Category Archives: justCheckers

Progress in the justCheckers project.

Attack of the Lettuce Monster, and the Return of Work

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After disappearing for a few months, I went back to the justCheckers website again. Much to my horror I discovered a group of spammers decided to “borrow” my forums. Now I have to engage in anti-spamming. The forums are cleaned of NSFW content, and I began the process of deleting and banning users. Joy. I think that sailors feel the same way, when cleaning barnacles off their ships. Spammers are just as pesky, and I don’t have the online equivalent of a high-pressure water hose.

Even my brother is not as pesky. Even when he turns into the dreaded Lettuce Monster, and begins eating all the lettuce leaves before I can finish the salad, my brother is not as pesky. Nor obnoxious as a earn-a-quick-buck spammer. Bad comparison, but my brother wanted to be mentioned as the Lettuce Monster in my blog.

In other news, I need to tie up a bunch of loose ends before I leave for Europe. After a few summers of work or school, I decided that I need a vacation. But I need to finish off my work and plan for the trip. I am still figuring out the itinerary. I wonder when should I start looking for a job too. So many decisions.

My friend and fellow justCheckers admin, Chris Bellini recently switched over to Ubuntu from Windows. And he nuked his Windows too. Wow. Even I am not quite prepared to leave my Windows yoke complete due to some of the PC games I bought. But 2007 really seems like the mythical year of the Linux desktop, with all the talk of switching away from Windows. But I think we still need more commercial game studios to start making Linux clients, before we see a more dramatic exodus.

Adjusting to Easy Schedule

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I am not good at adjustments. The switch from a super-busy, near-hyper-kinetic schedule to a “normal” lighter schedule keeps on throwing me off. Hence the lack of updates since Friday.

Yesterday was the great chill day. Today was the great after-chill day. Meaning, I did not get too much done when it comes to assignments or studying. Anyone who follows the justCheckers project got lucky with the new daily updates (at least on the wiki). Everyone else… kind of lucked out. (At least you lucky denizen of the blogosphere get a neat treat today – 3 make-up posts. Why? Because I love you and enjoy having a regular audience.)

Still, I rejoice at the thought of the “evil” over-busy semester finishing. With the exception of three moderately difficult exams, a wack of writing for my writing portfolio and two assignment-papers, my goal of finishing a B. Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, just got a semester to completion. The very thought of finishing in April-May 2007, makes me euphoric. Now assuming that I pass every course this semester, only 4 more courses await me next semester.

I only worry about what I do after-university. People assure me, there is a life after university. I am not too sure. I guess I will need a job, to pay off my meagre debt. But kind of a job? Where can I work? Sure I do plan to work for myself one day, only I need money to bootstrap any sort of business. I would prefer to entire self-employment on my own terms, rather than “starving” myself into it.

So where should I work? Most jobs want some sort of work experience, something I lack in the professional sense. Take gaming firms like Valve, Apogee, id or EA: everyone wants an artist with a portfolio (but can I build one in less than 6 months?), a project developer (do you know that I never worked in let alone managed developing a commercial game?) or a programmer (does Java AWT count as graphics experience? No I don’t do OpenGL, at least not yet). How about NASA’s JPL? Would love to code rovers to race around on Mars, yet neither engineer nor US citizen I am not.

Realistically, I should contemplate working for IBM or Canonical (makers of Ubuntu). Man too little dreamy options (Valve), and too many risky (Canonical) or dirrery options (IBM, Microsoft *shivers*). So long as all effort does not land me a low paying sys admin or code monkey job.

Chillin’ and Dreamin’

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Elation!!! I finished work for yet another course, Business of Computing, and an assignment for the Foundations of Research course. So all the work for my Computer Science courses out the way, I can concentrate on the assignments for my two other courses. Staying up all night, sure wore me out but nothing a make-up nap did not help.

Right now, I am sit chilling and relaxing. I can finally concentrate on my “other” projects. Well after I finish my assignments and write my exams, but you get the point.

