Trying out Math on Blogger

The following under determined equation \(Ax=b\) is an example.
Trying \(x_1 = 3\)
\begin{equation} \int_a^b \! f(x) \, \mathrm{d}x \label{eq.gaussian} \end{equation} which we can later refer back to as \eqref{eq.gaussian}.
In equation \eqref{eq:sample}, we find the value of an interesting integral:
\begin{equation} \int_0^\infty \frac{x^3}{e^x-1}\,dx = \frac{\pi^4}{15} \label{eq:sample} \end{equation} Very cool indeed.

Properties of a positive definite matrix

Just found out some interesting properties about positive definite matrices.

Given an Hermitian matrix M

• The eigenvalues of M is strictly positive.
• It is the Gram matrix of linearly independent vectors.
• It has a Cholesky decomposition. M = M' = L' * L = H' * H.  Where L is a triangular matrix with strictly positive diagonal elements.

Kernel density estimation

Look into this on Monday.

Kernel density estimation

Ideal parent of a high reactive child

Quoted from Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking

Someone who can read your cues and respect your individuality; is warm and firm in placing demands on you without being harsh or hostile; promotes curiosity, academic achievement, delayed gratification, and self-control; and is not harsh, neglectful, or inconsistent.

Sequence alignment paper

Need to take a look at this for bitmatching.
Dynamic programming and sequence alignment

Paper from Todd Veldhuizen

This is a nice summary of techniques used in the development of Blitz++
Techniques for Scientific C++

Household hazardous waste disposal

Household hazardous waste disposal

More setbacks

It's all too often now that I experience another blow to my fragile self-esteem. I often feel confident about the amount of learning I have gather over the period. But to excel in what I do, I have to take extra steps beyond what is provided to really make an impact. Being severely drained as I am, I'm not how much more effort I can squeeze out of me...

HK Locations

Swindon book co. Ltd
13-15 Lock Road,
Tsimshatsui
MTR Tsimshatsui Exit C2
858-2366-8001

Heading to DB

I think this is a very special place and one that I'm particularly fond of.

• DB D-Deck dining

Workload

It's one of those moments when you felt your intuition is correct and you have put in significant effort to start the process, but all of a sudden you have been told your intuition will not lead you to the usefulness people see in you in the future.

Now I'm taking a step back and make sure I will not lead myself astray but trust the guidance of an expert more experienced than I am.

Anyway. It's complex.

How do you get gigabit per second over the air?

This question is still keeping my awake during the night.

• Multiple bits per symbol is a given; there is simply no technology out there that can digitize at gigasample per second.
• Multiple antenna - how do you pack up to four antenna to a device? I can picture that being possible on a decent sized laptop, at 5GHz or more, over short distance with a favourable channel.
• Getting gigabits to the home. This becomes a question of what type of infrastructure is required to do just that. Fiber to the home, and a wireless access point (femtocell). A cell tower managing hundreds of gigabits of data over the air will be challenging.
• A lot has to take place, similar to idea of fuel cell vehicles. Infrastructure is a significant issue.

Simulations

It appears most simulations are done in a Linux environment. Research tools are both open and actively worked on by the academic community as well as the industry.

However, a fair amount of practical implementation tools are developed on Window.

Survey of the disciplines in communications research

The study of communications encompasses the following theories

• Information theory
• Coding theory
• Dectection theory
• Control theory
• Network theory
• Computation theory
• Game theory

The underlying fundamentals consist of

• Linear systems and signals
• Statistics and random processes
• Antenna & wave propagation

Simulations

• Large Deviation Theory
• Importance sampling

Implementation level

• DSP and alogrithms
• RF/Microwave circuits
• Embedded systems

Illustrations in Latex documents

I've searched around for tools to help with creating diagrams. The closest contender seems to be something that is vector based and supports importing and exporting eps format.

One expensive choice is Adobe Illustrator + MathType. Even at student price, Illustrator is still prohibitively $$$.

A good contender is Inkscape but it's not mature enough for dealing with importing eps equations and editing them in place.

Library barcode system

Keeping track of the details for our library setup.

• My old Toshiba Portege A100 laptop
• Metrologic MS9540 (part of Honeywell) - $150
• Barcode labels (1000 labels) -$28
• Gaylord
• Brodart
• Demco

Barcode details

• Symbology: code 3 of 9, 5-6 Characters, no check code
• Heading: "Mira Mesa Chinese Baptist Church"
• Sequence: nnnnn (n = 0-9, e.g. 01234)

Testing formulas

This is a cool way of adding formulas to email/blogs. However it's not supported natively on the browser. Under the hood, it makes a request to a server for an embedded gif image.

