>>Galiwood

2012-02-10T19:17:00.001-05:00

My First Lakers Game

2012-02-10T00:22:00.001-05:00

Kampala Taxi Park gets saved

2012-02-02T08:52:00.001-05:00

I read this article with joy this morning. It seems someone in KCCA is finally listening to the public outcry to reform the public transport mess in Kampala.

Basically, KCCA is taking over day to day operations of the taxi park from UTODA so that they can modernize it.

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1317810/-/b1d5fsz/-/index.html

Key Points

- KCCA officials promised that the take-over would lead to an improvement in the state of the taxi parks and the service enjoyed by commuters, financed by a monthly user-fee of Shs155,000 per taxi.

- Utoda’s departure is expected to pave the way for the introduction of buses to carry more passengers and decongest the city. The first fleet of 100 buses belonging to Pioneer Easy Bus Company recently arrived at Mombasa Port after delays.

Lakers tickets!!

2012-02-01T22:53:00.001-05:00

Now gotta find a lakers jersey and make a Kobe poster to take with me
to the game!!

Secretive Culture at Apple

2012-02-01T10:20:00.001-05:00

Did you know that there are no free lunches or free gyms at apple. This insightful piece tells all about how stressful it can be to work at the world's most secretive company.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/01/18/inside-apple-adam-lashinsky/

Thanks to Tonny for sharing this article.

Wedding Planning

2012-01-31T21:22:00.000-05:00

Excited for Uncle Stephen's wedding that's coming up this summer with all the family and friends that are coming to Boston from different parts of the world.
Last evening, Uncle Ste was at my house and we were making initial plans for budgeting and I was giving him general wedding tips. It was kind of weird giving my uncle advice about weddings, but it did bring back sweet memories from my wedding a year ago.

Pics

2012-01-31T10:28:00.000-05:00

Friends 2009 SHAG visits tall boats in Charlestown Junior's 4th of July BBQ Roy Tanck's Flickr Widget requires Flash Player 9 or better. Midnite Summer Boat Cruise Sandra Graduation Cruise	Sara's BD July 25 SHAG surprise engagement party SHAG deep sea fishing
Family My lil sister Winnie

What do I have in common with M7

2012-01-12T08:48:00.001-05:00

I'm glad to read that amid all the criticism of President M7, we both share the same disdain for first food and love of grilled chicken.

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1303980/-/b22fn5z/-/index.html

Museveni, four others starved at ANC celebrations

2012: A year of so much promise

2012-01-07T13:36:00.000-05:00

Good bye, 2011, Hello 2012.
2011 seemed to go by so fast, but no worries because we have 2012 to make up for it.
I'm feeling blessed with all that's happened in the last year. I'm looking forward to even bigger things this year.

Looking back at 2011 in summary - Sandra and I purchased our first home. We celebrated our first year in marriage which was trying and a big learning experience about each other, which ultimately brought us closer.
Every day I'm learning how to be a better person by looking at a reflection of myself through her.

My sister, Susan managed to come to the US for her college and forging a relationship with her has been quite challenging given that like me, she is very quiet and reclusive. We seem to clash more often than not, maybe because we are similar in character.

I was lucky to see my mother who made a trip to the US and spend some time with her. It helps especially since I didn't get to go to Uganda this year.
Speaking of travel, we did take a wonderful honeymoon vacation to Jamaica which was one of the most amazing / adventurous trips that I've heard in my life. We definitely made the most out of it.

Jamaica Part 1: Dunn's River Falls

So as 2012 starts, I'm reading a new book 4 hr work week (thanks Beth Hussey (mom in law)) which is changing my perspectives on life. The Lakers are sucking it this sports season but that's okay, the Pats are doing just fine.
I hope to be writing some more this year.

Painting the House

2011-06-21T08:59:00.000-04:00

Sandra and I decided we did not like plain white, so over the weekend, we hit up home depot and attempted our first paint job ever. I love the results!

Well Done Mr. President

2011-05-02T09:51:00.002-04:00

If only M7 could follow B-Rock's example and also bring us Kony's head instead of fooling us and wasting time on Besigye.

Uganda's slow march towards being a Police State

2011-04-29T09:51:00.002-04:00

It's taken us over 20 years, but Uganda has finally made it back to the dark days of the public not being protected by their Police, but rather attacked and killed by the Police.

Obviously there are two sides to the coin, and all those attacked in the city riots are not necessarily innocent, but our security forces should be held to a much higher standard!

Jacob Graduates

2011-04-16T16:34:00.002-04:00

Congratulations Jacob Mutumba on your graduation.
Here are some photos from the the after party celebrations with Jacob, Eleanor and Ethan; Ivan, Sandra and I.
We were at the Cheesecake Factory.

Hello Condo.. Move In Date June 1st

2011-04-10T14:15:00.002-04:00

Time Flies, House coming up soon.

2011-03-29T21:18:00.001-04:00

Wow, looking at my previous post about a year ago..I was a single, homeless man. And now I've been married (twice) and a few weeks away from owning my first home. Scary how fast life goes by with the blink of an eye!

These are the exciting times of life that they talk about all along. Changes are happening too soon! I wish it would slow down a bit so I can absorb every second.

Hopefully now that life's somewhat settling down, I can get back to being a regular poster on this blog once again. And with the NBA playoffs coming soon, it's Laker time!!

College & Jobs

2010-05-04T21:23:00.000-04:00

Have you recently graduated with no job? Deadline coming up, no paper?
This is a resource for anyone going through or just completing college. I've uploaded my undergraduate papers and tips on job hunting. I've been through the undergraduate grind and the hustle of interviewing. I've worked in almost all environments from research to corporate. If you expect to land a job in any technical company, expect to show your skills on a white board.
Enjoy and don't plagiarize!

JOB HUNTING

During my graduate school at Northeastern University, I successfully interviewed for a researcher / MFC programmer position with a Technical Analysis group led by the late Dr. Bill Giessen. These are some of the questions that were asked (or could have been asked) >>Technical Interview Questions

COLLEGE PAPERS AND PROJECTS

My Mathematics Senior Project
My mathematics senior project on the "The Fourth Dimension". Thanks Dr. Andrew Rich for the great insight and guidance.

My Computer Science Senior Project
During the summer of my junior year, I did an internship with a company called South Side Supply and also designed their website. I worked with Microsoft Business Solutions - Great Plains. Thanks Sherri, Mike and SSS for the great time! Thanks again Dr. Rich for helping me get another A in this project.

My Philosophy Class
During my last semester of undergrad, I took a class called Philosophy of Civilization and it was a thought inducing college experience, even though it was not related to my major. In another life, I would have majored in philosophy.. if only the profession had more opportunities (sigh).

This was one of the more interesting classes that was not related to my major. I was really glad that I took this class because it helped me think outside the box about the confusing aspects of life, war, consumerism etc.

Just read the papers and share your thoughts too.
Consumerism - Do you ever think about the amount of food, product and necessities that you buy and throw away; the wastage of things that could be used elsewhere worldwide?

Howard Zinn - This is a response to his novel - Passionate Declarations

Negative effects of Technology (part 1)
Negative effects of Technology (part 2)
- Do you ever think about the negative effects of technology? These two papers offer a review of one of the foremost critiques of Technology - Jerry Mander.

Ishmael - This was the most though-provoking novel that I ever read. Here is my review of the novel.

Final Insight Paper - This was a summary of all that I learnt from this class.
Final Exam cheat sheet

WEB PROGRAMMING AND DESIGN

My Web Portfolio
South Side Supply - www.southsidesupply.com
Galiwood - www.galiwood.com
Wezimbe Inc. - www.wezimbe.com
Budonians International - www.budonians.org

My Flash Designs
I know flash is a dying technology, but back in the day it was super hip and these are some designs I messed with as I was designing various websites. The displays are for graphical purposes so ignore the links.

Galiwood Flash Television
Galiwood Flash Introduction
One of my first Flash animations
Click my name
My Sebring
Big-Bang
Scroll mouse over Me and My Grandpa
My alternative introduction idea
Budonians International Website idea
See Kampala City through a magnifying glass
My flash menu
Flash Sky
scroll menu in flash
South Side Supply website intro
Typing Flash

Wedding coming up soon

2010-03-01T22:15:00.005-05:00

Countdown!

