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Gone For A While

Well… tomorrow morning I’m writing my last final exam, then flying out to Ottawa.

From there on, it’s to the Dominican for a bit.  So I probably won’t post until after the New Year.

Merry Christmas everyone!!

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The Taste of Justice (and Victory)

So I just got my mark back from my CMPUT course that I mentioned earlier.

A little run down of the drama:

• Our team busted our butts off working to finish the group project worth 35% of our overall mark.
• We also did a wicked presentation (many said it was the best in the class).  However, part of the presentation marks are computed by peer reviews (which is really stupid since it’s a curved class).
• The end result was that we got 100% on our term project, but the problem was that the light marking put the lowest mark in the class at 91%.  On a curved course that’s really harsh.  Even worse… the worst project in the class is an embarrassment to our department and in no way deserves such a high mark.
• We got ranked 4th for our presentation because of retarded peer reviews and other factors.
• Since the class marks are so high and clustered, the prof decided to make a really tough epilogue exam that was supposed to be worth only 15%.  However, from the unfairly high project marks and clustering of the grades, this meant that our entire mark hinged on how well we wrote this “15%” exam.
• We complained hard to the prof.

That’s right.  We got 100% on the  project and we still complained!  The prof took our side into consideration and remarked all the projects  as well as the presentations.

I just got the marks in 10 minutes ago.  Victory!!!  (Yes, I’ll be an ass about it!)  Our team managed to clinch best term
project and presentation for the class.  More importantly, the spread of the grades are wide.

Though it may sound like it, we deserved our marks through our hard work.  We didn’t lawyer up the prof to achieve this in any way.  It just feels so good that some sort of justice has been done, considering how polished our project was compared to one that crashed and didn’t work at demo time.  It would’ve been just disheartening to have our distinction robbed by some sloppy grading.

I was pretty close to an A+, but I’m really happy with the A as my final mark.

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Pandora Internet Radio / Google Web Toolkit

Pandora

So my brother stumbled onto this really cool internet radio station yesterday. It’s called Pandora Internet Radio and can be found here: www.pandora.com

Now what’s so different about this internet radio station compared to the millions out there? Collaborative Filtering.

Basically Pandora asks you to name a song or an artist, and it will search it’s database to find it for you. It will then play for you songs that resemble your search or songs that it thinks you will like. For each song played, it will let you rate it with a ‘thumbs up’ or a ‘thumbs down’ and from there it will fine tune your profile. The more songs and ratings you give it, the more accurate the profile it will have of you.

Basically it works off of the Collaborative Filtering algorithm. It will try to match your tastes with the tastes of other users. If I happen to like the bands Mogwai, Metric, and Tool and you happen to like Mogwai and Metric, Collaborative Filtering will recommend you some Tool songs.

Pandora also uses metadata to categorize each song. So if you like Mogwai, then it will provide songs that are from the rock genre, with little vocals, and lots of soloing (choosing from many other variables as well).

Coincidentally I learned all of this stuff in one of my Comp Sci classes this semester, so it’s pretty interesting stuff for me. Pandora is a very cool piece of web technology. Check it out!

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Google Web Toolkit

Yes, another technology post. I read on Slashdot today that Google released another version of its Google Web Toolkit.

Web Toolkit? Well, it’s a spiffy framework that will transform your Java applications into web applications. You heard me. Write a Java application and then run the toolkit and it’ll compile your code into a webapplication using AJAX and Javascript.

Personally, I think this will revolutionize the way we design web-pages. Especially considering that it’s a very fresh and new project, one can only hope that it will become more versatile as newer features are added with each release.

As much fun as it is designing a webpage, it never has the elegance and ease of expression as writing an application. Why bother writing a bazillion select statements and fidgeting with html form buttons when you can pump out a few lines of Java code.

I haven’t played around with the toolkit yet (damn you exams for eating up all my time!), but I definitely will give it a try in the near future. There are a bunch of example sites made with it on the page. I was really impressed with what it could do.

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Simple Wordpress Spam Blocking

I’m not sure how many of you who read this are bloggers, but if you are then you’ll agree that spam is a huge problem. I absolutely hate how all my comment boxes have to be cleared out by me every so often.

No, I don’t want to learn about penis enlargement in my comment boxes!

