Data Visualization

Some of these sites are downright sexy

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches

substring bites

Last week i copied some string splitting logic from C# to Java and didn't bother to test much. Today i fired up one of the Duet appointments and typed max value in the location field (256) and it bombed! .. after debugging i found
C# substring is - substring(startIndex, length)
Java substring is - substring(startIndex, endIndex)
crap.. Java's is more like Python's where it's called slice syntax - str[startIndex:endIndex]
but we don't have slice syntax in Java or C# .. and i like C#'s better

random

Martin Fowler never ceases to amaze me. I was banging my head over timezone issues yesterday and today morning i see this. He gave Microsoft Office the worst timezone experience award. Interestingly i'm working on the exact same thing for one of the scenarios. I do think trying to be clever might ruin user experience. We have 3 major layers (outlook, java server, SAP backend) with each running in 3 different technologies (.Net, Java, ABAP) glued together using XML and proprietary protocols. The nuances of each of these technologies bundled with the bugs in them makes life a living hell.

I saw The number 23 yesterday. Neo ruined the movie unknowingly :) few years back. I'm also finding number 23 at many places. I look at my phone and its extension is 4739. Add it, you will get 23. Phone displays today is 07.09.07 again 23. My birth date is August 15 (15-08) again 23. My cubicle no is 23! Not so creepy anyway :)

QuakeCon 2007

QuakeCon went by and i didn't even know sigh :(
Id announced their new game Rage. It runs on Mac, PC, XBox 360 and PS3 from the same source base. The major technical feature is MegaTexture where artists now don't need to worry about the texture size and they can make surface as detailed as they want without performance hit.
The major announcement for me was that Quake 3 is going to be made a web game. It's called Quake Zero. Anyone will be able to connect to internet, download Quake Zero client(?) and start playing online for free. They will use advertisement business model. Id is now split into two teams and one team is doing this work. The other team is working on Rage.
You can download the keynote from here.

The next best thing after tabs

http://www.cooliris.com/Site/index.html

Amazing

Will iphone blend?

Will it blend? is the question

Hans Reiser

I try to avoid judging people. I do it anyway sometimes, but when i think it in larger context it makes no sense.

Hans Reiser: Once a Linux Visionary, Now Accused of Murder

Neverending white lights

Use ClearType!!!

Apple has released safari for windows. So i downloaded and started using it. The first thing which i noticed was the fonts. They were smooth. It brought back memories of Gnome, Microsoft Office 12, Iternet Explorer etc. A little investigation pointed to this post by Joel Spolsky. Next thing i did was enabling ClearType on my XP.

If you are using Windows XP and haven't enabled ClearType, please do it now. The quality of fonts is amazing. You are going to love your coding, reading whatever!

Carmack unveils Id's latest game engine

Wolves

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/that-old-marshmallow-maze-spell.html

lolcats

I Can Has CheezBurger?

Read the story

and this LOLPython :)

IN MAI datetime GIMME date LIKE DATE

SO IM LIKE FIBBING WIT N OK?
  LOL ITERATE FIBONACCI TERMS LESS THAN N /LOL
  SO GOOD N BIG LIKE EASTERBUNNY
  BTW, FIBONACCI LIKE BUNNIES! LOL
  U BORROW CHEEZBURGER
  U BORROW CHEEZBURGER
  I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER
  HE CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER
  WHILE I CUTE?
      I AND HE CAN HAZ HE AND I ALONG WITH HE
      IZ HE BIG LIKE N?
          KTHXBYE
      U BORROW HE

IZ __name__ KINDA LIKE "__main__"?
  COMPLAIN "NOW IZ" AND DATE OWN today THING
  IZ BIGNESS ARGZ OK KINDA LIKE 1?
      N CAN HAS 100
  NOPE?
      N CAN HAS NUMBR ARGZ LOOK AT 1!!
  GIMME EACH I IN UR FIBBING WIT N OK?
      VISIBLE I

xkcd also?

Previously Part1, Part2, Part3

Dreams

There are dreams. Some for which you would stake your life. Some achievable. Some worth. Some impossible. Some you wish had happened. Some you wish would never happen.
Do i have an advice? maybe no. maybe..

Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future isn't here yet, whatever it's going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That's it.

Mental Frames

Paul Buchheit writes...

For example, if you are interested in startups, but work in a big company, you are in danger. If you stay there too long, you will be drawn into the big company frame shared by the other "lifers". Startups will all seem too risky, frivolous, or impractical, and you'll spend the rest of your life in that big company (and posting bitter comments on TechCrunch).

Sigh.

Patents

Mark Pilgrim on patents...

The patent was original, it was innovative, and it was still shameful.

It’s hard to live up to your principles. If it were easy, your principles probably aren’t worth a damn anyway.

Days go on and on. They don't end...

Saw Taxi Driver this weekend. Twice. And as if that was not enough, it came in TV at night. Coincidence? I've been wanting to watch this movie for quite some time .. make that some years. I guess i saw some pics of this movie when i was in school. Right time to watch the right movie. The music haunts me ..

Processes

Guido says

Just because Java was once aimed at a set-top box OS that didn't support multiple address spaces, and just because process creation in Windows used to be slow as a dog, doesn't mean that multiple processes (with judicious use of IPC) aren't a much better approach to writing apps for multi-CPU boxes than threads.

Adminspotting

AACS in limelight again

Kevin Rose writes

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

via Freedom to Tinker