The LaTex Equation Editor website is here

UCSD planning

• Take first quarter at $8,000, no-support.

Winning moves

A very good cheat sheet on Winning Eleven (PES)'s moves.

Thought record

Now is the time to blow the dust off my blog and start something substantial. I'll have to see what I want to place on here. I'll start off probably by writing what I've learned during the period.

Hair Stylist

Stylist: Maki
Muse Beauty Salon
7710 Balboa Ave. Suite 125
San Diego, CA
92111

LA Restaurants

Maxim Cafe

Hong Kong style western dishes

18904 East Gale Ave,

Rowland Heights, CA 91748

626-913-7777

A&J Restaurant
Taiwanese

14805 Jeffrey Rd. #D
Irvine, CA 92720
949-786-3585

July 19, 2008
The Kitchen
203 West Valley Blvd.
Alhambra, CA 91801
626-289-4828
Upscale chinese cuisine, relatively speaking. Great food.

Tasty Garden
288 West Valley Blvd.
Alhambra, CA 91801
626-300-8262

July 4, 2008
Din Tai Fung
1108 South Baldwin Avenue (First store)
1088 South Baldwin Avenue (New, larger, modern looking)
Arcadia, CA 91007
626-574-7068

Phoenix Food Boutique
1108 South Baldwin Avenue
Arcadia, CA 91007
626-284-2388
Beside the drinks, casual food, it has amazingly tasty curry fish balls, not to be missed.

SD Restaurants

This is where I will compile a list of restaurants and how their fare.

Chedi Thai Bistro
737 Pearl St. Suite 110

La Jolla, CA 92037

858-551-8424

Lanna Thai Cruisine
4501 Mission Bay Dr.
San Diego, CA 92109
858-274-8424

Extraordinary Desserts - Little Italy

1430 Union St.

San Diego, CA 92101

619-294-7001

Tajima Japanese Restaurant
4681 Convoy St
San Diego, CA 92111
(858) 576-7244

Curry House - Japanese style curry and spaghetti
3860 Convoy St. #102
San Diego, CA 92111
(858) 278-2454

Ichiro Japanese Restuarant
4344 Convoy St # Q
San Diego, CA 92111
(858) 565-8603

Lorna's Italian Kitchen
3945 Governer Drive
San Diego, CA 92122
858-452-0661

Dae Jang Keum (Korean fine Cuisine)
7905 Engineer Rd.
San Diego, CA 92111
858-573-2585

Sante Ristorante (Italian) - May 17, 2008
Located at an inside street in La Jolla, not that busy compared to the ones along the coast. But this is a Gem that cannot be missed. Excellent seafood pasta, and delicious tartufo. Highly recommend.

7811 Herschel Avenue
La Jolla, CA
858-454-1315

KI sushi - May 14, 2008
I like the atmosphere and lunch is not bad for the price you pay.

Costa Verde Shopping Center
8650 Genesee Ave
San Diego, CA 92122

Cafe Coyote - May 4, 2008
Great taste of Margaritas and Mexican food.

2461 San Diego Avenue
San Diego, CA 92110

Osetra - May 1, 2008
Gorgeous and modern ambiance with a spectacular 3 storey wine collection and suspension lift for getting the wine! Expensive place, but well worth a visit. Thanks Shirley for bringing me there!

904 5th Avenue, San Diego, CA 92101
Gaslamp Quarters

The art of moving...

Don't let anyone tell you moving is not stressful; when you have to cross the border that complicates the matter even more.

I understand now how much my dad had to go through when he moved our entire family over. That must have been a feat of enormous proportion. He moved into a completely new culture with a different governing system. But I had no idea at the time, since I was still trying to understand why we moved and coping with adjusting to yet another move in my young life - I was 14 and rebellious.

From HK to England, to Toronto, to Waterloo, to Ottawa, there was not once that I had company while I moved. From Ottawa to Waterloo, and now Waterloo to San Diego, I'm going solo. The lesson I learned from this is that a modern mercenary has to be mobile as ever. You simply cannot keep too many things.

Piotr Wozniak's prescription to becoming a genius

When someone spends his whole life mastering the technique of learning, you listen...

Clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity.

Last glimpse of the Compaq Portable

Items for sale

This is a list of stuff I want to unload, I'm willing to give away some of them if I find a suitable owner.

