Busy

November 1st, 2008 at 9:13 · Filed Under At Home, At Work, Blogging, Days in My Life · 1 Comment 

Dear family, friends and readers,

If you have noticed, I post less starting October. Perhaps some of you are wondering why. Yes, you are right, I am busy working on my research and the thesis. Please continue to check my blog regularly and all comments are welcome. I will check and reply comments and will write new posts when time and ideas sneak in. I will be writing selectively rather than random thoughts.

Thank you for your patronage.

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Butterworth low-pass filters

September 4th, 2008 at 0:14 · Filed Under At Work, Call Me a Geek, Days in My Life, Mathematics, Software Development · Comment 

I was reading about Butterworth low-pass filters since two weeks ago. Signal processing was not my favorite but this particular linear analog electronic filter had somehow captured my attention. I have interns working on some projects. One project uses Butterworth low-pass filters to process signal acquired from some sensors.

I have to verify their works using Mathematica on Mac OS X for data modeling. But there is a problem with this software. It does not have a built-in function of Butterworth low-pass filter so I need to build one.

The gain G(ω) of an n-order Butterworth low pass filter is given in terms of transfer function H(s) as:

where ωc is break frequency.

The Mathematica code with break frequency normalized at 1 rad/s:


butterworth[w1_, w2_, o_] = 1/(1 + (w1/w2)^(2*o));

LogLinearPlot[
 Evaluate[Table[
   10*Log[10, butterworth[w1, 1, order]], {order, 5}]], {w1, 0.01, 100},
  PlotRange -> {-100, 0}, PlotPoints -> 100, ImageSize -> 400]
Export["butterworth.jpg", %]
Plot of the gain of Butterworth low-pass filters of the n-order 1 through 5.

Plot of the gain of Butterworth low-pass filters of the n-order 1 through 5.

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Writing a conceptual paper

August 17th, 2008 at 0:00 · Filed Under At Home, At Work, Blogging, Days in My Life · 2 Comments 

This may or may not be the greatest invention or rather I will not call it an invention yet. I am thinking of how to write a paper to record the conceptualization of my idea which I talked about earlier. First, at this point, I can’t discuss my idea with anybody in order to protect my interest; that makes the writing more difficult. Second, I have nothing to prove so writing this paper is like writing a Sci-Fi novel. So, I need a different approach, may be.

I dug out my collection of conference proceedings yesterday afternoon, hopefully I could find some inspiration. Obviously, I haven’t.

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Hello? What is Ada?

July 9th, 2008 at 23:46 · Filed Under Ada, At Work, Blogging, Days in My Life, Seminar · 4 Comments 

I was giving an Ada talk this afternoon. The room was quite packed with students although not full. They were mainly 3rd year sem 1. Most of them were looking at technologies that they could work with their FYP (Final Year Project).

While I regaled them with fascinating true facts of Ada, I could see various reactions on their innocent and ignorant faces. Almost half of them gave an expression of “What is Ada going to do with my project?”, “What is Ada? Never heard of it.” or “Ada is old technology and is unpopular.” It was years of experience telling me not to waste too much time with such audiences. I quickly skimmed through some technical facts which they wouldn’t understand and continue regaling them with some interesting facts.

Finally, I had come to the end of the talk. It was the questions and answers session. No one had asked any questions except a girl who asked me about C# after the talk session was over. I explained to her the benefits of Ada over C# but she said she would have to start all over again. Again, my instinct told me not to waste time with such attitude and I turned my focus onto the two students whom I am supervising now. I continued with them a discussion of their project.

Unlike a couple of years back, I was too over-enthusiastic about Ada. I would talk regardless of audience reactions. After a few talks and a seminar this year, I find that I have changed. My enthusiasm is parallel to audience reaction.

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Working at Honda?

June 30th, 2008 at 13:12 · Filed Under At Work, Autos, Blogging, Critiques · Comment 

I was working at Honda’s Showroom (KAH Motor) while I waited for my car to be repaired since 0830 this morning. One thing Honda has done right is the 3S (Sales, Service, Showroom) Center. They provide free drinks, Astro and WIFI for customers. The waiting area is very comfortable and cozy. One thing lacking is insufficient seats.

It was great experience to do my work at Honda’s showroom. I have a lot to prepare for the Ada Workshop tomorrow.

