"Art & Technology United" 2008!

@RTE ATTACK:

There will be a Digital Art and Photography Exhibit on August 9-16, 2008 during the Cursor week at the Melchor Hall, UP Diliman and on September 2-5, 2008 during the Youth for IT Congress (Y4IT) at the Bahay ng Alumni, UP Diliman.  Artworks shall use the digital medium in order to portray this year's theme: "There's No Place Like Earth". The exhibit is for free!  Submit your artworks at arte@upcursor.org. Deadline for submission is on August 8, 2008.

@RTE SEMINAR:

Seminars and short tutorials on digital art and photography  will be held  on August 11, 2008 (Monday), 1pm-5pm at UPAECH (more commonly known as Engineering Library 2 and Computer Science Building).

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for more details, email us at arte@upcursor.org or

visit http://www.arte.upcursor.org/

I am having a hard time thinking if I'll go to this event. I am not that social type of person. I prefer to be in my room, be with the people closest to me and be alone. Pathetic eh?haha

Anyway, my dad told me to go and attend the alumni homecoming. He insists that I should go build connections and relations to other people. Okay, I'll think about it. Sheesh.

Oh! By the way, the dress code will be: Cocktail /Glamour/Semi-Formal. Argh! I have to find something like cocktail dress or any semi-formal one and some shoe or sandals to wear.

Good luck to me!

Okay, I'll just post some of things that happened to me.

• I broke up with my boyfriend. Okay, I might sound like a loser here or a pathetic person but hey! it changed my life, right? He's not just an ordinary boyfriend. We've been in 14 months. People do not expect us to break up. Whenever I tell them that our relationship is over, they make comments like "Sayang, bagay pa man din kayo", "Kelan pa?", "Why?". O well, it is the way it is. (I'll make a post about this some other time.)
• I switched from Microsoft Windows to Ubuntu 8.04. Windows is really pissing me off. Even if I am a newbie in Ubuntu, there are many forums, documentations and other stuffs to support you and answer your questions. Ubuntu is way better than Windows.
• I live in a new room with a new set of room mates. The Dorm Management gave us randomly our room assignments.
• I cannot graduate on time. This is the biggest blow in my life. You see, after unable to pass one of my major subjects, I can not take some of my subjects this semester because I failed the prerequisite. Good bye 4 Years, Hello 5 Years. You can read about this here.

It is how things worked out. I have no choice but to accept all of these. Out of these changes are challenges, and I have to deal with it.

That's it for now. I'll just update this post if I forgot to tell you something.

:)

Unfortunately, due to unexpected events, I was not able to pass one of my major subjects. This subject serves as prerequisite to higher computer science courses.

I got a grade of 4.0 and I was required to take the removal exam. Out of the 6 who took the exam, I was in the unlucky 3 who failed it.

Actually, this is the first subject that I was not able to pass. However, because of the turn of the events, I am delayed and I have to take additional one year so I can graduate. Some of the subjects are seasonal so I cant just walk into the enlistment room and take it.

Due to depression, I got so sick and I am currently suffering from colds, cough, tonsillitis and fever. Pathetic eh?!

My exposure to other professionals in the applications end at my job has also peaked my interest in this area. Either degree will get me where I want to be but from what I've read going the CS route will give me a bigger "tool belt". Making critical decisions about the mangament of a large system or mainframe will be better made if one knows the parameters and the limitations of the applications involved. It will also open other doors for me. If I just want to start out as a coder (software engineer) I'll be able to do that. The thought of being a developer for a smaller but "cutting edge" software company intrigues me.

Here's some irony. Do you know what the difference is between a Math Major & CompSci Major is? Not a whole lot!!! Ironic considering I suffered through math when I was a kid. I'm taking some new approaches to this math thing and will begin conquering it this Fall.

The other day Sam said that I was one of the person who was enjoying doing my project.

Course I am enjoying it. How else would I mindlessly sit at the terminal writing cgi code in python.

Apart from rrdtool another recent this that brought some eye candy to my project was this.

I gathered sys stats from the system and built urls that linked to google to produce these fine charts.

wanna see how I did it?

Look at this

Leave comments if you have any ideas for improvement. Or better still join our project.

There is a little bit of catching up to do with the project report.

Why didn't we put the analysis and design part onto paper rather than having it in our minds?

Gonna have to create an appropriate design that would suit the product for the reports.

Used rrdtool to generate cool graphs, did charts using google charts api.

Will upload recent snaps soon.

btw project hosted on code.google no more waiting and approval.

Today I ran into a need for my old friend the tee
command. With tee you can read input from an input stream, and split
the output stream so it is both displayed on screen (stdout) and also
re-direct it to a file. I needed to do this today when I wanted to
monitor something that was running slow, and also keep an output log of
the long-running process.