Taking about my side projects, I am pleased to say the justCheckers project is moving along well. I am impressed the amount of attention project received lately. A lot of this attention comes from the increased ranking on SourceForge.net. The ranking seems to increased, thanks to migration to Subversion and the recent updates to the site. I set up a wiki that should speed up development of specifications. Maybe we will see a new release soon too.

In other news, Arnold Rosenbloom – my professor for many past course including this semester’s brand new Informational Security (CSC347) – will post my article on RSA cryptography and its demise thanks to quantum computation. I plan on resurrecting the SiteChunks project. Also as promised last Friday, I will post an update to the Self-Experiment: Fast Personal Context Switching, later on today.

Quiet Morning

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This morning seems so quiet. The lack of any real sounds, with the notable exception of the wind, make everything seem so un-alive. Its quite disquieting actually.

The only real sound (other than the typing of keys) is the sound of mental lemmings, walking around. That my friend, is the sound of writer’s block. Coming up with a main theme for an article, placed me into such a state. In an effort to shorten, and ease up on my articles, I had to cannibalize parts from three different articles, and plop them all together. I feel like a literary Dr. Frankenstein. And my article in its current form, plays the part of a half-zombie, half-robotic chicken monstrosity. Oh wait. That would be the robotic chicken… oops, wrong show. Anyways, with the current state of the article makes the lemmings inside my head want to throw themselves off a mental cliff. I mean walk off. Cause thats what lemmings do.

Lemmings aside, I resuscitated another of my projects yesterday. Yes justCheckers will return in all its Java-ish gory err… glory soon. On the topic of justCheckers, Chris Bellini, an important contributer to the project, just turned 30 yesterday. Happy birthday and I am glad you shrugged off the coming age. Is that a grey hair? *ducks*

The marathon of finals continues! Only 9 assignments, 3 exercises, 4 classes and 7 days to go. And the previous experiment seems to be paying off. Better run off now, and take care of my mental lemmings.

Why Open Source Projects Make Sense Career Wise

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Greetings Earthlings! (OK enough silliness for one day, back into the pocket you go Martian.) Once again I have to bring up the sort of lame excuse of being too busy to blog earlier. Well yes, it was lame too much work. Actually I killed my “1337” Gentoo box doing an update. So I basically installed the new Ubuntu 6.06, and I am in the process of setting things up. More on the new Ubuntu tomorrow.

Today’s rant is why open source projects make sense. At least from a university student’s point of view. Undergrad in CS to be exact. All other information from me will have to be extracted via torture, slyness or greasing of palm. 😉

Back to the topic, I am in the process of finding an internship position for the next 12-16 months. So far my own personal experience has mostly unsuccessful. The interesting part is that for the two interviews I have received, my interviewers were most interested in my open source projects. They glossed over my “work” experience, if you can call it that in my case. University courses were not even mentioned. Nope, the thing that stood out were the two projects I am currently actively involved in. For those in the unawares, I actually have 3 open source projects in the works. While initially I thought that working on these projects would be fun and simply educational, it turns out that they mean more than that.

There are three main reasons why I believe employers are interested. These being experience, portfolio and marketing. When you work on a project you have to not only have a grasp on the technology but also on the subtilties of team relationships, and organization. Any open source project will showcase your performance as a developer and/or project leader. The final product is interesting in itself. A look into your source code will reveal your work ethic, organization, knowledge, talent and creativity. Finally comes marketing, which applies mostly to the employer and sometimes to yourself. The words “open source” currently flow with the hype and buzzwords of the business world. By hiring an open source developer, the company gains a zen and almost messanic reputation of by part of what the business world sees as the future. Personally I think open source means plain old fashioned politeness and embraces the ethics of old (the “new” standard of “Western” ethics is quite dissettling). In some rare cases if the project is successful enough, the product becomes a brand onto itself. Any developer of said project also gains a certain amount of worth and can use this to his or her advantage when looking for work.

Well that is all great and everything but how can one gain these advantages. Simply put start a project for something that you need or want. Treat if it were a real life product to sell not just a “pet” project. This is how many open source companies themselves started out. Show your professionalism throughout the process. Try new things, and over time maybe that project will pay off in hard, cold cash.

