craven.fr

While I'm on the subject of wacky tech movies, one of the most bizarre, funny, and yet highly educational YouTube movies I've ever viewed has to be Erlang: The Movie.

(Erlang is a hot language these days as multi-core and multi-processor computing becomes the norm, and people worry more and more about how to write good concurrent programs. Erlang is a language that is made for this, which makes it easy and safe to write programs that do more than one thing at once, without having to worry about the things like unreproduceable race conditions or deadlocks that can plague you with C pthreads or Java.)

AJAX, applets, and Flash are one thing, but I would never have imagined someone going to the point of writing what amounts to a whole operating system in JavaScript and SVG. (!) Nonetheless, that's a pretty good summary of Sun Labs Lively Kernel. Currently it only works in the Safari browser, but I recommend checking it out if you like quirky technology.

If this kind of thing interests you on more than a "cool, I can play Asteroids" level, this Google Tech Talk has a lot of info:

I'm irked by some of the usability problems with my website right now, but I don't have time to do anything about them yet. (But hey, at least I got my S3 interface to work and can host high-quality video now!) I do, however, have time to blog about what needs fixing :-) It's probably not good form to call attention to the weaknesses of your website, but at least this way I get kind of a "to-do list" out there, and I can offer a few workarounds.

1. Search doesn't work. This one is entirely my fault: there was a perfectly functional search option before, but I took it out in favour of this Google one that potentially can generate some revenue. The problem? Google can't figure out how to index my site! So no matter what you search for, you'll get no results! I thought they had smart people working there? I won't get into the technical factors that make my site less than trivial to index (although it still is trivial, Google), but the solution is for me to put the old search widget back on. I'll get around to it soon.

2. There's no forward/backward navigation. The only way to go forward and back on the site is with the little arrows on the calendar. This takes you forward and back month-by-month, but since there are twenty stories per page, and typically less than twenty articles per month, this style of navigation has a lot of annoying overlaps. I should have a "Older posts" link at the bottom of the page that directly displays the next twenty posts.

3. Categories cannot be browsed. That is, even when browsing by category, there are only twenty stories displayed on a page at a time. But I've been blogging for so long now, that many of my categories have more than twenty entries in them. So if you click on, say /Personal/France, you won't see my awesome article about the Braderie, and there's no way to get to the second page of France articles! Combined with the search not working, this is pretty annoying. My hypothetical "Older posts" button should also handle categories.

4. My hierarchical categories, aren't. My category names imply a hierarchy, and I wanted them to work that way. So by clicking on /Personal you'd get everything in Personal as well as France, Gaming, and Fatherhood stuff, or if you wanted you could limit things to a sub-category. That doesn't work; I had originally wanted to modify the code for the website to make it work the way I wanted, but it would probably be better to just re-name my categories. If I haven't gotten around to it in the last two years I'm probably not going to any time soon.

5. RSS is broken I think this happened when I started putting up Chinese articles. Maybe the character set keeps the feed from being generated or read properly. I ought to figure out what's going on here, though, because the RSS feeds used to work fine in Firefox, and they haven't for quite a while now.

So, there is plenty of room for improvement when it comes to this blog. Inevitably, though, whenever I have some time to work on my websites, getting new photos posted to James' site, or editing new movies, has to take the highest priority. If anyone is in the mood for a walk down memory lane, though, clicking on this link will take you back to the very first month of this site's existence, and by reading from the bottom to the top and then moving forward month by month, you can read all of the old content.

I just don't know why Google can't figure that out :-)

Earlier this month I blogged about Project Euler, a site that presents fun and interesting math problems that require computer programming skills to solve.

At the time I wrote that I had only just discovered the site, and published the article immediately after having solved the first two problems. So this is an update to say that I'm still enjoying the problems, and have solved 29 problems so far, earning me a Level 1 rank of tetrahedron. (The ranks are all based on the Platonic solids, in keeping with the mathematics theme of the site.)

Now, on to level 2!

Last Friday was Assumption, a big holiday in France and an even bigger holiday for us, as James was baptized at the church of the Immaculate Conception in Don, France! We are extremely proud parents: not only did he not cry during the ceremony, not only was he not fussy or fidgety during the ceremony, but he actually seemed to hang on the priest's every word: he was wide-eyed and adorable throughout the whole thing! You have to see it to believe it: the movie is posted on James' website (password required).

After the baptism we adjourned to our house to celebrate as only the French can: with a 12-hour meal! We had over 20 people over and set up a couple of tents in the back yard to fit everybody; it was quite a party.

There is another movie, of the party, that I'll be putting up soon, as well as lots and lots of pictures. Stay tuned!

Один из моих самых лучших русских книг - Военный Энциклопедический Словарь. Этот огромный том советского время содержит верный клад стать, диаграмм, и фотографии. Для меня, американец который помниться холодную войну от дорогой стороны, всё это было очень интересно. Эта книга открывает для меня новую точку зрения на советском союзе.

