tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355783402012-02-08T10:18:59.922-08:00...from the relative safety of my fish bowl...kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.comBlogger671100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-89555290054897496822011-12-21T18:10:00.000-08:002011-12-26T12:27:57.933-08:00

I recently saw this video on Vimeo; to say it blew my mind would be an understatement: In it, Greg Wilson makes a compelling argument that we have a responsibility to seriously question the efficacy of the software engineering practices we employ. For example, do we know code reviews will really lead to better code, or are we just trusting our gut? Is pair programming effective?  Does

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-5868888850502242602011-08-19T15:06:00.000-07:002011-08-19T15:25:08.185-07:00

I've written previously about Ron Paul's misunderstandings about the 16th Amendment (among other things), but in all fairness he's not the only guy who doesn't totally get it.  In fact, most people don't "get" the 16th Amendment because it doesn't mean what you think it means on first reading. The latest victim of the horrible wording of the amendment?  Republican presidential hopeful, Rick

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-48813222195358154282011-07-14T19:20:00.000-07:002011-07-15T08:21:09.378-07:00

Let me start by saying I'm not a technophobe. I work in video surveillance, I write code in multiple languages, I cross-compile C++ code, I browse various open source projects in my spare time, I like python's structured use of white space, etc. I'm a nerd, and an unabashed one at that. But let me be the first to say: I do not want a "digital home." Yep, that's right. I don't want a digital

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-33497710433243090462011-05-10T11:46:00.000-07:002011-07-15T08:52:06.651-07:00

A month or so ago I was wrestling with a pretty thorny algorithmic problem at work.  Eventually I worked out a solution that worked great on our Windows emulator, so I figured my job was done...was I ever wrong. Once I got it running on our embedded processor (a lowly ARM926EJ-S at ~270 MHz), I quickly found my algorithm had some serious performance issues.  So, I fired up oProfile and did some

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-84121395661186890042011-03-02T18:11:00.000-08:002011-08-09T12:26:45.456-07:00

The other day my wife and I went out to lunch.  The local university has a crappy newspaper that publishes equally crappy editorials written by people who generally don't know any better.  Flipping through the editorial, I saw this article entitled Lincoln killed the United States.  Having just watched Ken Burn's excellent nine-part documentary on the Civil War (if you're interested, it's on

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-4041115436865389582010-10-15T17:15:00.000-07:002010-10-25T17:34:12.641-07:00

In my previous post, I compared JPEG to the newcomers, WebP and JPEG XR. For the most part, JPEG held its own pretty well. WebP was better in a few respects, worse in a few...overall decent. JPEG XR was utterly horrible.But this got me thinking: how optimized was my JPEG encoder? I first used MSFT's .NET JPEG implementation, but I had to wonder just how good that implementation actually was.

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-91294486750881335832010-10-10T12:53:00.001-07:002010-10-12T18:11:31.226-07:00

Google recently released a new image format called WebP, which is based on the intra-frame compression from the WebM (VP8) video codec. I'd seen a few comparisons of WebP floating about, but I wasn't really happy with any of them. Google has their own analysis which I critiqued here (executive summary: bad comparison metric--PSNR--and questionable methods).Dark Shikari's comparison was limited

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-34445120040496400522010-10-01T13:42:00.001-07:002010-10-08T00:53:14.432-07:00

Google decided to use the intra-frame coding algorithm of WebM to create a new image format for the web called WebP. And, of course, they make bold claims like "...an average 39% reduction in file size." There's nothing wrong with bold claims, but after reading the details of how they arrived at that conclusion, there are a few problems.First, Google should stop using PSNR as a metric for image

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-21674942484365682332010-05-28T16:24:00.001-07:002010-06-11T15:42:00.040-07:00

Last year, there was brief discussion about a standard for high definition video; you can see my previous comments here.One of the big questions about a high definition standard is how to make sure the quality of video encoding is acceptable. Sure, video can be 1080P, but if it's over-compressed garbage produced with a sub-par encoder then it's really difficult to claim that it is "high

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-81875483490427183372010-05-09T14:55:00.000-07:002011-05-02T19:37:51.806-07:00

My significant other works in zoology. She needed a program to analyze about a thousand hours of video containing salamanders. Since image and video processing is my primary focus, I offered to take a stab at analyzing her video. The goal was to determine how much distance the object (in this case, a cute little salamander known as Plethodon Shermani) traveled over the course of the video.

