Update: Unfortunately, I did not win. Thank you all for your support. I remained within spots from making it, but the top vote-getters really pulled away on the final day.
I've been nominated for the Hot Blogger Calendar. I've been noticing some hits from it, so I decided I should put up a picture of myself more prominently. You can vote for me here (search for RoboJenny) or here (the link may be easier to find my name since it'll be the only instance of "RoboJenny" on the page):
The Hottest Blogger Calendar is a response to other hottest blogger lists where the list was just chosen and not voted on. They plan on having a real photo shoot in NYC with make-up artists and professional photographers.
Commenting is obviously an important part of programming, but it is possible to take it too far. Too many comments can muddle the readability of code.
Overcommented Code
When I was a TA at Carnegie Mellon University, we always made code commenting worth 10 out of 100 points on a project. Students understood when they received no points for not commenting, but they would always complain when they were docked points for commenting too much. However, developers can take it to extremes when we do things like this:
/** * Counts the number of times char c shows up in String str */ public int countChar(char c, String str) { // intialize the count int count = 0;
// loops until end of string for (int i=0; i<str.length; i++) { // if character in string at position i is equal to c if (str.charAt(i) == c) { // increase count count++; } }
// returns the count return count; }
I find this to be harder to read than if the code had no comments at all:
/** * Counts the number of times char c shows up in String str */ public int countChar(char c, String str) { int count = 0;
for (int i=0; i<str.length; i++) { if (str.charAt(i) == c) { count++; } }
return count; }
I am in no way saying that code should not be commented. Instead, it should only be commented in situations where the comments are there for a reason, instead of being a copy of the line of code below it.
How to Know When to Comment
Situations that deserve comments:
Complicated nested loop structure - This is the textbook case and should be clear.
Assumptions - If you are coding or omitting a case because of an assumption or a "guaranteed" situation found earlier in the code (even in the same function), comment that you are making this assumption
Strange Requirements - Sometimes you have to code something in a strange way due to strange requirements. In this case, cite the requirement (document name, section, and page) in the comments so another coder coming back to this section won't think it looks weird and try to "fix" working code
A hack, fix, or exception for a specific bug or request - cite the bug number or the requester's name and date requested
TODOs/FIXMEs - There are many situations where a portion of code is left unfinished or hacked due to time constraints. It may be a case that you do not have to deal with yet but might in the future, or it may be a quick bug fix. In these cases leave a comment with a TODO or FIXME flag so it will be more likely someone will get back to it, and so another person working in the code looking for a bug may realize that it was something not implemented in the first place.
Commenting code is important, but it's also important that it's only used in certain situations. For example, writing javadocs for getters and setters on POJOs are unnecessary. If the API user cannot figure out what getName() and setName(String name) do, then I'm not really sure a comment would help them. Use comments for a purpose.
Back in my post about robot-themed weddings, I mentioned an R2-D2 cake. The cake was created by Mark Joseph Cakes, who get a lot of requests for this special cake. They were nice enough to allow one blogger to take pictures of the process. I reposted a summary of those pictures below, but go to the previous link to see all of the pictures.
Many layers of cake are made:
They are stacked:
The shape is carved:
Rice Krispie Treats are made:
And carved into legs:
Frosted:
Details added (not sure how myself. Food colored frosting? Candy?) and put together:
Many people have switched to AT&T as their cellphone provider since the iPhone came out. I have found that most of these people who switched did it just because they wanted an iPhone, and did not do any research and comparisons into AT&T plans and how they could save some money. What many people seem not to realize is that while they cannot get discounts on the iPhone itself, they can get discounts on their monthly plan with AT&T depending on what school you go to or what employer you work for.
If you already have an account with AT&T, you can enter your phone number and school or work e-mail address to start saving on your monthly bill. If getting a discount would help you make your decision to switch, you can just look-up what types of monthly savings you could get. I've heard people claim that the increase of the data plan from being $20/month to $30/month is the reason that they don't want to switch to the iPhone 3g. With some of these discounts, this could offset the difference from the data plans.
The amounts of the discounts vary. I have heard anything from 5-27%. I am going to be on a joint plan with my brother, who goes to Hopkins Med. JHU gives 10%, and my Fortune 500 employer gives me 8% savings. I have also heard that Radio Shack, CMU, and most schools give 15%. It works on the primary account on family plans, and on all individual plans, though I hear it doesn't work on voice and data for V1 but it does on both for 3G. Some can include accessory discounts (one example I saw had a 30% discount) and waived activation fees. From the AT&T site: "The charges to which your Service Discount applies are subject to the arrangement between your organization and AT&T. Typically, the Service Discount is applied to the Monthly Service Charge on most voice and data rate plans. Note: On FamilyTalk plans, only the Primary Line will receive the discount under eligible Agreements; additional Lines do not receive the Service Discount."
It doesn't matter if you're a new customer, or if you have been a customer of AT&T for years. If you discover that you can receive a discount, they will add it on (though it will only start counting from the day you add it). It might take a few months to show up, but they will retroactively give you the discount on the months after you added the discount information if they charged you with the full amount the first few months.
