This is the second PASS Summit I am attending. I will be in Seattle for 5 days. The first day has been a long day for me. I got up at 3:30 AM even though my alarm was set to go off at 3:55 AM. A car picked me up at 4:30, I got to the airport at 5:10 AM. My Alaska Air flight left promptly at 7 AM, I landed around 10 AM at Seattle Tacome airport.
I went to pick up my badge at the Washington Convention Center around noon. I had some lunch right after I picked up my badge
I had some free time this first day, I decided to go to the Space Needle
When I got to the Space Needle which is about a 25 minute walk or so from the Washington Convention Center, I noticed they also had the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibition. If you want to see both the Space Needle and the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibition, make sure to get the package deal, you will save around $8 per person.
I took some pictures at the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibition. All these glass items below were made by Dale Chihuly, In 1968, after receiving a Fulbright Fellowship, he went to work at the Venini glass factory in Venice. This is the place where he learned to work the way he works today. You can learn more about all lof this at the Chihuly Garden and Glass website
Some alien looking things
Flowers
Straight out of a sci-fi movie
Here is also a video of some of these glass sculptures
After the Chihuly Garden and Glass I went to the Space Needle
I have been to Seattle 4 times now and have never visited the Space Needle. this time I decided to go for it. First of all, I am not a big fan of heights, second..I am an even smaller fan of heights when it is extremely windy. So I went up there, it was very window and it was the typical crappy cloudy and rainy Seattle day. I took a couple of pictures, but I was scared several time that I was going to drop my phone
After the Space Needle, I took the monorail back to Westlake Center Station, at 5th Avenue and Pine Street. From there I went to visit Pike Place Market
I also saw this couple, one playing the guitar, the other doing some flamingo dance.
Since I was so jet lagged, I did not even eat dinner, lunch was around the same time that I normally eat dinner at the east coast, I wasn't hungry at all. I will probably be starving for breakfast however.
Back in the hotel I decided to take it easy. I read a little bit and just relaxed...
Here is final video for you. it is a little grainy but it is a timelapse taken from the hotel room while it is getting dark
Of course I woke up at 1:15 AM then at 2 AM. Finally I got up at 3 AM..and that is why you see this post.
I am probably one of the few people who like the commute when taking a train. The reason I like taking the train is that it gives me time to read. I normally take the train once or twice a week, the train ride itself is only about 35 minutes or so from Princeton to Newark. In Newark I transfer to the path and take that to the World Trade Center station.
So yesterday I was sitting on the train on the way home and decided to take a timelapse video between two station. You can see that video below
As you can see that took about 14 seconds for a 4 minute or so train ride duration. That means if I was to travel at timelapse speed, it would be about 17 times faster. With a timelapse travel speed my commute would be about 2 minutes..... Who wants that, that would mean it would take me a year to finish a book if I only read on the train, However sometimes it is handy, this is especially true when the NJ Transit or Amtrak trains are running late........ which is every day!!
Here are two Google Map images of the two stations to give you an idea where this is all located
If you prefer to see this in Google Maps the go here: Google Maps
I am a big fan of timelapse videos, it is always interesting when you see people in timelapse videos, it;s like watching a bunch of rats or ants
If you like timelapse videos, check out timelapse on reddit if you don't already know about that subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/timelapse
As some of you know, I am part of a premier league fantasy soccer/football league. The new season started last week…. I managed to have the least points at the end of the first match day. I am glad that this is not my real job otherwise I would be in real trouble. What annoys me the most is that I switched out Philippe Coutinho for Roberto Firmino, Coutinho ended up with 15 points while Firmino only had 2 points. Then to rub some salt into the wound, my dear friend Christiaan Baes pointed out the following
@DenisGobo great to see you are letting everyone have more points than you in your league, very gentleman like.
What can you do, this is just the first week, so hopefully it gets better. Last year I finished somewhere in the middle of the group.
Here is what my team looked like that first week
Not sure why I had Cech instead of Mignolet, lost 6 points right there.