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-86148946138966299002010-03-13T19:18:00.000-08:002010-12-14T15:13:57.392-08:00

Nothing makes programmers cower in fear more than memory corruption. These bugs are almost always A) fatal and B) ridiculously difficult to track down and C) hard to reproduce consistently. The combination of these three things can make you start thinking of your memory in surprisingly literal ways: (and literal in more ways than one, since your memory is "trashed" hahahaha, oh that was bad...

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-28511124526197185872010-03-01T09:01:00.000-08:002010-06-09T11:11:03.773-07:00

Lately I've been working with DMO filters. Typically I've written regular DirectShow filters derived from the base classes, but after reading this article I decided that maybe it was time to start writing DMOs instead of transform filters. The advantages seemed attractive, and being able to write a filter that would work in Media Foundation was tempting.After writing two of them, I can now say

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-82907188698091501582010-01-07T10:13:00.000-08:002010-01-07T10:18:56.984-08:00

A fellow poster on a forum I frequent often says to gravity skeptics (yes, sadly people like this exist) "well, if in doubt, jump off a cliff." Someone commented that there wasn't such a succinct retort for evolution skeptics, but I think there is:...all the intelligent design advocates die; settles that debate, I believe.

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-555433666500130672009-12-22T20:37:00.000-08:002009-12-22T22:41:02.730-08:00

By no means do I know film well. Occasionally I catch myself using the term "movie," and I struggle to remember the names of actors and directors and producers and what their respective roles are, and so on.But I love film. I really do. Nothing is quite as good to me as a solid flick. So, without ado, my list of the 25 best films of this decade, in no particular order:Lost in Translation:

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-758030762447079882009-12-21T10:48:00.000-08:002010-01-07T10:32:22.384-08:00

The media subtypes supported by Directshow are outlined in an MSDN article. Although the article lists five separate types, there are really only two distinct types:MEDIASUBTYPE_AVC1: h.264 bitstream without start codes, andMEDIASUBTYE_H264: h.264 bitstream with start codesBasically, a subtype in directshow communicates the type of media that a filter outputs, so these types let connecting

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-39935429138195964462009-11-05T14:34:00.000-08:002009-11-05T16:14:44.174-08:00

The news media is all aflutter with the budding Obama Administration/Fox News stand-off. I'll let my biases be known: "Faux" News is great for entertainment, but it is a lousy way to get informed. I would no sooner watch Faux News to inform myself than I would trust Michael Moore to present an argument that doesn't represent the triumph of image over substance, but I suppose that level of

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-70254451848033550022009-09-29T16:08:00.000-07:002009-09-29T16:19:11.443-07:00

I went to demo some shiny new code for a friend, and we both had a laugh when my program pretty much puked all over itself.Admittedly I had not run this code on this particular machine before, and it was running Vista and .NET 3.5 (neither of which I'd tested against) But upon finding the bug, I find it difficult to understand what sort of design decision would involve such an arbitrary

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-62753142100642130532009-09-21T12:48:00.000-07:002009-09-21T13:25:24.901-07:00

While messing around with CMediaType (a wrapper class for AM_MEDIA_TYPE), I came across an inconsistency/bug. If you execute the following code: pmt->cbFormat = sizeof(WAVEFORMATEX); WAVEFORMATEX *wfex = (WAVEFORMATEX*)pmt->AllocFormatBuffer(sizeof(WAVEFORMATEX));...you will find that wfex (which is a pointer to pbFormat) is NULL. My first thought was "out of memory?!" and the next thought was

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-57745586106669251662009-09-08T15:44:00.000-07:002012-01-04T11:10:47.258-08:00

