Sonja and I had an anniversary of some sort last week and we went to a restaurant that was recommended to us, the Mt. Hamilton Grandview Restaurant. The picture was taken with my little cell phone while we were dining. The sunset was very nice, and it was very cool to see darkness overtake the valley and bring out all the lights. That's where the romance ended. Don't get me wrong, Sonja and I still had a good time and we were fine and enjoyed each other.
The restaurant itself didn't really ooze romance, unless you are into 60's or 70's style dark brown wood paneling on the wall, flowery carpets and a somewhat dull interior decoration. The food was average, edible, not bad but not so good that I definitely want to come back. The views (especially around sunset) make up for a lot of shortcomings, just don't go there and expect romance to greet you at the door.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Soccer Fever
Whoever reads this probably knows that the greatest sports tournament in the world is currently under way. Yeah baby, I am talking about Soccer World Cup, or Fußballweltmeisterschaft as we say in German. I overheard somehwere that an estimated 1.2 billion people watched the opening game of this World Cup between Germany and Costa Rica. For the final game an estimated 1.5 billion people will watch this event. It is truly the World's sport. Don't get me wrong, I like all kinds of sports but having played soccer my entire childhood in Germany and a few years after that, it truly is Germanys pastime. I have been watching games at home and at work (thanks to Yahoo for the nice big screens in the cafeteria) or been following them online. Yeah, my productivity suffers a little but once every 4 years you get to see the world's best soccer players in one tournament and it's just terrific. I wish I could be in Germany right now, my friends tell me that all of Germany is going uts and with every win of our national team, people will get more insane. I am hoping for a rematch of the last World Cup finals, between Germany and Brazil. This time though, Germany will be on top. And for someone like me who loves soccer to see your home team win is really, really cool. Germany has won 1954, 1974 and 1990. I wasn't born back in '54 and I was only 3 years old in '74 but I still remember watching the finals in Italy when Germany beat Argentina 1-0 in 1990. It wasn't a good game but winning the title pushed all of Germany into delirium for one night. Anyone who has ever played in a championship game on any level knows that it's a special feeling when you come out as the winner. I am hoping for something like it again. Let's see what happens. In the meantime I will keep wearing my red Germany jersey when they are playing. So far they are undefeated when I am wearing it and I have been saving it for almost a year for this world cup ... If that isn't helping I don't know what can.
Why comments in code are useful ...
Everyone who is a programmer knows that good coding isn't just writing code that has very few problems, is efficient, does what it's supposed to, requires little maintenance and is easily extensible. This means that it is not just about using correct syntax and the latest and greatest algorithms and implementing them correctly. It is about telling oneself and others why something was implemented a certain way. Yeah, you may already guess it and you are right. I am talking about comments in code. I know, I know, you may say: "I bet Joerg has sometimes delivered less than perfectly commented code". And you are right, but I try to always do it when appropriate. Hell, I don't need someone to tell me something like this:
That's dumb, don't state the obvious. But when you chose a certain algorithm or use something that is non-standard, write a line or two about it and add documentation so that people that will have to pick up your code know what the hell you were thinking. Why am I writing about this? Well, I am currently working on a project that is about integrating something cool and new into an older codebase. And this includes using code others have written. It's amazing when you trying to code towards certain APIs what kind of surprises you sometimes see. And you don't see them by reading the code, you learn through painful and time-consuming debugging. Here is an example. Consider the case where you have larger buffer and you have to mark certain regions in the buffer to identify subsections. One way to do this would be through a struct like this:
Now, for me, the intuitive thing would be to assume that start denotes the byte offset of the first byte of the section and end would denote the offset of last byte of the section. Well, I came across some code where end pointed to the first byte after the section. Why? Well, no comment or anything in the code. Thankfully, the programmer was still there and I could ask. And even though he had a reason for doing so (he wanted to be able to express section of length zero [don't ask me why], and ...well...laziness), a comment would have avoided a bunch of confusion. Even better, don't name it end but length and there is no ambiguity at all. What's even worse is that when I asked the programmer about it he did not know/remember why he did that. And this is where useful comments come in again. They are not just good for others, they help you as well. And believe it or not, the code that you write will be seen by more people than you might think. So use smart comments but don't litter the code, nobody wants to read source code files that are 4000 lines or longer. This is another one of these things that people shouldn't do but I will leave that to another post.
