Kermit@CS

Who voted for this guy anyway?

A moment before the new academic school year starts, heres my wish-list, some of these may already be done - if so kudos to the relevant parties:

1. Campus-Wide WiFi - Wifi coverage is already present in the libraries and in the Ross building, but Wifi access in the lecture halls and on the lawns is sorely lacking. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could look up relevant research on the web during a lecture or check our mail from the grass outside Shprintzak?
2. Standard Compliant Websites - UNIX and Mac users can’t sign up for courses or even browse the shnaton (!! - search function doesn’t work) this year due to poor standard compliance in some parts of the University’s web-presence which only works in Internet Explorer. In a perfect world, the University would require that all web pages be standard compliant and work at least in Firefox. The real pity is that it appears this would be very easy to fix - as from a quick look at the code for these sites, most of the problems seem to stem from use of the document.all property.
3. Install Firefox, Thunderbird and an updated version of Acrobat in Ross - last year at least, the default web browser on the Ross computers was an antiquated version of Mozilla. It would be nice if someone went about installing a modern version of Firefox and thunderbird. The recent builds are much faster, more compatible, and definitely more stable than the older versions of Mozilla.
4. RSS on course websites - It would be nice if instead of checking email lists, nntp news groups and course websites we could simply use our RSS readers to subscribe to each courses website and automatically be notified of new announcements/exercises. This could be easilly achieved with minimal effort using Wordpress or one of a myriad of other blogging tools. Of course it would require the TAs to become familiar with the relevant software, but that seems a small price to pay for the improved functionality.

Well for reasons of brevity, thats my list. Overall I’m very happy at HUJI, to date the experience has been much better than I thought university would be. The CS secretaries have also proved to be super, and where of great help whenever I needed anything.

Wishing everyone a very successful and enjoyable new year.

After a much needed break things are starting to wind back up…

Well I say “starting” since the Algorithms course page for this year isn’t up, although computer graphics seems to be in better shape - it still lacks a few images.

Also, has anyone else got this SMS from the Algorithms course?

ALGORITHMS
LECTURE(67504)
CHANGE TO
MONDAY AT 18:00
INSTEAD OF
SUNDAY IN
SEMESTER ALEF**
    (HUJI)

Anyone have any idea what they mean [I’m assuming they mean that the lecture on Sunday from 12:00-13:00 has moved to Monday 18:00-19:00]? and why its in all caps?

I’m off to try to knock as many things as I can off my todo list for the summer, see you all on Sunday…

In parting, some tidbits:

• Filesystem using TinyURL
• Why you should spend all that spare money on a DSLR

One of the most valuable tools a programmer has in his/her arsenal (besides caffeine that is) is source control.

CVS is traditionally one’s weapon of choice, and I’m sure most of the people reading this are very familiar with it’s ins and outs…

Well, theres a new kid in town by the name of Subversion that fixes many of the problems that old CVS had and adds some cool options.

If you aren’t using source control already or if you aren’t familiar with Subversion, theres a really neat article over at redhat.com - checkit out…

And while your at it, check out TRAC, a really cool addon to subversion…

Nachla’ot - it’s like living in a bloody village

I’m looking for a new place to live. I currently live in a really wonderful apartment in Nachla’ot which I love dearly (close to the university and the machneh yehuda market, great/weird neighbors, etc.), but I’m moving in with my gf so we need a bigger place…

Saw an add that caught my eye on one of the online boards this afternoon for an apartment really close by. Chatted with the guy on the phone and was over there in a matter of 3 minutes.

Here’s the kicker - the present tenant is a friend of a friend (and from here the village reference)…

Apart from that, it turns out that it’s the height of apartment hunting season at the moment. When I came in to see the apartment, there was already someone there (they add had only been put on the net this morning).

