defrag

AIBench

I am currently involved in a research project under an investigation scholarship as I mentioned in this post.

One of the main tasks of this project is to create an application that allows to load a network topology and the aggregated requests of its nodes. Based on this information, this tool must do some simulation/optimization of OSPF weight scenarios with previously developed algorithms, and show the results in an adequate way.

As suggested by my scholarship guides, I’ll be using AIBench,the Artificial Intelligence workbench to develop the graphical application.

What is AIBench?

AiBench is a lightweight, non-intrusive, MVC-based Java application framework that eases the connection, execution and integration of operations with well defined input/output. This basic idea provides a powerful programming model to fasten the development of applications given that:

• The logic can be decoupled from the user interface.
• The interconnection of operations can also be decoupled based in the idea of “experiments”.
• The programmer is forced to “think-before-program”, easing the code reuse.

AiBench was created focused in the easiness of building new operations.

The applications of AiBench are not limited, but it fits specially well in the data-mining/AI field, because every day there are new operations and data-types that need to be tested and integrated within the existing ones.

AIBench, created inside the SING research group, is a growing project vastly used by researchers in the area currently at its second major release (which you can easily download). Here you will find more information about the framework, such as news, motivation, documentation, wikis, and so on…

AIBench is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. The terms of the license can be consulted here. This is an open source project and you’re collaboration is encouraged by the developers.

If everything goes as planned I’ll post my own results later… You should give it a try!

Tags: Development, English, Framework

Feed change

Those that are subscribed to my RSS feed should know that I’ve moved to a FeedBurner version.

The old one will be going away, so please unsubscribe and resubscribe to the new version at http://feeds2.feedburner.com/defrag.

You can also click the icon below.

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Thanks!

Tags: English, Wordpress

Recent bookmarks @ 30-01-09

These are my recent bookmarks which I am sharing today:

1. AIBench – Java application framework that eases the connection, execution and integration of operations with well defined input/output.
2. OddsPortal.com – An easy way to compare odds from the most important bookmakers.
3. FlashScore.com – A very user-friendly online source for sport live scores.
4. Linuxtopia – An extensive online resource for anyone learning or deploying enterprise level open source technology.
5. Nicetranslator – NiceTranslator is a fast, easy to use online translator designed with simplicity and functionality in mind.
6. Linuxhaxor – Tips, tricks, news and all the exciting things going on in Linux world.
7. Cisco – Needs no presentation! Bookmarked for the important source of documentation.

This list shows the things I have been busy with…

I’ll make an effort to post more frequently.

Have a nice weekend!

Tags: del.icio.us, English

MSN: Adium and Pidgin unable to login

Looks like Microsoft has been making some changes in their MSN servers and protocols.

Since that change, both Adium and Pidgin clients can’t login. I don’t want to turn this personal, but I think it’s not an ethical decision from the Microsoft Engineers.

Millions of Unix users will not be able to use this service, and I am sure that the responsables for this update knew it…

Right now there is not much information about this subject.

Looks like it is still possible to login with:

• Microsoft clients, of course
• Adium 1.3.1
• aMSN 0.97.2 ( the one I am using right now)

I’ll try to find other alternatives for Linux.. It’s a very important service for me and I hate aMSN

Please let me know if you find more solutions.

UPDATE: looks like this problem was solved by Microsoft. Not this time…false alarm! :)

Tags: English, Internet, Linux, Mac, Windows

WordPress Stats not counting

My blog is still very young, but one day my stats stopped counting visits. At first I didn’t know what was happening (I even thought I had no visits), but my Google Analytics shows a few visits a day.

So I started searching for the answer…

It happened when I changed my blog theme.

The solution is easy, all you have to do is check the footer.php file on your selected theme and make sure that wp_footer() function is called within the script.

The end of footer.php should look like this:

<?php wp_footer(); ?>
</body>
</html>

Hope this helped! now just keep blogging! :)

Tags: English, Wordpress

Recent bookmarks @ 09-11-08

I have been using del.icio.us for a long time and it has become pretty useful for me. For those you don’t know this service:

What is Delicious?

Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet.

On this post category I will publish my new discovered sites and services with a small description of them.

I have installed this WordPress plugin today to list my recent bookmarks, as you can see in the right column.

These are the bookmarks I’d like to share today:

1. del.icio.us for Wordpress « WordPress Plugins – the wordpress plugin I am using at this blog
2. E-Mail Icon Generator – a simple website where you can generate a mail icon like the one I use in my about page.

3. Gravatar – Globally Recognized Avatars – a service that lets you store avatar images that follow you from weblog to weblog appearing when you comment on gravatar enabled sites.