• Black and Decker Toaster oven
• Car pedal lock
• Propane camping lamp
• Little Green portable wet vacuum
  
• Cricket stuff
• 2 Supersoaker water guns
• Hockey Gear
• Fishing rod
• PS2 steering wheel
• 2 Sleeping bags and mats
• camping chairs
• 6 foot folding table
• Inflatable sofa and mattress
• Camping tent for 4
• Bauer Roller blades size 8 1/2
• Michelin Pilot Alpin snow tires on steel rims 195/65/15 + hubcabs
  
• Broil-Mate 50K BTU Gas barbecue (Natural Gas) with stainless steel utensils
  
• Worx 13A 16" Mulching and bagging electric lawn mower, handle folds down
  
• 16 foot extension ladder
• Lawn rake, leaf scraper
  
• 2 Snow shovels
• 2 SnowZinger magic carpets
• Volley ball, basketball
  
• 2 Weight adjustable Dumbbells
  
• Stand-up vacuum
• Wine glasses
  
• Camera tripod
  

Peter Drucker on the Individual in an organization

• Effectiveness must be learned
• Focus on contribution
• Know your strengths and values
• Know your time
• Effective decisions
• Functioning communications
  
• Leadership as work
  
• Principles of innovation
  
• The second half of your life
  
• The educated person
  

Reflections on 2007

2007 is another challenging year for me.

I have to fight another severe episode of depression. Luckily, I have the help of my dad's friend and a renowned psychiatrist Dr. Wong. He came to the rescue in April and I was fortunate to receive treatment immediately in April. I have been doing quite well now, continuing taking anti-depressant, and I have also kept in constant contact with a local psychiatrist and a very good psychologist in case I needed immediate attention. It's funny how my doc parallel this condition to a diabetic, but again, I am more fortunate than a diabetic because I don't necessarily have to be on medication all my life.

At work, I have created a comfortable environment for myself and I am working quite autonomously. I have gain much respect from my peers so there is now synergy at work, I am spending much less time working on issues.

I have been continuing my goal to establish myself in the soccer field. I am happy to say I have succeeded by being promoted to captain for our dept soccer team for next year. Although my ultimate goal is to coach little kids, not big kids, but it's one small step closer to my goal.

I am continuing my work helping people around me and helping the students at KWCAC. They are a handful but I think I am now enjoying my time helping them. It's a very satisfying experience.

Lucinda has been my big sister and continue to have strong influence on me in my quest to become godly. She is a wonderful person and I will learn much from her.

All my brothers are now in North America, within an hour flight from each other. I think this is the start of something tremendous as we can co-ordinate our activities with much more efficiency than before.

I am looking forward to 2008 as I believe this will be the turning point of my life and the lives of the people I care and love.

CIBC visa transaction

Date of transaction: Sept 15
Received call: approx. 12:30PM
Transaction proceeded 11:01AM
Transaction declined 4:13PM
Best buy order number 5956664

Rental agreement - draft

- Maintain cleaning schedule
- Share use of kitchen and laundry facilities
- Hydro, heat, water included?
- Phone, TV, cable
- blah blah blah...

Waterloo weekend getaway

Waterloo - Saturday afternoon - visit St. Jacobs market,
- Saturday night - German food at the Heidenberg http://www.oldhh.com/rest.html
- Games at my place.

Stratford - Sunday noon - brunch at the church restaurant, http://www.churchrestaurant.com/index.php
- Sunday afternoon - stroll at the swan river park, or catch a theater show
- Return home


Useful links:
Stratford dining ideas
Waterloo dining ideas

Long distance plan

City Telecom http://www.ctinets.on.ca
Distributel http://www.distributel.ca
Onlinetel(Call zone) http://www.onlinetel.com

Cooking for Engineers

Cooking for Engineers

My once in a lifetime poker experience

Restaurants in Waterloo region

Tried:

• Sole, Waterloo (pronounced soliel, french) - pretty good, decent price
• Thai Coconut Island, Cambridge - cheap, but shabby place and food.
• Verses, Kitchener - best restaurant in town, pricey
  

Recommended by others:

• Charcoal Steak House, Kitchener
  
• Chefs on King, Kitchener
  
• King Crab, Kitchener
  
• Modern India, Kitchener
  

Gvim custom settings

" Custom settings - DKWH
colors blue
set guifont=Lucida_Console:h10:cANSI
set lines=50

" RIM coding style - 4 characters indents, no tabs
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab

" tags file search
set tags=tags;/

" smart search
set ignorecase
set smartcase

" taglist hotkey - needs taglist.vim installed
" - which needs ctags installed
" - see www.vim.org for details
map :TlistToggle

" syntax fold
set foldmethod=syntax
set nofoldenable

" End of Custom settings

Hitting the 100,000 milestone

Last Sunday marks the rolling of 100,000km for my trusty RSX and it also signals the end of all Acura factory warranty. Now I really have no incentive to bring my car to the Acura dealer, all the better. I will have Waterloo Honda take care of it, which costs a tonne cheaper too!

