I think the director tried to remain true to Douglas Adams' vision of Hitchhicker's universe, but the story was a little jerky, and left an unfinished taste in the average Hitchhickers' fan movie watching palate. It did'nt have that completeness other adaptations had, like Lord of the Rings or Spider-Main.

I think I'll stick with the book for now, Unlike the Lord of the Rings' where I thought I actually saw into the imagination of J. R. R. Tolkien.

ONDotnet.com: Introduction to Managed C++

2005-04-30T10:33:00.000-04:00

ONDotnet.com: Introduction to Managed C++ Just found out from here that jagged arrays in Managed C++ are not supported.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Review for all us Mac Heads out there ...

2005-04-30T01:06:00.000-04:00

Batman Begins

2005-04-28T23:10:00.000-04:00

I don't know why they keep making sequels of this movie considering that the last three failed so badly. It just might work this time. Currently Listening too ... Devils & Dust from the album "Devils & Dust - Single" by Bruce Springsteen

So what's a POD in Managed C++??

2005-04-28T00:25:00.000-04:00

While reviewing some documentation on Managed C++ I came across the word POD. I knew that it meant Plain Old Datatype and by definition, a POD is a datatype that can be copied by copying its bits and does not need a constructor. Digging it a little more I came across this Q & A article by Paul DiLascia. From what I understood , a POD in .Net is restricted in managed C++ classes because the framework then copy these datatypes without worrying about constructors, vtables, etc. Read more about it here I also came across about an interesting difference between C++ and C#. In C++, its generally regarded as bad practice to call virtual functions, in constructors and destructors. The reason is that, during the construction of a derived object, the constructor of the base class is run first, and hence would call the virtual function (if called) implemented in the base class instead of the one overridden in the derived class. On the other hand in C#, the virtual function in the derived class will be called as intended. The reason for this is that when the constructor in a C# object is called, the object is completely constructed. The reason for this behavior is because of the garbage collector. To optimize the performance of the garbage collector, the size of the objects should be known a-priori. And to know the size of the object a-priori, its necessary to construct the complete object (instantiate derived and any base classes). Read a more detailed explanation here.

Whats a whitepaper?

2005-04-27T21:27:00.000-04:00

A white paper is a report outlining policy or authoritative report on a major issue. I need to write one of these ...

Currently Listening too ...

2005-04-27T20:51:00.000-04:00

Twilight Creeps from the album "Dignity and Shame" by Crooked Fingers American Baby from the album "American Baby - Single" by Dave Matthews Band Speed of Sound from the album "Speed of Sound - Single" by Coldplay

Hacker deletes own hard drive

2005-04-27T20:41:00.000-04:00

Hacker deletes own hard drive This has to be the silliest story I've read in sometime. Are there hackers out there who don't know that 127.0.0.1 is the self-referencing IP address for your own machine? Most probably, this was some kid who just got hold of some hacker tool off some website, and then tried to use it incorrectly. Alternatively, it could be a hoax where the person was messing with the moderator. Personally, I'm inclined to believe the latter explanation. Read more about it here which is a half-decent translation of the german chat transcript. Make whatever you want to make out of it.

Its good to be Bill Gates ...

2005-04-27T20:40:00.000-04:00

Check this out ...

2005-04-26T21:42:00.000-04:00

XBox 2 Promotion Ad on MTV... I guess I should really start planning to get the TV, I've been avoiding to buy, and play that XBox I won in a raffle :-). Brought to you via.

Only Five days Left for ....

2005-04-25T23:15:00.000-04:00

this...

DMB on iTunes....

2005-04-25T22:28:00.000-04:00

Wow! DMB decided to get on iTunes too. I read somewhere that the Dave Matthews Band didn't like selling their music online saying that they preferred to sell their music as albums since each album is a work of art in itself I agree with that point, but CD players are just sooooo inconvenient!! Apparently its their first work on iTunes, and by the sample I just heard seems to be pretty good too.

musings on c#, c++, java and the meaning of liff today...

2005-04-25T21:57:00.000-04:00

Found out something interesting in C# the hard way :-|

You inherit a value type from an interface, and then attempt to cast an object to an interface, you will implicitly box it, and get a reference to it. Any changes to that boxed reference, will only affect that boxed reference. So the moral of the story is if your value types implement interfaces, then access those operations, through the object and not the interface.

The cool thing about learning something the hard way is that you always remember it afterwards, even though you have wasted a couple of hours on something trivial. :-)

One thing I like about C# is that you can pass parameters in different ways like C++. So value types are passed into methods by value,

ref parameters are used to pass value types into a method by reference and out parameters are used to only to return information from a method. Compared w/ Java, this is definitely an improvement. Actually you can achieve the same sort of effect with some indexer magic using the [ ] operator, but its kinda clunky. They could have avoided all of this by just making it like Like some functional language and returned everything as a tuple. After all, is'nt Python like Java or C#, utilizing a runtime to run its bytecode, like Java byte code, or MS IL?

Question to someone out there, what exactly is the difficulty in returning tuples from a method call in a OO language, a'la Python, Lisp, or Haskell?

