Read faster, can you?

Many of my friends read, be it novels, technical documents, research papers, whatever. The 6 tips mentioned in this article, "Double Your Reading Rate" by Scott H. Young might help you to improve your reading skills. Here I jot down the points for my own reference, please refer to his article for more detailed explanation on each point.

1. Remember, Reading is Not Linear
2. Stop Subvocalizing
3. Practice Reading
4. Use a Pointer
5. Eliminate Distractions
6. Find Your Motivation

I especially like the idea of "Stop Subvocalizing".

Does distance really make hearts grow fonder?

I doubt it.

Father of Fortran, John Backus dies

Although I have never used Fortran before, I heard quite a lot about it from my friends in the engineering fields. Fortran, short for Formula Translation, is a programming language invented in 1950s, but still widely used in today's modern computing world. It is also the first high-level programming language ever created.

Prior to Fortran, computers had to be meticulously "hand-coded" -- programmed in the raw strings of digits that triggered actions inside the machine. [Technology, CNN.com]

The creator of Fortran, John Backus, who also invented Backus-Naur Form(BNF), died at the age of 82. BNF is a way of formally describing the syntax/grammar of computer languages. These two inventions have a great impact of today's IT world.

It is sad to know a great person like that has left us (_ _ )

Rest in Peace.

Microsoft exec said...

If You're Going To Steal Software, Steal From Us

According to this article from InformationWeek, this is how Microsoft business group president Jeff Raikes thinks about software piracy. I kind of agree with him. Without software piracy, Microsoft wouldn't have their large market share that they are having today in poorer countries. Once the users got accustomed to their products, it would be much easier to sell their products later on when the users get richer and want less troubles(pirated software comes with legal copies of viruses, worms sometimes :P).

Yeah, steal from them, since there is nothing to steal from the open source world.

So, what is software piracy really bad for? The open source world! With cheap commercial products being available at a price of a lunch, no one(except those with a conscience) would even care to use the open source products which might come at the same price. So, who is the actual victim of software piracy? I will leave the answer to you.

I couldn't believe I saw snow in March!

Yeah, it is still snowing outside.

I am in my room now. Came back to home quite "early" today after having some chit-chat and poker games with my friends in Gusto(a restaurant), on the way back we saw snow falling from the sky! How amazing! Come on this is already March. It hasn't snowed in March since I came to Japan 6 years ago(or at least I haven't seen it before). The weather is strange this year... Hope that the real spring comes on time and we can see the Sakura bloom soon.

Ok, I've gotta go.

To those who joined the poker games, Otsukaresama and Have a good rest :-)

MIT course material went public

If you are in the technology world, you must have heard of MIT, the world famous academic institute of technology. Now they are kind enough to publish the materials they use in all their courses online. Feel free to browse around and discover what you might have missed in your own studies :-)

Video of the fastest car in the world

Somebody might wonder that I should be working around this time and shouldn't have the time to write in blog. Well, I was having my lunch when I saw this clip and I am still having my lunch when I am writing this post :P

Although I am not much into cars but some of my friends are. Just want to share with them this video of the fastest car in the world running at its highest speed. Even the camera didn't manage to catch it properly. Enjoy.

Wow! Wow! Wow! This is just so cool!

Come on you have to read this! This is just so amazing!

New Technique Stores Data in Bacteria

Artificial DNA with encoded information can be added to the genome of common bacteria, thus preserving the data... According to researchers, up to 100 bits of data can be attached to each organism. Scientists successfully encoded and attached the phrase "e=mc2 1905" to the DNA of bacillus subtilis, a common soil bacteria.

I wonder if your antivirus software would accidentally kills them? (^ ^)

Save the world while you chat!!!

Hi everybody, now(or later) you can tell your boss that you are helping the world when s/he complains that you chat too much!



* This currently only works in the US.

It is pretty difficult to explain what it is about, so I will leave it for you to find out. This post just serves as a reminder for myself if I happen to forget the URL :P

Tata.

