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Megabudget v0.1

2013-10-13T14:49:00.000-04:00

I finished the very first, somewhat-useful version of the Megabudget Android App. To recap, Megabudget is an Android app that allows you to use your existing Google Docs spreadsheet as a budget, but add expenses on the go from your phone. It does the following:

Authenticates into your Google docs spreadsheet with your Android user account(s)
Reads months & categories from your budget spreadsheet
After you select a category & month, you can add a new expense, updating your spreadsheet

The project itself is meant to be extensible, so that if it seems useful to you, you can contribute an implementation of the BudgetAdapter in order to have it work with your own budget format.

Here's the project again: https://code.google.com/p/nolacoaster/

And the last SVN commit log:

This is the first version of Megabudget that does something useful. It:
- populates the categories & months
- populates the total of the latest month
- you can select a category
- you can add an expense to that category

It has several notable problems
- no idea how it works when disconnected from the internet
- it is very slow, esp. at the beginning where it does multiple pulls from the
spreadsheet
- you can't select a month

Additionally it would be really nice to
- organize the categories by freq of use
- allow for offline expenses

11 mile run (17.5 km run), Wallonia to Brussels

2013-09-08T11:23:00.001-04:00

I've been training for the Brussels Half Marathon this year! It's been fun so far, and it's my first race of any length so wish me luck. Anyway, during training you're always looking for interesting routes to run.

This one is cool because it starts in Wallonia, passes through Flanders, and then ends up in Brussels, in the Bois de la Cambre, already one of our favorite places to run.

View Running route from Wallonia to Ixelles in a larger map

More information:
Distance: ~11 miles (17.7km)
Starting point: La Hulpe train station
Ending point: Bois de la Cambre, by La Bascule
Terrain: Mostly forrest with some farmland type areas. Passes by the Chateau de la Hulpe, which is a very nice bonus. Gentle hills up and down.

A Few Hikes in Ireland (The Burren, Inishmore, Connemara)

2013-08-19T12:00:00.000-04:00

We just got back from a week-long vacation in Ireland. It was great! We spent most of our time in Western and Northwest Ireland. Unlike most of our vacations, where we hit up museums, churches, and cultural sites in cities, this was a more nature-oriented trip, as I think is common in Ireland. We wanted to do some hikes, but were having trouble finding enough information about them online.

So, for future visitors to Ireland, I thought I'd recap the hikes we went on with a bit more information. Good luck!

The Burren (Ballyvaughan Wood Loop)

Distance: 8 km
Difficulty: Easy
Time: 1:26, but we were running for a fair bit...
More information: here and here

Our first 'hike' was actually a run. We needed to run 9 miles as part of half marathon training, and we thought we'd do two loops around this 8km route to get us there. It's "Easy," right? Well, that turned out to not really work. The first ~15 minutes of this hike are though some interesting, but tough woodlands and rocky fields. Good hike. Lots of farmland that you pass through, and some times it was almost tough finding our way, but we did it. Go to Monk's restaurant afterwards!

View The Burren in a larger map

Inis Oirr Island Hike

Distance: 4.73 miles

Difficulty: Easy

Time: 1:44

More information: here, and the ferry

We took a ferry to the smallest of the Aran Islands, Inis Oirr, and while there we did this nice hike. I can highly recommend it! We saw lots of great views of the island, some livestock, and we even had a nice picnic at the rustic castle tower on top of the island.

View Inis Oirr Hike in a larger map

The Connemara (Diamond Hill Hike)

Distance:

Difficulty: Medium

Time: 2:22

More information: here and here

A short distance from the Connemara National Park visitor center is a hike to the top of Diamond Hill. In fact, there are a few hikes around the hill, but we took the one that went to the top. It was a nice, strenuous climb for me, although some of us didn't like the views from steep heights! The scenery makes one think of the Scottish Highlands. We took the hike pretty seriously, but there were plenty of families with small children doing it (in fact, it was a little crowded) so probably just about anyone could make it to the top.

View Diamond Hill Hike in a larger map

Buying a SIM Card in Ireland (from the Dublin airport)

2013-08-18T12:50:00.002-04:00

I recently got back from a one week vacation in Ireland. It was amazing. We mostly went to the west and northwest of Ireland (Galway, Sligo, Donegal, Derry). And we had a car, so it was easy to get around and see whatever we wanted whenever we wanted to. I highly recommend it!