UPDATE: Wedding(s) came and passed

If you couldn't make it, here are some photos from the Uganda trip.

https://picasaweb.google.com/gali.alan

Namirembe Cathedral Church Ceremony

Serena Gardens Photos

UMA Exhibition Hall Reception

Safari

Picasa 3 has face recognition

2010-02-11T11:04:00.001-05:00

I just recently caved and updated my Picasa to the latest version that utilizes the face recognition and enhanced name tagging feature. I love it.

The cool thing about this is that first it scans your entire photo album library and attempts to connect the dots for the first few names you tag.

Then as you approve more of its selections, it become smarter and gets even more faces of the same person as shown in the example of Corleone below.

I wonder if Flickr can do that…

Picasa beta 3 is a free app you can download here.

Does anyone know what is going on with The Daily Monitor Online?

2010-02-03T16:37:00.000-05:00

Has the government also shut down Daily Monitor? Please let me know if you know about this?

Tasty peanut sauce

2010-02-03T13:50:00.000-05:00

I’m particularly proud of the fact that I made some nice peanut sauce for an International potluck lunch we had at work this afternoon. It was tasty too.

2009-12-05T01:34:00.001-05:00

The black mamba strikes again!!!
I love the lakers!

Uganda: Hottest Bankruptcy Rehab Center

2009-12-04T09:55:00.000-05:00

Are you a Hollywood star that’s Broke/ Career going down the drain/ Star-power fading?

No problemo!

Fly over to Uganda, where you’ll always be a star in our eyes!

The US Flag

2009-12-02T14:35:00.000-05:00

One thing I’ve always found amazing is how much respect is attached to the American flag. If it’s any gauge of the amount of patriotism among American citizens, then the Uganda govt. could borrow a page from this link - http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/faq.htm and set up some rules and regulations around the Ugandan flag.

Maybe if more people respect the flag, more people will display it and thus get a greater sense of patriotism.

Just a thought.

Why I love GMaiL

2009-09-21T09:22:00.000-04:00

With features like Merge Contacts here, you gotta love gmail. Good job PM’s at google.

Now for a feature to automatically delete outdated emails.

When an email comes back as bounced, there should be a feature to allow me to delete that email address there and then rather than going into my contacts.

Alan Galiwango | Developer

Technical Interview

2009-09-09T22:07:00.000-04:00

A lot of your computer science professors studied outdated programming languages and are not familiar with modern programming techniques. It is up to you to brush up on the latest trends of programming. With that said, here are some sample technical questions that every programmer, regardless of language should be familiar with.

What is an object ?
An object is a package that contains related data and instructions. The data relates to what the object represents, while the instructions define how this object relates to other objects and itself.

What is a message?
A message is a signal from one object to another requesting that a computation take place. It is roughly equivalent to a function call in other languages.

What is a class?
A class defines the characteristics of a certain type of object. It defines what its members will remember, the messages to which they will respond, and what form the response will take.

What is an instance?
An individual object that is a member of some class.

What is a super-class?
Given a class, a super-class is the basis of the class under consideration. The given class is defined as a subset (in some respects) of the super-class. Objects of the given class potentially possess all the characteristics belonging to objects of the super-class.

What are the 4 major principles of Object Oriented Programming?
Encapsulation, Data Abstraction, Polymorphism and Inheritence

What is inheritance?
Inheritance is property such that a parent (or super) class passes the characteristics of itself to children (or sub) classes that are derived from it. The sub-class has the option of modifying these characteristics in order to make a different but fundamentally related class from the super-class.

What is data encapsulation ?
Data Encapsulation is also known as data hiding. The most important advantage of encapsulation is that it lets the programmer create an object and then provide an interface to the object that other objects can use to call the methods provided by the object. The programmer can change the internal workings of an object but this transparent to other interfacing programs as long as the interface remains unchanged.

What is inheritance ?
Inheritance is the process of deriving classes from other classes. In such a case, the sub-class has an 'is-a' relationship with the super class. For e.g. vehicle can be a super-class and car can be a sub-class derived from vehicle. In this case a car is a vehicle. The super class 'is not a' sub-class as the sub- class is more specialized and may contain additional members as compared to the super class. The greatest advantage of inheritance is that it promotes generic design and code reuse.

What is multiple inheritance ? What are it's advantages and disadvantages ?
Multiple Inheritance is the process whereby a sub-class can be derived from more than one super class. The advantage of multiple inheritance is that it allows a class to inherit the functionality of more than one base class thus allowing for modeling of complex relationships. The disadvantage of multiple inheritance is that it can lead to a lot of confusion when two base classes implement a method with the same name.