A long-awaited Chinese New Year

Since I came to Japan 6 years ago in 2001, I have been spending Chinese New Year in Japan sitting for exams almost every year. This year I finally had a chance to go back to my hometown to celebrate Chinese New Year with my family. Everything is so nostalgic, the firecrackers, the angpows, the food, the people. Although I haven't made it to finish my report before I went back to Malaysia on 10th Feb, thus having to spend the first week doing report at home, I am very contended with this short trip.

After spending the first week doing report, I met up with someone I had wanted to get close to but had never been too close before. We went to shop, went to Old Town(a new cafe chain store in Malaysia), went to a movie, went to karaoke and spent almost everyday together the week after the 1st day of CNY. I even sent her off to work early in the morning. Honestly, I haven't been so energetic for a very long time.

Then, we spent a really sweet night on the beach. Soft music flowing from her mobile phone through the air along with the soothing sea breeze. And the sky was so full of stars(alright, not the whole sky but part of it). The atmosphere was just so perfect! We talked about many things, her life, my life, and the probabilities in the future.

However, time seemed to pass faster when you enjoy it. Soon I had to come back to Japan to continue what I had left off. Well, among the holidays that I spent in Malaysia, this is definitely the one that I will never forget.

Stack Overflow: How to make the stack bigger?

Hi, fellas!

It has been a long time since I have posted something really technical. So here I am again.

We have been asked to implement a quicksort-based selection algorithm and another one based on random sampling to compare them to each other in one of the lectures. But wait. I am not going to tell about these algorithms. What I want to say here is more general, more system related.

Ok, by looking at the algorithms, everyone can tell that the quicksort-based method, because of its simplicity, runs faster in a usual case when the target array size is small. So, in order to be able to say that "the random sampling based method performs better when the size of the data set is large", I have to make sure the sample size is large. And here the problem begins!!!

When you run a program, the operating system puts your program into the RAM. At the same time, it also allocates some spaces for the consumption by the program, in case it needs it. There are two types of allocated memory, stack and heap. I don't really remember but I think that the stack is used for function calls and variables, whereas the heap is used when you allocate memory dynamically by calling malloc().

Stack overflow occurs when your program needs more memory than allocated to it. In my case, I need a lot of space to make sure the data set is large enough to see the difference between the algorithms, so the default stack size allocated by MinGW gcc is not enough for me. I later found out also that stack size allocated to a program is handled by the operating system it is run on, so there is no sure way to turn around this problem. Luckily I came upon this file. It provides exactly what I wanted. I link to it here in case I will need it again some day, and maybe you would find it useful, too.

It is kind of late now so I have got to go.

Good night.

Hi, isn't this a nice desktop?

Wow, I haven't made a post for almost a month... Not that I didn't want to but I have been busy configuring my new desktop computer :P Now you must have guessed that I have finally got a mac but you are wrong :P After much thought I stayed with PC for one more round. Why? Although the entry level for a mac is not that expensive, but when you think that you can get much better specs with a PC, you will give it a second thought.

However, after I have watched the presentation about the new APIs and technologies of the new Mac OS X, Leopard, at WWDC 2006 for developers (you can download it via iTunes for free if you are a ADC member, free registration :D), I really think that the coming Vista is going to lose some share :P

Ok, now let's have a look at my new desktop PC, which has the following specs:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300
Memory: PC6400 1GB x 2
Motherboard: ASUS P5B-V
Graphics: Intel G965 Express on-board
OS: Windows XP MCE

Well, these are about all that you need to know :) Now please look at some pictures :D

From the front

From a different angle

Desktop: Skinned with Flyakite OS X

Desktop: Yahoo! Widgets

Running Kubuntu on VMware Player

Running Kubuntu on VMware Player: Login Screen

Running Kubuntu on VMware Player: Kubuntu Desktop

Virtual Desktop Manager that comes with Microsoft PowerToys

I will try to make some tutorials on how to make your Windows desktop look that way when I find the time. Since it is not exactly that hard, maybe you can just google the keywords yourself and get yourself up and running :P

Till then.

