DevSlant - Obviously Obfuscated Originality

Moving to Tumblr

2010-09-03T17:04:00.002-07:00

The blogger system that this runs on has been driving me crazy, so I've up and moved!

You can reach my new blog at tumblr now.

2010-03-08T21:31:00.009-08:00

Billing

I mentioned in my previous post that the billing project is making progress and that we are clearing some hurdles. It's interesting because right now it's both lots of coding and lots of (re)design work. Our initial attempt at the new billing platform ended up using the wrong solution (or perhaps I should say, we used the solution incorrectly). For our database layer, we chose to use Rose::DB. Unfortunately, both our inexperience with Rose, and our quest (yes, a quest) to also use Moose at the same time ended up causing a far greater increase in complexity than anyone had expected, and a significant impact on performance.

Recently we started replacing that database layer with our own thin layer built on top of a query generator (SQL::Abstract). It's going much easier. It's made more of the platform transparent, and makes it easier to both see the design, and recognize other design possibilities.

Recently I've been (re)reading Robert Martin's book Clean Code (I'll write a review of it once I am done). I don't agree with everything in the book, but it's after having to really think about what he's saying, and comparing it to what we're trying to accomplish at work.

Interestingly, something I came across in it really helped pull together a design idea/problem we're facing - how to keep a clean separation between our data access layers and our business logic. Fortunately I came across the chapter that includes a brief discussion of the DECORATOR pattern, which after some thought and a few scribbled diagrams, and some further reading on the web, has become the leading candidate for solving this separation problem. (For the curious, we now want to wrap our business layer with a Data Access Object, which in turn may end up being wrapped within a caching layer). The wikipedia page I linked to above has a reasonable explanation of the design pattern. Personally I found the description within Head First Design Patterns to be a bit more practical for my tastes.

Readings

Inviting Disaster is the book that describes what engineers and software developers rarely openly admit :-).

The book reviews various failures/disasters caused by what initially might be thought of as equipment failure, but quickly becomes a view on how poor training, communication, and an outright ignorance of potential problems leads to disasters that could have been avoided. It's amazing how many of the systems people design and spend enormous amounts of money to produce are quickly left to people with little or no training, changes made that are undocumented, and a habit of people believing that since something didn't fail the last time it was used, it won't fail the next time. It's more frightening when you realize how much of the software industry makes the same mistakes, but really does seem to accept the high failure rate.

Iron Heart was a quick read, but almost morbidly fascinating. Brian Boyle was a high school swim athlete just getting ready for college when he was struck by a dump truck while driving. The fact that he lived considering the state he was in is impressive - the ER doctors basically expected him to die, then they expected him to never walk again. His heart was pushed over to the middle of his chest cavity, several organs had to be removed. His heart stopped several times. He was put in an induced coma. Two and a half years later he successfully completed his first IronMan competition. Read the book to fill in the blanks :-). Worth reading.

Computing

It's been many years since my last computer upgrade (yes really!). Now, as you can imagine (are you imagining), someone who is in front of a computer most waking hours is going to be picky :-). I wanted something for gaming, photoshop, programming, video encoding, and anything else I may throw at it.

Here's the spec for those hardware geeks among you:

Intel Core i7 920

Noctua NH-U12P heat sink

ASUS P6X58D Premium motherboard

12GB Corsair XMS3 Dominator RAM

Kingston 128GB SSD

2x Seagate 1.5TB 7200.11 SATA-300 drives

Vantec 59-in-1 card reader

XFX Radeon HD 5870

Corsair 1KW power supply

Coolermaster Haf922 midtower

Windows 7 64-bit

And yes, it plays games sooooooooo smoooooooothly. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 now runs like butta!

Chess

Uh-oh, there's that addiction again. I don't have the time to really study chess, and certainly not play in tournaments again, but once again I'm starting to pick it up, play a little online, check out what training software is available, etc. I'll have more in future as I review various software programs and online chess servers to play on.

For those curious the position in the image is from a game between Capablanca and Alekhine in their World Championship match, in Buenos Aires, 1927 (game 11).

2010-02-27T12:19:00.009-08:00

Been pretty much regular progress the last couple of weeks. Riley is still cute, though he grunts a lot... Making progress with the billing project at work. I think we're clearing some of the hurdles now.

Obligatory olympic torch shot:

Readings

In the Department of Mad Scientists, the author take you through a fascinating look at DARPA - The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. You may not have heard of DARPA, but among other things, they funded and helped develop something that today is called the Internet... If you have an interest in how big (outlandish) ideas get turned into a reality when no one else in the world even thinks it's possible, read this book :-).

I remember a little of Jacques Cousteau being on TV when I was growing up. In the Sea King, the author manages to hit all the highlights of Cousteau's life. From his spying on the Germans during WWII, the invention of the SCUBA, to showing the underwater world on TV for 10 years. It's unfortunate that near the end of his life his relationship with those around him, particularly his son, were not an example of how he had lived his life until that point.

For a short photographic essay that follows Lance Armstrong during his comeback from retirement to placing 3rd in the Tour de France, this book has a nice selection of photos. This is really for those who want everything Lance, or want to see what a professional photographer can produce. Worth studying some of the shots if you're eager to see what it takes to be in the right place at the right time.

Education

The on-going's of trying to keep up with technology in a world that produces more technology, faster, every day. I'm basically working my way through Clean Code. It's amazing how you can forget some of these practices when you're buried in design, development, documenting, and general team management every day.

I had an interesting discussion (and realization) this week at work. I was discussing the design of our database layer, and our layers on top of the DB with a co-worker, and how the data should be organized into our higher-level objects. A key word that my co-worker mentioned was composition (not the kind you get in grammar). The idea that an object is 'composed' of it's own information AND other objects. It's a common approach, but, oddly, one that I haven't really though about since I used to do some Java programming. Java (or actually, design patterns) make common use of the idea of composition. It's not really particular to a language, though Java seems to be where it's discussed frequently. The odd thing is, in the years that I've been doing Perl, we rarely if ever discuss the idea of composing objects together in this way. Maybe it's specific to where I work, the company is not very object-oriented in it's approach to Perl (though that is changing).

Gaming

Currently playing:

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (beta). Pretty good so far, the full release comes out March 2.

Dragon Age: Origins. Nice game, now if I can just get through that circle of fire...

Up soon: Assassins Creed 2, Mass Effect 2.

On the blog again...

2010-02-11T12:29:00.003-08:00

So it's been a little while...about 1/2 year since I added any updates here. I'm going to try and change that by making more frequent updates, as I find there's quite a bit to blog about.

First up, let's get the big, obvious one out of the way - I have a son :-). This is Riley, born Feb 3, 2010.

He's already got that thoughtful look...

Readings

I've read a slew of books lately (where a slew is 10+). It's been an interesting mix. I want to highlight a few of them. Most of these I've been reading as eBooks on my iPod:

Feynman's Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow. Mlodinow was a young physicist who worked for a time at Caltech during Richard Feynman's later years. Whether you're interested in physics or not, this book is interesting because it reminds you that regardless of what you're trying to understand, everyone around you has had the same problems.

The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow. An excellent book on understanding 'randomness'. Both for recognizing things that are random when you thought there was an actual pattern, and for recognizing there's a pattern when you thought something was random. More people need to read this book, it would reduce a lot of that "why does this always happen to me" type of thinking.

Collider by Paul Halpern. A fascinating look at the Large Hadron Collider, and previous colliders that have led up to the LHC. Finding the answers to the greatest questions about how the universe formed are being worked on underground in Geneva. This book provides a view into that work.

Roving Mars by Steven Squyres. Squyres is the principal investigator on the Mars missions that landed the rovers Spirit and Opportunity. This is an exciting behind-the-scenes look at how it was done. Fascinating view of what NASA puts people through to get a mission accomplished, particularly when faced with the whims of politicians.

More reviews to come, I have about 15 other books I want to mention that I've read in the last 6 weeks.

Fitness

The Vancouver Sun Run is coming up May 9th of this year. Time to get myself back to running. Considering how mild this winter is turning out, I don't think I'll have to worry about running in several inches of slush this time.

There's also a 5K Science Fair Fun Run happening at Science World on May 30 which helps to raise funds for sending students to science fairs.

If my feet hold together, there's even the possibility of a half-marathon later this year (Scotiabank Half Marathon takes place June 27, from UBC down to Stanley Park).

Education

I continue to read about software development. There's a huge array of material in different topics to read about, though reading about something is not always the same as studying something. Studying requires deeper thinking, more questioning, more practicing.

One of the things I've noticed is that most fields of interest that acquire enough people interested in the subject end up having a magazine dedicated to the topics within that field. There's magazines for just about everything these days. Whether you're a trucker, knitter or gardener, there's a magazine out there to keep you informed of what's happening, articles to provide encouragement, offer hints and tips and advertise products that may be of interest to you. They do it year-round, and they always have reminders, regardless of your level of proficiency, of what you can be doing to improve.

Programming has had it's share of magazines too, with one of the longest lasting being Doctor Dobbs Journal (DDJ). Unfortunately, it has succumbed, and is now a minor feature within an IT related magazine.

There doesn't seem to be much that fills the gap. Maybe it's all been replaced by information online - blogs maybe? But sometimes that seems like you're getting smaller, less researched information. Granted, you can now become part of a conversation, which may lead you to a better understanding, and able to ask questions directly to the author and others reading their blog.

Still, I do miss having a magazine that makes me aware of the things I didn't know about, that I didn't even know to ask about. Hopefully I can find an equivalent online.

Random Bits...

2009-07-04T12:23:00.009-07:00

iPhone redux
In my last post, I mentioned that I see computing platforms like the iPhone to be the wave of the future for mobile computers that also include a phone. Jeff Atwood over at Coding Horror posted a considerably more thought out version that arrives at the same conclusion :-). Worth taking a read of.

Software Developer's and education
Our development teams at airG have grown quite large, and there is a real mix in knowledge level. Note, I'm not referring to talent/innate ability, I mean knowledge - the stuff you acquire from doing stuff or from others showing you stuff. However, it seems that there are only a few people actively pursuing improving their knowledge. Or maybe, they are all trying to, but they're not all sure how to do so. It's a large problem that shows up in small details.

Something that an experienced (whatever that is) developer might consider 'common-sense' isn't common at all. They learned it from someone else, or through reading what others have done - basically educating themselves on what they should be doing. But what happens when you have a team of mostly junior - intermediate developers? How do they gain these basic concepts and then move onto more complicated ones if that knowledge isn't getting transferred around or picked up from external sources?

As such, a group of the more senior developers have gotten together, and we're trying to start with some of the basics we 'assume' people should know, but occasionally see being ignored and start gently educating people. Not too many things at once (who needs a list of 50 rules?? No one's going to remember them all). But a few across a couple of weeks, make sure it's adopted by everyone under the right conditions, let it become part of their work flow, their habits. Then add more and repeat.

Photography
I haven't posted much since my photography was on hold for awhile, but I've been doing a few things lately - photographing racers at the Test of Metal mountain bike race in Squamish, and on Canada Day, photographing road racers at the Yaletown Grand Prix.

I think I managed to get quite a few good shots at both races. I try not to focus just on the lead racers, but on as many riders as possible. I think all the competitors are worthy of photos :-). Oh, and an interesting thing with the Yaletown racer photos - I've been contacted by a manager of one of the teams in the race, asking if they could use some of the photos on their team page. They're not there as of this writing, but hopefully soon.

Billing
High-level design of our new billing platform is moving along nicely. I think we've come up with a solution to our database design that should last considerably longer that the current version and make it easy to scale out horizontally in future with minimal effort. Now I'm on to attacking the most difficult (or perhaps it's more accurate to say 'unknown') area of the new design involving a middle ware layer. There's a few commercial solutions out there (cha-ching $$). Will have to evaluate what they offer over rolling our own custom-solution.

As part of all this billing design, I'm thinking far more about scalability, but not just how it applies to our billing system, but how all of our platforms handle growing in capacity. There's a growing amount of information on the web from others who have gone through various growth patterns (think Flickr, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, etc). The best place I've found is the High Scalability site. If you even think you might need to deal with capacity, this is a site that can get you going in the right direction.

Training
Of course, after all that design, I'll also be helping to implement it all :-). Keep in mind, I've been more manager than developer the last three years so I'm going to have to dive back into coding. This ties back to the training goals I push on the junior developers - what's your plan for improving your knowledge?

