David Tennant at the Doctor in The End of Time. Photo copyright of the BBC

BBC America today announced the U.S. premiere of David Tennant’s final special as the Tenth Doctor. Doctor Who: The End of Time, Part Two, premieres January 2nd, 2010, one week after Part One, on BBC America. The finale to the era of David Tennant is one of the most eagerly anticipated adventures in the history of Doctor Who. Guest-stars include John Simm (Life on Mars) as The Master, Timothy Dalton, Catherine Tate, Bernard Cribbins and June Whitfield. New synopsis for the final three specials airing on BBC America over the holiday season are as follows:  

Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars - Lindsay Duncan (Alice and Wonderland) joins the Doctor as his sharpest and most strong-minded companion yet for the second of four Doctor Who specials. The Waters of Mars is a dark, scary thriller that sees the Doctor land at a base in peril on the planet Mars. A creeping infection beneath the Martian surface threatens not only the human race, but also the Doctor’s most fundamental beliefs. Together with Adelaide Brooke (Lindsay Duncan), the base’s commander, the Doctor must defeat a seemingly unstoppable menace before it can reach Earth and wipe out mankind. The Doctor must fight not only the water, but destiny itself, whilst also confronting his own existence, when the prophecy about his future begins to resonate. Is his song about to come to an end? The Waters of Mars airs Saturday, December 19th @ 9:00 pm EST/PST on BBC America and was written by Russell T. Davies (Torchwood, Queer as Folk) and Phil Ford and directed by Graeme Harper. The executive producers are Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner (Torchwood, Life on Mars).  

Doctor Who: The End of Time, Part One - It’s the Tenth Doctor’s final journey, but his psychotic nemesis, The Master, has been reborn on Christmas Eve. With both determined to cheat death, the battle ranges from the wastelands of London to the mysterious Immortality Gate. Meanwhile, the alien race, the Ood, warn of an even greater danger approaching, as a terrible shadow falls across the entire universe. The End of Time, Part One airs Saturday, December 26th @ 9:00 p.m. on BBC America and was written by Russell T. Davies and directed by Euros Lyn. The producer is Tracie Simpson.  

Doctor Who: The End of Time, Part Two - The Doctor faces the end of his life as The Master’s plans hurtle out of control. With the sound of drums growing louder and an ancient trap closing around Earth, the Doctor and Wilf must fight alone. But sacrifices must be made, and the deadly prophecy warns, “He will knock four times.” The End of Time, Part Two airs Saturday, January 2nd @ 8:00 p.m. on BBC America and was written by Russell T. Davies and directed by Euros Lyn. The producer is Tracie Simpson.  

Regarding the final specials, lead writer and executive producer Russell T. Davies told the Radio Times, “It’s personal for the Doctor. The Master (John Simm) is his enemy, his opposite, and yet so tantalizingly close to being his soul mate. There’s something epic about their sheer existence – the last two survivors of an ancient race [The Time Lords]. It’s a clash of the titans, both of them heading for death, and yet both determined to survive – at any cost.”  

Davies and Tennant are passing the baton to Steven Moffat and actor Matt Smith, who will play the Eleventh Doctor in a new season of the re-imagined series premiering in 2010 on BBC America.  

As noted above, photo copyright of the BBC, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!

It’s not exactly shocking anymore when Lady Gaga dresses, well, shocking; in fact it would be really jaw-dropping if she stepped on stage in jeans and a sweater set.

At the American Music Awards Sunday night, she wore a nude bodysuit, covered in strange bone-like structures, reminiscent of what The Telelgraph thinks looks like the Ood.

Source:
http://www.stylecaster.com/news/6655/doctor-who-is-lady-gagas-latest-inspiration-plus-5-characters-we-think-she-should-emulate

 
 
 
 
 
WEDNESDAY 18th NOVEMBER

 
 
 
 
I’m a lion, apparently. I’m taking a journey on the yellow brick road. Let’s hope the Wizard of Oz can cure this problem I supposedly have.
 
*****
 
A clarification.
 
I wasn’t describing people who play computer games as “utter sad twats” in the blog last week – it was aimed at those who queued at midnight when the new ‘Call of Duty’ game was released in the shops.
 
Couldn’t you wait until lunchtime the next day? Or the next week? Or wait to get it as a Christmas present? Did you really have to have it there and then, race home and get playing at 1am in the morning?
 
Well it appears that many people did. I personally find that extremely sad – just my opinion.

*****

That said, I suppose all these people acting out their solo fantasies in front of a computer screen is not dissimilar to my favourite hobby before going to bed…
 
*****
 
I had to laugh at this from the BBC website last week:
 
“Thousands of gamers may have been cut off from Microsoft’s online gaming service Xbox Live for modifying their consoles to play pirated games.”
 
I’m struggling to find any sympathy.

*****
 
This is what happened on Wednesday 11th November 2009:
 
Geoff Peters, aka Mr DJ Wanker, described X Factor in his blog as “karaoke for a thick generation.”
 
Gordon Sumner, aka the singer Sting, described X Factor in a newspaper as “cynical televised karaoke.”

*****

Another clarification.
 
I mentioned last week that I thought it was a bit sad that so many people update their Facebook status, expressing real anger, when the X Factor results come in on a Sunday night.
 
I like people expressing an opinion although I prefer it when they make it reasonably constructive. Then again, I don’t really expect constructive criticism from the primarily young Facebook generation.
 
*****
 
Facebook status:
 
<name removed> “is starten 2 realise alot of fings right now… “
 
That she needs a dictionary for Christmas?

*****
 
Some guy called Ian offering some girl called Katie advice on blokes via Facebook:
 
“dnt try looking 4 a relationship cz u rush in2 fings wiv sum1 dat u really dnt want so sit bk,relax n i bet u dat mr right wil cum 2u”

*****
 
Even more from Facebook this week:

Belinda “grrrr y do ppl fukin interfear all da bastard tym, get on wit ya own lives n let ppl b fukin appy”

Craig “dont worry about it baby…as long as u r happy then we’ll be fine init”

Belinda “yea i am appy but y do ppl av 2 interfear all da tym.. fuk um 2bh u no who ur friends r.. cnt ova ppl b appy”
 
Craig “well there u go we’re happy so take no notice babe let them say wot they want i know ur not doin it and so do u so we’re fine aint we”

Carly-ann “beathe lol”
 
Katie “Some ppl r only happy when there stirin with other ppl aslong as u 2 know the truth just ignore every1 else”

Belinda “i no thxs it jus fuks me off wen ppl av 2 try n make fings difficult 4 ya, but if dey wana bull shit up 2 dem.. n oh C apparently i messed J n A around lyk fuk did i… mre lyk otha way around. i ay fukin laughin.  if it carries on am jus deletin face book cnt b arsed gotta beta fings 2 do den let ppl gossip bwt me fukin lyf”

 
Okay, we’ll leave you guys to it.
   
*****
 
I was getting jiggy with a fat girl once, many years ago.
 
She said: “You know what I want, don’t you?”
 
I replied: “Yes, the whole fucking bed!”
 
She might not have been the best looking woman but beauty is only a light switch away.

*****
 
So how was Dr Who for you then?
 
I think the ‘Waters of Mars’ special on Sunday was one of the best since the show returned in 2005. They could, perhaps, have trimmed it down to 50 minutes to make it tighter but that would be the only tiny criticism.
 
I was sat on my sofa transfixed by a thrilling plot and cracking dialogue, not knowing how they’d get to the end and set up David Tennant’s final two shows.
 
It was a real shock to the system when The Doctor turned into a megalomaniac which certainly didn’t sit comfortably with how he’d operated before. I thought Adelaide was going to shoot him. Then it twisted back again as she killed herself and Tennant produced a couple of minutes of inspired acting, facing the Ood, fearing his song was going to end there and then.
 
I like Dr Who because it combines drama, comedy, emotion, underlying subtexts, plot arcs which stretch over different series, subtle nods to the past and there is that quintessentially English feel about it.
 
You can probably tell that I’m quite looking forward to the Christmas and New Year episodes…
 
*****

Full credit to Sammy Dolan from Telford who is doing rather well with his own clothing label. You can check out his fine range of gear at www.letthekidsdance.co.uk – it’s way too cool for someone like me who shops at Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, BHS, Primark and Burton et al.
 