In this together

1. If you arrive at work in a bad mood, leave it at the door.
2. When offered a juicy bit 0f gossip at work, refuse to hear it.
3. Always do what you say you will do. Promise management.
4. Avoid and stop potential offensive dialog regarding sex, politics, religions.
5. The rule when it comes to sexual atttraction at work - Don't look, don't touch.
6. Keep private about your opinions.
7. "Please and thank you" at work is commom courtesy.
   

Air Canada

Incident report:

Date: Sept 10, 2006 7:15am
Location: Ottawa International Airport

Boarded flight:
AC 443 departing Ottawa 8am

Employee badge number:
Air Canada counter clerk
05/2009
1/UC
YOW/100597

Employee physical appearance:
Appeared to be in senior role
White male, grey hair - in his 50s

• Client Checks bag in. Small carry on lugguge, weighs approx. 2 pounds
  
• Placed bag next to counter clerk within clerk's arm reach
  
• Bag oriented in inconevient position
• Clerk asked client to have bag flipped
• Client responded with "The bag weighs 2 pounds", and obliged to flip bag
  
• Clerk obviously offended by the tongue-in-cheek comment, and acted in retaliation
  
• Clerk refused to process e-ticket and boarding pass - his commited duty as he offered to serve client
  
• Clerk intentionally made client wait in another line, without giving reason
• Client asked for name/identification from Clerk, Clerk refused to provide identification voluntorily
• Boarding pass smoothly processed by another counter clerk after waiting in another line.
  
• Client had to note down badge number when the contents of clerk's badge was desernible.
  
• Client was greeted by RCMPs at the security line, apparently clerk persisted in his retaliatory actions by reporting this as an "incident" to the RCMPs. He further distorted the situation and made the RCMP believe client is an "eratic" individual that may cause harm to the public.
• Besides the agitated clerk, all other individuals that had dealt with client find client to be behaving in good manner. This includes the second client that processed the boarding pass, the RCMPs, the security station staff, the attendent at the boarding gate, the attendents on the plane.
• This leads to the only conclusion that clerk is acting inappropriately and with intent to cause harm to others and refusing to fulfill his duty.
  
• This behaviour is dangerous, counter productive and damages the reputation of the company the clerk represents. The clerk is in no way fit for client serving duties.
  
• Client demands 1) the clerk be disciplined appropriately 2) Clerk be removed from active client serving duties 3) a formal apology be given by Air Canada to permit this behaviour in crucial client interaction roles.
  

Ability model of emotional intelligence

1. Read People-Identify Emotions: This refers to the ability to identify accurately how you, and those around you, are feeling and your ability to express these feelings. More than awareness, this ability stresses accuracy of awareness.
2. Get in the Modd-Use Emotions: This special ability helps you determine how emotions help you and how they work in harmony with thinking. Your ability to use emotions changes your perspective, allowing you to see the world in different ways and to fell what others feel.
3. Predict the Emotional Future-Understand Emotions: Emotions have their own language, and they have their own logical moves. The ability to understand emotion means that y ou can determine why you feel the way you do and what will happen next.
4. Do It with Feeling-Manage Emotions: Emotinos convey important information, so it is valuable to be open to our emotions and to use this information to make informed decisions.

Soccer coaching

• Soccer coaching manual

• Ottawa south united

Canada to US business immigration

US Visas

Bond prices

The central tenet of Bond Market investing is that prices and yields move in opposite directions. Bond prices go up when Bond yields go down, and vice-versa.

Pursuant to this relationship, Bonds are often considered "counter-cyclical" securities, meaning that Bond prices tend to be high and yields tend to be low when the economy's performance is poor. This factor is probably the single most important reason for having some Bonds in your portfolio.

Though there is a great deal of overlap, distinction needs to be made between factors affecting interest rates and factors affecting the price of an individual bond. Interest rates shift in response to a number of factors including: the demand and supply for credit, Federal Reserve policy (monetary policy), fiscal policy (government budgeting and expenditures), tax policy, exchange rates, general economic conditions, price inflation, perceptions and forecasts for future inflation and a host of lesser factors.

Individual Bond prices are not only affected by all of these factors, but additional ones as well. These factors include: supply and demand for the specific issue, liquidity of the issue, special characteristics of the issue, credit quality, perceptions and forecasts for changes in credit quality and a host of lesser factors.

Soccer balls

Before I throw away our cherished but deflated soccer ball. I thought I should keep a picture of them all.

IT Band Treatment

Iliotibial Band Friction Syndrome Treatment

Debt free!