Good luck, and I hope that helps save some people some money!
It's my birthday! In honour of my special day, I'm giving some tips on alternative bouquets you can send to people on their special days (or when you mess up).
Cookies by Design
Maybe your special someone has a sweet tooth. Send them a cookie bouquet from Cookies by Design! When my man wasn't feeling well when I was out of town, I sent him one of these bouquets. I wanted monkey cookies (inside joke) but didn't see them on the website, so I called Cookies by Design. They were happy to make me monkey cookies for no extra charge, so I got a bouquet of monkeys with a center message cookie saying "Bounce Back Soon!". He loved it.
Fruit Flowers
When his birthday rolled around, I wanted to send him another cookie basket to his office, but he was on a diet. So I sent him a bouquet of Fruit Flowers instead! He loved these even more! All the fruit was really fresh and sweet, particularly the pineapples. He ended up sharing his bouquet with his coworkers, who had been eying it jealously since the time it arrived at his cube while he was away at a meeting.
Hope you enjoyed those tips and keep them in the back of your mind next time you want a creative way to send flowers to someone!
Earlier, I mentioned the Mojave experiment, where Microsoft pretended to be showing users the new upcoming Windows OS called "Mojave", but instead were showing them Vista.
Now it looks like Microsoft will reveal features Vista's successor during their "Professional Developers Conference (PDC) set to take place from October 26-29 and at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) scheduled for November 5-7". Currently called "Windows 7" and suspected to be code-named "Midori", little information has yet to be unveiled about the new operating system. It will probably come out in late 2009 or early 2010.
It seems to be a growing fad for hotels to have floors geared towards business women. What I didn't know, is that this is a rebranded trend from the 80s.
Millennium's Premier Hotel Time Square has a Women Travelers floor that is "designed to provide female travelers with a peace of mind and myriad of comforts to unwind and uplift. Accessible only with elevator key-card access, the seven-room Women Travelers Floor features thoughtful amenities including yoga mats; plush robes and slippers; straightening iron, curling iron, lighted make-up mirror, wash mitts and luxurious amenities from LATHER Spa in bathrooms; and women’s magazines in guest rooms."
Many of the hotels with these floors don't restrict the floors to only have women though. Some allow men to make reservations there as well, if they see a desire in paying up for these additional amenities. Personally for me, I would find the 24-hour fitness rooms to be the best part, since I'm an insomniac and like to work out between the hours of 1-4am. But that's just me.
A portion of the fireworks during the summer Olympics opening ceremony that were broadcast around the world was actually done with CGI. The 55 second segment of 3D computer imagery took almost a year to create. It was carefully done to replicate Beijing's smoggy sky and imitated the shakiness of a cameraman on a helicopter.
When questioned, the Beijing Olympic committee defended its choice by stating that the fireworks were too difficult to see in the thick smog of the city. They were able to control all broadcasts in the world because China regulated that only one company (Beijing Olympic Broadcasting) gets to control all of the Olympic footage. Their feed then goes out to everyone in the world who is broadcasting the event.
As impressive as the computer graphics may be, it scares me that China is controlling all the media footage in the world that's going out to every country broadcasting the Olympics. We already saw in V for Vendetta how things can be spun when the government controls the media. Theoretically, they could sneak in subliminal hypnotic messages to turn the world to do their bidding! Okay I'm just kidding but seriously though, I am a fan of freedom of the press.
In my last post, I talked about a useless iPhone application. Today, I'll talk about the ones I do like.
But first, a disclaimer. I still do not own an iPhone. My contract expires later this month, and I will be buying myself (and my little brother, who's broke in med school) an iPhone 3g. However, my boyfriend owns an iPhone. Often times in our apartment, he'll want to do work or play some game (currently PixelJunk Eden, so during those times I get to borrow the iPhone, buy whatever games I want, and keep myself entertained.
Trism
Trism is a game like Hexic or Bejeweled, but with the added component that you can tilt to decide which way things slide back into place. I have to say, I didn't quite understand all the aspects of the game through the tutorial, but I found a lot of non-cheat videos on YouTube like this one that explains what starwalking is that have helped me understand the game better. Either way, I found it addictive.
Crosswords My bf and I both enjoy doing crosswords. When we went to Spain at the beginning of the year, we had two crossword books with us and we kept fighting over which ones we were each allowed to do without the other person. Sundays often include lying on the couch together working on the Washington Post crossword together.
Having tried both, we prefer the interface on Crosswords even though 2 Acress includes the Washington Post crosswords. But there are more than enough puzzles that show up every day, that we don't even fight over doing them. Usually I go in, fill in all the answers I know (or "know" as the case may be, since I've put a lot of wrong answers down too), and later he goes in and fills in more of the puzzle. Afterwards, I go back and look at what I did wrong, and help him fill in some final details that I could only get after I saw some of his answers. It's been working out great. Also, you can work on multiple crosswords at once. Crosswords also includes a daily cryptic crossword, which I'm hoping to get into someday (Especially after a friend who was also at the Las Vegas NABC showed me how they work. I learned that the rules to cryptic crosswords are important to actually being able to fill one out. Hey, I'm normally a ignore-the-manual-and-just-try-the-game type of girl).