The company has been featured in the Sunday Express as well as Front magazine and FHM.com.
 
PS. Some of the men’s t-shirts are fantastic and not expensive either. Sam has promised a discount for blog readers so message me if you’re interested.

*****

The big chests were out in force at Pussycats last weekend. I even had customers saying they wanted me to take photos of their bouncing bazookas for my website. See for yourself in the gallery at www.djwanker.com – I’m liking this new trend and long may it continue.
 
That said, I prefer a woman to have a cute ass rather than great breasts. I accept I’m in a minority of men with regard to that. Although a man of my age and average looks has to be grateful for any offer these days.
 
*****
 
On the subject of enormous jugs, I see that Katie Price – erm I mean Jordan, erm I mean Katie, erm I mean Jordan… okay, that talentless oxygen thief – has gone into the jungle on ‘I’m A Celebrity’. You can’t blame her – she’s getting the thick end of half a million quid if the tabloids are to be believed.
 
The money is not her inspiration, of course. She’s gone there after a difficult year to “get closure.” Let’s hope she gets closure. Stay there you terrible woman and we’ll close the door behind you.
 
Peter can keep the kids as he seems like a decent bloke.
 
*****

Thanks to everyone for their feedback about the blog last week especially with regard to ‘The Sperminator’ aka the shag-happy Telford internet love-rat. Most people agreed with my assertion that while he was obviously a reckless twat, the gullible women involved also lacked responsibility.
 
The Princess Diana joke raised an eyebrow or two (come on, it’s 12 years since she died, let’s get over it, none of us knew her personally…) and this was my favourite message: “Bad taste about Diana – but I nearly pissed myself laughing.”

*****

There were a couple of army guys in Cats on Saturday in full military uniform. They’d been to a wedding, I think. One had ginger hair and I pointed him out via the microphone.
 
“Ladies and gentleman, Prince Harry is here.”
 
I probably shouldn’t have followed up with: “How’s your mum? Oh shit, sorry.”

*****

Men vs Women – Part 4 of 6

SUCCESS

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.

A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

MARRIAGE

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t.

A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change, but she does.

 
Part five in this series next week.

*****

A friend of mine is trying to raise funds for the Neuroblastoma society after a nine-year-old boy she knew died from this rare cancer. For more information go to www.nsoc.co.uk and www.justgiving.com/stephanie-poole.

*****
 
Plucking fantastic.
 
I think Trudy at Tantalize really enjoyed ripping out my eyebrows last week. I’m in for a back wax this week. I think they take pleasure in seeing a grown man wince and groan. It’s okay though; I take a sadistic pleasure from having it done!

*****
 
From the letters page at Viz magazine: “A woman whose daughter was hospitalised in a US tornado told ITV News that ‘God would make her better.’ Presumably that’s a different God to the one that almost killed her with a tornado.”
 
*****

And finally… news on Jimmy Carr’s new diet book. He’s calling it: “Put that down, fatty, you’ve had enough.”

 
  
 
 
 
Cheers for now,
Geoff / DJ Wanker

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Any Dr Who fans out there will be under the distinct impression that the UK - and London in particular - is the preferred port of call for all alien lifeforms considering  an attack on planet Earth.  On Christmas Day alone, three of the last four years have seen London under attack from Killer Santas (2005), a spider empress (2006) and last year the Cybermen.  (You can see a complete catalogue of all the David Tennant Dr Who episodes, together with their original UK transmission dates here.)  

Starting last night with the first part of a trilogy, we’re now gearing up for this year’s Christmas Day Dr Who episode, and for the end of David Tennant’s 4-year reign as The Doctor.  So this week I’m not only taking a break from showing you the sights of my world; I’m actually taking a break from showing you the sights of this world! 

See – Just look at what I found on the beach the other day!

… An Ood!

If you’ve never seen an Ood, you might like to watch this short YouTube clip, and see what you’ve been missing.

Of course. if you’re more of a botanist than a Dr Who enthusiast you might just prefer to look at this alien lifeform the other way up and marvel at how this seaweed, found on my local beach, had rooted to this pebble!

A big thank you to Klaus, Wren, Sandy, Sylvia, Louise and Fishing Guy who organise My World for us every week.  Now you can click on the badge below to take a peek at other worlds.  But beware!  Who knows which part of the universe you might end up in!

Daleko je ta Amerika … al’ nije bilo druge nego po onoj staroj: kad neće brdo Muhamedu, oće Muhamed brdu . Stoga sam nekako istrpio 15-ak sati puta (da vidimo, iz stana u Zg sam izašao ujutro u 8, a u sobu u hotelu sam ušao negdje oko 2 po ponoći po hrvatskom vremenu – holly shit, pa to je 18 sati!) i dokoturao se do Orlanda (Florida, USA), gdje se ove godine održava OOPSLA (za „pale s Marsa“ – OOPSLA = Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications )).

THE konferencija i mitsko mjesto objektno-orijentirane paradigme, u čije „inovacije“ spadaju design patterns, agilne metodologije, refactoring, TDD, … – stvari koje su danas common knowledge, a koje su njihovi autori po prvi put prezentirali na OOPSLA-i prije N godina. Koliko sam samo referenci na OOPSLA-u našao u raznoraznim člancima dok sam krajem 90-tih ozbiljno „orao“ po C++u, teško bi ih bilo i pobrojati!

Doduše, treba reći i da OOPSLA više ipak nije toliko dominantno najvažnija konferencija kao što je nekad bila, i to ponajprije zato što se eksplozivnim širenjem objektno-orijentirane paradigme i svih dobrih ideja s OOPSLA-e u zadnjih 10-15 godina, otvorilo dosta novih područja što je rezultiralo i ustanovljavanjem novih, specijaliziranih konferencija (pa tako primjerice agilisti imaju svoju konferenciju posvećenu razradi agilnih metodologija), no, OOPSLA je još uvijek OOPSLA )).

A prvi dan je opravdao SVA očekivanja!

Počelo je sa keynote govorom Barbare Liskov, prošlogodišnjom dobitnicom Turingove nagrade (nešto kao Nobel za computer science, to get you into perspective , i što reći nego – žena je ZMAJ!!!

Autorica koncepta Abstract Data Types (na kojima takoreći počiva objektno-orijentirana paradigma) i programskog jezika CLU kroz koji je realizirala te ideje, autorica koncepta iteratora (iskreno, nisam pojma imao da je to njena ideja), osoba koja je 70-tih dala ključan doprinos razvoju modernog software developmenta održala je izvrsno predavanje na kojem je posebno istaknula važnost povijesti computer science-a tako što nas je provela kroz najznačajnije radove Davida Parnasa, Edgara Dijkstre i ostalih (a našao se i pokoji njen članak).

Apsolutno iznenađenje mi je bilo kad je, onako usput spomenula priču o tome kako je nastao Liskov Substitution Principle. A nastao je takoreći slučajno. Naime, 1987-e su je organizatori OOPSLA-e zamolili da dade jedan osvrt na stanje u razvoju OO jezika (s naglaskom na nasljeđivanje) i ona je napisala članak „Data Abstraction and Hierarchy“ u kojem je „iz šuba“ iznijela Liskov Substitution Principle. Već u to vrijeme se odmakla od istraživanja vezanih uz programske jezike (sad se uglavnom bavi distribuiranim sistemima), i rekla je da se nakon nekoliko godina po objavi tog članka silno iznenadila kad je vidjela koliko značenje Liskov Substitution Principle ima u modernom software developmentu (a koliko značenje ima pogledajte u postu Roberta Martina „The Principles of OOD“ koji je i inače must read za svakog ozbiljnog developera).

Anyway, dan je počeo apsolutno štrumfastično i nije ga mogao pokvariti niti bljutavi i nejestivi ručak .

A poslije ručka, još jedan draguljčić – tutorial Erica Evansa: „Domain Driven Design – Putting Model to Work“. Četiri sata slušanja (i diskutiranja!) s carem domain-driven design-a je nešto što se ne propušta i tutorial je opravdao sva očekivanja. S obzirom da sam bio budan od pet ujutro (a nisam se baš ni naspavao), a tutorial je trajao od 13:30 do 17:30, činjenica da nisam niti jednom zijevnuo tijekom tih svih četiri sata dovoljno govori.

