it’s the week end…

i have to do something instead of staring at my laptop’s screen and declaring some integers, or surfing my google reader

so, i’ve read about an event in BibAlex related to a mini book fair, i’m not fan of such things but lets try, may be i can find a book related to programming

but it was a smaller event than what i was expecting, and i found some shelves having books about VB, C# and Windows Me

anyway, i got out of the hall looking for something to do, and there was the planetarium…

for those who don’t know it, it’s the blue-stripped moon seated beside the sun of BibAlex

actually i’ve never been there before, i just wasn’t interested, so i gave it a try

i bought a ticket for a show called “The stars show”

ok, i entered and liked it from inside, that rounded screen that is above our heads and that astrology professor who is sitting behind 3 computer screens

it seemed nice

of course the number of visitors was very small, may be 10 girls, a family and me !!, that was expected anyway

the show name was “Stars Show” not “Star Academy”

anyway, it started showing some information about the planetarium itself then about astrology vs astronomy, then about some stars and star birth from a nebulae while showing some amazing views on that rounded screen

then showed some stars locations and formations, i was pretty amazed when i knew that zodiac dates have changed than what is known due to the rotation or all the stars in our galaxy so now i knew that i belong to Pisces rather than Aries, and every one should be belonging to the sign that is one before what he currently think he does

anyway, that is another evidence that shows that those who relate zodiacs to life or luck are mistaken as zodiacs themselves are not stable, so i might be lucky this year but not lucky the next years, or love someone this year and hate him the next

but i really liked the imagination of the Greeks who can form from some points in the sky a pretty painting to just give it a name

anyway, despite i have noticed a couple of bugs in the rendering of a star, i really liked the show, and i think i’m gonna repeat that visit again

No, the old install didn’t crash !!!

i just was very anxious about the new Ubuntu release (Karmic Koala), so i installed the RC version

and as u know i hate to install a fresh install of any OS until the currently running one crashes, hangs and cries to let it die

but anyway i was going to install a fresh install whenever Karmic is released as it will need an ext4-formated partition

so, it took may be no time to be installed, or may be i didn’t feel the time coz i was surfing the Internet on the same machine while it was being instaled..

i just pressed 6 or 7 “Next” buttons and a click or two at each wizard screen,

then wrote my Name, login name and password

and it worked like a charm..

then it prompted me to confirm the installation of the wireless drivers as it was proprietary drivers, then i was ready to go

-i liked the default theme, which is the one i’m using

-the new “Ubuntu Software Center” which replaced “Add/Remove Programs” looked nice, but anyway i just search for the app name that i wanted to install…

-The sound preferences is well managed compared to the previous Ubuntu versions

Mail Menu

-Empathy is installed by default rather than pidgin, but i like pidgin more

-i liked the grouping of the Mail client with the messengers in the Mail Menu, with the different mails being specified

-it is faster and lighter than the previous versions

-while booting it shows animated icon instead of the text which was displayed usually.

-Firefox 3.5 is very fast on it compared to Ubuntu Jaunty

-And Chromium as well

-the thing that excited me today was the scrolling, on my laptop i can use my touch pad as a partially multi-touch

u can see it says Two-Finger scrolling, but i used both hands, looooool

-And one important thing that i liked, now each disk is mounted with a constant ID, i have no idea what that ID represents but it is always the same, to avoid the path changes when the order of mounted disks differ from a day to another

which means that the path to some file will always be /media/83427386432/file, rather than /media/disk-1/file where if the drives are mounted in another order, disk-1 will not be the one holding the file.