I installed a spam blocking tool for this site that uses something called Captcha. Captcha is the technique of generating a random number of strings on an image, and skewing the image and asking the user to input what he sees. An example would be to ask you to input the following text from this image to verify that you’re not a spam bot:

The only problem with Captcha is that sometimes it’s really hard to read the words. What’s worse, is that spam bots are evolving to the point where they can now read some of the Captcha images generated, completely bypassing it altogether.

So the Captcha tool I installed earlier wasn’t effective at all… I still got spam.

Frustrated, it took me 3 seconds to realize I don’t any fancy Captcha tools and whatnot. All I need to do is to make sure whoever comments on my blog to input a string in which only a human being could do. So I plugged in some code into my comments section that asks for users to enter in LeeMobile. Spam bots can’t understand semantics… they can only do what’s programmed of them. So they can’t read the sentence to tell them to input “LeeMobile” to proceed.

Fancy schmancy spam blocking? Who needs it! For all you bloggers out there, give this one a try. Post a comment and checkout my simple homebrewed spam blocker in action.

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Chuck Palahniuk and Randomness

So I’ve been reading something other than a textbook lately. I know, it’s strange that I’d be reading something on my own time. Anyhow, I’ve been reading Chuck Palahniuk’s Stranger Than Fiction, and I absolutely love it.

Palahniuk is the author of Fight Club, and apparently many of his other books have gained a lot of acclaim. His modern and edgy writing is something so refreshing. He writes in a kind of minimalistic style with little pretense. No need to pad his writing with extraneous fanciful details, it’s straight to the point and powerful.

What really annoys me most about poorly written literature is how it often tries to mask lack of thought or insight with wordiness, and by being overly dramatic or verbose. From what I’ve seen so far, Palahniuk writes with a ton of insight but in such a minimal way to avoid coming off as pretentious or pompous. I think this appeals to me quite a lot because I am so riddled with ADD that it’s nice to cut through all the BS and present something meaningful and interesting.

I’m definitely gonna read up on his other books when I can.

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On another topic, my group project mark for that class I mentioned earlier came in. We got 100%, but the worst part is that the lowest mark was 91%. On a curved course this is terrible for us. The distribution of our marks are so tightly packed because of this that our entire grade rests on the small 15% epilogue test.

It was so disheartening to see that we poured so much work into our projects only to gain so little recognition.  We protested our point, and the professor took our concerns into consideration and said he’d remark all the projects.  I’m quite sure the second time around will have a wider distribution for us, and I’m hoping it’ll be enough such that our marks are pushed ahead.

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Last day marked the end of class.  I have 5 days to study and learn/relearn the entire math term, and 8 days to learn/relearn everything taught in my databases course.  It’s gonna be a tough few days.  I’m hoping all goes well and that I’ll be seeing Renata soon in about 8 days.

I’ve decided to take a 3D graphics course next term.  It’s going to be really math heavy, and I’ve heard it’s a very heavy course.  However, it’s gonna be a wicked fun course to take and our term project in that course will be to develop a video game.  How cool is that?!  My only problem is to think of a simple game to work on… gimme some ideas!

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Comp Sci Standard Time

The end of crunch time came last night with the completion of my project demo in the lab.It has been a tough and long week at school. Long nights were had in the lab, with the team coming home at 2 and 3 in the morning a few days. That stacked on top of other assignments and projects have lead to a crunch all of us Comp Sci folk loathe.

Our team has emerged out of this doing quite well. We don’t have our marks in yet for sure, but I believe we got ranked top project out of the 10 groups in the class as well as for best presentation. I felt schandenfreude (I finally get to use that word!) seeing some of our main competitors’ projects crash and burn during demo time. Afterall, my course is a curved class and marks are based on how you compare to your peers. Our project had the best visual design as well as the most complete feature set. Sailing through our demo without a single crash or hiccup basically clinched the win for the top spot.

All of our toiling to “cover-our-asses” with relentless fail-safe checks and bonus features actually came to fruition and put us ahead. It’s always a huge fear of mine that all of the additional time and effort put into a project would go unnoticed.

With all of the projects behind me, I can finally bathe, eat, and sleep well. Vegging and doing absolutely nothing has never felt so good. I now no longer have to track time in Comp Sci Standard Time: hours until deadline. That’s right, we don’t track time in days in comp sci… but rather in hours. Days and nights are irrelevant when you’re in the lab. Sleep cycles? Days? What’s that?

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