2009-03-25

Get strong at Kibitz

I was reading some random pages on Sensei's Library when I stumble upon this great page about how to Get strong at Kibitz. It is so "on the spot" how it is on KGS.

Check it out!

2009-03-19

Who are you, really?

The other day, during a coffee break, we were talking about natural neural programming in the brain of animals and humans. What do we have with us from birth programmed from our genes? Why is some animals ready to run just a couple of hours after being born and why is a human so helpless for several years. I find all of this quite interesting.

Our topic were evolving and transforming several times and somewhere in the discussion while talking about psychology I told about my experience with a personality test I made online a couple of years ago. The Jung Typology Test.

The test is usually referred to as a MBTI-test (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). At first I was a bit skeptical that this was some Internet joke or something, but something felt right and I made the test. It takes some time and then I am done and gets the result.

First it says nothing else than that I have the personality type of an INTJ. What the %¤&# is an INTJ? Well there are some links on the result page to some descriptions of the result. Like this one by Marina Margaret Heiss. More descriptions are made by Keirsey who talk about four temperaments where I belong to the rationals.

Do the test now!

The reason I can recommend this test to people is that it gave me an understanding of who I am. The description of an INTJ fits me very well and I recognize myself in it. I have read special INTJ-forums on the Internet where they discuss the special features we share that are both blessings and handicaps. All of which I too have, more or less.

Only 2% of the population are INTJ so many others might think we are odd and strange... but we are the masterminds and we rule the world! Hee hee hee... ;)

2009-03-17

Melodifestivalen song contest

Now it is over for this year. The so loved and so hated song competition Melodifestivalen. For you who don't know what it is I can tell you shortly...

Almost every country in Europe are sending a song (with a performer) to the big Europeans Song Contest (ESC), which will be in Russia this year. It is common that the countries have their own competition first and the winner is sent to the big ESC final.

Sweden just had their own local final to figure out which song to send to the European final ESC. Actually it is a little more complicated than that because we first had thousands of applications sent in to the organizers and they pick out 32 songs that compete in live television in four semifinals. One every Saturday night. Then the TV viewers can vote for their favorite song (or artist) by calling an expensive pay number and the two song with the highest votes get sent to the Swedish final. The two with second highest votes will be sent to the "second chance" and they can perform again after the semi finals and before the big final. Then the two "best" in the second chance get sent to the final and there are 10 songs in the final. But then we have the "international jury" in the background who picks their favorite and sends it to the final and suddenly we have eleven songs in the final. All this is very complicated... and actually I have simplified the rules a lot in my description... :P

Before the final I listened to all the songs and I was sure which one were going to win. Ok, you can never be sure but I knew which one I believed would have the best chance. My favorite was Måns Zelmerlöw – ”Hope & Glory”.

Girlwing and I watched the final last Saturday. I was hoping for Måns and Girlwing was hoping for H.E.A.T. – ”1000 Miles”. Both Girlwing and I didn't like the desperate song Caroline af Ugglas – ”Snälla, snälla”. The international jury's choice Sofia – ”Alla” was really good but it would feel more right if it was performed by Greece in the EGC. Another song that I liked was Alcazar – ”Stay the Night” and I think it is the largest threat to Måns. Higher in the results I would like to see Emilia – ”You're My World”. B.t.w. You might remember Emilia from her debut song Big Big World.

In the end of the final when all the artist had sang their songs the voting starts. First there are 12 juries giving points. This year it was very strange when the first six juries all had different songs for highest score of 12 points. Usually you can see a pattern of a specific song get several top scores. But not this time and that felt a bit suspicious. Are they trying to make it more exciting and to trigger more people to make phone votes so they can earn more money? I didn't call anyway, but it felt strange.

After all the juries had given their vote the top scoreboard said:
  1. Måns Zelmerlöw – ”Hope & Glory” (96 points)
  2. Sarah Dawn Finer – ”Moving On” (75p)
  3. Alcazar – ”Stay the Night” (67p)
  4. H.E.A.T. – ”1000 Miles” (58p)
  5. Caroline af Ugglas – ”Snälla, snälla” (51p)
After this I felt quite good because Måns were so much ahead. But the thing is that now is it up to the TV viewers to keep voting and their votes are exactly as much worth as the professional juries and you never know how the Swedish people will vote. They usually don't vote as I want. They have a strange taste in music. And now it happens...

