Self study.

Of the people I knew who did well, those who self studied alongside their normal course did things like website design, search algorithms, micro kernel design, robotics and advanced study in certain languages (lisp, c , C, Object Pascal, assembler), everyone I knew did the last thing, but the languages varied.

You can pass and get a 2.1 or 2.2 easily just by following the course guidelines. I got my phd offer not by doing this, but by cramming every day (almost every day, have a blowout night at the weekend, you've got to have some fun time) with additional study. I exceeded the requirements of every assignment (I wasn't alone in doing this), and studied around every topic taught. The result was a lot of very interesting phd offers when I graduated, it rocked. I was tired a lot, I will admit, but the benefit was vast, I was so far ahead of the students who just followed the course that I actually tutored some.

Don't assume I'm that clever though, I sweated blood sometimes trying to get assignments done early, and the extra learning was oft times very difficult. Every evening spent on it was one well spent however.

Most of the people I know personally who did this are now in great jobs, one heading towards millionaire status at 25. In his case he worked like a dog, even more than I did. You wouldn't beleive what he was capable of on graduation.

So work hard, and study around the subjects.

Slashdot | Is Computer Science Dead?

Linux-AD Integration, Version 4
Posted on Posted on Monday, January 15, 2007 | Filed in Filed in Linux, Interoperability, Microsoft
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This procedure allows Linux-based systems to authenticate against Active Directory. We use Kerberos for authentication, LDAP for account information, and Samba to help automate the process along the way. When this process is complete, AD users can be enabled for use on Linux systems on the network and login to those Linux systems using the same username and password as throughout the rest of Active Directory.

These instructions are designed for use with Windows Server 2003 R2. If you are looking for information on using Linux with a previous version of Windows, please refer back to this article. The only significant changes in the process involve the mapping of the LDAP attributes; otherwise, the procedure is very similar between the two versions of Windows.

blog.scottlowe.org � Blog Archive � Linux-AD Integration, Version 4

Tools for heavy lifting

Solving a tricky regular expression? The Rx Toolkit makes it simple. Trying code before burying it in your app? Use the interactive shells for JavaScript, Perl, Python, Ruby and Tcl. Or recycle your work as handy code snippets, stored in the Toolbox.

With Eclipse, I cannot simultaneously edit Javascript and HTML and have it validate both. I might switch to this for Perl/JS/HTML, when I get a chance to try it.

ActiveState - ActiveState Komodo IDE, End to end development of dynamic web applications - Dynamic Tools for Dynamic Languages

I started to use Subversion one year ago and liked the elegant file-system design a lot. Soon it became impossible for me to go back to CVS. This means that I felt uncomfortable whenever I was working on projects using CVS, and I wanted to see a tool to keep my Subversion repository in sync with a CVS repository. This would not only save me time importing snapshots into vendor branches, but it would also give me the whole history when I'm not online.

I found Barrie's VCP and wrote a Subversion driver. Then I understood why people said Subversion was slow. My driver invoked the svn command, and it took something like 30 hours to convert from a CVS repository that resulted in 3000 revisions in the Subversion repository.

Fortunately the Subversion developers made the code easy and ready for wrapping into different languages using SWIG. At that time, only Python bindings were implemented, so I had to do the Perl bindings myself. With the Perl bindings implemented rapidly, VCP gets much faster, and I also started writing SVN::Mirror, a module that enables mirroring between Subversion repositories. When I felt bored, I would add Subversion back-end support to tools like Bloxsom and Kwiki.

Then the season for traveling came. As I'm far more productive and creative while disconnected from the Internet, I realized I need a distributed version control system, and decided to give myself a year break to develop such a tool to enable me to be even more productive in the future. svk was born soon after my birthday in September 2003.

svk-age

perl.com: Distributed Version Control with svk

A lot has happened since the blog entry. However, our web page and the video have not reflected all the new things eMpower Lite Reporting can do. We’ve taken feedback from the system in the field, at the Gold Rush Casino and Hotel in Cripple Creek, Colorado, and we’ve improved the system enormously. The main features we’ve added for version 2.0 are:

* Trend Lines - Any chart now produces trend lines. Just click “trend” to see the trend, and “raw” to go back to the raw data.