4. Imdb: tino’s vote list – Tino is a big friend of mine who loves cinema. And this is his public vote list. You can also see my vote list on my profile.

5. OpenLDAP – Project homepage of OpenLDAP an open source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.

And that’s all for now. I’ll try to post frequently and keep this category as interesting as possible.

You can check my full del.icio.us page here.

Tags: del.icio.us, English, Internet

Format/Install Windows in 10 steps

This is the English version of this post)

I am an interested student in informatics and, as time goes by, the words gets out by friends, family, friends of friends, etc.

People start asking for help as they know you can “fix computers”.

Virus, spy-wares and so on cause problems. The “usual” Windows’ user often needs maintenance on the computer very frequently.

“Don’t give them fish, teach them to fish”, so it’s better to spend some time explaining than having to do it yourself.

The steps I’m describing are those seen from a standard, optimistic point of view, if everything happens normally:

• The first step is to backup all important information located in the Windows partition, because it will be formatted. After doing it, it’s time to start the installation procedure.
• Enter the BIOS: press Del or F2 key after on the computer.
• Change Boot Device Priority on Boot Settings section: Pick the CD/DVD drive as 1st Boot Device and the HDD as 2nd Boot Device. Choose Save Changes and Exit at the Exit section.
• When the system reboots, press any key when asked to, in order to enter the Windows installation program. Otherwise, the computer will boot normally by disc.
• The startup of the program may take a few minutes. After that chose the Configure Windows option by pressing Enter. There is also a option to repair the existent Windows partition, but that’s not the objective of this article.
• After not reading the whole agreement press the F8 key. A list of the existent partitions and unused disk space is shown. If the table is correct, you only have to chose the desired partition to install the operating system. Otherwise go find information about disk partitioning (maybe I will post about it later).
• A few actions-windows will be shown. The recommended file-system is NTFS for many reasons, so the chosen partition shall be formatted on that system (the quick option is normally enough). Be careful because all data on that partition will be lost! Confirm that choice by pressing F. If no problems occur, the operation is successful and the file copy will start.
• A few minutes later the computer will reboot, and this time you don’t want it to boot from CD, so you can reset the Boot Priority on the BIOS. On the Boot Device Priority menu choose the HDD as 1st Boot Device. You can also set the rest as Disabled. The computer will boot the OS from disc, so the other devices are not necessary. Accept changes and the machine will now boot the fresh Windows install. But the installation is not complete yet.
• During this step, a few option-windows will appear, related to idiom, region, username, etc… The standard network settings can be chosen later, leave it for now.
• After answering a few questions the installation is complete! I recommend you to activate the Windows, anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-everything-else updates.

As I wrote in the beginning of this post, the idea here is to make “everyone” able of install Windows.

So next time someone asks you for assistance, you can point him/her this post.

Sorry for my rusty English and thanks for the feedback.

Tags: English, Windows

Planning Session

Right now I’m just following the First Steps with WordPress which asks me to do a planning session.

It’s hard by now to describe the intents of this blog, because I’m not really sure how it will evolve.

Probably no one will ever read this post, but I’ll do it anyway to compare the project and the results in the future (maybe laugh a little!).

These are the proposed questions:

1. What am I going to do with this?
2. Who is going to read this?
3. What kinds of information will I be posting?
4. Why am I doing this?
5. Who am I doing this for?
6. How often am I going to be posting and adding information?

The idea of creating a blog came to my mind several months ago when I started thinking about my professional future and the impact the Internet had on it. If you want to be noticed you have to promote yourself!

I don’t know yet who’s gonna read my posts, maybe some friends who will hear about this by me and some random visitors who get here by searching related topics (I hope someday Google will find me :).

I am a technology addicted, who loves to learn, so I’ll be posting about stuff I’m discovering about.

This might sound egocentric, but right now this personal project is happening just for fun (which I’m having)! I want to register my learning curve and the topics I’m reading about. Of course, I’d like to know that my shared information is useful to someone.

The frequency of my posting is not a main concern. I’ll try to use my free time to write as much as possible.

(Right now I’m noticing that I haven’t practiced my writing for a long time. For years I have only used my English for “input”, like reading or listening, so writing in english is a huge benefit for itself!)

Well, it’s getting late… time to sleep!

Thanks for reading.

Tags: English

First!

Well, this post is only for test purposes.

I have planned to create my personal page/blog a long time ago.

Right now I am just reading the “Wordpress for dummies” (not really!), just like a kid who has received a new toy!

Tags: English, Personal, Wordpress