...Kaiser Permanente. Seriously. I live in a small town in Oregon. To receive any non-emergency medical/vision services, I must drive 50+ minutes (one way) just to see an "approved doctor" in my "coverage network." Any service not in this "coverage network" (which, so far as I can see, extends as far as Kaiser's front door) causes me to incur 100% of the expenses. There is a doctor I like

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-66645143142744627422009-07-12T21:15:00.000-07:002010-04-18T09:42:02.580-07:00

I've been a climber for almost twelve years now, and I think it's fair to say that the sport is mostly misunderstood by the public at large. So, I decided it might be fun to outline a few common misconceptions about climbing.1. Climbing is not actually that dangerous.Yes, this will come as a surprise to some, but the statistics don't lie. You are more likely to die in your car, giving birth to a

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-21054182909310420362009-05-14T13:05:00.000-07:002009-09-03T13:26:41.497-07:00

Despite the last couple of years being a time when "high definition" video has really gained traction, there's one surprising thing about HD video: it doesn't have an obvious definition. Dan Rayburn brings up this observation in a recent blog post:For an entire industry that defines itself based on the word "quality", today there is still no agreed upon standard for what classifies HD quality

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-51429948403584920522009-05-04T18:44:00.000-07:002009-05-04T20:38:41.488-07:00

One of the most common tasks when working with video is dealing with colorspaces and image formats. In this post, I'll discuss the two major colorspaces commonly used in Microsoft code, converting between different formats of a given colorspace. In some future post, I might talk about converting one colorspace to a totally separate colorspace, but that topic is worthy of its own discussion.In

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-9215591581803363572009-02-02T16:19:00.000-08:002009-05-04T20:54:40.986-07:00

Vista has a nasty bug that can cause lag spikes when attached to a wireless network; every sixty seconds, the PC will experience a rather substantial lag spike: 10.0.0.1 is my router; notice everything is going along just fine, and then out of the blue, I get a ping time of 836 milliseconds, which for any latency-sensitive application is a very consequential amount of time. And it isn't like my

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-50244302333934872572008-12-06T15:10:00.000-08:002008-12-06T16:19:23.684-08:00

Everybody loves log:...this posting concerns a different type of log: the type we programmers use to keep a history of what our application did.I love Jeff Atwood. I really do. I read his blog on a regular basis. I enjoy his style of writing, and both of us are unabashed nerds. We both post on Silent PC Review. His blog, Coding Horror, has possibly been my favorite blog over the last few

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-79749289981393668962008-11-19T16:00:00.000-08:002008-11-19T17:06:14.237-08:00

Raymond Chen briefly discussed priority shift in a recent blog post:If you wait long enough, everything is our top priorityI always crack a smile whenever I hear or read someone say that "XYZ is our top priority." The person may believe it at the moment they say it, but just wait a little while, and soon there will be a new top priority. I'll be completely frank: I do not like Chen's pithy, dry

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-59810274646165135242008-11-05T20:59:00.000-08:002008-11-07T09:40:26.144-08:00

I have to be honest: one of my favorite things to do is go on newegg and see the best budget system I can piece together.Anyone can toss a buttload of money at a computer and end up with something really nice. It doesn't take any creativity, really--money solves a lot of problems. The real talent comes in making a shoe-string-budget system that is decently fast, efficient, has room to grow, uses

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-64313010169999279062008-11-01T19:33:00.000-07:002008-11-18T11:48:15.133-08:00

I've written previously about Ron Paul's rather superficial understanding of the Constitution. But this youtube clip really takes the cake:...where to start with debunking Paul is difficult. His "question" to Bernanke is not a question; it is a five minute, rambling treatise that comes off being more accusatory than inquisitive. It also shows that Paul doesn't understand the mortgage crisis, or

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-85217079807201645002008-10-30T18:52:00.000-07:002008-10-30T19:28:43.105-07:00

The following is an editorial I wrote that was published in my University newspaper, The Daily Barometer. It was published in response to accusations about Rev. William Wright (which, for the record, are completely silly accusations).Upon re-reading my editorial, I realized that A) I liked this particular piece of writing and B) it is salient given that Obama is almost in the White House.Brett

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-9973345044445088312008-10-16T14:24:00.000-07:002009-05-14T17:03:53.833-07:00

