- There are a lot more smokers than in either Palm Beach Garden or Gainesville
- Food Chains I have noticed here are Eat, Cafe Nero, Simply Food, Pizza Express
- People drive crazy over here I am surprised I haven't seen a crash yet
- People at pub are friendly and thinking calling a restroom a restroom is funny. The proper way to say it is toilet
- Flashlights are torches, lines are queues and give way instead of yield.
- You can hear a lot of US songs though I haven't heard any recent ones I have only heard popular songs from about 2 month ago.
- You can buy a meal with a coin (2£)
Friday, May 8, 2009
Interesting Facts about London
Thursday, May 7, 2009
London
Stefan and I have spent 2 days in London and we are really enjoying the trip. Our first day we started at 6:45 am when the plane landed in Heathrow Airport. A friendly native pointed out the center of London as the plane was coasting towards the runway. Stefan and I planned to get some sleep but the plane ride was much shorter than we thought and with the excitement of the trip we got about 1 or 2 hours each. With some heavy jet lag we set out to discover London. Our first mission was to find our Hostel. We found that the subway system in London is expansive and took us very close to our destination. Our only problem was the loops and turns the roads have in them confusing our sense of Direction. At last we found our hostel and our accommodations were much better than we previously thought.
Day One
Once settled in, we set forth to hit up some big attractions in London. Our first stop was the British Museum and it was massive. Every room made you feel small and it just had so many things from many different cultures. The highlight of the the museum was seeing the Rosetta Stone. And unlike most attractions it was in plain view and we could touch it. It was awesome. Then we hit the National Gallery which we first thought was boring but once we got a hold of map and found out what was in the gallery, it got a lot more interesting. The highlight for me was the Turner's Rain Sand and Speed which I learned about in my architectural history class. I also got to some of Monet's Water Lilly paintings which was also treat. Next, we went down to West Minister Abbey and saw the tombs of a bunch of famous Englishman from the Bronte Sisters to Shakespeare. We also saw Big Ben which is found at the North End of Parliament.
Day Two
The next day we also saw many things. First we went to the British Library and saw the Gutenberg Bible(2/3 in my Gutenberg Bible Picture Collection) and the Magna Carta. Then we saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace from a strange vantage point. Following that, we saw The Eye of London which is an awesome looking Farris wheel. We got hungry so we ate some fish and chips. Then we saw London Bridge. Stefan got tired of site seeing at this point and we decided to split ways. He went to see St Paul's Cathedral and then back to the hostel to enjoy a Guinness(Guinness here seems to be a lot better)while I went on to see Tower of London. On my trek to Tower London I found this really tall tower. When I got up to it I found out that it was The Monument, the tallest freestanding stone tower in the world. I paid 2£ to walk 311 steps to see the magnificent view from the top. After The Monument, I continued my adventure to Tower London. When I arrived it was bigger than I expected. I was planning on going into the Tower of London but the cost was 12.50 £ which was too steep for me. So I continued to Tower Bridge. The Tower Bridge looked awesome.(which I will post pictures after I can get physical access to a computer). The craftsmanship that went into building it is really remarkable. I then went down a road called Thames Street(I believe) which look like a road from the 1800s; complete with cobblestone street and stone buildings. I found a corridor that gave me direct access to the Thames River and I picked up a rock from the edge to keep as a memento of London.
After that trek, I wanted to hit my last stop which was St Paul's Cathedral. When I got there I just so happened to make it in time for a service and got to see the inside of the Cathedral. The Cathedral was more breathtaking than I had seen in my architectural history class. When you walk in, the grandeur of everything just blows you away. The service went over some chapters in the bible along with Gregorian style chorus in between chapters. After that I made it back to the Hostel. Now were planning on heading to Paris stay posted for our next blog post.