Doduše, moram reći i da nisam baš puno toga novog čuo , jerbo je fokus bio na „osnovama“ DDD-a, ali čuti i vidjeti s kojom lakoćom Evans iznosi priču o DDD-u je definitivno motivirajuće. Pogotovo s obzirom da manje više isto to i ja ovu srijedu pričam svojim studentima na predmetu Objektno oblikovanje na FER-u (i nije da sam toliko lošiji od njega, nije . Sutra je glavna stvar na rasporedu drugi DDD tutorial s naslovom „Domain Driven Design Strategy“ i tu ćemo vjerujem već načeti i neke „naprednije“ teme.

I to je bilo to za prvi dan.

Sad idem maznuti jedan jumbo steak, a onda slijedi odlazak u „Irish Pub“ na „Social event“ – da se malo „družimo“ (srećom, sutra rano ujutro nema predavanja „koja se ne smiju propustiti“ .

Sooo Halloween is this Saturday, as I am sure you are aware of dear readers. And I don’t know about you, but every year I go on the internet and see all those fantastically geektastic pumpkins that everyone has carved and I think to myself… hey, why cant I do that? Well often times it’s because I don’t want to draw up my own pattern. Though I am informed that many people also just don’t like to draw. WELL little blogglets, I have gone through all the trouble of researching some fabulous templates, ranging from easy to medium in vegetable artistry difficulty in hopes that it will aid you in creating that perfect nerdy pumpkin you want all of your neighbors to see so they can either A) judge you from afar or B) think you are super sophisticated because they have no idea what your pumpkin is. So here are some awesome pumpkin carving ideas for you to print out and enjoy! (Disclaimer: yes I stole these from the internet)

Well here of course is the traditional Batman symbol. This is fun for kids and adults alike. Its recognizable, its geeky and its EASY. The beauty of this one too is that it is the original bat symbol, so while other people look lame by just doing the fancy Dark Knight symbol or a creepy Heath Ledger Joker, your pumpkin will stay stylish, simple and classic.

So, for all the math geeks out there, this is both clever and nerdy. Again, very simple and easy to cut, but haha! Its pumpkin pi! Get it? Impress people with your incredible wit! You are clearly the most clever person on your block, to put such a witty pun into your holiday festivities.

Everyone loves video games! Here are two video game based templates to show your support for both Gears of War, or if you are feeling slightly more ambitious and less violent, the ever popular Rock Band! Gears of War is a pretty easy design, where as Rock Band is a little more ambitious, ranking out at a solid medium level of difficulty. So rise up gamers! Show your fandom AFK!

Now what kind of magnificent ass hat would I be if I didn’t include some Star Wars stencils? These are great for the whole “Dark Side of the Porch” theme. Both Bobba Fett and Dark Vader will look incredibly creepy and badass, scaring adult and small child alike. And we all know scaring children is what Halloween is all about. Right? RIGHT?! But yeah, both of these you just cut out the grey parts and you’ll have something pretty awesome. The Fett man is pretty easy and Sir Vader is an easy to medium cut. Have fun!

Now, while I am not personally a Linux person, I know the people who are will defend this little Tux Penguin TO THE DEATH. So if you are one of the folks who runs this incredibly strange system (no offence intended, it just confounds me), show off your techie pride!

Looking for something a little more pop culture oriented? Show your happiness for the return of Futurama with this fantastic Bender the Robot stencil. Got kids in your neighborhood? Don’t include the writing. Don’t give a shit about kids in your neighborhood? Go for it! The orange area indicates that this area can be “shaded”. If you don’t know how to do that though, its totally fine to just not cut out that area of the pumpkin. Either way this is a great fun easy design for fanfolk!

Speaking of pop culture, lets stray away from the Team Edward/Team Jacob pumpkins this year. They will probably get smashed by anyone who isn’t 16 years old and a girl. Instead, how about trying this True Blood template to spice up your vampiric night life. Super simple but very iconic, this image is a great way to add a little sex to your doorstep, I mean, if thats what you’re into .

This is a super sweet throw back to the original series of Star Trek. Just cut where the white area is, and you’ll have young Lenord Nemoy looking out on all your neighborhood, judging human emotions in silence, but with dignity. With the new Star Trek movie, you’re bound to get a ton of Federation clad trick or treaters, so this design will be a great hit with almost everyone who sees it! It looks harder than it is, but this design is totally easy to medium on the difficulty level scale.

British fear is the best kind of fear. This Doctor Who template is a GREAT way to show off incredible fandom and it also makes for a pretty terrifying looking pumpkin. Even if people don’t know what it is, this Ood will send shivers down the spine of any geek or non geek that visits your door. Probably the hardest design of the group, ranking out at a solid medium in difficulty, this still is totally doable by the artistically challenged and would be a super cool, super unique addition to your doorstep.

Last but not least ladies, I give you my personal favorite. Meet the Ash pumpkin. Encapsulating all of the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness glory that is Bruce Campbell, this design is incredibly fun and fantastic for the geek who just doesn’t have enough chainsaw hand in their life. This thing looks FANTASTIC when finished, and ranks at a medium carving level (the chainsaw and the scraggly pant leg is why it gets that rating), but out of the mouth of the great man himself, this pumpkin design is one word. Groovy.

Over the years I’ve become less and less enamored with software design tools, what we used to call CASE (computer aided software engineering) tools. That’s not to say that I don’t like and use design diagrams. I make UML diagrams all the time. Mostly class diagrams and sequence diagrams. But generally opt for very simple tools to make my diagrams such as PowerPoint or Visio, rather than full up UML modeling tools. Actually my design tool of preference (which I can’t convince anyone to buy) is a portable whiteboard that can print out hardcopies of what’s been drawn. People seem to be using regular whiteboards and cell phone cameras for this purpose. My artwork and penmanship are awful, and the results weren’t very pretty, but that brings me to my first major point. Design is an activity, not a set of diagrams. The whiteboard is a great tool because it supports the design activity.

I’m not going to try to come up with a comprehensive definition of software design. If anybody could do that, I’d be out of a job along with everyone else who designs software. But I will try to characterize some key features of the activity of software design and how design tools can be obstacles rather than aids.

So what are we doing when we design? We’re weighing various, often conflicting concerns and selecting between solution alternatives to balance them out. These are often called design trades. Design involves making many small decisions, which interact with each other to form a larger solution pattern. These larger solutions need to be evaluated and compared as a whole with regard to all the concerns that drive the design. This is one area where design tools fall down. Most of these tools only attempt to capture the latest design. They can’t track multiple candidate designs, which may share many components and even merge. I would argue that if you’re using a tool to capture the (single) most current design, then you aren’t using it to design, since you’ve already made all the design decisions.

That’s why a whiteboard with a means to make a record of the drawing is a great design tool. You can draw and redraw as quickly as you think of new approaches, and then go back and compare alternatives, combine features, etc. I’ve actually sat through a design session where someone tried to create designs in real-time using a UML tool. The tool brought the process to a standstill. When I use a whiteboard as a design tool, I don’t limit myself to UML diagrams. I sometime use code sketches or fragments, tables, taxonomies and whatever else I can think of to express my designs. I also freely mix UML and other symbology. Tools like Visio allow me to capture this mix in finished diagrams (after that phase of design is done).

While UML modeling tools don’t support the kind of real-time collaboration you get from a bunch of engineers standing around a whiteboard, they have the potential for supporting other modes of collaboration. Unfortunately, they don’t realize this potential. The web has been hugely successful in providing dynamic, collaborative access to complex information. Most UML tools are desktop application that store models in file-based projects. They all provide some mechanism to create diagrams that can be put into web pages, but these are static views. In order for a user to be able to navigate through the model, and customize their views, they need to have access to the desktop application and the project files (most tools don’t support concurrent access). Reviews and other collaborative design meetings usually take place in conference rooms, sometimes at off-site locations. Installing tools and copying project files is not very practical

A tool that truly supports design should store its models as a set of versioned (branching) objects in a shared repository, and have powerful web-based navigation tools with explicit support for comparing versions and alternatives. Model elements should also be web resources (URL) that can be linked from other tools and models. Current modeling tools are firmly stuck in an ‘80s model.