А теперь, это новая война между России и Грузии показал мне, что я не так хорошо знал как сегодня работает организация русских вооружённых сил. И я думал, это жаль что у меня нет современной Военной Энциклопедической Словаря. А скорее, я сам нащёл все информации, которые я мог бы желал знать. Где? На Википедии, конечно!

Мир действительно изменился!

I'm getting into a new excercise routine these days, and the impetus behind it was a video game system. —One hears people saying that a lot these days, but in my case the system is the PS3, not the Wii!

I should back up a bit first though, since the Wii does deserve some of the credit. We bought Wii Fit when it launched, and for the first couple weeks I used it to work out for half an hour a day almost every day. This was more than I had been doing, in fact other than a daily 4K walk at lunch time I had been getting pretty sedentary. And as is always the case, once I started exercising a bit more I noticed that I felt a lot better. So far, so good.

But one thing really bothered me about Wii Fit: it came out just as the weather was getting nice. So although it is a reasonably fun game, and the way it tracks your performance over time is very useful and motivating, I still wanted to go outside. This is also why our excercise bike, which I enjoy using in the winter, is no fun at all when the weather's nice and I can't help from thinking how much better it would be to go on a real bike ride.

Then along came a heat wave and the house was so stuffy that there was no way I was going to do Wii Fit. This broke up the rhythm I had gotten myself into, and I haven't been doing it much since.

By the time the weather cooled back down, I had bought a PS3, and was enjoying games like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Uncharted. In these games you play as elite special forces soldiers or parkour running adventurer: basically guys who are in peak physical condition, and you take them through some very physical adventures. All while sitting on the couch. There is only so much of that you can do before you start to feel like you need to work out more. How can I force my virtual character to run up the side of a mountain like that if I can barely run a mile?

What's interesting about this is that I play Madden Football on the Wii all the time but never felt the same kind of guilt. I think there are two reasons: the PS3 games are ones where you really identify with the character, they tell a story almost like a movie (Emilie loves watching me play Uncharted, in fact). Also, the Wii's immersive controls make you forget to some extent that you're not actually playing football. To pass the ball, for example, you make a passing motion. While on the PS3, my character is leaping from cliff to cliff, pulling himself up by his fingernails, while I'm just sitting back pushing buttons. So the disconnect between the activity of the game and the passivity of playing it is greater.

There were other factors in getting me outside too, like the Olympics, and my reading a lot of Homer lately, but I really do think a big share of the credit goes to the PS3—for making me feel so lazy!

(*I haven't given up on Wii Fit, either, but I think it should take a backseat to running and gardening as long as the weather is nice.)

(No, this has nothing to do with my previous article about Euler!)

I was reading some random comments online on an article about frugal ways to have fun, when my curiosity was piqued by one fellow who said that he was learning a new programming language by working on the problems at Project Euler. I had a look at the site, and find it neat enough that I thought I should help spread the word.

Project Euler describes itself as "a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems", wherein each problem is designed to require both mathematical insight and a little computer programming. The problems are designed in such a way that "by solving one problem it will expose you to a new concept that allows you to undertake a previously inaccessible problem".

This is interesting in and of itself, but what I like best about Project Euler is that it is not just a list of problems: there is a social aspect as well. One registers for the site and it keeps track of which problems you have solved. There is also a forum thread for each problem, which is only unlocked once you solve that problem. So the site grows with your progress. There is also a high scores page where you can view your level. As in a video game, you level up as you gain experience points by solving the problems.

For all my enjoyment of and respect for mathematics, I'm actually not very good at pure maths. However in combination with a computer things get a lot easier, and the problems here are not too difficult: I was able to solve the first two in about 10 minutes. (Of course I have some advantage, being a computer programmer for a living!)

For anyone interested in a structured but fun way to get into maths or computers, I recommend giving Project Euler a look!

The weather this week was no fun, hot and muggy. Like nearly all French families, we don't have air conditionning (an honestly, we would hardly ever need it since it rarely gets this hot), but to make matters worse Lille is being overrun by thrips so we had to close the windows a lot of the time! And it wasn't just me and Emilie who weren't enjoying it:

Luckily his momma was there to pull out all the stops: cool washcloth, vaporizer spray, and a fan picked up at his uncle Tom's wedding:

Emilie said that the spray was the funniest thing to use: every time, James would get a panicked look on his face when she sprayed him, and get ready to cry. Then when he felt the coolness in the seconds that followed, a smile would come to his face.

Luckily we had a good rainshower yesterday and the temperature has finally descended, so it looks like we survived!

