jjguy

My CSOTD is OS X. I'm a Windows guy, 15 years of win32 development. But at home, I use a Mac.

really?

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/hunter_becomes_the_prey/

The suggestions below are solid:

  R 
  Python + matplotlib

I've used and been impressed by both. Starlight and Palantir may fit your needs, but those tend closer to enterprise applications -- I get the sense you're searching for something lighter.

Some more suggestions:

DAVIX [D] A live CD distribution containing lots of visualization tools, from capture to parsing to presentation.

SecViz and their "graph exchange" [0] -- lots of pictures of various datasets, usually with details of how it was produced.

Personally, I found most packages too restrictive and fell back on Processing: http://processing.org A project out of the MIT Media Lab, it's a generic graphics framework you can (among other things) produce 2D time series graphs in. It's still tedious, but tedium is traded for control.

Some of my projects in Processing:

http://jjguy.com/som/ - Self Organizing Maps

http://jjguy.com/life/ - Conway's Game of Life

I don't have a great time series write-up posted, but I've been working with Robert May's population model recently. [1] You can find the source at [2] and example output image at [3].

[D] http://secviz.org/content/the-davix-live-cd

[0] http://secviz.org/category/image-galleries/graph-exchange

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_ecology:_m...

[2] http://jjguy.com/populationModel.pde

[3] http://jjguy.com/normal.png

I spent some time studying Self-Organizing Maps, a neural network algorithm from Teuvo Kohonen, a Finnish professor.

The internet has plenty of resources:

http://www.google.com/search?q=self+organizing+maps

I implemented the two canonical 'hello world' projects in processing, but have yet to apply to a 'real' problem. The emergent behavior is fascinating, as is watching maps coalesce in real-time.

There are plenty of other algorithms available; a basic "back propagation" algorithm is widely used in OCR algorithms. Try reading some of these:

http://www.google.com/search?q=neural+networks+image+recogni...

Don't get too wrapped around the axle of trying to find immediate electronics engineering applications, but understand the algorithms and the applications will become self-evident.

(1) follow your heart. love what you do, ignore everything else and good will come. despite your doubts, this is true.

(2) Any degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville will be better received by potential employers than all degrees from Pellissippi State Community College.

(3) follow your heart. love what you do, ignore everything else and good will come. despite your doubts, this is true.

this could be conflicting advice. welcome to Life.

g'luck!

I got a job with the hospital on campus, doing custom win32 app development. Nothing huge, just business process facilitation with some windows-native glue apps.

Under market consulting rates, above typical college rates, I walked to the office and set my own hours. Everyone wins. It was hard to beat.

Four years after reading this the first time, I still remind myself of one insight: engineer vs. managers and "fixing problems" vs. "managing problems".

You can find this discussion under the heading "Problems: managing, fixing, and solving" here http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/eatwatch.html

It's pretty brilliant. Even when my (manager) head knows I should be just managing problems, my (engineering) heart really, really wants to just fix them.

I don't understand why this keeps getting passed around.

Buffer overflows in the hash reference implementations have zero relevance on the algorithm's hashing effectiveness. Fortify posted the results of their static analysis tool to the web as an academic exercise and PR stunt.

That it continues to propagate the web is merely amplifying the FUD.

293 days ago: "Ask YC: What tools do you use for notifications of server/site uptime?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=180951

Lots of good suggestions there.

It's too late in the day for me to give a coherent reply to all your questions.

But your first, I think, is easy:

The stronger that technology makes society, the less freedoms. Why?

We apply new technologies in new ways to help improve and regulate our society. Each decision is well-intentioned, improves society and -- taken alone -- is a good idea.

Examples: (1) Red light cameras (2) RFID passports (3) National ID Cards

Each decision is also a tiny reduction in personal freedom. As the libertarians say, the incremental destruction of our liberties. Or, as Kelly condensed -- "the less our freedoms."

yes! I thought the same when reading, and had to share.

Incidentally, Kelly has been posting on "The Technium" for a while now. I added him to my blog roll because I respect his experience and have really enjoyed many of the things his written in the past.

He's allegedly using The Technium to help develop his thoughts for his next book. Many of his early posts were a little too cerebral for my tastes, but he must be getting a lot closer to pulling his book together -- his more recent posts have been more grounded.

That, or I'm just in one of those moods. (shrug) Either way, he's not leaving my blogroll.

You need to find the thing that distinguishes you from your peers. My story is undoubtedly different than yours, but I'll share parts; perhaps it can help you.

I went to college on a military scholarship. After four years of school, I spent 6 years in the military. Three critical things came from those years: contacts, credibility and experience.

After a couple tours, the military's plans for my career and my own ideas didn't sync up. I left and used a contact to land a nice job doing exactly what I wished. I floated my resume around, but serious offers only came from those I knew. I got other offers, but they were in a different class.

I've been with the same organization for several years. It's awesome. I get calls occasionally from those old contacts, asking if I'm ready to move on yet. I'm not, but when I do, I'm unlikely to "hit the market." I'll make a few calls, express some interest and find a home.