Problems i’ve faced till now

1-When i Shutdown, Restart or Logout it displays me a message box saying it’s gonna do that actions in 60 secs or i can just press a button to do it now, in Jaunty i was supposed to right click on the shutdown menu and configure some preferences but it doesn’t exist anymore

Solution

executed this command in a terminal

gconftool-2 -s '/apps/indicator-session/suppress_logout_restart_shutdown' --type bool true

2-When i mount any partition for the first time, it asks for the keyring password, i want to disable this dialog without disabling the Keyring

Solution

Not Found Yet

3-Evolution is not minimized to the tray as the messengers do, even after it’s being added to the Mail Menu

Solution

i use “Alltray” program to minimize it to the tray, but it adds the evolution icon beside the Mail Menu where another Mail launcher already exist, i hope that to be handled, or may be i could add this feature myself :D

thats it for now, i’ll be back soon after some exploration

ok, i admit that it was an  innovative method that depends heavily on XML Programming,

i can say it saves a lot of time during developing the whole system, as the time required for every feature is nearly constant

just some generic methods to solve all the problems that can be found

but as known “Generic” can not cope with “Performance”, as there must be unneeded steps done with the small/mid sized problems, and it will be fully utilized with the problems that satisfies the general case problem -which is most of the time rare-

and even if u had the general case as the smallest/simplest case, u’ll waste some performance trying to combine those tiny generic solutions to solve the larger problems

anyway, i think that was a nice choice to select such programming method when developing an ERP system as what i have seen on such system is typically a feeding/reading data model

so, high performance is not a critical requirement here, just wait for the user to scratch his itchs during page loads -kidding-

but what about me ?..

the developer i mean…

its so painful to forget about memory, loops, classes, and even data structures and  create a system using a mouse, dragging tags in other tags, mapping some data chunks into other ones, to “just” solve the problem..

and what about me ?

the scientific ACMer i mean…

where the most subjects i liked where those who were related to developing the most efficient algorithms (in time/memory), and sometimes parallelizing them

and as an ACMer, where the performance is as critical as the problem solution

to make me forget about that…. u r typically killing  the little crazy developer inside me who must have a mouse pad on his desk, not for resting his wrest, but for banging his head on bugs, thinking that that would help

anyway i’ll just consider it as an IS course which i didn’t attend, but a better one… technically

see you soon with The Royal Company isA…

here are some phrases i’ve heard from some people i’ve met, mainly in FCIS -my faculty-

“this is the learning curve in FCIS”

Mohamad Meshref…. (SDE Microsoft Redmond)

*that graph was somehow accurate -for me anyway-

Dr.Roushdy Aamer (one of the best of the best of the best teacher i’ve seen… if not the best)

*he was talking about studying for science versus for the exams, and i really respect that story

Dr.Mohamad Samy (The geekest guy i’ve ever seen)

*i just asked him which is better windows or linux, and he meant that each has a field, just use every thing in it’s place to gain the max profit

Mohamad El Morsy “ZIZO” (SDE Mentor Graphics Cairo, One of the best ACMers i’ve seen)

*i didn’t believe it when he said it first, but i understand it now

“فضل كفر الشيخ على باقى المحافظات كفضل الشمس على سائر الكواكب”

علاء سعد….من زملاء الكفاح المسلح بالمدينه الجامعيه

و مالو…دا الكلام ده لو مفيش اسكندريه

Mohamad Fouad… (SDE CriticalSites, a Geek ACMer in the army )

of course you know that IE -> Internet Explorer, FF -> Mozilla FireFox, i stick to this rule, even before i’ve heard it

BEBO… i wont say more than that, “BEBO” is more than enough

i really miss being in such a pic with such people

for the SC batch 2010….

now you should have seen half the subjects in the first term in my beloved dept “SC”

here are some advices i hope it helps….

1- whatever tasks u r asked to do, just do it, it will always add new

2-i wanted to talk about Finite Elements, but the Doctor has changed so it will be meaningless, just try to understand what is behind the equation

3-Dr.Ashraf Saad, you might think he is somehow offensive but if u interacted with him and did as much as he asks, u would feel compleeetly the opposite, believe me  “he is one of the best Doctors i’ve met”

4-Dr.Hossam Faheem, he is very different thinking Dr. more than any one you have ever seen, just try to be very very open minded in the HPC course, to study his subject, wikipedia is a good place to start

5-if you don’t want to study, then don’t…. implementing the required tasks/prototypes is more than enough -in some subjects-