Day One
Once settled in, we set forth to hit up some big attractions in London. Our first stop was the British Museum and it was massive. Every room made you feel small and it just had so many things from many different cultures. The highlight of the the museum was seeing the Rosetta Stone. And unlike most attractions it was in plain view and we could touch it. It was awesome. Then we hit the National Gallery which we first thought was boring but once we got a hold of map and found out what was in the gallery, it got a lot more interesting. The highlight for me was the Turner's Rain Sand and Speed which I learned about in my architectural history class. I also got to some of Monet's Water Lilly paintings which was also treat. Next, we went down to West Minister Abbey and saw the tombs of a bunch of famous Englishman from the Bronte Sisters to Shakespeare. We also saw Big Ben which is found at the North End of Parliament.
Day Two
The next day we also saw many things. First we went to the British Library and saw the Gutenberg Bible(2/3 in my Gutenberg Bible Picture Collection) and the Magna Carta. Then we saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace from a strange vantage point. Following that, we saw The Eye of London which is an awesome looking Farris wheel. We got hungry so we ate some fish and chips. Then we saw London Bridge. Stefan got tired of site seeing at this point and we decided to split ways. He went to see St Paul's Cathedral and then back to the hostel to enjoy a Guinness(Guinness here seems to be a lot better)while I went on to see Tower of London. On my trek to Tower London I found this really tall tower. When I got up to it I found out that it was The Monument, the tallest freestanding stone tower in the world. I paid 2£ to walk 311 steps to see the magnificent view from the top. After The Monument, I continued my adventure to Tower London. When I arrived it was bigger than I expected. I was planning on going into the Tower of London but the cost was 12.50 £ which was too steep for me. So I continued to Tower Bridge. The Tower Bridge looked awesome.(which I will post pictures after I can get physical access to a computer). The craftsmanship that went into building it is really remarkable. I then went down a road called Thames Street(I believe) which look like a road from the 1800s; complete with cobblestone street and stone buildings. I found a corridor that gave me direct access to the Thames River and I picked up a rock from the edge to keep as a memento of London.
After that trek, I wanted to hit my last stop which was St Paul's Cathedral. When I got there I just so happened to make it in time for a service and got to see the inside of the Cathedral. The Cathedral was more breathtaking than I had seen in my architectural history class. When you walk in, the grandeur of everything just blows you away. The service went over some chapters in the bible along with Gregorian style chorus in between chapters. After that I made it back to the Hostel. Now were planning on heading to Paris stay posted for our next blog post.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
DokuWiki vs MediaWiki BenchMarks
The premise of this blog post is to see test how these 3 wikis from a performance stand point. That is how long does it take to load a page. I am using BenchMark to time the time it takes for a page to load from different points.
Test Environment
1and1 Web Host
PHP5
Mysql
MediaWiki 1.13.4
DokuWiki 2-14-2009
How I compute my time: Avg over 3 attempts
Results
Features:
Syntax Highlighting:
Both DW and MW use Geshi to do code highlighting. Though DW Geshi syntax comes
Syntax:
DW and MW have similar syntaxes
builtin
MW has more plugins
DokuWiki Downside:
My host limits the amount of files I can create and Dokuwiki creates a txt file everytime you create a page. Though, since the file limit is around 260k I dont see myself making over 10k pages in my wiki. Though this could cause slow downs if a users doesn't use namespaces and puts all there files in the same directory.
http://www.abcseo.com/blog/dokuwiki-vs-pmwiki
From timing pageloads on both media wiki and dokuwiki I have concluded that dokuwiki loads significantly fast than mediawiki. On the test system? The load is time is anywhere from .3-3s longer
Test Environment
1and1 Web Host
PHP5
Mysql
MediaWiki 1.13.4
DokuWiki 2-14-2009
How I compute my time: Avg over 3 attempts
Results
Features:
Syntax Highlighting:
Both DW and MW use Geshi to do code highlighting. Though DW Geshi syntax comes
Syntax:
DW and MW have similar syntaxes
builtin
MW has more plugins
DokuWiki Downside:
My host limits the amount of files I can create and Dokuwiki creates a txt file everytime you create a page. Though, since the file limit is around 260k I dont see myself making over 10k pages in my wiki. Though this could cause slow downs if a users doesn't use namespaces and puts all there files in the same directory.
