Month: March 2006

Well it was short but sweet, and now it is time to move on. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that should I not go for it I would regret for some time to come.

After a month and a half or so doing challenging work at Blinck International BV in Amsterdam as team leader of the developement team, I will be starting my new life at Pace Micro Technology in the UK as software architect for their research and development department.

Like I have said before, you are never too old to begin yet another adventure in life.

He showed that every continuous function (one with a connected graph) is equal to the sum of its Fourier series except perhaps at some negligible points. (He actually proved a more general result, that a broader class of functions, called square-integrable, equal the sum of their Fourier series except perhaps at those points.)

2006 mathematics prize announced

One thing you should not forget is that you are never too old to take the next adventure in life.

This is especially true when the right opportunity pops up, and no matter how many logical excuses you can make up not to do it, still in your heart you know that it is now or never.

Go for it or else.

Sorry about shutting down this blog, but it took me a little more than a week to find out what was happening.

You see, some idiot out there decided to use my webserver to send spam all over the place.

Before I realized it, my service provider cut me off with an angry warning that thousands of email spams were being shot off from my host address.

This took me much time and alot of soul-searching to figure things out, but I believe this aggravating problem has been rectified once and for all.

How? Well, if I told you that, then I would be welcoming the next hacker to drop by and hack away again.

Ten years from now, who knows what the next so-called 'Big Thing' in technology will be.

That's why it is very important now to keep your eyes and ears open, just in case.

Let this be a warning: success is a myth and only leads to hubris which further results in complacency.

Bad news so watch out.

Finally everything on my computer screen looks perfectly sharp even when I am reclining back in my chair.

Takes a bit of getting used to, aiming my eyes in exactly the right direction while those objects at the periphery of my vision look slightly distorted.

My coffee cup for example which is oblong like wet clay which has not had enough time to dry and has been squished ever so slightly from side to side.

CNN Breaking News ...

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has died in The Hague.

Too bad.

This is by far the best job description for software developer that I have ever seen:

"Programming is a craft. At its simplest, it comes down to getting a computer to do what you want it to do (or what your user wants it to do). As a programmer, you are part listener, part advisor, part interpreter, and part dictator. You try to capture elusive requirements and find a way of expressing them so that a mere machine can do them justice. You try to document your work so that others can understand it, and you try to engineer your work so that others can build on it. What's more, you try to do all this against the relentless ticking of the project clock. You work small miracles every day."

- The Pragmatic Programmer, Andrew Hunt and David Thomas.

Whenever possible, resist the temptation and use the stairs rather than taking the escalator.

While it is more difficult and requires a little bit more work, after reaching the top you will feel much better about it all.

Do not forget that in the long run each and every one of us ends up living in the very same house we built for ourselves without even knowing it ahead of time.

Although it is only the beginning of the year and it is snowing and cold outside, it is never too early to make vacation plans for a sunny and warm climate.

Everything is booked now and we have a wonderful trip to look forward to in the middle of July.

This time around we will be spending two weeks at Villa Mertiza which is on the south eastern coast of Crete.

Mirtos, Crete

There was this youngish person standing on the escalator just in front of me as I was ascending to the main level of the train station in Utrecht.

Dressed in a pin-striped suit, a bright purple tie which glittered, and carrying a chic-looking attache case.

But he was wavering slightly from left to right and then plainly wobbling. At the top of the escalator he almost fell over and stumbled his way to the next train, wherever that might be.

Nice looking chap but obviously drunk.

A couple of snowflakes randomly fell from the cold icy sky and landed on the tracks. Complete chaos reigned as the trains were delayed, cancelled, whatever. Hard to believe what a little bit of snow can do to ruin one's day.