Not supposed to be there?

I keep wondering what might have happened to cause facebook to send http headers which say "Server: MochiWeb/1.0 (I'm not even supposed to be here today.)".

Who Says Space Quest is Dead?

Nice! It looks like Akril is back to writing her WSSQID comics again (http://sq7.org/wssquid). She has two new comics in the past week.

Happy π day!

it's 3 14 again. It looks like librivox is celebrating in their own way http://librivox.org/?page_id=1999&preview=true You can listen to the first 50 digits read by many readers. Sounds like fun. Once again I forgot all about it so I don't have any Pie to celebrate with but it's a fun day anyway.

Drooling over announcements

Oooh! IE8 Beta 1 is out today. I'm excited! I'm easy to excite aren't I? I simply had to download it and try it out. http://msdn.microsoft.com/ie

I decided to re-download the IE6 and IE7 Virtual machines so I could try installing IE8 in a safe environment, so I wouldn't mess up anything. When I went to the VM page I found there was already an IE8 Virtual machine up too. Nice! But it means that just running the VM I don't get to see the installation, oh well.

I'm having fun anyway. I'm even writing this post from IE8 running on the Virtual Machine. It's so funny how broken Blogger is as it's expecting the old broken IE behavior.

Another really cool thing I saw today, is that a project I have been watching excitedly for a few years, has been released with source code. The project is Microsoft Research's Singularity OS. The all Managed Micro-Kernel, Software Isolated Process, Operating System. Even better, I know the one of the guys in charge of it. I've gotta find the time to try it out some time. http://www.codeplex.com/singularity. I wonder if I can understand any of it?

Spreadsheets

I got my spreadsheet start in Quatro pro. Now days I now use Excel quite allot. It was an easy transition.

What is cool about spreadsheet programs like these, is what you can do with them.

Most people use them to create stuff for finances like budgets, schedules, Payrolls etc. Excel is really good at those sorts of things. After all that is what it was designed for.

But it's the other things it can be used for that I find interesting. For instance I created a spreadsheet which every morning at Work I enter the time I arrived and then at the end of the day I enter the time I left so that I can calculate my hours every week.

When I first started at my current job I created a spreadsheet to keep track of where things are and what and when to do it. Basically I used it as brain storage. Pretty soon it became a piece of a model for organization for the team. It's strange.

When I was at school I had finished several programs and wanted to see how close I was to achieving any certificates or degrees. So I took the Syllabus and duplicated it in Excel then plugged in some formulas so I could set some check marks which would then highlight certain cells if the achievement was accomplished.

While at it I discovered that the Syllabus hadn't been calculated correctly. So I asked my Instructor about it and when he looked at it he asked if I could finish it so he could use it. He also said it was worth extra credit. So I finished it, and in the process helped fix the credit distribution.

Believe it or not Excel is also pretty good at geometry too. Using the right kind of chart it is simple to create graphs, but by indicating x and y the graph can go back on it's self. Then by doing this it is relatively simple to create a graph of a circle or square or whatever.

Back when I was small and One of my Uncles was going to school to be a Math Teacher he showed me this really cool Quatro pro graph he had done. It produced a Spirograph where you could change certain cells and get really neat designs.

Whenever I have something I want to formulate like how to write a program which draws an ellipse I'm likely to draft it out in Excel.

The more I use spreadsheets the more I think of the possibilities of what they can be used for.

I bet one day someone will figure out how to write a game of Asteroids all using Excel cell formulas. It would be difficult for sure. But it would sure be cool. even though it would be equal to using a screwdriver or a wrench as a hammer.

CRT RF Ghosting

I'm sitting here watching TV and finding it a little weird that I'm seeing a few second delay precursory ghosting in the screen.

It seems to be the DVR sitting on top of it, for some reason, as it records the analog signal of the live broadcast, produces RF interference which, with the 2 second + delay on the signal out, overlaps the interference as the ghosting effect of what will soon occur.

It's kinda interesting. And even stranger when there is an hour or so delay.

It reminds me of a computer we once had, which if it was turned on within 5 feet of a powered on CRT monitor or TV, would ghost whatever the Video card was displaying.

It was entertaining to watch the cursor moving Solitaire cards on Windows 3.1 superimposed over the news.

Fun days.

Reverse

While helping my office mate prepare for his Interviews a whole bunch of us were coming up with questions and challenges for him. We were really hoping he would make it. One of the challenges asked was to reverse a string.