My plan:
Three areas of improvement I want to work on (aside from the current material I'm studying for design and capacity ideas):

More advanced Perl (and relearning some of the basics I might not have been using for all these years).
Relearn Design Patterns, but not necessarily using the "Gang of Four" book. Instead I'm going to use Oreilly's Head First Design Patterns which has gotten a large number of recommendations.
And finally, to dive into SQL and database concepts (again). I never use to find databases all that interesting. I use them, I'll set up some schema and I can normalize them, but never really got into them. That's changing. There's a whole world of complexity in there that's actually quite interesting, and when you apply it to go beyond simple queries on simple tables, and instead start dealing with huge volumes of data spread across tables, databases, servers and you have to figure out how all that's going to work - you take an interest ;-).

2009-06-11T20:51:00.004-07:00

Regex

An interesting (to programmers) book has just made it's way out to release: Regular Expressions Cookbook. It says it's for beginner to intermediate, but word is there's material in there that self-considered regex experts will find new as well. Considering one of the authors wrote RegexBuddy and PowerGREP, they would seem to be...quite knowledgeable.

iPhone

I have seen the future, and it is mobile. Well, who hasn't figured that out already, duh! I work for a mobile wireless content provider so it was pretty easy to see coming ;-). But what's interesting is that the vision of a future where you have a mobile device that is a phone, handles email, calendars, music, tv, movies, gps, has voice activation, is able to run tons of apps (about 50,000) and games and is basically your one-stop computing platform now exists in the most recent iteration of Apple's iPhone ( the 3G S). The Palm Pre is also an example, and with Google's AndroidOS available for handsets, you're seeing this future rushing towards us faster and faster. If the cost for data in Canada wasn't so horrendously out of whack compared to...well, almost the entire rest of the world, the iPhone would be my choice of computing/communicating platform.

From Integration to Billing

2009-06-03T22:54:00.008-07:00

airG

I'm a couple of weeks into not doing the Integration Team Lead role, and it's amazing how much more time I have (mostly due to the sudden drop in the number of meetings). So what am I doing now? Billing Team Lead! So basically instead of managing all of Integrations and Billing (about 14 people total), I'm only managing 5 now. And I'm designing the architecture for our new billing platform.

The only meetings I attend now are billing related, and wrapping up a few things on the Integrations side - or things that just require someone who knows where things are, regardless of the team they manage :-). Coming up to 5 years at airG, I'm one of the few who knows where all sorts of weird things are, particularly with the older systems.

Billing

Billing is an interesting topic (to me anyways). We've done a lot of work on it over the years (integrating billing with carriers), but to design a cohesive platform that supports all sorts of new features, capabilities, reporting, etc., takes considerably more up-front thinking.

It's also an interesting mix because while we do a lot with wireless carriers, and we could just model our billing directly on how most carriers do theirs, it doesn't quite fit. We're essentially a mobile web-based social network. Our backend is more Web 2.0 than carrier (if that makes sense). We move fast, we change, we adapt and we're always being chased by our competition. That pace is reflected in our backend - it has to adapt quickly, sometimes to radical changes going on in the industry. Carrier-based systems...well, they're not noted for their rapid pace ;-). So while we can get ideas from how their systems are designed, the implementation tends to diverge to make use of our strengths and the nature of our business.

To refresh and improve my knowledge, I've been studying architecture - from the simple book 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know to Beautiful Architecture to my current read Software Architecture in Practice. They've all given me ideas, though I think a large part of what I get from them is being put into the right frame-of-mind that's needed while trying to design something. If I were sitting down to code a specific section, I think I'd be better off reading something like The Pragmatic Programmer, again, to be in the right frame-of-mind.

Google

On the note of how quickly things change, there is a recording of Google's I/O conference (http://code.google.com/events/io/). The video that shows them demoing 'wave' shows how email should (and likely will) be. if you've ever wished that email really allowed you to carry on a conversation, include real-time chat, display videos (and I don't mean as attachments, I mean embedded right into your email), and other features, then check out the coming Wave.

Mac

So I've had my MacBook for a little while now. Dam it's sweet :-). A unix core with a consistent GUI? Yeah! Recently what I found surprising is that it can see and communicate with my Dell Axim x51v (PDA) via Bluetooth. Why is that a big deal? Because the Axim runs WinCE, and uses Microsoft's ActiveSync (under Windows). Or more, it tries to, but ActiveSync is a piece-o-crap that only works some of the time. I HAVE TO USE MY MAC TO SYNC TO MY WINDOWS PDA!! Microsoft = EPIC FAILURE.

2009-01-02T16:54:00.003-08:00

It's been a pretty good xmas break so far. Off from work from Dec 25-Jan 5th, a chance to read, get out of town.

airG

As usual, it was a very busy and difficult year at work, but overall it's been exciting and fascinating. 2009 will be even more-so. I'm looking to increase the number of people I hire in 2009, we want to improve our internal development processes, improve the quality of everyone's code, and generally push people to new opportunities.

Home

We finished off 2008 with a new car:

It's a 2008 Honda CRV, with a 4-bike rack attached. Snazzy :-).

Tech

Lately, there is a lot of buzz over netbooks. If you're not familiar with them already, think of them as minimalist laptop computers. Really minimal. These things are tiny! Which is the advantage to them of course. Having something that really is about the size of a paper back book (only thinner), that you can surf the web on, play videos and music on, is probably what most people are looking for, at least when they're on transit.

I'm currently looking at three different ones;

Sylvania GNET28001SO Meso 8.9" Netbook w/ Linux (Ubuntu).

HP 2133 8.9" Mini-Note PC w/ Linux (SUSE)

ASUS Eee PC 1000 10" Netbook w/ Linux (not sure which distro)

And maybe also the Dell 9" netbook.

They all look quite interesting, but I need to read more. This market is seeing a lot of changes ocurring rapidly. Already the above ones may be obsolete.

Photography

I've been a bit slack on my photography this year (despite having some photo's published), but I'm looking to get out more in 2009 and fill up those memory cards. One things that's helping is the new Lightroom v2. It's making it so much easier to do some simple, quick changes on my photos to clean them up and then publish them. Check out the latest on my flickr page.

Fitness

To keep exercising during the winter, I've spent most of my time out running in the morning. Of course, with the large dumps of snow (and the even larger mountains of plowed snow on the sidewalks) this has become a bit more difficult. At least now I have a car so I can drive somewhere snow-free to run :-). I even spent Jan 1st out at Stanley Park, taking part in the Resolution Run (5k) put on by the Running Room. Along with having the bike on an indoor trainer, I should be able to keep my fitness level up.

Learning

So what are you doing for 2009 to keep your knowledge current, whether it's professionally or personally? Even before 2009 rolled around, I've been pushing myself to really work through new technical material, from algorithms and data structures to photographic techniques, mountain biking to house maintenance. There's a tremendous amount of information out there to learn anything you are interested in. What are you waiting for?

Mobile Industry & The Economy

2008-11-15T14:50:00.002-08:00

The sky is falling! Or at least, that's what you hear/read in the news these days when it comes to the economies of most countries, and Canada is no exception, though we seem to be better positioned to ride out a recession than most other countries.

So what does this have to do with the mobile industry? It's interesting times to be working within the mobile industry. Recent quarterly earning reports from large carriers like AT&T, Verizon, Alltel, T-Mobile are all good. Their revenue & profits are increasing. That's good news for me and others who are trying to push the mobile industry forward.

In fact, it appears that as economies slow down and people begin to cut back on their spending for movies, shows, dinners, etc, they actually spend more time....on their phones :-). The cell phone is now considered by many a necessity. A necessity that they will keep spending on.

I found it noteworthy that most of the wireless carriers in the US are reporting that they earn an average per user (ARPU) of $55/month. In particular though, AT&T is making $95/month from iPhone users! Hopefully even more of those users will end up on an airG site :-).

airG is well poised to take advantage of mobile growth. We're doing well, I'm even hiring 5-6 people (already grabbed 3 more in the last couple of months). My team alone is 14 people currently, and I could see it being upwards of 20 by Q2 of 2009.

Home Entertainment

2008-09-21T22:06:00.005-07:00

So I've been looking at home entertainment systems. This spiralled into a multi-month learning project to research TVs, AV Receivers, Blue-ray players, and speakers.

TV
I started looked at Sony TV's. I ended up reading about a new series of LCD's coming out, supposedly in August, (but won't actually come out until October). The 46XBR8 was my original choice, but after waiting impatiently, I discovered the price was going to be $5000 US! No way, not worth it. It simply doesn't have enough features over the current high end 46Z4100 series. So then I started looking at the 46XBR6. It's going to be at $3000 (the recent price of the Z series has just dropped from $3000 to $2800, $2500 if you get it on sale). Long story short, I went for the Z series, and it's awesome. 4 HDMI inputs, component-in, cable, etc, etc. I had also looked at some of the screens put out by Samsung, and the A750 is probably comparable, but I read about glare from the glossy bezel.

AV Receiver
For the sound system, I had originally looked for a package deal from Sony, and they had what I thought was a good set of speakers (including wireless rear-speakers). How wrong I was once I started to read about them. So I dug into what makes good sound, and quickly realized that I wanted a receiver than everything could plug into, and it would take care of send out the data to the TV, the speakers, center channel, and subwoofer. I first looked at Pioneer, Onkyo, and Denon. The Denon allows you to connect the receiver to the internet and listen to internet radio stations, watch youtube videos, and even connect to your own server if you know how to configure it. Otherwise, the Onkyo was very close, and may have a better video decoder than the Denon.

Blue-ray player
This was a minor consideration. Most BD movies are no better than a regular DVD that's played on an upconverting DVD player (the studios were cheap in transferring movies to BD, only now are they starting to spend the money to go back to the source - the film - and do a new transfer that takes advantage of BD capabilities). I had decided on Sony's Playstation 3. It's fully compliant with all the different revisions of the BD standard, it does TrueHD sound, and on top of that you can play games with it. Oh, and it's upgradeable over the internet. However, Sony has just recently come out with the 350S, which does everything but the games, and you can get a deal if you purchase it with a Sony TV.

Speakers
This was probably the toughest, certainly the longest, amount of research I did. You can read about speakers and subwoofers, but until you hear them, you just never know if it's the right ones for you. I ultimately decided on the following speakers, and was lucky enough to actualy hear them (at teh newly renovated FutureShop in Park Royal).

Front speakers: Polk Audio RTi A5's
Rear speakers: Polk Audio RTi A3's (bookshelf speakers)
Center Channel: Polk Audio CS6 (yay, now you can hear voices during large background noises)
Subwoofer: SVS Sound PB10

I ordered all of the Polk Audio speakers from Crutchfield in Ontario. Substantially less cost than anything I could find locally. However, many people advised against getting the Polk Audio subwoofer. They all recommended a subwoofer from svsound - which has a Canadian distributor - sonicboomaudio.

Random mutterings

2008-09-19T22:47:00.003-07:00

Personal Genomics
I came across a brief mention today of a new blog called too being written by Sergey Brin. Who, you may ask? He's one of the founders of Google. Oooh, so it's a blog about nerdy stuff! Not quite. Sergey's recent blog posting was actually about something that will be growing in popularity - personal genomics. What is personal genomics you may ask? It's the ability to provide a company a swab of your DNA, and they will provide you a complete listing of your genes, or at least as complete as current technology allows, which is improving almost daily. So what good is having a CD with a lot of genetic information on it? That's where it's getting interesting. Let's take a closer look at Sergey's example. He used 23andMe to provide him a his genetic information. It turns out that one of the genes they were able to identify within him is one that has been linked to Parkinsons. As it turns out, it's something that runs in his family. For many people, this kind of information is scary, even terrifying. But calm down and think about this for a minute. Just having this information hasn't changed the genetic code within you, but it has given you information that you can act on, before it's too late. There's an opportunity now for you to change your lifestyle, and become more involved in your own health choices. That's the power of information. And it's information like that, that will become more and more available in the near future, at lower and lower cost (I think 23andMe is about $400, which really isn't much considering you may be able to lead a much healthier life because of it).

Spore
Unrelated, but amusingly fun, is the game Spore, which allows you to evolve a life form, which eventually adapts from the ocean to land, through various tribal stages, to eventually colonizing the whole planet...and then moving onto space! It's a fascinating concept, sort of like SimEarth meets the Sims. The game is a bit too easy early on, and the tribal stage is a poor version of an RTS, but the space era has some depth to the game play. It's too soon to say if it will hold people's interest (including my own), but it has potential.