http://www.abcseo.com/blog/dokuwiki-vs-pmwiki
From timing pageloads on both media wiki and dokuwiki I have concluded that dokuwiki loads significantly fast than mediawiki. On the test system? The load is time is anywhere from .3-3s longer
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
5 Apps that would make Android Kick
5 VPN client
In some places, the best option to connect to wifi is to use a vpn client. It would be nice if Android had a client that lets you connect to standard vpns
4 Office Suite
I want to be able to read and edit Open Office and Microsoft Office files. I also want to view PDFss
3 Skype through Wifi App
I have a small amount of minutes it would be awesome to call people through Skype not using my
2 Wireless Router App
Having internet for my laptop anywhere I have a signal. Do I need to say more?
1 Flash
Once flash hits android imagine all the websites that are now open to you virtually anywhere. Imeem, Songza, Hulu, Ebaums, Grooveshark, CollegeHumor, to list a few.
In some places, the best option to connect to wifi is to use a vpn client. It would be nice if Android had a client that lets you connect to standard vpns
4 Office Suite
I want to be able to read and edit Open Office and Microsoft Office files. I also want to view PDFss
3 Skype through Wifi App
I have a small amount of minutes it would be awesome to call people through Skype not using my
2 Wireless Router App
Having internet for my laptop anywhere I have a signal. Do I need to say more?
1 Flash
Once flash hits android imagine all the websites that are now open to you virtually anywhere. Imeem, Songza, Hulu, Ebaums, Grooveshark, CollegeHumor, to list a few.
Friday, December 12, 2008
December Post
Haven't post on here in awhile so I give some updates
Hand Scanner Denied
Because of the success of spreading propaganda about the hand scanners they will no longer be added to the gyms. Though the software works well so if they ever decide to do it, it's ready to go.
Personal Projects
Senior Project
Since my last semester will be pretty demanding I decided to use my courseplanner project as my senior project. I think I will make it just in python and html and javascript as opposed to having the server side scripts in php. Also I want to make the scraping part multithreaded so I can grab everything in 5 minutes instead of 40. Moreover, make the interface for using the courseplanner cleaner.
Answord
I final will get some time to work on my android bible app. I want to give it search, bookmarks, make it work with esv, and improve its start up time and responsiveness.
Wiki Notes
I think I want to spruce up the gui for this open source app in addition to giving it more wiki features like bold test and lists. maybe have it back itself up on to google notebook or something like or maybe just make an app that syncs with google notebook
Tuner
see if there is an fft libraries out there and see I can make a tuner for the phone
Collaborative UML Web App
I want to make a web app where multiple people can work on a UML and export as some standard format. I don't know when I get time to work on this though same with the tuner.
Last Semester Hopefully
So I am hoping that I didn't fail any class though 2 are in high question but if I didn' t then my last semester will get underway.
Job
I got a job at Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Fl so I am excited about that I am also checkout the NSA and see what they have to offer.
Hand Scanner Denied
Because of the success of spreading propaganda about the hand scanners they will no longer be added to the gyms. Though the software works well so if they ever decide to do it, it's ready to go.
Personal Projects
Senior Project
Since my last semester will be pretty demanding I decided to use my courseplanner project as my senior project. I think I will make it just in python and html and javascript as opposed to having the server side scripts in php. Also I want to make the scraping part multithreaded so I can grab everything in 5 minutes instead of 40. Moreover, make the interface for using the courseplanner cleaner.
Answord
I final will get some time to work on my android bible app. I want to give it search, bookmarks, make it work with esv, and improve its start up time and responsiveness.