void incrFunc( int& i ){
i++; // adding one to i
}
That's dumb, don't state the obvious. But when you chose a certain algorithm or use something that is non-standard, write a line or two about it and add documentation so that people that will have to pick up your code know what the hell you were thinking. Why am I writing about this? Well, I am currently working on a project that is about integrating something cool and new into an older codebase. And this includes using code others have written. It's amazing when you trying to code towards certain APIs what kind of surprises you sometimes see. And you don't see them by reading the code, you learn through painful and time-consuming debugging. Here is an example. Consider the case where you have larger buffer and you have to mark certain regions in the buffer to identify subsections. One way to do this would be through a struct like this:
struct section {
int start;
int end;
};
Now, for me, the intuitive thing would be to assume that start denotes the byte offset of the first byte of the section and end would denote the offset of last byte of the section. Well, I came across some code where end pointed to the first byte after the section. Why? Well, no comment or anything in the code. Thankfully, the programmer was still there and I could ask. And even though he had a reason for doing so (he wanted to be able to express section of length zero [don't ask me why], and ...well...laziness), a comment would have avoided a bunch of confusion. Even better, don't name it end but length and there is no ambiguity at all. What's even worse is that when I asked the programmer about it he did not know/remember why he did that. And this is where useful comments come in again. They are not just good for others, they help you as well. And believe it or not, the code that you write will be seen by more people than you might think. So use smart comments but don't litter the code, nobody wants to read source code files that are 4000 lines or longer. This is another one of these things that people shouldn't do but I will leave that to another post.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Commuting ... Take Two
I have already written about the things you may or may not encounter on the road when commuting. Reading all the things that there are to find on a car are a whole other story. There is stickers of course, customized license plate numbers and the oh so useful license plate frames. Personally, I hate the personalized license plate numbers. Some people go to a lot of extremes making something out of nothing. Sometimes, it's pretty easy to figure out and sometimes it makes no sense whatsoever. I wish people would stop this all together. Why do you have to have "MY BMW" on the license plate of a BMW? Isn't it obvious? And who cares whether the driver or the bank owns it?
An even dumber thing is what you can find written on license plate frames. Here is a prime example of stupidity: "My other car is an airplane" (Found on an Acura SUV)
Let's start with the obvious. An airplane isn't a car. I made sure to check on Wikipedia and I am certain that any other online encyclopedia would tell the same. Next problem with it is: "Who the hell cares?" I think it's perfectly fine to put stickers on your car or even have something that's funny. Whatever it is, just make sure it makes sense. So whoever you are, airplane dummy, if you read this, take off the license plate frames or fly your darn airplane so we don't have to see your stupid license plate frames. On the other hand you would probably drive your airplane. Whatever it is, just stay off the road because whoever puts stupid stuff like that on his car will probably do more harm.
An even dumber thing is what you can find written on license plate frames. Here is a prime example of stupidity: "My other car is an airplane" (Found on an Acura SUV)
Let's start with the obvious. An airplane isn't a car. I made sure to check on Wikipedia and I am certain that any other online encyclopedia would tell the same. Next problem with it is: "Who the hell cares?" I think it's perfectly fine to put stickers on your car or even have something that's funny. Whatever it is, just make sure it makes sense. So whoever you are, airplane dummy, if you read this, take off the license plate frames or fly your darn airplane so we don't have to see your stupid license plate frames. On the other hand you would probably drive your airplane. Whatever it is, just stay off the road because whoever puts stupid stuff like that on his car will probably do more harm.
My commute ... Now, I have seen it all.