Photography
This summer I upgraded from a Nikon D80 to a Nikon D300. The D80 is a very nice camera, although recently replaced by the D90 that has some nice additional features (including the ability to record high-def video!). But the D300 provided some very nice features, a more robust body, and the ability to take about 6 shots/second, for several seconds. That's of interest to me, since I prefer to take sports photos, mostly of cycling (mountain and road). If you haven't seen it for awhile, check my flickr page, I am pretty happy with the recent photos I took at Lucille Lake.

Linux update

2008-05-04T22:21:00.002-07:00

It seems I was a bit quick in my assessment of the lack of chess software available for Linux. It turns out there is a very strong chess engine, with a reasonably nice interface available - Shredder. It also allows you to plug other chess engines into it, so this should keep myself and other Linux users happy. I also came across PyChess, which is this pretty nice chess program written in Python. Worth checking out.

Using this along with a free chess database (such as ChessDB or SCID) should keep you playing and studying under Linux for awhile. There's still far more training software only available for Windows, but these other programs can certainly provide a base for those looking for a strong chess program to analyze games, and a database system capable of dealing with their own games, right up to collections of millions of chess games.

Linux does it all

2008-05-02T20:45:00.006-07:00

I run two identical computers at home, one running Linux, the other Windows XP (32-bit). Want to guess which one drives me crazy with it's poor performance, crashes, quirks, bugs and poor design? I hate Windows. Not because it's from Microsoft, but because it's clearly not a serious operating system. It's simply to old, too unreliable, and doesn't make use of higher-end computers. Windows simply isn't good enough.

My Linux system has frustrated me on rare occasion, but for the most part, it just works. All the time. I leave it running 24/7. It can be months between rebooting it. And unlike Windows, it just keeps getting better and better. It also handles higher-end hardware, easily works with 4GB+ of RAM. So...why am I not using Linux all the time?

Until this year, I played games, and for that, you need Windows. However, I'm getting more into programming for myself again, even though I develop software at work. Additionally, most games I now find boring. There hasn't been anything interesting since Call of Duty 4 and Team Fortress 2. So the time for games seems to be winding down for me. Instead, I'm onto other things, like Photoshop, programming, video editing, etc.

So I started to consider alternatives to Windows. I looked seriously at Mac, particularly the Mac Pro. Imagine hardware that has two quad-core processors, 8-16GB of RAM, and an operating system that can make use of it all. I was getting pretty enticed by the whole thing. Then I started to read about people who had used all three operating systems, and the different quirks they found with each of them. Ultimately, the common theme about Mac being reliable, having great software, but restricting you from doing things differently made me realize I wanted more flexibility to do things the way I want, not the way Apple wants.

I decided to take harder look at my Linux system, what I use it for and what I could be using it for. Linux could run on hardware as powerful (or even far more powerful) as the Mac Pro. I could buy what hardware I wanted, and use it any darn way I please.

So I've written out a list of programs that I ran under Windows that if I could find an equivalent under Linux would get me closer to the goal of 'no more Windows'.

Here's my list:
Nero DVD Creator
VLC (Video/Music player)
FlickR uploader
EverNote
Crimson Editor
MS Word
MS Excel
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Photoshop
Nikon Capture NX
JungleDrive
Chess programs

How did I do finding replacements for these? Better than I expected!

There's a great CD/DVD burning program called K3b that easily replaced everything I would need Nero for.
VLC - there's a native Linux version that works perfectly.
FlickR uploader - Flickr themselves have a link to jUploader which works very well under Linux.
EverNote - this one proved hard to replace. I tried TiddlyWiki, which is pretty cool, and I will use it for some note taking, but I haven't found a way to group notes into categories. However, I found basket. While it's not a perfect replacement of EverNote, it's the closest I've found so far. If it could capture web pages as well as EverNote does it would meet all my needs.
Crimson Editor - a fantastic (free) editor. I'm evaluating Kate, and so far it seems a very close replacement.
Word & Excel. The free OpenOffice package has easily replaced Office for everything I use it for.
Adobe Lightroom - I knew this was going to be difficult to replace. Adobe Lightroom is essentially a database for tracking your photos, with the ability to do some image adjustments. It turns out there's two pretty nice Linux options: Lightzone and Bibble. I don't think either supports 64-bit yet, but they are worth keeping a close eye on.
Adobe Photoshop - the big Kahuna. The free GIMP is nearly as powerful, and there's a package out that will make it look and act just like Photoshop. Awesome.
Nikon Capture NX - it allows you to read the raw image data used by Nikon DSLRs and make lots of adjustments. There's a free Linux program called UFRaw that does the same thing, and can load your adjusted image into GIMP for detailed manipulation.
JungleDrive - software that allows me to backup to Amazon's Web Services (think of it as a huge hard drive that you can use for extremely low cost). There's a native version for Linux that works very well.
Chess programs - a chess program to play against, and a chess database to load/store games in. There are several options available for Windows - ChessBase and ChessAssistant being the primary commercial DB programs, and there's more chess engines that I know what to do with. Unfortunately, this area is still hugely lacking under Linux. There's some unmaintained Chess databases (scid, chessdb) but there doesn't seem to be much development going on there, and the interfaces...well, their just not up to the Windows equivalent.

There's bound to be more software in the future that I'll wish there was something available for Linux, but as I've realized, I just need to look a little harder :-).

This doesn't mean all is lost for my Windows system. While even hard-core Windows users have told people to stay away from Vista and 64-bit Windows, the 32-bit version of XP isn't completely useless, sort of. By that I mean, Windows slows down over time as more applications are installed/removed. It builds up a lot of cruft. And as many people know, the only way to truly get it working smoothly again is to format and reinstall. Which is exactly what I did, and I can't believe how much faster it is. It's like having a new computer. I had the system spend one night backing up everything, and then the next night, I formatted, installed XP, and reinstalled the apps I still cared about.

My future plans probably don't include any existing version of Windows. There's not enough support for high-end hardware from both Microsoft and hardware vendors. Maybe the version slated for 2011 will be 64-bit, able to handle far far more than 4GB of RAM, more than two processors, and be stable and reliable enough to trust. Until then - Linux is my main operating system.

2008-03-26T21:00:00.003-07:00

Two months, must be time to update this page...

Photography has been a growing interest of mine. I attended a workshop put on by Bryan Peterson (author of several popular photography books, in particular: Understanding Exposure). It was a pretty cool workshop, I was impressed by how forthcoming he was about how much he earned in a month from his stock photos.

More recently, I took an intensive weekend course (easter weekend) through the Vancouver Photo Workshops school, with Syx Langeman. Normally a 10-week course, it's all squeezed into two days. It was an awesome course, really motivating. It's very hands on, and goes right from the basics on the first day to shooting models on the second day.

For getting ideas, I've been using some of the groups on flickr that are photography challenge groups. They post a challenge, everyone submits a picture, and then the photos get voted upon.

It's also inspired me to get more photo equipment :-). I've since acquired a Nikkor 50mm lens, and a Sigma 10-20mm wide-angle lens. Next up: professional tripod and ball head (likely a Gitzo 3540 and a Markins M10). Right now I shoot with a Nikon D80, which is pretty nice, but I've had my eye on the D300...

Went for the first bike ride of the year, rode 70Km (round-trip) out to Steveston and back. It sent surprisingly well. I had made minor adjustments to my bike, mostly for my position on it, and it felt more comfortable, with no backache and less fatigue. Hopefully this is a good sign as I get towards the Tour de Blast.

Save your ass(ets)

2008-01-20T21:25:00.000-08:00

How important is the information you have on your computer? Would you care if you lost it all when your (and note, I didn't say if) hard drive dies? Most people forget that the hard drive in their computer WILL die eventually (it's a mechanical device, and heat is it's enemy). Most people upgrade to a new computer, and find some slow/painful method for transferring the stuff they care about from the old computer to the new one (or the realize they can simply take the hard drive from the old computer, stick it in the new computer, and copy all the files over quickly).

That's great, but what are you doing to ensure your data is protected? Backing up onto CD or DVD? That's a great start, and most people don't do it. But what about things that are too precious to risk losing? You could make several copies onto CD/DVD. Then what? If you keep your backups in the same place you keep your computer...you still run the risk that a fire or some other catastrophe will destroy your data. (For most people, I suspect their vital data is digital photos, and maybe financial info, and various documents (word/excel).

So...you decide to keep your data at some other location, maybe at work, at a relatives. That's good. But I've found a better solution :-).

Amazon.com - you know, the online store has other services they provide, and in this case, they can sell...online storage. Basically, you upload your files to Amazon.com, they take care of storing it safely (it's stored across multiple drive systems, and encrypted!). I bought a 3rd party piece of software from JungleDrive that let's me see my Amazon data as another hard drive. (Note, JungleDrive works under Windows, Mac, and Linux). Why did I go to this solution instead of CDs/DVDs? Well, because it's incredibly cheap, easy, and more reliable than any other solution.
A blank disk these days is roughly $0.25 - $0.50, up to $1.00 (for gold archive quality) per disk. Amazon - about $3.00/month for 20GB of storage.

I bought the JungleDrive software for $20. And the great thing is, even if the company that wrote JungleDrive disappeared, I can still do everything without a problem. The software will continue to access Amazon, and there are other ways to get your data. Amazon is cheap. Really cheap. We're talking $0.15 per GB for storage. There is a charge for the bandwidth you use for uploading/downloading ($0.20/GB). That means you could upload HUGE amounts of data, and it will cost you $3-5, with an ongoing cost of maybe $2/month.

I've already started using for storing all my photos (including all our wedding photos). To give you an idea, I currently have used 8.658 GB of storage. How much is that currently costing me: $1.30 for January. You can't buy this amount of reliable storage for this low a cost in hard drives, USB drives, SD cards, CD's, or DVDs.

So...have you backed up your ass(ets)?

Wireless Carriers and more OpenGL

2007-11-10T16:55:00.000-08:00

I've been looking for a flash for my camera (Nikon D80). I finally settled on the Nikon SB-600, which seems to do everything I could want, and just reading about it has led me to new ideas in switching to using the flash off-camera. The SB-600 can work wirelessly, with the D80's built-in wireless control. That's pretty exciting. The drawback to the SB-600? Price. It's too dam expensive everywhere in Canada. Amazon.com has great prices, especially with the exchange rate these days, BUT, they don't sell electronics to Canada. Booo. I'm happy to say that I found online a US photography company that has very high ratings that I purchased the flash from - B&H Photography & Video. Even with shipping and duty costs, it's still worth the savings to buy from the US.

It's interesting seeing first-hand the differences between wireless carriers from around the world. At work, I deal with 90+ carriers globally, getting our products integrated with them, and developing billing solutions that work for everyone. You'd think multi-billion dollar companies would have this stuff figured out...but that doesn't hold true for all of them. Once you get outside of North America, you're into carriers and systems that have been put together with the telecom equivalent of duct tape. (I suspect some of them may actually be using duct tape to hold various bits of their equipment together). I've encountered carriers with overly complicated systems that make it almost impossible to bill a customer, to carriers that are unable to bill their customers at all! (and sometimes....they don't even realize they haven't been billing their customers).

What I find particularly interesting about this is that we have more knowledge than the carriers do about how WAP 1 & WAP 2 work, how billing should work, on sometimes, even more knowledge about how their systems work than they have themselves. Having so much knowledge contained within one company is of great advantage, it allows us to quickly access how much work is likely to be involved with an integration, at least with carriers that have some common sense (sadly lacking in some). It can also make things frustrating when you realize...you're working with a carrier that doesn't know how to solve the simplest of problems, and you're going to have to teach them what they need to do.

Aside from all that, I'm working on Method0 for brief moments. Currently, we have a galaxy of up to 100,000 stars showing, with zoom levels that get to about 10,000x - that shows about 30 - 40 stars. Currently our solution is a pretty simple brute force approach. We pre-calculate the positions for all the stars, at each different magnification level. This allows us to switch between zoom levels near instantaneously, but there is a huge memory penalty. I know perl isn't the most efficient language, but it does make it easy for us to rapidly prototype and change things as we continue development. Unfortunately, the memory usage is HUGE after pre-calculating the star positions at each magnification, and calculating them during run time is too slow (at least for doing all 100,000 stars). My next little burst of work will be to only calculate the positions of stars that are visible, depending on what section of the galaxy is currently zoomed in on. It's a bit more work that the brute force approach, but it should allow the zoom to happen quickly, while using a minimum amount of memory.