Wiki Notes
I think I want to spruce up the gui for this open source app in addition to giving it more wiki features like bold test and lists. maybe have it back itself up on to google notebook or something like or maybe just make an app that syncs with google notebook
Tuner
see if there is an fft libraries out there and see I can make a tuner for the phone
Collaborative UML Web App
I want to make a web app where multiple people can work on a UML and export as some standard format. I don't know when I get time to work on this though same with the tuner.
Last Semester Hopefully
So I am hoping that I didn't fail any class though 2 are in high question but if I didn' t then my last semester will get underway.
Job
I got a job at Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Fl so I am excited about that I am also checkout the NSA and see what they have to offer.
Friday, August 15, 2008
August Updates
Hand Scanners in the News
Recently the local newspaper for Gainesville, the Alligator, printed a paper with a bunch of news about the hand scanners that are going to be implemented on campus. The main article was neutral in its depiction of the hand scanners there were 2 others stories in the paper that described the scanners in a negative light. The scanners were featured in a satiric comic showing the scanners as unnecessary invasion of privacy and also received a dart from Darts and Laurels for the same reason. Although I am flattered by the Alligator coverage of my project, they also had some errors in their perspective of the scanners. The argument that was posed was that the scanners are an unnecessary invasion of privacy. This argument is flawed because it wont be an invasion of privacy at all. What the scanners will store to make the scanners work isn't valuable personal information. The information that will be are templates of users' hands. This template is not a picture of a hand, fingerprints, or measurements; the template is a 9-byte digest derived from an image of the back of one's hand. What this means is that this template can't be reversed to obtain the image of the original hand. So in other words. it's just an arbitrary number that when paired with an id(like a ufid), can be used to make sure a person is who they say they are. To further my point, UF already keeps information more sensitive than what will be stored for the hand scanners. They have addresses, phone numbers, and pictures of all its students which is much more sensitive than a arbitrary number derived from the back of one's hand.
Hand Scanner Project Progress
The Hand Scanner project is slowly progressing and getting closer to production quality code. Hibernate is now used to persist data to the DB2 database, Maven is used to manage dependencies, and Log4J is being used to log information about the status of the Web Application. For Ajax functions the program now uses JSON instead of raw html allowing for much more control in the defining how the information for the the server is used and viewed. In addition, it allows for more separation between view and the control. So basically it makes the code a lot cleaner. One thing I want to change though is how the pages are setup at the moment. Anytime I need information from the server without using ajax it is a pain. Since everything gets redirect to one page the normal way struts2 handles the value stack is broken because the value stack is cleared on redirect so I have to use a very hackish way to get these results by placing them in the session. Also since all info is directed to one page using the back button or bookmark functionality is no longer an option. So I want to get Tiles working with the project and hopefully this solves my problems with these issues.
Course Planner and other Project Updates
CoursePlanner is about the same as it was before but I just modified it so that it works like people expect. It was also shown to the people in charge of ISIS to see if they what I did with it. I might make it a facebook app but that unlikely. As for the other projects I haven't really started on them and the djmark is looking more an more unlikely. However the airsoft turret I definitely want to create for my senior project.
Interesting Grade News
It turns out that graduation with Cum Laude will be easier than expected and I have a long shot chance of getting Magna Cum Laude. How wicked is that?
Recently the local newspaper for Gainesville, the Alligator, printed a paper with a bunch of news about the hand scanners that are going to be implemented on campus. The main article was neutral in its depiction of the hand scanners there were 2 others stories in the paper that described the scanners in a negative light. The scanners were featured in a satiric comic showing the scanners as unnecessary invasion of privacy and also received a dart from Darts and Laurels for the same reason. Although I am flattered by the Alligator coverage of my project, they also had some errors in their perspective of the scanners. The argument that was posed was that the scanners are an unnecessary invasion of privacy. This argument is flawed because it wont be an invasion of privacy at all. What the scanners will store to make the scanners work isn't valuable personal information. The information that will be are templates of users' hands. This template is not a picture of a hand, fingerprints, or measurements; the template is a 9-byte digest derived from an image of the back of one's hand. What this means is that this template can't be reversed to obtain the image of the original hand. So in other words. it's just an arbitrary number that when paired with an id(like a ufid), can be used to make sure a person is who they say they are. To further my point, UF already keeps information more sensitive than what will be stored for the hand scanners. They have addresses, phone numbers, and pictures of all its students which is much more sensitive than a arbitrary number derived from the back of one's hand.