Having been asked to do it in an interview before (I did it in VB then) I had, had the time to come up with other possible solutions to the challenge. Here is a C# version of the method from memory:

/// <summary>
/// Reverses a sequence of chars in a string.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="value">String to Reverse</param>
/// <returns>the reverse of the provided string.</returns>
/// <remarks>
/// Reverse by back stepping through each char in the string 
/// and filling a StringBuilder with the result.
/// </remarks>
public string reverseStringFill(string value)
{
    StringBuilder temp = new StringBuilder();
    // Iterate backwards through each char and copy 
    // it's equivalent from the source string.
    for (int index = value.Length - 1; index >= 0; index--)
     {
         temp.Append(value[index]);

     }
     return temp.ToString();

}

Here is another variation:

/// <summary>
/// Reverses a sequence of chars in a string.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="value">String to Reverse</param>
/// <returns>the reverse of the provided string.</returns>
/// <remarks>
/// Reverse by back stepping through each char in the string 
/// and filling the resulting array.
/// </remarks>
public string reverseStringBFill(string value)
{
    char[] temp = value.ToCharArray();
    int length = value.Length - 1;
    // Iterate backwards through each char and copy 
    // it's equivalent from the source string.
    for (int index = length; index >= 0; index--)
    {
        temp[index] = value[length - index];
                
    }
    return new string(temp);

}

My Office mate having learned in C/C++ most of school came up with a swap method that he had learned in class, but when he tried to run it in C# it had compile errors. because he was trying to do things the C way in a type safe language. After a hint about casting he figured it out. What he ended up with is something similar to the following:

/// <summary>
/// Reverse String using Swap
/// </summary>
/// <param name="value">String to Reverse</param>
/// <returns>the reverse of the provided string.</returns>
/// <remarks>
/// This is how a C/C++ programmer would reverse a string in C#
/// </remarks>
public string reverseStringSwap(string value)
{
    char[] returns = value.ToCharArray();
    int index = 0;
    while (index < value .Length / 2)
    {
        // Swap chars
        char temp = returns[index];
        returns[index] = returns[(value.Length-1) - index];
        returns[(value.Length-1) - index] = temp;
        index++;

     }
     return new string(returns);

}

While he worked at the problem I was thinking of a similar way to do the same thing from a managed perspective:

/// <summary>
/// Reverses a sequence of chars in a string.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="value"></param>
/// <returns>the reverse of the provided string.</returns>
/// <remarks>
/// This is similar to the swap method except it
/// only pulls it's chars from the source string.
/// </remarks>
public string reverseStringBSwap(string value)
{
   char[] temp = value.ToCharArray();
   int length = value.Length - 1;
   int half = length / 2;

   for (int index = 0; index < length; index++)
   {
      temp[index] = value[length - index];
      temp[length - index] = value[index];
                
    }
    return new string(temp);

}

He had written his in a console app and I in a GUI app so rather than  return new string(returns); His actually used Console.Write(returns); I stumbled around for a little while trying to remember how to cast to a string. But eventually found it, hopefully I can remember it now. I have changed the methods so they work the same in a GUI and a Console app as I like a clean Modular design.

While at it I found Array.Reverse(""); and this nice little, simple, clean and tidy, method ensued:

/// <summary>
/// Reverses a sequence of chars in a string.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="value"></param>
/// <returns>the reverse of the provided string.</returns>
/// <remarks>
/// This is the simple way to reverse a string.
/// Simply by using the power of the Framework.
/// </remarks>
public string reverseStringArray(string value)
{
   // Copy to an array
   char[] temp = value.ToCharArray();
   // Reverse
   Array.Reverse(temp);
   // Return casting the array as a string
   return new string(temp);

}

Now for the real fun. Recursion (Where a method calls it's self over and over until it finishes it's work, then backs out to provide the results.). This method ends up being fairly simple, but it is slower, has potential to crash and is somewhat difficult to wrap one's head around. But it looks clean and impressive.

/// <summary>
/// Recursive String Reverse
/// </summary>
/// <param name="value">String to Reverse</param>
/// <returns>the reverse of the provided string.</returns>
/// <remarks>
/// This method Reverses a string by calling it's self recusively 
/// The method used here is certainly not the fastest method avalible
/// as it uses slow string concatenation and has the possibility of
/// having a buffer overflow recursing to many levels if using a 
/// string which is to long. But the idea is just so fun.
/// </remarks>
public string reverseStringRecursive(string value)
{
    if (value != "")
    {
        // Recurse the incoming string, minus the first char, then return 
        // the resulting string, appending the first char to the end.
        return reverseStringRecursive(value.Remove(0,1)) + value[0];

    }
    else
    {
        return "";

    }

} 

Ah, this was fun! One of these days I should revisit one of my old favorite sites (http://www.xbeat.net/vbspeed/) and try to work out a method for timing the methods and try a few other speedy ideas.