Sarah get 12 points from the Swedish TV viewers. Måns got a low score of 48. Alcazar get a medium high score of 72. Caroline get the second highest score of 120 points and now all in the top got their points and it looks like Caroline will win with her terrible song. Girlwing and I swear and say that damn if Caroline win.

We got the time to calculate and reflect over the points. Five in the bottom had not got their points yet and three of them could win the whole contest if they get the last highest score of 144 points. We said that let anyone win as long as it is not Caroline. The points went to the 8th place holder of Malena Ernman – ”La Voix”. That was not expected...

This is the final result:
  1. Malena Ernman – ”La Voix” (182 points)
  2. Caroline af Ugglas – ”Snälla, snälla” (171 points)
  3. E.M.D. – ”Baby Goodbye” (145 points)
  4. Måns Zelmerlöw – ”Hope & Glory” (144 points)
  5. Alcazar – ”Stay the Night” (139 points)
  6. Sarah Dawn Finer – ”Moving On” (87 points)
  7. H.E.A.T. – ”1000 Miles” (82 points)
  8. Agnes – ”Love, Love, Love” (40 points)
  9. Emilia – ”You're My World” (28 points)
  10. Sofia – ”Alla” (12 points)
  11. Molly Sandén – ”Så vill stjärnorna” (2 points)

So Sweden will compete with a opera/pop in the European Song Contest later this spring. It can be great and it can become a fiasco.

What do you think?

2009-03-13

Create a social network on Ning.com

Do you want to create your own Facebook.com? Or maybe your own XiaoNei.com? Maybe you want to make it more specialized to a certain area? You don't care that much about all your current friends but instead want to focus on your special areas of interest and maybe make some new friends?

That is where Ning.com has found their idea. Let people create their own Social Networks on the Internet. I just heard about it today and it sounds really good compared to Facebook that is getting more and more boring for every day. When will the hype die out? Probably when someone figured out something better and neither Facebook or Myspace will be fast enough to catch up. Maybe that is what we are seeing now? Maybe Ning.com will be able to activate us again and keep the interest alive and permanent? We'll see...

Anyway... I just registered and created a new Social network called The world of WeiQi. The reason that I created it is that there were no social network that was general enough. There only existed one for a weiqi club in America. I thought about creating one for Sweden or Stockholm but I feared that was too small, so what a heck here is a network for the whole world!

Next I need to find a social network for Sci-Fi, Star Trek, Star Wars, Programming, Linux and all other stuff I find interesting. There already exist a lot of specialized networks and if you miss one, you can always create one on just a couple of simple steps.

2009-03-12

If programming languages were...

As a computer programming nerd you often find yourself amused with smart jokes about nerdy stuff like programming and other things like that. So when I the other day got an email with a link where they compare different famous programming languages with religion I can not help to read it and smile approvingly.


If programming languages were cars...
  • Ada is a tank. A butt-ugly tank that never breaks down. People laugh uncontrollably if you tell them you drive Ada, but really, do you want to be driving a sports car in a war zone?

  • Assembly Language is a bare engine; you have to build the car yourself and manually supply it with gas while it's running, but if you're careful it can go like a bat out of hell.

  • Basic is a simple car useful for short drives to the local shops. Once popular with learner drivers, it has recently been stripped down to a shell and rebuilt by a major manufacturer, The new version has been refurbished for longer journeys, leaving only cosmetic similarities to the original model.

  • C is a racing car that goes incredibly fast but breaks down every fifty miles.

  • Cobol is reputed to be a car, but no self-respecting driver will ever admit having driven one.

  • C# is a competing model of family station wagons. Once you use this, you're never allowed to use the competitors' products again.

  • C++ is a souped-up version of the C racing car with dozens of extra features that only breaks down every 250 miles, but when it does, nobody can figure out what went wrong.

  • Eiffel is a car that includes a built-in driving instructor with a French accent. He will help you quickly identify and learn from your mistakes, but don't you dare argue with him or he'll insult you and throw you out of the car.

  • Erlang is a fleet of cars that all cooperate to get you where you want to go. It takes practice to be able to drive with one foot in each of several cars, but once you learn how you can drive over terrain that would be very hard to navigate any other way. In addition, because you're using so many cars, it doesn't matter if a few of them break down.

  • Forth is a car you build yourself from a kit. Your car doesn't have to look or behave like anyone else's car. However, a Forth car will only go backwards. FORTH LOVE IF HONK THEN !

