Notes on codes, projects and everything
This update took me quite a bit more time than I initially expected. Anyway, I have done some refactoring work to the original code, and thought it would be nice to document the changes. Overall, most of the changes involved the refactoring of function names. I am not sure if this would stick, but I am quite satisfied for now.
Writing a usable form and database library has always been a painful experience. So why bother re-inventing the wheel when there are so many to choose from already? I am writing one mostly for learning purpose. After numerous attempts, I finally get my form and database library in shape. It is nowhere complete, but nor it is perfect, but it is currently the implementation that is closest to my original design. I will keep working on it so it can be used in my personal projects in the future.
After publishing the previous note on setting up my development environment, I find myself spending more time in the CLI (usually via SSH from host). Then I find myself not needing all the GUI apps in a standard Ubuntu desktop environment so I went ahead and set up a new environment based on Ubuntu Quantal server edition beta-1. For some reason my network stopped working and didn’t really want to spend time finding out the cause, so I reinstalled everything again today using the final installer, as well as the updated Virtualbox 4.2.6.
The Sports Tracker app for my awesome Nokia N9 is not receiving any updates and doesn’t look like things are going to change any time soon. Recently the development team at Sports Tracker published a status update post and sadly there’s no mention of N9 port at all. It’s really sad considering how incomplete the N9 port is at the moment (horrible GPS positioning, no pedometer to name a few).
I have been following this excellent guide written by Benjamin Thomas to set up my virtual machine for development purpose. However, when I am starting to configure a Ubuntu Quantal alpha machine, parts of the guide became inapplicable. Hence, this post is written as a small revision to the previously mentioned guide.
After shifting all my instant messaging accounts to my Nokia N9, I stopped getting email alerts via Adium. Therefore, when I finally remember to check my mailboxes, they are already loaded with exploding amount of mails (mostly junk and newsletter though). I don’t fancy doing my email stuff with my device, and don’t feel like installing a webmail checker to my browser, hence this simple little script is written for my phone.
Semantic Web always sounds like some magic power stuff that a group of people keep yelling about. Chances are, if one is into web development, he/she would have heard of it somehow or other. However, despite the supposedly wide awareness about it, are we using it? Or rather, am I publishing enough data to Semantic Web? OK, I don’t, but why?
I have recently made my Adium useless by moving all my IM accounts to my beloved Nokia N9. While moving my buddy lists of all major instant messaging services, I did a quick check on each of the contact to see past interaction. It is sort of surprising to see I don’t actually chat with them as frequent as I thought, so why do I “need” my Adium opened all the time?
Everyone knows folksonomy is (or was) cool and useful, however, when it is applied in real life, then problem arises. The idea of blogging this came while I am struggling to get my literature review report done (been doing it for months, I am being so ridiculous, I know). As a matter of fact, as I am dying to get it done, there are a couple of things that I found to be blog-worthy. So, I will be publishing a couple of brief overview to some of the topics involved in the coming days in a really casual (read: lazy, and full of personal speculations) way to this very humble little blog of mine.
It is very difficult to like the way vim handle plugins by default, so I was really thrilled to find out about pathogen when a geek I followed tweeted about it. It took me some time to actually re-organize my current configuration to this new format. Then I thought why not reorganize my .vimrc as well, as my current version looks a bit cryptic after a while.
Recently I switched my search code to Annoy because the input dataset is huge (7.5mil records with 20k dictionary count). It wasn’t without issues though, however I would probably talk about it next time. In order to figure out what each parameters meant, I spent some time watching through the talk given by the author @fulhack.
Just managed to migrate all my blog sites to one centralized multi-site, so no more half-baked solution and hopefully this brings better plugin compatibility. I have not check with other related services (like Google Webmaster Tools) whether this cause any breakage though. Well, the main purpose of this blog post is actually a draft of what I did for the past two months for my postgraduate programme. Yea, I should have posted more stuff to this blog (just realized that my last post here is already like half a year ago).
The Nand2Tetris part I at coursera is very much my first completed course. It was so fun to actually work through the material and it feels amazing to know how simple it is to actually build a computer from scratch. While it is simple, it doesn’t mean the course itself is easy though. I was struggling to get the CPU wired up properly that I spent two to three days just to get it working.
This is the second part of the golang learning rant log. Previously on (note (code cslai)) I managed to make each line in the CSV into a hash map. So today I am going to make it into JSON Lines.
Sometimes I really doubt about the advantage of recycling old stuff to fund for new units beyond goodwill. Sure you get to convince yourself that you are saving the environment by doing so, and it also saves money in the long run. However, I didn’t realize how much it generates it may be after trying to work out an answer for a fictional IQ question.