Crazy Or Genius?: Category Ideas

Google App Engine

Sean — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:56:00 +0200

Today Google announced Google App Engine, a free (within certain limits) deployment environment in which people can develop, deploy and host web apps. Currently, the offering is for python only, and you are kind of tied to Google’s data store, but in return you don’t have to worry about server management, infrastructure, or paying money. Additionally, they have a pre-packaged SDK to give developers an identical development sandbox, as well as a method to deploy local code to the production environment.

However, I think they missed a way to make it even MORE awesome. Imagine, if you will, that they had integrated this package with Google Code. Suddenly, developers have an entire managed development and deploy framework. Develop on your workstation with an environment that is identical to the production environment, check in code so that it is managed, have a web interface that manages deployment from the repository so that you could deploy specific revisions/branches to either a staging area for testing or the production environment, with easy rollbacks if a problem is noticed…... since one of App Engine’s goals appears to be to lower the total cost of entry into the app development world, this just seems like it would make sense and work so well.

Behaviour Driven Development And rSpec

Sean — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 03:52:00 +0200

Last week, Dave Astels came into Halifax and gave a talk on Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) and rSpec (a BDD framework for Ruby). I thought it was quite the interesting talk, and that a lot of things seemed to make sense.

I took some rough notes, and thought I would write a bit about what I managed to take away from the talk.

The premise behind BDD (as I understand it) is that many users are only getting part way up the Test Driven Development ladder and then getting stuck and not being able to leverage the full set of tools and techniques they have at their disposal. Some of this has to do with terminology (ala the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) and not being able to grasp the concepts as they are presented. For example, TDD has unit tests, but what exactly is a unit? What exactly are tests supposed to test?

TDD emphasizes checking state at various points in execution. BDD, as the name would imply, defines tests in terms of behaviour.

The part of the talk that I enjoyed most was the fact that BDD focuses on human readability. So instead of something like:

def test_truth
  assert_kind_of Group,  @group
end

you get:

specify "is really a group" do
  @group.should_be_an_instance_of Group
end

Note: the above examples are identical in functionality (in fact, Dave pointed out that they made a point to provide all the same functionality as the Ruby TDD framework, so people that preferred BDD would have a clear migration path) but differ in how they are presented.

If you are interested in a more in depth description, you can check out an earlier version of the talk on Google Video video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8135690990081075324 or check out Dave’s site

TurnItIn.com - Beating The System Part 4: Denying Our Corporate Overlords

Sean — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 12:14:00 +0100

As many of you might know, a while back Mike Smit started taking a hard look at TurnItIn.com a while back. For those of you who follow his site, he has more recently begun an information campaign, pointing out failings, problems, and concerns with the service. Even outside of his site, the issue has been getting a lot of attention, including being covered in the current issue of the Dalhousie Gazette.

One of the things Mike is doing is investigating how effective it is, and how difficult it is to trick the system. Currently has mentioned three ways to beat the system. One involves his own program that manipulates the document to make it pass. The second involves using MS Word’s built in hidden text feature. The third to date is using MS Words built in macro functionality. “How can we trick the system with free tool that are readily available?” However, not everyone can write software, or own MS Word. I began thinking to myself ‘how can I trick the system with free tools that are readily available?’. First step: take a look at OpenOffice. Can the same hidden text trick work? A quick test shows…......... no. Hidden text is a field attribute in OO, and a character attribute in MS Word. The two are not compatible. Macros? Keeping the macro as is and saving as a MS Word file doesn’t work. This is largely due to MS Word using their own scripting language or VB for their macros, while OO has their own scripting language, as well as using javascript and a few other options. Either way, the macro option is out, especially since TurnItIn.com doesn’t accept OO documents, making an effort to create a similar macro for OO pointless (at this time).

But wait…... what formats DOES TurnItIn.com accept? A quick check (verified by Mike a second later) gives me the following list: MS Word, WordPerfect, PostScript, PDF, HTML, RTF, and plain text. Plain text is out for obvious reasons, MS Word is being hammered by Mike’s own tests….... wait…... HTML? Instantly a few ideas come to mind. Idea the first: What happens if I replace all the spaces in a document with a & nbsp;? Thankfully TurnItIn.com DOES convert these to spaces. I would have laughed my ass off if they hadn’t.

Idea 2) What about inline style tags using spans? For example, this document. Note that this is what the professor would see. Now view the page source. You should see a number of lines like this:

<span style="position:absolute;left:-10000px">fgahlhgk</span> “What is sad is the fact that we are not even trying hard yet.”

This basically takes these characters and shifts them WAY to the left out of site of people like your prof.

Result? 0% plagiarized according to TurnItIn.com. Total time required to figure this out? < 5 minutes. Tools required? Your favorite plaintext editor. So not only can cheap windows users use this technique, but now Linux users can too!!!

What is sad is the fact that we are not even trying hard yet.

