Does anyone really have that much data?

It’s quite common. For example, it’s hard to find a digital camera that that has fewer than a million pixels (1 mega-pixel). These images are processed and displayed on the screen. The algorithms that do this had better not be O(N²)! If it took one microsecond (1 millionth of a second) to process each pixel, an O(N²) algorithm would take more than a week to finish processing a 1 megapixel image, and more than three months to process a 3 megapixel image (note the rate of increase is definitely not linear).

Another example is sound. CD audio samples are 16 bits, sampled 44,100 times per second for each of two channels. A typical 3 minute song consists of about 8 million data points. You had better choose the write algorithm to process this data.

A dictionary I’ve used for text analysis has about 125,000 entries. There’s a big difference between a linear O(N), binary O(log N), or hash O(1) search.

HOWEY! a week for 1 megapixel image using an O(N²) algorithm!! …. Ok, sure, on a desktop application where the data are usually small and the processor is fast, it doesn’t matter much. But for heavily visited web sites (huge data) or for small devices (slow processor) it makes a world of difference. I better watch for this in my current projects, one’s expect heavy traffic (huge data) and the other is a mix of medium/big data and slow-ish server. Better go revise the code.

So look, interesting does not come from greatness. Interesting comes from conflict.

Something about this line just rings to me. It seems so freaking true, and I cant tell why. She follows it with this line, which I guess illustrates what is meant with the pervious line.

Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina with the line, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” 

Even thought I’m in the last paragraph, I couldn’t continue until I share this line with someone. Now that I did that …. I’ll go finish that post.

Reason #3: Nobody will read my blog.

and its simple, I got nothing interesting to talk about.

Here I am, a 24 years old software engineering Grad, freelancing on a game project. Technical issues? I’m still not experienced for that, and there are million of blogs for that and will do it 10-20 times better. Work place issues? I work from home and don’t get out much (so that kills talking about local events). And don’t say about working from home. Freelance Switch, Anti 9 to 5 Guide, Location Independent  all do a fine job at that. Drawing? again, million other artists got that covered. Video games … covered. Daily life tips and tricks? …covered (I love you lifeHacker!). Anime …covered. Oh coffee! I can … nope, covered.

That leaves me with the last thing, a blog that points to other blogs entries and talk about them (I know, highly original). I’m not bashing the people that do it, some of them give you a very interesting read, even without reading the blog they are pointing to. But again, there isn’t a single topic that I can devote a blog to (or make it worthy of following/subscribing to), nor can I give thoughtful insights on other peoples blogs.

But, I can try.

What comes to mind is that I can pull a Seinfeld and make it a blog ‘about nothing’. Just daily (weekly … every 10 days) ramblings that may seem interesting to someone. If I can build a crowed, write interesting stuff and get that great programming job in the process, great! If not, then at least I’ll have a log of what I liked and disliked in a certain period of my life (in case I had amnesia or early Alzheimer’s). Or I can read my blog 10 years from now and laugh/cry saying “What a noob!”

Noticing that I wrote 2 paragraphs with almost one ‘I’ per sentence, here is ‘my’ other problem with blogging from Steve’s list:

Reason #4: Blogging is narcissistic.

As much as ‘I’ love to stand out in anything ‘I’ do, ‘I’ hate portraying that ‘I”m narcissistic or even hint it (looking at all the ‘I’s, apparently I’m not doing a good job in that).

But I’ll risk it, just in case one day

When it comes down to it, I’m asking you to write blogs because I know you’ve got really interesting things to say, even if you don’t think they’re that interesting. Your life is interesting, and your opinions of technology, Amazon, and life in general matter to me, and to others. I bet you’ve got a lot you could teach me, even if you don’t think you do. Heck, I was in my mid-twenties when I realized I had a gross conceptual misunderstanding about the reason it’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. The stuff I think I know is an invisible speck compared to the superset of what all people know today. Do me a favor and save me the effort of tracking you down in the hall and asking you to enlighten me.

Besides, I’m not ready to hear what you have to say yet. When I am ready, it’ll be in your blog

— Steve Yegge

I’m blogging for you Steve (narcissism overload!!).

Thanks for reading, have a nice day!

Flicker image search :) ! try it!

