The Matt Faus Blog

Whew! We’re getting close!

Matt Faus — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:14:58 +0000

Well, after graduation, wedding, honeymoon, and the trek to San Francisco, we are getting close to establishing a semi-normal lifestyle again. We signed the lease and got the keys to the condo we will be living in for at least the next year. I have ordered high speed Internet, and the movers are coming tomorrow to unload the U-Haul truck! I know I have been terribly negligent in blogging during this insanely exciting and interesting time of my life, but my memory serves me well and I promise to spill all the details once I get my desktop established at our new place.

I don’t want to publish our new mailing address to the World Wide Web, but if you would like it just e-mail me at Me at Matt Faus dot com.

A Great (and Fun!) Way to Study

Matt Faus — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:52:18 +0000

One of the greatest schools for studying Computer Science is Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Luckily, MIT has opened up all courses with their OpenCourseWare program. So, you can teach yourself all MIT courses at home! This includes video recordings of all lectures, homework assignments (with selected answers), projects, and exams. The only thing that’s missing is the insane deadlines and tremendous stress! (Rumor has it that MIT had to institute additional vacation days in their academic schedule to reduce the suicide rate).

Another great one is ADUNI. If you don’t want to instal RealPlayer, most of the videos are hosted on Google Video.

Flockage

Matt Faus — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:57:20 +0000

flock is literally part of the fabric of our social, cultural and economic history

Apparently, flocking is the technique used to give certain surfaces more interesting demeanor. We all know and love flocking, but if you’ve ever wanted to dive into the depths of flocking and how it has changed the face of the world we live in, you might want to check out this exhibit:

http://www.adm.heacademy.ac.uk/news/sector-news/flockage-the-flock-phenomenon

German expedition, anyone?

Intro to InfoPath Presentation

Matt Faus — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:56:22 +0000

It is rare that the work I do in academia can be appreciated by non-geeks, so here is a link to a presentation I gave in my Technical Communication class. I’m a pretty big nerd, so I know it’s not the best presentation in the world, but I think I did OK.

Size = 46MB, Duration = 8min

Download the video

PS - If you want to see my tree agreement protocol simulation over 7 servers and 10 (or more!) clients, let me know.

The 13th month: Undecimber

Matt Faus — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:09:12 +0000

Stumbled upon this today as I was working on my Database Design project. Thought it was pretty interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undecimber

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/Calendar.html#UNDECIMBER

Rarity

Matt Faus — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:13:53 +0000

As I was working on my distributed agreement protocol project for my advanced operating systems class I wanted to see how many lines of code I had written so far. As fate may have it, it was exactly 1000 at that instant.

{net33} wc -l ./*.cpp 143 ./client.cpp 284 ./server.cpp 339 ./TVPLib.cpp 234 ./TVPMessage.cpp 1000 total

Joy

Matt Faus — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:16:54 +0000

MS SQL Server Transact-SQL NOW() Function

Matt Faus — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:52:57 +0000

Recently, I was searching around for how to obtain the current day’s datetime using a SQL query in SQL Server Management studio. I know I had obtained this value from MySQL with NOW() function, but could find nothing of the sort for Microsoft’s SQL Server. After digging around in MSDN Library, I found this:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188383.aspx

SELECT GETDATE();

Hopefully this post will allow others searching like I did to find what they are looking for quicker.

GCC == Green Cheek Conure

Matt Faus — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:17:50 +0000

While Googling around for the phrase “gcc thread sleep” to get started on my distributed operating system project I discovered that bird lovers also love their acronyms! I thought it was kind of funny.

Cuddly Green Cheek Conure

Macs are Better

Matt Faus — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:14:50 +0000

Nah, I’m kidding. I just think this mentality is hilarious. I was sitting in class this morning and one of my classmates stated that he could not open the slides that had been posted. After being asked for clarification, he replied in an ignorantly haughty tone of voice:

I have a Mac, and I don’t use Microsoft Office.

Luckily, a more astute Mac user from the back of the room ruefully replied:

OpenOffice.Org!