Hand Scanner Project Progress
The Hand Scanner project is slowly progressing and getting closer to production quality code. Hibernate is now used to persist data to the DB2 database, Maven is used to manage dependencies, and Log4J is being used to log information about the status of the Web Application. For Ajax functions the program now uses JSON instead of raw html allowing for much more control in the defining how the information for the the server is used and viewed. In addition, it allows for more separation between view and the control. So basically it makes the code a lot cleaner. One thing I want to change though is how the pages are setup at the moment. Anytime I need information from the server without using ajax it is a pain. Since everything gets redirect to one page the normal way struts2 handles the value stack is broken because the value stack is cleared on redirect so I have to use a very hackish way to get these results by placing them in the session. Also since all info is directed to one page using the back button or bookmark functionality is no longer an option. So I want to get Tiles working with the project and hopefully this solves my problems with these issues.
Course Planner and other Project Updates
CoursePlanner is about the same as it was before but I just modified it so that it works like people expect. It was also shown to the people in charge of ISIS to see if they what I did with it. I might make it a facebook app but that unlikely. As for the other projects I haven't really started on them and the djmark is looking more an more unlikely. However the airsoft turret I definitely want to create for my senior project.
Interesting Grade News
It turns out that graduation with Cum Laude will be easier than expected and I have a long shot chance of getting Magna Cum Laude. How wicked is that?
Friday, July 18, 2008
Summary of last 2 months
At Work
Ok the program I am working on at work is going along smoothly. Our clients were impressed with the interface. As of right now we're working on the boring parts of the application. We need to make the forms that will allow CRUD on members. We are in the process of mapping the model with Hibernate to make this part of the application a bit less irritating.
UF Course Planner
For the Course Planner I have a version 1 working nicely. Anyone with a gatorlink username and password can try it out at denkou.ath.cx:8080/mlester/courseplanner/. There are features that I could add to it to make it better but from the people I have tested it with there is not much interest in the potential user base. In addition, I learned just about as much as I can learn from the project so continued development is unlikely. The application uses python to scrape data in a database, mootools javascript framework for the UI and PHP to handle database interaction. to talk back and for between Javascript and PHP my application uses JSON.
What I am planning now
There are 3 things that I want to do before I graduate if I can complete some of them I might want to add more:
Ok the program I am working on at work is going along smoothly. Our clients were impressed with the interface. As of right now we're working on the boring parts of the application. We need to make the forms that will allow CRUD on members. We are in the process of mapping the model with Hibernate to make this part of the application a bit less irritating.
UF Course Planner
For the Course Planner I have a version 1 working nicely. Anyone with a gatorlink username and password can try it out at denkou.ath.cx:8080/mlester/courseplanner/. There are features that I could add to it to make it better but from the people I have tested it with there is not much interest in the potential user base. In addition, I learned just about as much as I can learn from the project so continued development is unlikely. The application uses python to scrape data in a database, mootools javascript framework for the UI and PHP to handle database interaction. to talk back and for between Javascript and PHP my application uses JSON.
What I am planning now
There are 3 things that I want to do before I graduate if I can complete some of them I might want to add more:
- Django - I want to get familiar with this python web app framework because its look like a way to build high quality application quickly and makes working in the web pardigm less annoying
- Autonomous Airsoft Turret - Saw a paintball version and since this looks like an interesting image processing problem I would like to make this my senior project. I will be taking image processing so I think this is a feasible project.
- DJMark - I want to make a mp3 mixing program that makes beat matching easy for a non dj: I started looking into this its seems a bit dificult but I think I can do it.
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