[post in progress -- I will be fixing it, adding to it, soon]
I just released the NeptuneAPI,

If you have no idea what Neptune is, here is the description from its help pages:

--"Ananke Neptune is a co-operative education information management tool designed to facilitate the exchange of information between the co-operative education institute, employers, students, academic directors, coordinators, and the university. It is an online system designed to streamline the co-op process for all parties involved, thus reducing redundancies and facilitating communication between the parties."--

Neptune sucks. So I decided to do something about it. I don't know how I got the idea really, I think I saw an example on thecodeproject.com that mentioned connecting to sites at a time when I was realy frustrated at Neptune.

It didn't take to long for me to get it working. But I did run into one problem with the HTTPRequest when I was doing POSTs. You have to include your cookies before the data. In fact, the data has to be the last thing in the HTTPRequest. It took me a week of on/off trials to figure that out. I had to set up my own mock php scripts to analyze the interaction my program had with it.

The coolest feature I find in it is making cover letters based on templates for specific jobs. In my mind this is one super easy thing that Neptune should have done. You know, a small button beside each job saying "make cover letter". It would simply fill in the address and name for you, why do I have to copy the address my self.

I might be making available a copy of a UI analysis me and my teammates did last semester. It showed how bad the Netpune UI is.

[Posting in progress]
This is more of a to-do list/catching up post than anything, but I hope I will be able to keep things updated much more, I know I said that before, but I am always looking for ways to do just that. So let me start:

UbiSoft: This is where I spend most of my time. Very interesting since I had just finished a game for my Computer Graphics (Comp471) class. I am starting to really enjoy game programming, simply because it has proven to be quite an interesting challenge. I am also programming for the XBox that's a rather interesting departure from what I am used to.

Assembler: Page assembler that is, the program I had mention a million times before about how it will get finished soon and blabla. Well it's even closer to running. this is a list of things that I have done on it since:

• Entity Parsing: I had to make my own parser to replace the older one I had with VB.NET (that one was so inconsistent); So learning a good lesson about compilers from Compiler class I decided to take a look at compiler generators. Coco/R is SO sweet, it has many tutorials and generates code for many languages. You should seriously consider it if you want to make a compiler or parser of some sort written in C#. One notice though, there are two flavours of Coco/R for C#, although the difference isn't very clear, you should watch out. I got in trouble when the one I was using wasn't supporting Chr()...Chr() ranges even though the tutorials where using them. [switched to the "better" one]
• Plugins: my program now loads plug-ins successfully. One can make a plugin that would handle personalized actions. I find this to be the strong point of the application right now, since the way it was with the older VB.NET version meant that I would have to open up the project and touch its dirty code just to do a simple functionality, not the case anymore.

The following is still to be done:

• FTP: I need my application to automatically upload the pages and resources that changed in my project. this will make things a lot easier for me.
• Entry addition: I also want to make it easy for me to add entries or components on my site, so that I can add say blog entries or whatever.
• WebServices: I want to be able to connect to my application through the web. This would be SO cool. I wouldn't even need to install it on a local compiler.
• DataStore: Is a new idea I have, its more a vision of the future of data storage than anything. I will have to make a concept and possibly write a paper about it.

Games: Its E3 2005, I am at Ubisoft, I just finish making a game not long ago. Take A GUESS. Yeah, I am starting to really enjoy game programming. I have been following the E3 quite closely, and can say tha  by far my favourite consol is the PS3 (not that Nintendo said much about revolution), the amount of technology in the PS3 is simply amazing. WOW, it looks very nice too.

Soen490: I need to know what to do for my final Software Engineering project. Here is what I know:

• Expected Team Size: 6 - 12 people
• Duration: 8 month
• Topic: Software engineering related, I don't want to
• simply program something; I want it to have SOEN
• implications.
• Coolness: IT NEEDS to be COOL, I don't feel like doing just any project, it has to be challenging and fun. So that's it for this entry.