I have made some changes, not too many, I want to keep my wildcard in case some of my players get injured.
Btw, you can follow the league here: RealFootball...
Lately I have been messing around with R and I decided to check out the twitteR package to see if I can post from the R console. In order to use twitter from the R console, we need a couple of things:
Setup OAuth authentication for twitter
Install the twitteR package
Setup OAuth authentication for twitter
As of March 2013 OAuth authentication is required for all Twitter transactions. If you don't already have a OAuth setup, head over to twitter here: https://apps.twitter.com/app/new
Follow the instructions, once you are done, you will see the following 4 items
Install the twitteR package
Now in you R program install the twitteR package
Once the package is installed, it is time to get busy......
Load the package by executing the following command
library(twitteR)
Now it is time to setup authentication, you do that by using the setup_twitter_oauth command, below is an example, make sure to replace the keys and tokens below with the values you got back when you setup OAuth on twitter
If that is all set, we can send a tweet. To update you twitter status, you can use the updateStatus command, this is very simple to use, you pass your status into the function. Here is what it looks like on twitter
updateStatus('testing Tweeting with twitterR package from witin Revolution R Enterprise') [1] "DenisGobo: testing Tweeting with twitterR package from witin Revolution R Enterprise"
testing Tweeting with twitterR package from witin Revolution R Enterprise
Of course nobody is doing all of this to update their status. The reason I am playing around with this is because I want to do twitter searches and then store the results in a file or database. So let's do a simple search for the tag #rstats and let's also limit the search to only return 6 results
tweets <- searchTwitter('#rstats', n=6) tweets
Here is what we got back, as you can see some of the results end in ...., those have been truncated
[1] "psousa75: RT @rquintino: @Mairos_B #sqlsatportugal session: all about R in #SqlServer 2016 #rstats https://t.co/DHrqIZrz1e" [[2]] [1] "millerdl: a quick script to use imgcat in #rstats https://t.co/fpUlgWNX33 https://t.co/AhCCMLewCH" [[3]] [1] "diana_nario: RT @KirkDBorne: Useful packages (libraries) for Data Analysis in R: https://t.co/haRKopFyly #DataScience #Rstats by @analyticsvidhya https:…" [[4]] [1] "emjonaitis: Hey #rstats tweeps, do you have any readings to recommend on sensitivity analysis? Books/articles/websites all welcome." [[5]] [1] "caryden: RT @KirkDBorne: A Complete Tutorial on Time Series Modeling in R: https://t.co/7oI6JKyU4E #MachineLearning #DataScience #Rstats by @Analyti…" [[6]] [1] "ArkangelScrap: RT @KirkDBorne: A Complete Tutorial on Time Series Modeling in R: https://t.co/7oI6JKyU4E #MachineLearning #DataScience #Rstats by @Analyti…"
What I really want is to convert the output to a data frame. Luckily the twitteR package has this built in, you can use twListToDF. Here is how to do that
tweets <- searchTwitter('#rstats', n=6) twListToDF(tweets)
The output now has a lot more stuff, you can see if it has been retweeted or favorited as well as the latitude, longtitude and more
1 RT @rquintino: @Mairos_B #sqlsatportugal session: all about R in #SqlServer 2016 #rstats https://t.co/DHrqIZrz1e 2 a quick script to use imgcat in #rstats https://t.co/fpUlgWNX33 https://t.co/AhCCMLewCH 3 RT @KirkDBorne: Useful packages (libraries) for Data Analysis in R: https://t.co/haRKopFyly #DataScience #Rstats by @analyticsvidhya https:… 4 Hey #rstats tweeps, do you have any readings to recommend on sensitivity analysis? Books/articles/websites all welcome. 