Our Macs!

We are sorry for not writing for a such long period but exams at uni kept us quite busy! Anyway now, since we finished all the exams, we are again free. To restart witing on this blog we want to show you this beautiful photo of our macs…

The sad truth about geeks and women…

I’m sorry for not writing as much as I would but unfortunately the study (for uni’s exams) is keeping me away from the keyboard (I’m still using my computer… but after studying I’ve not much energy left for blogging).

Anyway I found on the web this extremely funny strip that tells a really sad truth about geeks and women…

CocoLife: a Cocoa version of “Game of Life”

Since my mental illness is still not cured, and I’m very much into this “game of life” thing, I also developed a version of Conway’s game of life for Mac OS X using Objective-C and the framework Cocoa.

Esthetically speaking the Cocoa version is much more cool then the Java one… but the algorithm is actually the same. I named it “CocoLife” fusing “Cocoa”, the name of the framework I used, and “Life”. The application’s icon represent a particular configuration of the game of life called “glider”.

Since I cured much more the develop of this version I filled up the application with many “cool” features! In CocoLife is possible to:

 

• Configure the colors of background and automata
• Choose between 4 different world sizes (50×50, 100×100, 250×250 and 500×500)
• Choose the world type (bordered-world or loop-world)
• Change the execution speed of the simulation modifying the interval of pause between transitions
• Create personal world configurations using the bult-in world-editor

The application, released under the license GNU GPL v2, requires Mac OS X 1.5 Leopard to work.  

Download CocoLife from here:

• XCode Project source code: CocoLife-src.zip
• Mac OS X Universal Binary: CocoLife.zip

 

jLife: the last son of my mental illness

Do you know the Conway’s Game of Life? Well for them who don’t…

The Game of Life is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is the best-known example of a cellular automaton.

The “game” is actually a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, needing no input from human players. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves. A variant exists where two players compete.

Yesterday I read an article about it ad I felt an insane necessity of developing a little java version of this useless game (of course it is not the first implementation of the life game… but it was just for my fun)!

Here you can download it:

• Source code: jLife-src.zip
• Mac OS X Universal Binary: jLife.zip
• JAR Multi-platform executable: jLife.jar

Here you can find bit different version… the world-loop one. In the previous version the world was a 100×100 bordered matrix, in this version instead it is a 100×100 infinite-loop matrix (each border is connected to the opposite one creating an infinite loop).

•  Source code: jLife-loop-src.zip
• Mac OS X Universal Binary: jLife-Loop_Version.zip
• JAR Multi-platform executable: jLife-loop.jar

My new MacBook Air

Two weeks ago I did it! I bought the new Apple’s super thin computer… the MacBook Air! Obviously the model with the 1.6 GHz CPU and 80 GB PATA Hard Drive since I’m not rich enough to buy the Solid State Disk model (I’m also not a fan of solid state technology… so having the money I would have opted for a 1.8 GHz CPU and PATA HD).

You know… I don’t care if it hasn’t any dvd drive or neither a ethernet port! On my old MacBook the ethernet port was still virgin after 2 years of use… and the dvd drive is useless since I have my iMac to burn and read DVD (I usually rip my dvd-movies and put them on a portable HD) so I got only advantages from the Air: less weight to carry around at uni, less space occupied in my bag and a battery with a much longer duration (tested… it truly worked for 5 hours)!

Another thing I love of the Air is that it has all the “coolnesses” of the pro series (like the ambient light sensor for automatic adjustment of keyboard illumination and screen brightness). So I can say I’m pretty happy with my new toy!

I did a video of the unboxing… I hope you’ll appreciate it:

Male-Female interaction problems

Today I’ve read (the article can be found here) that, upon a study of Indiana University, young men are unable to read female behavior and body language to understand if they are “interested” or not.

“Young men just find it difficult to tell the difference between women who are being friendly and women who are interested in something more” said lead researcher Coreen Farris of Indiana University’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

Mulling over the issue I’ve found out that the true problem is that has never been defined a protocol for male-female communication and interaction! I’ve searched into ISO database and I couldn’t find any! In my opinion if both male and female would use a standard ISO protocol for interaction and communication most of problems and misunderstanding would be avoided! I suggest one based on XML messages (would be the best choice)!

Please, you all, think about the huge benefits we would receive if my great idea would be reality!