Now that you know what news is, you know what this page has lots of... news!

Yawza, the FORUM is back! Not that anybody has missed it.

There was a car accident right outside my house just now (yeah, only about 20 minutes ago!) (around 11pm on September 27th, 1999) From what I could tell, nobody got seriously hurt, but I could hear somebody crying down there...

I was never in a position of the guy who "saw it all" but with this accident, I did! At first, I head the brakes of a car raving, then, a laud "bang." The car you see in the picture was hit from behind (it ended up in it's position because of the force). (I got a good view out of my window; and now, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, so did you...)

Don't you just love these incredible images? Anyway... I've talked to the Computer and Information Science department chairman at Brooklyn College, and it seems like I'll be teaching Compiler Construction class (CIS 29) in Spring 2000! So, if you really want to learn how to write a compiler, then register (it's a Monday evening class)!

I plan on covering the basics of language theory (including finite automata, context free grammars & different ways of parsing them), introduce Lex and Yacc, quickly implement some simple assembly language (to illustrate the features of Lex & Yacc), and then spend the rest of the semester developing a compiler which will translate C like language into that custom assembly (Oh, there will also be a simple virtual machine to go with the assembly language ;-)

The funny thing is that I wanted to teach such a class for a really really long time...

Went for a walk around Manhattan today, only started in Brooklyn! The trip from J Street in Brooklyn, to 34th Street in Manhattan only took 2 hours (at a relatively slow walking speed). This is the first time that I actually ventured out to explore the city without any other thing on my mind.

The picture of Brooklyn Bridge is one of hundreds I took while there. Most of them came out pretty bad, but this one looks amazing (in my humble opinion).

While walking my dog in the park, came across some of the hurricane FLOYD's damage. This is the worst looking thing I could find (an old broken twig)! It's a wonder it didn't kill anybody on it's way down! Seriously, this has been the most over-hyped weather event I've ever seen! I even went outside to get coffee DURING the supposed worst time of the hurricane, and no, I didn't see cows flying by, roofs of houses breaking off, and people drowning in floods. It was a total joke for the New York area, yet the media made it seem like the worst storm of the century. (but then again, I didn't get my basement flooded like some people I know...)

In other news, the Chess Game got updated. So, head over to the chess page to grab the latest version.

Today was the day I said bye to my ISP. Now, I'm totally on my own. Using whatever means necessary to get on the Internet. Got a yahoo e-mail, and pretty much everything that's free. From now on, I'm not going to pay for crappy service. I am still planning on paying for high speed service though, but that's months away.

Also re-installed everything (yes, again). After the last update, I went and installed Linux. Then, thinking I could access my NTFS partition, I tried accessing it. (and apparently, it didn't work). Anyway, I ended up erasing my NTFS partition, which pretty much holds the entire computer together (my Win95 is a bare system, with nothing but the OS). Right now, I'm at the configuration that I wanted. Win95, WinNT, Linux, all on separate partitions.

We had a little hurricane here... named FLOYD. Anyway, after seeing it's "power" I can't really say I'm impressed. Frankly, I don't even know what all the fuss is about. Everybody went home early today, etc., but the weather is more or less average. Maybe everybody just wanted to go home at 12pm, and not work... I also enjoyed a day of closed college.

Haven't really been programming lately (at least not for myself). Can hardly find time to do very basic things ... like watch TV. Doing a lot of homeworks, and reading a lot of books (most of which are very boring). Other than that, nothing is new.

Went to see the 13th Warrior; nice movie, with enough weird fighting for who knows what cause to satisfy nearly all.

Also created a GECCTT section. GECCTT is a game my friend is working on, and I have no idea what it stands for. Well, I got the GECCT figured out, but still don't know what the last T stands for. See if you can help me out...

Created a FORUM for this web-site, so, if you have anything to say that you'd like the world to know, just do it here!

Since I'm taking a Java class this semester (yeah, really!, no joke!) I have convinced the instructor to put a link on the class page to my Java Data Structures document. The FORUM is a nice place to ask me class related questions (i.e.: tips on homeworks).

In relation to that, made a small but interesting program to do the impossible. The program, will access, and change a private member of a class, but not just any class, but the java.lang.String class. An object which is supposedly immutable. It also does it inside a method, making it a bit more interesting.

Bought two new books today. One is a repository of C/C++ code (with explanations, etc.), the other is Digital Typography by Donald E. Knuth. Both of them look very useful, and I intend to read them as soon as I find some free time (which has been a problem lately).

Came up with a cool new way of generating permutations. I haven't seen this method in any of the books yet, so it might as well be new.

