The QR is a Quad Rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle developed by another department from the University. We are struggling to do doing the software that will make it fly. The software is made of two parts: one part running on a PC and another running inside the QR. The device is not yet advanced. Currently it has the minimum necessary in order to stabilize in air (gyroscopes, accelerometers and engines). In future, cameras, wireless interfaces and other gadgets will become available.

Today was an important day because we had the first engine test. The first try was not successful but after a bug was fixed we managed to throttle a little the engines (see the movie below). The device cannot fly yet because the stabilization routines are not implemented and no human will be able to control it for more than a few seconds without digital assistance. You may wonder how can one control it: through a joystick that is connected to a PC.

We (computer scientists, electrical engineers, mathematicians, embedded guys and a few others) spend most of the time in building 35 (‘The Drebbelweg’ or ‘DW’) and building 36 (‘Elektrotechniek, Wiskunde en Informatica’ or ‘EWI’). There we have almost all the facilities we ever wanted need: computers, blackboards, coffee machines, cafeteria, small library (compared to the central one), private rooms for meetings, etc.

The images above are in building 35. The one below is in building 36.

When we get bored this is what happens. Actually others got bored – we found the trapped doll in the lobby of building 36…

Hope you got an idea about the life in Delft. There is a lot of fun and joy, even inside the university. However, don’t think the requirements are low. Why do you think the building are open every day until 22:00 (10PM) and people actually stay until closing there?

From that list I read “The Inmates are Running the Asylum” and “The Design of Everyday Things”. Actually from the last one I read just 3/4 because the the book is too theoretical (psychology) and, even though I like psychology, it was a little too boring much – don’t get me wrong, the author offers valuable information about the things used every day and how simple is/should be the design, but the mix of practical and theoretical has a wrong ratio.

However, the former book is absolutely fascinating. Alan Cooper shows that whatever has a computer is actually a computer (or at least has that complexity). He also shows that programmers tend to increase the complexity of the software in order to make the development easier or, just because they can and see this a challenge. One of the main ideas of the book is that programmer cannot design simple software; they always design software that is supposed to be used by people with a lot of technical knowledge, who enjoy complicated things. Cooper’s suggestion is that developers should create software that is as simple as possible to operate, for the end user and, usually, the design must be made by a designer (a person who is able to understand how an experienced person will act).

Currently, my attention is on “Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman”. The book has a nice introduction about the first years of Richard Feynman’s life, but things may change as I progress with the lecture. I postpone any conclusion until I read the last page of the book.

Game Of Life

The Game of Life is not really a game because no one plays it. It is a cellular automaton, a zero player game in which the only human interaction is the initial setup. Then the game evolves by itself under the constraint of some rules, until it gets to a stable state.

The game’s world is a 2D grid in which each node is a place that can hold one individual. Each individual can be dead or alive. Basically you can see the world as a black, white grid in which black represents living individuals and white dead ones (the figure on right).

Each grid represents a single generation. In order to get a new generation the current one must evolve. This process implies that every individual (dead or alive) node will be evaluated and, based on the result, will survive, die or resurrect. The evaluation function takes in consideration the number of alive neighbors a node has (a node can have up to 8 neighbors):

1. If one individual has less than two neighbors alive, it will be dead in the next generation because of underpopulation.
2. If one individual has more than three neighbors alive, it will be dead in the next generation because of overcrowding.
3. If one individual is alive and has two or three neighbors alive, it will survive in the next generation.
4. If one individual is dead and has three neighbors alive, it will resurrect (be alive) in the next generation.

That’s all. Based on this transition, each individual gets from one state to another, from generation to generation. There are two situations in which no more changes will be made between generations:

1. All individuals are dead.
2. All individuals are in a stable state from which they cannot die. The square on right is a stable population that cannot change because all alive individuals have two or three neighbors and all dead individuals have at most two neighbors alive so they cannot resurrect.

The fun part was to implement this myself. I created a small MFC application that is able to load files with predefined configuration or to generate random populations up to 10.000 individuals. If you download the sample be aware it will crash if you load invalid files and do strange things – it is just a prototype.

Demo

Code and download

If you want just to ‘play’ then you can download the binary file GameOfLife Binary (67.06 KB) (the archive also includes some great samples).