I took the landlords number shortly after and phoned him up, turns out the guy who was there before me closed with him 5 minutes beforehand…

Oh well… If anyone hears of a 2 room apartment in Nachla’ot that’s freeing up in the start of October for around $500 (preferably less), I’d really appreciate a heads-up… (oh, and one more thing, the loo has to be inside the house, and the roof has to not leak, thanks )

Summer break at huji has always been something of an illusion to me (for the past 2 years at least). This year by some freak accident, I’ve got a little over a month “free” before I’ve got any more moadey bet…

This leaves me with a bit of time to get some personal projects done, hopefully make some money, and get down and dirty with QT 4.0 - one of the coolest development frameworks around.

I wish you all an extremely happy summer vacation, I hope you aren’t too bogged down with moadey bet… And of course to everyone doing Infi 1 again next week - best of luck!

I don’t think I’m going to post much till the start of the school year, as people are too busy studying and on their summer vacations anyway….

Well, another milestone has passed us - moadey aleph are finally out of the way (hopefully for the best)
and we’re now in full moed bet swing [which will hopefully end in time for an actual summer vacation…].

Seems there are still people with energy to do things other than study in Giv’at Ram and a neat example
is one physics student who wrote up a WikiBook guide for students in Giv’at Ram. It’s an entertaining
read and being part of a wiki, it’s a “living” document - meaning anyone can add or correct information.

It already contains lots of useful and entertaining info, and I hope more people will add their own content
to make it even better.

For some reason, I don’t think this is what the next Knuth book is going to look like:

Some worthwhile links:

• A very insightful writeup on software design - written on a PERL oriented website, but the advice is solid and most of it is very relevant to software development in general.
• Simply entertaining

The LinkedIn craze is spreading like the plague through Giv’at Ram. If you haven’t gotten an invitation in the mail yet, the shtick is as follows:

LinkedIn is a very interesting Social Networking site - unlike other such sites, this one utilizes the Kevin Bacon effect, not to enable some 16 year old from France to contact you with pictures of his Pokemon, but to help you find a job. In simpler terms - it’s pure Vitamin-P.

What makes this so great is that it looks like it works, the site [intentionally?] leaves your picture, hobbies, favorite music, etc. out of your profile - the only thing that belongs there is your employment goals, and your resume.

You can search for job offers posted by people in your network, and it will even tell you how many people you know who work or have worked in the relevant company. There appear to be plentiful job offers also - even Google seems to be posting openings there…

Connections are most simply made via company (although you can search on names, or invite your own friends) and it seems nearly everyone is in on it. A quick search located many many people I’ve worked with in the past, both in Israel and abroad.

Use in the university seems to be growing exponentially, seems all my friends are competing who’s can get the most contacts…

Also, if I’m already on the subject, another really cool social networking site is MySpace although it’s much more geared towards musicians.

Links from the web:

• A Pirated Mac OSX version that runs [for the most part] on normal Intel boxen is in the wild.
• An insightful article on how Windows Programs by and large look like crap - there is a better way of doing things!

Wowzers, seems we’ve come a long way since Elite…

It’s amazing to think how far 3d graphics have come in the last few years…

This is the kind of thing I want to do when I finish my degree!!!! (Although I think I’ll keep my present family name, thank you…)

In other news, this might be of use if you need some extra help studying for statistics.

Well, if you haven’t noticed, we’re in the thick of exam season now. Call me sick, but this is the part of the year I enjoy the most - it seems that studying for exams causes all the material to jell. Topics connect up between courses and you realize just how much material you’ve absorbed in the last semester….

Well, there are certainly worse things you can do with your time…

Continuing on the topic of my last post, the computer graphics courses look really nice (67609 and 67315).

Apart from the cool course website for cg, they both star Dr. Dani Lischinski, who did a year’s internship at Pixar (wow-awee-wa kavod!!!).

Other stuff that bears mentioning:

• Apple adds Podcast support to iTunes [You thought written blogs could be boring…] + all iPods (except for the mini) are now color - how sexy is that
• Now you can own your very own paper Enigma machine.
• Theres a new James Bond gadget out to keep that big plasma display in your dorm room out of the way…
• How to rebuild an old laptop battery for much less than a new one costs…