Woohoo! I am once again debt free! Working even harder now to get to the next stage of my life.

Software manager's checklist

Execution

• Do you have your customer's requirements?
• Do you have a n approved budget?
• Do you have an approved roadmap?
• Do you avhe an approved schedule?
• Are you delivering the product on time?
• Do you hire developers in a timely fashion?
• Is your team capable of dealing wiht change?
• Are you capable of keeping your team focused and resisting change?
• Do your customers encounter a lot of quality issues with released products?
• Do you and your team measure how well you do your work on a regular basis to find ways to improve?

Communication

• Does your team understand your company's strategy?
• Does your team understand engineering's roadmap?
• Does your team understand why the roadmap meets the goals of the strategy?
• Do you have regular communication meetings and e-mail with your team?
• Are people on y our team willing to tell you bad news?
• Do you hear information about your team from your team before you hear it from others?
• Do members of your team communicate with each other and the rest of the company in a respectful manner?
• Do you provide information to your boss before he or she has to ask for it?
• Do other people in the company know what your team is doing and accomplishing?
• Do you communicate in a positive fashion?

Empowerment

• Does your team develop and buy into their schedules?
• Do you avoid micromanagement?
• Do you delagate tasks and let your reports proceed without interference?
• Do you make it clear what your employees are accountable for?
• Do you provide leadership opportunities for your employees?
• Does your team have a sense of urgency in addressing issues?
• Do you set cleawr roles and responsibilities for your employees?
• Do all the members in your team know what they need to accomplish each week before they can go home fo the weekend?
• Do your developers consider your organization a positive work environment?

Things to juggle

• Resources
• features
• Dates
• Quality

Caveats

• If you remove too many features, you won't have a competitive product.
• If you add too many features, you won't make your dates.
• If you scrimp on quality, you'll get a bad reputation.
• If you wait until the product is prefect, you'll miss the market window.
• If you make your engineers work extra hours all the time, they'll burn out.
• If you add too many resources , you can run out of money.
• If you slip the schedule, you make it hard for the sales team to sell and you might miss a market window.

Core Competencies of Web 2.0 Companies

• Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
• Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
• Trusting users as co-developers
• Harnessing collective intelligence
• Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
• Software above the level of a single device
• Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

Web 2.0 Design Patterns

In his book, A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander prescribes a format for the concise description of the solution to architectural problems. He writes: "Each pattern describes a problem that occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice."

1. The Long Tail
   Small sites make up the bulk of the internet's content; narrow niches make up the bulk of internet's the possible applications. Therefore: Leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.
2. Data is the Next Intel Inside
   Applications are increasingly data-driven. Therefore: For competitive advantage, seek to own a unique, hard-to-recreate source of data.
3. Users Add Value
   The key to competitive advantage in internet applications is the extent to which users add their own data to that which you provide. Therefore: Don't restrict your "architecture of participation" to software development. Involve your users both implicitly and explicitly in adding value to your application.
4. Network Effects by Default
   Only a small percentage of users will go to the trouble of adding value to your application. Therefore: Set inclusive defaults for aggregating user data as a side-effect of their use of the application.
5. Some Rights Reserved. Intellectual property protection limits re-use and prevents experimentation. Therefore: When benefits come from collective adoption, not private restriction, make sure that barriers to adoption are low. Follow existing standards, and use licenses with as few restrictions as possible. Design for "hackability" and "remixability."
6. The Perpetual Beta
   When devices and programs are connected to the internet, applications are no longer software artifacts, they are ongoing services. Therefore: Don't package up new features into monolithic releases, but instead add them on a regular basis as part of the normal user experience. Engage your users as real-time testers, and instrument the service so that you know how people use the new features.
7. Cooperate, Don't Control
   Web 2.0 applications are built of a network of cooperating data services. Therefore: Offer web services interfaces and content syndication, and re-use the data services of others. Support lightweight programming models that allow for loosely-coupled systems.
8. Software Above the Level of a Single Device
   The PC is no longer the only access device for internet applications, and applications that are limited to a single device are less valuable than those that are connected. Therefore: Design your application from the get-go to integrate services across handheld devices, PCs, and internet servers.

Testing Flickr

11P1010393
Originally uploaded by dkwho.

Flickr is pretty cool...

Thai recipes

Tasty Thai form Delia

Guitar music

對面的女孩看過來

最佳損友

Restaurant Links

Michiel's Restaurant Page

Software Development on Linux

Software Development on Linux

Computer watch...

Future Shop: Computers: Desktop Computers: HP AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.2GHz Computer (A1114N-REF) - Refurbished - Web Only

My japanese name...

