Last weekend we had another sechsta sinn development meeting in Cologne. After I finished some LUA 4 serialization code (really ugly stuff… after the project is finished I will burn this particular code file) I played a short game against our AI player on Raphael’s really beautiful dust map and decided to make a panorama shot out of it. The result can be seen below:

(click for full blown version)

 

With different blogs reporting that the European version of the new webOS (1.3.1) won’t be available until the end of November, I decided to just use the English Sprint webOS 1.2.1 version. Due to the detailed guides at WebOS Internals the update was very easy and done in a few minutes. Afterwards the whole world of custom WebOS patches and execellent homebrew applications through the fantastic Preware was available. I installed patches for landscape email, on-screen keyboard, and better notifications as well as the new music player, the homebrew Facebook client, and some free games. Together with the now working (probably due to fixes in WebOS 1.2.1) Exchange synchronization (yeah baby, two-way! I’m very satisfied with the device. The battery only lasts a day with 3G, push-mail, and moderate use enabled but I think that is a problem that all current smartphones face.

A bit disappointing is the number of available apps right now. While there are many qualitative applications the store right just cant compete with the iPhone and its two year head start.

Fortunately developing for the Palm is pretty easy (just HTML, CSS and JavaScript), so I started to develop my own “Fahrplan” application, which displays the available train connections from point A to point B on any given time. So far I have only a very simple interface but I’m making fast progress. Will let you know I it will be finished.

Apart from that there will be another sechsta sinn team meeting from Nov, 20 to Nov, 23 so stay tuned for updates from the game development front as well.

 

Last week I exchanged my old HTC Herald Windows Mobile device for a shiny, new Palm Pre. So far I really like the design and the usability of the OS and the hardware. Unfortunately, I have some strange calendar sync issues with appointments entered in the Pre not syncing back to my Exchange server. The Europe version of the Pre, however, is still running webOs 1.1.3 while the rest of the world is already using 1.2.1. Version 1.3.1 should be available worldwide in the next few days, so I will wait for that upgrade, see if it fixes some of my problems with this device and then I will deliver a full in depth review. Stay tuned.

For the evaluation part of my thesis I had to include a lot of charts. The scientific approach proably would have been to use gnuplot, but my tool of choice for any kind of charts is Microsoft Excel 2007. However, I found no simple and easy way to directly include Excel charts into my LaTeX thesis document. After a lot of experimenting and looking at other people’s solutions I came up with the following:

1. Create chart in Excel as usual

Yesterday I completed the last part of my computer science (bachelor) studies at the RWTH Aachen. After I handed in my thesis last wednesday I successfully defended it on September the 15th. While I still have to wait for the final report by my supervisor, in my mind I already have completed this part of my education. Below you will find the final thesis (english) and the slides (german).

BachelorThesis (PDF)

BachelorSlides (PDF)

Spotify ist ein Musik-Streaming Service aehnlich der Napster Flatrate aber mit einem viel angenehmeren Interface (iTunes aehnlich) und einer besseren Auswahl. Leider befindet sich der Dienst momentan noch in der geschlossenen Beta Phase und aus Deutschland kommt man nur als Premium-User (9.99 Eur / Monat) in den (Musik-)Genuss. Mittels ein paar kleiner Tricks, laesst sich Spotify jedoch auch bereits aus Deutschland testen:

1. Ueber einen UK-Webproxy, wie z.B. https://www.proxify.eu  [Siehe Update 2] auf https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/ gehen
2. Anmelden mit einer UK PLZ, beispielsweise CB4 3EH (Cambridge).
3. Spotify herunterladen und installieren

Jetzt kann man Spotify bereits benutzen, jedoch erscheint nach ca. einer Woche die Warnung, die aktuelle Position wuerde nicht der angemeldeten entsprechen und man duerfe max. 14 Tage mit Spotify reisen. Um diese Meldung (und die unweigerlich folgende Sperrung) zu umgehen reicht es anscheinend, sich ~1x pro Woche ueber einen Proxy (eine Auswahl freier Proxies findet sich bei http://www.xroxy.com/proxy-country-GB.htm) mit Spotify zu verbinden. Spotify selber unterstuetzt von Haus aus Socks4/5 und HTTPS Proxies. In der Praxis haben von obenstehender Liste die HTTPS Proxies am beste und zuverlaessigsten funktioniert.

Viel Spass beim Musikhoeren!

PS: Auf Seiten wie z.B. http://sharemyplaylists.com/ nutzen viele User das – geniale – Spotify Feature zum Playlist freigeben und teilen ihre persoenliche Musikauswahl mit der Welt.

Update:

Es empfiehlt sich nicht die ganze Zeit einen UK Proxy zu benutzen, da man sonst Werbung im Programm hat (Banner und ab und zu einen Spot). Ist man hingegen die meiste Zeit mit deutscher IP Adresse unterwegs, faellt man anscheinend durch das Geotargeting (Ortsbezogene Werbung) und man ist komplett werbefrei.

Update 2:

Anscheinend funktionieren die freien WebProxies fuer die Anmeldung nicht mehr. Aber mit einem der Proxies von xroxy (Link siehe oben) sollte es noch klappen. Dazu einfach einen der UK Proxies von der Liste im Firefox eintragen oder FoxyProxy benutzen.

Just encountered: Do not use \\, use \newline. And then perhaps something like \hspace*{1.5em} in the new line to have both lines aligned to the (a) or (b).

As Tim Ferris said, control your environment rather than your behaviour. So no instant messaging in my work account anymore.

On Monday I heard a talk given by Michael Wong (IBM Canada) and he told us – and he also wrote in his blog – about the last C++0x Standard Committee meeting in Frankfurt, Germany:

At this meeting, Concepts, the major feature of C++ 0x, which enables constrained genericity, or template argument prototyping, has been removed from the C++0x draft.

So at this point another major feature of C++0x won’t be included in the final release of the standard (and the ETA was shifted to 2010/2011 instead of 2009/2010). While C++0x has many features I’m very anxious about (think lambda functions, the auto keyword, double angle brackets in template declarations, etc.) I really wanted concepts in the new standard.

Over the past year I have been – and I still do – writing a linear algebra template library in order to try out new methods to exploit parallelization in an object oriented environment (my bachelor’s thesis titled “Exploiting Object Orientation to Parallelize and Optimize C++ Applications” will include a more detailed explanation and evaluation). It would have been really great to be able to specify certain contraints for the generic types the way, for example, C# allows you to limit the usage of parameters in Generics. With the removal of concepts, the only way is to use the STL convention of specifying Concepts, which types must adhere to, but with no real representation in the code and especially no checking through the compiler.

However, even though I was looking forward to this feature I understand the reasons for not including them (see N2906 by Bjarne Stroustrup), C++ is already a very difficult language to teach to beginners. In my opinion the real value and great advantage of C++ lies in the various usage possibilities of template (see template expressions, or general template metaprogramming) and when explaining these concepts to new C++ programmers you nearly always make their head spin..

UPDATE

There are now two new blog posts by Herb Sutter and Bjarne Stroustrup himself about this topic:

Herb Sutter – Trip Report: Exit Concepts

and Bjarne Stroustrup The C++0x “Remove Concepts” decision

Last Friday I passed the 70-536 Exam, TS: Microsoft .NET Framework – Application Development Foundation. I had thought it would be much more difficult but in the end it was pretty easy (or I was just well prepared.. maybe both). Next ones will then be 70-562 and 70-564 to reach the Microsoft Certified Developer status but I think that has to wait until after the thesis.