I am commuting to work by car. That's really no surprise when you live in the Bay area which (aside from when you live to close to Bart or within San Francisco) does not have a good public transportation system. That's beside the point in this post as this time I am writing about the interesting, not so interesting, scary and sometimes even disgusting things you see when you spend a fair amount of time in traffic and at stoplights. In the morning there is the numerous women who put on make-up while driving their big SUV swerving left and right. I wonder how many eye injuries there are per year caused by putting on make-up in the car. Some guys are not that much better, shaving while driving, half looking at the traffic in front of them, half looking in the mirror to check whether they've missed a spot. Thankfully, I have yet to see someone who does not use an electric shaver. I have even seen a guy brush his teeth in the car and spit the foam out the window.
Then there is the people picking their nose. I know, it's not nice but I think everyone at one point has picked his/her nose. What seems wrong to me though is that some people just don't seem to be bothered when you actually see them doing it. Even worse, they have no problem inspecting their finds. Where do they end up? I leave that to your imagination. Seriously, I could do with out these people.
When commuting in stop-and-go traffic you also can't help but looking at the people in the cars beside you or just look at the cars themselves. My favorites are the Japanese sports cars with these insane rear spoilers. You really need them badly when you are going down San Tomas Expressway in San Jose with approximately 12.5mph.
My favorite so far has been the old guy reading porn while stopped at traffic lights. One day I ended up driving right along side this old guy in his old Honda Civic. After we have come to a stop at an intersection, he pulls out a magazine puts it on his steering wheel and turns out it was a Playboy magazine. Very nice! Two stoplights later I am right next to him again and same procedure. A few pages further into it or so it seemed but he did not even bother putting it on the passenger seat. He simply did not care or was he just being very good and wanting to share his magazine. Who knows, haven't seen him again which is said because I as curious about the next playboy issue.
What's the moral of all this? No moral here but keep your eyes open when commuting, there is definitely interesting and weird stuff going on. Or simply close them to get spared the nose picking and other disgusting habits ... But wait, you are in traffic, better keep those eyes open...
Then there is the people picking their nose. I know, it's not nice but I think everyone at one point has picked his/her nose. What seems wrong to me though is that some people just don't seem to be bothered when you actually see them doing it. Even worse, they have no problem inspecting their finds. Where do they end up? I leave that to your imagination. Seriously, I could do with out these people.
When commuting in stop-and-go traffic you also can't help but looking at the people in the cars beside you or just look at the cars themselves. My favorites are the Japanese sports cars with these insane rear spoilers. You really need them badly when you are going down San Tomas Expressway in San Jose with approximately 12.5mph.
My favorite so far has been the old guy reading porn while stopped at traffic lights. One day I ended up driving right along side this old guy in his old Honda Civic. After we have come to a stop at an intersection, he pulls out a magazine puts it on his steering wheel and turns out it was a Playboy magazine. Very nice! Two stoplights later I am right next to him again and same procedure. A few pages further into it or so it seemed but he did not even bother putting it on the passenger seat. He simply did not care or was he just being very good and wanting to share his magazine. Who knows, haven't seen him again which is said because I as curious about the next playboy issue.
What's the moral of all this? No moral here but keep your eyes open when commuting, there is definitely interesting and weird stuff going on. Or simply close them to get spared the nose picking and other disgusting habits ... But wait, you are in traffic, better keep those eyes open...
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
PhD struggle
So here I am, done with all classes with one thing left to do. Write my PhD thesis. But first things first. I sort of have to know what I want to write about. And that's where the struggle starts. There is a lot interesting thiings to work on in the area of Search and Indexing, and there is a lot of things that are of interest to me. The only problem is that when working full-time, it is very hard to do something that lies completely outside your line of work. It is always better to be able to combine what you are doing at work with your thesis topic. And that's the challenge. Additionally, there is the challenge of keeping the thesis work in the foreground. The way it goes right now for me, that work is always the first thing to be pushed back and that I need to change. There is ways though to buy myself more time ... ;-). Check out the image below which is hosted at www.phdcomics.com:
"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com
Monday, May 15, 2006
Less than 1 month from now ...
... the greatest sports tournament in the World will kick off with the opening match between Germany and Costa Rica. Of course, I am talking about Soccer World Cup 2006, held in Germany from June 9th until July 9th. If you have never watched a soccer world cup, do it this year. And don't get discouraged by a few low scoring games in the preliminary rounds where there are groups of four teams playing each other once. The best two team of each group advance to the next round, which is knock-out playoff style. That's where the fun begins. Give it a try. I am excited and can't wait for it to start.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Go Sharks, Baby!!!
