Lex and Yacc

Lex and Yacc are two software tools used in developing compilers and interpreters (like the Windows command interpreter (cmd.exe) and Bourne again shell (bash) in Unix systems. The book of Levine, Mason, and Brown is a perfect book to learn lex and yacc.

There are also a couple of websites describing how to use lex and yacc. I find http://dinosaur.compilertools.net/ a great place to start.

Database systems

A couple of database systems that people can use freely (including the source code):

PostgreSQL - an advanced object-relational database system.
MySQL - relational database system.
SQLite - a C library system that implements an SQL database engine.

My personal favorite is PostgreSQL. I have been using it for 4 years now. MySQL is quite good too. SQLite on the other hand is great for small projects that require some database capability.

Fairy tales

I found a website about Hans Christian Andersen's 168 tales. Most of the stories are provided in the website along with the original artworks. Google lists a couple of other websites showcasing Hans Christian Andersen's stories. Some interesting tidbits about Andersen are available in wikipedia.

My inspiration

Gotta finish that research!

Easter Sunday

Happy easter everyone!

My Final Four

Chicago : Illinois fighting illini
Albuquerque : Louisville cardinals
Syracuse : UNC tar heels
Austin : Kentucky wildcats

Almost eliminated

The blue devils and the wolfpack were defeated by the spartans and the badgers respectively. The tar heels however survived the showndown with the wildcats -- by 1 point! The Final Four contenders from the ACC were almost eliminated in one night.

Duke blue devils (68) - Michigan St. spartans (78) [box score]
NC St. wolfpack (56) - Wisconsin badgers (65) [box score]
UNC tar heels (67) - Villanova wildcats (66) [box score]

T-rex tissue

CNN.com reports about a 70-million-year-old soft tissue recovered from a Tyrannosaurus rex. It seems that the scientists are interested to know if DNA can be extracted from this jurassic tissue.

Hiding alarm clock

MIT Media lab developed clocky, an alarm clock that would roll and hide whenever you hit the snooze button. Crazy. hehehe.

Graphviz

Graphviz is a tool to draw large directed and undirected graphs. The graphviz version for Mac OS X is particularly cool (btw, there are versions for Windows and Linux too). I may use this tool in my research work soon.

Star Wars cartoons

In case you miss the new episodes of animated Star Wars, you can still watch them online at the CN website.

Partition congruences

The number 4 can be partitioned in 5 ways. 1+1+1+1+1, 2+1+1, 2+2, 3+1, and 4. The number 9 can be partitioned in 30 ways and 14 in 135 ways. In fact, any number ending in 4 or 9 can be partitioned in x ways, where x is divisible by 5. The numbers 4, 9, and 14 are said to be congruent to each other.

This mathematical pattern has been observed by the genius Srinivasa Ramanujan decades ago. He found partition congruences for 5, 7 and 11. Recently, Karl Mahlburg, a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, USA, generalized this theory on partition congruences. The new scientist magazine reports that his results have applications in particle physics and computer security.

Hashing

Lately I had to implement a hash function to speed up my program. This website about minimal perfect hashing is helpful.

Demons out! ... and Jackets too

The West Virginia mountaineers routed the Wake Forest demon deacons last night. The mountaineers came too strong after the half-time. The deacons managed to tie the score at the end of the second half and in the first OT -- but came short in the second OT. Story is here.

UPDATE: The Georgia Tech yellow jackets lost to Louisville cardinals this afternoon. Story is here.

FINAL SCORES:
West Virginia mountaineers (111) - Wake Forest demon deacons (105) [box score]
Louisville cardinals (76) - Georgia Tech yellow jackets (54) [box score]

Duke blue devils, NC State wolfpack, and UNC tar heels are still dancing.

So Long Dixon

Carlos Dixon and his team lost the second round of NIT to Memphis tigers. They gave us a thrilling inagural season in the ACC and we are very proud of them. The full story is here.

FINAL SCORE:
Memphis tigers (83) - Virginia Tech hokies (62) [box score]

Open source math software

Here I am again. Looking for open source alternatives to expensive software. This time, alternatives to Mathematica, MatLab, and S/S+.

If you don't have the bucks, a decent alternative to Mathematica is Maxima. Maxima had its origins to DOE Macsyma which was the first among the modern computer algebra systems like Maple and Mathematica. Maxima does symbolic integration, 3D plotting, and ODE solving among many other features. It is available for Windows and Linux systems.

SciLab on the other hand is a very good alternative to MatLab. Scilab is a scientific software package for numerical computations. It provides a powerful open computing environment for engineering and scientific applications. SciLab is available for Windows, Linux, HP-UX, and Solaris platforms.

Looking for an open source statistical software? I recommend R, a very sophisticated open source statistical package. R uses a dialect of the S/S+ statistical software package. R is available for Windows, Linux, and MacOS systems.

Of course Mathematica and MatLab are great software packages. However, they are just too expensive for me.

Sequencing the X chromosome

Nature published a paper about the recently sequenced X chromosome. The paper is available online here.

I wish all research papers are freely available online to the public. These papers are anyway funded by money which ultimately came from the reading public (through taxes). :)

Going to the second round

The hokies have finally beaten the owls after a total of 10 match-ups. Dixon and his team routed the owls, 60-50, last night at the Cassell.

LOTR parody

I found this LOTR parody by Jonas Diego, a pinoy comics artist working in Makati. The humor is pinoy and the drawings are great. It seems that the caricatures of his friends (also pinoy comics artists) composed the cast of characters in the parody.

