Monday, May 15, 2006

Java Threading

This weekend I decided to clean up some of my threading skills in java. I bought the O'Reilly book, Java Threads, which has been a good read. I always find the O'Reilly books very insightful. Anyway I went ahead a wrote a small Reader/Writer program using threads. It follows a simple algorithm using a basic FIFO policy with the exception of reads, if a read has 10 "time units" left and a second read comes that only needs 5, that read is allowed to take place at the same time. Here is the applet, with the code in the base dir.

http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~merz/RW.html

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Finished ...

I finished. Well not completely, still one more quarter of school. But with the end of this last quarter I have finished my final Computer Science/Engineering class. My final project was for ECS 152b (computer networks B) for which I wrote a Bulletin Board and Chat Client/Server. It was written in C. We had to create the client and the server from the socket level up. This became interesting when I implemented the second connection for file transfer. See you need to be able to chat and send/receive files at the same time (Which makes since). I used pthreads on the server side and fork client side. Disconnect was my favorite part since the file client and the chat client are two different processes at that point and time did not permit for a nice pipe implementation to be used. Instead the user chat client sent a kill command to the chat server for that clients connection, which sent a kill to the clients file server, who then intern sent a kill to his file server connection. Once the 2 processes and two threads were all ready, they all shut down.

Anyway now that I am done I am putting the final touches on my resume before I send it out. I am excited to finally get to use some of the stuff I have been learning over the last five years. I am going to be a little sad to move out of Davis, but as Steve Zissou says in The Life Aquatic “This is an adventure.”

Friday, January 20, 2006

Feedlounge Review

Well after a week of using feedlounge’s public release I must write something about it. First and foremost you must remind yourself that this is not a desktop application. Which is hard to do with the amazing UI that feedlounge implements. Not only does feedlounge excel at being ‘easy on the eyes’ so to speak, but I think it is part of a large milestone for the internet. In today’s world of wireless synchronization is key. The problem with that, synchronization is time consuming, and annoying. I believe feedlounge shows us the way the true American solution to synchronization… have someone else do it for you. Centralized web apps are just the way to accomplish this. With the all the backend benefits of the web and a front end that looks like _____ (insert your favorite car here) it is hard to go wrong.
Now not everything in life is perfect and I know many have been upset that feedlounge has become a paid service. And at first I had the same thought as you, damn. Though with further thought into the matter I have gotten past this slight dilemma. Mainly it came down to the fact that I can’t even eat lunch at taco bell for under $5 anymore. Carl’s Jr. is almost a sure $7, and mocha’s are creeping up on that same marker. And when I thought about comparing feedlounge to that of eating the low grade beef from taco bell, I am upset that I even thought about making such a comparison. The other solution of course (and I believe feedlounge has flirted with) is adds. Now I don’t know about you but I am getting a little sick of the fact that ever time I turn around there is somebody trying to sell me something. No I don’t need a new mop, no I don’t have erectile disjunction, no I don’t need to lose weight with your miracle bottle of legalized crack. I just want to read my flippin friends blog.
Anyway enough said, feedlounge, in my humbled opinion is superb reader. And I am excited that this door has now been opened for everyone to walk through. Let the evolution of the internet continue.