Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Monday, 8 February 2010
Functional C#: LINQ vs Method chaining at Mark Needham
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
One of the common discussions that I've had with several colleagues when we're making use of some of the higher order functions that can be applied on collections is whether to use the LINQ style syntax or to chain the different methods together.
I tend to prefer the latter approach although when asked the question after my talk at Developer Developer Developer I didn't really have a good answer other than to suggest that it seemed to just be a personal preference thing.
Damian Marshall suggested that he preferred the method chaining approach because it more clearly describes the idea of passing a collection through a pipeline where we can apply different operations to that collection.
Tags: programming functional C# coding technology
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1MoIC
Using an FPGA to tame the power beast in consumer handheld MPUs | Power Management DesignLine
Pretty cool and very useful tips.....
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
By
Rahul V. Shah and Vishesh Agrawal
Tags: mpus technology power electronics microelectronics
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1MoIB
EETimes.com - Engineers explore life beyond 10 Gbit links
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
At three separate industry events last week, engineers said they are gearing up to deliver in 2011 chips that can handle serial data streams running at 25 Gbits/second to drive next-generation 100 and 400 Gbit/second networks. But they say it's still a mystery how—or if—they can deliver follow-on components for the terabit networks today's Internet data centers are already demanding.
The kinds of jobs required to run today's Web 2.0 services such as Google and Facebook can completely overwhelm current 10 Gbit/s Ethernet links in the warehouse-sized data centers those companies use. Such data centers could use hundreds of 100 Gbit/s Ethernet links today, although standards for such networks are still being completed.
Tags: technology electronics engineering networks chips
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1MnuhSunday, 7 February 2010
Quantum computing leap forward: altering a lone electron without disturbing its neighbors
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Tags: technology quantum computing computing physics qubits
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1MhwT
YouTube - Wall Climbing Robots developed at Ben Gurion University
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Tags: technology electronics robotics robots mechanics
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1Mep9
IEEE Spectrum: Avoid Microsoft Internet Explorer, German Security Agency Says
Hahaha... as if we didn't know already.... =))
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Tags: IE security software internet explorer
Posted by: aasemoon
http://migre.me/jbvw
LabVIEW Package for Robotics Design
This is something that I'm very much looking forwards to getting my hands on. It could very well be a life saver for me.
"On Monday, National Instruments announced one such platform. It's called LabView Robotics. In addition to LabView, the popular data-acquisition application, the package includes a bunch of tools specific to robotics. It can import codes in various formats (C, C++, Matlab, VHDL), offers a library of drivers for a wide variety of sensors and actuators, and has modules for implementation of real-time and embedded hardware. NI says engineers could use the package to both design and run their robotic systems."
IEEE Spectrum: National Instruments Introduces LabVIEW Package for Robotics Design
http://digg.com/u1MeQb
Robotics
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
easy to program complex robotics applications by providing a high level of abstraction for sensor communication, obstacle avoidance, path planning, kinematics, steering, and more.

Tags: robotics technology programming C++ labview
Posted by: aasemoon
http://www.ni.com/robotics
IEEE Spectrum: National Instruments Introduces LabVIEW Package for Robotics Design
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Tags: technology programming electronics robotics robots
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1MeQA
Calling F# from COBOL and Back Again - CodeProject
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Tags: codeproject cobol technology programming coding
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1MeQ9Saturday, 6 February 2010
Scientists Discover Common Bacteria Can Turn Microgears When Suspended in Solution
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
an important requirement for further development of hybrid biomechanical systems
driven by microorganisms," said Argonne physicist and principal investigator
Igor Aronson. “In this system, the gears are a million times more massive
than the bacteria."

Tags: technology nano technology robotics ai science
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1MaFY
Den by default » Using the Google Weather API – pros and cons so far
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Tags: programming coding google google weather api
Posted by: aasemoon
http://dennisdel.com/?p=99
Uniform Buffers VS Texture Buffers « RasterGrid Blog
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
OpenGL 3.1 introduced two new sources from where shaders can retrieve their data, namely uniform buffers and texture buffers. These can be used to accelerate rendering when heavy usage of application provided data happens like in case of skeletal animation, especially when combined with geometry instancing. However, even if the functionality is in the core specification for about a year now, there are few demos out there to show their usage, as so, there is a big confusion around when to use them and which one is more suitable for a particular use case.
Both AMD and NVIDIA have updated their GPU programming guides to present the latest facilities provided by both OpenGL and DirectX, however I still see that people don’t really understand how they work and that prevents them from effectively taking advantage of these features.
