next post, my fail, Kanye’s a f%$#tard

First off the bat, I didn’t make it through to Round 2 of CodeJam. The issue I posted about on Saturday reared it’s ugly head again and I kept getting the good old crash due to int not handling 10^18 !! Annoyed me a tad, so I haven’t reviewed my attempts just yet. My small datasets worked perfectly with the identical code, so I’m definitely puzzled. I’ll be posting the code once I have the issue solved. I’ll then be able to point out my epic fail that should have been obvious. Ah well, next year I’ll be back in for more. I’m also contemplating doing it in PHP next time instead of C# because I like the cleanlines of some of the algorithmic features of PHP. I’ve reviewed other competitors solutions in PHP and C# also; the other biggie for me is to review my regular expressions as I don’t use them anywhere near enough, so my code is full of while loops/if-else statements etc.

Moving on, I have to say that Kanye West is a “moustache on a woman” (thanks Paul Henry!!) for his efforts at the VMAs the other night. All the copies of the video keep getting pulled from YouTube, so the best I can offer is this link to mashable. Suffice to say, he’s acting like an arrogant douche and jumps into the middle of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to grab the mic and say he thought Beyonce should win!! He got booed off by the crowd, but even so he needs a big slap upside the head.

The video has also been remixed already too:

Other than that, I’m loving MonoTouch!! It’s an interface and IDE essentially which enables you to run your .NET and ASP applications within the iPhone/iPod Touch framework. From the website:

MonoTouch is the Mono edition for Apple’s iPhone and Apple’s iPod Touch devices.  MonoTouch allows developers to create C# and .NET based applications that run on the iPhone and can take advantage of the iPhone APIs as well as reusing both code and libraries that have been built for .NET as well as existing skills.

For example, here is the proverbial “Hello World” demo. So simple and sweet. I definitely want!

That’s enough for right now, but I’ll bring more later today, as well as some updates on launching site in the next few days. 99% done, just final testing now.

the weekend has landed

I didn’t get to blogging yesterday, as I was working hard on assignments. You may have noticed the quick post I put up with some music and a video of it. Check it out if you get the chance, Bob Marley is awesome and the remake is brilliant. Just gets me all summery and wanting the sun and sand!! Back to today now, I had the dedication of some friends’ baby this morning, Annabelle is SOOOOO cute it’s ridiculous. Also bumped into some other old friends there whose baby was being dedicated in the same service. Great service, great people, and lots of cute babies. And then there was food afterward. I also started up a page on here linking to useful websites for coding, web-development, anything scripty as a kinda go-to page for quick reference. Hopefully it becomes useful for some of you. Check it out here.

In techy/g33ky/web land, the DDoS of Facebook and Twitter the other day is now being treated as an attack by Russian hackers, specifically targetting a 34-year-old economics lecturer and blogger who criticises Russia’s military presence in the Caucasus. Facebook and Twitter launched investigations yesterday, as a blogger called “Cyxymu” (a latinised version of Sukhumi, the capital of the Georgian breakaway republic, Abkhazia) announced he was the attack’s first target. Max Kelly, Facebook’s chief security officer, confirmed Cyxymu was the target.

Just checked my Twitter account and found that none of my text Tweets this evening from work have made it through. Thanks Vodafone, you’re awesome!!!!

Rumours are starting [via Engadget] that iTunes 9 will have BluRay support. As Engadget says

To be fair, the HD disc format wars are all but over at this point, and the most recent Final Cut Pro actually lets you burn video directly to a third-party BD drive, only to have to play the discs on another, non-Mac device. This is all pretty sketch at the moment, and we doubt the boys in Cupertino will be showing their hands until just after the eleventh hour — let’s not forget, also, that iTunes is also available for Windows which does have other third-party Blu-ray playback software.

So, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see now, won’t we??

Gizmodo is also showing off this 16GB USB, plus whatever microSD cards you shove inside. Kinda Osum!! [geekstuff4u via ohgizmo via gizmodo]

Into a night of playing with Microsoft Virtual PC and the WRK for Windows Server 2003 now. Ciao.

some cool stuff, and an update from me

I found a few cool things on my perusal of Uncrate recently, so I thought I’d share them with you. They’re ALL stuff I would love to have, either for their cool, or just ’cause I could. First off we have the space trampoline which is basically two courts on a trampoline where you bounce and compete against someone to get a ball through a tunneled, netted gantry and past them. Essentially a cross between volley-ball and trampolining, the game of Spaceball was invented in the early 1960s by trampoline pioneer George Nissen. It has been hailed by Scott Carpenter, one of NASA’s original Mercury Seven astronauts, as

the best conditioning exercise for space travel

The game requires hand-eye coordination, balance, timing, and trickery to get your ball past your oponent to the other side.

Next up is the predator pool table from Hurricaine Billiards. Nothing much to say here really, just plain awesome, and it would great in any Man Cave. Also looking perfect in any man cave would be the markham console bar from Pottery Barn. Just a very stylish, rustic look bar for the man who is a man. To serve your drinks from the bar, a real man’s set of tumblers is required, and these concrete tumblers from Charles and Marie are just the thing. Rugged, sturdy, and solid.

