Jun

13

My App Engine “Wall”

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I was messing around with Google’s App Engine this week, and learning some Python (the programming language, not the snake! I had someone ask me that) at the same time.

App Engine (for scalability reasons) does not support SQL, but instead provide and API they call Datastore for persistent storage. For the app I made, I queried for data ordered by date, but for some reason the result set still comes out unordered. Odd. I’m probably not calling it right. Anyway, it was just an exercise to see what App Engine was all about.

Here’s a replica of the Facebook Wall I made, feel free to write your heart out. As you can see, I’ve had friends say some really nice things about me already. The full address is liew.appspot.com .. but there’s an iframe to it if you’re too lazy to click on that link :)

Update 6/15/2008 — Tinkered around a little and realized why its unordered .. I lost the timestamps on some of the posts, so for those that come out unordered, it’s because there are no records of which came first (the timestamp was NULL). It should be fine going forward. The un-stamped posts take precedence in ordering over the stamped ones, so you may have to scroll down a little to see your post (or just CTRL-F it).

Mar

7

Towards a greener computer–but what does that really do?

Filed Under cleantech, did you know, geeky, hardware, ideas, innovation, technology, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

MSI announced that the company has recently invented the world’s first powerless air cooler for computer motherboards. For those new to computer hardware, as we ignore Moore’s Law and advance computer technologies by making them faster and store more data, cramming more and more transistors into a piece of silicon, the heat generated by all these components start becoming a non-negligible problem–as anyone managing a data center with hundreds of computers will identify with.

There are many ways to cool the insides of a computer, but the most common is through the use of heatsinks and fan’s. Computer hardware junkies prefer a more advanced hack: liquid cooling, a more quiet and efficient (and l33t) way of dissipating heat from their overclocked CPU’s. This invention by MSI makes the fan inside your computer power-free, thus less power drawn from the computer power supply.

The basic idea employed here is one derived from the Stirling Engine. MSI’s invention captures the heat from the component, whose energy is then converted to push the fan blades around, which in turn cools the heatsink.

From their press release:

The “Air Power Cooler” transfers the chipset heat into air momentum, when the air becomes hot, the air will expand then push the fan to rotate and In doing so cooling the heatsink immediately. After the air moves from the bottom to top of the piston, the air will become heavy to push the up piston down. The better air piston design can transfer over 70% heat power and transfer to air power, that’s great efficiency transfer from Stirling engine theory. In a comparison with solar power the transfer rate is only around 20~30% requiring more surface and as a result cost.

I think the claim of besting solar power is interesting, but would like to see some independent tester verify that statement (just for my assurance that this isn’t the typical corporate PR mudslinging nonsense).

This actually reminds me of Tesla Motors’ regenerative braking system. Energy from deceleration is captured and stored for later use in acceleration. Genius!

In a battery-powered electric vehicle, regenerative braking (also called regen) is the conversion of the vehicle’s kinetic energy into chemical energy stored in the battery, where it can be used later to drive the vehicle. It is braking because it also serves to slow the vehicle. It is regenerative because the energy is recaptured in the battery where it can be used again.

Tesla Motors is an interesting electric car startup in Silicon Valley headed up by Elon Musk (of PayPal fame), who also started SpaceX and SolarCity (I’m an admirer!).

But I digress.
Read more

Feb

23

Separation of body and mind

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No, I’m not referring to some zen-ish meditation. Check this out.

This is why I love technology. If I recall correctly, humans are the only living things that know how to augment our own capability with tools. And we’ve just taken it to a whole new level by separating our body from our conscious mind. Look at how fast the robot can quickly scan the left corridor and then the right corridor at the T-junction. It’s almost as if the operator is there in person, quickly turning his head from left to right (which he is, just remotely!)

Note to self: perfect cubicle toy for corporate drones.

Feb

21

Don’t be afraid of the machines!

Filed Under automation, changing the world, geeky, ideas, innovation, technology | Leave a Comment

A BINARY STEP COUNTER?! OH MY! This is *amazing*, you have to see it. This reminds me of a rudimentary transistor, and how we keep cramming more and more of them into a piece of silicon we call a microprocessor, on top of which we have this thing called a computer, on top of which we have this thing called web two dot oh, … and ..

From TED. Watch his commercial here:

Nov

28

Aquarium of viruses and malware goodness

Filed Under geeky, humor, ideas, security research, websense | Leave a Comment

I love pets but am too busy to tend to one. I could take care of a plant, but I can’t take a cactus for a walk. This, seems to be right within my realm! I do security research for Websense, I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier!

(click for bigger)
xkcd-network

xkcd is my kinda comic. It’s funny and nerdy. Hmm.. I wonder how I can implement this.

