Month: March 2003

Fratricide in 101st

Having spent a good deal of my spare time reconstructing the battles of 101st Airborne from Normandy to Germany, I am shocked to hear of fratricide in a 101st brigade HQ.  The suspect is a sergent attached to an engineering unit, a Muslem convert.

Extremism is an aspect of religion I really dislike.  While being helpful to most people, religion drives some people insane enough to destroy lives.  Maybe there should be a medical warning posted at churches and mosques.

Warning: you may become a terrorist.

Not using FM RadioStation

FM RadioStation was useful enough for me to recommend it, but I just stopped using it after a week.  Why?  Because it was too slow to start.  I usually run Radio only when I am about to post something and Radio is slow to start itself.  With RadioStation, I have to wait twice as long before I can write my post.  I am also not too happy with amount of memory and CPU cycles both programs use.

Programmers certainly have gotten sloppy with resources over the years.  I don't expect them roll assembly code nor am I expecting extreme frugality like Steve Gibson, but people need to remember that speed and small footprint are important features.  Speed, particularly, is making a come back now if popularity Apple's Safari is any indication.

Acrobat is another program that could use some speed.  Imagine much happier Acrobat users will be if it was twice as fast.  Microsoft Office suite is also a pack of dogs when it comes to speed.  Just try saving a word file as a text file using a non-English encoding.  A dialog pops up with a list of encodings, a few checkboxes, and a preview.  Depending on the size of the file, I have to wait 10+ seconds before I can click on anything, and another 10 seconds after selecting an encoding.  Are they out of their minds?  If an Office-killer appears in the future, speed will be a big part of it.

Prototyping is good and incremental development is good, but one must occasionally refactor or rewrite to keep the software alive.  Dave should consider rewriting Radio from scratch using Python.

Eclispe 2.1 RC3 Released

Its at its usual place.  They were late in getting RC3 out and I think some regression bugs creeped in during the rush.  I'll pass on RC3 and wait for RC4, which seems likely at this point.  I expect and recommend Eclipse 2.1 final release to be delayed by two weeks.

BlogNation: Blog Goes to Washington

While blogspace continues to sprawl along, growing incrementally, I have been scanning the horizon for what might come next.  I think I may have found a big one.  In every democratic society, there is a very small group of important people who really need blogging tools to broaden and enrich their ability to communicate with rest of the society: the elective branch. 

Today, Senators and Congressmen are more like distant cousins to their constituents.  Using blogs, Senators and Congressmen can reach their constituents with far more regularity, depth, and interactivity than mails and polls.  Through their blogs, they can inform the people they serve about their daily activities and thoughts.  This will enable them to be closer to their constituents and bring about a more efficient democratic society.

A blog portal (BlogNation or BlogCongress sounds good)  is also needed to amplify their messages and to broaden perspectives.  Your comments are welcome.

Searching for words

Urgh.  So far, I had no luck in locating anything similar to the intrusion detection method I came up with.  Everyone seems to be obsessed with complex solutions.  I tried all the words I could think of that describes the method, but all I get are fancy crypto, AI, or statistics heavy methods that generate too much false alarms.

I need to find the right keywords to continue on with the search.  Google doesn't help me at all.  I wish there was a Google-like search engine for finding the right keywords.  A search engine that understands time, places, things, people, and concepts.  A search engine that monitors, remembers, and assist me in my search.  I guess the search engine industry is still young.  Maybe I'll dustoff my old notes on my search engine idea.

Scuds vs. Tomahawks

Bush started the war early by interrupting Saddam's secret meeting with some Tomahawks and smart bombs via F-117.  Saddam returns the favor by tossing some Scud missiles at US positions.  At least one is supposedly intercepted by new and improved Patriot missiles.  Interesting how war changed so much.  Couldn't they just agree to fight the war inside a PlayStation2?

Lupy: Python port of Lucene

If you are a Java guy like me, you know how great Lucene is.  I am also a budding Python guy, but not having a search engine as good as Lucene in Python really sucks — sorry ZCatalog guys.  Well, here is something that looks promising:

Lupy is a port of  Jakarta Lucene 1.2 to Python. Specifically, it reads and writes indexes in Lucene binary format. Like Lucene, it is sophisticated and scalable. Lucene is a polished and mature project and you are encouraged to read the documentation found at the Lucene home page.

Hurrah!

Turning off Office XP’s Smart Menu

GUI being one of my specialties, I am emotionally sensitive to quirky UI.  I have been annoyed by Office's attempt to be overly smart by hiding menu item I don't use often.  Its more than annoying when I am searching for a menu item.  I looked for a way to disable it without success.  If anyone knows of a way to turn this 'bug' off, please let me know.

Wars and Wedding Anniversaries

So the Iraq war started on my 11th wedding anniversary.  I woke up at 5:30pm after working through the night and early morning, washed vegetables, cooked the side dishes, slapped a few steaks on my grill — first time I actually used it myself — and opened a nice bottle of red wine.

Black Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon is wonderful folks.  Taste is relatively rich yet affordably priced to be enjoyed every night.  I tend to avoid expensive wines because a good bottle could really ruin your taste like a one nighter with a supermodel could ruin your marriage.  Steak turned out great.  Side dishes were so so.  Baked potato was a hit though.

We turned on the TV and there was a war on.  My wife and I toasted again to celebrate the end of a long wait.  My wife thanked me for cooking dinner.  I told my wife "I'll cook again on our 22nd wedding anniversary."  My wife said, "No, you should cook every year."  I said, "I doubt not even Mr. Bush can start a war every year."