In the next part, we’ll talk about what function design diagrams serve, how tools fail to support and even confuse disparate functions, and the value proposition for design tools (do you get more out than you put in).

A quick look at the Google Search Appliance

INTRODUCING: Marcello Davalos as my GUEST BLOGER. Marcello is a Senior Engineer with Oshyn and a software expert in OOD with .Net and Java.  He is a subject matter expert in the CMS integration space.

Google it!  The most popular search engine in the market is now available for internal company and site use.  Google offers the Google Search Appliance (GSA) and Google Mini as a private search engine solution for any internal company use.

Let’s start looking what GSA is.  It’s a commercial version of the traditional Google search engine installed in a server running a linux-google version OS black box.  This server can be bought from Google and installed for our companies or clients to be used for an internal search of the company documentation, company intranet or even as the company public site search engine.

The installation is as easy as any that Google could offer.  Once the server is connected to the network, we only need to configure the network on the server and it’s ready to run.

Then we access the administration site, usually http://gsa-ip-addres:8000/, and we can start setting the sites or data bases to crawl.   The crawling process may take a while depending on the number of pages and sites we set the search engine to go over, but once it is over, we have fast results like we are used to with our traditional Google service over the internet.

The advantages of GSA are that we can quickly find any information in our companies and any related documentation that may not be in the same site.  Additionally it’s a simple interface, which most of us are used to.

Additionally, we can connect GSA with other applications like .net, java or even CMS, which can send the petitions by http requests and get the results as xml documents ready to be processed.  This functionality simplifies the way to integrate a search engine for global site search functionality.

There are a few limitations encountered with GSA, and among those is trying to create functionalities like search suggest.  GSA does searches by whole words and not by partial words like “stu” for “student”.  Additionally, it currently only sorts results by the relevance or by the date it was crawled, so we will have some limitations to very specific functionalities on the sites.

Overall, Google is a great alternative to offer the power of a search engine, especially in a CMS where we want to create dynamic content or search results and which don’t have the support of a traditional data base.

For more Oshyn, Inc blogs visit: http://www.oshyn.com/resources/blog.html

If, like me, you’re bored senseless by the generic men’s fragrances churned out by the big fashion houses then here’s a suggestion for you – check out Le Labo. A bespoke fragrance emporium tucked away on Elizabeth Street in New York’s terminally hip NoLita, it’s chock full of wonderfully ballsy, characterful fragrances that smell like nothing else out there and which epitomise modern luxury.

I stumbled upon the uber-cool shop whilst pounding the streets in search of David Bowie’s New York abode (which I don’t think I found – unless he’s chosen to live above a Kebab shop). Anyway, not only is Le Labo worth checking out just for its cool decor, all the fragrances are ‘compounded’ in front of your very eyes and you can even have the label personalised to include you name.

My fragrance is 'compounded' and personalised while I wait

Of the scents on offer, Ood 27 knocks your socks off and the Neroli is to die for but the one I fell for is Patchouli 24, a fantastically sexy, smoky number with an unabashed viagra-like staying power.

Don’t worry if you don’t fancy schlepping all the way to NY to get hold of a bottle though – Liberty stock much of the ready-made range. It’s not cheap (a 100 ml bottle of perfume strength fragrance is £120 but it’s worth every penny).

To visit Le Labo’s site click here.

The writing on the wall (literally) explaining the Le Labo ethos

1.      Background

It has been intuitively completely clear for a long time that object-oriented 3- tier approach is close to complexity minim and therefore requires least work to implement a given functionality.

This was actually the most important reason to create OOP and OOA (look at:

Grady Booch: Object oriented design Second edition p: 16-23  and Peter Coat Object Oriented Analysis  chapter 1.3. Analysis Methods p: 18 -36)

2.      Complexity model from Start Kauffman

Originally a medical doctor, Dr. Kauffman’s primary work has been as a theoretical biologist studying the origin of life and molecular organization. Thirty-five years ago, he developed the Kauffman models, which are random networks exhibiting a kind of self-organization that he terms “order for free.” He borrowed his model from physics call spin-glass model. The following is a quotation from Kauffman’s book:  At Home in the Universe. (ISBN= 0–19–511130-3 )

http://www.amazon.com/At-Home-Universe-Self-Organization-Complexity/dp/0195111303/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223150067&sr=1-1

The NK model I will introduce is a kind of genetic version of a physicist’s spin-glass model. The virtues of the NK model are that it specifically shows how different features of the genotype will result in landscapes with different degrees of ruggedness, and it allows us to study a family of landscapes in a controlled way.

I will briefly sum up Kauffman’s concepts findings and conclusions. The idea of the proof is that there is a fruitful area between chaos and order where development using random search is both possible and probable. This is ruled by how big part of independent features is tightly or loosely associated.

Then we create a scale from bad to good and we assign for each feature and a random value to this feature. This is a starting point. Now we start our evolution scenario by randomly introducing mutation within the features. Then we interpret the total change as organisms as fitness of the organism in the ecosystem.

Kauffman talks about ruggedness of fitness landscape. The interpretation of N/K in genetics is that N is the total number of genies in an individual. K is the number of genes that are closely related. Changing K from 0 to N reveals that when K is relatively small compared to N the group has best possibilities to evolve and adapt along time and when K is close to N here are practically no chances to develop. Then he extends this pattern to things he call “patches” and the results repeat themselves but this time the close attached subset is topologically defined.

(See Stuart Kauffman: At home in the universe pages: 164-180)

The conclusion is that adaption that can also be called learning is interplay between the structure and the basic dynamics. Here the combinatorial exploration is bounded by the organisation or structure and this way enabling that dynamic search to continue. This applies to patching s well.

3.     Complexity in modelling behaviour

Now I am applying his interpretation and conclusions into the application development domain.

The two different approaches separates from each other in the way the behavior is modeled. Here is an illustration of them both.  The functional decomposition sees the functionality just time sliced actions as OO explain it as collaborative functions of individual object. The next diagram illustrates this comparison

Figure 1.                          Function decomposition and  object collaboration

First remark. I pretty often come across a claim that OO analysis is more abstract than functional decomposition. This is false. Actually for the following comparison it must be the same. This level of abstraction is reflected by the number of attributes in system.

The thing that separates these is the amount of organization or structure. In the object view the first layer of structure is given when the domain is divided into classes. This leads to distribute activity into the object. This is done in a way where locality is maximized. First this means than object itself is the only one to see it’s attributes so all manipulation on those are strictly isolated within the object. The next layer of functionality of this model is the collaborations of a given set of objects.

The application of Kauffman’s N/K landscapes starts mapping gene’s to OO case to attribute – atomic base element.When we consider this difference in terms of N/K, then we can say that N is the number of attributes in system.

a.  Value of K in functional decomposition is N-1 since there is no structural restriction to use any attribute in the system.

b.  A simple estimation of the value of K in object collaboration is N/C, where C is the number of classes in the system. N/C is the average of the attributes in a class.

Now when we consider the two approaches to behavioral abstraction, they are :

functional decomposition and OO collaboration. In our interpretation the first division into closely related subset of attributes comes from class encapsulation. So in this case the number K is the average number of attributes within a class. If we have 100 classes in the domain layer then K = N/100. Classes encapsulate much of the behavior within each class. The coherence between the attributes inside of a class is much higher than to attributes in other classes.

So if N =800, then for functional decomposition K = 799 and for object collaboration it is near 8. This has a tremendous impact on the ruggedness of the landscape. (see above).

The second layer of organizational management of complexity is what Kauffman call patching. The equivalent in OO is the consequence of class structure topology.

Figure 2.  A few (3) patches for example shown in airline class diagram

Objects forms clusters with other objects from directly associated classes. These object cluster form the patches and the coherence is much higher between object in the cluster than outside the cluster. As you can see from my illustration we can think that these patches are overlapping or fuzzy or we can do just simple partitioning of the class diagram.

4.     Abstraction

Lets return to abstraction.  First definition:

Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose.