5 RT @KirkDBorne: A Complete Tutorial on Time Series Modeling in R: https://t.co/7oI6JKyU4E #MachineLearning #DataScience #Rstats by @Analyti… 6 RT @KirkDBorne: A Complete Tutorial on Time Series Modeling in R: https://t.co/7oI6JKyU4E #MachineLearning #DataScience #Rstats by @Analyti… favorited favoriteCount replyToSN created truncated replyToSID 1 FALSE 0 NA 2016-02-20 20:29:54 FALSE NA 2 FALSE 0 NA 2016-02-20 20:24:50 FALSE NA 3 FALSE 0 NA 2016-02-20 20:16:25 FALSE NA 4 FALSE 0 NA 2016-02-20 20:11:08 FALSE NA 5 FALSE 0 NA 2016-02-20 20:11:06 FALSE NA 6 FALSE 0 NA 2016-02-20 20:02:05 FALSE NA id replyToUID 1 701141750161784834 NA 2 701140474019577856 NA 3 701138356466483204 NA 4 701137026075140096 NA 5 701137018508722176 NA 6 701134750296227840 NA statusSource 1 Mobile Web (M5) 2 Tweetbot for Mac 3 Twitter for Android 4 Twitter Web Client 5 Twitter for iPhone 6 Twitter Web Client screenName retweetCount isRetweet retweeted longitude latitude 1 psousa75 3 TRUE FALSE NA NA 2 millerdl 0 FALSE FALSE NA NA 3 diana_nario 50 TRUE FALSE NA NA 4 emjonaitis 0 FALSE FALSE NA NA 5 caryden 41 TRUE FALSE NA NA 6 ArkangelScrap 41 TRUE FALSE NA NA
Now that we have a dataframe, let's dump it into a csv file. Below is what the command is to write the output to a csv file
Here is what it looks like if you open the csv file in Excel
As you can see each column is filled with correct data. How about instead of writing it into a csv file, we write the data into a database? That is pretty easy as well, we need the RODBC package to accomplish that. You can see that post here: How to store twitter search results from R into SQL Server
I started my own Today I learned project on Github
Today I learned
A collection of concise write-ups on small things I learn day to day across a variety of languages and technologies. These are things that don't really warrant a full blog post. Idea stolen from jbranchaud/til
The reason I did this is because it gives me an opportunity to use Github, all my stuff is usually backend SQL Server code, I also don't do any web or app programming. The reason I like the Today I Learned project is that you can easily see all the stuff that you have learned over time. I will probably mostly add R and Powershell items in the foreseeable future. I am messing mostly with R on my own time and Powershell at work. Once I start diving deeper into SQL Server 2016, I will probably add that stuff as well to my Today I Learned Github project.
I decided to write down what I will use to learn Chinese.in the coming weeks. Here are some of the things that I am currently doing and some things I will be doing in the near future.
Watch videos on Youtube
There are a bunch of videos I have already watched, there are also a bunch that I bookmarked. Here is one of the videos that I have already watched several times
I like Dani Wang's videos and will watch all of them shortly.
Here is a video that I have bookmarked but will watch this week. This video is by Yangyang Cheng, it is a Google hangout showing you the most effective way to learn Mandarin tones, tone pairs
I have already listened several time to Lesson #1 - What's Your Name in Chinese? It is actually fun and quite interesting. I listen to most podcast at 1.5 speed but always have to remind myself to set it back to 1.0 speed with this language podcast
Visit websites
There are a bunch of sites that I have bookmarked, I have read some of these already and some are bookmarks because those sites were listen on some of these but I did not get enough time to read them all yet. Here is just a small list for you to check out.
Organized in 25 easy steps, by essential categories
150 Sticky Labels for home and office
Ready-made Flash Cards
This is a real beginners book and is fun to learn from. It will arrive by the end of this week so I will be doing all the other stuff I mentioned in this post instead.
Movies
Watch a movie in Chinese and trying to understand it. I own only 2 movies that are in Chinese: Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But luckily for me, my local library has a lot of Chinese movies, here is just a small example of the stuff that they have, there are several of these cases filled with movies.
I won't get to the movies for a couple of months, at this stage there is no point, I probably might recognize 5 words in total. But I will try to watch my first movie in April or so and will let you know how that goes.