I also highly recommend buying a SIM card at the airport. It was really easy and we took full advantage of it.

Buying a SIM card allows you to:

Call hotels & restaurants in Ireland
Check your email, etc. at the many places where WiFi is spotty or non-existent
And my favorite, allows you to use your phone's GPS to navigate while driving. This was a huge help for us, as driving is a great way to get around Ireland, and it's much less expensive than renting a GPS unit from the rental place.

First, as always, you need to make sure your phone is unlocked. If you've been with your carrier for a while, they'll usually do this for you with no problems when you call them up and tell them you are visiting another country. Or you can be like me and buy an unlocked phone like the Nexus 4.

In the Dublin airport, there are at least two places to buy a SIM card.

Terminal 2: This is the International terminal, where you probably arrived from. Once you exit the baggage claim there is a convenience store (Spar, I believe) where they sell many things including SIM cards from several different vendors. While the prices were good (€20-30) I couldn't figure out whether and how much data my money would get me, and I cared much more about data than calls/texts. The employee I asked, though friendly, was not helpful.
Terminal 1: This is the budget terminal. If you took Ryanair you probably arrived here, otherwise you may have to walk. On the ground floor is a small store that sells nothing but SIM cards. This is, I believe, the place to go. The employee was quite knowledgable. There we purchased a Vodaphone SIM for €20. For that price, we got 250MB of data, which was good enough for our one week entire trip, checking email, Facebook, and daily use for navigational purposes.

Good luck!

How to find out when your T-Mobile contract is expiring?

2013-08-06T07:36:00.002-04:00

Sometimes you want to know when your T-Mobile contract is expiring, either because you want a new phone, want to switch providers, or just because you think they screwed up. And if you asks this completely reasonable question to T-Mobile, they will tell you that you need to call them up to learn this information, and also, "Is there anything wrong? Why are you curious?" Annoying.

To find out when you contract ends do the following:

Go to t-mobile.com
Go to the "My Account" section and log in.
Look for "My account activity" and select "More account activity" and go back far enough in history to find the most recent "Change in contract" event. Expanding this event will tell you what date you contract was extended to.
(The list only keeps 24 months of activity, but if there were no "Change in contract" events during this time, you almost certainly have finished your contract.)

Reading Google Spreadsheets from an Android App

2013-07-28T19:05:00.000-04:00

Well, I've done it. It took me two serious days of wading through the mess that is the gdata APIs (myths and outdated versions abound) and the OAuth2 APIs (same caveats apply) and I was finally able to read the list of my own personal spreadsheets in Google Docs, and print their names out from an Android application.

It was very important to me to be able to use Android's own build-in account mechanism, which took a fair bit of time to figure out, and then on top of that the build/class-path requirements for the Google Spreadsheets API is completely messed up.

But anyway, here's a short description of how I did it, notes, and the full code for the main activity.

1 - I am using a Nexus 4, so I set up my app to use the latest APIs possible (Android 4.2.2 on my system).

2 - The list of required JARs is crazy, and quite picky. Here's the screenshots of the ones I am using:

3 - I had to add the following permissions to my manifest file:

4 - And finally, here is the code itself to run the main activity. The basic application structure was just the one that is created by default when you create a new Android Application. The basic steps for listing the Spreadsheets I got from the Spreadsheets API Tutorial. I can't really remember where I learned the OAuth2.0 steps, but needless to say, I cobbled it together from several online sources.

A Joke

2012-09-23T20:49:00.001-04:00

On Thursday night I saw the movie "Sleepwalk with Me." It's a pretty funny movie about the life of a stand-up comic. You should see it.

Anyway, this stand-up comic, like many, is constantly writing down joke ideas on little scraps of paper. Over time they refine the idea into a joke, which they practice at small venues and over time make the jokes a part of their overall material (or sometimes, the material for a particular tour).

