Cold Water Diving

Up until I experienced a cold water dive, I was always thinking about Ice Diving -being the nut head that I am-. Yesterday we went out for a fun dive to a 15meter depth site. Waters in the sea were getting way too rough. We're talking 5 feet plus. The boat was rocking and there was just no way for us to gear up and jump in that site.

So we decided to change the location to a less rough area with a 6-7 meter depth. The scary part wasn't the rough waves... On the contrary I love a bit of adventure. The scary part was that first contact with the water knowing the temperature was 19c!!!

With the think suite (at least I thought) I was wearing I made a jump into the water and my god it was cold! With 5 divers in the water and 20 minutes into the dive 3 of us went up, because you consume lots of air in cold water and you do loose energy. I hadn't known until I tried it.

With two of us left underwater, we decided to challenge our limits and continue until our air was out or the time was up. Fortunately, our air went out and we managed a 45 minute dive in cold water. The experience was amazing because it got me shivering in the last 10 minutes. I had to continue the dive to know my limit plus understand the suit I was wearing.

When I got out of the water, everything was warm in comparision to 6 meter down there. I was happy to have tried something different and yet even happier to have understood my limitations.

Engaged

Finally, I have decided to call it a day on being single and got engaged last Sunday the 10th of December 2006.

I guess no more switch the PC on and play Company of Heros for 6 hours...
No more watching episodes for 5 hours a day...
No more sleep whenever you want and wake up whenever you want...
No more too much free time...
No more Single...

But, I don't mind giving all this up. Life has to be different.

Attitude quote

I have always been fond of wisdom and totally love quotes. To me, quotes act as switches that turn things on and off. Sometimes I know I have silly habits that need changing but I unconsciously apply them. Simplest example is getting angry and losing temper when in a hot argument. Every time this happens I revise myself and swear that this will not happen again. But I guess it's a silly habit, so it does!

While I was browsing I remembered the nice and long chat with BuZain about attitude and being positive and found this quote that I liked about attitude:

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Herm Albright (1876 - 1944)

Performance Race Never Stops...

Since I bouhgt my Nvidia GeForce 6800 I have been enjoying great gaming experience since my graphics performs nicely and I can enjoy the sweet gaming hours without getting annoyed by flickering and performance issues.

However, I hunger for more! I have been checking on graphics cards every once in a while and I found that our friends in Nvidia have released the GeFoce 8800! So, I read Gamespot's review and checked Nvidia's site. As usual the results are always stunning. We have better and better graphics cards. But, who can keep up?

Nvidia's Site with all the demos and review
http://www.nvidia.com/object/reality_redefined.html

Gamespot's site with performance test results
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6161267/index.html?tag=features;title;0

Office 2007 and BI

Lately I have been getting my hands abit dirty with Office 2007. Nothing done so far but I am trying to investigate the BI capabilities of Excel 2007 especially after seeing all the scorecarding and dashboaring presentational capabilities. Obviously I need to combine Analysis Server 2005 skills too -which I'm still picking up - with what Office 2007 has to offer.

however I also stumbled upon Business Object's Xcelcius (http://www.xcelsius.com/) which an amazing flash generating Dashboard component that you can simply hook to any data source to come up with a neat dashboard. I liked the what-if analysis and the simplicity in hooking it up to excel sheets. The video presentation and the demos gave a good picture about the power behind it.

I'll probably post some screen shots of whatever I acheive in my next blog, so the next post has already been planned. For now, it's the weekend and there is lots and lots of the premier league...

Attitude Revision

Everytime I login to the blog scene, I stare at my screen and wonder what I could brag on about. But thanks to the very interesting blogs I have been reading recently; I get the picute. It's simple, map what's in the brain to the fingers and let them do the rest. Just write; Actually just type.

I wouldn't describe myself as a very experienced person, nor have I got much exposure to other organisational cultures and I certainly have not worked in a multinational environment. But I think I understand company politics better than before. Especially what is refered to as management!

It's really simple to blame your manager for some of the actions they take which may seem personal and then develop that rebelious attitude which harms both the organisation and yourself. We all know that lovely courses in Europe are so important that if a manager does not attend, companies would collapse -oooooh-, and we also know that under-the-table deals will take place for personal benefits wether we like it or not and so on. You can't help these things, they happen. Everyone will get a slap of some sorts every once in a while. The question here is, how many slaps can you endure before you explode? Better yet, can you stop them from happening to you?