Battle Beams

Sean — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 21:51:00 +0100

Today, someone mentioned that all disputes in the Computer Science Building should be settled through battle on the beams suspended over the atrium. This individual also went so far as to state that this was a traditional mode of challenge on a certain mailing list in the past (which remains to be seen). Obviously, I missed out on quite a bit in the past here, but I feel it might be worthwhile to revive this tradition.

However, a few changes:

Install a cross beam (or two) in between the two central beams already there. Then combatants can start of on their own beam without arguments of who steps out first. Additionally, this would allow individuals to jump from beam to beam, thus hightening the overall entertainment value.

Include other trials, such as a rock climbing challenge at the local gym. American gladiator style knocking the opponent off will be permitted, as will random projectiles launched by the audience.

The ‘My Kung Fu Is Powerful’ challenge, where contestants attempt to immitate the over the top martial arts moves they see in the movies. For added entertainment, said moves must also be performed on the beams.

Perhaps the most difficult challenge in the overall scheme of things would be the ‘Oral Algos Quiz Challenge’. Personally, I would rather battle over a tiger pit.

With the social acceptance of geeks these days, and the success of shows such as ‘Beauty and the Geek’, I think this might have potential. Think of the entertainment! We could broadcast events live over the internet. “Geeky Gladiators” will surely be a hit. Revenue will be raked in hand over fist, and will help build another two floors on the CS building.

Update For some reason I missed out on a ‘Gauntlet’ style challenge. This challenge would involve competitors running through an area with multiple sentry guns. For visible scoring/less chance of permanent injury (we want victors to come back after all), the sentry guns would probably be loaded with paintballs.

Buskers - Part 2

Sean — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 14:58:00 +0200

Halifax International Buskerfest

Day 2 of what started here

Patrick Drake

Sleight of hand, or magic? This CS graduate turned magician (yeah, you read that right) makes me wonder. I really have no idea how he accomplished some of his tricks. Especially the one where he empties a pop can, squeezes the sides together, and then later restores the can, seals it, reopens it, and poors a cup of pop out.

Squid

What do you get when you take drums, a set of bagpipes, people to play them, and turn it into performance art? The answer, of course, is Squid. One of the best performances I saw in my two days of buskerfest, Squid conveyed a high level of energy and entusiasm in their performance. The kitchen stools as drums bit was interesting, as was the juggling of drum sticks (as well as stopping to do push ups when they screwed up). They reminded me of Blue Man Group, or Windom Earle. Oh, and the Homer Simpson chicken spin was amusing as well.

Dragon Knights

Storytelling art without words. All I really have to say is that their animal harnesses are amazing in their degree of movement, and the people that use them are astounding in how fluid they operate. Whoever designed them were amazing. I want one.

Astar The Fire Dancer

Set things on fire, play music, spin flaming objects around really fast in various directions. What’s not to like?

Afro Jambo

I would also have to put this among my favorite performances. Of course, I could be biased, since I was actually involved with this performance. Yeah, you heard me, I got selected from the crowd to get up in front of all 150+ people and jump rope. I like to think I wasn’t terrible, and in fact, maybe a touch better than the little kids. At least I hopped on one foot for a bit. Afro Jambo, of course, blew my antics right out of the water (hey, they’re professionals after all). Doing flips while jumping rope, human pyramids where the top was balancing on his hands, with his feet in the air, fire eating, dancing, and the flaming limbo…...... yeah I would have to say this was one of the best shows at Buskerfest.

iMind

Sean — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 22:37:00 +0200

Due to past conversations and certain web comics I’ve been doing some thinking.

You see, technically, music devices are behind the times.

Me, I can plug a musical device directly into my implant. No headphone static, no background noise, just crisp, clear, musicy goodness.

The devices are small enough to fit behind the ear. Sure you might not get 8 gigs of space for music, but you should be able to get 512 MB at the very least.

Tranfers could be accomplished using bluetooth. Controls could be built into a watch, also using bluetooth.

All we need is a workaround of the surgery costs and we’re good to go!

Think of the marketing slogans!

“Listen to the voices in your head that much clearer!”

Hmmm…....... maybe not.

How To Solve The CS Building's Cash Flow Problem

Sean — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 00:10:00 +0200

Take over the new ‘Management’ Building next door once it is complete. It’s taller than ours and the management faculty is obviously not as important as us.
Turn the current CS Building into an Urban Paintball field to generate revenue. I mean, think about how awesome it would be to do Couterstrike like missions with paintball guns in the CS Building.
What about the management students? Well, they’ve gotten used to the management building already. What’s a few more years taking classes there?

Crazy... Or... Creative Genius? You Be The Judge

Sean — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 22:21:00 +0100

One of the reason some of my friends are so awesome is that one of us will have a crazy idea, and run with it. Maybe not in reality, but in a big long discussion on what we would end up doing.

Today, the following was thought up:

Starting up a nerd-punk band with a name like “Iain and the Stooges” (help desk individuals would understand). Which has evolved into me being singer/songwriter, my friend Jon (not you Despry) as guitarist, and other individuals of tech support filling additional spaces. We figure, there is so much BAD punk out there, that we couldn’t really do any worse.

I’m getting ideas again… and we all know what that means…