Anyway, I'm no comic, but I love this idea. This morning I had a joke idea. So here it is:

Begin Joke Sequence
"About six months ago I found out that my bank was going to start charging me a bunch of extra fees. I had already been pretty fed up with this bank, so this was the last straw. I took out all my money and transfered it to a different account. Cleaned the account out to $0. Funny thing was, I had a decent amount of money there, so a couple of weeks later, the bank issues the statement, and I earned some interest, so now I have like $3.50 in my account. Like I said, I hate this bank, and I'm not going to let them have any of my money, so I took that money out too. Next month the same thing happens, because I earned some interest on the previous interest. This time it's like half a cent, but I don't care, I still want my half a cent you know? So I take it out. Now this goes on for months and months, eat time the money I earn in interest on the previous interest gets smaller and smaller. Until one month I get a job. But by the time I have a job, I just give up on the whole thing. Now that I'm making money, I just can't get myself to care about .000000009 cents, you know?"

Okay, well that's the joke. It was probably funnier when I was half asleep.

Project Fortress is Wrapping Up

2012-07-22T22:57:00.000-04:00

I was interested to learn that Project Fortress, the programming language research project from Sun (now Oracle) was wrapping up:

https://blogs.oracle.com/projectfortress/entry/fortress_wrapping_up

I was an intern on Project Fortress during the summer of 2008. Fortress was an ambitious language project that attempted to incorporate a number of advanced and experimental features.

I'm sorry to see the language be wrapped up without a JVM or native code compiler, but I understand there were a number of technical challenges, many of which I encountered during the course of my internship. Best of luck to these folks on their future projects!

$15/MB

2012-05-02T10:30:00.002-04:00

Pretty soon I will be traveling for Korea for two weeks. I'm pretty stoked about this!

What I was also pretty stoked about was using the Google Translate Android app for the Korean language. It allows two people who speak different languages to alternatively talk, then it uses voice recognition & translation to allow them to communicate. It's pretty cool.

What is less cool is my cell phone provider. I am generally very favorable towards T-Mobile. Their customer service has been excellent and I have been a happy subscriber for almost ten years. But I want to use my cell phone in Korea on a data network so I can take advantage of Google Translate and other fine apps. But guess what?

International data roaming is $15/MB. Fifteen dollars per megabyte!!!

That is insane. A quick browse of my phone's "Data usage" app reveals that I use anywhere from 80MB to 1.1GB in a two week period. In other words $1200-$16,500 at these rates. Other providers have plans that you can upgrade to if you know you are going to be using lots of international data roaming, but not T-Mobile. (My friend Jeff told me he pays $20 a month extra for unlimited international data roaming!) This is also insane because South Korea is one of the most mobile-friendly countries on Earth. Please T-Mobile, get with the program here.

Weddings with Awk, Latex and Google Docs

2012-02-26T15:28:00.002-05:00

Hey guys, I'm getting married! Pretty sweet, right?

Like any good software developer, I am always trying to save myself boring work with scripts and tools. Sure it may end up taking more time, but it's more fun.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a little bit of our wedding workflow, since I think it has been pretty effective. It all starts off with a few Google docs. These documents are all shared, so both my fiance and I can update them at any point during the day. Those documents include a text file with ideas and tasks to be completed, along with a spreadsheet of the gifts we've received, who gave them and whether or not we'd sent them a thank-you. We don't want to forget anyone, nor forget what they gave!

But the most useful document has been a spreadsheet containing the guest list. In the row for each name we filled in their addresses as we received them along with a Y/N column indicating whether or not that person would have a 'plus one.' We were careful to put each piece of the address (street, city, state, ...) into its own column, which is helpful for the script I wrote later. We also had two Y/N columns indicating whether that person had been sent a save-the-date and an invitation.

Putting the addresses in a spreadsheet, as opposed to a Word document, is a great idea, because then it can be exported in CSV format, and I can write scripts over them. After exporting the guest list to CSV format, I wrote an Awk script that would go through the file and output a LaTeX file so that I could generate address labels. I used the "envlab" LaTeX package for generating the labels, and because I had saved each part of the address as its own column, it was easy to play around with alignments (e.g., "should the apartment number go on its own line or after the street?"). Also, I made the outputting of an address label conditional on the Y/N value in the column recording whether or not that person had already received an invitation. This was really useful, since we wanted to send out save-the-dates as soon as possible, even before we had addresses for everyone. So we could effectively run the script any time we wanted without having to worry about generating the same label twice. Finally, we printed the labels onto those standard Avery 5160 inkjet labels (or at least a compatible label). I happen to think that the clear labels look really good, and professional.