I kept trying to find learning resources for complete beginners (who can program at least, but didn’t do any RIA development of Action Script programming before). In the end, I found that returning to Adobe is your best bet: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/?tab:quickstart=1.

Also, keep this open when you program, or at least add it to your favorites : http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/flex/ 

That’s about all you need (well, so far). Adobe will recommend that you buy their Flash Build to develop flex, but you can use the free FlashDevelop  http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/ for your Action Script and MXML needs (and its really good).

Remember to pass by http://flex.org/ to see some Flex application and see what it can do!

and lastly ….. Good Luck :)

What’s the difference between Flash and Flex? the answer is in the title, and here http://kanuwadhwa.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/choose-the-best-flashflex/

So, how can I learn Flex for free and develop free RIA applications? ( I spent 3 hours on this and it is what this post is all about)
My friend Sirisian has the answer here http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2229691&postcount=9
The post is actually an answer to someone wanting to develop flash games, so it can be used for games as well.

I hope someone saves 3 hours thanks to this,
Have a nice day

this is a test to try out  Windows Live Writer that I just installed.

Lets try a picture here, this drawing is from JollyJack gallery on deviantart jollyjack.deviantart.com

And here is a table … just for test

I think that’s good enough. Lets try it.

Competition idea:

To program the AI/Strategy for a group of nano-bots. This strategy is then played in a 3D-simulated environment and you get points for accomplishing certain tasks and mission with that strategy. The simulated environment represent a human tissue, and your nano-robots has to be injected in a certain place in that tissue in order to do all/most of the tasks required. Tasks include visiting a number of points in the tissue, building enzyme needles, and going to enzyme points to collect enzyme and take it to an enzyme needle and fill it.

There are many constrains that makes this a tough competition:

- Your nano-bots has only 5 min from the start of the simulation.
- In Round 2, you don’t get to see the area map before hand, so your path algorithm has to be dynamic.
- If your nano-bots takes too much time processing, the simulation engine will freeze them all and continue running the game until they finish processing and they can move again.
- You have five nano-bot classes, each with its own weakness/advantage points.
- Only one nano-bot is injected in the tissue at the beginning of the simulation, and that nano-bot is the nano-AI, your main bot.
- Only the nano-AI can build other bots and needles. Needles count as bots.
- you cant have more than 40 bot at any time during the simulation.
- All your bots can do only one task at a given time (move, walk, collect enzyme). So your nano-AI cant move and build bots at the same time.
- There are 3 colored tissue areas in the area map. The red area let your bots move at their normal speed, the blue area make them move at half of their speed and the green area make them run at one-forth of their speed. This makes path finding harder than it seems.
- To top it all off, there are another injected nano-bots group, and they have one mission, TO DESTROY YOU! …. needless to say that when they kill your main nano-bot, all the other bots you have freeze and stop moving.

There also other constrains in the game, you can read more about the game by downloading it from the link below.

How did I do?

There were hardly any competition with me from Saudi Arabia. Only one team was there before round 1 and it looks like they didn’t submit their files before the deadline. I advanced easily to round 2 (round 1 is so easy that they want you to pass!). I didn’t have time to fully finish my 2nd round submission, I was working alone and I went through a month in the hospital for a major surgery. The submission has no defense strategy against the attacking nano-bots, so I was hoping on luck to get enough points before they kill my main bot.
Seeing that there is only one team from Saudi Arabia, I advanced to the international round, where they get the top 3 teams from each country, and put them in random 4 team leagues, every top 2 advance and they put them again in random leagues, and so on.
I lost at this stage. At first I though that I didn’t do well, but when the rest of the leagues results were posted, I saw that I could have easily advanced to the next round have I been placed in a different league. Mine was the "Iron group" so to speak. But oh well, this is life.

Project files and download

Here you can find the project files for my strategy (which will produce a .dll file on compilation). You’ll need to change the output folder for dll file if you want to compile it.
Here*Not yet* you will find the entire project hoshimi SDK and files, including my submission dll file. Just run the ProjectHoshimi.exe, choose alamed as a user, click on expert mode, choose "AlamedPH" and a map and click start. The simulation should run and it will show you my plan on the chosen map.

Special Thanks

goes to my best friend, Motaz, for making me enter this competition :)