So abstraction equal simplification and it is done to address a certain viewpoint. The downsize of this is that we lose part of information. This loosing is the price of the clarification. On one hand abstraction has direction – you can think it as a vector in n –dimensional reality. When we have chosen the direction then abstraction is linear.

When we are think to model  a company operation it often includes some abstraction direction that have same starting point. The size of this point witch normally is a ball over these dimensions that is spanned by the set of vectors. The whole model the union over these spanning vectors.

Along each vector abstraction is linear. So each class is on some level of abstraction and has semantic content.. The level of abstraction is always connected to a reverse value of semantic. Following diagram describes this relationship

Figure 4. Dependency between level of abstraction a class  and semantic value of a class.

Here the most effective representation lies somewhere near the center. The same result can be deducted from Kauffman’s patching. From his book we know that the evolutionary power is related to the size of the patch. This indicates that complex minim is achieved in the middle of extremes. This is quite obvious too. If our classes are very abstract then there are very few classes and the size and complexity within such class is very high. In the other extreme we have very small classes with high semantic value but the number of these classes exceed the limit of manageable number of elements.

1.     Three loosely connected aspects three logical layer of implementation

The third layer of patching is achieved  by early separating the three aspects: application, domain and persistence. The logical 3 layer implementation where application, domain and persistence is separated and the coupling to domain layer is asymmetric from both side. This way domain lives in complete isolation and doesn’t know anything of the rest of the world.

Figure 5.             3-layer architecture and isolated domain layer

The static structure (classes and there association) and he dynamics ( methods, distribution of responsibilities and  collaboration) gives us a narrow isthmus between chaos and strict order. This is the same area of phase change where for instance life on earth have created such a vast complexity.

It is extremely important to remember, that this isthmus is narrow and that we don’t really have much freedom to move in either direction.

2.     Final conclusions

In paragraph 3 we found a narrow isthmus. Now this abstraction semantics akseli actually cut our isthmus and we are left with a tiny island in the sea of complexity which gives us minim. At the same time we have exhausted all our reassures. This means that we have reached our highs peek in our ruggedness landscape of effectiveness. I read this so that our theoretical knowledge in search of solution in application development in deterministic Turing machines has came to fulfillment; to its end.

On one hand the fundamental restriction of current system is of course the determinism of behavior on  the other hand this has been and is our aim in the first place. We all want truly want that a given transaction from one bank account to other bank result always to same end state.

When we extend our aim to nondeterministic Turing- machines then we come across with learning. This is then equivalent with Kauffman’s self-organizing  sets. The difference here between the previous and current if self with translates to learning. This is the cause of non-determinism. From our systems perspective this means the fundamental change in our method structure. All methods have to became mutable and their mutation is learning.

The technical solution from the hardware point of view shall be something like our brain: neuronets. The theoretical researches has been going on for some while all ready but I seems that we don’t know yet quite enough about the subject to be able to copy the hardware to perform the desired function.

Food is the basic need for the human race to survive in this plant. These can be obtained from many different ways. For example hunting and fishing are some ways to gather food for the survival. But the best food of all is the crops and vegetables as they contain lot of good stuffs and that too in adequate amount for healthy life. But for growing these, a man should take proper care of them such as to provide good place to culture on and mainly good irrigation system. The irrigation in the early period was very difficult as they had to cut down many trees on their way and to provide path amongst the rocky terrain. So many irrigation systems were just a few feet wide which could irrigate only some acres of land. This was not sufficient to irrigate a huge area of about hundreds of acres of agricultural fields. This was the time during which the Dujiangyan irrigation system can into picture.

Dujiangyan irrigation system

This irrigation system was designed and implemented first in the china in the middle of 200 B.C. This is one of the oldest irrigation systems and this is still in function these days. They are the major source of water for many fields in china. They are placed in the min river in china. This irrigation system has a major function to regulate the flow of water. That is, during the rainy season they need to store the water so that they can manage the next summer season. This river was selected first as fields which are situated in the banks were flooded often in a single year. So the best method to stop this is by building an irrigation system in its banks.

Secondary function of the irrigation system

The irrigation system’s secondary function was to divert the flow of excess water during the rainy seasons which caused flooding of the agricultural fields. These were also used for transportation purpose. Some military persons or vessels travel through this irrigation system only. This is because this is the cheapest way to move on as they need work to row the boats as they will move downstream along with the river. By implementing these irrigation systems, the Chinese were also able to solve the problem over water between the neighboring agricultural field owners.

Article Summary: The best irrigation system that the world has ever seen is the Dujiangyan irrigation system which is still functioning in proper order. As they were made of natural materials like wood and bamboo stick they still stay intact to serve their function.

Blackjack: A Real World OOD Example
By Dan Fontanesi

Download Blackjack.zip

When programmers start creating object oriented designs, several questions pop up consistently:

• How do I know what objects to create?
• What properties should my objects have?
• What methods do I need to create?
• How do I know when to overload an operator?
• How do I structure my classes for inheritance?
• Etc.

The Objects

Let’s take a look at a real world example and a fun one as well. The game Blackjack lends itself well to object oriented design because it has physical objects that can be modeled in object-oriented code, i.e. players, a dealer, cards, etc.

These objects have relationships to one another as well. Players have hands that have cards. The dealer also has a hand that has cards. And there’s a shoe from which the cards are dealt into the hands.

public class Player
public class Dealer
public class Hand
public class Card
public class Shoe    // A shoe is just many decks of cards, usually 6 in Las Vegas

For our Blackjack game, we’re going to have computer-controlled players as well as human ones. For that, we’ll have to have a strategy that the computer players use. So we can create another object, albeit not a physical one, called Strategy that takes some input and gives advice on what move to make. The Strategy object is going to belong to the Player objects and each player will need an array of Hand objects (players can split pairs so they may have more than one hand).

public class Player {
private Strategy plyrStrategy;
private Hand[] hands;

A hand is just an array of Card objects:

public class Hand {
private Card[] cards;

A shoe is also just an array of Card objects:

public class Shoe {
private Card[] cards;

Now when we deal the cards, we just go around the table taking cards from the shoe object and adding them to the hand objects for each of the players and the dealer.

for( int k=0; k<2; k++ )
{
foreach( Player player in players )
{
player.GetHands()[0].Add( shoe.Next() );
}
dealer.Hand.Add( shoe.Next() );
}

Inheriting Interfaces

When a player splits a pair of aces, each ace receives only one more card:

if( CurrentPlayer.CurrentHand[0].FaceValue == Card.CardType.Ace )
{
NextCard();
NextHand();
NextPlayer();
}

Nice code huh?  Well that’s because there is a lot of supporting code underneath this, particularly to implement the line:

if( CurrentPlayer.CurrentHand[0].FaceValue == Card.CardType.Ace )

How does the compiler know what CurrentHand[0] means? To use this kind of syntax, we must implement the IList interface. This is the same interface used by the ArrayList class and others that you might be familiar with. This is easily done by changing our class declaration slightly:

public class Hand : IList

Now there’s a little more work to do. When you inherit an interface, you must provide the implementation for all the methods of that interface. For IList, we need to add:

IsFixedSize
IsReadOnly
Add
Clear
Contains
IndexOf
Insert
Remove
RemoveAt

But the most important method to implement is called Item and it looks like this:

Object IList.this[int index]
{
get { return cards[index]; }
set { cards[index] = (Card)value;}
}

This allows us to use array syntax like CurrentHand[0] which really means nothing until we tell the compiler that this means the card at position 0 in the array of cards in the hand.  Without implementing IList, we would probably have to write something like CurrentHand.GetCard(0) which isn’t nearly as cool!

What methods do I create?

Notice that the players and the dealer are responsible for drawing their own hands. This makes it convenient to add code to the form’s paint event like this:

dealer.DrawHand( drawingSurface, showDealerDownCard );

foreach( Player player in players )
{
player.DrawHands( drawingSurface );
}

The players and dealer then loop through each hand, asking the cards to draw themselves:

foreach( Hand hand in hands )
{
foreach( Card card in hand )
{
card.Draw( drawingSurface );
}
}

Sometimes it’s easier to envision the code you would like to write and then model your objects to allow it.

Summary

Take a look at the code for this article. This is a full-featured Blackjack game with strategies and graphics and even card counting. But don’t let it intimidate you. It really just boils down to the few objects outlined above with a lot of fancy code added to make the game more appealing.