6-study as a group, u’ll understand/finish tasks better and faster

7-in some subjects you can take/use libraries -after taking permission from the subject’s doctor- which will save some of ur time reinventing the wheel, just ask me or any one of the SC Mens, and we will hand it to u

8-unit and u’ll enjoy

9-fighting with CS studs is a healthy phenomenon, u’ll know what they study and they’ll know urs, and at the end of the fight u’ll thank ALLAH that u r not in “IS”

10-try to enjoy the science, do not study for the exam

11-do not look for marks, it’s the easiest thing to get

12-invite me to ur dish parties

that’s what i can think of now…

if u have any question, be my guest

enjoy

السلام عليكم و رحمه الله و بركاته

و كل سنه و انتو طيبين بمناسبه عيد الفطر المبارك

يعنى لو لاحظتوا يعنى -للى متابع يعنى- ان ده اول تدوينه بالعربى هنا, و انا كاتبها بالعربى عشان كذا سبب يعنى…. عشان بيبقى محسوس اكتر و عشان كمان مايفهموش غير اللى بيتكلمو عربى

نخش فى الموضوع

انا فاكر زمااان اوى اول مره رحت اصلى العيد مع ابويا….. مكانتش الامكن بتاعا الصلاه كتير طبعا زى دلوأتى ف كنا بنصلى فى حته كده يعنى ممكن نقول على بعد نص كيلو من البيت , انا مش فاكر غير انى ساعتها كنت مبسوط اوى وانا سامع التكبيرات من البيت و كأنها جايه من السما

و ماظنش كانو بيستخدو الميكروفونات ساعتها

كان احساس جميل اوى كده و الناس كلها مع بعض فى نفس واحد بيقولو نفس الكلمه, كان صوتها عالى قوى

نيجى دلوأتى بقى………..الاماكن كتييير اوى للصلاه و محطوط سماعه من النوع التقيل كل 10 متر ولا حاجه و تلاقى اتنين ماسكين الميكروفون و كل واحد يبدع حبه

و تقريبا مفيش غيرهم اللى بيكبرو

انا بقى عايز استرجع ذكريات الطفوله و نفسى اسمع الصوت بتاع ال سما  ده

اعمل ايه بأاااا رحت جامع عندنا ف اسكندريه اللى اعرفه عنه انو بيصلى فيه ناس اعدادها بالميت الف و المليون, يعنى رقم و جمبه خمس اصفار ف وش العدو

نبص بأا هناك, هوا تقريبا الناس حالفه ما يعملو حاجه مع بعض ابدا تانى

الناس بيبقو متقسمين تلاتين نوع…. حبه كل واحد بيتكلم مع اللى جنبه و حبه بيتفرجو على موبايلاتهم و حبه خدتهم روح الفوتوغرافيا -او فرحانين بموبايلاتهم اللى بكامارتين- و واقفين يصورا باقى الناس و حبه مركزين مع الشباب اللى بتوزع هدايا للاطفال عشان يقوللو هات اتنين للواد و اخته اللى نايمه فى البيت و حبه باصين فى الارض و مابيعملوش اى حاجه “خالص” و الباقى تقريبا بيبقى مطبق ف بيكبر و هوه نايم

اه كمان كان فى واحد جنبى ماسك علم السعوديه و لابس لبس غريب كده زى الناس بتاعت الزار و الكلام ده هوه تقريبا شافنا متوحديين اوى فا حب يدورلنا على حاجه تفرقنا

انا كل اللى غايظنى ان الناس كلها تحس انها مكسوفه تكبر

يعنى تقدر تقول كده لو جبت صوت كل اللى كانو هناك و حطيته ف حله مش هايجيب صوت عشره بيشجعو مصر فى الدورى العام

نفسى اعرف امتى هانعمل حاجه مع بعض, حاجه واحده

يعنى انا شفت قبل كده الناس و هيه بتحاول تتحد ف رأى, و هوه كان عشان النتيجه اللى على التليفون بتاعت جامعه عين شمس

