foxpro.catalyst «

FoxPro workBLOGS and MORE… . . .

Here’s a funny Mac video. (Sorry Apple-lovers (via Rod Paddock’s Blogs))

VOTERGASM: “Our goal is to have 100,000 young voters catalyse 250,000 orgasms by November 3.”

Humans are weird.

If ever a certain programmer/mathematician (aka real problem solver) is brave enough to enter politics, he or she will have my 512-bit support.

That is if logic does not prevent him from diving in.

Let me post the title again: Sex pledges to boost US vote turnout.

Come on… what’s the problem here?

Possible low voting turnout. (or ‘turn on’ if you prefer seeing it that way).

Is that the real problem? If it is… then why?

Because of lack of sex?

Beep.

Let me re-phrase that:

   If ConvertToLogical(nAmountofSex) == lRare

        NUMTOSTREQ(nVoterTurnout) = 'Low'

   EndIf

That line of code sounds very illogical to me.

Why can’t humans identify the ‘real’ problem, find the ‘real’ root/cause of the ‘real’ problem and give ‘real’ solutions?

But then again… what if… considering that human beings, being the epitome of irony, have always preferred the approach that defies logic… realize that:

   IsNOTAlways(REALSolutions == EffectiveSolutions) == .T.

Then we’ll be having more goals and solutions similar to the first line above.

Something interesting to boot up your day: The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates. Truth is elusive… but anyway… it still is an interesting read.

QS and I are in ‘cold war mode’… but I’ll link to her PomeGRENADE article inside YOU.INQ7.

It’s less than five minutes to one in the morning… breaktime period is over. Now back to some coding.

If by ‘Browser Wars’ you think only of Netscape versus Internet Explorer before… think again. Of course these days it’s more of IE versus FireFox.

Unless of course… Google is cooking up something.

Speaking of Google… by now I presume you’ve heard of Google Desktop. Sriram Krishnan posted a review of this new search tool from Google.

Quite obviously… we don’t need an overhaul of the file system to come up with something nifty and useful as this, eh?

You want more Google Desktop reviews?

Here’s more.

Let’s just hope Google will overcome its perpetual love for a beta state. (Google News is in Beta, GMail is in Beta… and now the Google Desktop Search is also in Beta).

Not that I’m complaining. There’s a reason too for that ‘perpetual, lawyer-induced’ beta state for Google News.

The Daily WTF: ‘Curious Perversions in Information Technology’.

Windows XP Home and Professional Service Pack 2 Services 411 (via Rubik’s Redemption). I was about to complain about the black background when I saw the White or Black option.

One more thing… MSNBC now offers RSS Feeds.

OK…. back to the FoxIDE and out of the cyberspace, WildFire.

In the local scene, Filipino [tech]bloggers are being featured here, here and here.

Last week I also stumbled on one cs-related academe blog. In her ‘Blogs I Read’ section you’ll find some links to cs students blogging too. I guess indirectly, some calls are answered.

(CS stands for ComSci not CounterStrike nor CyberSex, Bit-wit)

She’s blogging about project presentations and defenses currently. I’m beginning to miss those teaching days of mine even more… and the food too.

Areman (who just transferred his blogs to blogspot (who I worked with before I transferred here in Manila (who happens to be a classmate of mine also when I was still in college))) also posted some defense-related blogs on his site.

This is one of the many things I like about Areman, his angst which is reflected in his ‘valiant’ use of the f-word.

But don’t let the f-words cloud you. That is an intelligent mind… you don’t graduate cum laude in AdDU for nothing. (And this was six years ago, when education in our country was not that ‘commercialized’ yet.)

Back to defenses and presentations, one of my favorite ‘torturing processes‘ before was making Student-01 delete five blocks of code for Student-02 to fix while I’m asking Student-03 some project-related questions. All of these things are done in front of the class.

I’ve also done that process every time I was invited as a panel in other schools.

It never fails to amuse me.

Some of us are just born sadists you know.

A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User’s Perspective from the man behind AnandTech.com.

Great branding is a spiritual exercise… nice read. And this one too: Intense longing.

Pencils down… I had fun trying to solve GLAT, Google Labs Aptitude Test. Now I’m a little brain drained to start coding. It’s a Sunday and I’m still having fun browsing through GeekPress.com‘s archives.

Some of the insightful political-related opinions I’ve read online are written by persons involved in the software development/infotech field… here’s one: Debate Devices.

Some are even posted to tickle your bones.

Probably it would be wise to listen to these mathematicians who offer some help on how to fight terrorism.

Needless to say values and logic go hand in hand in solving most (if not all) of the word problems… err world problems.

I’ll continue this later… qs is making fun of me right now.

