EVOL.reverse

A fellow developer brought up Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) during lunch. AOP is a programming paradigm that increases modularity by allowing the separation of “cross-cutting concerns”. These are aspects of a program which affect (crosscut) other concerns. These concerns often cannot be cleanly decomposed from the rest of the system in both the design and implementation, and result in either scattering or tangling of the program, or both. Examples are a logging infrastructure or user-based authentication. If we want to implement these things we have to scatter around the application instructions for it (either in the beginning/end of the function/method calls).

AOP implementations have some crosscutting expressions that encapsulate each concern in one place. The critics however advocate several things against it: “AOP has an inherent ability to create unpredictable and widespread errors in a system” and “Given the power of AOP, if a programmer makes a logical mistake in expressing crosscutting, it can lead to widespread program failure.”

http://www.eclipse.org/aspectj/doc/released/progguide/index.html

This message got to my mailbox via a friend a few days ago but only now I’ve got around to check it properly. CUDA is a programming language for applications that are to be executed on the graphics processing unit (GPUs). GPUs have a parallel “many-core” architecture, each core capable of running thousands of threads.

> Nvidia has announced the production release of CUDA 2.0, the latest
> version of its C language programming environment for GPUs that
> enables software developers to tap into the massively parallel
> architecture of the GPU for the acceleration of complex computational
> problems.
>
> This latest production release of the CUDA software suite includes
> support for 32 and 64-bit Windows Vista and Mac OS X as well as 3D
> textures and hardware interpolation to increase the efficiency of
> applications such as medical volume reconstruction and oil and gas
> seismic computing.
>
> Also included in CUDA 2.0 is an Adobe Photoshop plug-in example for
> both PC and Mac versions of the software. The example allows
> developers to design plug-ins that move the most compute-intensive
> functions of Adobe Photoshop to the GPU, such as filtering and image
> manipulation, delivering dramatic performance improvements.  The
> plug-in is available as source code so developers can easily develop
> advanced filters and imaging techniques that are available directly
> within Adobe Photoshop.
>
> CUDA 2.0 also features additional source code examples and new
> compiler optimizations and is available today for free download from

www.nvidia.com/cuda

Hi,

After a lot of work, the Mars Express Flight Control Team here at ESA/ESOC have got the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) back in operation.

As you know, the VMC is mounted on Mars Express. In 2003, it provided simple, low-tech images of Beagle lander separation, and this completed its original operational role.

While it’s not a scientific instrument, it does provide fantastic views of Mars - including crescent views of the planet not obtainable from Earth. VMC’s wide field of view also provides global images of Mars - something that is not currently provided by any other spacecraft.

In 2007, the Mars Express Flight Control Team began a test campaign to see whether the camera could be used to image Mars. ((It wasn’t even known if the camera would function at all after over three years of inactivity in deep space.)) But the VMC did, indeed, come back to life and the results to date have been very encouraging.

We plan to publish the new “VMC minisite” on Friday, 22 August, around 15:00 CEST. This mail is being sent to a select group of about a dozen bloggers, space writers and media as advance notice, and I hope you will plan to surf by to take a look at the results. Furthermore, we need your help!

Help us with the VMC

• VMC activities are unique in that the camera is operated by the Flight Control Team on a time-available basis (and not by a team of scientists).
  
• Starting Friday, images from the VMC (we call it the ‘Mars Webcam’) will be made available via the ESA website as rapidly as possible and whenever we have something worth showing - on the understanding that the VMC project is strictly a lowest-priority, “as available” activity.
  
• Open invitation for image feedback:: You can assist the Mars Express team with additional processing of the raw image data files as well as interpretation: What do you see? What part of the Mars surface is being shown? Can you identify any geographical features? What regions of the atmosphere or atmospheric components do you see?
  
• It would be fabulous if you would help spread word of the new site and encourage your readers to visit, enjoy the image galleries and take part, if they can!

((We would be delighted to receive copies of any good results that you get - either processed images or interpretations (more details on the site) - and we hope you’ll allow us to publish the best submissions.))

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/VMC/index.html

So, after signing up for the service back in Portugal it was time to install the antenna so we could watch portuguese TV here in Darmstadt. I haven’t stuck the thing into the wall yet but I wanted to test it before the weekend so after a lot of pointing at the air (I didn’t use a compass) I got it to work. The thing you see serving as a support is a rotative chair without it’s top part

Professor Randy Pausch passed away this morning.

If you have not seen his video, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”, please do so.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Thank you for the inspiration.

I’ve just been “exposed” to this software requirement:

“No memory leaks shall exist. ”

I’m glad someone thought of this one!

Today we cycled to the Frankfurt Main airport, the second biggest airport in Europe. It took us quite a while to get there (~1h30) at a medium pace I would say. After watching a few landings and some takeoffs we went for food at a nearby biergarden and begun cycling back to Darmstadt (Griesheim). The map says it was 40 km but think it was more!

Seems one of the developers that was working on one of the modules asked what icons should be shipped with the software and the client said it wasn’t important so he ended up choosing some icons according to his own taste.. which is kinda cool because now I’m working on the software and have these funny icons on the desktop:

The guy didn’t use the default gray icon, he wanted something better and funny and not the minimum that can be gotten away with. By the way, the icon on the right is Frank Zappa.

We cycled to Ludwigshöhe Tower and then to Roßdorf via Ober-Ramstadt.

We cycled through Griesheim, Wolfskehlen, and Leeheim, which is basically where the road goes. From Leeheim, we carried on straight to the Rhine through Sonnenhof and on to Kornsand, whereas the road goes north a bit through Geinsheim. It took about an hour to get there.

This map shows it quite well… click here.