Quote from an AP article on the Nets:

"We had a lot of conversations about the game itself and about his expectations about who he can become as a player," Carter said. "At first it kind of seemed weird to him, but then after a while when he opened up it made things easier. Once you get it out there in the open and figure out who it is you want to be, you kind of put it together and you become a basketball player."

I'm looking forward to a very productive season from Antoine

There's something kinda cool about creating games on platforms that weren't meant for game creation; it presents a whole set of programmatic challenges that leads one to come up with creative solutions to otherwise simple scenarios in typical gaming SDKs.  It's kind of a brain-teaser as it goes beyond typical business application programming (generally boring, tedious, repetitive, and not fun) and forces one to think about more...challenging and creative programming tasks.

For a while, I was obsessed with writing games in HTML and JavaScript (Exhibit A, Exhibit B).  Trying to write Tetris was particularly interesting as I got stuck trying to come up with a good algorithm for collision detection based on my implementation of using unordered lists to form a grid.

So I found it quite awesome that someone actually took this idea to another level and wrote PacMan...for Excel!.

My Tetris implementation is actually kind of similar in concept as it also utilizes the same basic technique of switching "cell"--in my case, list items--background colors to simulate pixels.  I actually have a more complete version somewhere on my machine, but I have no idea where it's buried .

I never thought I'd see the day.  Rutgers football having a winning season?  It was but a common joke on campus (the football team that is).  But what do you know?  It turns out that Rutgers is now #23 on the AP top 25!

No joke. Rutgers is ranked.

The Scarlet Knights, long a college football laughingstock, moved Sunday into The Associated Press Top 25 for the first time in 30 years.

Applause for Greg Schiano, the coaching staff, and his players.

A great quote by Joe Torre I came across in an article on A-Rod's recent struggle:

"What Jason said made me realize that I had to go at it a different way," Torre says. "When the rest of the team starts noticing things, you have to get it fixed. That's my job. I like to give individuals what I believe is the room they need, but when I sense that other people are affected, teamwise, I have to find a solution to it."

It's also a great article in and of itself and speaks a lot about how our own expectations, not to mention the expecations of those around us (in this case, millions of Yankees fans) can weigh down on our ability to perform.

I think it also reveals a lot about how one should approach difficult tasks. To seek assistance, guidance, and counsel are things that many avoid in tough times due to pride or some such inner roadblock, but in fact, honesty and openness are the likely best approach. Honesty with oneself about the expecations and one's failure to meet said expectations.

So I came across OpenDNS somehow last night and read about the service that they provide.  From my days as a CS major, I was familiar with the high level workings of the DNS infrastructure and OpenDNS's explanation, at least in theory, made sense.  The gist of it is that somewhere out there, there exists a network of DNS (Domain Name Servers) translating the alphanumeric URL that you type into your browser address bar into numeric IP addresses.  This can be a slow process if the initial DNS does not contain a mapping for the URL that you entered as it means that the DNS will have to consult another DNS (and so on) until it is retrieved.

Of course, I was a bit skeptical of just how much performance there was to gain, but I have to say that it is noticeably zippier browsing today.

So I would give it a shot and see if it makes any difference.

Awesome...simply awesome: paper cutout art.

Jawdropping even.

More here.

I find the A4 sheet of paper interesting to work with, because it probably still is the most common and consumed media and format for carrying information today, and in that sense it is something very loaded. This means that we rarely notice the actual materiality of the A4 paper. By removing all the information and starting from scratch using the blank white 80gms A4 paper as basic for my creations, I feel that I have found a material which, on one hand, we all are able to relate to, and which on the other hand is non-loaded and neutral and therefore easier to fill with different meanings. The thin white paper gives at the same time the paper sculptures a fragility which underlines the tragic and romantic theme of the works.

Good stuff.  Good freaking stuff.

If you haven't done so already, there's an excellent high level white paper by David Chappell that you should download (if you work with such things like Office and SharePoint) which provides important information so far as system architecture is concerned with regards to integrating workflow and Office.

(Via Paul Andrew).

Small footnote: it's been a year since this blog has been up!

Warning: strong language ahead...

So I'm attending this webcast on Microsoft Project Server 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh and I can't believe the stupid motherfuckers on the call who:

• Can't mute their god-damned phones.
• Can't leave the screen alone so the presenter can continue.
• Insist on asking questions on the document instead of in chat.
• Start drawing on the document...

Motherfuckers...you'd think we'd be a little better behaved than high school kids...Man, we're all professionals and most importantly, we're all adults man!  WTF?

And then, with regards to the install procedure for the Technical Refresh:

"Yes, I know this is painful, but due to time and resource constraints, this is the best we could come up with."

Garrrrrrrrrgh!

And then the kicker: you can't have SharePoint Beta 2 TR and Project Server Beta 2 TR on the same machine...You MUST install SharePoint Beta 2 TR on a seperate server first and then install Project Server Beta 2 and TR on a second server.

While the reasoning behind using the patching procedure is understandable, what is not so clear is why they do not make both types of upgrades (patch and clean/standalone) available so that some people can test the patching if they are interested in that aspect and that others (the majority) can just test the functionality of Project Server (and not have to worry about the complexity of applying the patch).  The complexity of the TR patch itself will make it likely that many will skip over the TR beta testing and simply continue to use the Beta 2 version.

Even more annoying, no further patches will be provided (no Release Candidates) until RTM so that the bugs in TR will persist until RTM.  I suspect this approach will backfire on the Project team as most people will end up simply using Beta 2 without applying the TR patch.

"B-Team" indeed...

So it looks like the EU is trying to pick Microsoft's pocket again.  The EU is up in fits about Microsoft's inclusion of security features such as Windows Firewall and warns Microsoft that inclusion of such features would bring further fines against it in the future.

Regarding the new security features in Vista, Jonathon Todd, an EU spokesman said:

"Less diversity and innovation would ultimately harm consumers through reduced choice and higher security risks."

What?  Wait, so having an OS that's, by default, not secured at all, somehow helps consumers?  It's entirely contradictory and the EU has lost all credibility with this move.  The inclusion of default security measures is a gesture to help improve the user experience and make sure that users aren't exposed.  If such features were not included, users would likely not even be aware of the need for security related software until it's too late.

It's not as if Microsoft is blocking others from installing security related software on Vista, it's simply providing some simple functionality out of the box so that there is always protection available to the consumer, whether he or she is aware of the need for such software.

And I'm sure if Microsoft didn't include default security software, the EU would have a different stance and claim Microsoft wasn't protecting consumers by providing a stop-gap solution until third party security solutions were installed.

What a debacle...

I don't want to get all mushy here and get too deep into this historic event.  I remember being awoken by my girlfriend then (now wife) with a frantic call to turn on the TV after the first plane had already crashed into the World Trade Center.  I watched in disbelief, as if it were some sort of fiction, as the second plane crashed into the second tower on live television.

My mother was a mere five blocks away from the World Trade Center...it was quite frantic trying to check on her condition as all of the cellular channels were overloaded.  Luckily, she was unharmed and was able to make it out of the city that evening.

There's not much else to comment on this I guess, so I'll leave this with a photograph that I took in March of 2002: