Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Archives for 2007

My books on LibraryThing

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In addition to the quality information found on the Internet, I also have a lot of books. Not all of them are reference quality material but they are all mine…

Yesterday, I have started using LibraryThing, a Web 2.0 application to manage my bookshelf.

LibraryThing will allow me to buy better and better books. I’m thrilled!

I have books on:

Computer Programming

Software Architecture

Hardware, Networking and Parallel Processing

Database and Artificial Intelligence

Operating Systems (Mac OS X, Linux, etc.)

The Web, HCI, Graphics and Multimedia

Various other things I like

By the way, I hope (?) that you have all recognised the cover of Kitab al-Jabr wal-Muqabala written by al-Khwarizmi (AD 780-850). This book is the first book on the systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations and consequently Al-Khwarizmi is considered to be the father of algebra (al-Jabr). The word algorithm stems from the Latin version of al-Khwarizmi’s name.

In other words, Al-Khwarizmi is the grandfather of all computer scientists…

Programming Quiz #1

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Tomorrow I am asking my Computer Science & Engineering students to solve this small programming problem:

Write a function in C which returns a random integer between 1 and 20. One extremely important caracteristic of the function is that it must return a different integer each time it is called. This, obviously, implies that it can only be called twenty times.

There is a second part (and in my opinion it is the coolest part):

Write the same function using a more modern programming language (e.g. Ruby).

Care to give this a go?

(Image courtesy of Sega Japan)

Is LinkedIn perfect for grown ups?

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Some extremely prominent people (like Guy Kawasaki) are raving about LinkedIn at this very moment.

According to Wikipedia,

“LinkedIn is a business oriented social networking site, mainly used for professional networking. As of January 2007, it had more than 9 million registered users, spanning 150 industries and more than 400 economic regions (as classified by the service).

The main purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. The people in the list are called Connections. Users can invite anyone (whether a LinkedIn user or not) to become a connection.”

LinkedIn seems to be made for two categories of people (overlapping allowed):

  • those willing to get acquainted with more people
  • those looking for a better job

I’ve created my profile (http://www.linkedin.com/in/avinashmeetoo) and I’ve a couple of contacts. In addition to that, I’ve just sent 65 invitations to people I know professionally and, believe it or not, I’m watching them add me to their network in real-time.

Personally, I see a lot of value in LinkedIn. What’s your opinion?