طبعا مش هاقولوا النجاح الساحق اللى عملناه ف اننا حاولنا نقبى خمسه ميتصلوش, كل الناس كانت بتشتغل نفسها و تجيب اسباب غريبه و تتصل و تقول مش هاتفرق الكام جنيه دول ف داهيه الفلوس بس اعرف النتيجه النهارده عشان لازم اعرفها النهارده عشان مينفعش استنى لبكره عشان هوه كده

وطبعا البنات احاسيسها مبتستحملش و لو معرفتش النتيجه -اللى هتغير مصير الكون- النهارده هايحصل اى حاجه بتعمل اى حاجه

بس اهم حاجه مانعملش حاجه مع بعض

مع ان دى حاجه قويه جدا مع الناس و متهيألى بانت قوى لما حاولو يخلو الانترنت فى مصر محدود و معظم الناس كانت “فعلا” هاتقاطع و القرار ده اتلغى

نرجع ل موضوعنا….. ليه بأا الناس مش بتفتح بقها يعنى لو قلنا ان فى الحاجات اللى فاتت دى هاتضحى شويه عشان نكون مع بعض ف حاجه, هنا بقى هتاخد ثواب ف كل كلمه بتقولها و فى الاخر هانحس اننا اقويا و الناس هاتعملنا حساب حتى لو كنا صوت بس, اما كدا احنا لا صوت ولا صوره

ف ايه بأا…..هاه ؟ ……ايه ؟

يعنى احنا المفروض كنا قاعدين فى شارع واسع و فجأه كده و احنا قاعدين….اسف و احنا نايمين  “يا كريييييييييييييييييييييم”……. ﻷ ..ده مش الراجل بتاع السعوديه بيدروش

ده طفل ممكن نقول كده عنده 15 سنه و اكيد كان بينادى على واحد اسمه كريم الناحيه التانيه يعنى

المهم…. كريم رد….عرفت منين ؟…….عشان الواد ماناداش تانى

طيب و ايه المشكله

ﻷ… نحسبها

ناخد مقطع من الشارع من الرصيف للرصيف ب عرض 3 بنى ادم و ب طول 15 بنى ادم – مع انها اكبر من كده- و نشوف

نفترض ان الواد فطر امبارح ممبار و اتعشى كوارع و فطر فول و بكامل صحته و لما نادى راح مطلع 80 ديسيبل و الصوت ده وصل !!! يعنى الشريحه اللى فى النص دى مقدرتش تعمل صوت ب 60 ديسيبل حتى

Constructive Interference و المفترض ان الناس دى كلها بيقولو نفس الكلمه و بادئين مع بعض يعنى هيحصل

و الموجات تتجمع على بعضها

يعنى كده كل واحد من الناس اللى فى الشريحه ده الموضوع واقف عليه الموضوع 1.5 ديسيبل  بعد الخصم

طبعا ده مش صح بس نفترض

هوه اساسا  الكلام العادى 70 ديسيبل ….  يعنى لو كل واحد من ال45 بنى ادم دول كان بيتكلم بس, مش كان الكلام موصلش ل كريم, كان زمان كريم اتخرم اساسا

ف ياريت الواحد و هوه رايح يصلى العيد كده يعمل حسابه ف اتنين تلاته ديسيبل زياده بس

و الديسيبلات كتير والله…. يعنى فى مطشات الكوره بتلاقى دسابل بتتحدف عليك من كل حته, ده غير الكراسى و الكبايات و المعالق و كده – بتختلف من اهلاوى ل زملكاوى -  ف ياريت بعد كده نكبر “كلنا” مع بعض

اكيد فيه فرق كبير بين صوت التكبير هنا

و هنا

طبعا انا مليش دعوه بالناس اللى فى الفيديوالاول ده, بس هوه ده الصوت اللى بقى ف كل الجوامع

و بالنسبه للفيديو التانى هوه الصوت نفسه واطى بس تحس ان التكبير بيهز السما

احلى حاجه فى الموضوع ان بعد الصلاه و الخطبه ما خلصوا لقيت واحد كده فجأه بيقول بصوت من اللى انا مفتقده ده (خيبر خيبر يا يهود , جيش “مبارك” سوف يعود) ….على اساس انو خرج ابل كده

