Sam's Everyday Life

How does Vending Machines work?

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:02:00 +0000

Have you ever wondered how vending machines work? Ever wondered how does the machine recognizes the currency? How does it determine which coin or bill did you insert? Here's a brief explanation:

Bills:

Bills are printed with magnetic ink, and different denominations generate distinctive magnetic fields.
Ultraviolet scanning technology can determine the different fluorescent properties of bills.
Digital cameras can reference the optical patterns in bills with a database of authentic patterns.

Coins:

The machine checks its diameter
Weight
Thickness
Composition
Some say it has two magnets to slow down the speed because of its magnetic content. Only Iron is magnetic, I don't think coins are made out of Iron.

Drivers Manual

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 14:55:00 +0000

Have you ever had the feeling that drives read the drives manual all wrong?

Have you ever came across a slow driver that drives on the left side of the road? Oh yeah, and drivers that like to go faster............they drive on the right side of the road.

Am I the one that read the drivers manual the wrong way?

What does yellow light mean? "Hurry up, you can make it" I thought it was, slow down it's about to change or pass with precaution. Last night I saw like 6 cars that ran through the red light! Hahahaha, and there was a police man.

When a police man turns his back on the way you are driving, what does it mean? Ok, if you have read the manual, you should know that that means STOP. Suprisingly nobody know this and they keep going.

When the red light is on and its safe to turn right o left you can pass (that's what some people say). This is the case when there's no police dude. The saddest thing is that the police guy doesn't do crap about it.

When you signal that you want to switch lanes, do you pass right away or do you wait for someone to let you pass? Most of the drivers turn on the signal and they pass right away and when you hunk the horn they give you the finger or in the case of Guatemala you can get a crazy dude pointing a gun at your head, niiiiiice!

Blocking intersections. Rush Hours. People are so damn desperate to get home or wherever they need to be, that they forget that there is a manual for driving. Think about it, if there red light is on and you are coming across an intersection, do you stop before the intersection or do block it? Like I said, people are so damn desperate that they block the intersection, for what? they obstruct they way of other people that want to go home aswell. If you come across an intersection, STOP BEFORE IT!!!! or if there is space pass, DO NOT BLOCK IT!!! We all want to go home early.

If you fit in one of the described cases above..........pleeeeeease get one of this little books, read it carefully, then drive!

In memory of a great friend

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:06:00 +0000

This post is dedicated to a great friend and mentor. His job description : “Try to take over the world with limited resources and limited personnel”

Hector Polo, una gran persona que nos dejo a todos marcados con recuerdos, conocimientos y en mi caso con muchos robotios para adornar mi escritorio, claro esta que Hector Polo causo muchas cosas mas en mi persona.

Hector tenia la vision de convertirnos en una empresa lider en cualquier area de la tecnologia. Desarrollar productos hechos por Guatemaltecos a todo el mundo. Muchos de los que conocimos a HP compartimos este pensamiento. Ser una empresa lider en nuestra area, ser los mejores en lo que hacemos y hacerlo como quisieramos. Nuestra filosofia es la misma que comparte Google. Eres como eres, como te miras, como te vistes, no importa que idioma hables, de donde vienes, simplemente ser el mejor y dar siempre lo mejor de ti.

El sueño mas grande de este hombre ¨es¨ (Digo es porque sigue siendo el sueño de muchos y su sueño seguirá.) tener su propio GooglePlex pero de EbClosion. Asimismo tener a toda la gente altamente calificada para poder salir a batallar cuando fuera necesario. Construyó un gran equipo, perdimos a algunos en el camino, pero estamos los que estamos y seguiremos el camino que Hector nos ha encaminado.

Hasta siempre Super Hector! Desde arriba nos estaras guiando y orientando para continuar con tu sueño que ahora se vuelve parte de nosotros.

Como todos sabran no soy de las personas que le gustan los reconocimientos. Simplemente hago mi trabajo xq me gusta y claro, xq me pagan por hacerlo. Hace unos meses atras nos dejaron unos compañeros de equipo y pues nos toco a 3 compareños y a mi asumir todas las responsabilidades del departamento de programacion. Y en la foto salimos master chief y yo, Hector agradeciendome frente a todo el personal.

DMB

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:14:00 +0000

Recently I saw a blog from Fenix Luvanna who had my favorite drummer Mr. Carter Beauford from my favorite band DMB. I realized, holy crap I'm Dave's greatest fan and I don't have a blog to show how big of a fan am I.

Tell ya the story.........I come from a family of musicians (that doesn't mean I'm good!) My favorite bands are those that make the difference, such as DMB. I've always liked bands that have a unique-interesting sound, to name a few: DMB, Dream Theather, Rush, Petrucci, Rage Against The Machine, Robert Randolph & The Family Band.

I've had the oportunity to see DMB live twice at The Molson Centre in Montreal, Canada. Right next to where I used to work back in Montreal {...break, surfing Youtube found this video}

As I was saying. One day one my co-workers said to me "Hey Sam, did you know that DMB is playing the Molson Center", I went crazy! Ran down the stairs, ran to every single music shop to buy the freakin' tickets. First time! I've been a fan of DMB for more that 10 years and I have to say, I've never been to a concert like that one! Unbelievable! Never seen so many fans of DMB together!

