The other side of the firewall

Migration to bloglines

2005-05-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

I have migrated my blog there.

Hey, this is a free country.
I am going with the best service I can find.

I find Blogger's interface clumsy and the service sometimes not responsive.

optical illusion

2005-04-02T12:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~moraes/illusion.html

SVG

2005-03-30T21:02:00.000-08:00

SVG is an XML format to describe pictures.
This is great because this is truly multi-platform.

The problem is that thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifhere are very few tools that support SVG.
Ideally, you want to find multi-platform tools to create, edit and display SVG pictures.

Here are some of them:

Sodipodi
Skencil
SVGMaker (PDF to SVG)
The Gimp
Adobe Illustrator
Corel WebDraw

There are other Unix tools that can convert from various format (e.g. pic, fig) to SVG.

Learning the guitar

2005-03-24T15:58:00.000-08:00

They only keyboards I can play are QWERTY.
I am thinking about learning a real instrument.

I got frustrated with piano. Guitar looks more intriguing and my roomate has a cool electric guitar.

I don't have time to take lessons (even though I am sure this is the best way).

Maybe this is the solution: a guitar that shows where and when to put your fingers. This is a really great use of technology for learning.

Sweet device

2005-03-18T06:25:00.000-08:00

Here is a device from Siemens that recognizes human words and transmit them via Bluetooth to a computer or a base station.

Can imagine walking in my apartment and controling by voice what music plays, what channels are on, etc.

Seinfeild scripts

2005-03-16T16:43:00.000-08:00

if you are a big fan of the "show about nothing", here are the scripts of all the episodes.

UML sequence diagrams, the easy way

2005-03-10T06:48:00.000-08:00

If you need to generate some UML sequence diagrams and don't want to waste your time with traditional UML tools, check UMLGraph.

You describe your diagram as text: you define objects and messages between them. And the tool generates for you the diagrams.

Buying an LCD monitor

2005-02-23T20:53:00.000-08:00

I am struggling about which monitor to buy.
Here is an interesting buying guide.

Check also this review of the latest Dell 24inch monitor.

Kitchenware design

2005-02-23T20:21:00.000-08:00

Beautiful piece.

Sand artist

2005-02-23T20:19:00.000-08:00

Here is a video of a sand artist, that draws on a screen with sand.
Very, very impressive.
Check the video.

XUL development

2005-01-28T13:45:00.000-08:00

I have started to develop using XUL, the Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird user interface XML dialect.

Here is a very nice site that shows what you can do.

Managing a research lab

2005-01-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

The collapse of the internet bubble has reshuffled the card deck in terms of how research is funded. AT&T Labs and Bell Labs have suffered a lot (and I know it first hand).

Here is an interesting article about some management issues at Sun Labs.

new iPod product

2005-01-12T06:25:00.000-08:00

I found a funny post about how to transform your regular iPod into an iPod shuffle.
Read here.

Ideas for interesting (database related) computer science projects

2005-01-11T07:34:00.000-08:00

Computer users keep complaining that someone should write an application X, doing Y.
Every year, hundred of thousand of computer students are given programming assignments, as part of their classes. Instead of having implement something useless, maybe we should suggest they implement something useful.

Here are some suggestions of computer projects. The list will keep growing, but here is a start.

- conference management tool (CMT):
Academic research is based on conferences where people submit papers that are reviewed by peers. The reviewing process is complicated. Some tools have been developed, but they are a but outdated, in the sense that they do not embrace the new communication modes of today.
The idea of the projet is to create an open source extensible state-of-the-art CMT (see Microsoft CMT) with some features such as: off-line reviews, chat, etc.

- calendar portal:
Each field (mine is databases) comes with a lot of events (submission deadlines, conference dates, etc.). Today the information is disseminated via email (e.g. dbWorld mailing list). It would be nicer to have variaous calendars (in the sense of iCal) people can subscribe to. For instance, ACM conferences, IEEE conferences, etc.
The idea is to build a web application where people can enter the event information and where people can subscribe to the various calendars.
See iCalShare, as a nice example of a calendar portal.

"registration required" content by-pass

2005-01-11T06:53:00.000-08:00

If you are tired of having to create a new account, remember a new password and enter some personal information to access some content on the web, you may want to try BugMeNot.

There is also a Firefox extension that handles the process even more transparently (check the BugMeNot site).

My favorite research papers

2005-01-09T13:25:00.000-08:00

Here is another paper that I like very much.
Computer scientists deal with programming languages, the same way authors (e.g. writers, playwriters, poets) deal with human languages.

Growing a Language at OOPSLA 98, by Guy Steele (one of the fathers of Java).

(to be continued)

My favorite research papers

2005-01-09T13:14:00.000-08:00

There are some research papers that I wish everyone had read.
I will try to put them on this blog. Here is the first entry.

Composing contracts: an adventure in financial engineering. Simon Peyton Jones, Jean-Marc Eber, Julian Seward, ICFP 2000.

The paper shows how to use functional programming to represent and price arbitrarily complex financial contracts.
I wish this paper were available when I was working on the trading floor.

(to be continued)

Can a biologist fix a radio

2005-01-09T13:05:00.000-08:00

I am a computer scientist working mostly on data management.
Sometimes, you wonder if your work makes a difference, if your field is heading in the right direction.

There is an old (Sep 2002) article from a biology journal (by Yuri Lazebnik) that provides a very insightful view about this issue.

I strongly recommend the reading.
You should be able to find the article on google. Try the terms "Can a biologist fix a radio".

You can also find it here and here.

Something from Microsoft to run on your iPOD

2005-01-09T11:57:00.000-08:00

I was at the CIDR 2005 database conference where I met a very nice and funny guy from Microsoft. He made a rendition of American Pie for the IT industry: witty, funny and talented. American Idols contenders should secretely hope that IT does not die.

Mr. CIO Guy
A satire based on the song “America Pie”
Video , Lyrics

The Blog about nothing

2004-11-23T07:11:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of Seinfeld, now I am thinking that this blog should be about "nothing". But what does this really mean? While I am struggling to find the answer, I need to provide some content for my dear readers. So here it comes.

What I love about computers and people that "operate" them (I am one of them), it that sometimes, coming from no where, you see something beautiful and usually totally useless. Isn't it the definition of art?

Try this "clock" (cached version here). It may require Internet Explorer to run, but it is worth trying.

Les choses sérieuses commencent ...

2004-10-22T13:26:00.000-07:00

So, this is my first post on my first blog. A milestone in a blogger's life.

What should you expect from this blog, dear reader?
I am not sure yet, but probably some thoughts about technology in general, science, education , movies and politics.
OK, and also maybe some reflexions around France and some comments about soccer.

Stay tuned.

The other side of the firewall

Migration to bloglines

optical illusion

SVG

Learning the guitar

Sweet device

Seinfeild scripts

UML sequence diagrams, the easy way

Recommended readings

Buying an LCD monitor

Kitchenware design

Sand artist

XUL development

Managing a research lab

new iPod product

Ideas for interesting (database related) computer science projects

"registration required" content by-pass

My favorite research papers

My favorite research papers

Can a biologist fix a radio

Something from Microsoft to run on your iPOD

The Blog about nothing

Les choses sérieuses commencent ...