Things that happened:

Enterprise is OVER
StarWars III is out
I Skipped the C's, Thanks Bui

This isn't the first time I see this type of thing. But it is surely the first time I see it on TV.

You know when you are looking at some screen meant to show a slide show, or some sort of advertisement or general information, and you see a pop-up in the middle of the screen, or worst yet a blue screen?

I observed the blue screen example at the time I was working at Motorola; NO it was not at Motorola. The walk from the metro to the underground exit would lead me to pass through this set of screens and projectors set in a circular manner, on which an interesting show of nature is displayed. You'd see things like animals, plants and all, and the sounds were beautiful, the bird singing made you want to stay underground instead of going outside into the often crowded and loud intersection.

Now it happened more than once that I would pass by these screens and see a Blue Screen of Death. Now that's quite a shame, but at least we got to know they are running windows and seemed to have a problem with there graphics driver.

The blue screen might be a bit harder to avoid, but how hard would it be to avoid having a random error message pop-up, or Norton opening up and scanning your computer in the view of hundreds of people? This happened at school on its internal TV network, which is understandable since it is run by a group of students, which you'd figure are taking classes and all, and hence might be too busy to have noticed a Norton pop-up. But what excuse does a TV channel have?

This isn't just a TV channel; it's a CABLE TV channel! OK, granted it's not a big channel, but you must imagine my surprise when I turn to Channel 09 (VOX) and see a Norton window, and a mouse cursor. I can tell its Norton 2004/2005. I simply find it quite funny. Maybe I should call them up and let them know that none of the information they are intending to show is actually showing ;)

Now, from a user interface point of view, should Norton really pop-up and tell you that it found no viruses? Why not simply display a green icon in the system tray? I understand that giving comprehensive feedback to the user is a good thing, but when is it too much feedback? When is it feedback for the sole purpose of saying: "Hey NORTON worked hard and found nothing, rest assured your money has not gone to waste"?

BUT, alas, there is good out of all of this. The PUBLIC is reassured that channel 09 is virus FREE. So, here we go.

Lets hope this doesn't happen with any of the big networks, because I would be very mad if an anti virus scan interrupted my favorite TV show -- who am I kidding, I download those anyway, I don't have time to watch those on TV.

So, did I ever mention how much I hate graffiti inside City Buses.

As if it wasn't just a question of ugliness, I had my pants stained by one of those graffitis. it was really annoying. So to all those poopoos that think its cool to draw on the bus, I say, GET A LIFE; but I doubt you are reading this.

BUT, I learnt something very interesting, and that is, that the bus company would pay for the cost of the cleaning of my pants. I found that really cool of them. So if you ever get your cloth stained by graffiti on the bus, make sure to mention it to the bus driver, and with the RTL at least you know they will pay for it.

I'm sitting here at the final event of day one of CUTC 2005. I am not sure about the presentations yet, I think my background of involvement with CUSEC have got me to expect something else. CUTC seems to be much less academic. Agreed some of the presentations where quite interesting, but some other ones seems like a big recruitment event (i.e. BELL).

I learned a few things about ECC, which is being developed by SUN. This new Asymmetric Encryption algorithm seems to be very cool given that it much much faster than RSA. SUN also showed off their Mini servers (not mini as in the Mac Mini, but mini as in a 25C coin).

The Gadget Guy show was cool, but I had seen most of the gadgets already, except for the cool USB GPS.

Now listening to a SUPER rich dude that is younger than me, I have this feeling that I should push my ideas a bit further, otherwise they won't go very far.

For the next few days I will be attending CUSEC 2005 (Canadian Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference). I was an organizer for CUSEC 2004, and although our event seemed to have been great, I simply did not attend ANY of the presentations (OK, no, I attended one complete one, and another two partial ones). I had to run around help people, take care of presenters and all.

This year CUSEC is being held by Carleton University, so its a nice two hour trip to Ottawa. I will try to post more about how things are going in the conference if I have an internet connection at the hotel. And, obviously I'll take as many pictures as I can.