I've just gotten two excellent books on OpenGL, I suspect they are the only books you really need, at least for most OpenGL work: OpenGL SuperBible, 4th ed., and OpenGL Programming Guide, 6th ed. Already the SuperBible is the only book that has described how to start with the most basic pixel (vertex) and works it's way up from there. Excellent resources.

Flickr, OpenGL

2007-11-03T15:28:00.000-07:00

I've been using FlickR more lately. It's a great site for photo-sharing, and there's no many great photo's/photographers on there to get ideas from. I've uploaded a batch of photos from when Jen and I went to Europe. They were taken with a little digital camera, next time I'm taking the dSLR :-).
Follow the Flickr link from the menu to the right to take a look.

One of my coworkers and I have been pressing ahead with developing our game - Method0. (That's 'Method Zero'). Lately we've begun experimenting with coding parts of it. He's been developing the galaxy layout, and I'm working on being able to display the galaxies he creates. We decided to use Perl & OpenGL for both the 2D and 3D graphics. As you may know, OpenGL wasn't intended for 2D interfaces, so it's a bit more work. For now though, I can take the coordinates for the stars in the galaxies, and render them. We're creating galaxies with up to 100,000 stars in them, with all of them visible at the most zoomed out view.

Next I'll be adding the ability to zoom in on a section of stars. Have to develop a scaling and coordinate system so I know which stars to display, and where to display them as we zoom in.
A book that is helping greatly with this is the OpenGL Superbible. This really is the book for getting quick, clear help and examples on what you need to do, from displaying simple pixels to full on 3D textured polygons.

Puppy time

2007-08-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

My sister has gotten a new puppy dog - Raven. A Labrador, mixed with something.
8 weeks old and currently at 11 pounds, she looks to have sizeable paws :-).

You can see pics of her on my flickr page.

Here's one from my flickr page.

You outta be in pictures...

2007-07-31T21:44:00.000-07:00

The planning is mostly done, and we've only got 1.5 weeks left to our wedding. And our honeymoon in Hawaii! As such, we got ourselves something to help remember the trip - a new digital SLR, the Nikon D80.

No photo's to share just yet, we're still learning about it, but in the meantime, I've created a flickr account, so you can find photo's appearing there.

Tour de Gastown

2007-07-22T16:35:00.000-07:00

All sorts of bike racing going on this month. While most of July is taken up by the Tour de France, we have our own local races in the BC Superweek. The Superweek consists of the Tour de White Rock, Tour de Gastown, and Giro de Burnaby. Since I work downtown, I was able to get to the Tour de Gastown, and get some pics...

This is early in the evening,
when they were just starting the race.

The racers begin to blur as they pick up speed.

Some are so fast, you can barely film them:

Coming around the hairpin turn:

Additionally, I've been keeping up with my own riding -
Mondays are a short 14Km ride
Wednesdays are 42Km out the Barnet Hwy and back
Fridays are 36Km up Mount Seymour and back

Here's a shot from the top of Mount Seymour:

Summer! Summer! Summer!

2007-07-12T21:56:00.000-07:00

You know what I love about summer?
Everything :-).

So, what's been happening since my last update so many months ago..

I did the Sun Run in April, finished just under an hour.
Joined the North Shore Ride club for Mountain Biking, so I can learn the local trails and gain experience. I went to the club's season opener - 4 hours of riding! Too much uphill for my like on a 37lb bike :-). That's what my road bike is for. Nonetheless, it was cool coming down paths and going over logs and small drops without any problems.

Unfortunately, the group normally meets Thursday evenings at 6pm, which makes it impossible for me to continue getting there, too much to do at work. Instead, I'll just start exploring the trails on my own during the weekend.

I have been on a few road bike rides though:
90Km ride out to Steveston (via UBC) and back.
Riding up Mt. Seymour (all 12Km). That's steep!
Horseshoe Bay
Coquitlam (out past Lafarge Lake)

More recently, I have started riding regularly (now that summer seems to finally be here):
Mondays: a small ride up the Seymour Parkway, around to the Dollarton Hwy, and back home. It's only 35min, so it's a short recovery ride.
Wednesdays: across the 2nd Narrows, along the Adanac, and finally down the Barnet Hwy to Port Moody and then back (42Km round trip). This takes about 2 hours.
Fridays: up the Seymour Parkway to the base of Mt. Seymour, and then up-up-up Mt. Seymour Road. It may only be 12km, but it takes me 90 min.

I really need to start bringing a camera with me for these rides, so I can take some pics of the great views you can get from some of these places.

And to add to all the cycling insanity, it's TOUR DE FRANCE time!! YES! The world's toughest bike race, 3,550 Km long...

Aside from all that fun, myself and a co-worker are working on Method 0 - our code name for a game we are designing. I aim to prototype it in perl with SWIG/OpenGL.

You can never be too specialized...

2007-04-14T18:16:00.000-07:00

Woah, a whole month since I've updated this blog. That's partly due to moving in (March 24th), and not having internet for a week afterwards. Moving day was long - seven hours. Then the unpacking began...that's still not completed. Who knew we had so much stuff!?

Work has been both the usual non-stop, busy, go go go, and the unusual - they told me they thought I worked excessive hours. How often do you hear that?? I proposed a plan to this...dilemma, which AirG has accepted whole-heartedly :-). I'm to shed more of my work onto the team, so that instead of them working normal hours and me working 10-12 hour days, I spread it around, give them the opportunity to accept more responsibility, and to learn more, and I can start to leave at normal hours. In fact, towards this, I am going to join the NSRide club, which is a group of people that go mountain biking together. Anyone can join, they have different skill levels, I just have to be there by 6PM on Thursdays, so I'm leaving work early, at least on those days.

Which brings me to today's activities...I bought a mountain bike! :-).
And not just any bike, but the one I have been drooling over for months.

I've purchased a 2007 Specialized Trail SX III. If you saw it, you might think it was an SX II, because that's what the paint job says. It's like this - the frame for the I, II, and II are all identical, just different paint jobs. Obsession Bikes didn't have a medium with the Trail III paint job, so they took a Trail II, and put all the Trail III parts on it. I prefer the Trail II paint job, so that works out pretty well I'd say :-).

Here's what the bike looks like:

Pretty snazzy :-). It is much heavier than anything I've ridden before - 37 lbs. And I've gotten the full-face helmet, forearm & shin pads, and hydration pack. Now I just need to get out and ride it. But not just yet, I have the Sun Run tomorrow.

Now that I have the bike, I can move on to wedding and honeymoon planning. There's always something going on around here...

Taking Possession

2007-03-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

Well, we're not moved in yet, but we now have possession of our new townhouse! woot!

Here's some pics:

The kitchen

Main section of the living rooom:
Second half of the living room, with fireplace:
The closet organizer in the master bedroom:
What will soon be my computer/office space:

It must be getting near cycling season...

2007-03-01T21:59:00.000-08:00

My irresistible urge to get out on the bike is once again showing itself. If only it would stop snowing in the morning. In the meantime, as I have mentioned, I am saving up for a new mountain bike, something that can handle riding on the Shore.

So far, I'm comparing what I look at against the Specialized SX Trail:
I've also been thinking about making a few upgrades to my road bike. Everything on it is pretty much the stock parts it came with. After reading reviews from other riders, there seems to be a few parts that everyone agrees are either too heavy or not good enough:

The brake pads are not good enough for steep descents.
The wheels are stiff and heavy.
The tires are heavy.

Brake pads are simple enough :-). I can attest that the tires (Michelin Dynamics) are not that great. I've already replaced the rear tire with a Bontrager Racer Lite, and will replace the front with the same, or perhaps the slightly lighter Bontrager X Lite Pro. The wheels on the other hand, that gets expensive.

The Xero XSR-3 wheelset that the bike is sold with come in at a whopping 2050 grams. That's heavy in the cycling world. Good wheels can easily cost $1000 or more for the pair. I might go for a more intermediate pair - the Bontrager Lite wheelset, at $550. There's also the Mavis Ksyrium Elite, but they're $890 for the pair.

The price we are willing to pay to make our bikes faster, when our legs aren't ;-).

Keeping busy

2007-02-26T18:55:00.000-08:00

For someone who likes to sit and read quietly, I seem to be doing anything but that since the New Year began.

A current rundown:

Wedding planning (August 11th, 2007)
Training for the Sun Run (up to 7+Km now, 3x/week)
Bought a townhouse! - Moving in March! (already packing)
Looking to get a mountain bike (hey, I live on the shore, it's a must-have!)
Trying to keep up with my reading. I'm on Refactoring by Martin Fowler now.
Watching HEROES.
Went to the Bike Expo during the Outdoor Show at BC Place.

Still going

2007-01-21T16:22:00.000-08:00

I've been continuing my reading to improve my understanding of more areas of my profession. I finished of UML Distilled. it's a pretty small, fast read, filled with real-world advice on what to use, and not use, in UML. You have to appreciate an author who is heavily involved letting you know when there are parts to the standard that may just not make sense, and that you should avoid them. Essentially, he remind you to do what works, even if it's not standard.

Since then, I have started into Rapid Development. I'm only about 60 pages into this nearly 700 page tome, and already it's one of the most exciting books in this field I have read. Interestingly enough, another excellent book that also impressed me - Code Complete 2, is also by Steve McConnell. His books are by far the best I have come across for really seeing what goes wrong in most software projects, and how to prevent it from happening to you and your team. One of the exciting parts for me is that I am already gaining benefit from the advice in this book. I've actually used it to outline risks to a project manager. It helped me make it obvious why some ideas were leading down the path we've always taken in the past, that has gotten us into trouble. With no need to argue, or complain, but simply provide a clear, concise outline of where I felt there to be significant risks, I've gotten people to agree, and schedule things sanely. People on my team are happy, they feel they're actually working on a project that clearly defines what's wanted, and when it's wanted by, without expecting them to work 24/7, for weeks.

The beginning of 2007

2007-01-08T20:17:00.000-08:00

A new year, literally full of opportunity.
I am continuing to read more as part of my Professional Development Plan (something Steve McConnell talks about in Code Complete 2 - see last blog entry). Since finishing CC2 (which is an excellent book) I have continued on with his recommended reading list, here's what I've gotten through so far:

Facts & Fallacies of Software Engineering
Software Project Survival Guide
Professional Software Development
Software Configuration Management Patterns

and I am currently reading:

UML Distilled

What does all this mean for the software I develop? Mostly a reinforcement of things I knew, a focus on upfront design and really unit testing everything I write. Making changes in small increments and testing right away. The bigger impact all this is having is on how I lead the team at work. Improving how people use CVS and Subversion, putting in place a nightly build system, enforcing milestones and code reviews, and getting design and documentation for each project. Doing all that along with coordinating both my team and across the teams leaves little time left for coding :-). With what time I have left, I want to get the most out of the code I write.

There's still a long way to go, both in reading more about developing software, and actually putting it into practice.

---

This year, I have started training for the Sun Run already :-). I want to be under 60 min, so I have already put myself on a training regimen. However, aside from running, I have cycling goals this year. Riding to work is good, and the loop around UBC is a solid ride, but I want to stretch my cycling. My goals include the ride out to Horseshoe Bay, riding up Mt. Seymour, doing at least one century ride (100Km), and possibly the ride out to Harrison Hot Springs (~140Km), and back the next day.

I don't know how you spent New Year's Eve, but for myself, just after midnight....I got engaged :-).

For this year, plan big! You know what you need to do, now just get started doing it!

Software Skills

2006-12-02T13:26:00.000-08:00

I've been doing software development for about 6 years now. As a team lead I'm expected to be both familiar with the technical side of our work, as well as having the social or management capabilities to run the team. So you might expect a hard-core geek who wants to improve to focus on how to better run a team of developers. That's something I am working on, but surprisingly, I'm finding I have to work harder on expanding my technical knowledge. Or perhaps I am relearning things I came across years ago, but am now at a point where I can put those things in place, once I relearn them.