ExtremeTech had an article by John Dvorak outlining his Windows 7 wish list.First, let me say that I am not a Dvorak fan. I think most of his columns are prone to hyperbole, and his technical expertise is questionable at best. I think of him as a Bill O'Reilly/Michael Moore of the computing world: basically a talking head who represents the triumph of outrage over substance.That said, in the

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-60267630022558091372008-10-08T19:42:00.001-07:002008-11-01T21:50:18.003-07:00

In a previous blog posting, I did a rhetorical analysis on an editorial in Spirit Magazine. Brief summary: Southwest CEO Gary Kelly wrote a non-apology-apology to address some FAA safety infractions.In the comments section, I was harassed by some Anonymous Coward:You may want to study harder in that class of yours. Spirit is a magazine, with an editorial staff that does NOT work for Southwest (

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-29803949805458642192008-10-08T18:01:00.000-07:002008-10-08T18:15:27.532-07:00

I first heard this quote in an episode of This American Life. Today's quote comes from Richard Dawkins:We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-43471896307436834302008-08-01T16:43:00.000-07:002008-11-12T20:24:01.435-08:00

When I see comments like this:Ok, yeah, a 10k drive is fast. Guess what? Two 7200 drives in Raid 0 are faster. Four drives in RAID 0+1 are bigger, cheaper, faster, and... yeah. Better. You have a measly 300GB drive - I have a 1TB (2TB counting mirroring) array that's faster and with automatic mirroring for less than what you spent on one 10k drive. And your cost doesn't include the second slower

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-86648716605006263742008-07-31T13:03:00.000-07:002008-07-31T13:05:06.931-07:00

It is summertime, so I believe this quote is wholly appropriate:Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-41317713216756005742008-07-30T16:38:00.000-07:002008-11-12T20:24:01.742-08:00

Jeff Atwood had a blog article outlining a build for a developer system. It's a decent system, and Jeff generally has pretty good advice regarding component selection. But Jeff's proposed system:ASUS P5E Intel X38 motherboard ($225) Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16 GHz CPU ($190) or Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 2.5 GHz CPU ($270) Kingston 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 800 x 2 ($156) Western Digital VelociRaptor 300

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-72044408968860039792008-06-18T22:16:00.000-07:002008-07-21T10:02:32.962-07:00

Lately I've been reading David Foster Wallace's book, Consider the Lobster:It is--like most things DFW has written--utterly brilliant and funny and clever and insightful in all the ways I secretly wish I could be brilliant and funny and clever and insightful. But let's face it: not all of us are David Foster Wallace. C'est la vie.Like most of his publications (Infinite Jest being the primary

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-77929933123192904492008-06-16T09:48:00.000-07:002009-02-21T12:12:24.096-08:00

One of the biggest mistakes people new to DirectShow (and COM, for that matter) is using raw COM pointers. This article aims to present a compelling alternative.All COM objects implement the IUnknown interface. IUnknown defines three standard methods, of which two are a concern of this article: AddRef() and Release(). When a COM object is created, its "reference count" (the number of objects

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-65954349461758808712008-06-05T15:55:00.001-07:002008-08-01T18:16:10.055-07:00

On January 28th 2003, Ron Paul introduced legislation proposing a Constitutional amendment. This amendment, dubbed the Liberty Amendment, proposes to abolish "personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibit the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens." The Liberty Amendment forbids the Federal government from engaging in any "business, professional

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-20025367839199496932008-05-20T15:57:00.001-07:002008-11-17T15:56:37.789-08:00

HC199, RA#2Note: video in question can be found online at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5479410612081345878IntroductionThis analysis will focus on a video clip of a television program called The Way of the Master, staring Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort. The specific episode is entitled "The Beauty of a Broken Spirit – Atheism," and the relevant portion begins at 03:00 and runs until

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-1070506567308144522008-04-14T11:32:00.001-07:002010-04-18T10:09:27.170-07:00