BLOGGING the RP Tech Scene. (via MParaz.com)

If the instances of grumbles and pounds from the love-of-your-life is already more than the usual amount of beeps you can handle because you’re spending so much time infront of your monitor coding for world peace… stop, smell the roses and make her some poem.

Need some guidelines? Here’s how a software engineer creates one.

And while you’re there, do check the COUCH POTATO agreement too.

Eleven years ago on this day… September 26, Stanislav Petrov saved the world against a possible nuclear war which could’ve been ignited by a computer glitch.

Here are some related links: Stanislav Petrov Averts a Worldwide Nuclear War | Armageddon Almost Not Averted.

PDF-link/download-warp: VFP9Focus.pdf from CoDe Magazine.

Bill Gates and Petals Around The Rose. (You have encountered that puzzle already… right?)

For almost three years I’ve been using SereneScreen.com‘s Aquarium ScreenSaver. Needless to say, it is one of the best screensavers.

Yesterday, I found this Machine Code Screensaver from Improbable Software (through surfing Sofotex.com). It has the same ‘geekie-Matrix-ie’ feel but I like it better than the other Matrix-look-alike screensavers.

You can customize the pictures the screensaver shows in hex. All you need is to convert it to BMP format. The software recommends grey scaled 256-color bitmaps (8 bit), but you can actually use higher resolutions as long as it is greyscaled.

I also tried using colored bitmaps. The screensaver still displays the image but the quality is better when it is dark and grey.

Also from the same site, you’ll find some fractal-powered screensaver. If you’re into Fractals, they have this Optimal Mandelbrot Screensaver which elegantly depicts the fusion of art and mathematics.

But well of course the effects are enhanced by computers, the fusion of mathematics and machines.

… now if I can just save some bucks for something like this.

Before i’ll continue the Normalization post I have discussed earlier… allow me to post some random humpie-jumpie links first.

I’m making my alter-ego blog for me tonight.

From GEEK to CHEF. At first I thought it was a joke but then April 1 is months away.

One of the founders of Pyra, the company responsible for Blogger which of course has changed many lives online and offline, decided to quit the tech world to become a chef.

Meg Hourihan summarized it in three words: ‘Follow your heart’. Mushy but true most of the time.

I was viewing some pictures from FooCamp this morning. It’s interesting to see what those minds behind some of the great things IT has to offer are doing. And I remember that every time I see pictures from geek/developer camps, events and conferences you don’t often see a human smoking.

Yup you see them doing some silly stuff like arranging mascots in sex-related positions or presenting in stage while naked in a bath tub or jumping around the stage and howling ‘developers… developers… developers…’ more than 10 times.

Yet… seldom (if not never) do you see a picture of someone smoking a cigar.

Which brings me to my next point… that programmers/developers are indeed logical. (Oh come on don’t make me explain that further.)

… and of course programmers/developers are good role models. [- insert BIG GRIN here -]

What Steve Wozniak learned from failure. Trust me… it has nothing to do with porcupines.

Illusion linkin’-time: Here’s one from Edward H. Adelson… Checkershadow Illusion. Want more..?

Here’s more.

Illusions don’t impress you? How about the relevance of a brilliant movie entitled Blade Runner?

Blade Runner was selected a number of times as one of the best sci-fi movies of all time.

Don’t fret too much jimmo… Matrix is in that list.

Depthcore, the abstract digital artgroup where I belong, released the Verve Pack. Funky artworks… the next pack will be this 15th of October.

Expect at least an artwork from me in that release.

A different digital abstract artgroup also released their art pack… Affekted’s Simplicity Pack.

You see in the ‘underground’ digital art community we do help each other.

Can we say the same thing in the software development world? Probably yes… if it does not involve individuals from opposing platform camps.

I haven’t watched TV for quite some months and I’m not sure if this cool batch of Fido Dido commercials have been released already.

OK… enough humpie-jumpie for now.

Today is the 256th day of the year… Programmer’s Day for leap years.

Programmer’s Day is a whimsical “holiday” on the 256th day of the year celebrated mostly by computer programmers. The reason for this is that 256 is equal to 2 to the power of 8, which is equal to the number of values that it is possible to represent in a byte of data. Traditions include drinking, acting silly, coding silly programs, mini computer games, playing with old computers, etc.

Programmer’s Day usually falls on September 13th; on leap years, it is September 12th, due to the addition of February 29th into the calendar.

Source: Wikipedia.org

Ten years ago… it was also on this date that Netscape Navigator was released.

Steve Gillmore: Allchin’s last stand? Looks like these articles derived from Longhorn’s component split up will never end, eh?

