October 2005 Archives

It's funny how sometimes I have absolutely nothing to talk about at all and other times there are so many things on my mind that the sentences and words get all jumbled up so I don't even know where to start.  Today has been one of those days where there have been a million and a half things that I have thought, "hey! I would like to write a little bit about that."  Part of that probably has todo with the fact that I was reading the Communications of the ACM which always sparks ideas.  But also I think it was just one of those days.

Now that I have gone on and on about how many ideas I have and want to write about I'm afraid that you will probably be fairly disappointed because I am not really going to talk about any of them here.  The one thing that I do want to mention is that Ervin, the department director at my work wants to transfer me to the "Strategic Planning Group."  I'm not quite sure exactly what that will mean but I suspect that Ervin will become my manager instead of Tim so he will be in charge of giving me my reviews and ultimately the priority of my assignments.  I think that Ervin's intention for the group is to keep pace with the current state of technology in industry and to plan how those technological advances can be integrated into the things that we work on at Rincon or how they can benefit our research efforts.  All in all I think that could be a fairly interesting group to be a part of and I think it will probably have a fairly positive impact on my career.  I still get to work on my current project 75% of the time so I will gain valuable experiance from that and get to interact with very intelligent people; but I will also be able to maintain close ties too what is happening in the rest of the industry.  Aside from a bit of aprehension I am excited about the change. 

Today I spent most of the day in Sonoita, AZ with some friends hiking and eating good food.  It was a lot of fun and I got to meet some really cool people too.  It's so beautiful down there, I got some really great pictures.

I've uploaded the pictures from the trip to Sonoita to the gallery and I've also added several galleries of old pictures that I had.  Check them out in the gallery section of the site.

Enjoy!

P.S. I've also been working on the template for the gallery a bit, it's slowly getting better but I am still not satisfied with it. 

It's been awhile since I last posted here so I figured I'd at least post some recent thoughts.  Life hasn't been very exciting lately.  Not to say things have been boring, just not a whole lot to talk about.

I was supposed to have my wisdom teeth out next week, not fun.  But it turns out the whole deal is going to cost around $1200 and my insurance only covers up to $1000 till December 31st and then it gets bumped up to $1500 so I figured the extraction could wait for a couple of months.  I can't imagine that being a comfortable operation.

It's going to be a busy weekend.  My sister is turning 16 on Saturday which is way cool but I can't believe she is already 16.  I remember the day she was born and how my dad got up in front of the whole church and announced the baby was being born.  My grandma came up and took care of me and my brother Zak.  It was a friend of ours birthday so we went to his birthday party and then went to see my new sister in the hospital.  I can't remember, but I think I liked her right off.  She had pretty bad jaundtis (sp?) so she couldn't come home for a couple of days and she had to spend a lot of time naked under a flourescent light to help burn the toxins out of her body.  It's hard for me to think of her as almost an adult.  I am excited to see what God does with her and how he shapes her into the woman He meant her to be.

A christian organization, which we will leave un-named, has recently decided to change their bible study material.  Some friends of mine are affiliated with this organization so I got to read a bit of it.  First off the whole of the material revolves around pornography and it's destructive effects.  If you've been reading my previous post you probably already know that annoys me.   The study goes through different things in the Christian life and discusses how pornography affects them.  I read the section on worship.  I'm sure the author was well intentioned but in his discussion he defines worship as a "saturation."  He regards the act of worship to be an outpouring of all that we are to God and then God filling us back up again.  For him, it's a two step kind of thing.  I can't help but wondering why we as christians insist upon muddling words so much.  I believe that there is a very specific definition of worship that we can apply across the board and I don't think that this gentlemen's definition is simple or universal.  I don't disagree that when we cry out to God and pour out our very lives to Him that He in turn fills us up; but, that is not worship.  That's what see worship being scripture.  If we define worship as a saturation it is far too general, inaccurate, and doesn't really give us that much information anyway.  Romans 12:1 defines worship as the sacrifice of our lives to God.  Worship is a display of our love and devotion to God; not what God does for us. The American Heritage dictionary define's it quite simply as:

worship (n): The reverent love and devotion accorded a deity, an idol, or a sacred object.

