Processing at the speed of Light AND A great puzzle for you

Hey everyone,
Found so interesting reading for those of you who are bored, or avoiding studying like me :)

Optical DSP's developed in Israel!

The Watson Test - can you get it right?

Science Photo Competition

James Brunskill

Laser Weapons finally (sort of)

The Oakland Tribune Online has an interesting story about the current generation of laser weapons being developed. While we are still a ways off from seeing them on the battle field, they are getting closer and closer everyday.

One thing struck me though, they said that all the laser will be infrared, not visible light. This means that you would just see things blow up in the air for no apparent reason. It reminded me of the attack on Israel in Left Behind where airplanes, and bombs blew out of the sky for no reason. While I wouldn't want to take away from Gods place in that senario, A huge array of lasers places strategically could have the same effect.

Interesting to ponder anyway,

Have a Great Day

James

Jesux

Did you know that there is a Christian version of linux! Its called : Jesux I has features like auto blocking of dodgy sites, and bible verses when ever you open a shell window! These things are all relatively easy to add to any Linux distribution but its quite a cool idea :)

Read the about Jesux page if you are worried about the name or anything http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Node/4081/jesux.html

James

First And Follow Sets

I think it must be getting near to exam time, as A lot of people have been visiting my First And Follow Sets page
I just thought I would mention it, incase you too have an exam covering that topic.
Also I had one of my PCHelp Pages referenced on Experts-Exchange the other day!!!
Heres the link: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Security/Bugs_Alerts/Q_20647858.html

Well back to my essay,

James

Waikato ACM General Meeting

We just had our Waikato Student Chapter of the ACM AGM today, (Free Pizza if you missed it)
I have been replace as treasurer, as have all the rest of the Execs (bar secretary)
Check out the website http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/studentacm/
to see more, and get involved...

James

Can You Raed Tihs?

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

Language (Can You Raed Tihs?)

I didn't have any trouble reading it, but I am slightly dyslexic...
Interesting concept though, we don't really need all of the letters in a word, if the whole world agreed then English could be shortened and writing might be far more efficient. Altogether if people misspelled words, then it would be much harder to work out what they actually wanted to say.
Well, that's what we are all about here, Rambling :)
Seeya again soon

James

Log Based Files Systems Presentation

Today I did a presentation to a class on the paper "The Design And Implementation of a Log Structured File System" by Mendel Roseblum and John K. Ousterhout. Their paper describes a new type of structure for Files systems. (as of 1991)
CiteSeer's page about the paper - visit this site to download the original

Well, this being done my work load has settled down a bit, and I will try to get a little bit of work down at sourceforge (I have just started a project there) you can see the page by going to http://jhtmlmanager.sourceforge.net/

Well that's it for now, I will keep you posted though....

James

Blogger Pro!!!

Well I am sure that blogger must have a huge spike in number of posts right as they just anounced that the previously $34/year blogger pro is now free for everyone. So I will be able to take advantage of all the new features...

I am also working almost etirely out of linux now (having installed SUSE) I managed to get everything going for the first time!!! Every other attempt to install linux has failed to atleast have no workin sound, and they have all only suported my video card at low resolutions. I am now running at 1280X1024 which is higher than widows will run...

I love the command line.


See you all again soon

James

TestDisk - Life Saver

Tonight I decided to install linux, (as you do from time to time) and Managed to stuff up my partition table. I lost all my files, and windows stuff. I was scared stiff! Luckly I found this site.

Test Disk Data recovery

It is truely amazing, It managed to find and mount an old windows partition that I hadn't seen for years. It isn't the easiest thing to use, and in certainly doesn't hold your hand. But its free and it works. File this url away for next time you stuff up your partition table!!! Now, how do I get linux to install...

Have a great day,
James

The police state - BEES

This article might interest you...
It is interesting that every few months another article appears about bee society. People are starting to understand, not only their dance like speach, but now their politics...
Natures - The police state

Lessons in Failure - The Top 10 Ways to Ensure Your Search Marketing Strategy Sucks

Lessons in Failure - The Top 10 Ways to Ensure Your Search Marketing Strategy Sucks
- interesting article for webmasters, I don't agree with every thing they say though. Or at least I could quible over how they say it. For example they say that link programs will hurt your ranking, form what I have discovered this is not true. Otherwise you could bring down a site by signing it up to such a program. However I agree with that you probably shouldn't sign up for them, as they probably bring little traffic to the site, and unnessisarily clutter it.
Anyway I won't go on.
It's a good Article,

James

Richard Feynman streamed video Lectures

Another link that I just picked up from the Simon Singh Newsletter is this : Richard Feynman : "A theory of Everything"??? : Streamed video
The lecture topic itself is quite technical, but he is a brillient speaker and even if you just listen to the preamble I am sure you will enjoy it. (well maybe you need a touch of nerd) If you are somebody who wants to teach or is a teacher (in the truer sense of the word) then It might be interesting to watch as an example of someone who can make what could be very boring, both interesting and humorus. And he does so with out fancy slides, or live experiments.

