Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

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C++ logger class

Monday, February 8th, 2010

I was looking for a logger implementation for one of my projects. I needed a few features: simultaneous output to a console and a log file, efficiency, and ease of use. Quick google search revealed a few candidates: Apache log4cxx, and Pantheios. Do it yourself articles (example) about home made logging I ignored, because I have done enough of those (Boost Logging Library v2 is in the same category for me). Given that my primary platform is Windows, log4cxx was dropped, as windows was not directly supported.

Compiling a few examples for pantheios was not difficult, but getting it to do exactly what I planned, which is to have output to a console and a file at the same time, was a little more challenging. The solution was not obvious from the documentation, and sample name mx.1 did not stand out to me as meaning Mixing different back ends. But after searching in pantheios forums I have found the answer to my question.

At the end of the day Pantheios was my choice. We will see how happy I will be with it after I play with it for a while.

Posted in Coding, Library, Reviews | No Comments »

Avatar

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Avatar movieIn short, I liked it. Yes – it was a bit long, yes – it was naive, yes – there were no strategy in the final battle. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the movie and recommend anyone to watch it in a movie theater on a big screen.

Posted in Movie, Reviews | No Comments »

Electric shaver

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Braun Series 7- 790cc Pulsonic ShaverMe and my wife decided to make a present to both of us by buying an electric shaver for me (who does not like presents like that?). Shaving every day with a regular razor irritates my skin, which is not fun. Not shaving every day irritates my wife’s skin, even less fun. My only experience with electric shavers was when I used a cheap kind, which did not do a good job. That’s why we decided to invest in an expensive shaver. Enter Braun Series 7- 790cc Pulsonic Shaver. The first impression was… very good. We will see how my skin reacts to it after the adjustment period of a few weeks.

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Posted in Health, Other, Reviews | No Comments »

RescueTime vs ManicTime vs Wakoopa

Monday, January 18th, 2010

After running ManicTime I found the application was not meeting my requirements exactly. The application does not reuse tags automatically, this means that I need manually assign tags every an application was used. On the other hand, the statistics pane allows me to create specific groups of applications that are used to show time, which essentially gives me the result I want. The downside is that there is no information about what documents were open by the applications. If I use the same applications for different projects, then I can not differentiate between those projects. On the good side, the program author responded very quickly to my request and promised that the new release will have some updates that will be useful for me.

Posted in Reviews, Software | 2 Comments »

Software for time tracking

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

I have been using RescueTime for more than a year. By “using” I mean that the application was running on my computer. Time to time I went online to see how my time was spent. Recently, after not visiting the site for a long time, I found out that my data is stored only for three month and some features (a year overview among others) are available only in paid accounts. It seems that $50 a year is not that much. But before committing my cash I decided to see what other options are there. Thanks to alternativeto.net (new website to me, and a good one too) I found a few alternatives.

Before going through the alternatives, I will specify what it is that I am looking for from an application like this. The most important usage for me is to know how much time I spent on a certain project. This simply means that I want to be able to specify what applications (documents in applications) corresponds to what project. Tagging is a way to do that. The next step is to see how much time different activities within a project occupied my time. This is also can be accomplished by tagging. I see benefits of storing the data online, but it is not a priority for me, because I do not plan to use multiple computers. For the next year or so I see myself working exclusively with windows and hence support for other operating systems is not a priority.

wakoopa: First impression was negative. After business like RescueTime, all the colors, pictures, and profiles looked a little alarming. Similarly to RescueTime, the data is stored online. Unlike RescueTime the account is free.

slifelabs: Looks too commercial without enough information to convince me to try them. Hence I did not even sign up there.

ybex: Seems to be oriented on what they need and my benefit is a side effect. This was not very convincing, hence no signing up there either.

manictime: Unlike RescueTime, the data is stored locally and the program is freeware, but for Windows only. The application has much larger memory footprint than other solutions.

Posted in Online serivce, Reviews | No Comments »

Osho books.

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

I enjoy reading Osho’s books, even though they do get repetitive (for a good reason), here are some thoughts about them.
Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself (Insights for a New Way of Living Series)

Freedom. This book introduced me to a few interesting concepts: “freedom for”, and “three dimensions of freedom”. Given that for Osho (and I agree with him) freedom is the ultimate goal, the topic of freedom is a very important topic. Surprisingly I was thinking very little about this topic before (yet another stab into self-hypocrisy). Great read.

Joy: The Happiness That Comes from Within (Osho, Insights for a New Way of Living.)

Joy. Yet, another good read. If you understand the difference between pleasure, happiness, and joy, there is no need to read the book. If you do not know what is the opposite of joy, or how pain and pleasure are connected, then, please, read the book.

Intuition: Knowing Beyond Logic

Intuition. Taxonomy of bases for our actions: instinct, intellect, and intuition. The differences and similarities between these methods are explained. A very good book to read for a scientist.

Meditation: The First and Last Freedom

Meditation. Different meditation techniques with some explanation of why and how they work. An amusing read, but I am not sure that it is fully applicable to our times.

Posted in Book, News, Reviews | No Comments »

Alexander Shyrokov has reviewed

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Autoscale-80x80 A documentary about how food is made in US. Good questions, and good attitudes. The movie tried to be too sentimental at times, but still it had delivered the message! I never thought about how customers change the supplier. According to the movie, fast food chains are the largest customer for meet, and crops. Now it is only logical to see that the production methods from fast food chains must be applied to the food suppliers if they are too support the demand. How good are the methods? That is for you to decide. On the other hand, we are the customers for the food chains. They will give us what we ask them for. Hence, we vote for what kind of food we get with every meal we purchase! That is a lot of power in our hands. http://www.foodincmovie.com/

Posted in Automaticly added, Movie | No Comments »

The cove

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

the coveInteresting documentary that focuses on one particular place in Japan, where dolphins are slaughtered. It is a story of a man who is trying to undo something that he had started. Some moments were really intense (better than action movies), some were very brutal. The goal of the movie is to rise awareness about the issue of dolphin captivity and killings. The author says, that if it is not possible to stop killing in one particular place, then it is not possible to address the global problem of killing whales and dolphins world wide. http://takepart.com/thecove.

Posted in Automaticly added, Movie | No Comments »

The Holy

Monday, October 5th, 2009

The HolyThe Holly by Daniel Quinn.

I was and is greatly impressed with Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Hence, I am trying hard to find the same greatness in his other books by comparing them to Ishmael. I understand, though, that every work must be judged by itself and not as a clone of something else. Still, it seems to me, that all of the Daniel’s books, I have read, do touch the similar subjects and talk about the same messages. Surprisingly, each time, the author finds very different angles to deliver the messages, which is very entertaining.

The Holy did not impress me as something exceptional. It did not provide the comprehensive picture of the environment and did not even hinted into the direction of how the environment can be explained. The notion of “them” vs “us” is an old one and is well popularized by Matrix movies. But Matrix does show how this separation came about, why it was possible, and where it would lead. I failed to grasp that reading The Holy. The book, of course, is well written and reminded me of Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. Still I found myself waiting for something more until the very end of the book. In my opinion, the last few chapters of the book contained the important things, which were not really explored during the rest of the book.

Posted in Automaticly added, Book, News, Reviews | No Comments »

The neocube – a magnet puzzle

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

I have played with the neocube. This toy is a collection of spherical earth magnets. Magnets make it very entertaining to play with this toy. One can create many shapes as shown in the video below. After getting a taste of it, I am planning on purchasing it.

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Posted in Puzzle, Reviews | No Comments »

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