For going a little over the top you could get yourself a fully chromed lamborghini murcielago which has been seen in London. Not quite my cup of tea (but I wouldn’t say no to a Lamborghini of any sort!), but sure to tempt somebody if it comes up for sale. [thanks to jalopnik.com for the Lambo tip off]

Back in the real world, ie stuff I may actually get in the semi-near future, I had a couple of monologues over the past week regarding Apple and their App Store so I thought I’d better have a little spiel about good Apple stuff. I did say that I don’t hate Apple and, while I’m not a fan-boi, I do love their products. They are definitely class. An excellent combining of aesthetics and design, with functioning products that definitely achieve their purpose. While generally more expensive than their counterparts, I personally feel that the price is somewhat justified. That said, I think computers (and most consumer goods) do cost a little too much for the most part. Because I am well aware that my opinion carries a massive amount of weight, and influences everyone that matters, I just thought I’d out this out there and balance my past rants about Apple. I still think they are being a bit out of synch with reality but, that said, who knows what cunning plan Apple has and is working towards with their latest actions. We all know that Apple has to be one of the slickest PR and marketing operations in the world, and they would have expected the backlash they are currently receiving.

I spent quite a bit of time today playing with T-SQL and SQL Server, and had a fair amount of fun, I have to say. While at first the vaguaries and slight variations between MySQL (my native SQL for all my PHP work) and T-SQL syntax were “fluffy”, I cam around pretty quick and caught on to some nice tricks for my coding there. Admittedly I hadn’t done a great amount of Prepared Statements and Stored Functions in MySQL either, but between T-SQL and SQL Server they really came together tidily and easily. I’m liking Microsoft’s efforts there so far. I’ll have to put up a few little tricks tomorrow as a mini-tutorial, just to share something.

I also noticed today that one of my YouTube videos from a prior post has been removed at owner’s request. A bit stink really as it’s been on YouTube for a couple of years, and only just got pulled on the last few days. I’m pretty certain it’s not my massive viewership stats on here that have pushed traffic over to it and had it pulled, but I’ll be trying to find another copy of it in the next few days to get it back in action.

Enough from me now, back to the study thing now that I’m home (I wrote most of this in breaks at work!!).

last mandatory assignent done, exams here I come

Finally, the last mandatory assignment of this semester is done and in…one more optional one, which I’ll be doing, due in a week’s time.

I really want one of these new NEC screens. From the site:

The unique 43″ (42.8″ VIS) NEC CRV43 curved display delivers an immersive and unmatched viewing experience. It is the perfect display for simulation, digital imaging, gaming and other applications requiring lightning-fast response time, a much wider field of view, greater dynamic range and wide color gamut.

• Seamless curved screen, which eliminates bezel and screen gap issues, increases productivity while decreasing frustration
• USB 2.0 connectivity for easy use of peripherals
• On Screen Display (OSD®) and software-based GUI enabling advanced display control options

Also, in other news, I’ve now resolved all my PayPal linking issues. Reset a couple of variables and adjusted my calls to the PayPal API….all my mistakes, but I’ve learnt a lot about it now. Also, the Google Maps implementation is now running smoothly, including dynamic generation of the markers on the fly. Yippee!! I’ve also come up with a few tutorials to add to here, I just need to get them written up nicely, then they’ll be live.

Having an agent come through the house with “interested people” in the next few days, so need to do some tidying and put all my computer cables and paraphenalia away. We’re not for sale, but he thinks they might make a stupid offer, so it can’t hurt really now, can it??

Haven’t had much time to “research” YouTube et al. but I got shown this the other day, and it’s awesome. I saw the original of this a while ago, but this version’s even better!

There’s all the usual banter on engadget, gdgt, and gizmodo now that E3 and WWDC are done and dusted. All the usual shenanigans. iPhone 3G[S] is coming June 19th, and the new price-point is $99! All MacBooks are now Pros, except the white one – makes it simple: aluminium = Pro; white = not. Still no word as to why we had to lose the ExpressCard slot to get the SD-slot on all but the 17″ MacBook Pro. That’s gonna force me to go to 17″ when I get a Mac, cause I’m gonna need the ExpressCard for broadband….I ain’t using a USB-dongle arrangement….

E3, I won’t say more on until I get a chance to filter through all the vids etc to find some highlights beyond what I posted the other day. It’s now morning, so I’ll either give you more goodness tonight or Wednesday.

I’ll end with an explanation of how the Obama stimulus plan will work (courtesy of dailyfailblog), and this BRILLIANT video of a Stanford student cracking level 60 of WoW. He’s stayed in his dorm room for almost a month straight and his mates don’t have the heart to tell him there are 10 more levels to go!! Stanford Student Flips Out After Leveling from the guys at break.com, and just remember: “Remember to behave, even if it’s only badly!!“

quick update – I want, I want, I want!!!

Sony demo at E3….lots of expletives want to come out of my mouth, but suffice to “F’n massive! Over 9000!!”

Check out this video, I can’t say more than that. And watch it to the end (like you won’t).

Need I say more? 2010 I’m waiting.