Archive for December, 2009

• Inability to reason about code
• Poor understanding of the language’s programming model
• Deficient research skills / Chronically poor knowledge of the platform’s features
• Inability to comprehend pointers
• Difficulty seeing through recursion
• Inability to think in sets
• Lack of critical thinking
• Pinball Programming
• Unfamiliar with the principles of security
• Code is a mess
• Inability to determine the order of program execution
• Insufficient ability to think abstractly
• Collyer Brothers syndrome
• Dysfunctional sense of causality
• Indifference to outcomes

Source: Software Engineering Tips.

The guys at DARPA have developed a neat camera for ground surveillance of the battlefield: The ARGUS-IS (Autonomous Realtime Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance – Imaging System). This is a digital camera that can be strapped under a helicopter at a 15,000 feet altitude and provides an amazing view. Actually, not all the data (1.8 giga-pixels by 15 frames/s) is streamed down to HQ, but up to 65 independent video windows are tracked simultaneously.

ARGUS-IS

Source: Engadget.

Yes! This cat is driving a Roomba.

The larger our displays, the tougher it gets to find adequate wallpapers. NASA (through a sélection from Chamorro) comes to our resscue with these exceptionnaly beautiful high-resolution images. Our computer will have a hig-technology look even in 4000×3000 pixels.

Atlantis Space Shuttle

You can notice that these images being free of copyright will allow to produce impressive posters if you agree not to make it a commercial venture. Idea?

I can’t stop being amazed by the beauty of Nature. Planet Earth presents such an unbelievable diversity of shows, such a superb collection of small and large moments of pure beauty. Here are some I would like to share with you.

• did you know that beaches may really have all possible colours that your mind would think? Including the nicest green.


Green beach (Papakolea)

• Underground caves are also bizarre. Colors abound, but I find most surprising that sometimes you can find there huge crystals that make you think that Hollywood film makers never invented anything.


Giant crystals in Mexico

• Nature can be horribly hard on Man (for example, in the hottest and driest deserts), but it can also offer the real marvels of life itself (as some oasis).


Oasis - Turpan, China

You love books, you love all about old books, stock paper, engravings, intaglio printing, hollow back binding, etc. The electronic book cannot satisfy your thirst for reading and touching books. So, here I am with some weird news for you.

First, the journal Analytical Chemistry teaches us that, even if we love the smell of those old books, this is the perfume of Death itself. It goes as far as using the identification of some chemical substances to determine which book is most in need of protection and help before too early a decease [1]. And, for this, researchers from the University College London’s Centre for Sustainable Heritage now use a chromatograph/mass-spectrometer.

But, by Jove! Old books will loose their odor? Of course not! Here come the replacement smell. I dare say: Luxurious perfume for the old restored writings, for the savorless new e-Book, for the amateur of foreseeable bibliophily! Here comes the new book smell in a pressurize can.

SmellOfBooks.com has it for $28.99 only!

In order to close with something a little more tasteful, I advise you to discover these ex-libris plates (famous or not) which will bring you back into past ages and will not make us walk in giant’s footsteps but somewhat visit some giant’s reading habits: The Extraordinary World of Ex Libris Art.

Bookplates from Amy Sacker (XIX/XX century)

Sharks are amazing killing machines, very efficient predators of the seas. But they are not only that. They also have some behaviors that could be described as interesting, astonishing, amazing, curious or mind-boggling (depending on your state of mind and what you think about the interaction between sharks and divers).

May I parallel this video with a previous post where I was showing the photo of a Japanese diver putting identification marks on a giant jellyfish?

Again in order to give you the best chances to improve a lot your fighting capacity in Mafia Wars, Facebook coooperative online game, here are some of my recommendations on weaponry and the best way to prepare your mafia for combat (fight).

• Build a powerful mafia (if some of the family members are sleeping on the job, do not hesitate: cull them out of your mafia team)
• Arm your mafia: In each category, you should have at least one of the best weapons for eachof the mafia members. For example, in New York, you will go and buy (when you can) hundreds of Bonus weapons. They don’t come cheap, but it’s the best money can buy. Also, purchase hundreds of Body Armors and 500 Town Cars (It will also earn you an Achievement)
• Don’t buy Boosts if you don’t havea precise and urgent use for them. You would waste them in meaningless fights.

There are few things that you can do to significantly improve the speed of your Internet connection. Of course, you can switch to another Internet Service Provider, but it’s a mess. On the opposite, it is easy to have an sub-optimal connection because of the response time of the DNS server of your Internet Provider. This server offers a translation service a domain name (for example, www.roumazeilles.net) into its equivalent numeric IP address (the only one that the web browser really understands and needs).

But all DNS servers are not born equal and if those offered by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) have an advantage (they are nearer to your own computer), they are not always the fastest ones. NameBench gives you the opportunity to easily and automatically check what DNS server is the most efficient (and to compare it with your own current DNS configuration).

In my own personal case, I just reduced DNS times by 50% (no less!) while I thought I had a rather good configuration. As a matter of fact, Neuf Telecom servers are faster that those from Free…

This works on Windows, MacOS as well as GNU/Linux.

