Rosie and I have had some out of town guests stay with us this past weekend. We all decided to go on a little jaunt to Pa. We visited the Amish in Intercourse Pa. where we ate, took little tours and found our way to a vinyard. Since the Hershey Chocolate World was only a short car ride away, we went to Hershey PA and toured the chocolate factory.
I was running out to pick up a Blu-Ray DVD player, when I spoke to a few people who suggested picking up a Sony Playstation 3 instead. The rational was that it played Blu-Ray DVD’s AND played games. OK I said, and I trotted out the door to my nearest Best Buy. The SP3 was $399.00 + $25 for the remote control ($424.00), and regular Blu-Ray players were about $349.00 (remote included). I figured the SP3 would be worth while if I liked any of the games, so I took a look at what was available, but nothing peaked my interest. They all seemed kind of dumb. I’ll just pick up a regular Sony Blu-Ray thingie when the stores are less crowded next week. I’ll also have to research it a bit more. Whatever I get will have to be able to plug into whatever home theater system I get later on this year.
The Wii was the big hit this Christmas. I played some of the games, but I thought they were dumb too. Guitar hero is somehow just wrong. Why would anyone spend so much time learning how to play the game, when they can pick up the real thing and actually learn how to play an instrument. It all seems so feeble minded. Like a quick fix to something that can actually be an accomplishment but takes a bit of time.
Christmas Eve and Christmas are my favorite days of the year. I love visiting all our family, looking at Christmas lights, and tracking Santa Claus on NORAD’s website. I’m not really about the presents, but I think something magical carries over to Christmas from my youth. I’m probably just nuts.
At any rate, some of the highlights of the season were seeing my nieces and nephews last weekend, dragging the fellows from work out to Palm West for dinner, Seeing Mom and Dad for a big Christmas morning breakfast, and a feast at Rosie’s Aunt Ann’s house (her cheese cake is out of this world).
I get a little depressed the day after Christmas because i have to wait a whole year before it comes around again.
Click here … this is flippin’ funny
Each year on Christmas Eve, NORAD tracks Santa’s path around the world. You can keep up with it at http://www.noradsanta.org/. NORAD also takes phone calls from children (and drunken’ adults apparently) to give info on Santa’s location.
NORAD is the North American Aerospace Defence Command; A joint military orginization run by the United States and Canada that tracks all objects in the North American Aerospace and maritime approaches. They are interesting in many ways and you can find out about them here: http://www.norad.mil/about/index.html
This history of this service is quite interesting, check it out here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NORAD_Tracks_Santa
128 processors - 1/2 TB RAM
-bash-3.00# uname -a
Linux smp1 2.6.27.6-1.vSMP.inl #1 SMP Tue Dec 2 00:06:05 PST 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
-bash-3.00# cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor | wc -l
128
-bash-3.00# cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 449983000 kB
MemFree: 378943012 kB
…
‘Twas the night before implementation and all through the house,
not a program was working not even a browse.
The programmers hung by their tubes in despair,
with hopes that a miracle would soon be there.
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
When out in the machine room there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a super programmer (with a six-pack of beer).
His resume glowed with experience so rare,
he turned out great code with a bit-pusher’s flair.
More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
On update! on add! on inquiry! on delete!
on batch jobs! on closing! on functions complete!
His eyes were glazed-over, fingers nimble and lean,
from weekends and nights in front of a screen.
A wink of his eye, and a twitch of his head,
soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
turning specs into code; then turned with a jerk;
And laying his finger upon the “ENTER” key,
the systems came up and worked perfectly.
The updates updated; the deletes, they deleted;
the inquiries inquired, and closings completed.
He tested each whistle, and tested each bell,
with nary an abend, and all had gone well.
The system was finished, the tests were concluded.
The users’ last changes were even included.
And the user exclaimed with a snarl and a taunt,
“It’s just what I asked for, but not what I want!”
-Anonymous, unfortunately.
why, mr. Anderson, why? why, why do you do it? why, why get up? why keep fighting? do you believe you’re fighting for something, for more than your survival? can you tell me what it is, do you even know? is it freedom or truth, perhaps peace - could it be for love? illusions, mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception. temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. and all of them as artificial as the matrix itself. although, only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. you must be able to see it, mr. Anderson, you must know it by now! you can’t win, it’s pointless to keep fighting! why, mr. Anderson, why, why do you persist?
-agent Smith, Matrix Revolutions
the video
I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we… are the cure.
- agent Smith
The Video
I’m a little over the half way mark to finishing the masters degree. Because I wasn’t actually mitriculated for the first few semesters, I was able to take my classes without doing my core corriculum first. Now, as an official mitriculated student, I’ve had to go back and take some of the classes I should have taken first. Most MSCS programs don’t assume that all students have an undergraduate degree in comp-sci, so the first few courses are fundamentals. Most CS programs are not based on programming languages or system architectures, they are based on algorithms and theories. Essentially programming and data structure courses are given to provide CS students with the tools to write programs to excute the theories and algorithms. Each university chooses a language that projects and work will be based on through the degree program. Most universities choose Java as the base language.
That being said, I’ve now taken Intro to Java 1 and have Intro to Java 2 next semester. There are certain things that I like about the Java language, but I think the program should be based on C/C++. And I’m not alone in this either. Many academics agree that Java relies on libraries, so very little time is spent by students finding the fastest or best ways to program a task. Students basically just pick an available library and use it. Here’s what Bjarne Stroustrup has to say about using Java in universities: click here, his sentiments are echo’d by Robert Dwyer of NYU (click here)
Again, I think Java is a great language and for building applications it provides a means of rapid development, but in terms of a teaching language, I’ve always thought that it relies to much on the standard library, and for things like learning memory management, it doesn’t teach you a thing.
All in all, I think this sequence will make me a better object oriented programmer. I’ve learned a ton of stuff in this course thus far.