Comic links: Teaser, Issue 1, Issue 2.

Day after spring break

Oh yeah ... reported to office early ... summarized work done during the break and on with a meeting with my adviser.

The meeting went well and of course I have more things to work on. I plan to have my research "defense" early april so I really have to make that prototype working!

Let the postseason games bagin

Duke blue devils and UNC tar heels earned #1 seeding at the NCAA tourney. They are joined by #2 Wake Forest demon deacons, #5 Georgia Tech yellow jackets, and #10 NC State wolfpack. It would be awesome to have three of them go to the Final Four!

Virginia Tech hokies, Clemson tigers, Miami Fl. hurricanes, and Maryland terrapins are NIT bound.

The hokies will meet the Temple owls on tuesday (March 15, 8pm). Go hokies!

Tough game

The yellow jackets played tough until the last seconds of their game vs the blue devils. The blue devils however are tougher. The Duke blue devils won the game against the Georgia Tech yellow jackets, 69-64, and are the 2005 ACC champs.

Jackets and Devils

The yellow jackets beat the tar heels fair and square while the blue devils took care of business by beating the wolfpack. The ACC champions will be decided tomorrow.

I still believe that the tar heels will still emerge as #1 seed in the NCAA dance. Today is just a bad day for them.

FINAL SCORES:
Georgia Tech yellow jackets (78) - UNC tar heels (75) [box score]
Duke blue devils (76) - North Carolina State wolfpack (69) [box score]

Popped!

So much for the bubble -- the hokies are about to burst theirs. The yellow jackets are currently pulling away from the hokies. The tigers however are awesome -- they gave the tar heels the scare of their lives. Anyway, the wishful thinking of having the tigers and hokies meet in game 8 is just -- well, wishful thinking.

UPDATE:
The wolfpack were able to upset the demon deacons. The blue devils however escaped the cavaliers.

I would like to see the blue devils and the tar heels meet in the championship.

FINAL SCORES:
UNC tar heels (88) - Clemson tigers (81) [box score]
Georgia Tech yellow jackets (73) - Virginia Tech hokies (54) [box score]
North Carolina State wolfpack (81) - Wake Forest demon deacons (65) [box score]
Duke blue devils (76) - Virginia cavaliers (64) [box score]

Unpredictable ACC

The tigers complete the sweep of the terps today. Recall that the terps are defending ACC champs and they didn't win against the tigers this season.

The wolfpack and the cavaliers have beaten the seminoles and the hurricanes respectively. Looks like the loss of the terps and the canes cost them their NCAA bubbles. The wolfpack on the other hand are looking good.

Final scores:

Clemson tigers (84) - Maryland terrapins (72) [box score]
NC State wolfpack (70) - Florida State seminoles (54) [box score]
Virginia cavaliers (66) - Miami Fl. hurricanes (65) [box score]

The madness begins tomorrow

I'm eager to see if the tigers will complete the sweep of the terps. :)

Too much eagerness

119 applicants previously being considered for acceptance by the Harvard Business School (HBS) are now outrightly rejected. These 119 applicants followed the advice of a hacker on how to gain access to the information system of ApplyYourself web service used by business schools including HBS. Subsequently they were able to check if they were accepted or not. Unfortunately, their activities were tracked. Talk about over-eagerness.

Meetings

My whole day was essentially spent on meetings. The one in the afternoon was particularly wasteful since we never agreed on something lest resolve anything. I hate long meetings going nowhere.

ACC near-upsets

The Duke blue devils came close in upsetting the UNC tar heels this afternoon. The tar heels won against the blue devils, 75-73. The NC St. wolfpack also scared the WF demon deacons a while ago. The demon deacons won against the wolfpack, 55-53.

The hokies benefited from the loss of NC St. today. They are now #4 seed in the ACC tournament.

In the other news, 3 top-10 teams didn't survive this sunday -- Ohio state won against #1 Illinos; Florida won against #3 Kentucky; and Missouri won against #7 Kansas.

Finishing with a bang!

The hokies wrap up their inagural season with a win by beating the terps 86-76 today at the Cassell. The hokies (15-12, 8-8 ACC) share the 4th place in ACC conference with the yellow jackets (17-10, 8-8 ACC) and are back to the NCAA tournament bubble.

The full story is here.

Free Antivirus software

The free version of AVG anti-virus from Grisoft looks good! You have to pay for support though.

Lovely walk

It is late in the morning and the sun already melted most of the snow. I decided to walk to campus. -- wrong decision: it is windy and the wind is cold; ice formed in some walk paths. (Fortunately, I am wearing a thick jacket, gloves, and hat). I am too proud to go back and wait for the bus. I pressed on and made it to campus.

At least I had a much needed exercise. ...but I might not do it again. :)

Reverse engineering by listening

Nils Schneider wanted to install Linux in his iPod. The problem is that iPod's bootloader, the software that starts up the system, is not accessible directly. What he did is he "played" the bootloader code. He then decoded the sequence of clicks that iPod produced. It took him 20 hours to reverse engineer the whole bootloader software.

He is now running Linux in his iPod. This effort paves a way for people to develop other software applications that will run on iPods.

-- Looks like these people have nothing else to do. :)

Thriller at Clemson

Tigers clinched the win over the hokies with a dunk! -- with 2 seconds remaining. The final score : (tigers) 66 - (hokies) 64.