So that's it. Nothing particularly clever, but I kind of wanted to share my experiences. I think that overall we've saved a ton of time generating the labels this way. Certainly vs. writing them by hand, but even vs. using Word to create the labels.

Beer Calculators

2011-07-19T18:08:00.002-04:00

As you may know, I have developed a beer calculator, howmuchbeer.com.

Well it seems that someone else had a pretty similar idea and developed a more general drink calculator. And while theirs purports to work for any style of drink, their data is not crowd-sourced, and therefore inferior!

Probabilistic, Modular and Scalable Inference of Typestate Specifications

2011-06-07T23:22:00.002-04:00

Today I presented my paper, Probabilistic, Modular and Scalable Inference of Typestate Specifications at PLDI 2011. This paper was joint work with Aditya Nori from Microsoft Research India. This was the second time I worked on a research project with Aditya, and as before our collaboration was extremely fruitful.

This paper is all about specification inference. The tool that I worked on for my thesis, Plural, checks that objects in a program are used according to their protocols. While the tool was quite powerful, it required a number of pre and post-conditions to verify that the protocol was being used correctly.

Our tool, Anek, infers them automatically, and does so using probabilistic constraints. This allows us to use various forms of evidence, some of which may conflict, in determining a final specification.

Anywho, the paper and presentation are now available online. Enjoy!

Thesis Defense: December 14th, 2010

2010-11-29T11:02:00.002-05:00

In about two weeks I will be defending my Ph.D.! It will be on December 14th, 2010 at 9:30am in the Gates Building, room 4405. I would very much appreciate your attendance.

How to Sit at a Desk for Long Periods of Time

2010-07-30T10:52:00.003-04:00

I just found a funny document on my computer, one that seems especially appropriate as my graduate career is winding down. It's a PDF that I made with LaTeX, way back when I first started graduate school (I can tell from the date). I had never used LaTeX before, but I had heard enough about it, and figured that I should probably learn it as soon as I got to graduate school. Here I am, five years later, and I'm still wresting with LaTeX, trying to write my thesis... Pretty funny stuff.

Anyway, without further ado, I present:

How to Sit at a Desk for Long Periods of Time

Microchronograph!

2010-06-06T15:59:00.002-04:00

In this period of intense travel, updates are few & far between. But dear readers I have music to present, and music say so much more than words themselves.

Microchrograph, is the latest Sick Ridiculous & the Sick Ridiculous tune to hit the market. Tom summarized it pretty well on his blog, but basically it's about academic dishonesty. You should definitely give it a listen, download it freely, and share it with your bros & lady friends.

I think this qualifies as a 'gotcha'

2010-05-25T09:24:00.002-04:00

I was writing some Java code today. I'm writing a plug-in for Eclipse that will actually insert some Java annotations (e.g., @Override) into your code automatically.

Unfortunately, every time I ran my plug-in, the annotations were being inserted without the @ sign (e.g., Override). I couldn't figure out what was going on, looking at the code that generates the text:

String annotation_text = ...
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder('@');
sb.append(annotation_text);
sb.append(newline);

Finally, I hovered over the StringBuilder constructor to figure out which constructor I was calling. Low and behold, I'm calling this one:
java.lang.StringBuilder.StringBuilder(int capacity)

In other words, by using single quotes, I am specifying the character '@' which is then implicitly cast to an int. Hmm... This doesn't seem so bad at first, but there's an asymmetry in the API. If I use this constructor:
new StringBuilder("@");
I get the behavior I expect, a string builder initialized to the at sign.

Moreover, there are append methods that take a single character:
sb.append('@');
Adds the single at sign character to the stream. So, knowing about this method, and the string constructor of the StringBuilder, I naturally assumed there was a character constructor as well... NOT SO FAST BECKMAN.