My japanese name is 浜野 Hamano (seaside field) 明 Akira (bright).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

Ski Extreme Membership - Gear Exchange

Ski Extreme Membership - Gear Exchange

UOttawa links

course offering.

ELG 5180 (EACJ 5704) ADVANCED DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

Techniques and performance of digital signalling and equalization over linear bandlimited channels with additive Gaussian noise. Fading multipath channels: diversity concepts, modelling and error probability performance evaluation. Synchronization in digital communications. Spread spectrum in digital transmission over multipath fading channels. Precludes additional credit for SYSC 5605. Prerequisites: SYSC 5504 or ELG 5375 or the equivalent.

Life is a repeating journey...

I can't believe how life repeats itself. Because I seemed to have lost my knack to do the things I used to do well. It's all because I have been chasing goals that are too far out of reach.

What stress does is it brings out the worst in you. I really don't like that, no matter how much EI I have, I cannot control my ourbursts. I vow never to let stress hurt me again. I hate to feel helpless and not be able to enjoy life simply because I am too drained to find a positive side of things.

Wines featured in Sideways

Byron 1992 Sparkling
Sanford Vin Gris
Kalyra Chardonnay
Kalyra Cab Franc
Fidder Head Sauvignon Blanc
Whitcraft 2001 Pinot Noir
Sea Smoke Botella Pinot Noir
Kistler Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir
Latour Pommard Ier Cru
Hitching Post Bien Nacido Pinot Noir
Hitching Post Highliner Pinot Noir
Andrew Murray Syrah
'61 Cheval Blanc

Oliver Twist

My attachment to my English schooling tells me this will be an enjoyable movie that will bring back fond memories. It's simply not a happy children movie, but it is something that's very special to me, just as HGTG is a classic for me.

Kernel Hackers' Guide to git

Git-Howto

Paradigm shift

This morning I read a passage about paradigm shift. Not so much the explanation of what it is, but the reason for understanding the importance of it.

This is very interesting the fact that when one looks at an image he will see it based on his interpretion, and his interpretion of the image is derived heavily from his past experience.

Philosophical questions...

I have a tonne of these questions, how can I permeate those to friends and people who care? It's a balance of time between the imminent tasks at hand, which everyone is busy dealing with, and those philosophical questions that changes the way you think and approach issues that will benefit you.

Team basics

Definition from Wisdom of Teams:

A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.

Trust in a sentence...

"...Trust is hard to earn, easy to lose and nearly impossible to win back."

What people do not realize is the capacity of people to improve and correct.

The world is often accustomed to the fact that people's character is set in stone. Often this is true, there are a lot of cases where people may revert back to their old self if he is pushed/shoved into a corner. Few people has what it takes to admit mistakes and demand for change, since such actions are often disruptive.

Characters do change. Ones willingness to change is variable. It may take extraordinary effort/circumstances to make this happen. There are just numerous ways to consider one's will/capacity to push for change and embrace it. Some people can identify what a person's character is with a short five minute conversation, and infer the person's willingness to change. Some people wait out a period of time to see if character improvement is noticed. And of course, to a large degree, your family, who means most to you, are the ones you will have to continue to forgive and embrace in perpetuality.

Working approach

1. Can we break up hierarchical patterns by assigning work tasks based on skills rather than position? Can we assign leadership roles to someone other than the CEO?
2. What specific rules would help us work better together, and "equalize" our individual, real work contributions to group goals?
3. Can we reconfigure our group into subteams more appropriate to the specific issues, opportunities, or problems identified?
4. How can we most effectively foster teams down the line?

Complementary Skills

1. Do we have important skills that are not best captured by our formal roles and responsibilities?
2. Can we better utilize the basic skills and experience of our group by working together beyond as well as within our formal, functional responsibilities?
3. Could some of us build skills in other areas, and thereby help strengthen the overall capabilities of the group?
4. Can we modify our membership to include others down the line to enhance our collective ability to achieve particular goals?

Identifying Team Performance Opportunities

1. Can we convert the company mission into a more group specific performance purpose for our group, including specific performance goals necessary to accomplish that group purpose.
2. Which of our performance challenges are best accomplished by individual assignments and responsibility? Which require a team effort and a set of collective work-products? Can we test the water by trying a team approach on one or two of these?
3. How can we ensure that we each subordinate our individual priorities to the group's purpose and goals?
4. How can we measure our mutual progress toward our group's purpose and goals as well as monitor the effectiveness of those teams among us that are needed?

Applied Cryptography

How PGP works decribes cryptography better than any I have seen. Simple and straight forward.

Never felt so sad...