It's hockey playoff time. Today, my buddy Chris and I went to see the first game of the Western Conference Semifinals between the San Jose Sharks and the Edmonton Oilers. The Sharks won 2:1 on a goal by Patrick Marleau and the game winner (a rocket of a shot) by Christian Ehrhoff. Playoff games are so much fun, let's hope the Sharks make it to the next round ... We had a really good time, and beers were only $7.50 for the good stuff ...
Friday, April 28, 2006
A night at the ballpark
My buddy Dan and I went to the ballpark in San Francisco last night. Giants 10, Arizona 2. Was a good game, a local guy from Los Gatos, Kevin Frandsen, had three hits in his first Major league game ever. Pretty cool. Only downer of the night were the beer prices. $8 for one beer is simply ridiculous. But we had "the best kosher hot dog", according to the vendor. I'd say it was at most average ... ;-)
Who would have thought ...
... that Linux is evil. If you read this you may be tempted to believe this. Of course it isn't and part of me wants to believe that the person who wrote that was just trying to make fun of the whole thing but more likely, the author meant every word. What's even more tragic is that he/she also believed that crap and that there is a even more people out there that will do the same. This is utter garbage, half facts, wrong facts and of course the bible and God are mentioned. Scary ... Read it and let me know what you think. Sometimes you wish the internet was less open ... so that not everyone could post their crap but I guess we will have to live with it.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Patent Stuff
While I was at IBM, part of the job of any research employee was to create intellectual property. Over the course of the 7+ years I was there I submitted roughly 10 or so patent applications. When I returned from my last vacation, my buddy Jan gave me a frame from IBM commemorating my first issued patent, 3 and a half years after it was filed with the US patent office. This is pretty cool. The patent itslef was a collaboration of a few people related to my old project, WebFountain. Pretty cool.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
flood waters
The two pictures show the water levels of the river "Elbe" in my parent's hometown. It was at 8 meters and 30 centimeters, already down 40cm from the highest level this season. Normal water levels are around 5 meters. For the Americans among you, this is a difference of almost 10 feet. So far the levees have held steady.
nice rainbow
We took this picture while in Germany, watching the river Elbe flow by. Teh water levels were pretty high. It was raining and the sun was shining and we caught this nice rainbow. In case you are wondering where this is in Germany. The city in the background is Lauenburg which is roughly 30 miles upstream from Hamburg. The side of the river we were standing on is the small village of Hohnstorf, where I grew up.
Digital SLR ...
After hearing Sonja complain about the response time of our digital camera (canon powershot) for too many times I decided to treat her for her birthday and get her a better camera. I opted for the Canon EOS Rebel XT Digital SLR. Since we had a Canon SLR before and two lenses, all we had to get was a body. And man, it is nice. it has 8 MegaPixels and it behaves like any SLR camera. We really liked out own traditional SLR camera but in the times of digital photography who has the time to get their films developed. Really annoying. So I went and ordered one and Sonja really likes it. Me too ;-)
Our vacation so far ...