هوه شكله كان عايز يعمل مظاهره بس خايف يتقبض عليه

هوه شكله مش فاهم اننا مش هانتحد الا لو قالو هانحدد الانترنت

!!!!!!!و اهو العيد فرحه

يا ريت بس لو حد عايز يتناقش يبقى على المدونه نفسها عشان يبقى الكلام كله فى حته واحد

]]> http://jaqoup.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/%d8%a8%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b9%d8%b1%d8%a8%d9%89/feed/ 13 Jaqoup http://jaqoup.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/sql-multiplication/ http://jaqoup.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/sql-multiplication/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:07:53 +0000 Jaqoup http://jaqoup.wordpress.com/?p=465 ]]>

i was shocked to find that there is no aggregate multiplication functions in SQL, something like

select mul(number) from table

but i needed to use a multiplication function…, so as usual i googled it and found this statement

select exp(sum(log(cast(number as float)))) from table

that does the multiplication,

so with a mouth half opened i tested this line and it worked

so how does it work, it uses the property of the natural logarithm “log(a) + log(b) = log(ab)”

so simply it applies the scaler “log” function on the current value, then uses the aggregate function “sum” on all the “log” values computed then raising the whole result to the power of “e” to get rid of the log using the property “e(log(x))=x”

so for the first example would be

e(log(a) + log(b)) = e(log(ab)) = ab

so at the end the aggregate multiplication would be “product = e(∑(log(num))”

about the innermost function it’s just to cast the number to a float for the “log” function

i’m just wondering… why isn’t it already implemented ?

but the most funny thing, i wanted to understand the math behind this statement in work, i took some time writing it and trying to analyze it during the day at work without any clue, but as soon as i ate after being fasten “Iftar”, it just flashed into my brain without even thinking in it…

so add to the benefits of milk on Iftar… it makes you capable of understanding SQL combined aggregate functions

having such a table in a MS SQL Server 2005

where the table represents some employees and their tree structure in the organization, where each employee has a foreign key “ManagerID” which is  the ID of another Employee in the same table, and this table is represented with the following tree

the problem is that i want to select the employees with an additional field holding their level in the previous tree

a recursive solution, huh !!

ok, that can be solved using recursive SQL function but here is another approach… just SQL select statement that uses CTE “Common Table Expressions” introduced in MS SQL Server 2005 -yeah i know i’m too late -

so here is the SQL Select Query

WITH t AS (
--select the root column(s)
--The anchor member
SELECT     Employee.EmpID, Employee.ManagerID, Employee.Name, 0 AS LEVEL
 FROM         Employee
 WHERE     ManagerID IS NULL

 UNION ALL
--select the children recursively
--The recursive member
 SELECT     Employee.EmpID, Employee.ManagerID, Employee.Name, LEVEL + 1 AS LEVEL
 FROM         Employee JOIN t ON t .EmpID = Employee.ManagerID
)
 SELECT     * FROM t

the term “With t as” is the CTE which allows us to create a table on the fly named t, where this table is filled using the query between the preceding brackets.

as any normal recursion, there must be a starting point and a terminating condition

the starting point here is the Anchor Member which is the first select query that gets the Employees whose “ManagerID” is NULL “they are the managers”

then the statement “Union All” that applies the next query over and over till it returns nothing “which is the terminating condition here”

and the recursive member here uses the selected rows in the table “t” till the moment to join on the ManagerID in the Employee table with the ID of the already selected Managers in t in the last execution of the recursive member

running such query on the table “Employee” will produce the following result set

i hope that helps…

and here is my reference

recently i needed to write a macro that processes an MS  Visio 2007 page and and does some actions based on the contents of a custom defined stencil shapes, where this contents are saved as a Shape Data field in the shape

the problem was i wanted to access the Shape Data of each shape

there is a data type Shape, which has a data field names “Name” which specifies it’s Class

i mean if u r using the following shape set

and dropped an object from the Triangle Class, that object will have the data field “Name” holding the string “Triangle.xx” where the xx is a unique number for that object in the current document

so to make sure that it’s of the class “Triangle” u can use the function “Mid” in VBA that is a substring function, like