The flatscreen LCD would be the most expensive. Then I’d need a pretty beefy machine (as host) to run that many virtual machines. For visualization, I guess I need to translate their actions into a network graph; for instance, if one machine DDoS’s another machine, the graphic would show one node firing small bullets at another machine rapidly. This sounds pretty cool, actually! MMmmmmm …………..

Update: I liked it so much I stuck up a print out of it on my cube wall:

IMG_2227

Sep

19

cos(x)^2 + sin(x)^2 =1

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I love geeky humor and recently joined a group on Facebook called that I fell in love with at first sight: “You be sinx^2 and I’ll be cosx^2 and together we’ll be one” Cute, and I love it.

For the uninformed, it’s a trigonometric identity. Looks like I’ve weeded you off my potential date list :D

Aug

25

Inbox Zero

Filed Under execution, geeky, goal setting, google, hacks, time management | Leave a Comment

Merlin Mann of 43folders fame presented a talk at Google titled Inbox Zero, a productivity hack/treatment for people who live out of their inboxes. The talk is about an hour long, so I’ve written up here some of the points I feel are important and works for me.

Disclaimer: This is _obvious_ stuff, but sometimes we forget, and a reminder is always nice.

Respect yourself, spend time and attention wisely

For knowledge workers like myself, we don’t create value by the number of bricks we can carry with our arms. We process knowledge/information, and that’s how we create value for our companies. The two things that knowledge workers must understand and appreciate is time and attention. Both of which we only have a finite amount of, and both of which are our constraints to our productivity. The goal is to separate the wheat from the chaff, saying NO to the low value work so that we can say YES to the high value work. Procrastination and frittering time away in email, surfing the web and flipping TV channels aimlessly would be “low value” work (more like almost no value work).

Email is a communication medium, just like the telephone. Don’t focus on email itself, focus on the information in the email and process it. Hitting the send/receive button all day is “busy work”, made to think that you are doing work, but you’re not actually doing any real work.

Process information in email
Don’t read the email and do nothing! Do something about it. Process it when you check it. Mine the gold from your inbox, and throw away the empty husk.

Processing actions:

  • Delete (consume) or archive it (save for historical records)
  • Delegate or forward it to someone else (stuff that don’t apply to you, or better handled by someone else)
  • Respond now, or do that work now!
  • Defer (perhaps replying requires more time, or requires some work first)

Having a productivity system in place is important (and so is sticking to it)

We are what we frequently do
– Aristotle

Don’t leave email open the entire time, with distracting pop-up notifications. Check once every hour or few hours, live outside of email. *This doesn’t apply to customer service reps

Use a tool/system that just stops short of being fun to use, so that you don’t end up fiddling with it. Remember that the tool/system has to be good at capturing information, and recalling information.

Jul

15

The Probability that a Matrix of Integers is Diagonalizable

Filed Under geeky, math, technology | 1 Comment

Phew, what a long ride it has been! My undergrad math research paper that I co-authored with Dr. Andrew J. Hetzel and Dr. Kent E. Morrison is finally published in MAA (Math. Assoc. of America)’s June/July 2007 Monthly.

In this article, we exhibit the results of an undergraduate research project where we asked the question: How frequently is an n x n matrix with integer entries diagonalizable over the complex numbers, the real numbers, and the rational numbers, respectively? Such a frequency is couched in terms of a variant on the number theoretic notion of “natural density.” Complete information is given for the frequency of diagonalizability over the complex numbers, and results are provided for the frequency of diagonalizability over the real numbers and the rational numbers if n = 2. At the end of the article, we provide three open questions based upon this work that may be suitable for other undergraduate research projects.

Here’s a preview (options to view in other formats are available, even in voice), courtesy of scribd:

I presented the research on this with April Jeffcoat at the AMS and MAA 2004 Joint Math Meeting in Phoenix, AZ. Here’s a picture of what appears to be perhaps one of the nerdiest time in my life. (you can drool over the sexy graphs charts behind me)

April "May June" and Jay "Kay ELL"

Jun

21

#!/usr/bin/perl -w joke

Filed Under geeky, humor | 2 Comments

The following is a Perl (the programming language) joke. If you didn’t know what Perl was prior to the “the programming language” explanation, then don’t bother clicking. But if you do, this is funny! :D

http://www.qwantz.com/comics/guest6/guest_qwantz_aLp.jpg

May

9

Programmer or serial killer?

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A test of nerdiness. I guess trivia buffs would do well too. Take the test!

Thanks, Ian.

May

2

Windows Vista’s speech recognition for programming Perl

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I laughed my ass off on this one :D

Hat tip to my co-worker Eric!

Apr

26

Difference between a normal person and a scientist

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Sadly, I might not be normal. I would say “Hmm, interesting .. let’s see if we can reproduce the problem”.

But hey, I pride myself in being a computer scientist who likes to experiment/study and solve problems, so there!

[=

Mar

14

Happy Pi day!