This brings me to what I am currently reading - Code Complete 2 by Steve McConnell. It focuses on the actual construction of programs - ie, 'coding'. Essentially his argument is that of all work on a software project, from requirements gathering to development to testing to launching, 85% of the time is spent in the coding phase. As such, the book provides techniques and ideas on how to get the best code out of that process. Lots of it seems like common sense, things you will have come across before, but never concentrated in one book before. I think this has to be one of the top books on developing software I've ever read. I can see why the author gives a copy to all of the new hires at his company to read before they start developing.

Dell Axim - I've been using this more and more. I love this little gadget :-). In particular, I read books on it. While there are several formats for books out there, the ones I seem to use the most are PDF and CHM files. Fortunately, there is an excellent PDF reader for Windows Mobile devices - PocketXpdf. You simply shouldn't get anything else to read PDF's. It's at least 1/10th the size of Adobe's PDF reader, it's free, it has bookmarks. It's a must have.

An excellent web browser for Windows Mobile is MiniMo - a mini Mozilla browser. Among the features you would expect from the Mozilla browser, it includes tabs. Very handy for looking at multiple sites. And I might add, this very blog shows up nicely when viewed from within MiniMo ;-).

Where did the time go?

2006-09-16T16:55:00.000-07:00

Was my last update really July 12th!? Woah, what the heck have I been doing!?

Let's see, since then, in July;
I've invested in a heart rate monitor (Polar S625X) to help me in my training.
Made some adjustments to Jen's bike (shorter stem) to make it more comfortable for her reach.
Floyd Landis won the Tour de France after an awesome come-back stage win. Then lost it when he was accused of using doping. What a waste. Why do athletes keep doing stupid things like this when it's obvious they will be tested, caught, and banned.
Spent a warm summer day at Lake Alouette, swimming and reading. That was pretty nice.
This summer's 'AirG Day' was sort of like City Chase. A scavenger hunt located downtown, ranging from Gastown to English Bay, ending in a BBQ at Stanley Park.

In August;
Spent almost a week in Whistler riding and swimming. And eating, let's not forget the eating :-).
Saw more openhouses, none of which we liked enough or could afford.
Hiked the Lynn Loop almost every weekend. (5.1Km)
Spent a day at the PNE, but without going on any of the rides. (My self-restraint was enormous).
Spent a week at Summerland ( smokey week caused by the fires near Manning Park).
Went Kayaking for the first time out at Deep Cove. That was very cool, I highly recommend giving it a shot.

September;
Not as much to report yet, still looking at townhouses, but have scaled back on what size/price we're looking at. It's simply too expensive for what we want.
That said, we are seeing prices finally start to drop. Nearly every place we've seen in the last 4 weeks has dropped it's price.

I'm finally close to upgrading my computer. It's been tough. Intel's Conroe processors are fast and affordable. I've also been looking into Macs. Jen's next upgrade is very likely to be something like the 20" or 24" iMac. Those are pretty sweet computers now.

Summer is slipping away, I'm riding less often to work. Soon I will have to go back to the stationary bike at the gym :-(. But I'm going to start again as early as weather permits next year so I can keep up with the better cyclists at the office :-).

Running into trouble

2006-07-12T21:22:00.000-07:00

Last weekend (July 8th) was the Underwear Affair! I raised over $400 for the BC Cancer Foundation. The run on the weekend was 10-K, which I thought I was prepared for. Not quite. As I learned the hard way, never eat a powerbar 20 minutes before you're going to run 10-K. I experienced painful cramps in my chest/abs within the first 2-K. It was so bad, I thought I was going to have to give up on the run entirely. My plan for slowing every 10-15 minutes for a sip of water turned into almost stopping every 5 minutes just to try and get rid of the cramps. And when I did run, it was more of a slow jog. The other thing I learned is that doing all my running on a treadmill is a poor way to condition my legs for running on tarmac. Despite running 7-K, 3x a week on a treadmill with no leg pain, running on roads and sidewalks left me walking/limping the next couple of days. Despite all this though, I managed to keep going, and even reached my goal of completing the run in under one hour. Yay!

The last week or two have been...stressful at work. I don't usually think of work that way, I enjoy my job immensely. However, a few weeks ago, due to some changes and hardware problems, the software that we use to determine some billing information wasn't able to run. Now imagine that there is a lot of money involved, if we can just get the software to work again. At first it was a fairly manual task to get the software working. Finally, today, I managed to write new software that not only gets the billing to work again, but does it 4 times faster than before! That may not sound like much, but trust me, this is going to be a highlight on my annual review :-).

This weeks mutterings

2006-07-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

It's been quite an exciting week for sports - World Cup games and the start of the Tour de France!
Too bad Germany got knocked out of the World Cup, I was supporting them because they're the host country.
This year's TdF had excitement before the first bike was rolling onto the first stage. A 'performance enhancement' scandal has broken, and several of the top riders are OUT of the Tour! This opens up the race to other rides to have an incredible opportunity to win.

Work almost slowed down for a few days...almost. People on my team keep going on vacation, so those of us left are kept pretty busy.

July 8th is the BC Cancer Foundation 'Underwear Affair' 10-K fundraiser, which I am in. The run isn't until 6PM, although I imagine it's going to still be quite warm at that time (better than rain!).

It's only a bike, and so much more

2006-06-27T22:36:00.000-07:00

It's been something of a bike week for us.
After what has felt like years, I finally convinced Jen to try a modern-day bike. She liked it :-).
Here's what her birthday present looks like:

I decided to try riding to work, (no, not by taking my bike onto the seabus!). It takes me exactly 30 minutes to get to/from the office to the apartment. That's faster than waiting for a bus, riding the seabus, taking the skytrain, and finally walking the rest of the way to the office.

Unfortunately, the building manager has some radical hate for all things bike-related, including trying to store my bike in my office. I found out that my company had an agreement where we could bring our bkes up to the office, as long as we used the emergency fire stairs, instead of the elevators. Fair enough, some people could scratch up the elevator. Of course, it turns out that the building managers hate extended to putting a padlock on the outside of the emergency door, so no one can get in. That's a great way to work with your clientelle that are leasing 2 floors in the building you manage.

The cool thing is, my company trying to find an arrangement for myself and the others at the office that want to cycle in. That's pretty cool that they are willing to go to bat for us.

Notions of Innovation

2006-06-20T21:05:00.000-07:00

I came across this great list from Melissa Mayer (for those of you who don't know, she's the VP for search products at Google).

1 Ideas come from everywhere
Google expects everyone to innovate, even the finance team.
2 Share everything you can
Every idea, every project, every deadline - it's all accessible to everyone on the intranet.
3 You're brilliant, we're hiring
Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approve hires. They favor intelligence over experience.
4 A license to pursue dreams
Employees get a "free" day a week. Half of new launches come from this "20% time."
5 Innovation, not instant perfection
Google launches early and often in small beta tests, before releasing new features widely.
6 Don't politic, use data
Mayer discourages the use of "I like" in meetings, pushing staffers to use metrics.
7 Creativity loves restraint
Give people a vision, rules about how to get there, and deadlines.
8 Worry about usage and users, not money
Provide something simple to use and easy to love. The money will follow.
9 Don't kill projects - morph them
There's always a kernel of something good that can be salvaged.

So what are you doing in your company to innovate?

To read about some of the fascinating things that are happeing at Google, check our their research blog.

AirG, exercise, and old computers

2006-06-10T16:17:00.000-07:00

Since my last blog entry, I have been increasing my running time at the gym, in preparation of the 10-K run on July 8th for the underwear affair. I've reached 40 minutes of steady running at a 9:49 per mile pace. This works out to just over 6-K in 40 minutes. Assuming I keep my training up (running 3x week), I should be on track to do the 10-K at around 57-58 minutes, which would be 10 minutes faster than my Sun Run time.

AirG news:
As of now, I have been promoted to the Integrations Team Lead. So essentially, more responsibility, longer hours, more work to do in a shorter period of time. Gotta love it :-).

Since starting at AirG, I've been expanding my knowledge of programming in Perl, and recently PHP. However, there's still an ocean of knowledge to acquire (or at least, that's how it feels), so I have started to concentrate my study time more and more on Perl, learning as much as fast as I can. Still need to expand my PHP and MySQL skills. I love getting paid to learn stuff :-).

I've managed to get some local bike rides in. I have a route that takes me out on the Dollarton Highway, through Deep Cove, and return via the Mount Seymour Parkway. Zipping down the hill at 60Km/h is pretty sweet early on a weekend morning with no traffic :-).

On top of all this, the World Cup has started!! It's going to be a crazy month!

As you may recall from some of my earlier postings, I now have a snazzy 24" wide-screen LCD, which replaced my aging (10 years!) 21" CRT monitor. Well, kind of a sad day today, I took the 21" to the used computer store to sell to them. How much was it worth to them? Zero. Zilch. Nadda. A whole lotta nothing! It still worked, had a great picture. But it was also 2 feet deep and weighed in near 100 pounds. Oh well, it's going to be recycled, along with an old scanner and a box of really old computer parts. I can actually see the den again now that it's all gone :-).

Science Run

2006-05-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

This morning I went into a 5-K run at Science World, to raise funds to send kids to science fairs.
Aside from the fund-raising aspect, I am using it to gauge my performance for the upcoming 10-K run for the BC Cancer Foundation's fundraiser - The Underwear Affair. I managed to run the Science Run in 26:03. Which is considerably better than my Sun Run pace. Although I don't think I can sustain this speed over a full 10-K run, I am hoping to reach my goal of doing 10-K in under one hour.

One thing I have noticed about running (and cycling), is that for me, it could easily become addictive :-). There's just something about the training, the organized events, testing myself that keeps grabbing me.

See you at the next run :-).

Summer activities

2006-05-13T17:53:00.000-07:00

What would summer be without activities? BORING, that's what! So I've picked it up a notch.
I've signed up for a 10-K fundraiser, called the Underwear Affair. It's a 5 walk or 10-K run to raise funds for the BC Cancer Foundation.
It's called the Underwear Affair because it focuses on cancers below the waist (prostate, colon, ovarian, etc).
I'm at the gym three times a week, increasing my running time, in the hopes of running 10K in under an hour.

In addition, I'm still trying to get some bike riding in. Just today I went for a ride from the North Shore to Maple Ridge and back. The Barnet Hwy is a tough ride on the way back. My hamstrings will take several days to recover. Still, it was a warm, sunny day, good people to ride with, and I managed 72Km, which is the longest ride I have gone for so far. My friends are much stronger riders than I am, but they are willing to ride with my and wait when I drop behind. They're riding to Harrison Hotsprings from downtown next weekend (it's about..6 hrs of riding). I will not be going :-). One day...

No luck on the townhouse hunt. Last week, we put in a bid on an ok place. We didn't get it. There were TEN other offers, with the winning bid well above the asking price, AND...NO subject.None. Nada. No financing, no home inspection, no review of the strata minutes. There are people out there with more money that sense buying townhouses.

Work is good, been interviewing lots of people lately, expanding the team. We even have more office space (which is about 80% of the floor). Lots of projects to work on, and of course, I am still learning more about Perl and Regular Expressions.

I'm looking forward to summer movies, treetop adventures, bike rides, running, and whatever else I can squeeze in :-).

Agony of da feet

2006-04-24T21:58:00.000-07:00

I ran my first 10K this last weekend - in the Vancouver Sun Run. The extent of my training was a couple of 2K runs at the gym weeks before, and a couple of bike rides. I managed to complete the run in 67:29, which I am pretty happy with. My original plan was to walk/run, but I ended up running the entire time. The only drawback - walking had become quite difficult. I will train well in advance, and on a regular basis for any future runs.

I'm enjoying my road bike. I went with friends after work to ride around UBC and back, and have also taken it for a spin over the 2nd Narrows out to Hastings. 2nd Narrows is a bike-unfriendly bridge. The sidewalk is very narrow, and the deck joints stick out. Add in a wicked cross-wind, and you're struggling to hold the bike without crashing into the railings or wiping out on the joints, all the while braking as best you can (more likely, until your hands have gone numb).

We've managed to bid on several townhouses in the last month, and not get any of them. Unfortunately, since the real estate market is still crazy, there are people out there willing to go well over the asking price. I'm happy to wait for them to be crushed by rising interest rates :-).

I'm having fun with my Dell PocketPC. Most of the time I use it to read books, but I also like to play chess on it, and there are several excellent chess engines and training programs available. For a strong chess program, Fritz2 is quite good, and for training, anything at Convekta.