This year I read 20 books. Ten of these books were fiction and ten were non-fiction. The Game of Thrones books were a re-read, I already read book 4 and 5 of this series before..
The weirdest book I have ever read
One part of this book is about a house which is always changing and somehow the measurements inside are larger than the outside measurements. There is are video recordings of what happens inside the house to the Navidson family as well as some people who are trying to help. The other part of this book is about Johnny Truant who discovers the manuscript written by Zampanò about the videos mentioned earlier, the Navidson record. I don't want to give you more info about the story, this way I won't spoil anything for you
This book has pages with text in circles, braille, upside down text, mirrored text and much more. Here is also a short video with some of the weirder pages of the book
There are also hidden messages in the book, the word house is always colored blue, some of the references are real, some are made up
To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara
This is a historical fiction book focusing on World War I. This book is very very good, I would recommend this to anyone. A big part of the book deals with air warfare, you will learn a lot about Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen and Raoul Lufberry. Another thing you will learn when reading this book is how the soldiers experienced trench warfare.
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
Excellent book, a non-fiction book that reads like a novel, I couldn't put it down. Amazon's best book of the month for March 2015. Here are just some highlights of what reviewers had to say.
Larson is one of the modern masters of popular narrative nonfiction...a resourceful reporter and a subtle stylist who understands the tricky art of Edward Scissorhands-ing narrative strands into a pleasing story...An entertaining book about a great subject, and it will do much to make this seismic event resonate for new generations of readers." —The New York Times Book Review "Larson is an old hand at treating nonfiction like high drama...He knows how to pick details that have maximum soapy potential and then churn them down until they foam [and] has an eye for haunting, unexploited detail." —The New York Times "In his gripping new examination of the last days of what was then the fastest cruise ship in the world, Larson brings the past stingingly alive...He draws upon telegrams, war logs, love letters, and survivor depositions to provide the intriguing details, things I didn't know I wanted to know...Thrilling, dramatic and powerful." —NPR "This enthralling and richly detailed account demonstrates that there was far more going on beneath the surface than is generally known...Larson's account [of the Lusitania's sinking] is the most lucid and suspenseful yet written, and he finds genuine emotional power in the unlucky confluences of forces, 'large and achingly small,' that set the stage for the ship's agonizing final moments." —The Washington Post "Utterly engrossing...Expertly ratcheting up the tension...Larson puts us on board with these people; it's page-turning history, breathing with life." —The Seattle Times "Larson has a gift for transforming historical re-creations into popular recreations, and Dead Wake is no exception...[He] provides first-rate suspense, a remarkable achievement given that we already know how this is going to turn out...The tension, in the reader's easy chair, is unbearable..." —The Boston Globe
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Loved this book, anyone who travels by plane should read this book, you will appreciate what these two guys accomplished pretty much by themselves
Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson
Very interesting book, in my opinion way too long, Neal Stephenson could have cut the book in half and still make a very compelling story. I liked the story a lot, the moon breaks apart and there is only a certain time frame in which to save humanity.
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
Another book I enjoyed a lot. The most interesting part of the book for me was that you could see what life must have been in Chicago during the time period the book takes place in. The first time we had tall buildings, electricity and light bulbs, the first Ferris wheel. This book really contains two stories, one about the world fair, the other about a mass murdered.
Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute by Emma Craigie
Was disapointed in this book because it also covered a bunch of stuff that happened at other time...but I think if this wasn't done, then the book would have been 50 pages or so. Some interesting facts about what happened in the bunker and what it must have been like for the people inside that bunker.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
Probably my favorite book of the year, Moby Dick was based on this disaster. An excellent story about tragedy and survival at sea. I didn't know much about whaling or whale oil, after reading this book I can only appreciate what a tough job that must have been.