In a way I think, all languages are gradually getting there. C# already has features like foreach and params, which is akin to Python's argument passing scheme, (when declaring a method like def foo(**args), and that passes a dictionary of arguments). C++ already can do this sort of thing using generic programming. So can you pass in different parameter lists of objects using the params and object keywords in C#, something like

void foo(params object[]bars){ .... } ?

And the answer to the above is that you can !!

One of the stuff I need to do for some work related stuff is to experiment with some Managed Extensions for C++. At work, I'm working with a lot of legacy code, that needs to be somehow integrated as we migrate to newer technologies.

Not Much on the Meaning of __Liff__ today.. May be tomorrow. Too bad this font is going to be appear only on computers, that have it installed, I don't see it on my Windows XP box. It looks really nice on my Mac.

Political Compass

2005-04-24T16:22:00.000-04:00

My Political Compass is (-3.75, -3.90), i.e. My rating on the Economic Left/Right on scale is -3.75, and on the Social Liberatarian/Authoritarian scale is -3.90. Brought to this blog from here.

Musings for the day...

2005-04-18T23:28:00.000-04:00

I'm confronted with a design problem at work that has been driving me nuts. Framework design has been on my mind quite a lot lately. One of the most vexing questions I have to deal with is how to refactor C++ code written somewhere in the last century with distinct C flavor into a viable modular OO design. I bought Martin Fowler's book on refactoring last night to help me get some ideas. I guess that will be my bed time reading for today.

On another note I started reading up on DirectX and how to render 2D images in it. One of the big problems that we face in the company I work for is how to render images quickly enough. A lot of image processing is done by the IPL from Intel (actually we're using an older version, we need to move to IPP), but that's only one part of the solution. We need a faster way of rendering the 2D images on the screen. I've been looking at DirectDraw for that. There is only one person in the team who knows anything about DirectX, and even he worked on DirectShow which is something for rendering movies. Since this will be probably be happening in my own time. I guess I won't be moving to Linux like I had to planned to.

I've been debating if I should get the new Max OS X release, when Apple releases Tiger. Its about $129.00. That's pretty steep(!) for poor ol' me. Or should I wait until I can afford to buy a new PowerMac. I heard that Apple is planning to come out with some new hardware. I wonder why Apple did'nt release a Java 1.5 for Macs when Sun released it. I'm pretty sure they are going to release it with Tiger.

Python Bindings for the MPEG Library, finally finished...

2005-04-17T16:58:00.000-04:00

Finally managed to test and get a running program running with the Python bindings I wrote. Python, SWIG and C++ source is FINALLY on the way. Need to write some documentation though. :-(

Being Bit(ten) and Byting Back

Bit By Bit, Byte by Byte, Char by Char, Word by Word

Borders vs. Barns & Nobles

Quixtar/Amway

the weather

Categories

FC 4 behaving wierdly

64-bit firefox

geeks love their inner geek.

Josh Highland's Blog / Journal / Whatever

Linux observation.

Important Questions I need to aswer?

Delegates in C++ wiithout abusive __delegate keywords.

Good and Bad Procrastination

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Black iBook rumor.

Outpost Nine :: Good writing stops here

Notes on what's happening at 12:52 am

question everything!: Google Suggest - Racism in the Machine

The new PC rocks ...

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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Sorting out Star Wars some more ...

The Geek Gorgeous Calendar featuring Women in Technology

A chill ...

Firefox

Lord of War

Serenity

Currently reading ...

Stick Figure Ninja

Firefox - Performance

Blogging about Blogs

The Legend of Mel, a Real Programmer

Got....

Post Summer Blues

iPod Blues Redux...

Through My Life, Being Bit(ten) and Byting Back: iPod Blues ...

Foobar

... and reading again

Currently Reading ...

Currently Listening to ...

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4)

"Real-time"

Currently Reading ....

Currently Listening to ...

iPod Blues ...

Something about today ...

Scott Collins' Journal: On Becoming a Video Game Programmer

Nissan to Recall 140,000 Murano SUVs - Netscape Autos

iPod Blues ...

Nasa's Ramblings in Space: Nerd vs. Geek

Potter Mania...

BBspot - Which File Extension Are You?

I Love C++ Exceptions

Disk Space ...

Everyone ...

Linux 9.3 & other news

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: Longhorn Setup and Deployment Strategies

Qt 4 just Released

Apple Matters

Different Kinds of Bugs

2morrow ...

Backing up files

Paying Bills ...

Do neophytes have an aversion to command-line tools? (Redux)

On a high tonite ...

Project Aardvark

Movies in in 30 seconds with bunnies.

Finished Reading ...

Do neophytes have an aversion to command-line tools?

Currently Listening to ...

Firefox on Mac OS X

And so it comes to pass... Mactel is here! :-|

What Video Game Character Am I?

Musings on a hot Sunday Morning...

Follow up on my last post about Apple switching to Intel chips

Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips | CNET News.com

Blogthings - Your Geek Profile

Your Geek Profile:

The Lock Statement in C#....

musings on c#, c++, java and the meaning of liff today...