Okay, not getting angry is easier said than done -even while I'm trying to preach about this- but I started to belive that taking a pause, putting the anger aside for a tiny bit -don't forget it just control it-, thinking about things and looking at silly managerial decisions from another angle would give an alarm to a person's attitude; as in "alriiiiiiiiiiiight, if they play it this way then I'll start changing my atittude" feeling. Except, doing this in a negative way can be harmeful to all parties. So, one of the scenarios between me and myself in my head were:

me: "How come thay get to travel and find
any course they want and I don't?"

me: "They're screwing around with me,
aren't they?"

myselft: "Hey, me, can I tell you
something but promise me you won't get pissed"

me: "What?"

myself: "That last course you missed
is purely because you just didn't fight for it. And you weren't persitent enough
to take it from their throat. I think it was your fault really! Sorry, but it's
true"

me: "WHAT!!! It's my fault now? but
the manager... "

myself: "Oooh, shut up, you should
change that attitude. Chances don't land in your lap dear, you have to go out
there, fight for them and snatch them"

myselft: "Managers will piss you off
if you allow them to. Your attitude needs a good checkup"

And so, I realised that I should have control, not them. I'll make things positive but I will not let anything to luck. Managers certainly don't care if you're trained or not, they care about what their manager will give them at the end of the year. Therefore, if training you will improve their share, then they will fight for you. And while they're at it, they'll take any opportunities that pass by. They are not for sharing.

I guess almost everything in life is about one's attitude. Even if you fail, at least you tried your best. Never live life in anger.

My latest Night Dive

Since I started learning to dive, I do my best to be on every boat trip out in the sea. The experience is brilliant. Last night I went on a night dive. We started the dive at around 5:45 after having something to eat since it is Ramadhan.

In those two dives that I made last night I freaked out when I saw the size of this sting ray. It was peaceful and lying next to the wreck. You should have seen the size of this thing. And the tail?!!? The first thing that came into my mind was poor Steve Irwin.

There was a sea snake, the hidden crab and a cuddle fish ('7athag). Our kind friend Dan has posted a video of last night's dives at Dan's Point

Done with Lost but haven't found what I'm looking for

So, after a long and very entertaining Lost episodes, I finally got to the end of it...

...And in whatever time I had to spend over my machine in the last couple of days, I started to learn C#. Trust me people, it's not for the sake of the language itself; it's just that the XNA beta works only with C#. Yes, I have been tinkering here and there but haven't found what I'm looking for. You know that chemestry thing. But I'm optimistic; I'm sure if I keep on wondering around, something will come up and I'll get hooked up to it.

Lost

Well, I've been putting much of my very recent time into watching the full 2 seasons of Lost since everyone is talking about it and since the damn 1st season's disc one was rented out by my sister. The mistake was to actually sit down and start watching!!

I can't really add more to the hype and the blogging that's been going around about it but I must say it is certainly an interesting series and one that will get you addicted. The character setup is cool, the oblivious events and the totally strange stuff that come an go are even better - I am not going to ruin it by talking about it -.

So, the Genetics and AI stuff has been on a short hold until I can finish off the whole series and my Rescue Diving meterial -Almost there ;) -. Hopefully I would have time to get down to it this weekend since I found lots of interesting stuff about combining Genetics with Artificial Neural Networks and even more interesting by combining it with Fuzzy Logic. I really want to get good grasp on all these stuff to make a series and perhaps start a project.

Basic Genetics Algorithm

Finally, after two days of programming -I feel so good to be back at it- I wrote a basic Genetic Algorithm simulation. The algorithm aims to find a solution to a problem through natural selection of population members. This selection process can go on for generations to find a solution.

Actually, a solution may or may not be found which if anyone thinks about it; it's like humans eveolving. the chances of a flying human is quite silly since our genes cannot evolve towards that -at least that's what history has shown so far since humans came to this earth-. However, if no solution is found, you get a pretty close one. This is my first attempt at it and maybe I can tinker with the algorithm and its parameters to get better results.

The concept is really cool and neat, because a solution seems to evolve on its own after a while and suddenly the whole population is fit and close to the solution. Seeing this work is even better ;)

So, what the Algorithm here is trying to solve?

1. I pick a number which is my target solution (say 23) and I have number 0 to 9 and operators +,-,* and / all encoded as binary strings (those are the genes).
2. I pick the sequence ...etc at random depending on the length that I choose -always odd length- and then this is a cromosome or a member of the population.
3. After constructing the population, each cromosome has a fitness score. i.e how close it is at solving the problem.
4. Using a method called the rollette wheel, I mate every two chosen random members of the population and apply all the concepts of a genetic algorithim until I get a new population.
5. This procss is continued for a certain number of generations and hopefully a solution is found.

The algorithm solves problems untraditionally and its strength lies in the fact that it is almost impossible for anyone to do it manually -that would take years and years- and that -given its done right- a solution seems to evolve.

This was based on the tutorial I read by Mat Buckland at http://www.ai-junkie.com

Game Programming

Actually, I was thinking of putting down stuff about Game programming since I seem to fancy that subject alot. I love games and I love the technology behind them. The good news is, I am back reading on the subject after a loooooooong stop aiming at a focus on my IT career!!!! What a shame, I feel I lost some valuable time which I could have used to get educated on the subject. In any case, I also came to realise that there is alot of time to learn at work-about IT and the discipline- so I should continue and get something done in Games programming too. Who knows maybe build the next Command and Conquer!

The beginning

I have just created this blog for the sake of getting into the habbit of writing.