I'll say this: your technical skills alone will not land you the _awesome_ work. There are plenty who (claim to) have the same skills; in the world we live in, it's very difficult to distinguish between us and charlatans without experience. For me, the military provided the contacts and touch of reassurance a hiring manager needs to make a decision.

You need to find your distinguisher. If you don't have one, make it. The other comments here provide plenty of ideas how you can do so.

dude, downmodded on your own post.

you have my sincere apologies, that's silly.

"semantic web" is a buzzword, too ill-defined to allow anyone to define themselves with it label of "semantic web programmer."

The intellectual academics point at the rise of standards, structured information and shout "the semantic web is here!"

The pragmatic implementers point at the reams and reams and reams of still unstructured data and wonder where the academics point.

Save yourself the trouble; don't worry about what the semantic web is or isn't. Don't worry about how to leverage it. Find a problem and just solve it.

With his essay, I believe jsomers has proven PG's point.

plain text. I don't read HTML emails.

import MySQLdb

db = MySQLdb.connect(blah)

cur = db.cursor()

cur.execute("SELECT foo from bar where baz")

Spend your time customizing a data access layer to fit your needs, not shoehorning an existing framework into a situation where it'll never quite fit.

I used OpenMosix and a modified version of john the ripper to build a distributed password cracker, back before rainbow tables.

OpenMosix is linux with a modified kernel and some user-space tools; nodes automatically join the cluster, processes get migrated across the cluster to equalize load across all the systems.

It's not as elegant as it could be, but it's quick and dirty.

I was an active duty (fulltime) air force officer, and am now in the USAF reserves. I say do it. Some thoughts:

1 -- Typical time commitment is 1 weekend a month and 2 weeks per year; no matter how fast your startup is moving, you can swing that. It's probably a healthy break.

2 -- Diversity is good for computer geeks. Life -- esp a startup -- takes a range of skills. Life in any of the armed forces will help build your character and experience.

3 -- Your enjoyment will be closely tied to your reserve duty station. There are absolutely places that will suck the life out of you, but there are also places where you will feel like you are in a movie. I am very lucky to have made contacts during my active duty years that got me a great reserve position. Take the long view. If you're not happy with your first assignment, talk to people and work the system to move.

4 -- health insurance for reservists is usually not effective outside your duty time (1 weekend/month, 2 weeks/year) note this is a political football; several years ago there was limited coverage for any reservist that did not have health coverage elsewhere. I'm not certain of the current status, and the coast guard is certainly a bit different than the other services.

5 -- the pay helps. it's not a lot, but nor is it chump change -- esp if you get the officer slot.

anyhow, my two cents. good luck.

edit -- reading more of the comments: don't be too scared by the threat of deployment. (1) I'm slotted in the system as a computer engineer, and engineers don't get deployed. 10 total years in, and never even the threat of time overseas -- and that's during the wars. (2) deployment builds character, and is reasonably safe given how many people we have over there. you recall the study from a couple years ago? you're more likely to get murdered living in DC or Chicago than as a soldier in Iraq.

Uhm... Lots of good suggestions here. Given the innomence of your question, I'll take the liberty of assuming you won't take offense to me questioning some of the more fundamental assumptions. Why do you need to host your own DNS? Honestly, it's a real pain. And if you're asking questions like this, you probably don't need anything fancy. The control panels at the major registrars are pretty advanced these days.

Apologies if you're a DNS rockstar, no offense intended.

University of Washington in Seattle University of Maryland in DC University of Texas in Austin

3 top-tier programs at public schools.

I use sendmail to pipe incoming messages to a python script using smrsh. "sendmail restricted shell" one liner change to sendmail.conf. Google around, lots of examples.

I've worked with SQL for a long time, with a variety of implementations and front-ends. Django's object model hurt my head. I didn't get it. There's simply too much black magic.

e.g, how is:

  Entry.objects.filter(
    headline__startswith='What').exclude(
        pub_date__gte=datetime.now()).filter(
            pub_date__gte=datetime(2005, 1, 1))

(from http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/db-api/)

easier than:

  SELECT * from Entry where headline like "What%" and pub_date...  wha?  see?  wtf is that chaining filter actually doing? 

my 2 cents: write your own DB access layer, fight the obscure black magic.

(nothing but quibbles with the templating engine, though)

Despite the author's assertion "There will be none of the nostalgia, melodrama, black hat rhetoric or white hat over-analysis" the article is just that. Don't read too much into it.

Python script + e-mail to your cell phone number.

not sure I understand your question fully, but python does have support for memory-mapped files.

>>> import mmap >>> help(mmap)

The insight re: tight integration of data structures into the syntax is pretty brilliant. I've struggled to articulate that several times, but never managed to get it right. It makes C laughable, highlights C++'s improvements were bolt-ons and Java's verbosity.

I do wish regex's were as tightly integrated, a la Perl.

django's templating language is great for small projects, but their object model is a disaster. I'd roll your own data access layer.