You may have noticed that Echo Generation has been fairly quiet recently. In my last post, I talked about my new employer, Suited Media Inc, but I have yet to blog about what exactly I have been working on.

So, what have I been doing? I have been very busy developing a new social networking site called Pokerspace.

Pokerspace is currently in its final stages of development for a demo release. If you would like to be one of the first few people to try out the site and help us improve it, you can submit your name and email address at Pokerspace.com.

We also recently launched the Pokerspace Development Blog, where you can stay up to date on the most recent Pokerspace development news.

That is all I have time to blog about for now, but as always, stay tuned to my blog for updates.

On Monday I finished the last exam of my undergraduate career. Needless to say, I felt very good. I was filled with the warm sensation of having finally accomplished what I had set out to, many years ago.

I now feel filled with energy, determination, and focus. I have been concentrating primarily on school for the last few years, so now I am primed to get into the workforce in a real way. I am ready to use my talents in the business world - where they will be tested much more throughly than they have been in the academic world.

I am also ready to jump into work because I am excited about the company I will be working with. I start tomorrow at a small start-up company called Suited Media Inc. Suited Media Inc. was founded in November 2006 to develop innovative online marketing solutions.

I will be working in a beautiful new building located on UW’s north campus, the Waterloo Accelerator Centre. I am quite excited be joining a small entrepreneurial software company at such a critical time in its young life. I feel ready to dedicate my attention to the continued growth and success of Suited Media Inc.

I have been running Echo Generation since 2003. In that time I have made almost 500 posts on a wide variety of topics that I find interesting. So, which posts have been post popular? Since the inception of the site, the top 10 most highly accessed posts are:

1 - Making space on the wall for my University of Waterloo Honours degree, Bachelor of Computer Science w/ Business Option
2 - Finding the Blog Influentials
3 - MyDensity maps 2 degrees of the social network around any URL
4 - Acoustic analysis shows how temple transforms echoes into sounds of nature
5 - Ning, a free social application playground
6 - iUpload blog coverage
7 - Mark Fletcher, CEO of Bloglines, shares tips on startups
8 - Mitch did notice my MyDensity post
9 - Advances in invisibility / stealth technology
10 - Cool Mind Hacks stories

I am now ready to jump into the working world with full force. I graduate in April and I am available to start work in May.
I am looking for a full-time position working in the area of software development and/or business development. Web-related development is my preferred type of software development work, although I am open to all interesting offers. See my resume for all my details. My preferred work location is Waterloo, Ontario (and area), but I welcome interested employers from across Canada to contact me.

I am quite excited to be finishing my final term at the University of Waterloo. In about three months I will be the proud owner of an Honours degree in Computer Science from one of the best CS programs in the world. I now understand why it is considered such.

I have had many exciting years at UW, but I am ready to leave the academic world and use my knowledge and experience to create real world innovation. The knowledge I have acquired at UW has been deep and wide, hands-on and theoretical, and current and relevant. And, I already have years of real-world business and software development experience thanks to the amazing co-op program at UW. The knowledge and experience I have acquired during co-op terms has been substantial. Furthermore, my personal research efforts span far and wide. The number of blogs on my personal reading list is extremely high and has been stabilizing (see Number of Feeds I Read) over the past few years. I can hardly believe I have been running this blog since 2003! The number of posts is now nearing 500.

Although I have not made any posts in a while, I still continue to follow a large number of blogs. So, just how large you may ask?

It has been a long while since I posted to Echo Generation. Too long. But why? I was too busy with the previous school term, and than with holiday festivities. But now that I am back on campus and into school mode I have started to blog again as well. In the meantime, with only occasional blog reading taking place, I now have about 14000 unread posts in Bloglines! Time to do some more culling.

This term should be quite enjoyable. I am taking a number of interesting courses, including two 4th year CompSci courses. CS 480 - Information Systems Management is right up my alley, covering many of the topics under my personal research umbrella. CS 498 Image and Vision Computing seems even more cool. So much of what we have covered in the first few lectures is actually making sense to me primarily due to my experience with audio and synthesizers. Low-pass filters, sampling rates, Fourier transforms, and so on, are topics I already know about from on my on going quest to learn as much as I can about audio/sound/music.

I have been quietly building a lot of posts lately, gathering more information for each post before I make it. I figure that my previous posts show a lot about what I am interested in already. In future posts, I will try to add more value to the blogosphere by combining more sources, over more time, with more of my personal comments added. I would like to focus more on emerging synergies from different personal, academic, and business niches — with less posts about a single cool idea. More perspectives = better information.

No blog posts (or even blog reading!) for the last while, because I am completely flooded with assignments right now. The CS 454 (Dist’d Systems) assignment I am working on right now, building a working RPC system, it taking forever. And mostly because the assignment specifications, while detailed, have left more questions than answers in some areas. Thus, I have been implementing it fairly slowly, piece by piece. At least they gave the entire class an 8 day extension… but I am guessing that is because the specs are so vague. I think this is the first time in my CS career at UW that a class was given a huge multi-day extension.

I have not even started my graphics assignment which is due Tuesday. And it is the creation of a ray tracer! That is also going to take forever. I am guess the blog posting will be slow for a while longer. In the meantime, here are some cool graphics related stories I had noted a few days (probably weeks) ago.

CMU scientist honoured for novel method of using computers to simulate collisions of objects

Dr. Doug L. James, assistant professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, has developed new methods to make computers simulate collisions a thousand times faster than previous methods.

In a computer, the shape of an object is typically represented by tens of thousands of tiny triangles. In conventional programs, when an object collides with something, the shape of each triangle is recomputed, based on physical principles.