Going back to the design of the objects, you might be wondering why the Dealer and the Player objects don’t inherit from some common object. Well, you could do that. But I felt the dealer and the players didn’t have enough in common to justify it. The dealer can only have one hand, has no bank, no bet, no strategy, no card counting.  This will have to be a judgment call on your part and that’s why they pay you the big bucks.

You might also wonder where the Deck object is. Shouldn’t the Shoe be composed of many Deck objects which are composed of many Card objects? That may be the case in the real world, but this is an example of where the real world and OOD might better part ways. A deck object would have just introduced an unneeded layer of complexity. The shoe is easier to implement as an array of cards, though it must be a multiple of the number of cards in a deck (52).

Have fun with this game. Take a look at the Readme.doc file for ideas on how you could improve this application.

If you are familiar with asp you are probably familiar with the concept of code behind and more recently MVC. Over the years I have bounced around using many different languages, frameworks and technologies. Using the pattern in another language emphasizes that this is best implemented as a conceptual pattern. OOD is best done first if you have any logic at all. If you are just editing a list and it IS just a CRUD app, an MVC up front approach might work fine. Every where I look the MVC is pushed as THE solution. When, like any other design pattern, it is never more than a piece. Try to think outside the MVC box and do what works. Don’t try to cram everything you want to do into the MVC or you will then need to create classes called ‘helpers’ and then the only business object you really have is the MVC, and you might as well have not done OOP in the first place, and you should have stuck with Clasic ASP or PHP4 and your procedural, monolithic methodologies.

Remember to keep your business logic out of your display logic. If you call it a template or a view is up to you. Just don’t be caught with your pants down when you find out your model is hard-coded to your business logic. Or worse, you find application has become a big string of classes that are untestable and codependent on your control structure. I always keep focused on being loosely coupled and dynamic without being magic.
Which brings me to the ASP MVC.NET implementation. As with many things in .NET, it seems to be a situation of ‘we want that buzzword tech. too!’. There are many advantages, and as usual I get the feeling it is a step in the right direction. Also not a surprise, it feels like it is not what is supposed to be. Like the point was lost in the translation. The .NET crowd wanted Ajax, they got the word but missed the point. their websites were freed from having to load the whole page, but they still were cursed with throning the state string back and forth and never got the benefit of good efficient client side processing with JavaScript.
Oh man, I don’t want to get started on JavaScript in the MS camp. Almost all the MS shops I have talked to in the last year think ‘Java’ and ‘JavaScript’ are terms that are interchangeable. To their credit, for all they knew of either they might as well be.
Then the .NET crews whined about not having flash, so they got Silverlight. (which I like what I have seen, but why cant every one just love SVG???)
My largest point of contention with ASP.NET is that all the training and documentaiton pushes you to use the built in controls. The built in controls are obviously not meant for the Internet, but are for LAN apps. Thus ASP.NET is best suited for application developers moving into the Web Interface realm. I once saw a ASP.NET application that fed 6MB HTML (not including graphics) at the user. This was the worst case, but was far from atypical.
Enter the ASP MVC. None of the state dependent controls work. Pat them on the back for destroying the only thing the rest of the web development world envies them for. Wait, this isn’t a totally negative rant. ASP MVC encourages you to be conscious and intentional with your HTML. It also opens the door for using jQuery instead of Microsoft Ajax. Thus, as far as the client/browser side you are free to do as you please.
But, then you may think that all is well. Until you start dealing with the server side. I am not going to get down on it, since it is still in development. Although, as with any software if it is out of development it is dead, so take that as you will. The real problem that I do see is that it tries too hard to be an MVC. Your Controllers end up getting huge with ‘actions’ (and where is that /really/ in the pattern). There is only one layer of organization in the controller. This means you cant go beyond controller/action. Granted you can customize your routing, which feels like you are configuring someone else’s app, instead of building your own. Then all your views tend to be one per action which defeats at least the bulk of the benefit of application and presentation separation.
Hear again, another MS team tries to step in and save the day. The Entity Framework (EF) is the official flavor of the day. This essentially is your ORM Model to supply your CRUD. None of which lend themselves to good OOD. You still are encouraged to draw up a action that feels oddly procedural mashing your EF object lists into a view. EF does not allow for any type of static extension so there is no natural way to build business objects. The solution to this is to just build your business objects facade over the EF ORM. But no examples encourage this, neither does any of the community publicize this. So you should shove your monolithic processing in an action and pray you can rewrite instead of maintain. Now to add to the sadness of it all, there is no straight forward way to call and render an action from another controller. So now that you have a huge controller class you now start copy and pasting code between actions. I have seen Quick Basic apps that are better.
Maybe I am just jumping the gun. It is still in development after all. Maybe the ASP MVC community will get there.
Currently the way I am dealing with everything is having a nice thick jQuery driven client. I load partial views in via Ajax and call JSON services. No community so far has dogged the MVC fail bullet. I just want to know when everyone is going to move on from MVC and realize OOP != OOD

The longest running science fiction series in television history, “Doctor Who,” is a beloved pop culture icon in its native U.K.   Among U.S. viewers, however, coming out as a Whovian used to be a bit risky. Self-identified geeks once considered the classic series to be a little too geeky even for them.

BBC America, Russell T. Davies and David Tennant changed all that  over the past few years  — Tennant, especially. For three seasons the gregarious actor portrayed The Doctor with a combination of goofiness and gravitas, making him charismatic, sexy and at times even sinister. We believed it when centuries-old Doctor’s companions fell for him because, after all,  we had too. Tennant and Davies’ recent Comic-Con appearance drove the fans into a frenzy.

That’s why the news that Tennant’s run on “Doctor Who” would be coming to an end made our hearts ache a little.  The journey for his incarnation of  The Doctor is already in the process of ending. “Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead” had its BBC America premiere last Sunday. The next special, “The Waters of Mars,” arrives in the fall and enlists a new companion named Adelaide (Lindsay Duncan, familiar to “Rome” fans as Servilia of the Junii).  Tennant’s final special arrives at what would otherwise be the most wonderful time of the year, Christmas. Davies confirmed that it’s called “The End of Time,” and it will be at least an hour and a half, maybe more, with commercials.

The decision to leave wasn’t easy for Tennant but, as he explained to critics on Wednesday,  “I like the fact that I stand a chance of leaving an audience and myself wanting more rather than people asking when I’ve leaving.”

For the record, Davies announced he’d be handing the reins off to Steven Moffat in May 2008, before Tennant decided it was time for him to go — he hit us with that news last October.

The actor described the feeling of abandoning the role that brought him such love and acclaim in both the U.K. and the states as both very exciting, and very sad.  “It’s thrilling to be handing over the show in such good health, actually…we’ve all come on this journey together, and it feels like we’re coming to the end of something very special.”

As do we.

***Warning: Slight spoilers lie ahead.***               

Davies explains the arc for Tennant’s final four specials in a note on BBC America’s site:  “The mysterious Ood have told him that his song is ending soon; something deadly is waiting on Mars; Donna’s grandfather, Wilf, is experiencing strange visions; and a powerful psychic warns the Doctor that “He will knock four times…”  The end is coming.  But will the Doctor, and the human race, survive?”

Understandably, this Doctor isn’t ready for his number to be up. “I think this Doctor likes being this Doctor,” Tennant explained. “And I think he’s raging against the dying of the light…He knows the sands of time are running out. He’s been told. And the bell is tolling for him, and he doesn’t want to go quietly.”

Up next for Tennant is a television version of “Hamlet.”  He’s also in the midst of shooting a film called “St. Trinians 2.”

The next Doctor, 26-year-old Matt Smith, is a relative newcomer and the youngest of all the actors to play the last Time Lord. Karen Gillan was recently unveiled as his new companion.  The first of their adventures will premiere in spring 2010.