Here is the schedule for CUSEC 2005.

I was just convinced to use a version control system for my own documents.

Greg Wilson, from the University of Toronto explained how they have been using CVS to manage student projects & assignments. This included requirements of the work to be done, artifacts as well as the final content.

One of the things he said that I found quite interesting is that the project due date (in the context of their CVS system) is no longer the date the assignment is "due" on; It is the date after which the project becomes "late".

You can visit his website at: http://www.third-bit.com/~gvwilson/

I'm sitting in front of my computer (not such a good idea) trying to study. Given that I really don't want to study I add to my distraction by putting my Walkman on radio and sticking the head phones in my ears.

The sound on AM is a bit scratchy, but for some reason it becomes better in certain situations. Like every time I hover over a windows button, the sounds becomes scratchy.

Now I thought that was absolutely crazy, so I investigated a bit more, and it turned out that what I was doing in fact was moving my mouse and then stooping it over a windows button. It wasn't the position of the cursor on the screen that made my Walkman go scratchy, it was the mouse not moving.

Now, you are probably wondering why the mouse moving would have anything to do with my Walkman?

Every time the mouse moved its red light is turned on, and son after it stops (give it a second) the red light dims, and the Walkman becomes scratchy.

Now all that remains to be investigated is why the mouse optical camera's light turning on and off makes my Walkman decide to become scratchy.

All that I can say for now is that for me to listen to my Walkman comfortably I would have to keep moving my mouse; and at 4 am the only thing to do on my computer is helplessly surf the web.

HEY, I think thats one more excuse to not study.

(well, so was this post)

Java 1.5 is out.

On the what's new list:

Java 1.5	C#
Metadata	Attributes (v1.0)
Generic Types	Generics (v2.0)
Autoboxing and Auto-Unboxing of Primitive Types	NO Primitives (v1.0)

It took so long for some of these things to make their way into Java, which is quite surprising. It makes me once more appreciate C# for how advanced it is. I don't think anyone can say that it is laging behind Java in any way. It is quite interesting, becasue i just started Using Java for one of my classes, it some of the things in it are quite annoying. I suppose i was spoiled by .NET. But now i truly wonder, whats in the future of these two languages?

They are becoming closer and closer... Is this becasue we have some sort of agreement on what the ideal language should look like? And if so, how long before someone changes this new mindset and gives us the quivilant of the OOP revolution of the 21st century?

J2SE 5.0 in a Nutshell

"Groklaw has the story of Kodak v. Sun (mentioned on Slashdot already), which PJ calls 'Exhibit A' in the case against software patents. Her analysis of Kodak v. Sun, and the larger issue of software patents, is excellent. Bottom line: the software patent 'cold war' provides no benefits to anyone, and will inevitably make the game of software development impossible for anyone to play."

Now I am afraid to program!

I spent a few hours a couple of weeks ago going through some software patents on the United States Patent and Trademark Office site. Some of those patents are SO stupid. Some things are just way too obvious.

The truth is, I myself find it quite hard to define what is to be qualified as a patentable piece of code. I understand a product being copyrighted, but how can you patent say a method of displaying colors on a color pallet?

Maybe we really shouldn't have software patents, and for no other reason than the fact that they scare me. YES! I am afraid of programming!!! What happens if a spend a few sleepless nights trying to figure out a method to solve a particular problem I have with my program, and then end up solving it, and get this HUGE programmer's CODING RUSH; only to be told a few weeks later by some grandiose lawyer that I must take my software off the web because it infringes on some patent that some giant company holds.

Now, I don't care if the patent is valid or not, it might be a stupid patent, the thing is I'll never get my day in court. There is simply no point for a home programmer to take on say Sun, Microsoft, or Apple (and in this case, Kodak).