Took a ton of pictures recently, unfortunately didn't even have time to copy them onto my computer. On a related note, saw a 333Mhz Celeron machine for $399 (monitor & 40x CD-ROM, 4 gig HD included!) Even though this machine sounds soo crappy, it's still MUCH better than the one I use everyday (Pentium 100).

The counter on this page is also going high... it's about to reach 400k! That's over three years of visitors! Not a big event, since I never pay much attention to the counter anyway.

School started. Met many old friends, made a few new friends, and generally enjoying every minute I'm there. The classes are nice & enjoyable, and everything seems to fit my expectation of a "senior year" deal.

Designed a distributed chat system to be used in my document on distributed computing (which I already started to write ;-). The design works on paper, but I have yet to implement it. Then, if it works, I'll re-implement the design using CORBA, RMI, DCOM, and maybe plain networking to illustrate the concepts behind distributed applications.

Already got a new book for one of my classes. Simulation, 2nd Edition, by Sheldon M. Ross. Started reading it in a train on the way home, and so far, it seems clear enough. Will probably get a lot more books next time.

Since I'm taking a Java class this semester (yeah, really!, no joke!) I have convinced the instructor to put a link on the class page to my Java Data Structures document.

In relation to that, made a small but interesting program to do the impossible. The program, will access, and change a private member of a class, but not just any class, but the java.lang.String class. An object which is supposedly immutable. It also does it inside a method, making it a bit more interesting.

My newly installed Windows NT Server only crashes on rare occasions when I play Quake 2, other than that, it's rock solid. Definitely better than Windows 95/98!

Installed Windows NT Server on my home machine. So far, it looks pretty cool, and has only crashed on me once (while running Quake2). The system is much more stable (or at least it appears to be) than Windows 95. Come to think of it, I think it's even better than the Windows NT Workstation, which I used for years. From now on, I'm only going to use the Server version, I like it a lot!

Downloaded an evaluation version of OrbixWeb 3.1 Pro from Iona's website. It is the product we use at work, and in my opinion easier to use than any other CORBA implementation I've seen (which includes OrbixWeb, Visibroker, & Mico).

The JDK 1.2.2 is proving to be a disaster. It crashes nearly every time I try to do anything. Where is the speed and stability of JDK 1.0? Then again, I don't think anybody tests these things on Pentium 100's (the machine I have at home). Kind of like the situation we had at work, where a server with 256MB RAM ran out of memory; the solution is to move the server to a machine with 1GB of RAM (or figure out a way to avoid using all that memory).

In the near future, I plan to write an article on distributed computing, and how CORBA, RMI, DCOM and other technologies fit into the picture. Code examples will most definitely be in Java.

Went to see a movie: "Deep Blue Sea." Pretty interesting, given all the special effects, and such things. The story is a bit dumb, but well played. There is something about those movies with sharks that makes you wanna go for a swim...

Was a bit busy at work lately, so, some of you might have thought I was dead. I'm still checking e-mail, but not very often (and a lot of the times, I just erase it). I get like 50-100 junk e-mails a day, so, don't expect me to look for an e-mail which doesn't specifically say PARTICLE or something of that sort in the subject field. ALL e-mail which doesn't have my e-mail in it's "to" field will be erased! (a lot of those junk e-mail scripts don't set that field)

Got my first DVD player. Watched Bugs Life, and Frantic on DVD! So far, cannot say anything bad. I love it! The sound is incredible and the sharpness is definitely better than any VHS I've ever seen.

Reviving my nearly dead LEX project. I need a lex tool for my development, and instead of using the generic lex (or flex), I've decided to write my own. Instead of spiting out C code, it will produce DFA tables. You'll be able to use those from within any language, like Java. The whole thing will probably be written in Java, since that's what half of the code is written in at this point.

I've updated this news section today, but you can still view the OLD NEWS HERE!

Went to see a movie: "The Haunting." A bit spooky, but overall, pretty dumb. Has nice special effects though.

Started working on the next version of the word calculator [link above]. This next version will allow you to use huge numbers. Yes, you will be able to multiply trillions, and get some weirdo number back.

Still working on my SQL parser. Instead of trying to write a database, then a parser for it, I'll start the other way around.

Got several new books lately. One entitled "Lex & Yacc," and you all could guess what it's about. Another "Image Processing in Java," which proved to be quite useless, since I already knew most of the stuff [and actually finished reading that book in just a few hours].

The other and the most interesting book is: "Java Distributed Objects." When I got it, I thought it will be just another "how to write an applet" type of a book, but it is not about Java (well, mostly), but about Distributed Objects. I love the UML, CORBA, RMI, the design suggestions, and the cute sense of humor presented in the book. It is the only book which actually talks about the type of stuff I do at work!