Advogato blog for zealot

15 Dec 2001

Sat, 15 Dec 2001 08:30:46 GMT

I decided that my nick can no longer represent me, so I was left with the question how could I change it and its meaning but still be known (on opn too) so the best I could come up with that does reflect me is zenalot Therefore from now on I will be posting as zenalot, so I guess its time to say bye to "zealot", after all it was a spelling mistake that I only now realized the missing 'n' (not) (I'm also getting sick and tired of ppl asking whethere I play starcraft).

to be continued here zenalot

10 Dec 2001

Mon, 10 Dec 2001 09:37:34 GMT

pointless maybe

If its one thing that I begin to realise more and more is that quick hacks have no place in commercial/open source code. Although the quick hack is cool it lapses in design but OTOH linux had no design from the beginning. I have become so accustomed to quickly throwing something together for it to just do the job and leave it alone only to be bitten on the arse later on. The quick hack does not have a place in OO code(java,c++,c#) and this stems from thinking about what your doing. Anything more than a few classes and a couple hundred lines becomes to much to not have a detailed plan/design. Without talking forever about code and design, this brings me to my question, how many open source projects out there follow some sort of design specification and what is the most popular?

Back to the quick hack, I believe this stems from my C background. I still place C on the top of my most preffered languages - why? - total control. To me, nothing still beats the command line compiler and [g]vim for development. btw I still stand by my statement that java layout managers suck. Java is a GUI joke.

25 Nov 2001

Sun, 25 Nov 2001 09:52:59 GMT

java grudges

Here are a few of the syntactic/semantic constructs that I believe need to be fixed with java -

for(int i=0,int j=0;;)
instead of
int j;
for(int i;;)

and

return (int)(i==blah)?x:y;
which gives a stupid error, instead of 
return (int)( (i==blah)?x:y );

Btw, the layout managers in java are so seriously braindead that getting a GUI to look how you want it is like painting a dark and gloomy medieval painting using one hand with gentle strokes :P GridBagLayout is the only really useful layout manager but hideously complicated to get correct, FlowLayout should also go vertically - but of course.. you can create your own layout manager so I better stop complaining.. *sigh*

30 Oct 2001

Tue, 30 Oct 2001 08:26:49 GMT

Someone from Oracle rang today and said something along the lines of "You've been browsing our site over the past few weeks, did you find the information you were looking for?" I thought hrmm lemme remember, err yeah just some info on oracle 9i. That was pretty much it but after a while it made me wonder - did he say that because I'm a subscriber to oracle magazine and just assumed that I would visit the site at least once a month? or are the big corporation bullies watching us more than what we think? Last but not least, how the hell did he get my phone number :-O and when I tick the box _don't send me updates about new products etc that includes not wasting time on the phone answering dumb questions and stop spying on me

28 Oct 2001

Sun, 28 Oct 2001 14:16:33 GMT

Today absolutely r0cked! I spent the day at the honda indy down the Gold Coast, roughly 45mins south of Brisbane. I The power of those machines is absolutely awesome. I'm still trying to figure out how those guys walk away from crashes, on the main straight if you looked directly in front of you across the track all you saw was a blur and the sound of a car screaming past at roughly 300km/h.

Ic /. mentions the linux conference in my home town Brisbane in February. Cu there

21 Oct 2001

Sun, 21 Oct 2001 15:49:41 GMT

stuff

There is a good chance that I will be working at PLAS over the summer holidays on a genetic algorithm framework in java. This should be cool considering thats what my thesis topic is about, anyway the situation for graduates finding a job isn't the best right now.

rant

bjf: the goodwill bridge is the most thoughless piece of shit that shitstacks with the rest of the brainless ideas that the brisbane city council consistently erects in this place to appease the gods of the 1950's. The footbridge purely comes from nowhere and goes to nowhere, it was strategically placed by Stevie Wonder. This is gonna sound stupid, but this place is also polluted with parks, that secretly house the homeless, and in some of the most primetime commercial real estate. What Brisbane needs is a Tokyo or Singaporean business man to start building the city and not making it look like an amusement park, unlike the sheep herding arseclowns that are currently in govt.

18 Oct 2001

Thu, 18 Oct 2001 12:11:50 GMT

I just did a presentation on my research topic "Genetic Programming for Technical Analysis in Financial Markets" to a bunch of information systems students in under 10 mins and man it was torture. First of all, doing a 10 mins presentation on what genetic programming is to a bunch of computing scientists is a hard ask. Secondly, there was no place to put all my notes coz of the uncoordinated design of where the presentation was held so out went the plan on what I was supposed to say and in came the John Cleese improvisation of a BBC special. What I said apparently did not matter, I could of talked about a 1960's adventure of the occult because all that did matter was eye contact, walking around why you talk and finishing on time. Last of all when my time was up, and the first 10 minutes that went by actually felt like 2, this jerk kept ringing the bell for roughly 4 seconds while I was answering someones question. I couldn't resist telling him, "yeah I get the point".

*sigh*

15 Oct 2001

Mon, 15 Oct 2001 11:25:27 GMT

I've been busy working on my Research Proposal the last week or so and have had no time for coding. That includes completing the AI pacman demo using genetic programming but is on top of the todo list for holiday items.

I'm fortunate to live in a very culturally and educated neighborhood, the neighborhood news is run by a raging anarchist who runs one of the local bookstores and I never miss an issue purely for entertainment value. In the latest issue he mentioned Robert Frisk and Noam Chomsky, a google here and found this choice reading

8 Oct 2001

Mon, 8 Oct 2001 02:38:11 GMT

There goes an old saying, "if you want something done then you got to do it yourself". This has been so true in the field of programming. This is one of the reasons why I like the open source model. I found a c++ library, genprog that completely suits my need in preference to galib although the amount of bugs running around in the thing is significant to a week or so in fixes and the last update on the thing was sometime in 1994. So I'm left to 2 options, fix all bugs and tell the maintainer or start my own library and release it myself.

I finally found the secret to getting work done, a healthy diet, plenty of excercise and the occasional lifestyle change. I'm aiming for 100 pushups straight by the end of the month, my alltime record is 120 back in the martial arts days. Ever since my bike rusted and snapped in half while I was riding it a few years ago and ran out of money for buying luxury item food, my productivity has fallen, and it's only taken me 3 or so years to figure that out.

26 Sep 2001

Wed, 26 Sep 2001 07:38:37 GMT

stuff

Had my graduation ceremony yesterday, it was good. Took some photos with the family and recieved my degree.

I had planned and paid for over a month ago a 3 day trip to Melbourne to watch the AFL grand final with a friend, return airfare and hotel package with ansett who've recently declared insolvent, so as of last week it looked like I wasn't going, plus all the tickets to the final would be sold out. NOT HAPPY about that.

coding

It's amazing how much time can be wasted working on the wrong thing because of an assumption of mis-communication.

I think I've got a genetic programming demo of pacman worked out, now all I got to do is finish the damn code and post it in the usual places. This is gonna be real interesting.