So it's been just over two weeks since I bought a Playstation 3, the first week of which I played it nearly constantly as I resolutely squandered the second half of my vacation playing video games. Now I think I've had plenty of time to form an opinion of the machine and can say that I'm glad I bought it (good thing too, since the thing is ridiculously expensive in Europe!)

First I need to explain why I bought a Playstation 3. I already have a Wii, of course. But the Wii has not been getting a lot of the latest games that I want to play, which only come out on the HD consoles, the PS3 and XBox 360. The Wii has had some stellar titles—Twilight Princess and Metroid Prime Corruption were gaming nirvana, and I don't expect anything on the PS3 to exceed them.

The problem is, there just aren't enough games like that out for the Wii. Even being a new dad with a full time job, I eventually got to the end of Metroid, and found myself with no new titles in my stack. Worse, no upcoming titles to get excited about (except Tiger Woods '09, which I'm hoping will finally give a full golf game on the Wii with good controls—I love Wii Sports Golf and still play it, but there are only nine holes.) The combination of not having any big titles coming on the Wii, and there being a whole load of AAA titles on the HD consoles that I would like to play, made me decide to start saving for a second console.

Secondly, I have a 42" Plasma HDTV at home with beautiful 5.1 surround sound. The problem? There is practically no HDTV to watch in France! I had an upscaling DVD player, but I really wanted to get a Blu-Ray player to be able to watch my TV with the highest quality picture it can display. I was somewhat worried that the difference would be negligeable between a Blu-Ray and an upscaled DVD, but I had seen details on The Fifth Element on Blu-Ray that my mom owns that I had not seen on my superbit DVD version, so I felt it would be worthwhile.

Because the XBox 360 doesn't have Blu-Ray, and because it's goofy appearance looks out of place in a home theatre (not to mention its loud fan noise), the Playstation 3 was the clear choice. Online play is also free on the PS3 whereas one must subscribe on XBox. So how did it turn out?

Well I came very close to backing out. The PS3 in Europe costs an insane 400€, compared to a price of only 260€ in the US. This meant that when I discovered that I could get a good Samsung Blu-Ray player with HDMI 1.3 for only 250€, I had serious second thoughts. Why not just get that player instead, especially since it would work with my Logitech Harmony remote? Eventually though I decided to go through with it, and though the price is too high in Europe, the hardware has not let me down.

Blu Ray is awesome. I have Planet Earth on Blu-Ray, and the picture is just amazing. Emilie walked by when I first put it in and stopped in her tracks. The difference is clearly visible and a serious improvement over DVD—when the sounce material is good. This is real HDTV; a lot of the downloadable and cable content people get in HD has been compressed to save bandwidth and this lessens the quality of the picture, Blu-Ray is the best way to ensure you're getting top quality, and it shows. That said, I hope it will catch on because in audio, consumers have shown they prefer convenience (MP3s) to quality (SACDs and DVD-As, which you may never have even heard of they flopped so bad). There's a lot more marketing behind Blu-Ray though and the picture is so much better (if you have a big-screen HDTV, which not everyone does), so I think its prospects are good.

Uncharted and GTA4 are awesome. These are the two games I've been playing the most; the other two I bought, MGS4 and COD4, also look great but I am saving them for later.

Non region-coded games are awesome. In particular for me because I was able to buy them in the US for way cheaper, but also because as an American in Europe I might want to get games like NCAA Football that I might not otherwise be able to.

Of course, I don't want to give the impression that the thing is perfect, there are some big annoyances as well. I already mentioned the ridiculous European price, but that's not all:

No PS2 compatability is retarded. I would really have liked to be able to play PS2 games because I never bought a PS2, since I thought that would have been an act of infidelity to my dear departed Dreamcast. The Wii plays GameCube games and I have used that to pick up some old GC games on the cheap; there are a lot of PS2 games I would've gotten if they would've worked. It's especially frustrating since the PS3 originally could play PS2 games, but they removed the functionality.

Region coding sucks. PS3 games do not have region codes, but it won't play region 1 DVDs or Blu-Rays. Since I have dozens of zone 1 DVDs, this means that I have to keep my upscaling DVD player hooked up, and can't use the PS3 for everything. Region coding is retarded: imagine if all my books had stopped working because I moved to a different country!

No IR remote capability. To control Blu-Rays with my Logitech Harmony remote I need to buy a third-party dongle, which is annoying.

No SACD or DVD-A playback. Not surprising, but I would've appreciated it, now that HDMI means that these high-fidelity formats don't require a stupid amount of cables to use. Also it appears that, like PS2 compatability, the first PS3s had SACD but it was taken out. D'oh!

There are other little things I could mention, like the ability to install Linux (good), or the web browser (bad, or not as good as the Wii's anyway), but I think that this shows the general idea: I am extremely happy with the PS3 for games and movies, although some of the minor things are slight annoyances, all in all it's a great source of entertainment.