Sun Academic Initiative @ Carleton University

Last month we had an official launch of the SUN Academic Initiative (SAI) here at Carleton University, Ottawa. I think it was good success and kick start for me to start as a SUN Campus Consultant. :) Here is picture from the event...




L-R:
Mr.Wade Hong, Information Tech Officer (ITO), Office of the Dean of Science.
Mr.Bill Jack , Senior Net Admin, Faculty of Science.
Mr.Micheal Kelland , Technical Sales, SUN Microsystems.
and me :)

Functional Programming Pain...

I am taking this formal course on Programming Paradigms which talks loads of functional programming with Scheme and it is killing me more than i expected :(

I am not sure who in the world is using such a programming language... no wonder why it survived only in the universities. We are almost at the end of the course and by now I hate brackets. Every single syntax starts with the bracket.. oh jeez...... plus since we have been on the Object oriented world all this time, turning my head to think in terms of functions returning functions passed to a function.. hooooooof.. good lord .. The only thing that i really liked from this language is tha part that is called "tail-recursion" and it works nice and neat. No stack overflows no memory shortage. without this....scheme is a piece of crap :) hee hee hee..

It's funny how the same person who wrote the Scheme also wrote the Java language spec and had been part of the core developer team at SUN.. He is none other than Guy Steele :)

Joining the Big Blue Camp [ IBM Extreme Blue ]

I was so delighted to see my job offer from IBM Extreme Blue program this morning. Yeah.. I am gonna be working on one of these COOL BIG projects this summer. I have been hired to work on IBM DB2 Retention Management Project here in their Ottawa Labs. I have no words to say how happy I am. This is going to be a wonderful opportunity for me. Top notch experience in working in a full life cycle project... from design to test .. with all the IBM tech resources... Hmmmm.. all excited !!!

For those of you who can not figure out why I am walking in the air... check out..

http://www.ibm.com/extremeblue

:)

Proud to be a Mac Guy ..

aright... now I am a Mac guy :)
I purchased my dream laptop this week and yes it's a Mac. I ordered my mac couple of weeks back and now i have got it shipped. I could not resist to open that nice cool black case...and the moment i open it.. it says.. " Designed by Apple in California" ! wow what a neat way to say that you have purchased something special. Inside the box l see my cool titanum finishing shine on my new G4 PowerBook !






Believe it or not.. this is my first hand experience with a macintosh.. trust me... apple has the best cool product with great user friendly software. Well I don't have to tell anything about why i got this product... still .. i'll say it any way.. from all the research that i made about laptops.. each manufacturer is some way or the other is competing in the market with a cheaper product.. but Apple... their No 1 priority is QUALITY ! and I love quality products. (Top 10 Reasons to choose Mac) The more I use this little toy the more I am appreciating that I bought such a lovely product ! Don't get carried away by these myths. Still not convinced? Hear what these ppl have to say about Mac ...Gues what.. the new version of Mac OS X has built in support for Java 1.4 and the moment i downloaded eclipse for Mac I am all set to go !!! If I am to say all these in a single line... "man.. it's simply the best" !

more about my beautiful babe...

Technical Specifications

Processor and Memory

• 12-inch model
  • 1.33GHz PowerPC G4 processor with Velocity Engine, 512K SRAM on-chip L2 cache, 167MHz system bus
  • 768MB of PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SDRAM; one SO-DIMM slot; support for up to 1GB

Storage ⁽¹⁾

• 60GB 5400-rpm Ultra ATA/100 hard drive
  
• • Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW): reads DVDs at up to 8x speed, writes CD-R discs at up to 24x speed, writes CD-RW discs at up to 16x speed, reads CDs at up to 24x speed (12- and 15-inch models)

Communications

• Built-in 54-Mbps AirPort Extreme wireless networking (based on 802.11g standard; Wi-Fi Certified for 802.11g and 802.11b interoperability) ⁽²⁾
• Built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
• Built-in 10/100BASE-T Ethernet (RJ-45 connector) (12-inch models)
• Built-in 56K V.92 modem (RJ-11 connector) ⁽³⁾

Expansion

• One FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a) port at up to 400 Mbps ⁽⁵⁾
• Two USB 2.0 ports at up to 480 Mbps

Display

• 12.1-inch (diagonal) TFT display (12-inch models)
  • Support for millions of colors at 1024 x 768 pixel resolution
  • Support for resolution scaling to 800 x 600 pixel and 640 x 480 pixel resolution with millions of colors

Video and graphics support

• NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 graphics processor with AGP 4X support and 64MB of DDR SDRAM video memory (12-inch models)
  • Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports up to 1024 x 768 pixels on the built-in display
    
• Mini-DVI port (12-inch models)
• DVI output using included mini-DVI to DVI adapter (12-inch models)
• VGA output using included mini-DVI to VGA adapter (12-inch models)

Audio

• Audio line in (minijack) (12-inch models)
• Headphone out (minijack) (12-inch models)
• Built-in stereo speakers with midrange-enhancing third speaker (12-inch models)
• Internal omnidirectional microphone

Battery and power

• 50-watt-hour lithium-ion battery (with integrated charge indicator LEDs) providing up to 5 hours of battery life (12-inch models) ⁽⁷⁾

Keyboard and trackpad

• Built-in full-size keyboard with 78 (U.S.) or 79 (ISO) keys, including 12 function keys, 4 arrow keys (inverted “T” arrangement) and embedded keypad

Security

• Kensington cable lock slot

Electrical and environmental requirements

• Meets ENERGY STAR requirements
• Line voltage: 100V to 240V AC
• Frequency: 50 to 60Hz
• Operating temperature: 50° to 95° F (10° to 35° C)
• Storage temperature: -13° to 113° F (-25° to 45° C)
• Relative humidity: 0% to 90% noncondensing
• Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 ft
• Maximum storage altitude: 15,000 ft
• Maximum shipping altitude: 35,000 ft

Size and weight (12-inch model)

• Height: 1.18 inches (3.0 cm)
• Width: 10.9 inches (27.7 cm)
• Depth: 8.6 inches (21.9 cm)
• Weight: 4.6 pounds (2.1 kg) with battery and optical drive installed ⁽⁸⁾