Suki - SUper K Iconizer - Release 1.0

First of all, Happy new year!!!

It is so fast that 2007 is here. Let's hope that this will be a better year for all of us.

And the first good thing in year 2007!!! Suki - SUper K Iconizer - is released!!!



Suki - SUper K Iconizer - is a small tool that helps you convert any supported image files(*.jpg, *.png, *.bmp, etc.) into icon resource files(*.ico) which you can use as favicon in your website or as shortcut icons in MS Windows platform. Besides converting existing files, it also lets you capture part of your screenshot and convert them into an icon.

You can download it from my static website here.

See you again! (^ ^)

This is awesome!!!

Sorry for keep posting YouTube clips here, but I really think that this piece of work is awesome!!! This proved only one thing, with some creativity and time(much time?) spent, even annoying things like the MS Windows default sound theme can make good music :P

So let's stop complaining and start composing :)

Super hero living inside the computer...

This is funny :D

What a great idea!

A great news video site

Hi, I know I told my friends that I would go to sleep soon more than 30 minutes ago, but I am still here blogging :P But I have an excuse... err... reason. I found this very good news site with lots of videos. Take a look! It is definitely far better than reading a lot of text just to get some new information :P

New York Times Video

And this is what took me there, funny: Windows Vista.

Keep On Budgets! 0.1 Released!!!

Have been thinking of making a software which can help me to keep track of my spending pattern. I know there are many good softwares which can do many amazing things out there, but I have the following reasons to write my own:

1. Getting used to the wxWidgets API.
2. Make it as simple as possible so lazy folks like me can manage to continue keeping record.
3. Just for fun.

So, here you are: The Home Page of Keep On Budgets! and the Downloads link for Linux and Windows.

Thank you for your attention :D

Let me know if you have any problems using them.

Why Windows Vista is so delayed

Hello guys, sorry for not updating for so long. Have been busy with assignments for the past few weeks.

I came across this article by Joel a few days before. It is an article which criticizes on the unnecessarily bloated shutdown menu in the oncoming Windows Vista.

Then today morning, I found another article, in reply to the above, written by a former developer in Microsoft. What amazed me was not that it takes so many people to implement such a trivial feature, but the fact that:

So Windows has a tree of repositories: developers check in to the nodes, and periodically the changes in the nodes are integrated up one level in the hierarchy. At a different periodicity, changes are integrated down the tree from the root to the nodes.

It is so wrong from the software engineering point of view. The bazaar style of the open source development might be more manageable compared to this. At least you see changes commited by others right after they have done it. Heard that the windows kernel is a microkernel and they should be able to divide the tree of repositories into independent ones. But, well, integration is always the strong point of Microsoft :P

The Falldown of the Laundry Empire; The Heater Strikes Back!

The pile of laundry has been accumulating since I came back from Malaysia. Today I finally made up my mind to do something about it although it is a rainy day. But well, since the place to dry the clothes has a roof so who cares :P

And then, the temperature falls below 15 degrees finally. And thus I have to switch on my heater again. In my last room, I can more or less guess the temperature and do whatever preparation accordingly. But since I just moved to this new room the last Spring, so it is hard for me to do that. How cold will it get? Stay tuned and be updated about the latest temperature :-)

Side report:

1. The new MacBook with Core 2 Duo inside has been finally available!!! But since I don't need a laptop now, it is just pure excitement :-)
2. Read a report somewhere that said Windows Vista will be released on 30th January, 2006. So be prepared to update your hardware if you wanna use it :-P

Ciao.

No wonder everybody thinks logic is no fun...

Vampires a Mathematical Impossibility, Scientist Says

Well, although that might be true but shouldn't we leave some space for our life to be less realistic so that we can still have some fun? :-D A "research" which matches the oncoming Halloween, though...

By the way, I don't really believe in vampires. I believe more in spirits and ghosts :-P