Source(s) – IMDB

If you need to organize a scene including objects which interact togehter, the best way to do so would be a scene graph. Well the scene graph is mostly used because OpenGL uses matrices and therefor you won’t have to calculate a lot things, just traversing the scene graph. Anyway you can place every object in it so that you can organize your data. First of all we have to define a very basic class. Let’s call it TreeNode, because actually our graph is more like a tree. And every TreeNode has it’s own list full of children. And ehm yes there is a constructor but I don’t need it. Anyway it’s not a good programming style not to include the constructor. So let’s do it!

public interface Tree
{
       public void traverse(boolean reply);
}

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.List;

public class TreeNode implements Tree
{
	private List<TreeNode> nodeList = new ArrayList<TreeNode>();

	public TreeNode(){}

And what about adding any Nodes to the Tree? Easy! As you have just seen we are using an arraylist object to store the data here. We just call the add()-method from the object to add elements. But we have to check if there is already a similiar node in the list. Same things when we want to remove elements from the list. First we have to check if the element is in the list otherwise we’re getting an exception thrown here.

public void addChild(TreeNode newNode)
{
	if(!this.nodeList.contains(newNode))
		this.nodeList.add(newNode);
}

public void removeChild(TreeNode oldNode)
{
	if(this.nodeList.contains(oldNode))
		this.nodeList.remove(oldNode);
}

And here we are going to implement the interface. The most important thing inside of our tree is the traverse method. Here we are creating an iterator and iterate trough the list, and every node inside the list has to be traversed too because we don’t know how deep our tree is going. So we have to check the lists of all other nodes.

public void traverse(boolean reply)
{
	Iterator<TreeNode> nodeListIterator = this.nodeList.iterator();

	while(nodeListIterator.hasNext())
	{
		nodeListIterator.next().traverse(reply);
	}
}

So far, this is now our framework for all the things we want to do. Well but we need some specialized nodes in here to store data for example. Therefor I used the following example. It’s just a class using generics to store any data you want to store. It extends TreeNode to get all that it needs to be a traversing node and it also implements the Tree interface for the traverse() method.

public class TreeNodeTemplate<T> extends TreeNode implements Tree
{
	private T data;

	public TreeNodeTemplate(T data)
	{
		this.data = data;
	}

And here you can see why I’m using a boolean value as a parameter for traverse(). It’s just to get feedback from the programme if everything is working:

public void traverse(boolean reply)
{
	if(reply)
		System.out.println(this.getClass()+ " traversed: "+this.toString());

	// call the traverse method from the TreeNode to iterate
        // through the next nodes
	super.traverse(reply);
}

And finally a little poor method just to get an output about what is inside of the node:

public String toString()
{
	if(data instanceof java.lang.String)
	{
		return (String) data;
	}
	return null;
}

Happy crunching, and coding! Maybe I’m pasting some new stuff if I’m going to modify this all here.

La ciencia ficcion es uno de los generos literarios mas amplios, nos permite viajar desde planetas distantes hasta lo mas profundo del ser humano y como cualquier genero se ha hecho presente en el cine, los comics, la tv; bueno practicamente en todos lados.

Bueno vayamos al grano: “Doctor Who” es una serie de ciencia ficcion inglesa cuyo protagonista es un misterioso viajero en el tiempo que se hace llamar “El doctor”, nunca se conoce su verdadero nombre pero cuando la situacion lo amerita el se hace llamar “John Smith” (nombre muy común en el ingles), siempre tiene alguna que otra acompañante . Como es logico al tratarse de un viajero del tiempo los capitulos pueden estar ambientados ya sea en la antigua roma o incluso en el fin del universo.

La serie de “Doctor Who” ( o “el doctor para abreviar) es la serie de ciencia ficcion mas longeva superando incluso a la famosisima Star-Trek, y para los que duden pueden buscar en wikipedia y veran que no miento; al tartarse de una serie tan larga el doctor no puede ser interpretado por el mismo actor para ello los escritores se han valido de un suceso tan simple como extraordinario, el doctor cuando esta a punto de morir sufre un proceso de regeneracion cambiando tanto en lo fisico como en la personalidad, asi que cada vez que el doctor muera uno diferente pero igual tomara su lugar. Algo que debo aclarar es que el doctor es alienigena y eso es lo que le permite regenerarse (bueno eso y que tiene 2 corazones), el pertenece a una raza que se hacian llamar “Time Lords” o “Señores del tiempo” , debido a una guerra en donde el tiempo mismo era usado como arma (mas adelante hablare de los enemigos) el doctor es el unico sobreviviente de su especie por lo cual muchos lo perseguiran a lo largo de sus aventuras, pero eso nunca lo detendra.

El doctor a travez del tiempo

La regeneracion

¿Pero como viaja en el tiempo?

No solo viaja en el tiempo el puede viajar a donde se le de la gana viaja a travez del tiempo y del espacio (ya quisieramos algo asi) por medio de la vieja y buena TARDIS Time And Relative Dimension In Space (Tiempo Y Dimensión Relativa en el Espacio en Castellano); pero no solo es una maquina del tiempo no señor, la TARDIS tiene vida y esta conectada al doctor ademas de que traduce todos los idiomas conocidos en el universo lo que permite que los que acompañen al doctor se puedan comunicar a donde sea que vayan, otra caracteristica de la TARDIS es que tiene un sistema de camuflaje que le permite combinarse con el lugar y el año en donde esten, pero debido a una falla la TARDIS conserva la forma de una caseta de policia (¿ya mencione que es un programa ingles?, ¿ya?, bueno continuemos) con la que se camuflajeaba en 1963 otra carcteristica de la TARDIS es que es mucho mas grande en el interior que en el exterior.

La TARDIS en el espacio

¿ Y los enemigos?

A lo largo de los años el doctor se ha tenido que que enfrentar a una gran galeria de malosos desde Gatos con atuendo de monjas hasta el mismo diablo, por eso solo mencionare los villanos que en los ultimos años han tenido un gran impacto en el doctor,

• Daleks

El mas grande enemigo

A primera vista puede no parecer muy peligroso, siendo sincero parece un salero gigante con un destapacaños y una batidora como armas, pero esta raza en particular es la mas problemas le a causado al doctor con solo mencionar que estos pequeños amigos fueron los que iniciaron la guerra que destruyo a  los “Señores del tiempo”, ellos son los que han llevado al doctor hasta lo mas obscuro de su ser, ellos son los que mas le han quitado, vamos pues si batman tiene al joker el doctor tiene a los daleks. A casi se me olvida los daleks carcen de emociones con excepcion del odio y aunque son supergenios y pueden crear frases largas ello prefieren atemorizar al universo con una sola palabra acompañada de su voz metalica, y esa palabra es: “Exterminar”.

• Cybermen

nosotros pero con otra cara

Los cybermen no son otra cosa que humanos privados de sus emociones solo existe el raziocinio en este cerebro, ellos lo consideran una mejora y su objetivo es lograr que todo el universo adopte ya sea a la fuerza o voluntariamente  esta nueva “actualizacion”, el doctor ya los ha detenido antes pero ha tenido que pagar un precio muy caro, el problema esque ellos no tienen nada que perder y no se detendran por nada del universo.

• El doctor

¿Hacia falta poner otra imagen?

Si asi es, el doctor se tiene asi mismo como nemesis y aunque lo que veamos sea una persona alegre y optimista el doctor tiene un pasado obscuro y misterioso, de hecho se ha insinuado a lo largo de la serie que fue el y no los Daleks el que extingio a su propia especie y que casi logra destruir a los daleks; entonces el doctor tiene un lado obscuro por asi decirlo y le hes muy dificil contenerlo, talvez el verdadero proposito de sus acompañantes es mantener alejado al obscuro doctor.

El primer intro del doctor alla por 1963

La actual introduccion del doctor

¡ vaya cambio!

Uno de los muchos temas del doctor

Doctor Who Theme 70´s

http://planetgallifreyesp.blogspot.com/2009/02/doctor-who-miralo-aqui.html

en ese enlace podran ver la mayoria de los capitulos de Doctor Who.

Bueno gracias por haber leido este post y gracias por no haberse dormido a la mitad, como este es de mis primeros post ire mejorando poco a poco y comenten por favor acepto quejas y sugerencias. hasta pronto

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Está lembrado que surgiu uma informação de que Rose estaria usando o Smith como sobrenome? E que muita gente sugeriu que ela poderia ter casado com o Doutor que ficou para ela?

Pois é.