What is polymorphism?
Polymorphism refers to the ability to have more than one method with the same signature in an inheritance hierarchy. The correct method is invoked at run-time based on the context (object) on which the method is invoked. Polymorphism allows for a generic use of method names while providing specialized implementations for them.

Polymorphism means one name, many forms. Polymorphism manifests itself by having multiple methods all with the same name, but slighty different functionality.
There are two basic types: overriding and overloading (know the difference)

What is a method?
A method is a class's procedural response to a given message protocol. It is like the definition of a procedure in other languages.

What is a constructor? A destructor?
A constructors and destructors are methods defined in a class that are invoked automatically when an object is created or destroyed. They are used to initialize a newly allocated object and to cleanup behind an object about to be removed.

What is the difference between procedural and object oriented programming?
The procedural paradigm performs computation through a step-by-step manipulation of data items. Solving problems this way is akin to writing a recipe. ie: All the ingredients (data items) are defined. Next a series of enumerated steps (statements) are defined to transform the raw ingredients into a finished meal.

The object oriented model, in contrast, combines related data and procedural information into a single package called an object. Objects are meant to represent logically separate entities (like real world objects). Objects are grouped together (and defined by) classes. (This is analogous to user defined data types in procedural languages.) Classes may pass-on their "makeup" to classes derived from them. In this way, Objects that are of a similar yet different nature need not be defined from scratch. Computation occurs though the intercommunication of objects. Programming this way is like writing a play. First the characters are defined with their attributes and personalities. Next the dialog is written so that the personalities interact. The sum total constitutes a drama.

Explain the scope resolution operator
The scope resolution operator permits a program to reference an identifier in the global scope that has been hidden by another identifier with the same name in the local scope.

What is a default constructor?
A constructor that has no arguments or one where all the arguments have default argument values.

If you don't code a default constructor, the compiler provides one if there are no other constructors. If you are going to instantiate an array of objects of the class, the class must have a default constructor.

When should you use multiple inheritance?
There are three acceptable answers: "Never," "Rarely," and "When the problem domain cannot be accurately modeled any other way."

What is a virtual destructor?
The simple answer is that a virtual destructor is one that is declared with the virtual attribute.

The behavior of a virtual destructor is what is important. If you destroy an object through a pointer or reference to a base class, and the base-class destructor is not virtual, the derived-class destructors are not executed, and the destruction might not be complete.

Explain the ISA and HASA class relationship. How would you implement each in a class design?
A specialized class "is a" specialization of another class and, therefore, has the ISA relationship with the other class. An Employee ISA Person. This relationship is best implemented with inheritance. Employee is derived from Person. A class may have an instance of another class. For example, an Employee "has a" Salary, therefore the Employee class has the HASA relationship with the Salary class. This relationship is best implemented by embedding an object of the Salary class in the Employee class.

The answer to this question reveals whether you have an understanding of the fundamentals of object-oriented design, which is important to reliable class design.

There are other relationships. The USESA relationship is when one class uses the services of another. The Employee class uses an object (cout) of the ostream class to display the employee's name onscreen, for example. But if you get ISA and HASA right, you usually don't need to go any further.

What are the access privileges in object oriented programming? What is the default access level ?
The access privileges in C++ are private, public and protected. The default access level assigned to members of a class is private. Private members of a class are accessible only within the class and by friends of the class. Protected members are accessible by the class itself and it's sub-classes. Public members of a class can be accessed by anyone.

What is the difference between a shallow copy and a deep copy ?
A shallow copy simply creates a new object and inserts in it references to the members of the original object. A deep copy constructs a new object and then creates in it copies of each of the members of the original object.

Describe what an Interface is and how it’s different from Abstract Class.

Interface:
- only has method signatures. No public, private specifications.
- No implementation of the class. Just a contract that whoever inherits the interface will implement all methods within it.
Abstract Class:
- A class is a collection of objects, properties and functionalities that are related. Basic building block
- It cannot be instantiated but only subclassed/inherited from.
- Why? To enforce hierachies / standards

What is a "pure virtual" member function?

What is the difference between public, private, and protected inheritance?

What happens if an exception is not caught?
What are the costs and benefits of using exceptions?
When would you choose to return an error code rather than throw an exception?