Crazy little planet called Earth

I think I must have got lucky today (life can’t all be bad luck anyway), walking in Rose-Hill I finally managed to get hold of “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind”. It’s a rather old animation (1984) by the grandmaster Hayao Miyazaki.

I’ve seen a couple of the 3D movies that Hollywood is serving us these days – Over the edge was the latest one – and I must say that I’m fed up. It’s always the same very very predictable crappy story of the guy that is uncaring/bad/… who then changes to a good guy in the end – all is well that ends well – they are so bad that you are basically praying for some jokes to come rescue the movie.

Nausicaa, like other Miyazaki movies is fresh air. It may be 2D and the quality id not so good (since it dates back to 1984) but the story is appealing, light n everything u’d wish for after eating a double cheese movie burger from MacDonald Hollywood. I won’t provide a resume here coz i don’t thinkI’ll do better than Wikipedia. So I’ll just put the link here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausica%C3%A4_of_the_Valley_of_the_Wind

Well it seems that some wise “counselors” (counselors are always wise) in Pamplemousses have decided that the APEIM kids need some fresh air. Indeed, classroom learning is a thing of the past and now, classes should be done outside … under the trees. Through this unique opportunity, the handicapped will have the chance to study the flora and fauna of the garden of Pamplemousses’s … village hall.

So for two weeks now (according to what I heard from Radio + ), the kids along with their teacher are enjoying the sun (assize dans ti soleil … et ti laplie) – that will help them make some Vitamin D which is surely very good. So let’s hope that the “chief counselor” (qui dans toute sa sagesse a refuse de commenter l’affaire) will now find a better educational plan for the kids. After these poor souls are well versed in the wildlife of the village hall’s garden, the councelors might now consider sending them to Pamplemousses botanical garden – they will be on outing everyday and not just a couple of times per year and we’ll have …

… a the “One Nenuphar Per Child” – ONPC project!

This is one of ACM’s Special Interest Group that I was aware of but never paid a lot of attention to. Most of the time, i prefer to see what people are talking about in SIGGRAPH (the special inteest group on graphics) or SIGART (the group on A.I.). However since next year I plan to take only the bare minimum number of modules to teach, I’m trying to see what people teaching what I will teach do, what problems they have, what great ideas they have and SIGCSE (the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) really helps.

I found that some lecturers are trying to incorporate OpenGL shaders (which is quite an advanced stuff) in thier graphics module, some are teaching GPU programming, for games programming: some are using a game as example,… in other words, it’s got a lot of useful insights provided by people having the same problems as  me!

Python is All Around 

I feel it in my fingers
I feel it in my toes
Python is all around me
and so the feeling grows

It’s written on the web
It’s everywhere I surf
So if you really love coding
C’mon and python it

You know I love coding
I always will
My mind’s made up
The way that I feel
There’s no beginning
There’ll be no end
Coz on good code
You can depend
 
You gave your syntax to me
And I gave my logic to you
I need Python beside me
In everything I do

You know I love coding
I always will
My mind’s made up
The way that I feel
There’s no beginning
There’ll be no end
Coz on good code
You can depend

Coz on good code
You can depend

It’s written on the web
It’s everywhere I surf
So if you really love coding
C’mon and python it
C’mon and python it
So if you really love
C’mon and let it
If you really love coding
C’mon and let it
Now if you really love coding
C’mon and python it

I’m seeing python so everywhere these day and while listening to Billy Mack’s Christmas is All Around, I got this wacky idea. What about a song on python – like the song on Christmas in “Coding Love Actually”; would be great to have someone to sing this one

This week I was reading an article on the demise of academia by Dr Traver. It was describing the downfall of British universities and how it happened; the really scary part is that we, in Mauritius right now, seem to be doing exactly the same mistake that UK did some years back! I won’t tell you more but I very strongly recommend this article – available here.

However, what I’d like to talk about is a term that I found in the article “Frankenstein code”.

The Frankenstein’s monster, in Mary Shelley’s book, was created from bones of dead corpses and Victor Frankenstein sparks life into it. But in other versions (cinematographic ones), the Frankenstein monster is made up from patches of human corpses very crudely sewn together – this is the Frankenstein monster I’m referring to!

So where does coding fits in? Well for some assignments, students at uni tend to submit Frankenstein code; code taken from I don’t know where, written by I don’t know who (and so ridiculously complex with so many pointers that they seem to be made up only of *) that they have very very loosely sewn together (through function calls). The code segments seem to be hanging by a thread that may at any time snap!

Software Engineering (beurk… I hate that module at uni) precognises code reuse and our appretice Victor Frankenstein (read some students) are happily breathing life in patched up monsters . And, as assignments, we get a beauty pagent with Frankenstein monsters as contestants.

Knowing how to use a debugger is an essential skill that any programmer should have. Yet, I see many final year students and future “programmers” still not knowing how to use one whether in C++, Java, … and I pity these poor souls who have no choice but to use only print statements in their code to try to locate bugs.

Print statements is a good debugging technique and it works (and sometimes, for some bugs this is the only practical way of debugging) but deguggers, with the ability to set break-points, trace over or into functions is a class above and is definitely very very very useful.

Also, the first computer bug was technically a moth and this is an account from Grace Hopper:

"Things were going badly; there was something wrong in one of the circuits of the long glass-enclosed computer," she said. "Finally, someone located the
trouble spot and, using ordinary tweezers, removed the problem, a two-inch moth. From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it
had bugs in it."

Grace Hopper was one of the first programmers working with big Mark I computers.

The first bug.

Last Friday for lunch (the 15 mins that I had between a lab and a meeting), I suddenly badly wanted to eat “dholl purris”. While queueing up before getting served, I heard an “interesting” conversation.

