Older blog entries for nymia (starting at number 1354)

27 Feb 2005 (updated 27 Feb 2005 at 08:05 UTC) »
n-gage

Finally got the Nokia N-Gage QD model after seeing the price at the local wireless store. I got a good deal on the family plan. The device looks pretty good for playing games and program testing, which will become part of the work I'm currently doing. [1, 2]

Also looked at the web for any free SDK. Found one site called J2MEpolish a while ago, figured it might be a good starting point for developing simple apps.

Volleyball

Using the device, I called each of my mate, asked them if they will be able to make it tomorrow, they all confirmed. Leo said Ivan might come to play but he is not sure if he got his phone number right.

It will be an exciting game for the team as we will be competing with a lot of very good teams.

They asked about the setter, I said our setter backed-out and will not play anymore. He probably got annoyed with one of the player who also didn't confirm. I guess that's just life, though. Volunteers vote with their feet.

Kyle volunteered to be the setter until a new one steps up to the plate. I told him it's OK, we can deal with it, we all have the height and power, though. We will just have to enjoy the game and do our best covering the defense.

I think Kyle is the shortest in the team, standing 5'11"ish. He can toss and hit as good as the previous setter. Dave volunteered as well so we can have all three hitters all the time.

Roman is youngest in the team, 19 years old, 6'4" and probably the crowd favorite. Ladies seem to like him, I wonder why. I told him to forget about it and just focus on the game. One lady asked his phone number, I told her, gee you just have to get it from him.
23 Feb 2005 (updated 23 Feb 2005 at 18:59 UTC) »
Ruby

Figured Ruby and the .Net bridge can handle some of the debugging work, like firing series of messages to the client until it breaks down. It would be nice to find the breakdown point of the client and see how much can it handle.

The competitor staked their claim and announced the reliability of their product. That meant something for us to figure out ours as well. This is all good, though. Better product for the buying public.

Refinancing

Finally got the refi approved at 5.125%. We're saying goodbye to the mortgage insurance with this, though. Feels good to have that sorted out. Closing will be in 30 days.
22 Feb 2005 (updated 22 Feb 2005 at 18:57 UTC) »
Bad Mojo

Tried several times intalling then re-installing the latest Fedora iso's in one of the boxes. Turned out the X server crapped out when it failed in bringing up the correct settings for ATI Radeon 9000. When the display came out, it had a black screen with a mouse pointer in the foreground. Bad Mojo.

Karaoke

We had fun with the Karaoke machine. We took turns singing, each song selected from a list of one thousand all contained in the box that looked like a component system. Interesting. I sang the following songs: Forever young (Alphaville), Human (Human League), Everybody wants to rule the world (Tears for Fears). It was fun, I never thought I could sing. Well, you get the idea.

Racing

I was told for the N'th time not to void the warranty of the car. Last week, I was on the verge of buying several mod parts to install on the Lancer, but I was warned not to even play with it. Turns out I got approval on buying an old car then simply modding it ad nauseam. Looked at the ads yesterday and found several oldies on the list. The first one was a 94 BMW coupe, perfect for modding. The second was a 91 190E with a 'slightly' worn out interior.

Volleyball

I asked Leo to recruit Ivan. I saw the guy did a vertical jump, his head going above the net, I think up to his shoulders, though. Standing at 6'1", Ivan could be another killer for the team. I asked Ivan a couple of weeks back and he said no to me, mainly because he thought the team has no setter. But I told Leo to talk to him and get him on the team.
18 Feb 2005 (updated 19 Feb 2005 at 01:26 UTC) »
Multi-Language Parsing Engine

Part of the work I'm planning to study is how parsers (i.e. HTML) manage to sort tokens based on regional language (code pages). This has been the biggest issue so far as the parser is concerned. I've read the high-level parser doc on Mozilla and it seemed that the parser doesn't support regions (unicode), or maybe I'm wrong there. Anyway, it would be nice to see an open source html parser engine for multi-language, though. I would imagine the AST would be populated differently than a single-language AST.

Ref:
1. Ruby Parser

Regarding SmallTalk

Developing in the ST environment is definitely a different kind of experience. I've never seen an environment provide a way of coding, debugging while seeing the output on the screen at the same time. This is what I call a paradox, a freak of nature, where objects morph into something in real-time. This is probably _the_ most favorable environment to develop applications in. The thing is, why hasn't SmallTalk caught up with the popular ones?

Ruby/.NET Bridge

Someone mentioned there is a nifty tool for running Ruby on .NET which turned out to be similar to SmallTalk's Workspace.
While the debate between dynamic and static languages and object systems is as old as computer science, we feel that dynamic languages like Smalltalk, Self, and Ruby have some enormous benefits over static environments. Particulary, we have been enormously interested in quick feedback, agile development, and direct manipulation of object systems and the impact these characteristics bring to the software development process. Why should one think of code and a running object system as separate things? Creating a dynamic .NET environment is a primary motivation of this project.
18 Feb 2005 (updated 18 Feb 2005 at 19:06 UTC) »
Milti-Language Parsing Engine

Part of the work I'm planning to study is how parsers (i.e. HTML) manage to sort tokens based on regional language (code pages). This has been the biggest issue so far as the parser is concerned. I've read the high-level parser doc on Mozilla and it seemed that the parser doesn't support regions (unicode), or maybe I'm wrong there. Anyway, it would be nice to see an open source html parser engine for multi-language, though. I would imagine the AST would be populated differently than a single-language AST.