Agora flagraram uma cena que pode ir de encontro a essa informação. Confira a gravação e o que foi visto:

Na primeira cena, Rose e Jackie vêm andando pelas ruas, que estão todas decoradas para o Natal, e vão tendo uma pequena discussão.

Ao pararem de discutir, as duas se abraçam e desejam “Feliz ano novo” uma para a outra. Jackie fala para Rose não voltar muito tarde para casa e ela responde “Tente me impedir!”

Enquanto isso, o Doutor as observa da esquina, com a TARDIS escondida. Encostado na parede, o Doutor está tremendo e parece estar com dores.

Rose passa por ele e começa o diálogo:

Rose: Está tudo bem com você?

Doutor: Em que ano estamos?

Rose: 2005

Doutor: Sabe de uma coisa? Aposto que esse será um excelente ano para você.

Essa imagem foi do intervalo das gravações

Depois desta conversa Rose segue adiante, enquanto o Doutor a observa, deixando claro que, até então, Rose não tinha sequer conhecido a 9ª encarnação do Doutor.

O Doutor, no entanto, tem outro encontro na mesma noite…

A questão é como é que Rose vai poder ser uma Smith se ainda nem conheceu o Doutor? Ah tá, mas podem mostrar a Rose no futuro e depois no passado.

Sinceramente?

Eu acho que seria gastar tempo demais com uma participação, primeiro no futuro e depois no passado. Mas não sei, pode ser que eles tenham conseguido encaixar. Quem sabe?

O que vocês acham?

Fotos e roteiro das cenas:

http://planetgallifrey.blogspot.com/2009/05/doctor-who-filming-150509.html

Confusions about abstraction

What the concept abstract really means ?

The term abstract is widely used, but the meaning in many cases is vague or fuzzy. To calibrate the term let’s try to define what we exactly mean with the concept (the word)

The next is a quote from English Wikipedia.  The definition of the word abstraction:

Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to a ball retains only the information on general ball attributes and behavior.

Abstraction uses a strategy of simplification, wherein formerly concrete details are left ambiguous, vague, or undefined; thus effective communication about things in the abstract requires an intuitive or common experience between the communicator and the communication recipient.

Abstraction is reducing the information content

So here the point is simplification by reducing the amount of details.  The purpose if this is to emphasize the important aspects from the chosen point of view.

To say that abstraction is simplification is true, but this expression could be interpreted too strongly. The simplification is in most cases achieved be reduction of details. So there is still room to move within the simplification. The amount and nature of simplification depends on the situation and change case by case.

From pure theoretical (mathematical)point of view we can say that abstraction is a mapping  f ( L) -> R, where L is the source set (in our case a subset of reality)and R is the result set (the model of reality). The mapping  f will abstract (simplified ) the complexity of L if the result set is more simple than the source set. In most general form this means reduction of the number of detail. This implies that the mapping f is homomorphism but is not isomorphism. Otherwise the reduction would be 0-reduction. Homomorphism means that many source points should map to one result point. This way a reverse mapping is not possible. This implies that the mapping genuinely destroys information. This lost information cannot be returned in any way just from the model.

A terrain and a map of this terrain is a good example of this kind of modeling.

Simplification is a double-edged sword. When the point of view and usage is strait forward and simple normally there are no problems. When we consider my geographical map example if we need direction with car in southern Finland or street map for waking in Helsinki city center, then the scaling of  the map is no big issue. The situation changes a lot when the “map” (model) is used in several different points of view and interests.

Common confusions of “abstract”- concept

Non-concrete is abstract
Abstract-concept is often used fuzzily as synonym for non-concrete and/or difficult. Sometimes people say that mathematic or geometry are “abstract” as such. This does not however conform to the previous definition. In other words there happens neither simplification nor reduction of detail. Both of these mainstream fields of mathematic are axiomatic system with rules of manipulation.   Completely other story is then the fact that mathematic and geometry can be used as instruments in abstraction but in such a situation the mathematic is only vehicle or tool to create the mapping between sets. In the same way we can say that chess game is abstract. This is false again. The game is most concrete thing in the world with it’s board and chess pieces and game rules. Following the same deduction also the programming languages are not abstract but well defined games in their own world.

Programming is abstract

The world of computer programming is defined by the physical structure of von Neuman machine. The next question is then do programming languages form layers of abstraction above each other? Many people say that Cobol is more abstract than assembler. My opinion is NO in my strict use of the concept abstract. My argumentation is following. As our current programming languages are all deterministic the code cannot truly simplify anything that effects the decisions made in the path of execution. This implies that all deterministic programs are isomorphic with each other. This means that when we have a function f from programming language a to b which gives the mapping then there always exists e reverse function f-1 which gives the reverse mapping from program in b back to original program in a. The real thing that some call abstraction is only compression! Here is a small simple example of that compression.

Example:  for-loop java 4 ja 5

void cancelAll(Collection<TimerTask> c) {
    for (Iterator<TimerTask> i = c.iterator(); i.hasNext(); )
        i.next().cancel();
}

and

void cancelAll(Collection<TimerTask> c) {
    for (TimerTask t : c)
        t.cancel();
}

Simplification always boils down reducing the number elements – the less important ones.  When the program is deterministic all those elements (attributes and their values) that control the flow of execution control must be present regardless the chosen programming language.  So in every equivalent program exactly the same if- statement must be present in one form or an other

UML is  abstract

UML is one-to-one mapping between a well defined set of concept and their corresponding graphical signs. This mapping is isomorphic between the graph and the garpth “verbal structure” which can be any programming language. This way UML is a transformation algoritm between a diagram  and a description (which can use for instance Java language).

About real simplification

Let’s return real simplification. When we model the reality we face all the time the question of how much do we simplify. When we are doing the mapping between the realty and the model we have to choose the scale. The following diagram illustrates the two sides of the decision. The y-axis is the amount of abstraction (or simplification) and x-axis describes the amount of semantics within a concept. When you pick up a point in y-axis and decide the level of abstraction the at the same time you get the amount of semantic value, which is the width of the triangle at the point. So the higher we are the smaller amount of semantic the concept gives.

There is a shaded  area in the center of the y-axis.  This shows optimal (read the best possible) level of abstraction and the read thread indicates that different individual concepts (read classes) can be at different levels of abstraction. This actually means that the benefit that we get from abstraction increases to maxim somewhere in the middle from 0-abstrction to total abstraction, which is single point with no content.  See the next diagram:

A common myth is that the higher the level of abstraction is the better. As this discussion shown this is not the case in contrary. As we can see from the parable at first there is a clear increase of clarity will follow but then at some point the raising of the level will reach a point where the simplification starts to corrupt the most essential parts of the information and finally the mapping will collapse to zero.  So both ends of this graph are area of danger.

First example of big crumpling at the left end of the graph was IBM ambitious attempt with objects. The project was called San Francisco (3200 classes, 24600 methods)  at the end of previous millennium.  The attempt was more or less to produce a model that would cover all possible businesses. As you can see from the figures above the level of abstraction was far too low. The model was finally constructed with huge effort. The trouble saw that it saw totally useless with that amount of information.  I am still quite frequently running into attitude where really big (read detailed) models are bolt and to be proud of but sadly the trough is almost the opposite.

The second extreme is of course at the other end of the function. These are models with very general concepts and only a few needed. Usually these models are technically correct but semantically completely empty. So they look nice but don’t contain any real value to develop applications.

This is the point where I can return to Grady Booch, when he asked his audience: “When is a domain model ready?” His answer to this question was that it not ready when all the possible classes have been added to the model but it is ready when you cannot remove a single class from the model without totally collapsing it!

My experience is that such a model typically consists of 30 – 60 classes. So even here the famous rule of Albert Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”  is completely valid!

By the way the modeler can decide the number of classes in the model even without knowing anything about the target reality. This is of course done by either lifting or lowering the level of abstraction of several classes of the model.

Abstraction within programming

The level of abstraction of the classes is not directly reflected in the absolute number of classes but rather in the relative number of classes and methods together. This means that the higher the level of abstraction in the model is the more complicated are the implemented methods and vise verse.

This way the logical 3-tier architecture can lift the abstraction level for the GUI programmer by encapsulating the lower level details inside the object boundary into the method implementation.