So here we are in Germany, ready for a relaxed time and it turns out that relaxing will be the last thing we will do for quite some time. Now, we weren't quite hoping for spectacular weather so we were fine with the rain but we weren't quite prepared for the nasty stomach virus that hit us after three days. To recap, instead of hanging out and enjoying my Mom's good food, we spent our time in bathrooms, doctor's offices, sleeping, vegetating and feeling miserable. On top of that we got my brother, his wife and their little son Frode (15 months) sick as well. Our little guy Jonas (13 months) took the worst hit, he had to spend two nights in the hospital due to dehydration. the whole things was not a pretty sight. Slowly though, we are getting back on our feet and the kids are starting to smile again. On top of that, my vacation will be over in two days when I have to head back to the U.S., Sonja and the boys will stay a little while longer. I just hope that the remainder of their vacation will feel like one. Big thanks to my parents who have been nurturing all of us through these very sucky last seven days. Although it wasn't quite the vacation one had hoped for, it was still great to see the family. I just need to figure out where to find the time to recover from this vacation ... ;-)
Saturday, April 15, 2006
where we are staying
The house in the picture is the place where we are staying most of the time in Germany. My brother Axel and our parents built this house about 3years ago. The interesting part about this house is that it is partially built with a wood frame recovered from a farm building built in 1879, which was still in very good condition and gives the new house an antique look and feel. Inside it is state of the art construction though. Very cool. Flight to Germany was ok, with its ups and downs that travelling with small children brings. At least our kids weren't the noisiest and most annoying on the plane. ;-)
Weather has been great today. Warm (by northern German standards) and sunny. First day and a half were kind of shitty, same as in California, or so I hear. More later.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Visiting Family
It's time again, we are going to pack up some stuff, grab the boys by their ears (not really, but it sounds good) and hop on a plane to Germany. Visit the parents/grandparents and not cook, clean or do anything remotely strenuous for a few weeks. Well, except for the flight that is. Sitting for 13 hours in a confined space with a three year old (Ben) and a one year old (Jonas) will be no walk in the park. Sonja and I are trying to be as prepared as possible to keep the boys happy and entertained. Wish us luck and may the temper tantrums be rare. Germany is going to be great, there is floods everywhere, the bird flu has struck already and the weather forecast doesn't look to exciting either. But hey, neither it is here in CA right now. Why are we going then? Because it's family and living 6000 miles away from your parents makes you want to go, regardless of weather. We are excited. Alright then, off to packing.
Drive-Through Ordering over the internet ... Simply ridiculous
Now, even McDonalds is outsourcing ... According to this article McDonalds is experimenting with a system that frees individual McDonalds restaurants from having a person take the orders locally. Instead an order outside the restaurant will be routed over the internet to a call center. I can't imagine a job in a call center anyway let alone taking orders for super-dollar menus and chicken mcnuggets or whatever they are called over the phone. Makes you wonder though what's next, that you will actually call someone in India when you are using a drive through ? Or that FedEx or UPS will actually deliver the burger from the restaurant to your car? This is crazy.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Firefox market share ...
I just looked at a web page that reports web browser market share. Assuming those numbers resemble reality, Only Firefox and Safari are gaining market share while Internet Explorer is losing market share. How long 'until Firefox will catch IE. Well, pretty simple. Over the last 12 months, IE has been losing roughly .27% market share. Assuming this trend continues and that all of IE's losses will go mostly to Firefox, it will only take approximately 136 months (that's 11 years and 4 months) for Firefox to get equal market share ... Something to look forward to. Why am I worried about browsers? Well, I am working on some frontend stuff (PHP, JavaScript, DHTML) and it's still a pain in the butt to make things look equally great in all kinds of browsers.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Smoking laws ...
Heard a piece on the radio this morning on my way to work. It was about laws that prevent people from smoking and whether the regulators/law makers are going too far by banning smoking outside (e.g., in parks or on beaches). This was then followed by the usual slew of phone calls for and against. While I am generally against anymore laws (I think there are enough laws already), I think it is always a good idea to protect people's health and the environment. I welcome the smoke free indoors in California, because I am a non-smoker, and I have no problem with people smoking outside in front of the buildings. If the smoke bothers me too much I can go around them. What is wrong though is the way many (not all, but many) smokers deal with the remains of the cigarette when they are done smoking. They simply toss the cigarette butt to the floor and step on it to make sure the concrete does not catch on fire ... and there we go. The next rain washes that waste into all the places you don't want it. (I encourage everyone to read this piece on toxicity and environmental impact of cigarette butts litter). It always amazes me how many people just toss their cigarette butts out of their car while driving. Which makes me wonder whether all these cars don't come with an ashtray. I bet they all have one but many smokers seem to think: "It's only a tiny cigarette butt". They are wrong and they should be prevented from tossing their crap into the street. Whenever I see something like it it makes me want to take my trash and dump it into their car or house. I bet you a million bucks that not a single one of these smokers would appreciate it. So if you smoke, be responsible and clean up after yourself. You are already ruining your health, don't ruin the environment more than necessary.
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