And here are the 5 books I like the most from this list of 20 books
I decided to put some of my new year's resolutions down in a post. These are non professional goals, here is what my goals are
Learn a new language
I want to learn a new language in 2016. I already know Croatian and Dutch, in addition to those I can understand most of German, I also have some knowledge of Italian and Spanish. The more languages you know, the easier it is to learn another language. To make it more difficult for me, I am picking a non European language. I decided to try to learn Chinese this year.
When I say learn, what I mean is that I must be able to communicate with a person in Chinese as well as being able to watch a movie in Chinese while understanding 80% of the movie. By Chinese, I mean Mandarin, it would be really funny if I picked a movie in Cantonese and then couldn't understand anything.
I work with a bunch of people from China and Taiwan, so I can always check with them to see if I am pronouncing words correctly.
If learning the Chinese language goes well, I want to then learn these 4 languages the next 4 years following 2016: Greek, Japanese, Portuguese, Korean.
Read 30 books
In 2015, I read 20 books, this year I want to read 30 books. I want 5 of those books to deal with American history, I have been living in the US for 20+ years and most of the history books I read were about European history or World War i and World War II history. I also want to read more technical books, so 6 of those books should be technical.
Do a handstand, walk 30 feet on my hands
I can barely hold a handstand for 2 seconds, this year, I want to try to improve on that. My goal is to be able to do a handstand and hold it for 30 seconds. I also want to be able to walk 30 feet on my hands.
Improve on lifts
I would like to be be able to bench press 200 pounds, squat 300 pounds and deadlift 400 pounds by the end of the year. All of the lifts should be raw.
Blog more
I want to write 100 blog posts in 2016, this should not be that difficult, it is only 2 fricking posts per week, but sometimes I don't write anything for 6 months straight. In 2016 this will change, one thing that will make this easier is I will document the progress of my goals, this will be mostly focused on my progress learning the Chinese language.
So there you have it, that is my list, seems very doable and I will keep you and me posted on the progress of these lofty goals.......
Here is some of the interesting stuff I tweeted about this past week
Compile Big Gateway Policy changes in SQL Server
SQL Server will automatically determine the number of concurrent queries that will be allowed in the Big Gateway depending on the Target Memory. Meaning, SQL Server will allow one query per 25GB of memory up to 80% of target.
The upper limit is only enforced by the medium gateway limit since all queries in big gateway would have first passed through medium gateway. For example, on a system that has 24 physical/48 logical cores and 64GB RAM, the new behavior allows for two large 25GB query compilations up to 48 concurrent compilations (as allowed by the medium gateway) if queries do not need 25GB for compilation. This is a dramatic improvement in number of large compiles compared to earlier versions.
Cloud Computing Finally Gets Some Startups
For years, getting into the business of renting out extra computing power through the cloud has been a bit like getting into the business of nuclear power
That formula is changing as cloud startups such as DigitalOcean and Backblaze begin to compete for customers with the likes of Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Google. The startups have managed to underbid the giants in certain markets by keeping expenses relatively low, either by writing their own versions of the software needed to run a cloud or by handcrafting the hardware needed to house one. “All the tools we’re using really pay dividends,” says DigitalOcean Chief Executive Officer Ben Uretsky. “I think that gives us a leg up.”
Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University Computer science has for the first time become the most popular major for female students at Stanford University, a hopeful sign for those trying to build up the thin ranks of women in the technology field. Based on preliminary declarations by upper-class students, about 214 women are majoring in computer science, accounting for about 30 percent of majors in that department, the California-based university told Reuters on Friday. Human biology, which had been the most popular major for women, slipped to second place with 208. If more women majored in technological fields like computer science, advocates say, that could help alleviate the dearth of women in engineering and related professions, where many practitioners draw on computer science backgrounds.
Execution Comparison Tool released with latest SSMS
With the recent release of CTP 2.4, some of you might have noticed something new shipped with SSMS – a Plan Comparison option. The purpose is to provide side-by-side comparison of two different showplans, for easier identification of similarities and changes, that explain the different behaviors for all the reasons stated above, which may include regressions or sudden query performance changes.