Books read this month:
23 Days in July - a face paced book describing the 2003 Tour de France, focusing on Lance Armstrong's win.
Treasure - From Clive Cussler (author of 'Sahara'). Another in the Dirk Pitt series.
The Last Sorcerer - A biography of Isaac Newton, who many consider the greatest mind the world has ever produced.
In Code - Autobiographical story of how Sarah Flannery, a high school student, developed a new mathematical encryption method, entered it into science contents, and won. Three times. And then helped discover a flaw in it, showing what good science is really all about.

I'm currently working my way through Men of Mathematics. Written in the 1930's, it's a highlight of what was then considered the key mathematicians and their discoveries. It's also written in an old-English style, which makes it incomprehensible at times :-).

Built for speed

2006-04-03T19:30:00.000-07:00

I've wanted a road bicycle for some time, and have been researching them since last year. Well, now I finally have one. Last weekend I borrowed a friends bike and rode out from English Bay to Steveston and back. Long ride :-). It helped convince me to get my own bike. After looking at Felt, Giant, Trek, and Cannondale, I ended up getting a 2005 Giant OCR Composite 3. Brief details: Fully carbon-fiber frame, forks, and seat stays. Light enough to lift with two fingers.
The only thing not stock is the seatpost, which was replaced with a better, aerodynamic one. I await the summer with great anticipation :-).

Yet more Dell

2006-02-27T21:49:00.000-08:00

So, I admit it, I'm a PDA geek. I started off with a used Palm IIIx, and eventually got myself a Sony Clie. I still use it, but it has a few issues. It's not very fast. The battery in it seems to be dying faster every day. Palm is virtually gone from the business, and the PalmOS that it runs on is at a dead-end. Future 'Palm' products will use Linux.

So, I've been eyeing some of the Windows based PDA's, in particular the Dell Axim x51v.
Compared to the Clie (33MHz, 16MB RAM), the Axim is 624MHz! with 64MB RAM and 256MB ROM, and can handle a 4GB memory stick. The screen is 640x480, and you can even watch movies on it.

The price was pretty high, but recently, it's price dropped significantly... and then as it turns out, my girlfriend got it for me for my birthday :-). That's the way to feed my gadget addiction!
I await it's arrival with great anticipation.

Monitor in action

2006-02-24T21:06:00.000-08:00

So the pics in the previous post didn't really give an action shots of the new LCD, so here's a couple:
Here's a shot running Linux, with Firefox, and a DVD (Bladerunner) running in MPlayer:
A pic with just the movie and my desktop background:
And another shot. And yes, when I run the movie full-screen, it's awesome - completely widescreen :-).
Oh, and I just can't resist, "Hey dad, HAHA" :-)

24" of LCD goodness

2006-02-21T09:55:00.000-08:00

Yes, it has arrived! And sooner than I had expected.
Here's what it's replacing:
It's a NEC XP21. For it's time (about 10 years old now), it was an incredible monitor. Heavy too.

This monitor has survived at least three computers, but over time, it's display has gotten darker.

Here is the great unwrapping:

The stand it will rest upon:Assembled:

Booting up Linux:

Finally, the car of the future...

2006-02-18T13:01:00.000-08:00

It's interesting to see where car manufacturers get their ideas from. Nissan has obviously hired some Star Trek fans. Who wouldn't want this!A vehicle like this, I'd happily sit in the back seat and play on the workstations.
More details here.

Infinity can be a challenge

2006-02-16T21:32:00.000-08:00

Debugging can be a challenge at the best of times. Now imagine it's (possibly) in one process spawned by the Apache web server...and it only shows up under heavy load, and it seems to be some sort of infinite loop. Ideally, you could configure apache to only run one process, load up a debugger, and get to work. But what do you do when it can only occur when there's maybe 100 processes, and you can't even tell what area of the code may be causing the problem...

I can't say I have any definite answer. I'm trying to narrow it down to code that (obviously) could cause an infinite loop, and from that list, narrow it down further to what could have changed recently - keeping in mind that there's always the possibility that a recent code change could have an influence in an old branch of the code. It's not a challenge you hope for :-), but as far as problem solving goes, it keeps you thinking.

Who knows, maybe if I google enough, I'll come across a similar situation that found a solution (or a close approximation :-) ).

24" wide screen LCD...

2006-02-14T20:55:00.000-08:00

I love it when a plan comes together.
I've been looking at LCDs a lot recently. I had decided on the Dell 24" widescreen LCD, but the price was still a bit steep...until today that is! Yup, it's ordered, and I got $250 off of it. It really is worth continuously checking their website for sales.

You can read the details on their site.

Surround yourself with smart people

2006-02-14T19:25:00.000-08:00

Sat in on an interesting interview at work today. Interesting to me because the person being interviewed had a similar view to my own - 'work with people smarter than yourself'. I've been lucky to surround myself with people I consider to meet that criteria at work. Not only do I have the opportunity to learn from them, but I also learn how they go about solving problems, thinking through issues. I may be at work, but I'm still receiving an education :-).

What's been happening since my last update...

Lots of projects at work, modifying the existing WAP platform, building new tools, writing up effort estimates for projects. Still working on learning more about bash and perl.

Still looking for a townhouse, though we have a real-estate agent now. Hopefully we will move soon, and I'll have room for more computers ;-).

Geek week

2006-01-22T18:38:00.000-08:00

Ahh, a week of geekdom. Or does that describe life in general? :-).

I've really been getting into listening to podcasts lately. Essentially, podcasts are audio recordings, usually in mp3 format, that you can download and copy to your mp3 player. You can also listen to some of them as streaming audio online. The cool thing is, anyone can create a podcast and distribute it. Apple will even host your podcast for free. A good start to site is podnova which has more than 25,000. Don't worry, they have a search engine to help you find what your interested in, as well as a top 40 list. My favorite is This Week in Tech (TWiT) :-).

My computer desk is..somewhat crowded. But then I saw a photo someone took, and I realized what I want my future setup to look like. The two monitors next to each other on the right are both 30". The monitor in the middle I think was 20", and the monitor raised up on the left is also 30". Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

Next month, I may go for a new computer (see, wasn't the last paragraph relevant!?). I'm thinking an AMD dual-core 4400, 4GB of ram, 320GB hard drive, Leadtek Winfast 7800GT video card, and the regular stuff like DVD/RW, etc. I also want to add in a new monitor. Currently I have a 21" NEC XP 21 (CRT). I've been looking at the specs for the Acer 24" LCD, and a Dell 24" LCD (the 2405FPW). Wow, nice screens, lots of features, good refresh rates. However, I'll have to dig out the surface of my desk to find somewhere to put it :-). But image the power....awesome!

And as luck would have it, I've just created enough space for a new computer. My old firewall - an aging dual Pentium Pro, running Linux in a 23" tower case has finally been replaced. I gave up on getting the Netgear FVG318. While I think it was a nice device, no one in Canada seemed to be able to order it, and the Netgear online store doesn't seem to sell it to Canada. The energy savings alone compared to the PC should make it worth it. The other advantages to this is that it actually runs Linux internally, supports wireless as well, and is really easy to install and setup.

Backups. Most people ignore them, even those of us who know better. But there are some easy solutions, depending on your time or money. If you have the money, you can simply buy a 2nd hard drive, and have all your data automagically copied into to it (most motherboards now sold come with RAID support which lets you set up a mirror. In other words, all data send to one drive also gets copied to the other one. If one dies, you still have everything). If you have the time (well, and still some money), you can buy an external USB hard drive. What I like about this solution is, it's portable, and can be plugged into any computer. I have an external 80GB USB drive (kinda small now days, but still useful). My goal is to backup my vital files from four different computer all onto it. I should be able to set things up so it can just be plugged into one of the computers all the time, and have important files backed up over the network.

Sometime in the future, my other goal is to have enough disk space to store all our music CD's on one of the computers, and then be able to play songs over the network on any other computer. A lot of people these days rip their CDs top their computers, store all their songs, and copy some to their MP3 players as desired. The next wave will be to do the same with your DVDs, but that's going to require some significant disk space when you have over a 100 movies.

2006-01-08T13:10:00.000-08:00

I've been looking for a small, portable hard drive or flash drive, USB 2.0, self-powered. I thought I had found what I was looking for when I came across the Kaster 2.2GB jumbo USB drive (picture to the right). Unfortunately, neither my Linux or WIndows systems could get the drive to work. So, I gave up on it, returned it, and came across something even better! The X-Micro Mini HDD. Only this one it 5GB! And it works perfectly. Only $20 more than the Kaser.

Spent 4 days in Summerland, reading and hanging out. Very relaxing.

Still looking for a townhouse. We've looked in Burnaby, mostly around the Marpole area, but Kingsway is just so busy. Now we're looking at Champlain Heights in Vancouver, which seems a nice area, close to transit (though I might just bike to work).

First week back at work after the xmas break started off with deciding which projects we're going to work on this semester, finishing the creation of a new programming test (and administering it), and dealing with the usual crop of odd problems the carriers seems to have created for themselves ;-).

I think this could be, by far, our busiest year yet. There's a lot more people in the company now, which opens up more opportunities to do new things. And have I got ideas :-). As usual, this also means there's a lot more learning to do. More perl, shell scripting, mysql, linux command tools, etc. Fun stuff :-).

I'm planning a computer upgrade, for those of you looking to geek out:
Asus A8N-E
Athlon Dual Core 4400+
4GB PC4000
Leadtek 7800TDH Extreme
Thermaltake VA8000 super tower
Western Digital 320GB drive
and, possibly, the Acer 24" LCD. At least, that's my dream :-).

Two days in a row!

2005-12-06T22:06:00.000-08:00

Considering how long I usually seem to end up going between entries, this may be a speed record for me :-).

FIrst off: The company I work at (Air Games Wireless) is still looking for people for a wide variety of positions. Check them out here: AirG Careers. Hurry up and apply, there's ton's of work to do :-). That is, if you like learning new technologies, programming languages, wireless communications, and being at the forefront of technology in a leading company that's now #1 in the wireless space...

I've been rewriting a portion of our platform that deals with device detection. It's an interesting problem, because some manufacturers (who shall remain nameless lest they be eternally shamed) are ignoring some standards. For example - each device has an identifier that will tell you what that particular phone is. But we're seeing manufacturers using generic identifiers, or the same identifier across several phones. Or change the internals of the phone but keep the same identifier. Gits. Oh well, it keeps me busy upgrading our platform to deal with this and other problems.

Oh, and a big BIG 'You suck' to Bell South Corp., after they offered to donate a building to house the new police headquarters in New Orleans, only to withdraw their offer when New Orleans announced it would deploy wireless internet throughout the city. After all, why bother with goodwill if the people you donate it to are just going to deploy what they need to deal with future disasters, rather than grovel at your feet...

Nits and Picks

2005-12-04T10:35:00.000-08:00

Yet another month has gone by since I last wrote an update...

Nits:
It seems some US-based telecom's think the internet should be under their control. SBC, which is now one of the largest telecom companies in the world, think they should be allowed to control what goes over their network. For example, they think that if Yahoo! pays them more, then they will improve people's connections to Yahoo!, and reduce access to Google. That's great. I can't think of a better way of destroying the entire idea of the internet that doing something this insanely stupid. Glad to see sheer greed still outweighs common sense.

Electronic Arts and Battlefield2:Special Forces. BF2 installs and runs on Windows 2000. The add-on pack - Special Forces will run on Windows 2000. The problem? You can only install it under Windows XP. BRAIN DEAD. STUPID. INCOMPETENT. Of course, EA doesn't listen. I will be very reluctant to ever purchase anything from them again. The only way to fight stupidity like this is to stop giving them any money.

The music recording industry - for coming up with the grand scheme of reselling all of us the same music over and over again. There's a lot of places online that will sell you music for you to download. Problem is, most of it is proprietary - it will only place on some specific device. And in a few years, when you likely upgrade....that's right, you no longer have that music, you'll have to buy it all again. Sony in particular, which gets charged and convicted on a regular basis for price fixing, is in full support of this. Along with their 'protected' CDs that opened up 1000's of computers to hackers, I say to you Sony: You suck.

Picks:
Favourite new site: www.digg.com There's always link to interesting stories there, worth a look.

Finished reading Great Physicists by William Cropper. An excellent read covering the main figures in science from Newton to Hawking.