There it is--concise, complete, and simple.  It's a good definition which completely agrees with the way scripture represents worship.  Why can't we as Christians keep things simple?  Why do we have to come up with all these new definitions for things that aren't even accurate.  I can think of no where in scripture (and please correct me if I am wrong) where worship is equated with an outpouring of God.  The only mention of wosrhip in scripture is when man is demonstrating his devotion and love for the God-head.

Worship is not a saturation as this bible study teaches.  That is a wrong definition and only serves to further the confusion surrounding the subject.  We accomplish the exact opposite of what we are trying to do.  I know this seems like a simple thing to complain so much about but if our teachers don't understand the simple topics like what it really means to worship then how are we to expect the next generation to learn from them?  If we are going to teach, it is our responsibility to ensure that the things we are teaching are clear and accurate because when we begin to spread things like worship being an outpouring of man and God then we are doomed to fail.  As leaders we should choose the materials we use with the utmost care and precision.  Let's resolve to at least try to clearly communicate the basics like what it is to worship, what it means to be holy, what is righteous and what is glory.  And let us resolutly oppose those who try to teach otherwise.

I would love to hear anyone's thoughts on the subject, if you have a few moments please post them in the comments section of this entry. 

Today I had my first dentist appointment in a long while.  When I was growing up we didn't have a whole lot of money so that was one of the things that we did without.  Once I got into college I didn't have any insurance and I wasn't in the habit of going anyway so I never went.  Now that I have a job that actually has benefits like dental insurance I figured it was about time that I go.  I was afraid I was going to have all kinds of cavities.  But no, not even one, I was suprised.  But I do have to get my wisdom teeth out ... all 4 of them, that is not going to be a fun day!  My initial appointment is on next Wednesday, we'll see how it goes.

In other news, I finished the book I was reading--beggars and choosers, by Nancy Kress.  I may have already mentioned it here, i'm not sure.  It was a good read and I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good sci-fi novel.  I love how creative Ms. Kress was in her futuristic world and how she wove philosophy into technology.  It really is a work of art.  I'm just starting up on the first book in the series--Beggars in Spain, stay tuned for more info.

One last note and then I'll shutup.  Powerball, which is almost worthless--you have such small odds of actually winning, is up to 340 million dollars.  I couldn't resist so I bought 2 tickets.  The drawing is tonight.  I probably didn't win but wouldn't that be crazy if I did?!  I guess that's how they stay in business, everybody thinking "I probably won't win but what if I did?!"  Ah well, win or lose it was fun. 

I've been a proud homeowner for almost 6 months now.  It took forever to find the right house but it was worth it.  I remember when I was signing the paperwork for the loan, I was committing 30 years of my salary, which was terrifying.  Now that I've lived there for awhile I sometimes wonder at the odd ways I've become attached to my home.  It's an older house so it's got a lot of quircks and odd things about it (like a lack of hallways).  I was noticing the other night how the doors often creak when you open them and I really like that.  I don't know why but it just makes me feel at home when I hear the door creaking, strange.  I guess this is a rather pointless post, I just wanted to say how thankful I was for my home.

This past saturday I went down to phoenix to visit a very close friend for his birthday.  We had a great time and was wonderful seeing him again.  The down side was how aweful the drivers were during the whole trip.  It started with a guy trying to merge into my lane, no problem normally, except I was in the spot he wanted.  Fortunately there was no one in the lane next to me and I promptly changed lanes.  Everyone makes mistakes and I told understand them all this fellow had to do was wave and mouth sorry and I don't think I would have thought twice about it.  That apparently was not his style though, instead he glares at me.  Why I don't know, I think it was fairly clear he was in the wrong.  That wasn't the last of the bad driving though.  Next I'm pulling into a parking lot and a guy almost backs up into me, not good.  Then shortly thereafter that I am turning into the next row of cars in the right lane (the lane we drive in here in america) and here's this idiot girl trying to drive on my side of the rode while she's talking on her cell phone.  She glares at me too!  As if those few stories weren't enough on my way home the guy in front me has a tire blow out and the rubber hits the front of my car, thankfully there wasn't any damage that I can tell and no one was hurt.  And to top it all of just minutes before I got home a guy pulled out of the shopping complex just north of my house.  He was making a left turn and if I hadn't braked sharply he would have been making the left turn into me.

