Wow… what a weird feeling, I have a degree under my belt. Three years, many friends and a lot of hard work later! The degree itself was based on my father’s business Grogan Burner Services, and trying to solve a real world problem of using Excel spreadsheets. We used Python, Google App Engine and a lot of Javascript to create a modern, sleek Customer Relationship Management system. All the code is open source, under GPLv3. Our thesis, including code is available below for those interested. We got top honours for the submission in ITB.

I usually listen to podcasts on the excellent Twit.tv network and it goes without saying Floss Weekly is one of my favourites. A recent episode covered Haiku - an open source operating system based on the design of the old BeOS. What’s very interesting about BeOS is the design, an integrated all in one operating system - and the fact Apple almost purchased it. That’s amazing to me, literally in one fell swoop, if Apple had of offered the 200 million Be Systems wanted, there would be no NextStep into Apple and by extension - Steve Jobs. It’s especially poignant since Apple just surpassed Microsoft to become the second most valuable American company.

I’ve written about my desire for open web video before, and now it looks as if it’s finally going to happen. Lead by Google’s acquisition of On2 technologies, the VP8 codec has been renamed as “WebM” and open sourced. Vorbis will be the audio. Matroska the container for the new format. An Open Source developer for x264 does a great teardown of the format vs. h.264 here. The patent minefield stateside is still not clear by any means, but with a strong backer like Google, it’s probably the best protection your going to get. Announcements, including links to nightlies, dev and beta channel browsers with WebM support are below:<

I recently purchased - known as a cult motorbike - a Honda BROS (known in the US as a HawkGT). It is a 400cc V-Twin 1991 model, with 33BHP / 24.6Kw out of the factory. That put’s it under the legal limit for a learner motorcycle in the A category of license in Ireland. I’ve been progressing through bikes, slowly gaining confidence and experience. I posted about my Yamaha YQ50, My Yamaha YP125 (Majesty) and now it’s a Honda BROS’ turn!

This is a 3rd Graphics project we presented as a group for Computer Science. I’d like to thank Mark and James, my team members, for all their hard work! The subject of Bauhaus was previously discussed in my graphical representation of a 3D chess set. The music is courtesy of Jamendo, and is free ;) Enjoy it the video!

Update: Also noticed Mark has a nice post on it also

I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for a while, probably since 2006. (Almost) everyone that I know of donates to charity on a regular enough basis. I’m a college student so I don’t donate as much as I should. But it really annoys me how the “main” charities run a campaign of guilt and spend millions on it. I’ve donated money to all of these charities, the third world aid charities. All of them spend far too much on paying people commission and advertising. One that I can think of off hand is asking people who donated more than €250 to sign a form and send it back.

One of our projects this semester is to make a Bauhaus Chess set in a program called 3DS Max (created by Autodesk). 3DS Max is a modeling and animation tool built specifically for creating 3D representations and models. Being a lover of Open Source, when we we’re told although Blender was considered, it fell a bit short for some reason, so we had to use 3DS Max.

3DS Max is not bad to use, some of the tools are nice if your not an arty type (like me) and prefer more technical and structured things. Some of the effects (like glass and water) give a really nice effect to add to the model your designing. Also as part of the project we had to have an accompanying website, which you can view at bark4mark.com/bauhaus

One topic that rarely gets coverage that I’ve seen is how women get along in male dominated environments, such as Computer Science. For me it has never mattered someone’s gender - I love using, tweaking and learning about computers and if you share that interest - the more, the better! It has been shown very young children are conditioned from a very young age by gender rules - shown by Prof. Robert Winston in Child of Our Time programme. So I’ve often wondered in a very skewed ratio of males to females (as generally there are more females than males in society) would affect a Woman’s choice of even considering Computer Science, since so few actually do. So I set about asking our class representative, Lauren Butler, her thoughts on Computers, doing Computer Science and being an authority figure in a male dominated class-room, my questions and her answers follow:

Some people make new years resolutions about eating healthier, exercising more etc. I find that boring, who doesn’t want to be healthier? So I am making a list of technology resolutions:

• Learn C in XCode on a Mac
• Make an awesome CRM program for College degree (Python, Google App Engine)
• Learn Vim and Emacs bindings, using them for code
• Learn to use Git, possibly mercurial
• Learn some Obj-C with Cocoa
• Learn some C++ with Qt
• Learn Python +Tcl/tk
• Learn more about the design of Linux kernel and study some of it’s code
• Do Sysadmin stuff on my server on Linode; like setting upSendmail,IRCServers and other stuff
• If I have time, investigate CakePHP, Django, maybe Ruby (on Rails?) and it’s ilk

That should keep me busy besides college and working! I didn’t include any security stuff, as we’re doing best practice for my honours degree next year. If anyone has any of their own, I’d love to see, or any resources to help me complete my list ^-^ Happy 2010!

Lesson learned: never leave a expensive. Take these pictures I shot after the dog attacked my motorcycle! I still love dogs as pets, they are man’s best friend and just like best friends they can screw up. The only thing I am most upset about now is the dog can’t pay for the repairs… Forgive and forget Fritzie? Thats a girl…

P.S. If anyone knows anyone thats in the seat repairing business, let me know! I can find almost any other part for my Yamaha YP125 other than a seat, grrrr