By the way, for those of you who may be wondering, Yes! I included the all new Google DNS as one of the tested options and it was far slower than most of the other freely available possibilities.

In Mafia Wars, fight is a critical par of the game, but it is too often neglected by players. Personally, I love to use it for several good reasons:

• Stamina points are quickly renewed,
• Fights are producing a lot of experience points,
• In fights, you get quick money (specially in cities where jobs are not very efficient like Cuba or Moscow),
• In fights, you get loots on your victims (I collected many an object that I did not know yet how to acquire in a more normal way, through MW job)

So, be an active mafioso and fight! A hundred fights a day is a good rhythm (but you could go faster if you really want it).

The fight below is a good example of several tactical tricks I use and appreciate in Mafia Wars fights:

• Choose your adversaries: Your mafia must be at least twice as big as theirs, to be sure to always kick them down (Mafia Wars only offer adversaries around your own level, in this case a level 194 while I’m 184): Here, Tiny Larson is part of 94-man gang and my mafia is 354 strong)
• Don’t kick twice a guy who did not drop some significant money, but remember that there is a hard-coded limit at $65,000$ per combat (obviously, in this example, I did well; And I immediately repeated my attack in order to grab as much money as possible from his bleeding beaten body)
• A mafia family member doubled my experience points (+4 Experience)
• A mafia family member collected a dropped item (loot) for me (Al Capone found a M16A1…)

All in all, a pretty nice and productive fight.

Then, as soon as I’m out of breath (Health fallen under 20 points), I rush to New York to stop by the hospital and bring me back into shape. New York has the strong advantage of allowing you to earn a lot of money (you only let the Properties produce their revenues) that cannot be invested in nothing else than good medicine. So, these fights become a good mean to convert real-estate income in New York into another currency and plenty of other objects (loot).

If you wonder what all those computer experts do when they assist you, the dirty secret is only a diagram away:

Become a tech support expert

You see? No expertise, just a little trick.

When you progress in Mafia Wars on Facebook, you collect points that you should choose how to assign between:

• Attack
• Defense
• Health
• Energy
• Stamina

Here are my recommendations about the optimum number of points in each.

Attack: You should stay with around 1/2 of your level, with a minimum around 50-55. If you are a Level 50, try to have a 45-50 Attack. If you are a Level 125, you should aim for a 60-70 Attack.

Defense: Same as for Attack.

Health: You don’t want to be too low, but as soon as your Properties in New York start producing money steadily, you will be better spending this money is curing yourself than spending points on Health.

Energy: This is what you always want to maximize. You’ll never have enough.

Stamina: They are needed for fighting and we’ll see that fighting is key but slow. Don’t get much more than 100 if you don’t want to spend all your days fighting.

If you play at Mafia Wars on Facebook, you certainly noticed that some objects are very difficult to get and are absolutely necessary to finish a full campaign. For example, I would list:

• Concealable camera
• Computer setup
• Untraceable Cell Phone
• Blackmail photos
• Illegal Transaction Records
• Politico Corrupto
• Dossier on Dmitri

You will need several hundreds of each of these objects (for example, 300 Politico Corruptos).

It is important to know where to get them. They are “loots” randomly ocllected from some “jobs”. And I advise you to write down where you should go to catch them. As a matter of fact, you could try and ask you mafia family to help, but everybody needs them and they don’t share those valluables a lot.

• Concealable camera : Rob an Electronics Store in New York / Enforcer and Smuggle Consumer Electronics for the Vory in Moscow / Baklany
• Computer setup : Rob an Electronics Store in New York / Enforcer
• Untraceable Cell Phone : Rob an Electronics Store in New York / Enforcer and Arrange A Drug Shipment for the Mafiya in Moscow / Baklany
• Blackmail photos : Obtain Compromising Photos in New York / Hitman
• Illegal Transaction Records : Steal Bank Records in New York / Capo
• Politico Corrupto : is a by-product of Businesses, Bribery Ring in Cuba
• Dossier on Dmitri : Buy Mafiya Intel On Dmitri in Moscow / Baklany

I’ll also show you more about it later.

If you are on Facebook, you certainly know Mafia Wars, this online game, slightly addictive, grouping several million FB users, where you try to progress in a mafia world while doing lowly jobs in New York, Cuba, Moscow (and soon Bangkok or the American West).

One of the difficult aspects is to build yourself a large mafia. You should recruit 501 friends to be stronger in fights. But not many people can really find 500 friends ready to spend a lot of time on a (slightly silly) online game. So, you should use on of the hidden tricks. Build your mafia in a matter of days:

First, sign-in as a Mafia Wars fan. You will receive all announcement messages about this game.

Find one of the messages and rush to the comments telling the world that you want to extend your family. Don’t overdo it, just say “Add me”, possibly adding your current level (”level 184″). You should immediately start receiving invitations from other players asking to be friend and then mafia members.

You can also merely notice people like you in the comments and ask them to become friends and part of your mafia family.

Add me, please!

In any case, I recommend to clean up the list of your friends after some time (they will stay in your mafia family anyway). It is not useful to have hundreds of unknown people being your friends on Facebook. But it’s your life…