For those who love programming, the source code is also available. Technical details:

• In order to prevent flickering the drawing is double buffered.
• There is a small memory leak (4K every few seconds) but I am too tired to look now for it – will check it sometime later or if you find it, let me know.
• The ‘gol’ files, that describe a predefined world, contain on the first line the width of the world, on the second the height and on the next lines the world where each node can be 0 or 1.
• The solution is for Visual Studio 2010.

The archive containing source code: GameOfLife Code (132.88 KB).

Have fun and please provide feedback!

More info and references

• More information about Game of Life
• More information about cellular automatons

If you use Windows Vista/7 then you know that buttons and links which elevate privileges are preceded by a shield icon. This is the way Microsoft decided to inform the user about the effect of clicking that control.

The first idea that might pop up is the reinvention of the wheel (or shield). In other words you could draw the shield on a button. This is OK except that:

1. Is not easy
2. Will require you to recompile the interface if Microsoft decides to change the icon
3. You need the icon in many sizes 16×16, 24×24, 32×32, etc. (extract it from MS’ DLLs)
4. Will create a lot of overhead with layout (position icon relative to text size/position)

The second method is easier, safer and recommended by MS. All you need to do is send a specific message (BCM_SETSHIELD) to the button if the user has limited privileges and pressing that button will trigger the UAC window. Actually there is a second, tricky, thing that must be done: the style of the button must be “System” (in C# “System.Windows.FlatStyle.System”). Without this you will not be able to see the shield.

The code provided in part 1 of this article will be modified in order to display the shield on the two buttons. Moreover, the shield will be displayed only when the user runs under an account with limited privileges or non-elevated administrator.

In order to display the shield one needs to send the BCM_SETSHIELD (=0×0000160C) message to the button. This can be done by using the SendMessage function from user32.dll. This article will not cover what is and how to use SendMessage, if you need more information about it follow the previous link.

To set the shield of the “Elevate this application” button one needs to send the message in the following way:

SendMessage(btnElevate.Handle, BCM_SETSHIELD, 0, 1);

The first parameter is the handle of the button, the second one is the message, the third one is not used and must be ‘0′ and the last argument must be non-zero in order to draw the shield, zero otherwise.

If you try this it will not work :) Remember the ‘tricky’ thing told before? This is the full code to display the shield for btnElevate:

btnElevate.FlatStyle = FlatStyle.System;
SendMessage(btnElevate.Handle, BCM_SETSHIELD, 0, 1);

There is only one thing that must be done in order to work properly. Remove the shield if the user has elevated privileges. I don’t know if this is against MS’ recommendation but in my opinion one must not be shown information that cannot be used in that context; in our case don’t show the elevate shield if there is nothing to elevate.

Part 1 described how to check if a user has full rights. Now we are just using that boolean variable:

if (!hasAdministrativeRight)
    SetUACShields();

Where SetUACShields will send the message to all buttons that require the shield drawn.

The full updated code from Part 1: UAC Code 3 (10.13 KB)

See you in the next year…

1. To show the pages correctly
2. To show as much as possible from a page (to remove the need of scrolling)
3. To provide me with an easy way of accessing pages.

What I don’t like at Firefox

• The search bar is superfluous. I really like what Chrome is doing (and the latest version of Opera?): use the address bar as search bar.
• There is no ad blocker
• There is a lot of wasted space: bookmarks toolbar, menu bar (just think how often you use the top menu), big icons

After a few tweaks I got a browser looking like the one in the picture below that satisfies almost all my needs.