Once, at some online forum, I found somebody arguing why is this whole confusion introduced by the Khronos Group and why there is no general buffer type to use instead and the decision whether to use uniform or texture buffers should be a decision made by the driver. This particular post motivated me to write this article.
Tags: coding programming technology OpenGL AMD
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1MXMNFriday, 5 February 2010
C9 Lectures: Dr. Don Syme - Introduction to F#, 1 of 3 | Going Deep | Channel 9
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
Dr. Don Syme is a principal researcher in MSR Cambridge. He has a rich history in programming language research, design, and implementation (C# generics being one of his most recognized implementations), and is the principle creator of F#. Who better to lecture on the topic than Don? This three part series will serve as an introduction to F#, including insights into the rationale behind the history and creation of Microsoft's newest language.
Tags: programming coding technology .NET F#
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1MWdV
Office 2010 :: The Movie
Hahaha.. look what I just found on Channel 9 forums. This is pretty amusing. =D And, well, self explanatory.
Thursday, 4 February 2010
The Blue Talkz...: LOST Seaon 6 Premiere, and Sayid's IRANIAN passport!!
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Tags: TV Lost entertainment sci-fi
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1MRnQ
LOST Seaon 6 Premiere, and Sayid's IRANIAN passport!!
So I just watched Lost season 6 premiere on Space channel, and it was simply mind blowing. =) LOOOOVVVEED IT! As I expected, it caused much more questions than giving any answers... and that's exactly what we love about Lost, isn't it? ;)
At the end of season 5, after Ben's trial, I knew with a 100% certainty that John Locke the new, the smoke monster, and the black dude were all the same. It was very clear given how he manipulated Ben to kill Jacob. But I'm wondering, what the heck is his name? =D And where's "home" that he wants to go to? And what happens no that Jacob's dead? And what did Juliet mean by "it worked"? And .. and... and... and... I could go on forever.
But you know what? I also have another really BIG question that I really have to bring up here... Sayid Jarrah is supposed to be Iraqi right? Then can somebody tell me, why on earth he has an IRANIAN PASSPORT????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm half Persian. I was born in Iran. I have an Iranian passport. I know what an Iranian passport looks like. Below is a screenshot of the scene showing Sayid's passport [thanks to YouTube!], right beside a photo of the first page of my Iranian passport. As you can see, it's exactly the same. [Click to see the full size.]
Something tells me that this is not a part of the Lost mystery plot. So I'd say... it's a rather sad mistake. Iraq and Iran are 2 different countries.. a fact that SOOOO many people seem to not realize.
Anyhow... aside from the above booboo, I really enjoyed the first episode, and I can't wait for more.... ah... please... moooorrre.... moooorrrrrrr Lost... MOOOORRRRE... =))))))))))
http://digg.com/u1MRZwWednesday, 3 February 2010
Say hello to PALRO
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In what comes as a bit of a surprise, Fuji Soft Inc.’s new humanoid robot platform for hobbyists and researchers has been given the name PALRO (pal + robot). Naturally we feel this name is a superb choice! Sales to research institutions will begin on March 15th, 2010 with a general release following later in the year. The robot combines Fuji Soft’s software prowess with an open architecture which will give developers plenty of room to experiment.
PALRO stands 39.8cm (15″) tall and weighs 1.9kg (3.5 lbs), and here’s the good news: it costs 298,000 JPY ($3300 USD). Considering PALRO has 20 DOF, a camera, 4 directional microphones, a speaker, LED arrays in its head and chest, 4 pressure sensors in each foot, 3-axis gyro sensor, an accelerometer, and an Intel Atom 1.6GHz CPU, it is priced very competitively. A comparative robot kit like Vstone’s Robovie-PC for example, costs $1100 USD more and doesn’t have such a fancy exoskeleton.
Tags: technology robots robotics electronics androids
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1MJXR
Facebook Developers | HipHop for PHP: Move Fast
Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Today I'm excited to share the project a small team of amazing people and I have been working on for the past two years; HipHop for PHP. With HipHop we've reduced the CPU usage on our Web servers on average by about fifty percent, depending on the page. Less CPU means fewer servers, which means less overhead. This project has had a tremendous impact on Facebook. We feel the Web at large can benefit from HipHop, so we are releasing it as open source this evening in hope that it brings a new focus toward scaling large complex websites with PHP. While HipHop has shown us incredible results, it's certainly not complete and you should be comfortable with beta software before trying it out.