The #MH17 investigation points to a revolution in open-source intelligence
A group of Internet sleuths who trawled social media and other open sources in the days after the July 17, 2014, downing and were able to establish that pro-Russian separatists had done the deed. Their remarkable forensic achievements are just the latest example of a citizen-driven open-source intelligence revolution that democratic policy makers must learn to welcome, even when it is a source of embarrassment.
NASA has opened up a bunch of datasets, code repositories and APIs.
In terms of data, they have the following categories:
Aerospace
Applied Science
Earth Science
Management/Operations
Space Science
You can also filter on type of data, these are the types that are available right now:
Data Lens
Tabular Data
Charts
Maps
Calendars
Filtered Views
External Links
Files & Documents
Forms
Here is what Meteorite Landings looks like, I just searched for the landings in New York
The cool thing is that you can export this data in a variety of formats, here is what it looks like
As you can see, you can export to csv, JSON, pdf, xls etc etc
So what are you waiting for, head over to the NASA site to start exploring and playing with this data. The link to the site is the following: https://open.nasa.gov/open-data/
Here is the link to the main site, here you can get to all the other stuff: https://open.nasa.gov/
The Royal mail has released a bunch of Star Wars stamps. This issue celebrates Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the role that Britain’s world-leading film industry has played. This is pretty cool and I am sure that they will sell a lot of these stamps.
From all of these Kylo Ren is my favorite character
Good Morning, Please go through the requirement below & if you are interested kindly forward your resume for immediate consideration. Title: Database Engineer Location: Manhattan,NY Duration: 6 months A database engineer who has experience creating a database from stage one to completion. Need someone that can handle either setting up or dealing with some sort of server to working with the team to create it. Basically we have all of this sales/financial information and need to compile it into one place that's easily accessible to everyone.
I just started to watch the new series Fear the Walking Dead on AMC. Some people said the first episode was slow, I liked it and can't wait for the rest of the episodes. This is the first tv show I am watching on network tv in a long time. Most of the series I watch are on HBO and Showtime. The reason I mostly watch HBO and Showtime is because no matter what show I pick on non premium tv tv it gets cancelled the same season I start watching it.
Here is a list of the shows I started to watch only to have them being cancelled
I think book 3 is the best book out of the 5 that have been published so far. Without spoiling anything I am glad that one person gets his due, another person is totally awesome in this book. I actually will reread book 3 again, I will start on March 15th or so. I read all 5 books and don't exactly remember what exactly happens in book 3 since I am starting to mix events from later books. Before the show starts I just want to read it again so that I can compare the visuals from the HBO series with the book which then should be fresh in my mind
Here is the trailer, enjoy, this season should be great
After breaking several shredders over the years I decided there must be a better way to 'shred' sensitive information. Today I decided to use my fireplace instead. Warms up the house and also gets rid of stuff I don't want people to see since they can use it to steal my identity
I like to read and since I will be commuting on the train very soon, it will give me even more time to read. I read 51 book last year, you can find those books here: http://pinterest.com/denisgobo/books-i-read-in-2012/
This year I decided to read a bunch of books that I have read before and that I have loved. Here is the image of the books as I took it this morning, I will go into a little detail after the image.
Hirohito And The Making Of Modern Japan
Written by Herbert P. Bix. I got this book as a gift from my father in law 8 or 9 years ago and didn't really know that much about Hirohito's life before reading this book. I like history and decided to read this book again.
On Writing
Written by Stephen King. This book is part memoir and part master class in the art of writing. If you are thinking that Stephen King was born to be a terrific writer, you are wrong, he struggled a long time before he got his first book published.
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Written by Bill Bryson. A history of the world written in a funny and informative way...who said history was boring?
Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
Written by Bill Bryson. There were several times that I laughed out loud reading this book. You will find some of the stereotypes described in this book, contrast how Germans park and drive compared to French and Italians. The book is a little dated because some countries don't exist anymore and things as described in the book might not be completely like that these days
Thinner
Written by Stephen King. I got this book as a gift from my wife before we were married and loved it. It is about a gypsy curse that makes a man get thinner, this book is also one of the thinnest Stephen King books
The Stand
Written by Stephen King. I am still waiting for a tv show that does the book justice, maybe HBO will pick it up. This is Stephen King's master piece about the battle between good and evil, a true page turner. Can't wait to start on this one again
The Shining
Written by Stephen King. One of the few books were the movie is as good as the book. A fantastic book and probably my favorite one after The Stand and It
The Hobbit
Written by J. R. R. Tolkien. I read this for the first time in 2001 and decided to read it again after having watch the movie 4 weeks ago. I am almost done with the book, have only 14 pages left.
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
Written by Mark Bowden. I had to choose between Killing Pablo and this one, I choose this one. I ahve watched the movie as well so we'll see if that will will make me like the book less or more compared to last time
Into Thin Air
Written by Jon Krakauer. After reading this book I was amazed why people insist on climbing Mount Everest. The book details how dangerous this really is, five people died and others were severely frostbitten. I wonder if my mind will change after reading this book again.
The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
Written by Sebastian Junger. If you watched the movie, realize that it doesn't do the book any justice. There is so much more detail in the book than in the movie. I remember reading this in Ocean City and loving it
Cryptonomicon
Written by Neal Stephenson. This is my favorite Neal Stephenson book! The boos takes place in WWII and in present day, there is an unbreakable encryption scheme that puzzles the present day characters. Highly recommended.
The Joy Luck Club
Written by Amy Tan. I saw the movie first before I knew it was based on a book. I loved the movie but I think the book is even better. The book is about four Chinese mothers who have to deal with their westernized daughters, the story goes back in time when the mothers were living in China and tells their part of the story.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The book chronicles one day in the live of a character's life in a labor camp in Siberia. This is some messed up stuff, next time when your house is a little chilly or you have to walk a mile longer think of Ivan Denisovich and what he had to endure instead.
A Clockwork Orange
Written by Anthony Burgess. This book might be disturbing for some people because of it extreme violence. Some people might find the book difficult to read because of the use of nadsat, nadsat is an argot used by the teenagers, it's a form of Russian-influenced English, the back of the book has a 2-3 page dictionary so you can look up the words. I will still recommend reading this book.
A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3)
Written by George R.R. Martin. This is book 3 of Game Of Thrones and in my opinion the best one. So much stuff happens in this book and one person at last gets his justice delivered to him. The reason I am reading this book again is because season 3 is starting on HBO on March 31st
That is all for this post, are you going to read any books again that you have read in the past and loved?
George Lucas annnounced Star Wars on Blu-Ray at Celebration V yesterday.
The Star Wars saga will at long last be released in a high-definition home video format as all six movies come to Blu-Ray in a Box Set in Fall 2011, as announced by George Lucas this morning at Celebration V. At the fan convention's Main Event, thousands of Star Wars fans braved the muggy heat of an Orlando morning to queue for a one-time only stage session between George Lucas and The Daily Show's Jon Stewart. Stewart asked Lucas questions submitted from the fan community, and one of the most frequently asked questions submitted online prior to the Main Event was about the saga's release on Blu-Ray. "I wish I could say it was coming out this year," said Lucas, "but it will come out next year."
The set will feature all six live-action Star Wars feature films, with the highest picture and audio quality, along with extensive special features.
I have not switched to Blu-ray yet and Star Wars together with The Ultimate Matrix Collection and The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy should make that pretty much a no-brainer. It is funny how the LOTR Blu-ray got horrible reviews because these are not the extended editions you are looking for but the regular editions, and of course they will come out with the extended editions sooner or later so people will have to buy both sets. SO yes, maybe once the LOTR EE comes out I will switch to Blu-ray, for now I am fine with my plain vanilla DVD collection. Also be aware that you won't see the original trilogy theatrical versions because necessary restoration would cost too much. These are the Special Edition remastered version of the original trilogy that were released on DVD.