Here's a simple example of how to do this. Run the following command
to get a directory listing on your terminal, while also redirecting the
output to a file named poop.out:

ls -al | tee poop.out

When you run this command you should see the output you would
normally expect to see appear on your terminal. But, the difference
here is that if you now cat out the file named poop.out like this:

cat poop.out

you'll see that a copy of the contents were also sent to that file.

As you can see, the tee command is exactly what you
need for situations like this, where you'd like to see the output on
screen, but also capture it into an output file.

Note: The script command is loosely related to this topic. I'll write a quick tip about it in a future blog entry.

1. Start database manager

#db2start

2. Stop database manager

#db2stop

3. Create a new table space

# db2 "CREATE REGULAR TABLESPACE TSPC32K PAGESIZE 32K MANAGED BY DATABASE USING (FILE 'TSPC32K' 500M) BUFFERPOOL BP32K"

4. Create a new buffer pool

db2 "create bufferpool bp32k size 2000 pagesize 32k"

5. Create a new schema

5. Create a new database

#db2 create database RCPDB

Export from a table in ixf format and import in ixf format

db2 "export to repcp of IXF SELECT * FROM QACDTA.REPCP0";
db2 "import from repcp of IXF insert INTO QACDTA.REPCP01"

Thankfully, I was wrong. I met a lot of new friends, most of them Albanians, who welcomed me to their group. Meeting other people from Albania is always fun, because there are so few of us and yet we have spread in almost every corner of the world (although, I still haven't heard of any Albanians living in the Arctic, but who knows) . Our language and common background unites us immediately, even if our families are not related, and even our hometowns are far apart.

A s far as courses are concerned, I have realized that the more high-level Math courses I take, the less they relate to any aspect of Computer Science and the less they seem helpful to anything I do outside the classroom, even if it is technical. Take Group Theory for example: we study groups (sets together with an addition-like operation), rings (sets together with an addition and a multiplication-like operation) and fields (sets together with basic operations, just like the ones you've been almost unconsciously using since grade 1). Of course, the material is not that easy because otherwise I wouldn't be complaining about it. There are literally hundreds of theorems that you have to be familiar with, few of which are applicable to a wide collection of problems. Unfortunately, there are few standard methods that you can use to solve problems, as opposed to first-year Calculus, where you had a "standard" arsenal of techniques that could solve 90% of your problems -- I mean math ones. In Group Theory it seems to me so far, after 1.5 semesters in this year-long course, I haven't used the same technique in more than one problem -- it's fascinating, the complete opposite of what I think of the material.

And then of course, there is Real Analysis. I frequently think that the very reason I decided to study Math together with CS was Analysis. But taking this course is really testing my will. We have been studying convergence of sequences of functions and then measurability and Lebesgue integration. Again, I have to admit: this material is extremely interesting, but there is an asterisk at the end of that phrase saying "if you want to be a mathematician," written in tiny font.

That's what the people who design programs of study that combine a major in X with Math have got wrong, in my opinion. Including these courses in programs of study for non-mathematicians does indeed guarantee that their preparation in math is solid, but it does not attempt at all to teach math skills that might be somewhat applicable to discipline X. For instance, if Johnny is doing a double specialist in Comp Sci and Math then why not teach Johnny material that might help him in his main course of study, say Combinatorics or Graph Theory or Linear Programming & Network Flows, or Discrete Math, or Number Theory or something that will be more than just another course to him. Because when Johnny decided to include math in his studies, I'm sure he didn't do it just for the "coolness" of it, or just because math is "generally interesting and useful." No! It has to be interesting and useful to Johnny, by supplementing his studies in CS with a more theoretical preparation.

So, after three years the time to decide which rabbit to chase finally came, and I chose Comp Sci, simply because at this point, even a Hello World program seems more creative and practical and constructive than studying material whose homework requirements outweigh its benefits by miles. Don't worry though, I haven't become soft and whiny yet; I can still handle hard times. The fact that I haven't changed my program of studies and I am still trying proves that. Nevertheless, the requirements of these courses are starting to become scary --maybe it's time to hug my mom. Yes, that will fix everything, for sure.

a) var = "string";

b) var = 'string';

c) var = "string";

d) var = 'string';

e) All of the Above

2) Was the above question lame?

a) Yes

b) True

If you answered A, B, C, D, or E for number one, you are wrong.   You you answered A, or B on question 2, you are probably just as outraged as me that any self respecting professor would put that question on an Exam.

Just this week I had a re-look at my design and wow; one critical
flaw at the start and you keep building on it until you realize you gotta go back and fix it.

Gee, they were not kidding when they said it comes with "batteries loaded".
www.python.org/about/

We are churning a lot of python code these days.

Am getting things done as fast as I can type.