HipHop for PHP isn't technically a compiler itself. Rather it is a source code transformer. HipHop programmatically transforms your PHP source code into highly optimized C++ and then uses g++ to compile it. HipHop executes the source code in a semantically equivalent manner and sacrifices some rarely used features — such as eval() — in exchange for improved performance. HipHop includes a code transformer, a reimplementation of PHP's runtime system, and a rewrite of many common PHP Extensions to take advantage of these performance optimizations.
Tags: programming php facebook hiphop coding
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1MBzhTuesday, 2 February 2010
Sleepthief – Ariadne The Dividing Sea (w. Joanna Stevens)
Multi-Core and Parallel Programming Practices | The Knowledge Chamber | Channel 9
For anyone who like me, missed this year's PDC almost completely.....
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
In today’s episode, we will meet with Stephen Toub, who will share with us some of the overarching concepts associated with parallelism, and some of the ways we are trying to empower developers to develop applications to take advantage of it.
Tags: technology programming multicore coding electronics
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1M9yh
Icosatetraped Robot Walks On 24 Soft Legs | BotJunkie
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Tags: technology electronics programming robotics robots
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1M9RsMonday, 1 February 2010
Google Code Blog: A proposal to extend the DNS protocol
Grammy Awards 2010
Sunday, 31 January 2010
A Postfunctional Language | The Scala Programming Language
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Tags: programming coding scala functional programming
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1Lw9u
Embedded.com - Early verification cuts design time & cost in algorithm-intensive systems
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
It doesn't have to be this way. Many designers of algorithm-intensive systems already have the tools they need to get verification under control. Engineers can use these same tools to build system models that help them find and correct problems earlier in the development process. This can not only reduce verification time, but also improves the performance of their designs. In this article, we'll explain three practical approaches to early verification that make this possible.
First, let's examine why the current algorithm verification process is inefficient and error-prone. In a typical workflow, designs start with algorithm developers, who pass the design to hardware and software teams using specification documents.

Tags: technology electronics programming coding embedded systems
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1Lw9s
jQuery 3D Infinite Carousel
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Tags: jquery programming coding
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1Lo60
PRODUCT HOW-TO: Increase embedded processor efficiency through the use of distributed CPU blocks | Automotive DesignLine
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
While SMPs are quite common today, we typically have not seen a shift towards multiprocessing in embedded computing. However, a new type of embedded design technique gives engineers the freedom to intelligently distribute processing functions across a digital subsystem.
This article will look at an example of the distributed processing technique using Cypress Semiconductor's PSoC 3 and PSoC 5 architectures, which consist of a main CPU (in this case an 8051 or ARM Cortex M3), a DMA engine, and array of Universal Digital Blocks (UDB).
Tags: technology electronics microelectronics cpu processors
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1Lo5zSaturday, 30 January 2010
TechOnline | Show Me the Next-Generation HDMI
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Tags: technology electronics HDMI multimedia
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1LlVXFriday, 29 January 2010
EETimes CleanTerra
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
The smart grid is "so interdisciplinary," said Wanda Reder, chair of the IEEE Smart Grid Task Force and former president of the IEEE Power & Energy Society. "We have the gamut covered in technical interests, but we needed a way to facilitate communications between our many entities to link information on all the conferences, papers and standards we have in this area," she added.
Tags: technology electronics ieee smart grid
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1Ljo5
Using an FPGA to tame the power beast in consumer handheld MPUs | Audio DesignLine
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
The consumer handheld market is growing by leaps and bounds. With more processing power and increased support for more applications, portable products are cross-pollinating with traditional computing systems even as the product life cycle has decreased considerably in this market segment. As a result, especially in this era of economic slowdown, it is imperative that new products meet the time-to-market window to gain maximum acceptance. A decrease in product life cycles requires a reduced development cycle and an increased emphasis on reusability and reprogrammability.
The emerging handheld market is also seeing interesting trends in which each individual device in a family has lower volumes but there is more customization across the series of devices, effectively upping the total unit volumes. The key challenge then becomes how to develop a system that is widely reusable and also customizable.
These requirements have led designers increasingly to turn to the FPGA for handheld-product development. The FPGA has become more powerful and feature-rich, while gate counts, area and frequency have increased. FPGA development and turnaround cycles are considerably shorter than those of custom ASICs, and the added advantage of reprogrammability can make the FPGA a more compelling solution for handheld embedded systems.