Tweaks applied and how/why to use them

1. Remove the bookmark toolbar. You just don’t need that bar! How often do you click a bookmark? If you need a page opened all the time you just don’t close it. Why do you minimize the working are just to see some buttons that you click them in an infinite small amount of the time you spend in browser? How to apply: right click the menu bar -> Uncheck Bookmarks Toolbar.
2. Remove the menu bar. Just like the bookmark toolbar, you don’t use it to often. If you want to see it just press Alt+F. How to apply: Install the Hide Menubar extension.
3. Merge address bar and search bar. Is not practical to need to think if you want to search or you want to enter an a priori known address. There should be just on input field and the browser should be able to decide if you want to search or go to some specific place. How to apply: First remove the search bar by right clicking the menubar -> Customize and drag the search bar out of the menu. Second navigate to “about:config” and search for “keywork.url”. Replace its value with “http://google.com/search?q=”. This will make Firefox search on Google when it cannot resolve a name.
4. Remove ads. Most of the time you just don’t want to see “Super/Extra/Mega/Ultra discount for X”. Also you don’t want to see links that are on top of the search list just because they paid. How to apply: Install the Adblock Plus extension.
5. Move icons and make them smaller. This is just a personal preference. I want the bookmarks button in the left corner. And in order to maximize working area I want small icons. How to apply: Right click a toolbar -> Customize. Drag/drop the icons you want. For small icons check the appropriate box.
6. Mouse gestures. I like the back button on the toolbar because of the drop down menu but usually I go back by holding the right mouse button and dragging left. The gesture functionality saves a lot of time and movement. How to apply: Install the FireGesture extension.
7. Protect/sync bookmarks. Sometimes one might accidentally delete an important bookmark or, even worse, the entire bookmark collection. Is a good idea to backup bookmarks online. This also gives you the possibility of synchronizing bookmarks across multiple machines. How to apply: Install the Xmarks extension.

Future work

1. Remove the status bar. Currently this cannot be done because there is no other way of knowing where a link is sending. Any suggestion?
2. Remove the tabs bar. The tabs bar should be removed in order to get more space but I have no idea where it could go…

Today books are used to add extra height to different objects ranging from computers and laps to … babies. Books can be also found on shelves. If you find yourself between many shelves with many books it means you are in a library or a book store.

OK, funny enough. I tried to gather, from different sources, the high rated titles (tech and non-tech geeky books). The reading process will take me a few months (years maybe) but it worth.

It is obvious that one cannot enjoy all the books people recommend. Many times I found horrible a book rated by many with five stars. I am sure that from the list of books I want to read at least 10% will be abandoned after the first few pages. Some books just don’t have that… sparkle… that makes you want to continue the lecture.

Each book will get one of the following ratings:

1. “Must read” (these books will get on the Books page)
2. “Good book”
3. “Mediocre”
4. “Bad book”

Currently I am reading the first book in the list and seems to be a good one. Here goes “The List” in random order.

The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High-tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity	Practices of an Agile Developer: Working in the Real World	The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change	Cryptonomicon
Working Effectively with Legacy Code	Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid	Coders at work	Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
“Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman”	The Design of Everyday Things	Nineteen Eighty-Four	Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 2nd Edition	The Art of Computer Programming: Fundamental Algorithms	The Mythical Man Month and Other Essays on Software Engineering	Code: The Hidden Language

Did you read one of these books? Help me prioritize the list by telling your opinion about that book.

Check the project page for more info.

1^st place (HandyBackup Professional): Timotei Dolean

2^nd place (HandyBackup Standard): tisi, Ursul

Winners: please check your e-mail Inbox and Junk folder.

First Place
(Handy Backup Professional – $99)

Handy Backup Professional is an advanced backup software designed for small and medium businesses. It extends functionality of the Standard edition with the following functions:

• Backup to SFTP servers
• Image backup
• Database backup via ODBC connectivity

2 x Second Place
(Handy Backup Standard – $39)

Handy Backup Standard is a simple PC backup and data synchronization utility for home and small office. It lets you easily back up all specifics of your system and your favorite applications:

• Outlook backup
• My Documents backup
• Desktop backup
• Windows Registry backup
• Individual files and folders backup
• Program settings, playlists, skins, etc.

The rules of the contest are simple:

• Write here (as a comment) or on another site (with link to this post) the most unusual way in which you could lose your data.
• The text must be written in English.

Contest period:

• Starts on October 27^th, 2009 at 11:11 AM GMT
• Ends on November 11^th, 2009 at 11:11 AM GMT

Why 11-11-11-11?

• Because the contest ends on 11/11 at 11:11.

Prizes:

• Handy Backup Professional license
• 2 x Handy Backup Standard license

Winning conditions:

• The best 3 texts win.

Winners will be announced on November 12th.

Reviews of Handy Backup:

• Review 1
• Review 2

Remarks:

• If you post as comment make sure you enter a valid e-mail address so I can contact you in case of winning.
• If you post on another site make sure there are some contact details there.

!!The contest is now closed!!