Lawand’s blog

Any programmer would pretty much like to read these stuff.

The first one (Stiff asks, great programmers answer) is about an interview with a bunch of lead programmers and technology inventors such as:

• Linus Torvalds - The Linux kernel author
• Peter Norvig - Research Director at Google
• Guido Van Rossum - The Python language creator
• Bjarne Stroustrup - C++ creator
• James Gosling - The Java language creator
• and a few other guys...

In the interview, (Beside 2 general questions) 8 tech related Questions are asked, such as:

• How did you learn programming? Were any schools of any use? Or maybe you didn’t even bother with ending any schools :) ?
• What do you think is the most important skill every programmer should posses?
• Do you think mathematics and/or physics are an important skill for a programmer? Why?
• [my favorite] What are your favourite tools (operating system, programming/scripting language, text editor, version control system, shell, database engine, other tools you can’t live without) and why do you like them more than others?

Among the very useful info found in the interview, I found some answers that exactly express some of my points of view for instance:
"Passion" Dave Thomas (when asked about the most important skill every programmer should possess).
"good developers also refine their techniques and practices over the years" Dave Thomas.
and David Heinemeier Hansson's respond to the second question: "A strong sense of value. The ability to ask yourself the question: Is it worth doing what I’m doing right now?"  this quote in particular actually describes one of the biggest mistakes any engineer can make.
In this context I remember a story about a German technician who was sent to Syria to fix a couple of broken TVs at some company, now what happened is that when he finished he left some units unfixed which made some employees try to fix it on there own (thinking that the man couldn't), and upon there (cheap but time consuming) success, they discovered that the German technician was saving the his time doing what he did.....

Anyway, the second one (Examining Where Desktop Linux and Open-Source Office Products Make Sense) is pretty much self described through it's label.
It answers one of the questions which intrigues anyone who hears about Open Source Software, "Where is the catch?".

And the last one for today is forum related (How To Ask Questions The Smart Way) and it's more of a tutorial than an article.
However, it helps each one of us who have ever had a question to ask (who hadn't?), to ask it in a better way.
Going through the outline will return headlines like:

• Choose your forum carefully
• Make it easy to reply
• Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language
• Send questions in accessible, standard formats
• Describe the problem's symptoms, not your guesses
• Don't flag your question as “Urgent”, even if it is for you

Enough talking, go get started :)

As you know, I study information technology "engineering" in the University of Damascus, Syria…

Anyway, beside the subjects not much related to computer science, in the 1st year we studied Pascal as an introduction to the basic programming concepts (being an educational programming language), not to mention that most of the Algorithms textbooks uses it to describe algorithms...

 

Then at the 2nd year (last year that is), we shifted into the "little bit higher" C++.

C++ was created at the great Bell Laboratories (the same labs where the transistor was invented!), the language corrected some of its predecessors' shortcomings and made it to the place where almost every modern OS is based on it (as well as some C and Assembly of course).

Now, after a lot of web browsing, I chose the following tools to write and build my own C++ based applications

• IDE: Eclipse a cross-platform open source powerful IDE.
• GUI builder: Qt 4 Eclipse Integration plug-in.
  

Qt is a popular application development framework mainly used for the development of GUI programs.

To get an idea on how popular it is, see this list of some Applications built using Qt.

The next step is a free book on “C++ GUI Programming with Qt” which I found here and now I am ready to go.

More info to come later ISA.

References: 

1. Bell Labs - Wikipedia
2. Comparison of integrated development environments - Wikipedia
3. Qt (toolkit) - Wikipedia
   

Seriously, Lavender flower is breathtaking, check some examples:

(for higher resolution images go to the Lavender article on wikipedia linked below)

Besides the nice look and fragrance, the flower has multiple uses such as:

• Essential oil of lavender has antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties, It was used in hospitals during WWI to disinfect floors, walls and other surfaces.
• Lavender is used to flavor sugar, the product being called "lavender sugar".
• The flowers are sometimes sold in a blend with black tea, as "lavender tea".
• An infusion of lavender is claimed to soothe and heal insect bites.

However, the most important thing about it is that my name (Lawand) was derived from it! [like lol or something].

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References::
Lavender (Wikipedia Page)

There is this short story told by actor Eddy Murphy  in the movie Holy Man:

{There was a storm. And thousands and thousands of starfish were washed up on the shore. And there was this beautiful little girl was running down the beach and she was picking up the starfish, she was frantically throwing them back into the ocean. When I saw her doing this I said to her, 'Why are you doing that? You can only save a few before they die, what difference does it make?' And she looked at me and she said, 'To THAT one, it makes a difference.' To THAT one, it makes a difference, that little girl said. And she was right and at that very moment she was making a difference for that starfish and she was making a difference for herself too because she was connected, to that starfish. And that's what life is all about, connecting. In fact that's the only time you're ever alive, really, is when you're connecting.}

This is really amazing story, and I think that what he is trying to tell us how life it's not just about logic, because when thinking about it we find that the little girl can't save more than a small percentage of the total starfishes, so rationally what she is doing doesn't matter.
But that's not how we are supposed to think, because it mattered to THAT starfish.