I'm sure after I own my own iPhone, I will discover new apps (I will definitely be acquiring Shazam) and post new reviews after I've used them enough, but these are the ones so far that I will definitely have to get for my own phone since I'm already addicted.
A few days ago, an iPhone application appeared in the app store called "I Am Rich" costing the max possible a developer could charge for the program: $999.99. Apparently 8 people have downloaded this application, which just displays a larger form of the picture above (though one review seems to imply that the downloader isn't actually rich).
The application has been pulled from the iPhone app store, but not before the developer had already earned $5,600 and Apple earned $2,400 from the app during its existence. However, this actually doesn't seem to be as much as the top selling apps are probably making based on the numbers from the 39th best selling app, which sells at just $5.99 a download.
Last month, I signed up for Mint.com. I have to admit, at first I was a little scared to sign up. You have to give it all the usernames and passwords of your financial accounts for it to be of any use. I was a little wary about doing that, so I did some research first. After seeing it being praised by TechCrunch, NY Times, and Washington Post, I felt a little better about it and took the plunge.
I gave Mint.com access to both my checking accounts, my savings account, my 401k, my account with a stock brokerage, two of my credit card accounts, and the knowledge that I currently haven't taken any loans. Boy, I'm glad I did.
Mint.com has been tremendously useful in tracking my finances. I can set-up warning when a transaction above a certain amount has occurred. It takes all my spendings across all my accounts and puts them into categories. It uses historical data to tell me how much I normally spend in a category, and how much I've spent so far this month. It was able to look up data from months before, so I was immediately able to take advantage of the historical trends from the first date I signed up. It depressingly shows how much debt I have compared to how much cash on hand I have (or depressing at least in my own scenario). I get weekly financial summaries that also help update me on my spendings even if I don't log onto their site.
In my month of using it, I have found Mint.com already to be a great tool to help me watch my money carefully. At once glance, I can see how much cash I have, how much debt I've accumulated, and how my investments are doing.
I admit, it seems very risky to give one site all the login information for all your financial accounts. If you don't feel up to taking the risk, then by all means, don't. But if you trust the Washington Post and the New York Times enough to take their word as I have, I'm sure you'll find Mint.com to be an amazing tool to help watch your finances.
I have had quite a few requests from both comments and e-mails for more personal posts about myself, so I have decided to try to do this on the first Monday of every month, including a Photo Booth picture. I'm sure these will come out awkward at first, but hopefully they'll get better.
July was a busy month for me. My bf had back surgery, I competed at bridge nationals in Las Vegas, and I went to Wildwood Beach Ultimate tournament (the biggest beach ultimate tournament in the world). On weekdays, I had ultimate games for two different teams, tennis lessons, an occasional softball game, and just going out to happy hours with friends.
I have to say, I've been pretty exhausted, emotionally and physically. I'm jealous of all my co-workers who have gone on various interesting vacations throughout the summer. Most summers, I have gone on trips out of the country. This year, I feel like my summer has barely started, having been injured myself in June and having been so busy throughout my July. I hope August will bring some relaxation and some leisure activities, as opposed to tournaments.
The new Harry Potter trailer came out this week. Sure, I'm excited for it, but I find the movies feeling stranger with all the kids outgrowing their character's ages. The trailer didn't even show a single one of the main Hogwarts students, leading me to believe my fear that they look completely too old for their parts now is correct.
For me, the most exciting trailer out right now is the Watchmen trailer. I am not as excited as true graphic novel fans, as I only started reading a few graphic novels in the past year, but Watchmen came as the highest recommended across the board and was therefore one of the first I read. But you don't have to be a graphics novel reader to enjoy this book. The storyline is so complex and interesting, it rivals the bestselling novels. In fact, it is so good, it is listed on TIME magazine's 100 top novels of all-time. That's right, novels, not just graphic novels. It is also #1 on Amazon's top selling books in Literature & Fiction.
The trend of recently released movies made from graphic novels include 300 and V for Vendetta (which I absolutely loved the movie of, but tried to read the graphic novel for and found it very different). It's looking like Watchmen should blow them all away. If you're someone who enjoys reading the book before watching the movie, I would definitely recommend picking up a copy of Watchmen before the movie comes out in March 2009.
Already read Watchmen and excited for the movie yourself? Did you know that Rorschach can be found in the 300 trailer? Another half a year to wait, but I'm already psyched.
I am a female computer science professional. I hold a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, with minors in Mathematical Science, Political Science, and Robotics.
came as the highest recommended across the board and was therefore one of the first I read. But you don't have to be a graphics novel reader to enjoy this book. The storyline is so complex and interesting, it rivals the bestselling novels. In fact, it is so good, it is listed on 