* Cartographic Visualization - Map Charts. Where a game machine is on the floor matters. Now you can easily visualize trends with Map Charts.

* Excel Export - We now export data right into Excel, where you can continue your analysis.

We could be spending time making a new video to show you all of this. But we add new features so often, this quickly becomes tiresome. So instead, we’re doing one better: we’re putting the entire application up on the web. Anyone can try it. You can try it. Its called eMpower Live.

eMpower Live begins April 6th. Please come by and give it a try to see what we can do for your casino.

Lucision is putting its software, eMpower Lite Reporting, online. It is called eMpower Live, and it begins April 6th.

Lucision Company Blog » eMpower Live: Try eMpower Lite Reporting 2.0 on the Web

Solution

Use these steps, one at a time, until the issue is resolved. Note: If you wish to back up your Mail messages before troubleshooting, make a copy of the Mail folder on a different disk (but leave the original Mail folder where it is). The Mail folder is in your Home folder's Library folder (~/Library/Mail).

1. Try rebuilding the Mail mailbox where messages are missing or can't be opened.

2. Reindex all messages:
1. Quit Mail.
2. In the Finder, choose Go To Folder from the Go menu, and go to ~/Library/Mail/ .
Or, choose Home from the Go menu, then open the Library folder, then open the Mail folder.
3. Move the Envelope Index file to a different location, such as your desktop.
4. Move any folders in ~/Library/Mail/ that begin with "Mac-", "Exchange-", or "IMAP-" to a different location, such as your desktop.
5. Open Mail. Mail will reindex all messages. This process may take several minutes depending on how many messages you have in your mailboxes.

I had to start a new account in OS X because my encrypted home dir would not mount. So I made a new account, mounted that image manually, and copied the mail and files over. But then the mail was not searchable.

Well, using this procedure it is. WOOT!

Mac OS X 10.4, Mail: My Mail is not Searchable!?

Every InnoDB table has a special index called the clustered index where the data for the rows is stored. If you define a PRIMARY KEY on your table, the index of the primary key is the clustered index.

If you do not define a PRIMARY KEY for your table, MySQL picks the first UNIQUE index that has only NOT NULL columns as the primary key and InnoDB uses it as the clustered index. If there is no such index in the table, InnoDB internally generates a clustered index where the rows are ordered by the row ID that InnoDB assigns to the rows in such a table. The row ID is a 6-byte field that increases monotonically as new rows are inserted. Thus, the rows ordered by the row ID are physically in insertion order.

Accessing a row through the clustered index is fast because the row data is on the same page where the index search leads. If a table is large, the clustered index architecture often saves a disk I/O when compared to the traditional solution. (In many database systems, data storage uses a different page from the index record.)

Clustered indexes means that InnoDB will append the primary key to each one of your indexes on an InnoDB table. Good to know.

MySQL AB :: MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual :: 14.2.13 InnoDB Table and Index Structures

Planning is an emotional minefield. Of course Development would like to program faster. Of course the project manager would like to be able to say exactly how fast Development can go. Of course Business would like to be able to say exactly what they want. Of course Business would rather not change its mind. When any of the participants in planning begin acting these wishes (or rather in accordance with the fears that lie behind each wish), then planning doesn't work well.

Planning Game

mytop is a console-based (non-gui) tool for monitoring the threads and overall performance of a MySQL 3.22.x, 3.23.x, and 4.x server. It runs on most Unix systems (including Mac OS X) which have Perl, DBI, and Term::ReadKey installed. And with Term::ANSIColor installed you even get color. If you install Time::HiRes, you'll get good real-time queries/second stats. As of version 0.7, it even runs on Windows (somewhat).

Highly recommended for those doing MySQL development. Top clone for MySQL. Color is neat. Helps you tune.

mytop - a top clone for MySQL

5.12.4. The Slow Query Log

The slow query log consists of all SQL statements that took more than long_query_time seconds to execute. The time to acquire the initial table locks is not counted as execution time. mysqld writes a statement to the slow query log after it has been executed and after all locks have been released, so log order might be different from execution order. The minimum and default values of long_query_time are 1 and 10, respectively.

Great tool to find low hanging fruit in your database application.

MySQL AB :: MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual :: 5.12.4 The Slow Query Log