Trip to Agra

2010-05-18T11:34:00.002-04:00

Classic Taj
Originally uploaded by DixiePistols

This past weekend I went to Agra! Agra is a city in India famous for the Taj Mahal, the landmark that Americans like me most identify with India. Since I'd never been, and this is my third trip to India (!!) I felt like I really should make the trip.

To cut to the chase, it was awesome. I was expecting a cool building that was kind of a tourist trap, but this was an amazing building that was kind of a tourist trap. Probably the most amazing piece of architecture I have ever seen. And as they say, pictures do not do it justice. It is much larger than I'd imagined, and thanks to its elevated location, it appears to be hovering in mid-air. The two hours that I spend at the Taj Mahal were more than worth the entire weekend trip.

And what a gnarly trip it was... It's not really that easy to get to from Bangalore. I flew to Delhi early Saturday morning, and then took a train to Agra. On Sunday, I hired a car from Agra to Delhi, and then flew back to Bangalore. It was stressful as hell. The train was hot because I wasn't in an A/C section because I didn't make reservations early enough. (Lesson: make train reservations early in India!) I took a car on the way back because the only trains still available were at like 6 in the morning. The trip, which was only 200km, took four hours. I spent almost the whole time alternating between worrying about dying (my driver was, um, aggressive) and worrying about missing my flight.

But some things went well. Even though my itinerary was crazy it all worked out. The hotel where I stayed (The Taj Plaza) was cheap, pretty nice, within walking distance of the Taj and full of helpful employees. Recommended. Also, on Sunday morning I went to the breakfast buffet at the Oberoi Amar Villas hotel. The hotel itself is unbelievably expensive, and the buffet was expensive by local standards, but the food was really good! Recommended.

Validating XML against a Schema

2010-05-11T05:27:00.002-04:00

If you ever have to write XML, and you need that XML to validate against a schema (and by the way, if you ever had to do this, I'm so sorry...) it turns out that Visual Studio is a great environment for this. It will tell you where you're XML is wrong and more importantly WHY. So many of the online validators would just say you have a problem without giving you any suggestions on how to fix it.

For the record, I am using Visual Studio 2008 Professional.

Yes. I am in India.

2010-05-05T08:50:00.005-04:00

I made it to Bangalore! The trip was extremely painful, mostly because it was long, but it did have a few highlights:

In Charles de Gaulle airport there is a "resting" room that has lounge-style chairs that you can actually lie on and go to sleep, and it's free! What?! I took a lil' nap there in between my two nine hour flights.
I saw five movies. Best one? Probably Crazy Heart. Worst one? Definitely Bride Wars.

At Microsoft things are about like I remember. TONS of paper work to go through on the first couple of days, but I actually managed to make some progress on my project. There are a few things about India that I forgot to remember:

The mangoes are ridiccio! There's a snack area here at MSRI that has free stuff for us. They have mangoes, not the green kind but the yellow kind, and they are soooo good.
The streets are unbelievably hectic. I'll spend the first week jumping at the sound of horns and fearful that I will be hit while walking on the edge of the street (because the sidewalks are not really navigable).
People call you "boss." Really love that.

Beginning of the Summer, Travel, etc.

2010-04-29T18:24:00.003-04:00

Well folks, it's been and continues to be a very busy period in my life! The semester is ending. I traveled a whole lot this past year. I'm going to India, again! And the summer is beginning. So let me just bring you all up to date.

The short story is, I am going to Bangalore, India, and I am leaving tomorrow. I'm going to work on a project at Microsoft Research, India that's related to my thesis, but also related to work they do there, so it's a good match. Some of you may know that I was there back in 2007, and had an awesome time. Well I am pumped to be going back. I'll be working with the same person, Aditya Nori, and to a lesser extent with Sriram Rajamani, who is on my thesis committee. This is going to be a more concentrated research trip, since I'll only be there for May, and we have a project to start and finish, but I'll still have some time to be a tourist.

When I get back, I have a bunch of research to get to in my final push to be doctored on. I'll be glad to be back in Pittsburgh for an extended time. I love graduate school, and I love all the great travel opportunities it has provided me with, but I also love my friends in Pittsburgh, and it'll be nice to be here for the summer.

If this post seems a little frantic, it's because I am frantically getting ready! Am I packed? Of course not! But I'll figure something out...