Guy 1: “Do you have Adobe – After Effects”

Guy 2: “Got version X.”

Guy 1: “I’m looking for the latest version.”

Guy 2: “Only got a trial version for that” (in other words, don’t have the cracked version. It’s a great software, but haven’t tried it yet.

For those who’ve never heard of Adobe After Effects, it’s a very powerful (and expensive) software for doing post-production of videos that meant to be used by professionals. The guys I saw were far from being movie professionals – just amateurs who are having a go at launching the software, and clicking once or twice. It sounds cool to be using After Effects but pirating a software just to use less than 5% of its abilities is insane!!!

If you want to learn Video Editing, try jahshaka. It’s free and open-source but please don’t go pirating software just for the fun of it. Here in Mauritius, we have a culture of “pirating” software like in many third world countries I presume. It’s kind of normal to do that! The main arguements are: “Anyway it’s far too expensive – how can I affort that!” or pirating software is the only way to allow us to have access to powerful computer tools.

Both of these are bullshit. Many software are now available free (and some as openSource) where you will not need to spend a penny and still be able to use great software. So why pirate? Just to brag that you are using a pro-software. Forme it only shows your stupidity.

The Subsumption architecture was invented by Rodney Brooks (currently director of the MIT Computer Science and AI lab)  and his colleagues in the 1980’s. It is described according to wikipedia as:

“A subsumption architecture is a way of decomposing complicated intelligent behaviour into many “simple” behaviour modules, which are in turn organized into layers. Each layer implements a particular goal of the agent, and higher layers are increasingly more abstract. Each layer’s goal subsumes that of the underlying layers, e.g. the decision to move forward by the eat-food layer takes into account the decision of the lowest obstacle-avoidance layer.”

This is according to me a great way of tackling AI problems. The lower layers take care of the basic needs of the agent while the higher layer tend to improve on that; for example, you won’t look forward to buy a car if you can’t afford a pair of jeans and eventually you won’t look forward to buying a pair of jeans if you can’t have food.

Yesterday, I saw part of a very interesting program on TV and it was talking about the human brain. Humans supposedly have 3 types of brain: Reptilian, Mammalian and Neo-Cortex.

The first type of brain that came about during human evolution was the reptilian brain. It’s purpose is to take care of hunger, temperature control, keeping one safe. This is the brain that supposedly all reptiles have.

On top of that reptilian brain lies the Mammalian brain. The latter is responsible for emotions (moods, hormones,…). This is the brain associated to mammals.

Finally on top of the mammalian brain lies the Neo-Cortex. This one belongs to primates and we use it to have complex social interactions, language, manipulating tools,…

So now if you compare the Subsumption architecture to our 3 levels of brain. In a normal human, the reptilian brain will take care of finding food, then the mammalian brain will give us emotions and finally our Neo-Cortex will give us the ability to socialize but they all depend on the layer below them (if you are dying of hunger, socialising becomes secondary). Is it not very very similar to the Subsumption architecture?

No wonder it’s one of the AI theories that seems to make a lot of sense to me.

This is a nice anime with many funny characters. The story line is as follows:

Yoh is a shaman who is training to be the Shaman King (basically the leader of all shamans with powers close to God) to acheive his dream – live lazily while listening to music! Eventually the aim changes a bit as the story unfolds.

What makes this anime interesting is the array of characters that assemble round Yoh; there’s Manta – his best friend and literally a dwarf who has a laptop while the other shaman have a spirit, Yoh tyrannical girlfriend Anna who wants to become the wife of the Shaman king and trains Yoh like mad, and then there are several shaman following Yoh ouf of which Ryu stands out.

Ryu of the wooden sword is perhaps the funniest guy in the whole of this anime. He has an Elvis-like hair style, wears Elvis-like clothes and has very weird funny attitude. He is overconscious about girls, loves milly-chan and has a strange love relation with Lyzerg (a boy) and the best thing is the relation he has with Billy the guy who always seems to be there to give him a lift.

Ryu: “Hello Billy”

Billy: “Hello Boy”

Ryu has an unfaltering faith in Billy but eventually Billy fails him coz of … engine problems. So funny to watch.

By the way, the aim of Ryu is to find the “besto” place if he becomes the Shaman king but his aim eventuallychanges to helping Yoh become the shaman King

On the 18 of April 2007, I got this text from Emtel:

Aujourd’hui, realimentez votre Emtel Prepaye a travers les ATM des banques (MCB, SCB,MPCB & FCB) et gagnez 20% du montant realimente en bonus. Conditions applicable.

Since I didn’t have lots of money on my mobile, I went for a refill at MCB. Tried a first time, a second time but in vain. Had to go in a shop and buy a card! Eventually the next morning, my refill was finally credited (only once) but I didn’t get any bonus!

Yesterday, like I guess many Emtel users I guess, I got a text saying:

Aujourd’hui, realimentez votre Emtel Prepaye a travers les ATM des banques (MCB, SBM,MPCB & FCB) et gagnez 20% du montant realimente en bonus. Conditions applicable

Since I had only about Rs 10 on my mobile, tried from an MCB ATM but in vain. Transaction unsuccessful!

So how long am I going to be conned by the guys at Emtel!!! Is it some “publicite mensongere” that they are doing??? Being an IT guy, I should understand that probably many people are trying to refill their mobile the same way and so the network is saturated. But guess what, I DON’T CARE!!! I want a service and that’s all!

The only thing I see is that I can’t do a refill when I do not have money on my mobile and in addition to that, they are lying about their adverts. Now I’m just wondering when is the next time I’m gonna be conned again!