I recently updated to Photoshop CS5 on my home computer, and I wanted to briefly share how particularly impressed I am with the new capabilities of their PhotoMerge process. The old PhotoMerge was a hassle to work with, and tended to screw up panoramas in weird ways. Getting the perspective right was usually a guess and check affair. Happily, the new system blows the old one out of the water.

Here’s are two examples to compare the systems:

• Original Currituck Lighthouse Panorama (Photoshop CS2)
• New Currituck Lighthouse Panorama (Photoshop CS5)

The results with the new system are much better, and more in line with tools like Microsoft Research’s Image Composite Editor. I will be going through my panorama collection over the coming days and updating them as necessary, cleaning them up where needed. I’m looking forward to producing better panoramas in the future with this help of this great tool.

Earlier this month, I traveled to Rockingham County in north-western North Carolina to visit the newest member of the NC state park system: Mayo River State Park. Naturally, I took my camera along and got some photos. Though there are only two hiking trails, both are worth the visit. It’s a nice new addition to an already stellar park system.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to serve on a jury for the first time. The experience lasted for three full days and I learned a lot about how the process works. Now that the case is closed and I can openly discuss it, I figured I’d write up a little bit about my experience. I’ll go through each day’s proceedings, the case itself, and the outcome.

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Has anyone here run into sound corruption problems in Windows 7? I’m having occasional audio problems with my current system, and I’m wondering whether my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS is to blame (it’s an ancient card). All I need is another hardware failure…

If you were to ask me which programming language I hated, my first answer would most certainly be Lisp (short for “Lots of Stupid, Irritating Parentheses”). On the right day, my second answer might be Java. But seeing as hate is such a strong word, I’ll opt for the statement that I dislike Java instead.

For the first time in probably 7 or 8 years, I’m having to write some Java code for a project at work. In all fairness, one of the main reasons I dislike the language is that I’m simply not very familiar with it. I’m sure that if I spent more time writing Java code, I might warm up to some of its quirks. But there are too many annoyances out of the gate to make me want to write stuff in Java for fun. Jumping back into Java development reminds me just how lucky I am to work with Perl and C++ code on a daily basis. Here are a few of my main gripes:

1. It’s a little ridiculous that the language requires the filename containing a class to exactly match the name of the class (so, a class named MyClass has to be placed in a file named “MyClass.java”). Other than making it easy to find where certain code resides, what’s the benefit of this practice? The compiler simply translates your human-readable code into machine-specific byte code; filenames get lost in the translation!
2. It pains me to have to write System.out.println("Some string"); to print some text, when in Perl it’s simply print "Some string";. This leads me to my next major gripe:
3. Java is way too verbose. I have to write 100 lines of code in Java to do what can be done in 10 lines of Perl. My time is worth something and I’m spending too much of it dealing with Java boilerplate code. In C++, I can use the public: keyword once, and everything that follows is public (until either another similar control keyword is reached or we come to the end of the block). It doesn’t look like that’s allowed in Java. Instead, I have to place the public keyword in front of each and every member variable and function. Ugh!
4. Surprisingly, Java’s documentation is pretty poor. Examples are few and far between and varying terminology makes it unclear when to use what function. For example, in some list-based data structure classes, getting a count of the items in said list might be getSize(), it might be getLength(), it could be just length(), or it might even be getNumberOfItems(). There’s apparently no standard. Every other language manual I’ve ever used, be it PHP, Perl, or even the official C++ manual, has examples throughout, and relatively sane naming conventions. I can find no such help in Java-land.
5. Automatic memory management can be handy, but it can also be a bother. I know for a fact that there are folks out there who make competent Java programmers who wouldn’t last 10 minutes with C++ code. Pointers still matter in the world of computing. That Java hides all of those concepts from programmers, especially young programmers learning the trade, seems detrimental to me. It pays to know how memory allocation works. Trusting the computer to “just handle it” for you isn’t always the best solution.
6. Nearly all Java IDE’s make Visual Studio look like the greatest thing on the planet; and Visual Studio sucks!

All that being said, the language does have a few redeeming features. Packages are a nice way to bundle up chunks of code (I wish C++ had a similar feature). It’s also nice that the language recognizes certain data types as top-level objects (strings being one; again, C++ really hurts in this department, and yes I know about STL string which has its own set of problems).

I know there are folks who read this site that make a living writing Java code, so please don’t take offense at my views. It’s not that I hate Java; it’s just that I don’t like it.

Having recently replaced my graphics card, I was surprised to learn that the latest generation of cards requires not one, but two PCI-E power connections (with recommended power ratings of 20A on the +12V rail). Seeing as graphics cards have gotten larger (they now take up the width of 2 or more PCI slots) and more power hungry, I got thinking about their future. Several questions came to mind:

• In 5 or 10 years, will graphics cards require their own dedicated power supply?
• Will computer manufacturers forgo the PCI-E format for some sort of on-board socket, similar to the CPU?
• If not, how will card size factor in to motherboard and case design?