Till tomorrow,
Dorian

Back in the Void Again.

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I feel so out of place nowadays. There is a bit of lull between assignments and exams, so I have taken advantage of this to do a few random things. These past few days I have returned to work on my pet project, justCheckers. I am quite pleased with the new look, and setting up the forums was a quick issue. This time I even included an avatar gallery. Only two things remain to do. One is to write a dynamic news page, and an image gallery. Thanks to my new found knowledge in databases, I can finally make this a reality. The only issue is that there is a bit of planning that needs to go into this.

I have sort of taken a hiatus from my Datasphere work too. I am sort of ashamed of this, but with schoolwork and all… My most recent task of coming up with requirements is not fun. Originally when I applied for this work, I was hoping to become a code monkey and not a designer. Oh well. I have a 10 page memo to go through, which I am not too excited about.

I have to do a financial check today. I have sorta neglected that for too long. Recently I have spent a lot outside of home on food, and entertainment. Not to mention the paychecks coming from Datasphere. Taking about entertainment, the topic of Rudy’s new girlfriend is starting to be a bit irritating. I am in fact slightly jealious of Rudy, and also the amount of attention he gives her. No I am not complaining… but I still am going to. I learnt a few things about Rudy, that I would have passed on knowing. Also my own failure of picking up any girl, or even getting the slightest hint of interest is most depressing. I do loathe this type of depression cause it leads to defeatism and more depression. The fact of having little social activities, the looming perpetual cold of winter, and the stress of the end of the semester, is bad enough. This little issue (I mean this is only an emotionally large problem) is compounding to the general depressing mood. HEY SOMEONE GIVE ME A LITTLE ATTENTION!

On a good note, I recently acquired a sexy little USB optical mouse. I am seriously looking into acquiring a Palm keyboard. The funds of getting my own system are still not present. Fortunately things are looking up in that department. I still feel a tinge of guilt… I really aught to buy a few presents for the family… I promise I will.

Farewell until later, fellow blogsphere traveler.

Adjusting to the New Universe

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The new reality of me being in school, and the prospect of working during the same time is slowly starting to sink in. Still its this sitting in front of a computer doing either homework or chores… trying to catch up. I mean I am catching up. Already I have made progress in my Visual Computing assignment. Got multiple image support working for our mini-Paint program. So I am very pleased with the outcome. No luck with coming up with a project for the Requirements Engineering course. But Mr. D’Ettore, one of my best friend’s father is willing to look into. Of course in my bumbling way, I came across in the most awkward manner… but I hope he understood. I will write an email to him shortly about the subject, and maybe we will get a reply soon. We badly need this. Very badly. The sad thing is my group members are even more clueless than me at this stuff. I still consider myself a messy person but apparently some of my new found habits are turning me into a neat freak, and ultra-organized. I can not stop laughing at that thought.

Tomorrow’s logic test is hanging above my head today. Sigh… I need to sit down and come up with a schedule for the next weeks so that I can be prepared. Too many things happening at once.

From a lighter side, I have joined the GLUE (Gentoo Linux User Everywhere) folding@home group. I hope that my laptop and occasionally my brother’s machine can help with number crunching so that researchers can better understand the way proteins behave, their impact on diseases and pharmaceutical interactions. Maybe this mundane CPU work can one day save someone’s life. OK, this is not going on the lighter side.

OK. Now a definitely lighter side. I probably will be earning money this semester as a developer playing around with an intricate Java web and database system for courses. Also once I get caught up on my studies, I will work at releasing a new version of justCheckers. Up to version 0.1.1, I believe. Maybe I will get some writing done too.

I will be seeing you, fellow netizen.