Filed Under did you know, engineering, geeky | Leave a Comment

Yes, that’s right, you math nerds. March 14 is Pi day.

From Wikipedia:

The mathematical constant π is an irrational real number, approximately equal to 3.14159, which is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter in Euclidean geometry, and has many uses in mathematics, physics, and engineering. It is also known as Archimedes’ constant (not to be confused with an Archimedes number) and as Ludolph’s number.

Update 15/3/2007 - Saw this on Digg, explanation about how the constant Pi is used! Very informative stuff: http://www.howstuffworks.com/pi.htm

Dec

20

Cartoon: How software is really made

Filed Under engineering, geeky, humor, uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Funny picture description of how software is really made in a bloated big corp. Thanks Carny.

Sep

29

Web proxy appliance performance

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This is a true (or fictional - for plausible deniability reasons) story at Websense:

Prospective customer: What kind of load will the Resilience Netsquad 05 handle?

Sales representative: I don’t know, why don’t you try throw an elephant on top of it?

Courtesy of Nigel Atkinson.

Sep

15

Nerdy jokes — math geeks inquire within

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I read it from this blog: http://immense-world.blogspot.com/2006/09/mathematics-genius.html

Thanks Carny.

Aug

30

Statistics - the new bling

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My kind of geeky humor! 4:33 minute clip warning.

I am reminded of myself when I saw that take-himself-too-seriously guy (scene at 3:52). Just kidding. Ha ha.

Jul

24

Software engineer today? More than just l33t hacking skillz!!

Filed Under career, engineering, geeky, project management, self improvement | Leave a Comment

Today, it is not enough just to be technically competent to survive. Yeah, yeah, everyone says that, but I found some numbers today. According to the annual Design News salary survey, these are the skills participants found most important (from most important):

  1. Project management and communication/presentation skills (86%)
  2. Computer skills (85%)
  3. Team-building skills (64%)
  4. Language skills (43%)
  5. Marketing/sales skills (35%)
  6. Finance/accounting (31%)

Who would have guessed that the #1 most important skill is communication? (Shocker, it’s not some l33t rare proprietary system hacking skillz. Us geeks have been trained in college to work in a dark windowless basement without talking to each other that communicating our ideas effectively is just naturally un-natural, to say the least.

Delivering results on time and within budget is also an obvious, although no where in a regular computer science curriculum is this strongly emphasized. However, this shouldn’t be a problem for students that have completed their operating systems class. Remember the fundamental concepts in threading, process and memory management? It’s all about juggling multiple tasks with finite memory space and a single processor. Same thing usually applies in the real world — you will have a finite resource/budget.

I’m sure someone can write up an algorithm for their project management needs. Here’s a pseudo-code algorithm:

  1. Identify the “projects”, tasks that need to be worked on (deliverables)
  2. Prioritize each task — use appropriate metrics (e.g. urgency, due date, cost, risk, etc.)
  3. Execute, and don’t drop the ball! Feel free to apply threading and pipelining concepts e.g. make sure no threads get “starved”.

Other advanced concepts that you can also apply from the OS class are such as solving deadlocks (process contention), reducing overhead cost when task-switching too much, and pipeline “hiccups”.

Also, I would highly recommend applying the infamous GTD concepts. I have learned to apply the GTD toolkit and I have managed to tie up many of the loose ends in my life that were just bogging me down (too much overhead). I like to think of it as reducing the number of background processes, giving me more memory and processing power for other things!

Perhaps CS grads are also lacking in the leadership department, because students are too busy competing to out do each other in grades that they didn’t get the memo telling them that in the real world, people are supposed to work together — performance reviews/appraisals replace “grades” and the need for leadership skills become more relevant and important.

That shouldn’t be a problem either. Any competent CS grad cannot call himself a “computer scientist” if he doesn’t carry his problem-solving algorithm toolkit with him at all times. Many hackers have used these general problem solving principles to solve non-technical problems. The Hacker’s Diet is a very good example a person determined to lose weight by approaching it as an engineering problem. The key resource in this weight problem? Determination.

Rick Johnson, president of Cherry Electrical Products says:

“My experience is that all companies prefer technical people in these [management] positions. The opportunity here for an engineer to continue in engineering is to add to his/her leadership skills. All engineers are taught to solve problems. If an engineer pursues acquiring leadership skills … they will have huge opportunities in store for them in the future. Alas, most engineers just ignore this aspect of their personal development preferring instead to learning more and more about the latest technologies.

Full article at Design News.

Jul

13

Mole problems?

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Got Mole problems? Call Avogadro at 6.02 x 10^23.

Jun

13

Cell division and multiplication

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So I logged on to my FreeBSD box this morning .. and saw this joke (warning: geeky humor),

“Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same thing as division.”

Happy Toosday Mawnin!

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