(note: I'm currently taking a writing class--HC199--and I like to publish my work on the blog. So if there's some weird stuff in the next few weeks...well....that's where it came from. Enjoy! )(Nitpicker's Corner - anonymous pointed out that Southwest technically doesn't "own" Spirit Magazine, which doesn't surprise me. Spirit Magazine is produced by Pace Communications, and presumably the two

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-38768342120311855102008-04-02T17:25:00.000-07:002010-04-30T12:05:32.356-07:00

First off, let me pay proper homage by linking to the inspiration for this post, The n Habits of Highly Defective Windows Applications. If you do Windows development, I highly recommend reading through this article; it covers numerous pitfalls in Windows application development.Anyway, I stumbled upon that article and though that it could use a DirectShow version, since there are many poor

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-40329023064570693252008-03-13T12:07:00.000-07:002008-07-31T13:03:46.151-07:00

One of my favorite things to do is browse quotes. I have no idea why I find this enjoyable, but nothing is more satisfying than finding something which speaks to me on a deeper level. Over the years, I've built up quite a collection (yes, I'm a hoarder), so I'll dole them out here over the next couple of months.On that note, dear reader, I share with you today's find.The ancients who wished to

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-62767097921126094222008-03-12T13:17:00.000-07:002008-03-12T14:46:22.253-07:00

There isn't much to say about Enum.IsDefined that hasn't been said before. Much of the confusion about why this method is bad stems from the fact that many people don't understand how Enum types have been implemented in .NET. So let's start by reviewing .NET's Enum implementation.Consider the following enum: enum Animal { cat = 0, dog, bird, cow, pig,

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-37151088199084551272008-03-06T17:53:00.000-08:002008-03-13T12:20:22.069-07:00

I'm a huge hardware nerd. I'll be the first to admit it. One of my favorite ways to waste time on the Internet is by piecing together imaginary computers on Newegg. My interests really lie in creating efficient, fast, ergonomic computers, so a lot of my favorite hardware sites have some rather unconventional slants about them.I get information from a number of hardware sites, but my favorites

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-23978182076412772412007-11-29T16:24:00.000-08:002010-06-06T12:53:54.977-07:00

The other day, I was searching for C# benchmarks. I came across this blog post. The "ultimate java verses C# benchmark" claims that:The C# results? Well they're just too embarrassing to post. Suffice to say, it's several orders of magnitude slower! Furthermore, the memory usage exploded to who knows where! I can't believe that people may be thinking of deploying mission critical applications on

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-61368157449296628682007-10-26T14:57:00.000-07:002008-11-12T20:24:02.401-08:00

Jeff Atwood recently blogged about a hardware assisted brute force password cracking product developed by Elcomsoft.Using Elcomsoft's figures from a pdf they released, Atwood concludes that we can attempt this many passwords a second:Dual Core CPU 10,000,000GPU 200,000,000...and using Elcomsoft's relatively weak 8-character alpha-based password (a-A, z-Z), there are this many passwords:52^8 =

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-70689949473552681332007-10-07T14:36:00.001-07:002008-11-12T20:24:02.801-08:00

As of late, I've been working on a set of automated tools that query free online translation services to perform translations for some of our target languages. For example, all of our string data is in en-US, so we might request a fr translation from babelfish.Yes, if you were paying attention, I am doing the unspeakable: I've developed an application to automate translation using AltaVista's

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-12170956106932005822007-09-18T16:47:00.000-07:002007-09-18T17:38:45.991-07:00

I'm currently converting a substantial application to be Internationalized and Localized. This basically means we're completely abstracting the language from the application, so we can easily have French, German, Italian, and other languages displayed in our application.In addition to internationalization, we also do localization, which means the way we format dates, times, currency and other "

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-20293684978729019502007-09-12T10:17:00.000-07:002007-09-12T11:17:24.617-07:00

The other day I was going through the source code in our application and tidying up various internationalization tasks, and I came across the following code: IntPtr BinaryValue = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(8 * Marshal.SizeOf(new byte()));I quickly noticed that this call didn't have the requisite Marshal.FreeHGlobal call, which basically meant it would leak 8 bytes every time this code was executed.

