My Daily WTF: [#1] Singleton Field Pattern.

It was yet another sunny and calm day at work for Jerzy K. For the past couple of hours he was doing some updates to the recommendation application and was now ready to submit the code to the shared repository.

Because there was one more guy from another team working on the project, SVN conflicts were nothing uncommon, and so it came as no surprise when one or two of them occured this time as well. Before blindly updating the code to the latest version Jerzy decided to have a quick look. It was the recently committed Product class that was causing the problem. And this is what he saw:

A word about cynicism

The goodness starts about 4:07.

Fail after fail

America will have to wait for me a bit longer as I found out they are not offering me a place on postgraduate study. I guess I am not as awesome as I thought I am. Well, maybe some research projects on the Old Continent will fill the time in between. Or maye not.

I have absolutely no idea at the moment what I will be doing with my life during next academic year...

Secondly, I was asked to write an article about AI

We are not alone in the universe

There is a small voice in my heart. The voice is small, but it can certainly scream loudly. It is the voice of the explorer and it is absolutely full of joy. It is jumping all around me, banging in the ears, beating back in my skull, rattling in the brain.

It seems there is an evidence of life in the universe. Aliens... but nothing too fancy. There was no Kane with a creature attached to his face, and no Ripley with grappling hook and finally no bloody, penis-like chestburster with incisors!

Something much simpler, more predictable, something... expected maybe?

Everything in this world is relative, my dear Watson.

I found this article about Watson - an IBM's super computer that not only is able to play Jeopardy game, but also wins against human contestants. Enjoy the full article and video here: IBM's Watson supercomputer destroys all humans in Jeopardy practice round.

It's truly astounding.

Brilliant linux patch?

How can you reduce the average latency of your desktop by about 60 times? Well, there is a new linux kernel patch which does just that. Published earlier today:

The ~200 Line Linux Kernel Patch That Does Wonders

I can't wait to see the effects on my machine. Seeing is believing as they say.

Cheers.

Self-motivation

...is something that I lack recently. However, today after a whole day of coding (pop3 server), quite surprisingly I came back home with the clear aim. It was to find out why my Python solution to breathalyzer was corrupted. At first I thought about sharing my problem on dP for instance. So I opened the editor just to have a final look at what's in there. I was about to decide what to ask for exactly. Then I started making the code less smelly and embarrassing. It became a little bit tidier, a bit prettier and more understandable. I kept on going. One thing led to another and here I go! It works!

I've just sent it to PuzzleBot and am waiting for response. Will see.

--

Bla, bla, bla. Again...

Your breathalyzer submission to Facebook could not be built/run

Annoying thing: trying to figure out why something that works well for me isn't working for you. Well, I will have another go then.