  • Fortran is a pretty primitive car; it'll go very quickly as long as you are only going along roads that are perfectly straight. It is believed that learning to drive a Fortran car makes it impossible to learn to drive any other model.

  • Java is a family station wagon. It's easy to drive, it's not too fast, and you can't hurt yourself.

  • Haskell is an incredibly elegantly-designed and beautiful car, which is rumored to be able to drive over extremely strange terrain. The one time you tried to drive it, it didn't actually drive along the road; instead, it made copies of itself and the road, with each successive copy of the road having the car a little further along. It's supposed to be possible to drive it in a more conventional way, but you don't know enough math to figure out how.

  • Lisp looks like a car, but with enough tweaking you can turn it into a pretty effective airplane or submarine.

  • Mathematica is a well-designed car that borrowed a lot from the Lisp car without giving it nearly the credit it deserved. It can solve equations to determine the most efficient way to get to the destination, but it costs a fortune

  • Matlab is a car designed for novice drivers going on short trips over terrain similar to the terrain the Mathematica car is usually driven over. It is very comfortable when driving over this terrain, but if you go off the trail even a little the car becomes so hard to drive that more snobby drivers refuse to even acknowledge that it's a car.

  • Ocaml is a very sexy European car. It's not quite as fast as C, but it never breaks down, so you end up going further in less time. However, because it's French, none of the controls are in the usual places.

  • Perl is supposed to be a pretty cool car, but the driver's manual is incomprehensible. Also, even if you can figure out how to drive a Perl car, you won't be able to drive anyone else's.

  • PHP is the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, it's bizarre and hard to handle but everybody still wants to drive it.

  • Prolog is fully automatic: you tell it what your destination looks like, and it does all the driving for you. However, the effort required to specify most destinations is equivalent to the effort of driving there.

  • Python is a great beginner's car; you can drive it without a license. Unless you want to drive really fast or on really treacherous terrain, you may never need another car.

  • Ruby is a car that was formed when the Perl, Python and Smalltalk cars were involved in a three-way collision. A Japanese mechanic found the pieces and put together a car which many drivers think is better than the sum of the parts. Other drivers, however, grumble that a lot of the controls of the Ruby car have been duplicated or triplicated, with some of the duplicate controls doing slightly different things in odd circumstances, making the car harder to drive than it ought to be. A redesign is rumored to be in the works.

  • Smalltalk is a small car originally designed for people who were just learning to drive, but it was designed so well that even experienced drivers enjoy riding in it. It doesn't drive very fast, but you can take apart any part of it and change it to make it more like what you wanted it to be. One oddity is that you don't actually drive it; you send it a message asking it to go somewhere and it either does or tells you that it didn't understand what you were asking.

  • Visual Basic is a car that drives you.



If programming languages were religions...
  • C would be Judaism - it's old and restrictive, but most of the world is familiar with its laws and respects them. The catch is, you can't convert into it - you're either into it from the start, or you will think that it's insanity. Also, when things go wrong, many people are willing to blame the problems of the world on it.
  • Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it's theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn't feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it's the best language in the world, but they're willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.

  • PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity - Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it's not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of "goto hell" was abandoned.

  • C++ would be Islam - It takes C and not only keeps all its laws, but adds a very complex new set of laws on top of it. It's so versatile that it can be used to be the foundation of anything, from great atrocities to beautiful works of art. Its followers are convinced that it is the ultimate universal language, and may be angered by those who disagree. Also, if you insult it or its founder, you'll probably be threatened with death by more radical followers.

  • C# would be Mormonism - At first glance, it's the same as Java, but at a closer look you realize that it's controlled by a single corporation (which many Java followers believe to be evil), and that many theological concepts are quite different. You suspect that it'd probably be nice, if only all the followers of Java wouldn't discriminate so much against you for following it.

  • Lisp would be Zen Buddhism - There is no syntax, there is no centralization of dogma, there are no deities to worship. The entire universe is there at your reach - if only you are enlightened enough to grasp it. Some say that it's not a language at all; others say that it's the only language that makes sense.

  • Haskell would be Taoism - It is so different from other languages that many people don't understand how can anyone use it to produce anything useful. Its followers believe that it's the true path to wisdom, but that wisdom is beyond the grasp of most mortals.

  • Erlang would be Hinduism - It's another strange language that doesn't look like it could be used for anything, but unlike most other modern languages, it's built around the concept of multiple simultaneous deities.

  • Perl would be Voodoo - An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on friday night.

  • Lua would be Wicca - A pantheistic language that can easily be adapted for different cultures and locations. Its code is very liberal, and allows for the use of techniques that might be described as magical by those used to more traditional languages. It has a strong connection to the moon.

  • Ruby would be Neo-Paganism - A mixture of different languages and ideas that was beaten together into something that might be identified as a language. Its adherents are growing fast, and although most people look at them suspiciously, they are mostly well-meaning people with no intention of harming anyone.

  • Python would be Humanism: It's simple, unrestrictive, and all you need to follow it is common sense. Many of the followers claim to feel relieved from all the burden imposed by other languages, and that they have rediscovered the joy of programming. There are some who say that it is a form of pseudo-code.

  • COBOL would be Ancient Paganism - There was once a time when it ruled over a vast region and was important, but nowadays it's almost dead, for the good of us all. Although many were scarred by the rituals demanded by its deities, there are some who insist on keeping it alive even today.

  • APL would be Scientology - There are many people who claim to follow it, but you've always suspected that it's a huge and elaborate prank that got out of control.

  • LOLCODE would be Pastafarianism - An esoteric, Internet-born belief that nobody really takes seriously, despite all the efforts to develop and spread it.

  • Visual Basic would be Satanism - Except that you don't REALLY need to sell your soul to be a Satanist...

2009-03-11

Star Trek - New trailer

The 8th of May the new Star Trek movie will have its premiere. I will be there! This seem to be a great movie that they have put a lot of effort in. It will tell the story how the original series started off with its young crew.

Check out the new trailer!


2009-03-10

OneSwarm

I just read about a new file sharing tool named OneSwarm. It is based on BitTorrent but is more focused on sharing files between friends and their friends and their friends while you are only visible to your own friends.

This new tool might be the new way for file sharers after the regular BitTorrent trackers like The Pirate Bay gets pulled of the Internet.

There are clients to download for Mac, Win and Linux. There are even source code to download if you want to improve the product.

I haven't tried OneSwarm yet but some day I probably will. If I can find some friend that uses it. :)

2009-03-03

New server on the way

My old Linux server died. First a fan stopped working so the computer froze now and then. After not so many days it refused to start at all again so something in the hardware is fried. I guess there is something on the motherboard that burned up. I really hope there is no real damage on the hard drive. That would be a small disaster because I have no fresh backup.... :P

So now I have ordered parts to build myself a new server. First time ever that I will get a new computer as server. Previous I have only taken some old computer that is ready to throw away and made it to my server. The one that just died was my fathers before I asked if I could take it when he bought a new one. He had even bought a new one after that switch. My dead server is probably over ten years old and deserves to rest in peace.

This is the specifications of my new server:
  • Antec mATX Cube NSK1380 - (350w)
  • Gigabyte Socket AM2+ mATX AMD 780G (GA-MA78GM-S2H)
  • AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.9GHz / 2x512kB Socket AM2 (65W)
  • Corsair XMS2 Xtreme 2048MB DDR2 XMS2-6400 800MHz
  • D-Link Nätverkskort DGE-530T 10/100/1000 (PCI)
  • Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB (7200RPM / 32MB / SATA II / NCQ)
  • Samsung SATA DVD±RW 22x - Svart (Dual Layer) (SH-S223F)
and a
  • D-Link 5-Ports Switch DGS-1005D 10/100/1000
I didn't do so hard investigations about the hardware so I really hope I didn't make any bad/stupid choices. As long as it works well I don't care much about the performance. My previous server had 350Mhz CPU and 384Mb of memory and that worked very well except in the graphical X Window interface using KDE which was a bit flickery and slow but still usable. Maybe that pain was mostly because of the really bad graphics card.

I am not sure yet if I will use the hyped up Ubuntu or the old reliable Slackware that I have always used before. I have actually used Slackware since summer 1994 and am quite comfortable with that distribution. I have used Ubuntu on my dual boot workstation and think there are both good and bad things about it. Most things I feel that is bad is probably my lack of knowledge about Ubuntu so I should probably choose that one for my server so I learn everything I need to know. But it feels almost like betrayal to not use Slackware any more. Hmm.. so hard decisions... What should I do?