It just got me thinking: why did we not start with python as our first programming language?

Did I mention the code is a beau.

Have to look into Zope for additional power in this case current ;-)

Recursion is our friend as much as it is our foe.

[[kish@MiAmor ~]$ cat propalin.cs
 using System;

class Palindrome{

     static void Main(string[] args){

	if(CheckPalindrome(Console.ReadLine())){

		Console.WriteLine("Palindrome");

	}

	else

		Console.WriteLine("Not a Palindrome");

     }

     public static bool CheckPalindrome( string s ){

               return CheckPalindrome( s, 0, s.Length - 1 );

           }

     private static bool CheckPalindrome( string s, int left, int right ){

                       if ( left >= right )

                            return true;
                 		       else if ( s[left] != s[right] )

                            return false;
                        else

                            return CheckPalindrome( s, left + 1, right - 1 );

		}

}

The computer's unwavering analytical approach, the disquiet of surveillance cameras and the poetry and intimacy of the sound of the words inflicts a tension on the beholder. He perceives in the installation at first a well produced drama, than reality, his direct vicinity and eventually himself; just as wandering off thoughts, a similarly banal examination of reality, amusing or embarassing moments. It's a poetic perspective on everyday things, forgotten things, human things, showing the (unconscious or hidden) pecularities of the other and demanding respect of the beholder by granting disrespectful insight.

this is the work of the same guy who found and blogged the thinker. y'all should check out his blog, infostuka.

Wikipedia, Google and the like are great for school research projects, but the true power of the web is still in connecting people, and people are the best aggregators of cool stuff.

This guy, who's German by the way, reads blogs, takes inspiration from them, and then puts them on his on blog for passers-by or subscribers to read, who then might blog it themselves. This just happened, and now it's trickled down to you. Don't you feel lucky to know about some random German guy's art project?

It's all a big circle of communication/inspiration/general goodness, which nowadays, in the internet age, happens at hyperspeed and without physical boundaries. Speaking of boundaries, though, there still is the language barrier. Perhaps getting past that is the next step. (See meaning markup language) Who knows, no one would have thought the internet was possible even 50 years ago...

Ewan ko ba kung bakit ko kinuha ang CS, hindi ko naman aasahan na ganito kahirap..huhu Hindi ko naman sinasabing akala ko dati madali lang ang kursong ito, pero hindi ko lang talaga inaasahnag ganito kahirap!

One thing more, nagiging PARASITE na ako sa kaklase ko, itago na natin siya sa pangalang KK. Kahit pigain ko ng husto ang utak ko wala talaga akong maisip na matinong code sa mga Machine Problem namin, kaya lagi na lang akong nagtatanong sa kanya. Paano nalang kapag nagtagal,,patuloy pa rin ba akong magtatanong at aasa sa kanya?! Waahhh! Wag naman!!! Hindi naman pwedeng buong buhay ko magtanong ako sakanya diba. Hindi rin naman pwedeng buong buhay ko manggaya ako ng algorithm niya. Ang saklap talaga!

Ang masakit pa rito,nag-aaral naman ako ah, kaya lang kahit sunog na sunog na ang kilay ko, nalalagas pa rin ang mga buhok ko sa kursong ito. Sana lang maghulog ang diyos ng utak ng demigod at mapulot ko naman diba.

Haay, ano ba talagang gusto kong mangyari sa buhay ko. Gusto ko naman ang kursong ito kaya lang nahihirapan lang talaga ako.

These promote the sense of the inevitable future, given the general exponential growth of human knowledge base in the digital domain, all branches of science like nano and bio tech along with the growing sense of hubris, this might just become true.

Watching the talk given by the speakers at the singularity summit https://singinst.org/ gave me a fresh outlook on the way things are headed in technology.

One speaker EliezerYudkowsky inspires us to create a friendly AI.

The topics discussed are what is needed in this information age, where innovation is happening at a break neck speed.

Compare this with our great archaic technology curriculum which focuses solely on the ability of a student to rack his/her brain to reproduce by-rote learning.

This simple thought presents a scenario far worse than smart machines taking over the world.

The quest to create AI that can aid us in medicine and other areas and to use such agencies for the greater good is of primal importance.

The level of expertise that this quest demands can only be satisfied by a model that is much similar to the open source movement.

Continual evolution of the product and that too at a greater speed and care with respect to integrity can only achieved by collaborative research and development.

All it takes is foresight and common sense to realize that we have the power to engineer the future.

As we're technically adept and are in a position to contribute, the rational course of action is to take up this quest to create such powerful entities within the framework of our ethics.

My love for FireFox just shot up with the release of 2.0.

It is the most powerful I have ever used.

With FasterFox and a few tweaks it simply plays your game.

Hats off to the team!