Cheers guys! Enjoy the Vids!

Robert Randolph & The Family Band - I Need Love

DMB - Dreamgril

In words of Dave......leave only your footprints!

Codes

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:17:00 +0000

Who would imagine that a famous soda company produces more than 360million bottles a year for a promotion?

I'm currently working for a e-Bussines Company and yeeeeeees, we are developing this amazing system, that will do what, what's the porpuse? No idea what so ever! They just told us..........."guys you need to develop this promo for this famous soda company". (Ok you guys must be thinking what does the title has to do with the blog, wait i'm getting there). I think the purpose of this is to do something like Facebook, were the users don't win anything at all.

Ok, here's the story of the Famous Soda Company Codes, for this project I was asked to create a program to generate around 360 million codes, 30 million codes per year. Hahahahaha, crazy stuff I know! So yeah, here I go with a previous built of the program done in PHP about a year ago, hahahaha, pretty old! Ooook, let's go back a bit!

This "famous soda company" the biggest client we've worked for! We've done big projects with them such as... (ok, some just told me not to post the name of the company)As long as I can remember team work has been key here! The problem was..........organization, schedules, deadlines. Ok been that said...........let's fwd to present day.

December of 2007, Team Leaders, who shall remain anonymous - came to me and said "Dude, we need to generate 30Million Codes every month", "We need 10million right away". How about that hey? Cracked myself up for awhile and then realized that what he/she said, was for real! (hahahahahaha, I think about it and crack myself up again!) Anyways, I started searching for the old program that did this, for my luck I found it! Couple of things I found out:

It was done in a program that I have (till this day i have no idea how to use it) no idea to use.
It wasn't finished
Oh yeah it crashed everytime I tried to run it!

That's to name a few of the issues! Then I found out that the software was re-done in a lighter version in php, haha! Other problems appeared! Briefly explained algorithm......

No 2 letters from the same phone key should be together (e.i AB, AC = 2 in the key pad)
Codes most be 7 Digits long

Ok, do the math?! O another thing, no 2 codes could be the same, UNIQUE Codes!!!! Impressive algorithm I must say!. Try this:

Yes, that's part of the code, ACTUAL CODE! Beautiful mind! Ok.....moving on with the post!

About 2 days ago I tried running this huuuge script via web browser, hahahahaha, bad idea, my powerbook's vents were flying!! Oh yeah talk about the TEMP!! Around 82 Degrees! I thought it was going to blow or take-off, hahahahaha.

I worked on the script the day after (yesterday) all day, none stop. Around 3pm I left the script running, and that when I had my episode with MAC OSX's UNIX System . All the time I was running the script I checked with another terminal what was the "size of the file" but not the amount of codes inside the textfile, biiiiiiiiiiiiig mistake. My script was set to go for 500million codes. When I did the ls -la I saw that the file was around 658million, and I thought to myself "the code got stuck and its not stopping!" And I needed 15million ASAP, so I decided to stop it. When I did the split command to have batches of 100million textfiles, but only 1 file was getting outputed. So I went back to the terminal to see the amount of lines in the file the wc -l command return 75million, yeeees! the 658 million that I saw................was the size of the file 658-around 500MB, hahahahaaha!

Last night I left the powerbook on all night, running thru terminal the "script" I fell asleep listening to the vents! When I woke up today i realized that the sound had stopped and I thought to myself, "holy shi...., what if the script caused the machine to crash or what if I ran out of combinations" For my surprise.......the script work beautifully! I have now in my possession 398million Codes. Thinking about it now.............I should've had 500million codes............398millon should work fine!

Soooooo, that's my story with the codes, If anybody needs a script to generate these types of codes, lemme know, I have another another one for numbers! hahahahahahaha!

Laters!

ps. check this out, another experience with the codes!!! I tried to Publish the post and it gave me this error.


ERROR
Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is broken:

Instalar Rails en OSX

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:08:00 +0000

Para instalar Rails/Mongrel en OS X se necesita:

0. Prerequisitos
Tener instalado XCode y MySQL

1. PATHs
Crear / Editar el archivo "/etc/profile"
%> vi /etc/profile

Y agregar al final de ese archivo (si no existe):
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH"

2. Instalar readline
Descargar he instalar la ultima version. Ejemplo:
%> cd /usr/local/src/
%> sudo curl -O ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/readline/readline-5.1.tar.gz
%> sudo tar xzvf readline-5.1.tar.gz
%> cd readline-5.1
%> sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
%> sudo make
%> sudo make install
%> cd ..

3. Instalar ruby
Descargar he instalar la ultima version. Ejemplo:
%> sudo curl -O ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz
%> sudo tar xzvf ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz
%> cd ruby-1.8.6
%> sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-pthread --with-readline-dir=/usr/local --enable-shared
%> sudo make
%> sudo make install
%> sudo make install-doc
%> cd ..