“In most cases, things don’t touch each other all over their surfaces,” he explained. So, using what he calls “bounded deformation trees,” the computer does detailed computations only for those triangles that are touching. That reduces the amount of computing drastically and thus speeds up the entire process.

SwiftShader Software Renderer

TransGaming’s SwiftShader technology provides the world’s fastest pure software 3D renderer with DirectX 9.0 class features, according to the company, including support for Pixel and Vertex Shaders. SwiftShader is built to provide the same APIs that developers are already using for their games and applications. This makes it possible to directly integrate SwiftShader into applications without any changes to source code. Direct3D 8 and Direct3D 9 compatible APIs are available immediately.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Technology

HDR, or High Dynamic Range, is a lighting process that’s been designed to emulate in-game or artificially generated lighting to closely mirror the changes we see in the real world.

In simpler terms, HDR allows you to make the objects brighter by allowing them to use the full brightness capabilities of the monitor and not just the brightness level at which they have been shot with (or rendered with) in the scene.

The UW DJ club is hosting a charity party in the Student Life Centre (SLC) on campus at UW. I will be playing a live breaks/DnB set from 2:30PM-4:00PM. I am quite excited. I have never played on campus before, nor with the UW DJ club. It should be quite fun. I will probably be hanging out in the SLC with my gear in case anyone wants to play, learn, or teach. Just look for a guy with a small midi controller keyboard.

I am guessing most of the other DJs will be playing some popular records with the tables, but I am just going to freestyle it with my laptop and midi controller for an hour and a half. As long as I can keep some beats and breaks going down the without overloading my computer with crazy effect chains I should be good. This will be my second live performance. At an hour and a half long, I just hope I can find enough cool material to draw from to play it out smoothly.

Here is the DJ lineup for today’s FSA Charity Event:

11:30am -1:00pm DJ Tin Lok (Andrew)
1:00pm - 2:30pm DJ Colin Bell (Colin)
2:30pm - 4:00pm The Inner Space Cowboy (Jason)
4:00pm - 5:30pm DJ Laika (Hunter)
5:30pm - 7:00pm DJ soulpepper (Jen)
7:00pm - 8:30pm DJ Adrian (Adrian)
8:30pm - 10:00pm MixMasterAlan (Alan)
10:00pm - 11:30pm DJ Karts (Kartik)

Why I blog this? It is a charity event, so if you are around the Waterloo area today please come out and show your support. As well, please spread the word of this charity event to your friends. All proceeds from this charity goes toward the Hurricane Katrina victims. Oh, and do not forget to go to the Bomber afterwards! And remember, I am playing a live set from 2:30PM to 4:00PM! Come dance!

Thought I had vanished… missing… kidnapped… killed? Or gasp, even stopped blogging? Of course not!

After a much needed vacation out west, I am back in Waterloo. It is time for my last year of computer science at U.Waterloo.

So, where have I been?

Five great friends and myself have been road tripping across Canada. We drove non-stop from Toronto, Ontario to Banff, Alberta. It only took about 3 days to get there (switching drivers and sleeping in the minivan almost 24 hours a day). We stayed in Banff for two nights, in a beautiful provincial park. This particular park had with many strange bird sounds. One particular early morning bird had over three octaves of rich sound in its songs, it was unlike any other bird I have ever heard.

We drove, explored, and camped out all over the southern parts of British Columbia for a few weeks. The peak of the trip was definitely Vancouver Island. Camping deep inside a second growth (50-60 years maybe?) forest, we found a huge, beautiful, untouched waterfall to play in and camp near to. The old growth forest we visited earlier in the trip was quite a treat as well.

I even brought the laptop on the trip to play with as well. The minivan was treated to more than a few live sets and recording sessions while we drove across Canada. Quite a lot of fun if I say so myself.

Much of the trip cannot be put into words. All I can say is I cherish the time I have spent with many good friends in many far away places.

‘It really is amazing’

Unfortunately, the trip had to come to an end - at least for some of us. We left two of our groups initial six in the forest - one made his way back a bit later, and the other is still there!

So, I am back into work-mode. But, I am excited for a number of reasons. It is my last year of computer science at U.Waterloo. And, for the first time in years, I will be living in one city for more than 4 months!

I also have some great 4th year CS courses this term. I am taking Distributed Systems [CS 454], Databases [CS 448], and Graphics [CS 488] (woot! woot!). It should be a pretty challenging term… hopefully. From the sounds of it, I can put as much time and brain power into Graphics as I choose to - lots of room for growth in the course. So, as I said, I am excited. If I do anything cool I will be sure to post about it.

Look forward to more blogging from me in the coming days and months :)

via IT Conversations comes a great presentation by Paul Graham about hackers.

In one of the most entertaining presentations from OSCON 2004, Paul answers the questions, what motivates great hackers? What do they need to do their jobs? How do you recognize them? How do you get them to come and work for you? And how can you become one?

I listened to the audio version of this presentation and I have to say I was impressed. It is not very often that someone understands us, let alone puts it all into words so others can try to understand us.

Why I blog this? Much of what Paul has said resonants deeply in me. Paul’s talk is highly recommended listening (or reading), especially if you would like to know more about me.

My previous post was written the typical way, using the WordPress interface.

For this post, I have bypassed the WordPress interface completely. It only took me a few seconds to write up this post using our new Perspectives QuickPost tool. I had to find a copy of xmlrpc.php for old (1.2) WordPress install, but that proved quite easy.

I have also added a Technorati Perspective with a couple of relevant tags to this post. Cool.

Anyone can use this tool now, for free. Click here to sign up for Perspectives.

Why I blog this? This is a first for me - a blog posting on my own blog using a blog tool that I helped create. I am sure you can understand why there is a smile on my face today.

iUpload Perspectives Applied (what’s this):

 Technorati Tags: iUpload, Perspectives