I have never saw a movie that I connect so well. I don't know what I have done wrong in my past lives, but it seems like I have to pay it all back this time around... Maybe there are more people who are worst off than I do, but at this moment I am brought to my knees. Where is my family when I need them? I know they are around, but I can't seem to grab them with my hands. They feel so distant. Maybe like Ben says, I have to let go of it all, myself included.

Handling stress

Taken from uOttawa Health Services

Four ways of handling stress:

• Be aware of your interpretation of stressful situations. since stress is directly related to your thoughts, try thinking in a more positive manner.
• Try relaxation methods such as meditation. This can be helpful in reducing anxiety and managing stress. By turning on the relaxed state, you are turning off the stressed state. This is because you can't be releaxed and stressed at the same time.
• Get physical! Techniquues such as breathing exercises, stretching, and walking all help in preventing stress and lower the physical signs of stress.
• have some fun! Go out and do something you trule enjoy. Whether it is a hobby or vacationing, you need to experience tings that give you genuine pleasure.

Having a creative mind is essential... when you can only think of one thing at a time, you lose the positive perspective at the time you are thinking about the negative.

Anatomy of famous people

All the well known people I know about are: people that love what they do, good communicators, unselfish and most of all, good tempered... which I am not. How can I fix that?

What team leaders do and do not do

Credits again go to the authors of Wisdom of Teams

1. Keep the purpose, goals, and approach relevant and meaningful.
2. Build commitment and confidence.
3. Strengthen the mix and level of skills.
4. Maage relationships with outsiders, including removing obstacles.
5. Create opportunities for others.
6. Do real work.

Best time to get beer

Just noted, the Beer store closes at 10pm Monday to Thursday, 11pm Friday and Saturday and 5pm on Sunday.

Thousand Island, Boldt castle cruise.

If you want to head out for the Boldt castle cruise, go early, its a five hour ride. The earlier ride begins at 10:30am and the next ride is 3pm. Could still do the 3pm mid summer when the day is longer.

Best time to get wine

Just noted, LCBO closes at 10pm Monday to Saturday and 5pm on Sunday.

Other Wine stores within Loblaws and Independent normally closes at 6pm.

Common approaches to building team performance

Of course this is extracted from Wisdom of Teams. Its here for my recollection. All credits goes to the authors of the book.

1. Establish urgency and direction. The more urgent and meaningful the rationale, the more likely it is that a real team will emerge.
2. Select members based on skills and skill potential, not personalities. Three categories of skills are relevant: 1) technical and function, 2) problem-solving, and 3) interpersonal. The key issue for potential teams is striking the needed skill levels versus developing the skill levels after the team gets started.
3. Pay particular attention to first meetings and actions. First impressions are very important. Leaders communicate their seriousness largely by how much time they devoted to the team. First meetings is the best moment to communicate key themes and directions.
4. Set some clear rules of behaviour. Rules test a group's credibility. The rules must be enforced. Teh most critical early rultes pertain to attendance, ("no interruptions to take phone calls"), discussion ("no sacred cows"), confidentiality ("the only things to leave thsi room are what we agree will leave thsi room"), analytic approach (" facts are friendly"), end-product orientation ("everyone gets assignments and does them"), constructive confrontation ("no figner pointing"), and contributions ("everyone does real work").
5. Set and seize upon a few immediate performance-oriented tasks and goals. Whether quantitiatively or qualitatively assessable, the performanace goals must include a clear "stretch" component. Significantly, the events generated by such stretch goals do not have to be successes. Teu wise team recognizes the value of performance-oriented events and takes advantage of them regardless of how they turn out.
6. Challenge the group regularly with fresh facts and information. New information causes a potential team to redefine and enrich its understanding of the performance challenge, thereby helping the team shape a common purpose, set clearer goals, and improvie on its common approach.
7. Spend lots of time together. Creative insights as well as personal bonding require impromptu and casual interactions just as much as analyzing spreadsheets, interviewing customers, competitors, or fellow employees, and constantly debating issues.
8. Exploit the power of positive feedback, recognition, and reward. Even the strongest egos respond to positive feedback - when it is real.

Most potential teams can become real teams, but not without taking risks involving conflict, trust , interdependence, and hard work.

Linux RT approaches

Linux RT approaches. An amazing survey of the current state of art for RT Linux by IBM's Paul McKenney.

Curry dish

First thing I have to remind myself is warming up the pot with oil needs only a small amount of heat, oil gets hot really fast. Something to keep me from burning myself.

Ingredients for curry is stir-fried onions, carrots, potatoes, and a choice of meat, and other favourite veggies.

Diving schools in Ottawa

Kanata diving supply offers cheaper courses and is quite obviously, located in Kanata.