4. Probar Instalacion de ruby
Ejecutar:
%> ruby -v

Debe desplegar algo como esto:
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-03-13 patchlevel 0) [i686-darwin8.9.1]

Si no despliega algo como lo anterior tiene error. (revisar pasos anteriores)

5. Instalar RubyGems
%> sudo curl -O http://files.rubyforge.mmmultiworks.com/rubygems/rubygems-0.9.2.tgz
%> sudo tar xzvf rubygems-0.9.2.tgz
%> sudo cd rubygems-0.9.2
%> sudo /usr/local/bin/ruby setup.rb
%> cd ..

6. Instalar Rails
%> sudo gem install rails -ry

7. Instalar Mongrel y Mongrel Cluster
%> sudo gem install mongrel -ry
%> sudo gem install mongrel_cluster -ry

8. MySQL Native Binds (opcional)
%> sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql

9. Capistrano / Termios (opcional)
Nota: se requiere que se tenga instalado subversion antes.

%> sudo gem install capistrano -ry
%> sudo gem install termios -ry

Instalar Apache/2.2.6 (Unix) en OS X

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:34:00 +0000

Para instalar el Apache 2.2 en OS X se debe seguir los siguientes pasos:

0. Prerequisitos
Tener instalado XCode que viene en el CD de OSX.

1. Descargar el Software
Siempre descargar la ultima version. Ejemplo de descarga:
%> sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/src
%> cd /usr/local/src
%> curl -O http://apache.mirrors.esat.net/httpd/httpd-2.2.6.tar.gz <----Varia de la version que deseen instalar
%> gnutar -xzf httpd-2.2.6.tar.gz <----Varia de la version que deseen instalar
%> cd httpd-2.2.6

2. Configurar Generador de Instalador
%> sudo ./configure --enable-mods-shared=ALL --enable-deflate --enable-proxy --enable-proxy-html --enable-proxy-ftp --enable-proxy-balancer --enable-rewrite --enable-cache --enable-mem-cache --enable-ssl --enable-headers --enable-mod_dav

3. Generar Instalador
%> sudo make

4. Instalarlo
%> sudo make install

5. Configurar Apache
Para configurar el apache:
%> vi /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf

Es ideal cambiar el User/Group a "www" y el ServerName. Tambien seria ideal habiliar la seccion de WebDav, Default y VirtualHost.

6. Para encender Apache
%> sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

7. Para apagar Apache
%> sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl stop

8. Para revisar configuracion
%> sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -S

9. Para revisar los modulos configurados
%> sudo /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd -l

10. Para que auto arranque en OS X
Se debe utilzar el "Apache2StartupItems.zip" y restaurarlo en "/Library/StartupItems". Y agregar en "/etc/hostconfig" la siguiente linea:

APACHE2=-YES-

11. Hacer links simbolicos
Ingresar a:
%> cd /usr/sbin

Mover:
%> sudo mv apachectl apachectl_1
%> sudo mv apxs apxs_1
%> sudo mv httpd httpd_1

Links:
%> sudo ln -s /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl apachectl
%> sudo ln -s /usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs apxs
%> sudo ln -s /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd httpd

Installing PHP in OSX

noreply@blogger.com (Sam) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:32:00 +0000

Para instalar PHP en OS X, se debe seguir los siguientes pasos:

0. Pre-requisitos
Se supone que se tiene instalado XCode, MySQL y Apache.

1. PATHs
Crear / Editar el archivo "/etc/profile"
%> vi /etc/profile

Y agregar al final de ese archivo (si no existe):
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH"

2. MySQL FIX
A la hora de compilar de un problema que no encuentra una libraria. Por lo que hay que hacer un link simbolico.
%> sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql/
%> cd /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql/
%> sudo ln -s /usr/local/mysql/lib/libmysqlclient.15.dylib libmysqlclient.15.dylib

3. Descargar PHP
Se recomienda descargar la ultima version de PHP. Ejemplo:
%> sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/src
%> cd /usr/local/src
%> curl -O http://ie2.php.net/distributions/php-5.1.4.tar.gz
%> gnutar -xzf php-5.1.4.tar.gz
%> cd php-5.1.4
%> sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/php

4. Configurar Generador de Instalador
%> sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php --with-zlib --with-xml --with-ldap=/usr --enable-cli --with-zlib-dir=/usr --enable-exif --enable-ftp --enable-mbstring --enable-soap --enable-mbregex --enable-dbx --enable-sockets --with-iodbc=/usr --with-curl=/usr --with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql --with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs

5. Generar Instalador
%> sudo make

6. Probar Instalador
%> sudo make test

PD. Si no termina el TEST para eliminar el make ejecutar:
%> sudo make clean

7. Instalarlo
%> sudo make install

8. Configurar Apache
Agrege las siguientes entradas en el archivo de configuracion de apache (/usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf):

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php

9. Probar Instalacion
En el root del Apache agregar el archivo "info.php" que solo ejecuta la funcion "phpinfo()"