Below is the long-lost deleted scene from Return of the Jedi.
I went to the small MarketFair mall next to my house and found 2 Lamborghinis and 1 Porsche GT (I believe it is a Porsche GT3) within 50 feet. I had my camera with my so I snapped these pics. Click on the pictures to get to the flickr page which will have a larger image.
I attended the 2010 MVP summit this year for the first time.
So it all started for me at 4:15 AM (EST) on Monday, this means it was only 1:15 AM in Seattle. I took a 7:35 flight from Newark New Jersey to Seattle Washington. I met Denny Cherry at the airport and we took a cab to Bellevue. This summit all the hotels for the guests were in Bellevue.
Bellevue at night
View from the hotel room
I have been checking the weather in Seattle for the last couple of months and noticed that it is 55 degrees and it rains 6 days out of 7....I was thinking to myself who would want to live here? Well as it turns out it was sunny every from Wednesday till Saturday and we really lucked out. I even took a little visit to Lake Washington.
At least I think that is Lake Washington but I could be wrong.
Microsoft Campus I was really impressed with the campus, they have a ski shop, a barber shop, a bike shop, many restaurants and even an artificial turf soccer field.
There were 2 full days of sessions on Microsoft's campus. These were really interesting sessions, I met some of the people who worked on SQL Server and it was interesting to pick these people's brain or complain about some of the stuff that they created. The SQL team really put some interesting sessions together and I would like to thank them for that.
After these sessions we had dinner with some of the Microsoft employees, I was seated with the Azure team and we had some interesting conversations about Azure and databases in the cloud in general.
Networking
I finally met and talked to so many of the people I only knew from online newsgroups, blogs and forums. Here is just a small list:
Kevin Kline Erland Sommarskog Rod Colledge Adam Machanic Louis Davidson Itzik Ben-Gan Kalen Delaney Joe Web Dejan Sarka
Pinal Dave Matija Lah Michael Coles Hugo Kornelis Alejandro Mesa Arnie Rowland Kevin Boles
I (and many others) also signed two copies of the SQL Server Deep Dives book that will be given away at SQL Saturday in NYC on April 24th
Desynchronosis Jet lag really kicked my behind the first couple of days, even though I didn't go to sleep until 11:15 PM on Tuesday night (meaning I was up for 22 hours already) I woke up at 2:30 AM on Wednesday..after tossing and turning for 30 minutes I decided to hit the gym. Luckily for me the gym is open 24/7 at the Hyatt.
I read or listened to the following things while flying or being awake during vampire hours and walking around Bellevue.
Listened to the following podcasts: This week in tech This week in google Security now Windows weekly The disciplined investor Dotnetrocks (2 episodes)
Shutter Island
After all the sessions were done on Friday I decided to go see Shutter Island. I really liked this movie and highly recommend it. The ending is very interesting.
Mount Ranier On my way home I snapped these two pics of Mount Ranier from the parking garage at Seattle airport
So the World Cup is still months away but already we can start preparing mentally for Euro 2012. Euro 2012 will be held in Poland and the Ukraine. Below is the draw, I don't think that there will be any surprises, the groups seem pretty easy for the top teams.
Group A Germany Turkey Austria Belgium Kazakhstan Azerbaijan
Group B Russia Slovakia Republic of Ireland FYR Macedonia Armenia Andorra
Group C Italy Serbia Northern Ireland Slovenia Estonia Faroe Islands
Group D France Romania Bosnia-Herzegovina Belarus Albania Luxembourg
Group E Netherlands Sweden Finland Hungary Moldova San Marino
Group F Croatia Greece Israel Latvia Georgia Malta
Group G England Switzerland Bulgaria Wales Montenegro
Group H Portugal Denmark Norway Cyprus Iceland
Group I Spain Czech Republic Scotland Lithuania Liechtenstein
Already places (hosts) Poland Ukraine
So what do you think, which is the group of death this time? I don't think there is one