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References::
Holy Man (1998) - Memorable quotes (IMDB Page)

Twenty Questions

20Q is this computer program that is capable of defining what the user (player) has in mind after asking 20 questions , the game is based on an artificial neural network (that is a system able to learn on it's own) so the more you play it, the better it guesses.

How does it work?

The player keeps in mind a certain thing, and the computers asks questions about it to be able to determine it.

And so, every question greatly reduces the number of possible solutions by omitting what doesn't match the answer, for example, the question: "Is it an abstract concept?" removes any database entries that contain a physical thing when the answer is "Yes" and when it's "No" it removes those concepts such as "Life" or "freedom" etc.

Of course supposing that half the solutions are omitted in every question, 20 questions will allow 2²⁰ different solutions in the database (more than a million entries).
Finally, it either wins the game (by finding a result which matches the criteria) or declares it's failure.

Note that the success rate is between (73 to 78)% so it doesn't always succeed (it always did when I tried it though!).

How to Play!
To play the game:
1- Click here.
2- Select your language.
3- (optional) fill in the personal info.
4- Choose Classic 20Q (or any other game).

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References:
20Q - Wikipedia page.
Twenty Questions - Wikipedia page.
20Q.net Inc. - Game Web Site.

Imagine that you where in a game show,
and the host has offered you three doors to choose from, knowing that one contains a fancy car behind it and the other tow are each hiding a fancy goat behind it! saying that you gain what is behind the door that you choose.

Now after choosing a door and before opening it to see the result, the host opens another one containing a goat (he already knows that) and asks you if you want to change your selection!

Now wait a minute, what does it matter if you switched to the other unopened door?
Don't you have tow closed doors with the equal probability of containing a car behind each?

You take a minute to think about it, knowing that the solution isn't gonna by that obvious...
Is in your best interest to switch to the third door or, It doesn't matter
.......
.......

"Make up your mind" the host says, so you immediately say "It just doesn't matter" , "the probability is equal so, I am gonna stick with my choice"
Oops! you were wrong :)

( of course if your decision was to change for the third one, i assume that you wouldn't have been reading this :) )

Now for the explanation of this dilemma check out this figure which is a tree showing the probability of every possible outcome if the player initially picks Door 1:

This is just a quick proof that "Switching wins with probability 2/3" which means that switching is in your best interest...
This dilemma is called the (Monty Hall problem) or (Monty Hall paradox) because the solution is counterintuitive.
(Monty Hall is the host of the game show Let's Make a Deal which first introduced the problem)

Petty weird right?

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References:
Monty Hall problem - wikipedia

I saw something catchy the other day, and I thought I would share it with you guys.

For those who doesn't know it, the ASCII Art is about using the standard ASCII characters to resemble images or pictures, and it was -at the beginning- used by owners of printers that lacked graphics ability, so they had to use characters in place of graphic marks.

Examples:

The last one "High ASCII" style is typically found in the .nfo files that is included
in the packages of cracked software, Not that I actually use that sort of software or
something like that :)
Also the smilies such as ":)" is considered ASCII Art...

Now for our topic today, I found that the Multi-platform Open Source
VLC media player has plug-in that plays any video file as ASCII Art!
Thus the final result will be something like this:

So, go ahead and try it out!

The steps to accomplish that are:
1-download VLC media player (the required plug-in is included).
2-open VLC media player using the following arguments:

Notes:
- "somevideo.avi" is the target file with the full path.
- the file name and path shouldn't include spaces.
- "vlc" is the location of the VLC media player .exe file
like "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe"

Enjoy!

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References:
ASCII art - Wikipedia
Uncommon uses - VideoLAN Wiki

How are you all doing today?
Welcome to my newly launched -humble- blog.
I mainly created it to share with you my sketches which can be found at the Photos section.

Anyway I have a lot of things planned in my mind so, feel free to drop by when you have a spare time.

I wanna see comments from you everybody, don't hesitate and say whatever you have in mind...

That's all for today
Cheers!

DISCLAIMER: I'm not responsible if my blog distracts you from your study,
you should finish all your homeworks and/or job duties before hanging around here :)

DISCLAIMER II:
The first DISCLAIMER is for all viewers except BlackSigma so please take note.