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-86814369109892238522007-09-01T08:40:00.000-07:002007-09-01T09:03:47.894-07:00

Lately I've been thinking a lot about climbing. I climbed a lot when I was younger, but since moving to Oregon, I haven't climbed as much, or climbed with the same intensity. At the moment, I'm in Rocky Mountain National Park, where a lot of good climbing is going down.RMNP is littered with strong, strong climbers: freakish abnormalities who have steel bands for tendons, no ass, and Latissimus

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-90601805404043479522007-08-23T16:38:00.001-07:002008-11-03T15:10:52.246-08:00

Ron Paul is a Republican congressman from Texas, and currently a candidate for the presidency. He is also, according to wikipedia, "a conservative, a constitutionalist, a libertarian, and a classical liberal (as distinct from modern American liberalism). He supports free trade, sharply lower taxes, smaller government, states' rights, national sovereignty, and a non-interventionist foreign policy

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-37596948824920446312007-06-04T09:57:00.000-07:002008-11-12T20:24:03.103-08:00

Another question often pondered when people discuss the population of ancient cities is: what was the average life expectancy? The formula for computing the average expectation of life is pretty simple:AverageExpectationOfLife = SumOfTotalYearsLived / TotalIndividualsRecordedThe above formula is basic enough, but Tim G. Parkin, author of Demography and Roman Society, points out several issues

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-48282858142315737972007-06-02T13:08:00.000-07:002008-11-12T20:24:03.335-08:00

Determining the population of ancient Rome is a rather tricky issue. It's been heavily debated and the estimates vary substantially depending upon who's counting and how.The dominant research tends to focus on a relatively narrow window of Roman history (46 BC to AD 15) and a subset of the overall population: recipients of the dole. Beloch's 1886 paper, Die Bevölkerung der griechisch-römischen

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-19957317092693990062007-06-01T14:48:00.001-07:002008-11-12T20:24:03.666-08:00

Here is a graph showing how much the water capacity in Rome increased over time. The y-axis is in quinariae, and the x-axis is time:...the above numbers were computed using Blackman and Hodge's figures. Notice that this graph is similar to the one I previous posted that tabulated totals in Excel. The big difference with this graph is the x-axis is appropriately scaled with respect to the

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-72983568914151352462007-05-17T13:18:00.000-07:002008-11-12T20:24:03.773-08:00

I decided to look a bit more into the water quantity figures Hodge listed in his 2002 work, Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply. It turns out that his figures are derived from the work of a previous author, Grimal. I know little about Grimal and some google searching didn't yield much information beyond basic facts: he's French, and most of his publications seems to have occurred in the 60s and

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-48796528042829168522007-05-10T17:12:00.000-07:002008-11-12T20:24:04.411-08:00

I'm currently taking a class on Roman aqueducts. We discuss and research the aqueducts that supplied Rome (and other portions of the Roman empire) from a number of different perspectives, including historical, hydrological, cultural, economic, logistical, etc. Basically, it's a class covering a broad range of topics pertaining to Rome's water infrastructure, with the aqueducts at the core of

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-38216311256502769822007-04-22T18:51:00.000-07:002007-06-04T10:23:54.476-07:00

Virginia has some of the most lax gun control laws in the nation:Anti-Trafficking Is there a one-handgun-per-month limit on gun sales? YesAssault Weapons Are there limitations on assault weapons and magazines? NoAttorney General Regulations May Attorney General regulate guns? NoBackground Check At State Level Do state police perform a background check in addition to federal NICS check?

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-3227124497615638462007-02-28T11:47:00.000-08:002007-02-28T13:40:09.710-08:00

Sometimes, as programmers, I feel like we start to value ourselves more than we should. After all, we do amazing things with machines that others around us seem to be baffled by. We have this constant, creative outlet where we can express ourselves in all of these unique, esoteric ways. It's incredibly fulfilling work that can really instill passion in programmers.Neal Stephenson put it best in

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-10041764188640902182007-01-21T20:21:00.000-08:002008-11-12T20:24:04.563-08:00

I recently read several papers evaluating the Total Cost of Ownership of Windows and Linux solutions. Thus far, the experience has been enlightening, although I'm sad to report that I don't have any obvious answers to the million dollar question: which is cheaper?This is due to several things:Often times, the authors have a clear industry bias. Two of the papers I reviewed had clear conflicts of

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-13936291344651006002006-11-29T15:58:00.000-08:002007-02-07T11:52:45.383-08:00

The Wall Street Journal recently published an editorial entitled "Milton Friedman Was Right." The title directly below that: "Corporate Social Responsibility is bunk." To summarize the editorial's message: Corporations are being extorted by the public to be socially responsible.By the time I was done reading the editorial, it was pretty clear: this was another hit-job by the WSJ editorial staff.