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Ada Obsession

June 17th, 2008 at 21:25 · Filed Under Ada, At Work, Blogging, Call Me a Geek, Software Development, Web · Comment 

Well, well, well. Kazeserver alpha RC1 has to be delayed due to some design issues and I am rewriting most part of the software so that the source can be understood easily. For the past two weeks, I was troubled by the old design but I have got a new picture now.

Isn’t Ada code easy to understand? Well, yes. But I was using a lot of Unbounded_String in records which made my code hard to read and understood. While Unbounded_String is compatible with database operation, it lacks the understandability and readability if compared to String (1 .. 10) for example.

Today, I am totally obsessed in Ada and am feeling the strongest Ada obsession after a couple of years. The feeling is still burning. If my Ada obsession keep burning, I believe I can release KazeServer for alpha testing before of June. Hopefully.

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Increased productivity

June 14th, 2008 at 1:18 · Filed Under At Home, At Work, Blogging, Days in My Life · Comment 

After solving the post-commit hook script problem (read here), I am a happy software developer again. I am able to receive post commit emails to help me keep track of changes in my development work. I have been experiencing the same level of efficiency and productivity before this problem struck me.

I guess I am happy of the whole week of activities and I am signing off to bed.

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Gourmet Chocolates

June 13th, 2008 at 23:11 · Filed Under At Work, Blogging, Food, Gifts, Marketing · 1 Comment 

I love chocolates! Recently, I craved for chocolates because of the increased brain activities. Chocolate is the favorite food while I am working on computers. Besides providing more energy for my brains, I love the way it melts in my mouth. LA has baked some chocolate cookies last week and I almost finished them.

I found a site which sells delicious gourmet chocolates. Gertrude Hawk Chocolates is made of fresh and finest ingredients. It is dedicated to create the best gourmet chocolates which include dark chocolate and other mouth-watering, delicious Chocolate Smidgens, caramel-dipped apples, gourmet summer taffy and many more.

Gertrude Hawk Chocolates also provide gift giving service. Their beautifully gift-wrapped assortments and pre-made gift baskets add more values to your gift-giving needs. Besides, you can also create your own personal gift with their Create-a-Basket program.

Hmmm… I wish to receive a Gertrude Hawk Chocolates gift basket.

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DocBook Publishing – Output to HTML

June 6th, 2008 at 23:24 · Filed Under At Work, Documentation, Linux, Software Development · 3 Comments 

I learned about DocBook last year and found it a great tool for technical documentation. It is a XML based semantic markup language. The DocBook is originally intended for computer hardware and software documentation but it is great for other documentation purposes.

I have been working on some documentation, new and converting existing from Lyx to DocBook. With DocBook, I am able to publish the contents easily to many formats, namely TEX, text, pdf or HTML. I had been trying to output some of my DocBook documentation to HTML.

This afternoon, I have finally succeeded to publish to HTML. I installed some DocBook packages on Ubuntu. Here are the packages you need to get DocBook going:

  1. docbook
  2. docbook-xsl
  3. docbook-xsl-doc
  4. docbook-xsl-doc-html
  5. docbook-xsl-doc-pdf
  6. docbook-xsl-doc-text
  7. xsltproc
  8. and optional xalan and fop

To output your DocBook document to HTML, simply this:


$ xsltproc --output paper.html \
/usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh/xhtml/docbook.xsl\
paper.xml

You can turn on chapter and section numbering by setting chapter.autolabel to 1 and section.autolabel to 1. To include the chapter number in every sections, set section.label.includes.component.label to 1.


$ xsltproc --output paper.html \
--stringparam section.autolabel 1 \
--stringparam section.label.includes.component.label 1 \
/usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh/xhtml/docbook.xsl \
paper.xml

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Patched a security hole in KazeServer

June 4th, 2008 at 14:46 · Filed Under Ada, At Work, Software Development, Web · Comment 

While I was at Honda waiting for the technician to reprogram the ECU, I found a security hole in the authentication part of KazeServer. An unrecognized user id with a null password would grant access to KazeServer but without any significant usability but posed a potential risk.

I quickly identified the cause and rectified the problematic logic in the program design. One down and many to do. One of the other critical problem is that KazeServer will get over with initialization and execute even without the MySQL server is running. A serious bug though.

Another 3 more days to release Alpha RC1 and yet so many problems and unfinished parts. I feel the release will have to be postponed then.

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Pre-Alpha RC1

June 2nd, 2008 at 22:46 · Filed Under Ada, At Work, Blogging, Days in My Life, Software Development, Web · Comment 

I am in the midst of getting the KazeServer to roll out. During this pre-Alpha RC1 stage, works have been a little pressured especially cleaning up parts of the codes to make it neater and more efficient. A number of factors are also affecting during pre-Alpha stage.