The Whistler Westin Resort and Spa. Awesome. Just walking into this beautiful resort will bring a smile to you. The staff are incredibly friendly and knowledgeable. Off-season prices are within reach of those of us who are not mega-wealthy :-).

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Not bad, pretty good all-around, except for the actor who plays Dumbledore. He has no presence on-screen. He's turned the character from this tower of calm knowledge and strength, to this frantic wailing banshee. Bleh.

2005-11-05T13:45:00.000-08:00

Another two weeks have raced by, let's see what's been happening.

We've been looking at townhouses. Found a couple of nice ones in South Burnaby, but they lack nearby shopping. It's a trade-off for location versus space...space is winning ;-).

Civilization 4! It's out, I have it, awesome has ensued. So far I have only completed one game, but it seems a worthy upgrade to the Civ line of games. Definitely better than Civ3.

My current firewall computer is an old dual Pentium Pro running Linux. The hard drive in it (the 3rd one) is starting to have problems, so I've decided to replace it with a small firewall/router. It will draw far less power and use much less space. I've ordered the Netgear Prosafe firewall (8 port, with wireless as well) from Netlink. The wireless will come in handy when I have my new Dell Axim x51v :-).

Tonight I've got tickets to the BC Lions game. Haven't really been watching this season, but hey, the tickets were free :-).

Launched on Bell

2005-10-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

Well it's official, we've launched our java community chat application on Bell Mobility. People can use their phone's web browser to hit bluelounge.airg.ca and download the java client, or use the online site. I believe you can also hit it from home page on Bell phones (I think it's the topmost link).

I've given up on getting a laptop. Although todays laptops are quite impressive, and can finally be used as a desktop replacement, I've decided to focus on replacing my Palm Pilot instead (Sony Clie). So far, it looks like a PocketPC based handheld is the way to go, and the Dell Axim x51v looks to be the best available at an almost reasonable price.

Windows - ptooi

2005-10-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

I'm continually amazed how many people accept the problems with Windows. I realize they probably have no idea what other operating systems are like, but still, they should be demanding better! My Linux system rarely if ever crashes. It runs 24/7, always with a large number of programs running. It never sites idle. It runs continuously for months (usually between power outages). At work, Linux is the operating system for all our servers, but we have these...Windows systems for our work desktops. Blech. Windows XP crashes more than Windows 2000 (which I have on a system here, and can attest it doesn't crash as often as XP).

The next version of WIndows - "Vista" is expected near the end of 2006 (but really, that means 2007). So far, it's not looking that impressive. Oh well, I'll still with Linux, at least until Google comes out with their own OS ;-).

Books aka dead trees

2005-10-16T19:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it seems like books could really be becoming a dead technology. Not everywhere mind you, but things like ebooks and google seem to have replaced (or prevented the purchase of) new books. Between being able to google for most information I need, or having an ebook on my Palm Pilot, I buy fewer physical dead-tree versions.

About the only place where I haven't made the switch yet is magazines. While many of the ones I read are available in PDF or online format now, I haven't been able to switch. Mostly because...they won't fit on my Palm, or they need an internet connection. This doesn't work too well when I'm on a bus :-). But mostly, I have't switched because remembering to go to each magazine's site to read something is more of a hassle than each issue arriving in the mail. Delivery and ease of access to the delivered content keeps me in paper. Lots and lots of paper.

Crunch days

2005-10-13T18:43:00.000-07:00

We don't often have crunch time at AirG, at least not on the scale of some well known game companies. But this a couple of days this week have been incredibly busy for the integrations team. Aside from the (by now) usual company expansion (we're looking to hire 4 more for my team, please apply, we need more developers!), we've been launching new WAP sites for Bell, Sprint, Telecom, Virgin. There's always so much going on, plus beginning to refactor our platform. Damn it's exciting :-).

More changes in mobile industry

2005-10-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

As usual, mobile/wireless technology is moving ahead. Palm is going Windows PC (blech) for it's operating system, so once again Microsoft has crushed a smaller, more innovative company. Granted, Microsoft has done a better job of improving the hardware needed to run it's resource-hungry software, and it really was Palm's market to win or lose. Still, don't expect much advancement now that it's becoming yet another Microsoft market.

Motorola's RAZR style phones have had an obvious afffect on other manufactuers. Thin is definitely 'in'. Models from Samsung, Kyocera, Nokia, etc will all be super thin.

Spent the morning today in my swim lesson, trying to tread water. It's harder than the front crawl! Oh well, at least I managed to do it longer than last week.

I'll be in at work this holiday Monday. We're launching our java based chat client with one of the Canadian carriers, along with a customized WAP deck for them to download it from, or use the browser-based chat program. But what do you want to bet that no one from the carrier will be working on Monday?

Wireless carriers succeed despite themselves

2005-10-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

Ever have one of those days where people wait until a looming deadline to tell you they have a project that needs done? Grrr. One week, three new sites, one of which is going to require days of customization. It wouldn't be so bad, if the wrireless carrier had a clue what they were doing. They don't. I spent too much time telling them how to fix their system (can you believe that a large wireless carrier doesn't know how to develop and maintain their own billing server? argh!). They continue to blindly ignore their own internal technical failure, and expect us to have everything working. Only we can't test with a working system on their side. How do they manage to keep making money??

Oh well, I spent some time working on an automation tool that will save me hours and hours of time on this and other projects. There's still some major customization to do for them, but at least 90% of it's done in a few minutes instead of hours.

Nokia is working on a linux-based tablet that looks interesting. Time will tell if they are pushing wireless technology in the right direction. There seems to be a lot of talk in the industry that might make you believe that anything wireless these days is going to be a success. I suspect much like the dot-com boom and bust, we will see the same rise amongst wireless products...and then 'consolidation' as products bomb.

Serenity

2005-10-01T18:14:00.000-07:00

If your ever looking for a Brazillian-style restaurant, try Samba's downtown (just off Thurlow). All-you-can eat buffet (MEAT!). Skip breakfast, you won't need it :-).

Went and saw the movie Serenity last night with some of the gang from work. I haven't seen the TV series it's based on, but I've seen/read enough sci-fi to follow along with no problem :-). I'd have to say, an enjoyable movie, entertaining, and has gotten me interested in watching the series (unfortunately, like most popular FOX shows, it was cancelled).

It so happens that the first season of Battlestar Galatica is now out on DVD as well, which I am unable to resist :-). It's an excellent sci-fi series, and so far, about the only one still on other than Doctor Who.

My swim lessons are going well. I used to sink (well, I still do), however, I'm getting much better at floating on my back and slowly doing a backstroke. The side-stroke is much tougher, hard to stay afloat.

Work is going really well. As usual, we are expanding, and my team (Integrations) is looking to expand quite a bit as well. Lots of interesting projects to develop, new technologies and ways of using that technology to learn. Exciting stuff :-).

Automation

2005-09-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

Automation is becoming the mantra at work. At least for some of us :-). I've been creating an interactive script that allows us to quickly create a new site in minutes. Last year I created a simple script that would take a configuration file and create our WAP pages based on it and some templates, but it's not pretty, and it's not the easiest to use (but still saved an incredible amount of time). This new interactive script will allow us to pick and choose what parts of the sites we want to create, add things to our version control system, and prepare a script that can be run on our remote servers to retrieve the new files.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg for automation. One of my favourite book series is the Pragmatic series originally by Hunt & Thomas (Pragmatic Programmer, Pragmatic Version Control with CVS, Pragmatic Project Automation, etc). Ideally, we are going to move those areas of our code that change often into a more dynamic format - probably into a database - so that we can change things through a simple web interface, instead of editing things manually and then restarting servers.

Automation is the key to getting onto newer projects, games, etc., rather than spending time editing files. Of course, it takes a bit of manual work to get there :-).

Communication bug

2005-09-28T19:05:00.000-07:00

The day seemed to start off normally enough, but things got busy after lunch. It was one of those weird days when little things seem to stop working for no obvious reason. And of course, it's not just one thing, but a multitude of little problems, people asking questions, discussions, checking code and data. We got everything working again, but it makes for a long day.Communication, it's always important among any team. Sometimes we get busy and forget. Then we get bit by bugs :-).

New Books

2005-09-27T19:58:00.000-07:00

I admit it, I'm addicted. To Chapters :-).
I'm getting back into astronomy, so it's time to catch up on what's happened with telescopes. Which of course means ... new books! I've had a small newtonian telescope for about 10+ years now, but haven't gotten the most out of it that I could have. I plan on changing that. With some knowledge, a pair of binoculars and a telescope, and modern software, you can do a lot these days.

My latest books:
Astronomy Hacks - Tools & Techniques for Observing the Night SKy
The Backyard Astronomer's Guide
Star Watch

And finally:
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track - The Letters of Richard P. Feynman
Not astronomy, but sure to be an entertaining and fascinating view of the late, great physicist.

Europe pictures:
I'm getting there. I'm not sure if I will simply post them here, or link to them on Google's Picasa, which allows you to make photo albums.

Here's a few pics from Amsterdam in the meantime:

Bad handsets

2005-09-26T18:58:00.000-07:00

You would think cell phone manufacturers would know what they're doing. You'd be right most of the time. I spent today day trying to overcome an issue when they get it very wrong. Cell phones have information they send when they hit a site. In particular, they have a user agent - text that identifies what kind of phone it is. For some...inexplicable reason, SonyEricsson decided to not only use a Samsung user agent in their own phone...they used one that's know to be broken. Thanks Sony. Of course, Sanyo and Samsung also have issues with some of the user agents they use, but at least they aren't 'borrowing' them from someone else.

Found an interesting show on Friday nights - Numb3rs. Sort of a FBI crime show, but the twist is how they use mathematics as an aid in their investigations. Number theory, probabilities, and more, yet explained in a way even those with no mathematics background can comprehend.

Back from Europe

2005-09-25T22:38:00.000-07:00

A new blog, a new post, everything old is new again...

So we got back last week from a 23 day stay in Europe. We flew into Amsterdam, and took the train all around Europe - Germany (Baccarach, Rottenberg, Munich), Italy (Venice, Florence, Rome), Switzerland (Interlaken, Gimmelwald, Bern), and France (Paris).

As time permits, I'll be writing in here the journal I should have written during the trip ;-).

Work is a little quieter at the moment, which is weird for me, since it's been busy since the day I started. More people hired, more projects coming very soon, with much more to learn and stay on top of.

Tour de France

2005-08-09T19:49:00.000-07:00

So it's official, Lance Armstrong has won an unprecedented 7th Tour de France. And now he's retired. Awesome performance from the whole Discovery Team.

It's been a little calmer the last few weeks. Spent the BC Day long weekend in Summerland. Work is busy (big surprise), but I think I've gotten my bigger projects done before my vacation (two weeks to go!). I've been looking into buying a road/racing bicycle. Dam those things are expensive, at least if you want a good one. So far I've looked at the Trek 2100, Felt F60, and a few others. To go for a carbon fiber frame and upgrade the parts later, or just get something right now and start riding, and upgrade the whole thing in a few years...

Tour de Gastown

2005-07-21T18:53:00.000-07:00

I watched 1/2 of the Tour de Gastown last night. It was pretty cool. I went down with a friend from work. At first we were watching near a tight corner, where the racers have to slow down, but we moved to the straight-away near the start/finish line. They were really moving at that point. Racers are so fast you feel the wind as the speed past. Makes we want to get a road bike and cycle with the guys at work :-).

For those of you who read Business in Vancouver, you will find an article on AirG in this months BIV Magazine - Hightech.

AirG Bio

2005-07-14T19:35:00.000-07:00

Where does the time go? Time for a burst, so you can see what's been happening since I last updated things. Saw a premiere for The Island tonight. Really good movie, I definitely recommend it, though not for very young kids (under 10ish). But for adults, this was a solid movie.

Finally got a new phone! woot! I went on contract with Telus, and got a free Samsung A650. A big improvement over my five year old Nokia. People can hear me talking now :-). Plus I can download the games from work :-).

Put a deposit down on a townhouse. Yes, really. It's the Red Brick Heights in Burnaby. We withdrew the deposit two days later :-). It was too quick a decision for us, but it was pretty close.

THE TOUR HAS BEGUN. The Tour de France! Go Lance! I'm excited, I hope he wins his 7th. It's on TV mornings and evenings on the Outdoor Life Network.

Europe is coming closer. Or more to the point, our three week holiday there is getting closer. Excitingly closer. Whew.

