A Few Thoughts…

Think you’re a computer guru? Not just someone who ‘knows a bit about computers’, but someone who lives, eats, and breathes the world of computers? Take the quiz and see how you do. Okay, InfoWorld didn’t call it the Computer Nerd Test, and I normally don’t think of them as the type that would put out a quiz with this level of nerdiness required. There’s an answer guide at the end.

Out of a possible 100 points, I got 55…guess I’m not as big of a nerd as I thought! Leave your scores in the comments!

Take the Computer Nerd Test

Today’s run got me to the 3-mile mark! I feel pretty good, though a little dehydrated. It seems like a lot of the runs at this point are more of a psychological achievement than physical achievements. Certainly the 20-minute continuous run from last Thursday did a good job of making me feel more like a runner than someone who is just trying to make his way through some running program.

Running for me is somehow strangely relaxing. I don’t really know how to explain it, but I enjoy it. Just under 5-weeks until the Cheetah run, and I’m thinking about adjusting my personal goal…but I haven’t really done any running outside yet. So I’m gonna hold off on that one

I finally got around to making my garage look nicer. It’s something I’ve been meaning to get around to since I’ve moved in over 3 years ago! The previous owners (not sure which one) decided to build a huge (over 5′x5′) shelf of sorts in the back corner, and store some old cabinets – not under the shelf mind you. Under the shelf was reserved for a few cardboard boxes. I never stored anything there because I couldn’t get to it, and I’ve wanted to tear it out since day one. Today, the ginormous shelf finally came down, and the old cabinets made their way to the dumpster!

Additionally, there were several boxes of hardwood flooring and tile on the floor. These I’m sure were form the immediately previous owner, who was a home builder (though I’d never buy a home from him again based on the experience I had with the negotiation process with him, and the subsequent signing). These are now stored in the wall – that’s right, IN the wall. Well, kinda anyway. One wall of my garage is exposed studs, and all but one of the boxes is shallower than the studs. So the perfect solution: put then in the wall, and a 2×4 across the front to make sure they don’t fall out! The tile was just super-heavy, and is now in a location out of the way!

After a little sweeping, setting up some new, USE ABLE, shelving, and organizing several things I intend to keep in the garage, I now have a garage which is almost they way I want it. I need to run some power to the walls as the only outlet is on the ceiling for the garage door opener which is just silly. But most importantly, I now have space for something else in the garage. (and a few others – I ran out of words…all in no particular order

I enjoy being a HAM. I feel like it ties my modern-day activities as a computer scientist to the hard engineering roots of the past that gave us many of the technologies we have today. But many of today’s HAMs are the same HAMs of the past 30+ years. And in no knock to them at all, the pushing-the-edge technology is kinda hidden behind outdated looking (or just plain not updated) websites. And many times, there’s virtually no presence on the web at all – even from vendors! What’s a HAM to do!?

Well, luckily there are a bunch of us who are looking to bring the world of HAM into the 21st century. I just ran across Ham Twits, a list of HAMs on twitter. Granted, not a pushing of the technology, but certainly a group of individuals who are merging modern technology trends with a beloved hobby (and they’re listed alphabetically by last name, so KC8APF, you can make the top of the list!).

I’ve been trying to think up something that might make my HAM hobby have a wider acceptance in the general community. Something that has a some ‘Wow’ factor with it. Simply put, kids are so used to long-distance communication, and most of them don’t even care to think about how the connection happens to impress them with satellite communications (though moon-bounce can be kinda cool still). If you have any ideas for something that has some wow-ness, leave a comment!

Time for my ‘worst airline trip ever’ story:
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A while ago (Sat 09 Oct 2004 07:15:52 PM EDT according to the EXIF data) I snapped the picture below in Chicago, at night, handheld, with my digital rebel and the rather crummy 18-55mm EF-S lens.

I was quite pleased with the shot, even though the tones are a bit off, and there is a bit of fuzz in the image (not to mention the noise from the 1600 ISO).

Imagine my surprise when I see the following picture on LifeHacker:

At first I thought it was my picture – but I hadn’t looked at mine in quite some time. Clearly they are different, and it makes me want to go try and redo the shot with the new camera, a better lens, and possibly a tripod!

So a few people have apparently created user accounts on my blog – listed as subscribers, and one of my posts was edited. Interesting. Any wordpress users who read this might want to check their accordingly.

The last user registered with the following information:
Username: ToinccerFlien
E-mail: sfdgjkku56@mail333.com

I’ve been struggling with this problem from my recent homework set: Prove that the number of triangles t in any triangulation of a fixed point set s is constant. This is something that after trying a few examples and thinking about it makes perfect sense to me. And indeed it is provable. However, everyone who references this says it is obvious and can be proven by induction – yet no one has actually shown the proof.

This is where I have a problem: I’m not so good at writing proofs, which is why I was terrible at algorithms 1. So while something seems obvious to me (at least now that I’ve thought about the problem for a while), and everyone else seems to be able to put down “it’s obvious, go prove it yourself” in their publications, I’m still stuck on getting this proven. Perhaps when I finally get the answer, I’ll post it here so that future me can find it…not that I’ll probably have much use for it in the future.

It has been a LONG time since I’ve taken time off to go somewhere and relax for a few days, and I can feel the stress starting to get to me. A lot of it is driven by situations at work, which I won’t really go into here, since there are people at work who read this. But school this (calendar) year has seemed to include a lot more work outside of class compared to the other classes I’ve taken. Maybe after 2 years it’s just starting to wear on me more.

So anyway, with the desire to go on vacation, and the school year winding down, I need some ideas. Where should I go? What should I see. Keep in mind I like to minimize charging vacation time at work – so things which maximize vacation time for the proverbial vacation dollar are preferred. (Places which offer good photography time in addition to relaxing are also a plus – i.e. not a beach somewhere, I’m not really a beach person anyway)

Share your thoughts!

I’ve ranted on this before, and I probably will again in the future. Word is a fine tool for writing short papers – but in the technical writing world, it’s only barely adequate. It can get the job done – not easily or conveniently though. Several of my co-workers would be in favor of doing documentation in Latex, but many (including those in charge) are not.

The documentation process would be much easier (SCM tools can easily handle text files – go figure) and it would be much easier to maintain formatting across multiple writers/editors. In general I think those writing the docs would be more productive because they can sped time writing the content instead of worrying about the formatting. Just because the ‘World runs on Windows’ and by extension ‘Writes with Word’ doesn’t mean it’s the best answer for a task – merely the most convenient. People spend a lot of time learning new languages and new techniques to be able to solve problems better, and then fall back to what is most convenient method of documentation. Scratch that – Word isn’t even the most convenient, it’s just the most pervasive in the office environment.*

If you have a little while, do yourself a favor – learn Latex! There is a little bit of a learning curve, but you can very quickly become proficient at writing documents which are easy to maintain, and look more professional than 99%** of the documents written in Word.

* Excel is still awesome, and the best tool for the job in many cases*
** 78% of statistics are made up – though this does not indicate that my estimate is wrong!
*** Footnotes are also a LOT easier in Latex…