Drivers these days, they are really annoying--most of them are terrible drivers and then when they screw up they get mad at you.  Now given the frequency with which these close calls occurred you may be thinking "maybe you are the bad driver and don't even know it" but I think if you talk to all my friends who were in the car with me in every situation it was clearly by no fault of my own.

Innovation comes with trial and error.  I don't think that you would find too many people who would argue that point.  Sometimes the cost of those errors is high.  Sometimes it costs the very lives of those involved.  We saw this with the tragedy of Columbia.  By no way to I want diminish the tragedy or disrespect the dead but they knew going into it that space travel was risky business.

Our society has reaped great benefit from innovation over the last century.  I think a lot of the innovation was possible because we nurished it.  We didn't regulate it so strictly that somebody couldn't explore a dead end idea because that's how we eventually got to the right idea.  How many times did the Wright brothers pursue ideas that were bound to fail?  And yet they persevered and one of the greatest innovations of the 20th century was born.  If they had lived today would we encourage inspite of their failures or would we kill it.  I feel like we have become so concerned with things like fiscal responsibility and not fleecing the American public that we are beginning to stifle innovation and I fear what that might mean for future generations.

We would do well to remember Teddy Roosevelt's speech "Citizenship in a Rebulic" where he says:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantely, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but he who knows the great enthusiams, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause;who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew niether victory nor defeat." 

Most of these ideas are not originally mine, they are from a conversation I had with my boss, but I thought they were worth writing about so here they are!

Tonight Campus Crusade for Chirst at the University of Arizona put on an event called 'Porn Nation.'  They were very excited for the event and I guess I can't blame them too much, if you're going to put something on you better be excited for it.  I didn't actually goto the event so these thoughts are more spurred by the synposis I recieved from the director of CCC at UA, Gary Anderson.

What is bothering me is that it seems like we as Christians are constantly trying to evangelize social justice and morality to the world.  We are constantly putting on events like 'Porn Nation' which try to convince the non-believer of the evils of pornography or xyz sin and how they should stop doing it.  It seems to me that if Jesus Christ is really the one we put our faith in; if He is really the one that we believe changes hearts and makes lives new; then, why don't we spend our timetelling the world about Him?  Why should we waste our time talking of the evils of sin when we could be talking about the greatness of Christ.  If it's true that He changes hearts then all those sin issues will go away and it will only be Christ.  Why focus on the effects and not the solution?  Christ is everything and we should start behaving like He is.  I want my ministry--my life--to be a continual pointing to Christ for all things; because I believe that through Him all things are brought to completion.

I guess that's probably enough ranting for now. 

Recently I have been researching embedded java relational databases (RDBMS).  There's a project I want to startup soon and for the persistent storage side of things a database with a SQL interface would make life a lot easier in many regards.  So began my search for a robust, free, embeddable java rdbms.  My requirements for the project are not unreasonable (at least in my opinion):

1. Fast selects of large sets of data or large subsets of data, it's OK if inserts are significantly slower.
2. Database stored in a single file or the ability to zip or tar archive into a single file for the user to interact with.  This is so it simple for the user to make backups or send to another computer.
3. Small footprint, the smaller the better as the footprint becomes larger it becomes more unlikely the application will be able to be effectively distributed via java webstart.
4. Standard SQL interface and JDBC driver so application can easily connect to a remote RDBMS like mysql or oracle at some point in the future.
5. Programmed in native Java to increase the chance it can run anywhere.

The following features would be nice but are not required:

1. Ability to encrypt data with AES or some other standard encryption method.
2. Builtin compression to reduce disk footprint.
3. ACID compliant to ensure no dataloss.
4. Non restrictive open source license that allows commerical distribution (this is just a hobby project right now but who knows what may happen in the future, it's always best to leave all doors open).