Ref:
1. Ruby Parser

Regarding SmallTalk

Developing in the ST environment is definitely a different kind of experience. I've never seen an environment provide a way of coding, debugging while seeing the output on the screen at the same time. This is what I call a paradox, a freak of nature, where objects morph into something in real-time.



Stumbled into an interesting Web Browser project named Shiira. The developer looks very interested in getting his own pet project going.
17 Feb 2005 (updated 17 Feb 2005 at 06:15 UTC) »
Morphic Thoughts

Little by little, this environment is becoming less of a mystery. Thanks to the many pages covering the basics for those who are still learning.

Figured there isn't enough documentation out there covering the Morphic API. I have a simple application needed to be coded in ST and it would surely be nice to use the Morph package as base, though.

Blog

Stumbled into an interesting blog worth linking to.
The only reason such an obviously superior language has not taken over the world is because it interferes with the plans of the astral Lizard People, and their avatars and representatives among us. These can be recognized by their MCSD plaques, their years of experience writing distributed application servers that serve application distributors, and - especially - their books with code samples in Java.
16 Feb 2005 (updated 16 Feb 2005 at 07:30 UTC) »
Self Language

While playing with Smalltalk, I chanced upon a recommendation to visit the Self Language website. Turned out the Self programming language is like ST-80. I'll give it a spin and see where it will take me. It should be interesting.

Volleyball

Sent an email to someone asking if it is possible to invite other clubs or teams to accept an invitation to play. I was thinking of setting up a system wherein clubs can send invites for a match. That way, clubs can play outside the tournament.

Morphic Trounces MVC

Played with a sample code demonstrating Morphic. I was impressed with the implementation, which is way better than MVC.
15 Feb 2005 (updated 15 Feb 2005 at 18:00 UTC) »
Smalltalk

Played around with the System Browser, walking around figuring things out. A lot of stuff definitely got sucked-in there, a lot of useful stuff worth re-using.

Also figured Cincom Visual Works is perfect for building business apps, while Squeak fits nicely into graphics oriented app like simple animation and charting presentation.

Figured a weblog documenting the steps that were taken will make the journey interesting. I'll start a weblog and title it: The Adventures of A Smalltalk Newbie

Volleyball

I got two calls from the same person asking me if he can borrow some of my teammates for their game. I gave them their email address and he called them up. Hope the game went well.

Also got the videos of the last two games burned in DVD. I used one cut in Colin's Patterns collection as the background music in the menu.
13 Feb 2005 (updated 13 Feb 2005 at 05:02 UTC) »
Volleyball Club: Sol

Finally got the club name (Sol) registered during the tournament. We played against four teams, each having years of playing experience. I was impressed with the awesome firepower my teammates unleashed as I couldn't imagine how good they are in raw form. Although we lost and didn't gain and place in the tournament, we played really well. We realized a lot of work is required to make to a good team.

All in all, everybody was glad they came and played. They want to play more and would like to get the first place--real soon.

The 6'4" Russian did most of the scoring and blocking, coupled with his comrade Leo (6'1") who did a pretty good job putting the ball down from the ten foot line. They were awesome, individually, but as a team we need more playing time to get to know each other.

Turned out I over-recruited. More than six players showed up and ended sub'ing a lot just to get the guys playing. I realized I committed a mistake recruiting one player who turned to be a player with really slow reflexes. My other mate told to hand him the pink slip right away and look for another player.

It is really hard giving someone the boot. It pains me to even think about giving it. But the thing is, he needs to be booted out or he will drag the team down. Geez, this is very hard. Maybe this is part of managing a club. Someone said "Just do it and get over it."

On the bright side, the champion of the tournament was my former team. Yay! for them. They are still the best team, but then, I'm not part of that team anymore. I'm starting my own little club with very good players. I'm hoping that someday, maybe next year or two we will be able to beat them.

Leo impressed me with his ride, a 1998 Mercedes-Benz SLK 230 Kompressor. Geez, what is the player made of? He just smiled at me when I praised his ride. Anyway, it's nice to have Leo play in the club, though.

Smalltalk

Finally decided Cincom Smalltalk was the right one for me. I did a lot of reading trying to figure out the environment. Overall, lots of very good stuff. Learning the syntax and control structure took some adjustment due to the Object Oriented nature of the language. But the thing that really caught me was the idea of which one really provided OO? was it the language or the environment?
12 Feb 2005 (updated 12 Feb 2005 at 09:51 UTC) »
Volleyball

Wow, turned out I got a good number of people wanted to join the team, which gave me idea two teams can be created. One for level B and the other Level A. That way, everybody will be happy playing in their own level.

Geez, I thought this was a simple exercise of just recruiting the right stuff. Turns out it became complicated because word spread out quickly and more people want to be in now. What am I supposed to do here? Could be an opportunity for me to serve them in having a good fun playing volleyball.

I sent one email to the person...
There is, I think enough, but it would OK if you come. I'm not guaranteeing anything everybody will be able to play all the time. I still don't know how many will show up before the game.

Maybe we can split the team into two if it went up to twelve players.
Dave gave a funny name for the team, called it Mental Block. Geoff (Kenyan) said Radi (swahili) as in lightning. Mine was Sol Invictus but I'm thinking of just taking Dave's instead. It fits perfectly. He he.

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