Recently, AirG updated their website. If you search around, you'll see my bio has been posted. (Hint, check the Careers -> Work Environment page). Work is good. Everyone just got new LCD monitors (mine's a 20" :-) ). I've kept my old monitor for a dual setup. It's pretty sweet. As usual, AirG is hiring again. Three more this week that I know of :-).

I've been busily studying as usual. Pretty much the same: MySQL, Perl, sed, awk, shell scripting.
Favourite MySQL book: MySQL Tutorial by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson.
Favourite shell scripting book: UNIX SHELLS by Example (4th ed) by Ellie Quigley.

Game of the Month: Battlefield 2. I haven't played CounterStrike since I started this. It's even better when you are chatting with your buddies through TeamSpeak at the same time.

Went to see War of the Worlds. I've been waiting for this one since the first trailers came out earlier this year. I've seen the original, read the book, even listened to the original radio broadcast. I eagerly went to see the new one. Parts of it were good, but what's with the blood and gore? Frankly, I expected much better from Spielberg. Not his finest movie.

Spent most of June house and dog sitting for my sisters' family while they went to China. They now have a larger family, with the addition of Elaine.

In late May a friend of mine went skydiving (Hi Jen!). That was cool. It's something I've been interested in. One day...

Star Wars, Linux, Half-Life2

2005-05-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

Well, what's been happening in the last month and a half since I last updated this page...

AirG is going to be doing a presentation at the next VanDEV meetup on June 6th. We are also hoping to do one for VanJUG, but it looks like we will have to wait until after their summer break.

Work is going good. Need to keep learning, there's always so much to absorb. More Perl, MySQL, sed, awk, and other command-line tools. I've managed to invest some of my time at work in creating tools to automate some of our processes, which will provide the opportunity to do less repetitive 'grunt' work in future, allowing me to concentrate on some of the harder tasks that take more thinking time, as opposing to coding time.

The final episode of ENTERPRISE aired. Not the greatest of finale's, but I guess they didn't have much time to get more creative. It's too bad though, in the last couple of seasons, ENTERPRISE had improved greatly, and could have had a chance.

The long-awaited Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith came and went. Not bad. Actually, it was pretty good, despite the truly painful dialog...

I use Linux for most of my day-to-day work at home, and half the time at work. I prefer Linux :-). For example, I wanted to backup onto DVD a large collection of files, most of which had long and sometimes unusual names. The kind that, as it turns out, don't burn nicely... For those of you familiar with gzip and tar, you already know the solution. Use Tar/gzip to tar up all the files, and then just burn the archive to disk. You can do the same with zip under Windows. I don't know if it would be as easy to set zip to do it automatically at specific times though :-). The power of the pengiun!

I managed to squeek in some time to play Half-Life 2. It was ok, but I have to admit, parts of it got a little tedious (mostly the endless journey through the sewers). I think now that I am finished it, I'll switch back to playing Knights of the Old Republic II :-).

J2ME, AirG hiring

2005-04-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

Interesting week at work. We have launched a beta of our J2ME client. This is pretty big for us. Pretty soon, tens of thousands of people will be using it. We just have to work through testing it for a little while first.

AirG is hiring again. We're almost at 50 people now, and want to hire about 20 more this year, for various positions (both technical and non-technical). I've noticed a real increase in companies looking to hire programmers/developers lately in Vancouver.

We have booked our flight :-). Yup, going to Europe for three weeks! Yahoo! Now it's time to pick where we're going to stay, and the places we want to see.

Databases, Strength Training

2005-03-28T19:53:00.000-08:00

Wow, has it really been almost a month since I have updated this? Now I know I am busy.

Sat in on a presentation at a VanDev meeting. It wasn't a technical talk, it was about the some government programs to help small businesses and entrepreneurs. In particular, the Scientific Research and Engineering Development (SRED) program is particularly helpful.

If you are a gamer who has been around for awhile, you may remember Silent Service, or the more recent Silent Hunter games. WWII submarine simulations. Silent Hunter III is out now, and it's time to start remembering your TDC (Torpedo Data Computer) settings, and hunt some shipping lines :-).

Spent the Easter long weekend at Jen's parents, in Summerland. They have a great place, in the middle of nowhere :-).

Most of this month has been taken up by late nights at work, trying to get things ready to roll-out. We're really close. The client team has given out a tentative 'gold' release, and the server team is close behind. I'm in between getting our offering ready for beta testers. On top of this, I am trying to learn more (much much more) about MySQL, with more Perl and J2ME as well.

I've also been doing a different workout for a few weeks now, based on a book - Serious Strength Training. The basic idea is that instead of increasing the amount of resistance each set, you keep the same weight for a weeks worth of workouts, increase it the next week, and the 3rd week, in the fourth week, decrease the weight (same as the amount in the 2nd week), and then increase from there. It makes more sense when you read the book :-). The idea is to allow not just your muscles to adapt, but your tendons and joints, which are slower to adapt than your muscles. So far, I am feeling far less fatigued after my workouts, but am still making gains. Good stuff.

VanDEV, Star Wars, ThermalTake pics

2005-03-01T20:54:00.000-08:00

Another busy couple of weeks, although it's going to get much busier in the coming weeks. People at work seem happy with my performance. In fact, I've been told my responsibilities will be expanding. There's some interesting data-mining projects I'll be working on soon, and some research projects that I'll be able to sink my teeth into. I'm also going to be responsible for rolling out a project in the near future that has pretty big potential for us.

I think I'll need a vacation at this rate :-).

I went to a presentation on Smartphones last week, sponsored by the local IEEE and VanLUG groups. There is some pretty interesting handset technology slowly making its way here to North America. I've used a phone at work that supports video-conferencing. It has a second (video) camera built-in that is aimed at you. You can even see yourself on the screen - picture-in-picture. Most of the Smartphones seem to be based around Symbian OS. This provides you are fair amount of access to the phones capabilities, but of course, this comes with the cost of the added development complexity.

Also last week, I went to a presentation put on by Gerald Bauer (of SchemaSoft). Pretty interesting view of the next wave of web browser wars. Essentially, Microsoft wants to control the Internet. To do so, they want to make their next web browser rely more and more on Windows-specific functions. The idea being that you can prevent web applications working for Linux/Mac/whatever because they rely on the underlying Windows system to function (and thereby completely destroying the advantages of web applications that can currently be used by anyone over the web, regardless of the operating systems). Sometimes, when I haven't used Windows for awhile, I almost forget how much I hate their crappy, insecure, horribly buggy and broken programs. Then they manage to remind me how horrible things could be. I hope the Firefox browser (possibly aided by Google?) completely crushes and destroys Microsoft's web-controlling ambitions.

I've upgraded my video card to the Leadtek 6600GT. Very soon afterwards I completed Star Wars: Knights of the Old republic ;-). Now I am onto ... Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic 2! heh heh. I am now also able to play DOOM3, Return of the King, and Splinter Cell. Never let a crummy video card hold you back from your game playing ;-).

My tower of power - Hurricane:

My other computers are Thunder, Lightning and Monsoon. Oh, and there's Halestorm as well. All part of my Stormet :-). (Yes, I know it's supposed to be 'Hailstorm' but I don't want to rename all the shares...)

Video cards

2005-02-17T22:57:00.000-08:00

Lots of late nights at work these last couple of weeks, although it's not always hard work. Occasionally we have a LAN-gaming night :-).

I'm currently using an ATI AIW8500DV in my Windows box, but I'm getting pretty fed up with ATI's drivers. In a word, they suck. Oh, not for recording TV shows and regular work, but when you want to play a game...blech. ATI's OpenGL drivers are horribly broken. So, it's time to switch back to an nVidia card. I've been looking at the Leadtek A6600GT for regular viewing and gaming, and an ATI TV-Wonder to continue recording shows. And soon after, I should be able to play Knights of the Old Republic II, which came out this month ;-).

Windows sucks (still)

2005-02-06T20:58:00.000-08:00

Busy at work again (but then, who of us isn't?). It's been a lot of problem solving, Perl coding, and even some J2ME work. AirG is a busy place at any time, but there's a sense that things are growing. We are hiring yet again, which will push the company above 50. Not bad considering the company was about 35-38 when I started six months ago, and about 15 in 2003. And boy do we need more people. I don't know how they managed before. Heck, I don't know how we manage now :-).

A group of us went to The Concert for Tsunami Relief. It was good, Sum41 certainly woke up the crowd :-). I think the only disappointing performer was Avril Lavigne, who seemed to just be going through the motions. When she hits the high notes, earplugs are required...

Viruses, spyware, and trojans. I *HATE* them. Especially when they finally manage to get in and infect a computer. Always be careful of the web sites you visit, if it looks weird, STOP. Apparently, there is a fake hotmail site out there that does a very good job of taking advantage of the thousands (yes, thousands) of security flaws in Windows and Internet Exploder. I had to format the computer and reinstall. You have no idea how close I was to putting Linux on it instead. Why do Windows users continually put up with this CRAP from Microsoft? One day, someone is going to get a class-action lawsuit going against them. In the meantime, buy a Mac. Or switch to Linux if you are more technically inclined.

Game of the week: Knight of The Old Republic (PC). I know, I know, it's an older game, but with the next version coming out on the 8th, I just had to play it :-).

I finished reading Pragmatic Version Control this week. Another excellent book in the Pragmatic series. If you haven't used CVS or an equivalent (Subversion is nice), you don't know what you are missing. If you take your craft seriously, you must use something to handle your version control. This book gives great coverage on how to use it, why to use it, and when to use it. It's a small book for the money though. I would recommend either borrowing it, or buying the pdf version and saving $20 of the print version.

I'm at the gym 3x a week, though so far only on the treadmill. I injured my hamstring last year during the summer (while running). It's finally recovered to the point where I rarely notice any pain. Hopefully, as I keep progressing, I will be able to run and do weights while keeping injury free.

Had an excellent dinner with friends at Amacord (an italian restaurant in Yaletown). And the dessert... You simply have no idea. The Chocolate Pear is the dessert to have.

Updates, Books, Aspect Programming

2005-01-24T21:00:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been *ages* since my last update. Time to catch up, in no particular order:
Finally decided on an MP3 player. I went for the Creative Labs Muvo N200, 1GB version. Comes with an FM receiver, line-in, voice-recorder, FM-recorder, and USB 2.0. I had almost purchased the iRiver T799 (the 1GB version), however, it was $80 more, and the only additional feature it had over the Creative was the ability to play ogg format music. I've been using the Creative for almost a month now, and I am quite happy with it. I did replace the earbuds it came with (earbuds never stay in my ears for some reason). I purchased a pair of Sony sport-earbuds. Very light, with a small plastic loop that goes over the ear (almost like wearing glasses).

During the xmas break, I played tourist in Vancouver. One of the highlights was the Massive Change exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The exhibit ended January 3, so if you didn't make it there, you missed out. Fortunately there is a book available. Massive Change is about design on a global scale. Everything from ideas on how to better develop high-density living to providing clean water.

Storyeum is another place I had been wanting to visit since it opened, but never found the time until the break. It is an interesting idea, and parts of the show are quite well done, however, for the expense, I can't recommend it. We found that the most interesting part was the old newspaper covers from Vancouver's past - which happen to be free for anyone to view.

Another highlight was the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra playing at the UBC Chan Centre. They put on an excellent show.

Finished reading various books - Calvin & Hobbes, because everyone needs a little light reading :-). Artemis Fowl (books 1-3). This is actually more of a kids book (targeted at the Harry Potter audience). While not as richly detailed as the Potter series, it's still a fun read. The Pragmatic Programmer, which has been fascinating reading again. If you are a programmer (professional or amateur), this book is one of those must-read books that you will greatly benefit from. I'm currently reading Wheel of Time (book 9), J2ME Game Programming, Pragmatic Version Control, and Core Perl.

There was a fascinating talk put on at UBC Robson by Prof. Gregor Kiczales of UBC's Software Practices Lab about his work with aspect-oriented programming and AspectJ. Even though the talk was brief, the glimpse it provided into AoP programming has already convinced me that this is going to be a technology that future programmers MUST know. It will become as important as other ideas like Design Patterns, and will cause new Design Patterns to be created.

I saw the movie Electra, unfortunately. I'm trying to think of something that made it worth seeing, or paying for, but I can't really. Even watching Jennifer Garner wasn't enough to make it worthwhile.