Today, the Emoticon Turns 30 :-) - The Atlantic

Today, the Emoticon Turns 30 :-) - The Atlantic

Good history lesson!!

Why Microsoft Chose New York City

Why Microsoft Chose New York City

Good idea!

1. Several good universities in the area. Easier to collaborate with academics and researchers.
2. Young people prefer urban areas. Easier to attract talent.
3. Cross pollination of ideas due to culture, education centers, financial centers, art, etc. Enhance creativity.

How it should work!

Iced Coffee for Purists - The Atlantic

Iced Coffee for Purists - The Atlantic

Good stuff! I would only add coffee ice cubes (made using the infusion process) to avoid making the coffee more dilute!

EURO 2012 Qualifiers: Malta 0-1 Greece (On Top!)

A last gasp score by Torossidis on the second minute of added time gave a very important win and the top spot of Group F to Greece. The Olympiakos F.C. attacking back had a couple of more good chances to score earlier in the game but better late than never! Combined with Croatia’s loss to Georgia, Greece climbed to to the top spot of their Group, one point clear of Croatia, at the midway point of the qualifying round.

The next game is a Greece home against Malta again on June 4th.

UEFA.com: Greece back on top thanks to Torossidis

GOAL.com: Malta 0 – 1 Greece: Last-Gasp Torosidis Saves Blue-White From Embarrassing Draw

Tech Etymology: Animated GIF - The Atlantic

Tech Etymology: Animated GIF - The Atlantic

I knew it! I was right!! GIF is pronounced with the soft 'g'.

From the article:

In the '80s, before the Internet was commonplace, CompuServe released a graphics display bulletincalled CompuShow. In version 8.33 (fQ&A.DOC), the FAQ section on GIFs begins: "The GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), pronounced 'JIF,' was designed by CompuServe and the official specification released in June of 1987." In their very own document, the GIF's creators indicate their preference for the soft-j.

Mass Effect 2

Very cool game! A space adventure with dark overtones and seemingly endless possibilities. And it is not a multi-player game either! I managed to finish it after 45 hrs.37min of gameplay over a span of 38 days. My John Shepard character survived the final escape jump from the Collectors station to the waiting Normandy. Good thing because I can use the same character in Mass Effect 3.

I played the game as a Sentinel which is supposed to be challenging, at least according to the IGN walkthrough which mentioned:

Because of their unique play-style, Sentinels should be left to those who have a lot of experience in the Mass Effect universe. Lacking any real ability to use firearms, Sentinels will need to depend on their dueling skillset, which includes both biotic and tech-based abilities. Good luck! Playing as a Sentinel isn't easy.

I did not really find that particular character very difficult in the normal (default) level of difficulty and I had no past experience with Mass Effect. It took me a while to figure out the ‘biotic’ powers but I could still fight. I finished the game as a level 27 character.

During the game:

• I ‘romanced’ Tali.
• Miranda died in action. She disliked me since I took the side of another female by the name Jack!
• The female Jack is pissed off at me because I dumped her for Tali!
• Morality-wise I was mostly a paragon. No surprise there.
• Best weapon: The Collectors’ heavy weapon.
• I saved the galaxy!

First Blizzard of 2011

Started snowing early AM on Jan. 12 and did not stop until 8 PM the same day. It dumped over 15 inches (38 cm) of snow on top of the frozen snow from the December blizzard. Shoveling took about 8 hours (4 intervals of 2 hours each.) The first one was the difficult one but had heavy hardware for help. The other 3 were maintenance!!

The early AM snowfall was very dense and blanketed everything very quickly with wet and heavy snow. By late afternoon I run out of places to dump it.

Rotten Winter Wonderland…

Blizzard of 2010

The snow started falling around noon on 12/26 and by 8 AM on 12/27 they estimated that there were about 18 inches (46 cm) on the ground. The intense snowfall (at times it was dumping 1 inch/hour) was accompanied by high winds which were creating large snowdrifts and whiteout conditions.  The snow accumulation around my house was higher than 0.5 m at a lot of areas including the driveway.