So what am I supposed to do!? Am I supposed to fear coming up with cool new ideas? Should I start looking for a lawyer, should I suppress my coding skills out of fear of ending up in prison, or denied entry to the US (as if this isn't hard already)?

Maybe a new system should be created for software. You know for all those "cool" application features that aren't quite patentable. Say Microsoft comes up with a neat feature for Office, that they don't want star office to imitate, well then they can copyright it for say 6 month, is generally a good time for a product to make some head way in the market. Then again, who judges what kind of feature is "neat"!

Software patents are bad. I mean, ARG, even if a get a good idea and its not patented, I need to fork over at least 8000$ USD to get it patented.

This is definitely a great thing for a system that breeds monopolies. If it is wrong for Microsoft to be a monopoly, it's also wrong for Kodak, Sun, Apple, and so on.

So until this software patent cold war ends, I suppose i'll have to live the risky life, coding at night, facing the big guys, and hoping that my paintings are not censored.

I've always been fascinated by AI; so today when a friend of mine mentioned 20q.net (although it seems its been around for a while) I jumped at it and had to try it. It asks you to think of something, and asks you questions about what it is that you are thinking about, until it guesses it.

Now at first it seems simply amazing (try it at www.20q.net), but then after a bit I start seeing how it would be implemented, and I realise that it probably wasn't that hard.

But does that really matter. The mere fact that this thing was able to guess what I am thinking of is simply amazing. Things like this make me want to close the door of my room and code for years. You know, make that machine that would interact with intelligence, or at least appear intelligent.

Now, my friend had told me that it did fail when he though of "condom" (don't know why he thought of that, but if you spend enough time trying to beat this thing, your mind is bound to wonder), interestingly enough it failed when I was thinking of "God".  But i must admit, I did make me smile since it got as close as guessing "Soul", "Spirit", and even "Reincarnation".

God: unable to guess
Chair: unable to guess
PDA: 28 Questions

So, I promised I will go to bed in 5 minutes, and yet I am still posting something here.

What's the deal with that? It's the latest of me procrastinating. Yes, procrastination, it's horrible, and I do it all the time. But I found some guidance in this article and you might be interested in reading it.

Structured Procrastination

Ok, this has got to be the craziest thing ever. Somehow I can no longer open XML documents (using .NET) with PreserveWhitespace = false, and have it actually work. Whitespace is some how always preserved.
WHY?
I am sure I have done this before, on this machine. What is wrong with my 4 lines of code:

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.PreserveWhitespace = false;
doc.Load("test.xml");
doc.Save("test2.xml");

Now if test.xml is:
<book>
    <price>                        14.95</price>
</book>

Then test2.xml should be:
<book>
    <price>14.95</price>
</book>

No?

Can someone please verify this, and let me know what I am doing wrong. It's driving me crazy, I have relied on this for over 2 years now, and it has worked correctly. What's wrong now?

SO Cool!

I just started coding in PHP5 and I made an RSS feed Wrapper.

It simply creates a wrapper around an RSS feed so that one can open any RSS feed and go through the entries and their content.

The purpose of this is basically so that I can grab my RSS feed from the Spoke and have it displayed on my site, this way my site won't have to wait for month before being updated. :D

Isn't this just SO cool.

I will clean up my classes and make them a bit lighter; then we'll see how things go. Next step, see if my host upgraded to PHP5.

You can see a sample here.

So, right now I am looking for a new laptop. I would love to have a Centrino, but here is my dilemma:
Toshiba 1.5GHz Centrino --> 2000$ CAN
Compaq 3000+ 64 bit DVD-RW --> 1899$ CAN

Ok, the Compaq is a bit larger, but MAN, thats's crazy! Note that I can also get a Compaq 2800+ 64 for 1699$ (R3230).

Is it just me, or is this a hard choice to make, and like I went to FutureShop and the weight doesn't to be so different. Also, the Toshiba A70 seems to be good, but out of stock!?

I want to know your experiences, how did you chose your laptop, and how did it turn out to be.