I found a handful of databases out there but for this article I wish to focus on just a few.  There were 4 systems available that caught my attention: Apache Derby, Daffodil One$DB, HSQL, and SQLite.

Apache Derby is a subproject of the Apache DB project.  It was originally developed by Informix before IBM bought them out in the first part of the century.  It then became IBM Cloudscape and was donated in 2003 to the Apache Foundation as an open source project.  Since then it Apache has maintained as an incubator project and just recently (August 2005) has graduated from the incubator program.  Overall I liked derby it was easy to work with and boasted a robust feature set.  I particularly liked that encryption was available natively and that all major SQL-92 and ANSI SQL-99 features were available including transactions and triggers.  Among the things I did not like were the speed of the system, selects were tolerable however it was the worst performer for inserts of the databases I tested.  It took over 30 seconds to do 10,000 simple inserts.  Selects were reasonably fast.  My other complaint is in the footprint of the jar file, it's slightly over 2MB which seems excessive compared to other systems.  Finally, there was no obvious way  to make single file databases.  You could point the system to a zip or jar file if it was a read-only database you wanted but that doesn't work for using the system for an applications primary file format.  It feels like derby is trying to be all things to all people which makes it not a great choice for anyone.  Hopefully in the near future the developers will settle on a specialized track and do that one thing really well.

Daffodil One$DB was my favorite database of the 4 I tested.  It is a derivative of the Daffodil DB which is a closed source solution.  Recently Daffodil decided to donate the sources to the open source community and start a project up on sourceforge.  One$DB is now released under the LGPL, which is a nice open source license for libraries.  As of this writing it was the only open source database that I could find which was purely java and allowed the database to be stored in a single file.  Most SQL-92 and 99 features are supported and in general the system was fast and responsive.  On my machine selects were quick and it only took a few second to insert 10,000 simple inserts.  The embedded jar is just under 200K which is nice but there is a Common jar also required that clocks in just over 3MB.  I was not a huge fan of this but I think it may be possible to trim a lot of fat out of this and hit close to somewhere around 300K which would be a very nice footprint.  There is no encryption available as of current; however, Daffodil has announced they will be adding this in the coming months along with several other useful features.

HSQL was the first database I tried.  From everything I read this was supposed to be the fastest database but after playing with it the inserts were definately the fastest but selects were among the slowest not to mention high overhead for startup and shutdown.  I wasn't real impressed with this system in general.  All data is stored in memory unless you use a cached table which is really annoying and the data format for non cached tables is just a list of inserts in the .script file which is the reason for high overhead on startup because it must recreate the in memory database everytime the system startsup.  I was also unimpressed with the file size limitations that were present.  While I don't expect users to be storing even gigabytes of data in the application it's nice to have the possibility too.  The footprint of HSQL was the smallest of all tested clocking in at around 100K for the most optimized version and around 600K for the generic install.  HSQL did not appear to have any ability to use a single file for data storage.  I saw some mention of this possibility in several forums however I was never able to find the documentation on how to do this and the links provided never worked so all I can assume is that this feature is not available.  All in all the HSQL system appeared to have the most hype and deliver the least bang for the buck.

Last but not least is the venearable SQLite.  SQLite is actually written in C not Java and try as I might there does not appear to be a java port available which is really too bad because this embedded database has a lot of really nice properties.  It natively only uses one file for storage, is very fast for both select and insert, and is simple so it does not add a lot of bloat to an application.  In short it's almost exactly what I wanted.   There is a JDBC driver available which uses JNI to interface with the c libraries; however, in the end the lack of simple portability for this solution killed it.  I really wanted something that was natively java so that I would have the best chance at compile once run anywhere.  If anyone out there knows of a java port for the SQLite libraries I would be very interested.  Perhaps, one day when I am bored and get the hankering to do something cool I'll port it over and write a JDBC driver for it.  But until that day comes we must write it off as a no go.