Being is in Mechanical Harmonic is Not Fun

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I think I can say that this is the last remnants of my malady. I can say this by the increase of sinus induced headaches and the symptoms of hay-fever. Also my throat no hurts… and so forth. Yesterday was OK too… except in the morning where I felt not too hot. Oh, and it was Mother’s birthday. Oops… I forgot everything about it. Anyways after a bit of coaxing I went with them to Awenda Provincial Park. Which was enjoyable as it was mostly me loafing around on a beach doing mostly nothing except writing. Then we went kayaking on nearby Kettle Lake. The sensation of gliding silently across the still water, gazing at the strange forest of dried pine mingled with water lilies, and grasses… serene. No unusual wildlife was seen but that is alright too.

When it comes to writing, I began to jot down notes about the different characters, factions, and plot of my story. I decided upon the title to be: Echoes in the Ether. I changed the beginning a bit, and made the background history interwoven in the conversations and thoughts of the characters. While I did notice a fair bit of influence from Battlestar Galactica (especially with the robotic Daedus faction), and the Homeworld games, I still think my idea as a whole is fairly unique. I am also glad that in the process of creating my universe I managed to get rid of the whole “Pregenitor” race idea, and still kept the Maker in the story. I hope that I can get the right mix of high tech science fiction and mystical religion as a backdrop for the story. I don’t want to turn into a fantasy story by adding too much crazy magic and mysticism. Overall I have most of the backdrop finished, I just have to finish notes on the last two factions. Then I have to jot down the back story, some technological details, and bit of landscape details. After that its just main character descriptions and plot.

On the programming front, I didn’t get much done except removing CHARVA and CLI elements out of the justCheckers code. The old style stream messages are still there. Maybe I can make a user interface from that. As for school preparations, a big fat zero. Oh well…

Standing on the Edge Looking Out

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The cool wind tugged at his body as he stood at the edge of the cliff. Beyond the worn sand hills stretched in contorted shapes, casting strange shadows in the rising sun. He leaned gently on the smooth bubble canopy of his desert mlaren, and smiled.

Well today I am feeling a bit better the last few days. My sinuses still pound repulsively inside my face. But I hope that this the last part of this disease. With the hay-fever season in full swing its hard to tell which of the symptoms are the illness or my irritable body reacting to the ragweed pollen super-clouds drifting around. Sometimes I wish we could get one quick frost. Now. Then the rest of the autumn can be as warm as it wishes. But that would be too easy. Right?

Yesterday, I got up feeling much better. No pain, only one nostril stuffed up and in rather happy mood. I was up by 5:00 AM so I took the time to try to fix my wireless card. I am not sure I can fix it. In Linux doesn’t show up at all, under Windows it gets detected as PCMCIA MTD-0002 after I take it out. It quite disappointing. Not too mention my USB flash drive is not being detected in Linux. I will have to fix this up first. I searched the Internet to my hearts’ content and found nothing about the wireless card. I think its firmware is absent… but I can’t load it until it can be seen by the system. Endless, vicious circle… a challenge for Rudy when I get the chance to talk to him.

Anyhow, I worked on the justCheckers project in the morning. I went through all the documentation, and updated most of it. All that remains is to expand upon on the style guide which pretty much complete, and write up a code of behaviour for developers and community users. I am confident with that done, and CHARVA being removed from the dependencies I will be able to release version 0.1.1. Then I will have to do a fair bit of work on updating the code, fixing a bit of the website (yuck), and getting the GUI finally fixed up.

As usual my work didn’t last for very long as I found out that my parents had planned to go on a trip. A kayaking trip. I mean I have been sick for these past two weeks, and they want me to kayak?!? Where will I get the energy? My feeble protests were naturally ignored. So we went kayaking on the Masquash river in the Muskoka region. So after a bit of grumbling (especially from my father’s side), some hectic packing, whining (mine and a bit of mother’s) and a long drive we were there. While I usually don’t admit defeat, I must say I enjoyed it. Mind you I had a fair bit of rests during the kayaking trip. I love silent lakes, and northern Ontario forests. I could go into a long description, but that would spoil everything. Go there and see it for yourself!

So when we got back home, I naturally dropped into bed from exhaustion (I couldn’t sleep in the car, and I had to tow Mom in her kayak back to the car earlier on). That is why I am writing this now, the morning after. Oh well better put this up on the web… and see if I can get anything done before today’s planned trip. Argh!