VFUG September 2004 Newsletter is out.

Inspired by Dave Barry, GapingVoid, Garfield, Neopoleon and a late night online conversation a couple of mid-nights ago with Avatar… I’m coming up with this new thing here in this site.

If you have CuriousLabs Poser 4, the toon is Edgar. The monitors and the lcd monitor mounts are from Ergotron… future ‘must-have’ in this technolust list of mine.

A hi-res version of the strip above is available here.

I spent more than half of this Blessed Mother Mary’s day (or make that yesterday since it is already 4AM (again)), in bed… sleeping.

Slept up to 12Noon, fired up and tweaked some codes for a couple of hours, took my lunch at 3PM then went off to dream away (Some dream episodes just hunger for sequels). Woke up around 6 in the evening and wondered how come time travels so fast.

I should’ve went to the office today to work on a freon-filtered room and tinker with Fedora Core 2 in between coding, which I have just finished downloading a couple of days ago.

I have burned the .iso images last night and was able to convince qs to ‘lend’ me her ‘not-so-old’ Pentium II 166MHz IBM Aptiva computer.

That computer currently runs on Windows XP SP2 so I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t run in a Linux-powered OS.

Yup XP SP2 can run in that 166Mhz/64EDO RAM machine. Although the prior Windows XP SP1 runs faster. SP2 tends to slow down almost everything.

Stress on the ‘everything’ and not the ‘almost’.

But then of course, the comparison here does not involve trojan/spyware-infested Windows XP SP1 machines.

Anyway, I was reading Stephen Sawyer’s post on why he is pursuing a different career after spending years in software development. It makes you think of a lot of things especially if you’re into software development.

EvenMore(DeepThinking++)… if you have slept too much for one day.

If you’re not into a software development related career, what do you think you would be doing right now?

What if it needs to be a job that shouldn’t be computer-related… what would that be?

Will you survive?

Feel free to transmit your binary thoughts here and let us hear some neuron decibel. (Note: You can post as GUEST… no need to register).

Here are some infotech-related warps before I’ll proceed to my late night programming related tasks.

GMane. Nope it’s not related with GMail but the idea is as slick as well… or even better. Info-overload level… stratosphere.

Joel Spolsky: It’s Not Just Usability. Indeed… one needs charm too. Software applications are not exempted to charm pre-requisites you know.

OSS torpedoed: Royal Navy will run on Windows for Warships. Giving a new dimension to the object known as the ‘Blue Screen of Death’… or is it ‘Scream’? Well… who cares there’s not much difference really.

Planet Mozilla and Internet Explorer blogs. What else can you ask for? Those are direct links to their feeds by the way.

Still don’t have an RSS Aggregator? Time to download RSSBandit which recently upgraded to v1.2.0.117.

What else do you want? How about blogs from John Cormack (the brains behind IDSoftware and Doom) and Quentin Tarantino?

It’s a fake Quentin blog though. But who cares? Even Tarantino’s publicist was impressed.

During our client visit yesterday (just hours ago really since it is still 1:11AM and I’m still up), I asked qs to setup and configure the computers inside the internet laboratory while I was finalizing some database integrity checking.

Yup… these days she’s not only involved in database discussions, data flow concepts and usability testing, she’s also doing hands on configurations.

She was even able to override that hide START.RUN feature I included in the IUMS program.

Plus she showed me where MSCONFIG was hidden. For years I was thinking this was an ‘internal command’. I didn’t even bothered looking it up.

But anyway, while she was doing this cleaning of the startup garbage entries through MSCONFIG, running the Novell client application and entering the dummy username and password I created to test the program… she found herself attempting to copy and paste some values from PC-001 thinking she could paste it on PC-002.

Weird and funny really, but this occur to me once in a while. And probably you too have been in this kind of situation.

Which makes me think, what if we can really copy and paste things to a memory within our bodies, let’s say the hair on your fingers or your nose, which can easily be retrieved (and pasted) with a short cut key interfaced with a computer.

It could even be used for storage of passwords and stuff.

Yeah I know, you’d point me to those fingerprint/voice/iris-powered technologies. But I’m talking here about the little amount of data which you can store within your body parts and not using your body parts as a the key.

Some of you would probably lecture me of how the brain should be used… but hey if Microsoft was awarded a patent which involves the usage of body as a source of power (power conduit and data bus to be precise and that was more than two months ago), why not use other parts of the body aside from the brain for little harmless amounts of data storage?

But then again… probably I just need some rest.

Spiderman, anyone?

Dave Barry is blogging about his Olympic experiences. Funny stuff. He talks about drugs, taxi cabs in Athens, weightlifting facts and TIPIYOTKI!

Funny as always.