I am probably raving far too much, and overhyping it but If you have some time to spare,
Why not check it out?

I don't have sufficent scientific knowlege to tell you how upto date or how relevant the topic is, as it was published (I think) in 1978.


James

Aventis Prize Won

BBC News on the Aventis Prize 2003 (the prize is for the best science publication for the year.) This year it went to "Right Hand, Left Hand" by Chris McManus. It sounds like an interesting book, but even if you aren't about to rush off and buy the book, the above page is worth a read.

I subscribe to few (very few) carefully selected newsletters, one of them is Simon Singhs News Letter In the latest issue he talkd of the aventus prize, and he offers a oppertunity to win a book if you can answer this question.
If there are 23 people in a room, then there is a 50/50 chance of a shared birthday, which
seems surprisingly high. The question is this: how many people do you need in the room for a 90% chance of a shared birthday?
If you are interested, here is a site that all but walks you through it: http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathtrek_11_23_98.html

I beleve the answer is 33 people. ie. 1 -(365/365*364/365....332/365) = 0.2047

Well thats about it for now,

Untill next time,

James

BLOGWISE - Blog Directory and Weblog Research

I have just had this site listed on BLOGWISE
So expect to see this link floating around a bit....




I have been really busy lately as usual, but I have lots of cool ideas to do some day. So keep checking back for new anouncements and stuff.

James

Mortgages

I heard an interesting thing the other day.
In Latin the root 'Mort' means Death (ie Mortal)
And the root 'Gage' meands "Grip" or "Grasp" ie (John went outside to gage the extent of the damage.)
Putting this together means the Mortgage means "Death Grip"....

Of course they were probably talking about it being something that has a grip on you untill it dies. But it's quite funny to think of it as something that has you in its grip untill you die :)

Anyway as can tell I am still alive, and I am working on the next version of JWT. It will be implemented in JAVA so if you don't already have Java installed on your computer you will have to download Java to run it. It think it is something like 5Mb. The actual JWT download should be relatively small. You will hear more about it soon enough.
The old version is still avaliable here if you are interested, or don't know what on earth I am talking about.

FTC steps in to help prevent 'Phishing' Scam's

How Not to Get Hooked by a 'Phishing' Scam

The FTC has just released this ?warning? or public notice about so called 'Phishing' Scam's. Basicly these people send emails that appear to come from some reputable source and trick you into inputing your credit card number and other personal details. Never ever give out that information, over the internet or phone or anywhere, if you didn't initiate the exchange. IE. if you are shopping at a reputable online shop (ie Amazon.com) you can safely give your credit card number and expect to recieve the product in the mail. If you get an email from "amazon.com" telling you to update your credit card details or something, It is probably a spammer trying trying to to trick you into giving them your credit card details. Anyway I won't go on just read the article from the FTC.

Google Toolbar - the best popup stopper

Google's Toolbar 2 is still in beta, but it is great! The best thing about it is the popup stopper. So far every popup stopper I have tried has either not worked or blocked the "open in new window" button as well. So far google has worked perfectly! It also interfaces with Blogger so if you have an account like this you should try it.

A Way to Pray

I was reading 1 Timothy the other day, and came accross this verse,
To Timothy my true son in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

It struck me that those three things would be good things to pray for each day, peace so that we can enjoy our day, and be refreshed and revitalised. Mercy that God would continue to bestow his mercy on us that inspite of our sins, and grace to recieve that which we don't deserve, in accordance to His will.

Anyway It's a thought,

James

Adjustments

The New version of blogger now released allows you to have Titles, and more readable archive names etc. So I have updated the format a little, Hopefull it should be a little more clear now...

I am sure you have all heard of Project Gutenberg, which is taking all the books it can find in the public domain, and converting them into digital format. So that they can be searched, and easily read by anyone. What you may not know is that you can be involved. If you visit http://www.pgdp.net/c/default.php you can sign up to be a proof reader. How it works is they give you a scaned image of a page, and the text it tried to take from the page. You just look for errors, add in missing formating etc. Their Documentation tells you all you need to know and a whole lot more....

If you are interested in books, or engish or just bored, why not sign up and have a go.


I also should tell you that Tiny Tiger Studios have released their first game called "track trouble", download the demo at http://tinytigerstudios.com/

well I guess thats about it for now

James