FIFA World Ranking Top 20: November 2010

Rank (previous)	Team	Points	Comment
1 (1)	Spain	1920
2 (2)	Netherlands	1718
3 (3)	Brazil	1493
4 (4)	Germany	1489
5 (5)	Argentina	1353
6 (6)	England	1250
7 (7)	Uruguay	1174
8 (8)	Portugal	1102
9 (9)	Croatia	1098
10 (11)	Egypt	1047
11 (12)	Greece	1043
12 (13)	Norway	1004
13 (10)	Russia	1003
14 (16)	Italy	995
15 (15)	Slovenia	958
16 (14)	Chile	929
17 (17)	Ghana	903
18 (20)	Slovakia	866
19 (19)	Cote d’Ivoire	857
20 (21)	Australia	853

No games played by any of the teams in the top 20. Just point adjustments. Australia replaced France which dropped out of the top 20 (rightly so.)

The latest full table can be found at the FIFA World Ranking website.

Soccer Ball Image: Reading, MA 2010

The image was shot on May 21st during soccer practice.

LaTeX on Windows Vista SP2: Usage

To test the implementation I used an old report written in LaTeX about 14 years ago while at the UW.

> cd /d "E:\XX\XXX_XX\Athena\gk_texed\gk_Report#1"

> latex Root.tex

So far so good. The file Root.dvi (dvi = device independent) was created successfully and it contains the 7 page report. The .dvi file must be converted to a .ps (postscript) file using the command dvips.

> dvips Root.dvi

Now there should be a file called Root.ps in the appropriate directory. The postscript file can be opened with GSView.

Nice!!

GSView can convert the file in PDF which would solve portability issues. The reality is that postscript is a somewhat esoteric format used by… select few!! To convert:

• Click File and select Convert…
• Select the device pdfwrite and click OK.
• Enter a filename (e.g. test.pdf) in the Output Filename window and click ‘Save.’

• Done!

LaTeX on Windows Vista SP2: Installation

Three things are needed to run Latex on a Windows box: MiKTeX, Ghostscript, and GSView. The last makes life easy. There are also editors you can buy that integrate these packages and offer a complete editor environment but for me a basic text editor works the best; There is one on every system.

MiKTeX 2.9

Download MiKTeX (pronounced mick-tech) which is the freeware Latex implementation for PCs with Windows OS. The latest version is 2.9 (Beta as of this writing) which was released on 9/26/10.

I downloaded the "Basic MiKTeX 2.9" Installer (137 MB) from mirror.ctan.org (there was no other option.) The installation was pain-free:

• Launch installer and accept license agreement.
• Elected to install MiKTeX for anyone who uses the computer.
• Accepted the default install directory: C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\
• Set preferred paper to ‘Letter’ and ‘ask’ installing missing packages.
• Review installation settings and click ‘Start'.’

The installation took about 7 minutes. (It could have been a bit less but I was distracted as Pittsburgh was beating up on Cincinnati!)

Done with step 1.

Ghostscript 9.00 and GSView 4.9

Ghostscript is an interpreter for the PostScript language. As mentioned in the Ghostscript website:

Ghostscript has several main uses:

1. Display a PostScript file (avoid killing trees).
2. Display a PostScript file to decide if you really need to print it (reduce the number of trees killed).
3. Print a PostScript file to a non-PostScript printer (kill more trees).

The latest version is 9.0 released on 09/17/10.

GSView is a graphical interface for Ghostscript for Windows-based systems.

Start by downloading Ghostscript 9.00 for 32-bit Windows. The link is located at http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/GPL/gpl900.htm under Microsoft Windows. The self extracting package is a bit less than 15 MB. After the download completes:

• Run the executable.
• Click ‘Setup’.
• Accept the defaults and click ‘Install’. About 10 seconds later the installation is complete.

Now go to GSView 4.9 download page and select to download the 32bit Windows installer. The size of the GSView installer is 1.5 MB. After the download completes:

• Run the executable.
• Click ‘Setup’.
• Click ‘Next’ a few times to accept the defaults.
• Click ‘Finish’ and the installation will complete in seconds.

