• Automatic Properties
• Implicitly typed local variables
• Anonymous types
• Object and collection initializers
• Query expressions (LINQ)

I am doing this mostly as a primer/base for my next article some time in the future. This future article will be about the cool features in the up and coming C# .NET 4.0!

The OO features are also very powerful. Everything from categories to selectors to protocols are cool concepts. I will post about these features in future posts. The part that annoyed people the most is how you invoke and define methods, but this grows on you as you program.

I wrote a post about documenting my learning adventure, but I now take it back. There will be too many assumptions I would have to make to explain everything. Also, there is simply to much to the language to post about. Instead I will start a simple project to get as much development time with the language as I can. This is the project that I will post about. Using the example, I will post about some important concepts of Objective-C.

I have decided to make tic-tac-toe. I will purposely try to use as many features of the languages as I can. So stay tuned until the next post. Also if anyone has questions concerning the language, let me know I would love to hunt down the answer, it helps me learn

I picked up Python over night just by going to the Python Home page and following their tutorials. The documentation is excellent, so if you can read, I assume you can, then you should be good to go. The tutorial I follow is located at http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html.

Python can be used for many things a popular usage for this scripting language is developing with Game engines, or 3D modeling software packages like Blender.  Once you have gone through the tutorials, I recommend you get this pocket reference book below. It proves to be very useful, because there are so many libraries, and a quick look up can make life a lot easier.

I started learning Python when I was an undergrad to develop some code for a summer research position I had. My job was to develop an API to integrate a huge virtual environment with a 3D game engine called Panda3D. The API was called HIVE (Huge Immersive Virtual Environment). If you have any questions about Python or done anything cool with the language just leave a comment and let me know

I wanted to make a point, that no matter how lazy I get I will never eat fast food like McWhatever and the likes

There is one thing that this break from my extreme lifestyle has thought me. Its that when I stop stretching and doing yoga I started to lose flexibility and got more like to  injuries (like my ankle). Also that there can be a good balance between the two lifestyles. You don’t have to be hardcore everyday, but instead be hardcore mostly everyday (if that makes sense). Also what you sacrifice has to be something you can recover from, for example. Cardio should never be sacrificed!  you should always try to keep your muscles flexible, if not yoga, try to stretch for about 15 minutes a day. Lifting you can slack with, but only after you have gotten to your goals!

When I say slack, I mean cutting your lifting workout by half. That way you can stay where you are, but you will not grow any stronger. When you feel you have rested, start your hardcore workouts again!

With that said, I need to my a** back into 6th gear again and start hitting the gym hard again. Also, keeping your body properly feed with complex carbs and protiens and good fats in also important, but thats another post for another time.

1. Federal tax
2. State tax
3. City tax
4. Local School District

All of these tax forms I filed online! You only need two things handy to complete all of your taxes.  Your W2, you get these from your employer (if you have a job) and finally your bank account and Routing number, this you can get from your bank.

If you run a business or make alot of money, unlike a poor graduate student (me) you might need to get your taxes professionally done.

For the federal tax can be done freely @ http://www.irs.gov/

For the state tax, just do a google search with you state’s name and append ‘tax’, for me the google search was “ohio tax” the first hit was the right place @ http://tax.ohio.gov/

The city tax was a bit weird, because it was not so obvious on where to file, but a quick google search turned up a place called the Regional Income Tax Agency aka RETA @ http://www.ritaohio.com/

The last tax to file is with the local school district, this can be filed at the same place where the state tax was file, so just follow the second link if you are an Ohio resident. Remember you don’t need to pay someone to file your taxes when you can do it yourself online and FREE! After about 30 minutes tops you are good to go and hopefully you’ll be getting money back like me

• Thesis write up
• muse benchmarking
• muse website

My issue today was with testing.  Ignoring the fact that I am not a c++ expert (in my opinion the shear complexities of c++ requires many years of development to master, and the word expert should not be used to lightly),  dealing with code that runs in parallel is just a pain the a**. There is no easy way to test, no easy way to unit test. When a bug is discovered, well, good luck because hunting that bug down will consume valuable time. I have managed to make good progress on the muse website musesimulation.org. However my work on the thesis writeup has been at a stand still for the last week and a half because I have been developing simulations for my benchmarking.

Benchmarking is a whole other ball game. I found the best way to find bugs in the kernel is to create different types of simulations and see if they work. Everytime I create a benchmark simulation I find an error. This got me thinking, why is there no good way to test parallel code? However I am determined to create something useful and I will give it all I got

Anyways, this is my rant for the day and if you have some tips about parallel development please feel free to leave some hints.

Lie To Me

When you scratch your chin, wring your hands, wrinkle your nose or swallow too much, Dr. Cal Lightman (Roth) knows you’re lying. He doesn’t just think so – he knows so. As the foremost deception expert in the country, Dr. Lightman can uncover the deepest secrets and crack the hardest cases. More accurate than any polygraph, he knows whether those in front of him – be they family, friends, criminals or complete strangers – are honest or not. Dr. Lightman heads up The Lightman Group, a private agency contracted by the FBI, local police, law firms, corporations and private individuals when they hit roadblocks in their searches for the truth. Joining him at the agency are a variety of experts in the field of behavioral evaluation: Dr. Gillian Foster (Williams) is a gifted psychologist and Lightman’s professional partner, a woman whose guidance he needs whether he knows it or not; Will Loker (Brendan Hines) is Lightman’s lead researcher who practices “radical honesty” at all times; and Ria Torres (Monica Raymund) is the newest member of the team, selected for her innate ability to read body language and catch certain clues that her colleagues may miss.

Life

A detective gets a second chance after serving time for a crime he did not commit.

Fringe

From J.J. Abrams (”Lost”), Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the team behind “Star Trek,” “Mission: Impossible III” and “Alias,” comes a new drama that will thrill, terrify and explore the blurring line between science fiction and reality. When an international flight lands at Boston’s Logan Airport and the passengers and crew have all died grisly deaths, FBI Special Agent OLIVIA DUNHAM (newcomer Anna Torv) is called in to investigate. After her partner, Special Agent JOHN SCOTT (Mark Valley, “Boston Legal”), is nearly killed during the investigation, a desperate Olivia searches frantically for someone to help, leading her to DR. WALTER BISHOP (John Noble, “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”), our generation’s Einstein. There’s only one catch: he’s been institutionalized for the last 20 years, and the only way to question him requires pulling his estranged son PETER (Joshua Jackson, “Dawson’s Creek”) in to help. When Olivia’s investigation leads her to manipulative corporate executive NINA SHARP (Blair Brown, “Altered States”), our unlikely trio along with fellow FBI Agents PHILLIP BROYLES (Lance Reddick, “The Wire”), CHARLIE FRANCIS (Kirk Acevedo, “Oz”) and ASTRID FARNSWORTH (Jasika Nicole, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”) will discover that what happened on Flight 627 is only a small piece of a larger, more shocking truth.