Nearest Neighbor

2010-04-21T22:14:00.003-04:00

Hey. Just learned about a cool data structure for computational geometry called, KD-Trees. Yes, it's sort of embarrassing that I've just now learned about them, but what can I say? I still think they are cool. Anyway, KD-Trees are like binary trees but for points in space. They make it really easy (well, fast) to do things like search for the nearest point in a set to some given point.

SO, I quickly hacked up a nearest neighbor application. It generates a bunch of random points, and then when you click highlights the nearest point in red. Yay.

Click here to download the JAR if you want to run it. It's on of those runnable Jars... remember those? Ah, Java... I tried to make it an Applet, but that process was even more ridiculous.

Proof of Soundness for a Typestate Checker with Locks

2010-04-13T11:36:00.003-04:00

Right now I am working on (what I hope will be) the last major theoretical effort of my thesis. I need to do another proof. Way back when I wrote this paper for OOPSLA in 2008, I did a proof of soundness for my language, a language that used atomic blocks for mutual exclusion. Right now, I'm doing the same thing but for a language that uses synchronized blocks. In other words, a language that is more Java-like.

Proofs are pretty painful for me, and the last one I did was really complicated, so rather than merely update the old proof to add locks, I am actually rewriting and simplifying (I think?) a whole bunch of stuff.

One of the biggest questions for me is a question that is important whenever you are doing a proof for a language with references; how will I define a well-typed heap? A well-typed heap means a runtime heap that is consistent with the type-checking facts that were known statically. In my system, every thread is an expression, and each one has its own type-checking context. They all much be consistent with the heap. Furthermore, in anticipation of my proof of preservation (where I have to show that after a step, the heap will still be well-typed) I think that my definition of a well-typed heap will have to include the following condition:

At most one thread can know statically the exact state of an object.

In my last proof I had a similar condition, but it was really unweildy to work with. I wonder how I can simplify this desire?

We're Live @ Blogger

2010-04-13T08:59:00.000-04:00

Hey folks,

As you may have noticed, my blog is now hosted at Blogger.com. This is why a.) you see a fancy new layout and b.) if you normally get here by typing www.blogface.org into your browser, it's no longer a silly URL redirect, but rather you actually see blogface.org in your browser's address bar. Nice. There are a few reasons I switched over to Blogger, but mainly I just wanted to try something new. If you ever have the joy/pain of switching from one blog software to another, I highly recommend you check out the google-blog-converters project. You can run it on there app engine or on your own PC, and it even logs into your blog and grabs all the comments if you want it to.

Couple of things to keep in mind:

If you want to follow over RSS, go to http://feed.blogface.org/
While comments were moved from the old blog, I guess you have pretty much lost your ability to edit your comment if you made one.
Lists should have three items.

The Dissatisfactory Doily

2010-04-11T08:24:00.000-04:00

The most recent incarnation of SIGBOVIK, the annual celebration of all that is computer science humor, occurred on April 1st. I didn't have much time to recap it earlier, but it went very well. With the exception of being just a tiny bit long, this may have been the best SIGBOVIK ever. If you're interested in a (free) electronic copy of the proceedings or a ($7) paper copy of the proceedings, go back and click those links!

But I mostly wanted to talk about my own paper, The Dissatisfactory Doily. The premise of the paper is this: You own a sports team. You are jealous of the Pittsburgh Steelers and their ability to sell $10 Terrible Towels. You's like to make your own, but you don't have a clever, alliterative name. Well look no further than the Dissatisfactory Doily, a random name generator for Terrible Towel knock-offs. It takes a list of adjectives (synonyms for terrible) and a list of nouns (cloth-related) and spits out your new product name. For a long list of examples, please see the paper, but some of my favorites are, The Wanton Wall-to-Wall Carpeting, The Abominable Afghan, and The Horrendous Hanky.

In further news, this was likely my last year as SIGBOVIK MC. It's been a lot of fun, but my jokes are getting stale. Time to pass the torch!

Bad Tatoos

2010-03-21T20:03:00.000-04:00

There's something really, really funny about a really, really bad tattoo. This one is my favorite, and really, isn't all that bad since it shows a sense of humor. Found this on a bad tattoo blog.