June 17, 2005
Dream Theater in Concert
Last Monday I saw Dream Theater live at the Posthof in Linz. That was the third time I saw them (I previously saw them in 1995 and 1998), and, as always, the concert was a great experience. They played for almost two and a half hours and the set list also included classics like A Fortune In Lies and Learning To Live, as well as tracks from their latest album, Octavarium which was released just two weeks ago. Definitely one of the best bands around. Go see them live if you can, and if you want to extend you musical horizon.
June 12, 2005
Star Wars
Finally, I went to see Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith yesterday. Well, it seems I am getting old, because the movie could not really impress me the way I could get impressed by an overkill of visual effects (and lack of story) in younger years.
Anyway, there is a message for us software engineers in the movie: half-heartedly done things will haunt you later on. In other words, an insufficiently fixed bug will get a black iron mask and start to breathe strangely, and eventually it will kill you. Well, at least that's what I took away from the movie :-)
June 11, 2005
Getting Things Done
Joel Spolsky some time ago wrote:
[...] Many of my days go like this: (1) get into work (2) check email, read the web, etc. (3) decide that I might as well have lunch before getting to work (4) get back from lunch (5) check email, read the web, etc. (6) finally decide that I've got to get started (7) check email, read the web, etc. (8) decide again that I really have to get started (9) launch the damn editor and (10) write code nonstop until I don't realize that it's already 7:30 pm.
Somewhere between step 8 and step 9 there seems to be a bug, because I can't always make it across that chasm. [...]
Sounds familiar to you? At least, this sounds very familiar to me. Fortunately, there are also these strange periods where I can hammer out code (or words) 12 hours a day for weeks, until something is done. Just don't dare to interrupt me then. I guess it's just the way it goes for us with jobs that rely on creativity. Many good comments in the article's discussion board support that.
June 10, 2005
CS Paper Generator
Want to present at a scientific conference, but you don't have an idea for a paper? Try out the SCIgen, a program that generates random Computer Science research papers, including graphs, figures and citations. You might even have a small change of getting the paper accepted...
In a related note, I am currently writing the proceedings paper for my class at the Embedded Systems Conference Boston. Of course I am not using SCIgen for that.
June 09, 2005
Photos from Karpathos
Photos from our great vacation in Karpathos are online. Have a look!