One of the odd things from that site is that you learn that simplicity is not always equal to speed. Rather often the reverse is true. There are some strangely long code snippets setup just for improvement with speed.

I _ Software

A silly thought came to me the other day of the perfect bumper sticker if I were to ever get one. So I went searching around and finally found a website which allows you to design your own bumper stickers http://www.makestickers.com/customize.aspx?TID=5870 And this is what I ended up with:

But if I was ever to find a way to get in on the Dev side I would have to switch to this one:

I think the first one is funnier.

Krondor mmm.

Ah. DosBox. I decided to reminisce I downloaded DosBox and opened one of the games I have fond memories of. Betrayal at Krondor. Good memories of a classic game.

Now if I can just figure out how to give it write access to specific files so that I can get past the introduction. Nice! Got it. Just had to share the folder so that the program has permissions.

Good thing DosBox works with Visa. I wonder what else I can get working on it?

Sigh. Weird. For some reason I have been longing, yearning to use Windows 3.1 again. The nostalgia. Yeah. Really Weird. I wonder if I can put it in a Virtual PC? Hmm. Could be cool. Another day though. Krondor Tonight.

Aw. No Analytics report

Aw. It looks like I didn't install the Analytics tracking script correctly, or something. I happen to know there were at least two hits over the past week.

I had thought that maybe those that read, might be doing so via. RSS Feed. It is quite possible but then I went looking for the tracking script I had placed and, it was gone. Whoops. This time I placed it in a place where I know it should go.

But then if Javascript is turned off in a browser it won't be tracked. Actualy, I wonder what this page looks like without JavaScript. Google relies on it heavily.

Socks and Sandals

Sad. My Manager is moving to a new position soon. He is an awesome Manager. I suppose it is good that he is moving on at the highpoint of this position. That's the way to do things.

He is one of the classic Pacific Northwestern Socks and Sandals guys (http://www.werealotlikeyou.com/) See #56. And the Youtube to go with it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z59fQ12OR0A).

Ah. Maybe I didn't have to give up Sandals and socks when I moved up here after all.

I finaly fixed the you tube link

Stinky Feet

Lock your Computer, lock your computer. That and no tailgaters. are some of the security things that are drilled into people that work at Microsoft. And for good reason. Employees, Vendors and Contractors deal with sensitive, confidential information which has not yet been released to the public.

Access to a computer could prove access to such information, so locking a computer becomes important. I have pretty much become accustomed to hitting [Windows] + [L] to do so. But sadly some of the more Junior coworkers still don't understand the hazard. So a tradition has sprang up in my team. If certain team members happen to notice that a computer was left unlocked then they will send an email from the unwary team member's computer, to everyone in the team, simply stating; "I have Stinky Feet!". Yep, quite the incentive. I have been lucky enough to not have to deal with the fallout of the resulting email taunts though I have witnessed it happening.

More Browser Wars are acoming

Hmm. Apple has released a beta for their browser, Safari for Windows. I'm a little torn about it.

For one thing, in my own oppinion, Apple has never really gotten the hang of programming, quality software for Windows. I don't trust ITunes or QuickTime on PC for that reason.

But I am hopeful that if the rendering is identical on PC as it is on Mac, that I won't have to buy a Mac to test web pages for Mac. Wouldn't it be great to have "One Machine to test them all! Mhaw ha, ha, hah. Oh."

On the side of competition, I don't really know how much good it will do. It will certainly be something to watch.

On a side note to the subject, apparently hackers have, within two hours or release, come up with ways to compromise a system running Safari for Windows. It is after all only Beta.

I'm a little hesitant to download it yet. But from the screenshots I have seen, the style they are touting is; the very style I have grown so annoyed at with Itunes and QuickTime. I am one of those that don't like it when someone arbitrarily skins their application for "Cool" not taking into consideration that "I want uniform conformity to my system styling". Brushed metal simply doesn't look as good on every Theme.

You know, I think I am starting to see a trend to Apple's products of late. They are building up a reputation for high end hardware more and more... They are in the process of switching from Motorola to the more Windows friendly Intel Chipsets... Their newest Systems now run Windows Vista... They are starting to port software to Windows... They are making fun of PCs.. Wait that one doesn't quite fit.

Okay I foresee the day Microsoft will make the OS of the Mac. Apple will make applications and high end hardware, as well as their now favorite mobile hardware. Well, who realy knows, only time will tell.

Okay, enough of my opinion.