It seems to me, especially seeing as how some graphics cards have cooling units larger than the card itself, that the PCI-E form factor for GPUs can’t last for many more years. Perhaps smaller-scale, multiple cores will prevent them from growing even larger than they are today. It’s interesting to think about the various possibilities.

I found an old video card around my house last night, so I swapped my current one out for it. I was able to boot my system, but upon entering Windows, I still see graphical trash. That indicates to me that the motherboard is most likely to blame.

After doing a little bit of hardware research last night, it appears that my CPU is still among the best, so I doubt I’ll replace that after all. And seeing as my graphics card might not actually be to blame, I’ll probably hang on to it as well (it, too, is still fairly decent). The motherboard definitely needs to be replaced, and I’m thinking about going to DDR3 memory instead of DDR2 (though if I stayed with DDR2 I could get by with just purchasing a new motherboard).

So, long story short, the situation doesn’t appear to be as dire as I had initially thought. It still bites that I have to deal with this though. Why can technology just work?

My desktop computer at home has been giving me some occasional graphical problems ever since I updated to Windows 7. I have the latest and greatest drivers for my graphics card, but every so often I get graphical trash on screen that, usually, corrects itself. Tonight, it seems to have died for good. I can’t get the system to boot reliably, even after trying to reseat the card. To add to my woes, I’ve also been having the occasional “double-beep” at startup, indicating that I have a memory problem. This has been an issue ever since I switched to the abit motherboard I’m currently using.

Anyways, I’m going to bite the bullet and buy a bunch of new hardware to fix all of this. New motherboard, CPU, memory, graphics card; the whole shebang.

If you have recommendations as to what to buy these days, I’d sure appreciate it. I’ll be putting in some orders ASAP, so the sooner you can recommend something, the better.

I’ve been slightly overweight for quite a long time. Two months ago, I decided I would start tracking my weight daily, in an effort to try and motivate myself to shed a few pounds. Desiring a tool to make this easy, I immediately searched the Android marketplace and found Libra. This incredibly handy tool uses a weight trend line as described in the excellent book The Hacker’s Diet.

We Interrupt This Post…

Allow me to quickly talk about The Hacker’s Diet. Written by John Walker, founder of AutoDesk, this book tackles weight loss as an engineering problem. The author is funny, to the point, and provides a careful analysis of how weight loss works. The briefest summary: you will only lose weight by eating fewer calories than you need. Exercise won’t do it (though it helps), and weird diets (Atkins, South Beach, et al.) won’t do it either. Read the book for further discussion and analysis of this viewpoint. The author presents a pretty solid case that’s hard to argue against. Best of all, the book is available for free as a PDF!

The trend line in a weight chart tells you where you’re headed: am I gaining weight (line going up), maintaining it (horizontal), or losing it (line going down)? With this simple tool, I was able to see in no time at all that my weight was going upwards at an alarming rate. After waking up to my weight gain, I set a modest goal of losing 9 pounds (I was 9 pounds above the “overweight” line for someone my height).

After reading The Hacker’s Diet, I made one simple change to my lifestyle: I altered how much I eat at each meal. I didn’t change what I eat; only how much. And wow what a difference that has made! Today, I weighed in at my goal weight for the very first time! Here’s the proof:

As you can see from the chart, I started heading up, turned the corner, and have been headed down ever since. My trend line hasn’t yet hit my target weight (as of today’s measurement, it’s scheduled to hit the target on August 21), but at least it’s heading in the right direction. It was a great feeling to hit my target this morning. I’m looking forward to shedding a few more pounds and maintaining a healthier weight.

This weekend, for my mom’s birthday, we took a trip over to Greensboro, NC to visit the Greensboro Historical Museum and the Guilford Courthouse Military Park. Having never visited Greensboro proper, we didn’t really know what to expect from either.

The historical museum in Greensboro is way larger than it may look from the outside. We easily spent two hours wandering through the various exhibits, some of which are tremendously large. More time could easily be spent here; the rainy weather limited our outdoor experiences (a few exhibits are outside the building). I was surprised to learn about the history of the area; a number of corporations were founded there, and several prominent events have occurred over the course of time. Best of all, the visit is absolutely free! I came away from the museum very impressed. It easily rivals the state museums in Raleigh.

Guilford county courthouse, site of a pivotal battle in the Revolutionary War, is equally as entertaining. Again, the rainy weather limited our outdoor activity at the park, but it should be noted that there are miles of hiking trails and a number of memorials around the park. The visitor center has an excellent 30-minute film describing the events of the battle. A number of artifacts from the battlefield are also on display; from rifles, to cannonballs, to belt buckles, it’s all here. The collection is truly gigantic. Again, the visit is completely free. This is a park I will definitely return to.

If you’re ever in the Greensboro area, I highly recommend both destinations. Both provide a relaxing environment, and a historical perspective on the Piedmont region of North Carolina.