The snowfall stopped around noon on on the 27th but the wind is still strong. Good thing my neighbors have snow-blowers which helped a lot when I went out to clear my driveway.

Currently the temperature is 17 degrees F (about –8 C) and with the wind it feels like it is –2 F (-19 C.) It is cold!

At least we expect a bit of decent weather for the next few days so quite a bit of the snow should melt.

Christmas 2010: Reading, MA

 

Merry Christmas!

Mass Effect 3

 

Mass Effect 3 was officially announced today and it seems that Commander Shepard will be back sometime around 'Holiday 2011'. I am not a huge fan of the ME series (the story line moves forward a bit slowly) but the trailer looks awesome!

Raytheon Company: ELCAN’s DigitalHunter™ Riflescope Hits the Mark

Raytheon Company: ELCAN’s DigitalHunter™ Riflescope Hits the Mark

That is amazing! And you can almost see little videos of bullets hitting targets showing up in youtube in a few years.

Next up self-guided bullets!

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!

FIFA World Ranking Top 20: September 2010

Rank (previous)	Team	Points	Comment
1 (1)	Spain	1824	Beat up on Liechtenstein. (EURO ‘12 Quals.)
2 (2)	Netherlands	1663	Wins over Finland and San Marino. (EURO ‘12 Quals.)
3 (4)	Germany	1490	Wins over Azerbaijan and Belgique! (EURO ‘12 Quals.)
4 (3)	Brazil	1480	Won over USA in friendly.
5 (5)	Argentina	1351	Won a couple of friendlies.
6 (7)	England	1191	Wins over Switzerland and Bulgaria. (EURO ‘12 Quals.)
7 (6)	Uruguay	1182	Win over Angola. (Friendly.)
8 (8)	Portugal	1049	A loss to Norge & a tie (barely) over Cyprus. (EURO ‘12)
9 (9)	Egypt	1034
10 (10)	Chile	1004
11 (14)	Croatia	998	Win over Latvia and tie with Greece. (EURO ‘12)
12 (12)	Greece	973	Ties with Georgia and Croatia. (EURO ‘12)
13 (11)	Italy	965	Wins over Faroe Islands and Estonia. (EURO ‘12)
14 (22)	Norway	958	Wins over Portugal and Iceland. (EURO ‘12)
15 (13)	Serbia	945	A tie against Slovenia & a win over Faroe Islands.
16 (27)	Slovakia	919	Wins over Russia and FYROM. (EURO ‘12)
17 (15)	Paraguay	904
18 (18)	USA	899
19 (19)	Slovenia	897	Tied Serbia and lost to N. Ireland. (EURO ‘12)
20 (23)	Ghana	889

A lot of action in September. All European national teams are playing in the qualification round for EURO 2012. Interesting Results:

• Portugal tied Cyprus 4 - 4 at home; Then lost to Norway! Cyprus gained 20 spots. Norway gained 8! Portugal stayed put…
• Russia lost to Slovakia at home. Then dropped out of the top 20 and Slovakia gained 11 spots!
• France lost to Belarus at home. France is now ranked 27.

Greece had a disappointing tie against Georgia at home but also tied Croatia in Zagreb which earned them a point against a difficult opponent. Since then a few players have quit the Greek national team. It will be interesting to see who lines up against Latvia in a couple of weeks.

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

C++ Reference: Google C++ Style Guide

Located at:

http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.xml

Very interesting reference on C++ style (conventions) used by the Google developers. Each topic includes dos and don’ts, pros and cons, rationale, and other comments.

It is detailed enough to include the guideline:

Each line of text in your code should be at most 80 characters long.

In my development environment the line limit is usually set to 72 characters! I picked that up about 15 years ago from some hard core developers and got used to it. Sometimes I go over that but for some reason I have never exceeded 78 characters.