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-5235922113465000182006-11-17T16:40:00.000-08:002006-11-17T16:57:27.378-08:00

In case anyone didn't already know about this, it's now been Digg'd, in addition to being posted on a number of major net forums.Long story short: a student in UCLA's Powell library was tasered repeatedly after being asked to leave by library staff, and then by police themselves. The entire incident was videotaped, and sparked outrage among students. For all sorts of gory details, see

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-52196396322479926452006-11-16T10:48:00.000-08:002006-11-16T10:56:10.983-08:00

I worked for a very large company from 2001 to 2003 as a mainframe operator and midrange administrator. The company datacenter consisted of multiple mainframes, roughly a thousand servers, a ridiculous amount of disk space, multiple tape silos, and 24/7 monitoring. Our job (98% of the time, anyways) was to drool on our keyboard in twelve hour shifts while we waited for some key system to blow

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-1162249374460875182006-10-30T14:12:00.000-08:002006-11-17T16:40:10.753-08:00

On my resume, I list that I have a degree in Computational Science, rather than the more frequently used term, Computer Science.I do this for two reasons:"Computer Science" is a misnomer, in my opinion, and It helps me determine if people were paying attention when they read my resume. It's always a good talking point during an interview.Why is Computer Science a misnomer? Well, for starters, "

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-1161628158443252482006-10-23T10:24:00.000-07:002006-11-10T14:46:47.964-08:00

Since IE7 is now released, this is a perfect time to explain why I'm stuck using both browsers, and the relative merits of both browsers, in my opinion.I have always like FireFox better for several reasons. The biggest reason for me is something that nobody ever seems to mention: hit Ctrl-F in IE, and a Modeless dialog box pops up in front of the window. It looks a lot like this:A few things to

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-1160602454898648642006-10-11T14:25:00.000-07:002009-05-11T09:24:07.343-07:00

The Economist had an article on Open Source Software that I found interesting.To summarize the article: the open-source model will continue to be applied in domains outside of software engineering and is a lucrative business model--albeit one with some outstanding issues. I agree with the former statement, but the latter is poorly reasoned and supported.Example:...However, it is unclear how

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-1160601434775316692006-10-11T14:12:00.000-07:002006-11-10T14:46:47.851-08:00

Two posts ago, I elaborated on a bug we found in the .NET 2.0 CLR when attempting to spawn multiple threads at a lower priority than the spawning thread. However, I realized this morning that I didn't talk about what we did to actually address the bug in our code.Short answer: we did the best we could, but really the only full-proof "fix" is for MSFT to release a patch or wait for the next

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-1160156980822528582006-10-06T10:41:00.000-07:002006-11-10T14:46:47.800-08:00

Raymond Chen is one of the proverbial oldboys at MSFT. He runs this blog....he is apparantly famous enough to have his own wikipedia entry as well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chen), although then again the requirements for having your own wikipedia page aren't exactly breathtaking.Okay, okay, not trying to be a curmudgeon, but I digress: Raymond is generally considered to be a very

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35578340.post-1160096780039913072006-10-05T17:50:00.000-07:002007-02-07T12:09:28.735-08:00

Welcome!Yes, this is my first blog posting. I decided to start blogging both out of a sense of bordom, as well as a desire to expound upon a few topics for my own personal entertainment. Anyways, I don't need to tire anyone with more details than that, so....on to the first post.Multithreading can be nasty business. Actually, to be totally precise, multithreading can be ugly, vicious, maloderous,

kidjanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11185942510889801693noreply@blogger.com0