Tags: technology electronics fpgas mpus power
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1Ljo4
New LOST Trailer! <3
NVIDIA and University of Illinois Join Forces To Release World’s First Textbook On Programming Massively Parallel Processors
This, I want to read....
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
The first textbook of its kind, Programming Massively Parallel Processors: A Hands-on Approach launches today, authored by Dr. David B. Kirk, NVIDIA Fellow and former chief scientist, and Dr. Wen-mei Hwu, who serves at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Coordinated Science Laboratory, co-director of the Universal Parallel Computing Research Center and principal investigator of the CUDA Center of Excellence.
The textbook, which is 256 pages, is the first aimed at teaching advanced students and professionals the basic concepts of parallel programming and GPU architectures. Published by Morgan Kaufmann, it explores various techniques for constructing parallel programs and reviews numerous case studies.
With conventional CPU-based computing no longer scaling in performance and the world’s computational challenges increasing in complexity, the need for massively parallel processing has never been greater. GPUs have hundreds of cores capable of delivering transformative performance increases across a wide range of computational challenges. The rise of these multi-core architectures has raised the need to teach advanced programmers a new and essential skill: how to program massively parallel processors.
Tags: technology electronics programming coding parallel processors
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1Lhm2
MilkyTracker by Titan
Pretty awesome tracker for Windows, created by Titan...
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Tags: demoscene music tracker milkytracker electronic music
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1Lhm1
January 26, 2010: Haggis, Rewrites, and the Soliciting Your Opinions. « Josephmallozzi’s Weblog
OMG LOL... Believe it or not, this in fact IS an SGU related article! =P
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
Today’s blog entry may be offensive to sensitive Scotsmen and/or Scotswomen. Reader discretion is strongly advised – especially if you’ve ever worn a kilt.
Yesterday, on my way to dinner with Marty and co., I stopped by my local butcher shop and picked up a fresh haggis, determined to finally sample the Scotland’s national dish (I thought it was the deep-fried chocolate bar. That shows you how much I know). For those of you not in the know, haggis is comprised of various minced sheep’s innards (ie. lungs, liver, and heart), beef and/or mutton fat, oatmeal, onion, and spices stuffed into a sheep’s stomach, served steamed or boiled with a side of turnips and rutabagas.

Tags: stargate stargate universe sgu sci-fi tv
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1Lgl0Thursday, 28 January 2010
Hey Niners, Got any Windows issues we can (try and) solve for you on Help Desk? | The Coffeehouse | Channel 9
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
From Nic:
We're piloting a new show idea on Wednesday called Help Desk where we put together a group of Windows trouble shooting gurus and get them to answer your Windows PC issues live on the air...
Any Niners out there have Windows PC issues/questions they need some help with?
Send to ch9live(AT)microsoft(DOT)com or tweet us @ch9live and make sure to watch the show live or check out the broadcast afterwards on demand.
Tags: programming coding technology computers help desk
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1LbG6
PRODUCT HOW TO - Embedding multicore PCs for Robotics & Industrial Control | Industrial Control Designline
Highlights and Sticky Notes:
PCs are also becoming more reliable. With these trends, the practice of building robotic systems as complex multi-architecture, multi-platform systems is being challenged. It is now becoming possible to integrate all the functions of machine control and HMI into a single platform, without sacrificing performance and reliability of processing.
Through new developments in software, we are seeing industrial systems evolving to better integrate Windows with real-time functionality such as machine vision and motion control. Software support to simplify motion control algorithm implementation already exists for the Intel processor architecture.
Tags: robotics robots programming coding electronics
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1LYM9
Dr. Dobb's | Embedded Virtualization Software Supports New Multicore Processors | January 11, 2010
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Tags: coding programming technology embedded systems multicore
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1LYM7Wednesday, 27 January 2010
The Most Important Silverlight WriteableBitmap Gotcha - Does It Lose/Change Colors?
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Tags: coding programming technology silverlight
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1LWpW
USB Floppy Drive! =P
Apple Announces the iPad
And finally it's out....
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Tags: technology tablet computers electronics apple
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1LVqKTuesday, 26 January 2010
Industry's Most Robust and Smallest Pin-Selectable DTE/DCE Multiprotocol Chipset | Your Electronics Open Source
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Tags: electronics chipset microelectronics engineering technology
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1LSw6
GateWorld » Wright reveals origins of Stargate Universe
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Tags: stargate stargate universe Sci-Fi tv Entertainment
Posted by: aasemoon
http://digg.com/u1LSw5



