Burton's dive service is the other alternative located in Vanier/downtown Ottawa.

DRTX initiative

Common objective for real time executive.

With the sophistication of microcontroller and the advance of modern communication stack and bus technology the environment a microcontroller is used now is ever more complex. The increasingly complex environment is fuelling the need for a context switching executive to handle background tasks.

In most embedded control environment, time-critical functions are likely to be shifted to hardware or interrupt driven routines, leaving the executive to do non-realtime tasks, nonetheless the response time is still the emphasis, the trade-off between response time and throughput is carefully considered.

The consideration of plugging in a real time executive to existing loop based task handling is taken into account.

Resource monitoring and instrumentation of the RTX is a key component of the design. Intregrating these functionalities to existing open source tool will be preferred over non-standard tools.

The inclusion of a standard IP stack, USB bus will form part of the DRTX framework.

OLS 2005 - day 3

A late start for today since the topics aren't truely relevant to NMX.

But Ian Pratt's talk on Xen is the most spectacular our of them all.

Bumped into Marcelo today and introduce myself to him. He was chatting with Andrew Morton at the time.

OLS 2005 - day 2

Today is an extremely productive day. I got to meet pretty much all the ppc embedded people. They are a great bunch. However I missed the CE forum's embedded BOF, it happened at the same time as the ppc BOF, but it was well worth the time.

Matt Porter's talk on RapidIO is excellent as well.

Rusty Russell's talk on nfsim is cool, he is truely another great figure.

Greg K-H is also an amazing driver person.

Murphy's embedded system seems to be a good idea. Should check out his paper when I have the time.

Profiling Java and pretty much anything else in Linux is done using OProfile now.

OLS 2005 - day 1

The spotlight of the first day is J. Corbet's Road map for the 2.6 kernel. It has interesting git talk and new features for the kernel. Very Informative.

The CELinux forum is holding an embedded BOF tomorrow sounds very interesting. Will also be meeting up with the ppc group tomorrow. XIP, and Power management will be excellent topics to be explored tomorrow.

Timesys is not doing particularly well as the real-time module is not making any sales and the notable exit of Jason M.

The bluetooth stack is a humongous beast to be honest. Intel's ACPI spec is another beast. Those two topics really make me feel like a small tiny potato.

Noted from today's display booth is that CELinux fixed the ARM compiler in thumb mode among other things. C++ is nowhere in sight for embedded computing.

Windows XP chinese file/directory names support

This one has me looking at the problem for hours. Waste of life to be honest. I truly believe why so many people curse Microsoft, until someone convince me otherwise.

As of today this is my conclusion...

• Asian fonts support is needed to view chinese characters in MSN Messenger and ICQ.
  
• NJStar viewer does not properly display chinese characters unless the Asian fonts support is unchecked.
• What's wierd is unchecking Asian fonts support does not make reading chinese chars in MSN Messenger go away. I found no documentation on the web that explains this behaviour, which to me seems very user unfriendly.
  

XCODE II video processor

XCODE II video processor.

Brian's web portal

Brian's web portal. His nifty picture collection augmented with great story telling.

Fuel consumption guide.

Fuel comsumption guide. Official document from the government of Canada.

Bruce Eckel's electronic books

Bruce is still the man for computer language tutorials. His collection now covers C++, Java and Python. This link will get you to his books page.

Embedded Linux

Craig Hollabaugh's Embedded Linux has evolved to a website
full of useful links and a EWiki. Haven't have time to check things out on the web site. In any case the link for downloading programs written in the book is still available. Will check it out when I have time.

Embedded Linux: Hardware, Software, and Interfacing
Craig Hollabaugh, Ph.D.
ISBN 0-672-32226-9

Numerical Recipes in C

Numerical Recipes in C. The neat little book of algorithms.

More on Ottawa for OLS

Places for beer

• Heart & Crown
• D'Arcy Mcgee
• Alexander's Lower Deck
• Earl of Sussex
• Mother McGintey's

Events

Museums

Ext2/3 access solutions for Windows

This is an up-to-date perspective on ext2/3 access solutions. Of course, there will inevitably other development that will pop up as I am writing, since this is still very much a very active topic.

Explore2fs. This is more popular with it's more user friendly documentation and FAQs.

LTOOLS. Very good documentation on Windows raw disk access issues.

More updates to come...

Plan for Ambrose

Indoor golf
Indoor go-kart
Pub/Dinner @ Market
Ice-cream

Scuba diving courses in Ottawa

Burton's dive service

TCPSAT announcement

TCPSAT announcement. This is what remains of the TCPSAT group. It is no longer active.

Freestyle Soccer

Freestyle Soccer