So I’ve officially moved to San Francisco and started working at the new job. I’m living in the in a place called Marina Cove which will be home for at least the next few months while I get my bearings and a better idea of where I’d like to be long term. The marina area is nice, right by the bay, beach, presidio and a few other parks but the general crowd might a bit too fratboy for me. On the plus side I live right next to the area’s Safeway grocery store so not having a car hasn’t been a big issue and eating well is easy. Also the 30x express bus stop is two blocks away and gets me to work in under 15 min.

More to come about SF

Music is a very large part of my life and my typical work day. I’ve been thinking for some time now how to share what I listen to with you. I’ve thought about podcasting but figured it’d be hard to keep that commitment up, plus I’d want to play tons of copy-written material. I’ve thought about doing album reviews but there are so many people far more eloquent who do a better job. Instead, for now, I’m going to simply post songs/albums/artists that are in my heavy rotation play list. I’m doing this to hopefully start some dialog and learn about great new music from you.

So for the first installment I bring you Apples in stereo’s latest album New Magnetic Wonder. My favorite 4 song on the album in order of awesomeness:

1. Same Old Drag
2. Energy
3. Sunndal Song
4. 7 Stars

Visit their website to give the songs a listen.

This question was raised on slashdot today:

I’m a high school senior who is trying to pick a college to attend. I’ve been accepted by two comparably selective schools. One is a highly regarded tech school, and the other is a highly regarded liberal arts institution. I prefer the liberal arts college, but the computer science program is small, graduating about a dozen students a year. The course load is heavily theory based; programming languages are taught in later years. How much would the tech school vs. non tech school matter? Are CS majors from non-tech school considered inferior? What would an HR department think? What would you think if you were hiring?

There is a good series of responses on slashdot about this topic and its very interesting to hear what people have to say from big universities as I’ve gone the liberal arts route.

Techcrunch has an interesting update about Fring a voip/chat service for mobile phones which plans it’s launch for the iPhone sometime in the next day. While this does require a jailbroken iPhone for the time being, this technology will no doubt change the mobile phone industry once it’s available to the public through the iPhone app store launching in June.

VOIP over the iPhone means there’s no need to use calling plan minutes to make phone calls. Whil this may currently be limited to areas with WIFI signal, the minutes and money saved could be astronomical. With a service like this the iPhone could truly become a land line replacement assuming you have a solid WIFI connection. What’s more, if the 3G iPhone proves to have adequate bandwidth, VOIP calls might even be possible over the data plan.

What will this mean for Apple and At&t? Apple is positioned very well with their innovative device years ahead of the competition. AT&T on the other hand is stuck providing a commodity and with alternatives like WIFI becoming more an more available, long term I think you’ll see their pricing plans change to reflect the shift in data-plan usage from VOIP and potentially mobile video chat.

My buddy Wyatt Dumas dropped me a link to this site with currently 1178 variations of how to program a computer to output 99 bottles of beer on the wall.

The perl version was very creative:

       ''=~(        '(?{'        .('`'        |'%')        .('['        ^'-')
       .('`'        |'!')        .('`'        |',')        .'"'.        '\\$'
       .'=='        .('['        ^'+')        .('`'        |'/')        .('['
       ^'+')        .'||'        .(';'        &'=')        .(';'        &'=')
       .';-'        .'-'.        '\\$'        .'=;'        .('['        ^'(')
       .('['        ^'.')        .('`'        |'"')        .('!'        ^'+')
      .'_\\{'      .'(\\$'      .';=('.      '\\$=|'      ."\|".(      '`'^'.'
     ).(('`')|    '/').').'    .'\\"'.+(    '{'^'[').    ('`'|'"')    .('`'|'/'
    ).('['^'/')  .('['^'/').  ('`'|',').(  '`'|('%')).  '\\".\\"'.(  '['^('(')).
    '\\"'.('['^  '#').'!!--'  .'\\$=.\\"'  .('{'^'[').  ('`'|'/').(  '`'|"\&").(
    '{'^"\[").(  '`'|"\"").(  '`'|"\%").(  '`'|"\%").(  '['^(')')).  '\\").\\"'.
    ('{'^'[').(  '`'|"\/").(  '`'|"\.").(  '{'^"\[").(  '['^"\/").(  '`'|"\(").(
    '`'|"\%").(  '{'^"\[").(  '['^"\,").(  '`'|"\!").(  '`'|"\,").(  '`'|(',')).
    '\\"\\}'.+(  '['^"\+").(  '['^"\)").(  '`'|"\)").(  '`'|"\.").(  '['^('/')).
    '+_,\\",'.(  '{'^('[')).  ('\\$;!').(  '!'^"\+").(  '{'^"\/").(  '`'|"\!").(
    '`'|"\+").(  '`'|"\%").(  '{'^"\[").(  '`'|"\/").(  '`'|"\.").(  '`'|"\%").(
    '{'^"\[").(  '`'|"\$").(  '`'|"\/").(  '['^"\,").(  '`'|('.')).  ','.(('{')^
    '[').("\["^  '+').("\`"|  '!').("\["^  '(').("\["^  '(').("\{"^  '[').("\`"|
    ')').("\["^  '/').("\{"^  '[').("\`"|  '!').("\["^  ')').("\`"|  '/').("\["^
    '.').("\`"|  '.').("\`"|  '$')."\,".(  '!'^('+')).  '\\",_,\\"'  .'!'.("\!"^
    '+').("\!"^  '+').'\\"'.  ('['^',').(  '`'|"\(").(  '`'|"\)").(  '`'|"\,").(
    '`'|('%')).  '++\\$="})'  );$:=('.')^  '~';$~='@'|  '(';$^=')'^  '[';$/='`';

http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-perl-737.html

Liked the python version for it’s originality and simplicity:

    import re, urllib
    print re.sub('</p>', '', re.sub('<br>|<p>|<br/> |<br/>','\n', re.sub('No', '\nNo', 
    urllib.URLopener().open('http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/lyrics.html').read()[3516:16297])))

http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-python-931.html

Lastly, there is a version programmed in whitespace which is apparently a windows only language I had never heard about. This must be Microsoft’s secret weapon for secure coding, or maybe it’s their language of choice for open sourcing their work. In either case it’s no doubt what Vista must have been written in

Google just recently released AppEngine which will no doubt change the web application hosting industry as it handles all the hard problems related to scalability and it’s free while you’re small. The biggest problem with it is that I have is that it only supports Python right now. Google has promised to support other languages going forward so I think it’s time to make ourselves heard. Vote PHP5 as the next language supported by Google Appengine