One of them is the gnat Ada compiler issue on Ubuntu Hardy Heron or 8.04. Hardy comes with gnat-4.1 with a number of packages not added. Without these packages, I can’t build AWS-2.3. So, I have to roll out Alpha RC1 on Mac OS X until Ubuntu Intrepid or 8.10 with gnat-4.3 is released (hopefully with gnat-4.3 by October). I have another option which is I have to move to Debian Etch with gnat-4.1 but including the libaws-2.2.

libaws-2.2 is a pre-built library for AWS on Debian Etch. I am developing using gnat-4.4 and AWS-2.3 on Mac OS X. Moving to Debian Etch means I am downgrading the version of gnat and AWS and I feel a little skeptical about it. This is one thing I hate most, version inconsistency among the Linux distro.

After talking to my friends on this matter, it looks like I have few choices but to target on Mac OS X for the moment considering the tasks of installing and get the Debian Etch up and a whole lot of uncertainties in gnat-4.1 and AWS-2.2.

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Entering Alpha stage

June 1st, 2008 at 22:35 · Filed Under Ada, At Work, Days in My Life, Software Development, Web · 1 Comment 

Finally, after weeks of experimental development, KazeServer is entering Alpha development stage. I expect to roll out Alpha RC1, hopefully before this weekend.

KazeServer is a web-enabled membership management system that allows registered members of an organization to login to review their membership data and other membership related transactions or records. KazeServer is developed 100% with Ada and AWS (Ada Web Server). The application itself is a web server. No web server, e.g. Apache, is needed to run KazeServer. It is a totally stand-alone independent application with a built-in web server (AWS).

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Talking to a wall

March 8th, 2008 at 1:53 · Filed Under Ada, At Work, Blogging, Conferences, Software Development · Comment 

I had two talks about Ada at MMU (February 25) and UTAR (March 5). Among the local universities I had given talk about Ada, UTAR was the only university where I had given more than 5 talks over the years. According to my previous experience at UTAR, the response from the students were quite good.

On March 5, the talk at UTAR was the worst as if I was talking to walls or stone sculptures. The students were acting very rude by ignoring my talk. They were doing their assignment at the computers instead of listening to my talk. The talk was rescheduled to another venue which was in a computer lab. Nonetheless, I wrapped up the talk quickly. I skipped many parts to take it to the end and at the end of the talk, no one had asked any questions. I asked them some questions instead and of course, they did not know to answer. Obviously, they did not pay any attention at all.

In contrary, the talk at MMU on February 25 received better responses from the students.

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I lost my cell phone

February 12th, 2008 at 23:26 · Filed Under At Work, Blogging, Days in My Life, Mac OS X, Phones, Sony Ericsson · 1 Comment 

Sony Ericsson K700iI had to go to one of my client’s outlet at Sentral Melaka to service their IP camera. When I arrived at the outlet, I received an SMS from LA followed by a phone call from Richard. He asked me lot of questions about his insurance claim and also to thank me for providing assistance and information about his insurance claim. I remembered clearly I put my Sony Ericsson K700i which I bought in 2005.

I was a Nokia user before switching to SE because I read about how seamlessly SE K700i syncs with Apple’s Mac OS X applications via Bluetooth. The SE K700i is a very nice phone with many features I love about. One of them is K700i can be used as a remote control for Apple’s Keynote presentation software. The control is via Bluetooth as well.

Soon when I realized it was not in my waist pouch, I quickly dialed the number using another phone. The phone had been switched off. Total silence. It’s gone! A phone which has been my friend for almost 3 years is now gone.

I went back to the outlet after taking Dmitry from school and the staffs told me they didn’t see it. Disappointed.

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GPS data uploaded

January 31st, 2008 at 23:44 · Filed Under At Work, Blogging, Business, GPS, Technology · Comment 

Finally, I have had the time to upload the GPS data I collected from yesterday’s delivery. The data is now all in the Windows box. It is too late to remove some unwanted data (data from other trips e.g. Zakimi on Okinawa and etc.). So I just make another copy of all the data and probably will edit them during this CNY.

I am kind of thirsty for more GPS data from delivery or trips to alien places. Anymore delivery? It is kinda fun. It is like treasure hunting, or tracking down a location. It is really exciting and fun!

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