IF mid(shpObj.Name,1,8) = "Triangle" Then
'say i am a drunk square
End IF

back to the main topic

i needed to access the Shape Data for the dropped objects, trying to use  the intellesnce that existed in the VBA studio that is already in the office

i found nothing called “ShapeData” or anything named data that can help

so of course the second step would be google,

after a little search i found that most if the shape data are saved in a 3D table, this table is composed of Cells that hold somthing

according to all the results i’ve found, i could access the value of the Shape Data i need using the property shpObj.Cells()

which is the table cells indexed by the cell’s name

so assuming that we are using the shape in the first figure, and want to access the Shape Data “Cost”

i could write

shpObj.Cells("Prop.Cost").Format

where “Format” holds the value held by this cell

but running this code produced an exception which is equal to “Object reference not set to an instance of an object” .Net Exception

which meant that this cell has not been found returning a NULL which have no “Format” to be accessed

i was sure of the name, and tried some other combinations on “Prop” and “Cost”, and always the same result

so, back to google, i found nearly the same ways to access the data

so, the next step, MSDN… it was a typical waste of time with no results, u can search for the information in the MSDN in google better that using the MSDN search itself, just add “msdn” before ur query

so, back again to google

i found another field in the shape object called CellsSRC(), that is the 3D data table holding the data

it takes three indexes for a particular cell (Section index,Row index,Column index)

so i moved to the debug mode, added a watch “shpObj.CellsSRC(1,1,1)”, and noticed the values, changed the section index till the data was in the same context i needed, then change the column index and the row index, (u can use the constant VisSectionProp to advance directly to the Shape Data section e.g. shpObj.CellsSRC(VisSectionProp,1,1) )

and at last i’ve found the data item i need, and the cell had a weird name…

it is supposed to be “Prop.Cost”  -if we are to follow the first figure example- but i found it “Prop.xxx_Cost” where the xxx were some other letters i don’t remember -as i was pretty mad at this moment -

so i “copy-paste”ed this Name and wrote

shpObj.Cells("Prop.xxx_Cost").Format

in the watch and found the result i wanted, but take care the value in the “Format” field is/must be surrounded by extra double quotes

as if the value u want to add is “x”, you should add it as ” “x” ” (spaces between double quotes are for demonstration)

and at last…. it worked

i had some other problems but that was the major one

one last thing…

i could have used the .NET development kit for office, but i just wanted to try VBA macros, now i doubt that i took the right decision

today after work i went to pray in a mosque near the company,

i was with three other friends and it was a new built mosque, it looked great from inside, intensively air-conditioned, big and well designed from inside

and like any other mosque it had the digital prayer times calculator

but in addition to the upper pic there was another field that was offbut what i understood later that it is used to show the time between the Azan and Iqama, so once it started to count down to the Iqama 1 minute before it.

actually i didn’t notice it except 5 seconds before Iqama time, it was my first time to see such feature in such calculator, i’ve seen one that counts down to the Azan time, but not this one

i don’t know why i felt something is going to happen when it reaches “00″, and more than one time me and one of my friends looked at each other and stared at the counter waiting it to reach the zero

u may say that it was 5 seconds, but they passed slowly, i don’t know why

but with every second passing i felt  that something is going to happen

what thing ?? i don’t know

and time passed

5

4

3

2

1

0

…….

the weird thing is that nothing happened,  yeah weird

of course u’re gonna ask “why is that weird ?”

actually i don’t know, i kept asking my self that question till now

and my friend felt that too !!!

may be i was waiting for the Iqama to be played from that calculator, the microphones goes on, an alarm rings or even lights goes off

may be coz my career in life is related to automating life..

but nothing happened !!!!

even the man who was supposed to broadcast the Iqama didn’t show up till 3 minutes later

i felt a very strange feeling that i am not able to explain

i don’t know what was that or why was that,

but at least it was a day that passed….