For my project it looks like right now I will be investing more time into using One$DB because it provides the closest set of features to my requirements.  I would still be interested if anybody out there can suggest alternatives though.  I would also be intersested if anyone knows of an interface that makes the java app think it's writing to individual files and directories but in fact it's not, it's just going to a single file on disk, a virtual file system in short.

I saw Tim Burton's "Corpse Bride" tonight.  The story line was kind of weak but it was interesting because you really didn't know where it was going through the whole thing.  Burton's films always seem to be very dark and this one wasn't any different.  The artistic style was very interesting though.  I think it was a good movie because it was so unusual through the whole thing that it intrigued me but beyond that there really wasn't much going for the film.

I am a tcsh fan.  I just don't like bash.  Most of my reasons revolved around not being very familiar with the bash shell but in general bash just feels ackward and uncomfortable to me.  A good friend of mine loves bash and is constantly evangalizing it so I thought I would do a bit of research regarding the two shells.

In general my findings were that tcsh provided a superior user experiance while bash was better at scripting.  Since I do most of my scripting in python anyway that was no big loss to me.  Here's a chart giving a general overview of features in each of the major shells.  Note: Chart is curtesy of Fermi lab at http://computing.fnal.gov/cd/unixlinux/unixatfermilab/html/shells.html#4132

Criteria	sh	ksh	bash	csh	tcsh
Configurability	-	+	++	+	++
Execution of Commands	+	+	+	+	++
Completion	--	+	++	+	++
Line Editing	-	+	++	+	++
Name Substitution	+	+	++	+	++
History	--	+	++	+	++
Redirections and Pipes	+	+	+	+	+
Spelling Correction	--	--	--	--	+
Prompt Settings	+	+	+	+	++
Job Control	--	+	+	+	+
Execution Control	+	+	+	+	+
Signal Handling	+	+	+	-	-

-- No Support      - Poor      + Good      ++ Very Good

Got some new pictures uploaded from my last trip to Australia.  Most of them didn't turn out very good because the lighting was bad but they're still kind of cool to look at. The majority of the pics are of wallabies but there are also a few pictures from sydney and a couple just before the plane lands in L.A. You can view the whole gallery here.

Being the good child that I was, when I was growing up I never tried a lick of alcohol.  So, when I turned 21 I really wasn't all that fond of it.  I didn't think it tasted very good at all.  Fortunately, I had a roommate who loved beer and every time he would drink he would make me drink a bit with him.  It didn't take long before I started to really like the stuff, especially beer.

So anyway, now to the real point of this post.  When I was in Australia last week I discovered this really great beer--Toohey's Old.  It's a wonderful black ale and it's delicious.  I had at least one almost every day I was down there.  Now that I'm back in the states I find myself longing for a bit of Toohey's Old and I can't buy it anywhere--it's aweful!  I guess I'll have to have some friends from Australia bring me some back when they get back in a couple of weeks.

I've been back in Tucson for nearly a week now.  It's good to be home; but it's been an adventure.  I got back Friday afternoon and, as usual, my roommate Charles picked me up.  We normally go out to Macaroni Grill when I get back from trips but the Yankees game was on so instead we got takeout from Mac Grill.  Sadly, the Yankees lost and the food wasn't that good.  The next day I woke up with food posioning.  I spent most of the day laying on my couch feeling miserable.  Every few hours I would throwup--it was not what I would call pleasant.  I'm not sure whether it was the Airport food I had or Macaroni Grill but I want my money back whoever is responsible!

Sunday was great.  It was really good to be back home and be able to goto church.  It was such an encouragement to see everyone at the Vineyard.  They all have such an awesome heart for Jesus, it's very encouraging.  Janice was sharing how she was so awestruck at how wonderful God's creativity was in the clouds and it was very encouraging to hear how such a simple thing meant so much to her.

I've still got pictures that I have not uploaded yet of wallabies and a few other things.  I think I lost my cable to attach the camera to the computer though so I had to buy a new one.  Oh well.  Hopefully, I will get those pics up soon.

In other news I got my membership card for ACM ... cool!