FIFA World Ranking Top 20: October-November 2010

Rank (previous)	Team	Points	Comment
1 (1)	Spain	1881	Wins over Scotland and Lithuania. (EURO ‘12 Quals.)
2 (2)	Netherlands	1683	Wins over Sweden and Moldova. (EURO ‘12 Quals.)
3 (4)	Brazil	1493	Wins over Ukraine and Iran. (Friendlies.)
4 (3)	Germany	1481	Delivered misery to Kazakhstan and Turkey. (EURO ‘12)
5 (5)	Argentina	1320
6 (6)	England	1205	Draw against Montenegro at home!! (EURO ‘12 Quals.)
7 (7)	Uruguay	1167	Beat up on China and Indonesia. (Friendlies.)
8 (8)	Portugal	1123	Woke up against Iceland and Denmark. (EURO ‘12)
9 (11)	Croatia	1086	Win over Israel away. (EURO ‘12)
10 (25)	Russia	1061	Wins over Ireland and FYROM. (EURO ‘12)
11 (9)	Egypt	1034	Win over Nigeria. (Continental Qual.)
12 (12)	Greece	1026	Two home wins against Israel and Latvia. (EURO ‘12)
13 (14)	Norway	989	Win over Cyprus. (EURO ‘12)
14 (10)	Chile	931
15 (19)	Slovenia	926	Moved up after beating the powerhouses of Estonia and Faroe Islands. (EURO ‘12)
16 (13)	Italy	901	A scoreless tie in N. Ireland. (EURO ‘12)
17 (17)	Ghana	891
18 (27)	France	888	Wins over Luxemburg and Romania. Overrated as usual.
19 (23)	Cote d’Ivoire	871	Win over Burundi. They get points for that!
20 (16)	Slovakia	926	Tie with Ireland and win over Armenia. (EURO ‘12)

Two good wins against Latvia and Israel for Greece, both at home. Currently Greece is at the top of group F with 8 points. Croatia is second with 7 points and one game less played. Greece have had the pretty much the same ranking since last April.

Italy was also awarded a 3-0 victory on paper for the abandoned UEFA EURO 2012 qualifier against Serbia held in Genoa in October. The game was delayed for 30 minutes due to trouble with Serbs and then it was abandoned 6 minutes after kick-off. It seems that whole thing had to do with the signing of the Serb goalkeeper with another team.

The latest full table can be found at the FIFA World Ranking website.

Windows Live Writer 2011

New version of the free blog editor Live Writer by Microsoft. My upgrade from the previous version was smooth and so far I have not encountered any issues. The interface is similar to the one from the recent Office versions. That is, it uses the ribbon interface which is a good thing.

There are 3 tabs available: Home, Insert, and Blog Account. All the basic editing functions are part of the Home tab including Insert Hyperlink, Picture, and Video. Other inserts such as breaks, tables, maps (offered by Bing of course!), emoticons , etc. can be found by selecting the Insert tab. The Blog Account tab should be self-explanatory!

In addition to the cleaner interface there are a couple of things that I liked:

• The readily available HTML styles.
• The post date to the blog can be set to a future date. (I will know how well it works soon!) UPDATE: It worked great!

Live Writer 2011 is available for Windows Vista SP2 and Windows 7. Vista also requires a platform update so it can support certain Windows 7 technologies and API’s.

The Six Emotions To Setting Goals

Keith Abraham is a motivational and inspirational speaker and book author (best selling according to his vitae) that offered the following in an educational video available at my workplace:

1. If you’re lost, decide.

2. If you’re frustrated, pursue the opposites of what you don’t want.

3. If you’re confused, design a plan.

4. If you’re unclear, follow your heart.

5. If you’re unsatisfied, ask what matters.

6. If you’re uncertain, stay focused.

To me the most interesting of the six pieces of advice was number 2! It is an interesting approach. Close second is number 5. The ancient Greeks stated ‘know thyself'.’ That is not always easy.

Numbers 3 and 6 are taught in engineering!! Number 4 is not taught to guys!