March 01, 2007
Thank Goodness for Wikipedia
I have always been fascinated by Wikipedia. Even though it shouldn't be used in academic papers, it is still a great resource for finding information on just about anything. There are times that I can go on and just go from page to page, finding information about any number of random things I never would have thought of. I think this comic sums it up nicely:
By the way, you can download the little Java app I wrote to make this entry HERE. Just pass in the text file to be converted as an argument. Jakarta Commons IO is required for runtime.
Posted by Chuck at 11:17 AM | Comments (1)
February 02, 2007
What are the Best Super Bowl Squares?
While I don't typically gamble, almost every year I take part in a friendly Super Bowl Squares Pool. This year I thought it would be fun to figure out which numbers win most often, to sort of gauge my likelihood of winning. I figured that 0, 3 and 7 would be the best numbers, just because a team is very likely to either not score or score once. However, I was not sure just how good these numbers were.
To come up with the answer, I started to manually add up all the scores from every Super Bowl using Wikipedia. Then my good friend Chris Federowicz decided to write a PERL script to do the same thing. Here are the results. Each number, 0-9 is shown, as well as how many times that number would have won the pool for a single quarter:
Digit 0: 91
Digit 1: 16
Digit 2: 8
Digit 3: 51
Digit 4: 34
Digit 5: 8
Digit 6: 26
Digit 7: 63
Digit 8: 9
Digit 9: 14
As you can see, 0, 3 and 7 are the big winners, with 1, 4, 6 and 9 coming in much lower. 2, 5 and 8 hardly won any at all.
Since my numbers this year are 9 and 8, I will be needing some serious luck.
UPDATE:
Part 2 of the results - Most popular combinations of scores (Thanks again Chris):
0, 7 = 19
0, 3 = 15
0, 0 = 12
0, 4 = 10
4, 7 = 10
3, 7 = 10
3, 6 = 7
7, 7 = 6
3, 4 = 6
3, 3 = 6
0, 9 = 5
0, 6 = 5
6, 7 = 5
0, 5 = 4
0, 2 = 3
1, 7 = 3
1, 5 = 3
0, 8 = 3
6, 8 = 3
1, 4 = 3
0, 1 = 3
7, 9 = 2
4, 9 = 2
2, 7 = 2
6, 6 = 2
5, 9 = 1
8, 9 = 1
2, 9 = 1
6, 9 = 1
1, 6 = 1
1, 8 = 1
2, 4 = 1
1, 9 = 1
2, 8 = 1
4, 4 = 1
1, 3 = 1
Posted by Chuck at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2007
Introduction to AJAX
An introductory article about AJAX that I have written has been published in the January, 2007 edition of System i News. Access to my specific article would typically require a paid ProVIP subscription. My contract for this specific article, however, allowed me to post the full contents online:
Posted by Chuck at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)
June 19, 2006
In the Trenches – J2EE Software Developer
The technology job search-engine Dice.com recently published an article in their Career Resources section that I wrote about getting a job as a Java Developer. The article explains what beginning Java programmers should know about interviews, what companies are looking for, what skills they should have, etc.
Posted by Chuck at 01:21 PM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2006
Survivor
I'd like to veer away from my usual technical posts and instead post an abbreviated conversation that happened recently between myself and a friend:
Friend: Hey Chuck, have you read any good books lately?
Me: Well actually, I am reading Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk right now.
Friend: That's cool. How many pages is it?
Me: Around 290.
Friend: Nice. And what page are you on?
Me: 275.
Friend: So you are almost done?!
Me: Well, no...
Posted by Chuck at 11:48 AM | Comments (1)
June 05, 2006
JavaOne 2006
Last month I was sent to Sun's JavaOne Developer Conference. It was held in San Francisco's Moscone Center and had several hundred Java-related sessions and labs. I took some pictures and also uploaded a summary PowerPoint presentation of everything I saw that I made for work. Check it out.
In addition, PDF's of all of the technical sessions have been posted online.
The catalog to search for specific sessions is here.
Posted by Chuck at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2006
Cold, Hard (Geo) Cache
Now that it is starting to get a little warmer, I would like to start taking advantage of Columbia, MD's pathways and trails again. When Columbia was first built (by Edward Norton's grandfather, no less), they purposely planned to have these pathways throughout the entire city. It makes it very easy to walk from one place to another and also allows me to get some much needed exercise.
Since I am also a technology buff, I have recently started getting into Geocaching, which allows me to exercise and use technology at the same time.
In the activity of geocaching, someone hides a 'cache', which is typically a plastic container full of a few trinkets and a log book. They then post the latitude and longitude of the location of the cache (found with a GPS) online at a site like geocaching.com. Other people will then plug the coordinates into their own GPS and try to find it. Once found, they can sign the log book, swap out a trinket for one of their own, take a picture, etc. They would also post online that they found the cache.
There are many variations of geocaching and they are found all over the place. For instance, there are 64 caches listed that are 5 miles or less from my house. The closest one was about a 10 minute walk.
I highly recommend this activity and hope to find about one cache a week for the duration of the Spring and Summer. You can track my progress by looking up user ChuckCaplan on geocaching.com.
Here are some other links that I recommend:
Maryland Geocaching Society
Reading a GPS using Java
Posted by Chuck at 12:23 PM | Comments (2)
October 04, 2005
Just Added - Del.icio.us Bookmarks on Sidebar
Using an idea from Jeffrey Veen as well as the Feedsplitter PHP package, I added my 10 most recent del.icio.us bookmarks to my blog sidebar via a del.icio.us RSS Feed. Now, people can see which sites I consider worth bookmarking from right here. If you don't already use del.icio.us, I recommend it as a great place to keep track of your bookmarks as well as a place to find user-contributed pages on any subject. I also recommend this Greasemonkey script.
Note - I edited a Feedsplitter XML file in order to customize the way the feed looks on my site. You can download the updated file here. For whatever reason, the original XML file was not well-formed, but it still seems to work.
Posted by Chuck at 10:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 16, 2005
Track Any Flight Online
My wife is currently flying to Chicago, but I am at work. Normally, I would have no idea if there was a delay, when she would be arriving or where in flight she was. Fortunately, I can track her trip in real-time with a flight tracking service like FlightView from RLM Software. With FlightView, I can enter any airline and flight number along with a date and it will give me real-time stats on the flight, such as altitude and speed. The site also features a map so I can see exactly where the plane is at any given time:
This technology has been around for a while, but I think it deserves another mention because I rarely hear about it anymore.
Posted by Chuck at 09:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 01, 2005
A 15-Minute Guide to Using CVS with WDSc
My first published article, "A 15-Minute Guide to Using CVS with WDSc" has been printed in the August, 2005 edition of iSeries News. It is free to subscribe to the printed version of the magazine, but online access to my specific article requires a paid subscription. If you happen to have a subscription, you can read the article online here: iSeries News - August, 2005
Posted by Chuck at 01:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 11, 2005
It's Me, or Not...
Pretty much everyone has Self-Googled themselves at one point or another. Some people are just curious. However, some people have legitimate reasons, like celebrities who need to monitor what is being said about them or webmasters who need to monitor where in the search results they appear. This article even suggests you Self-Google once a day. That seems a little extreme, but I am noticing that the more I post to this blog, the higher up this site gets when I search for my name.
Here are some interesting pages about people who have the same name as me but are not me. Apparently, I not only saved many of America’s most prominent leaders from certain danger and possible death in 1919 but am also a convicted felon in England who is notorious for illegally exporting poison gas.
- Packaged Threats: Danger in Disguise - On May 5, 1919, a New York City mail clerk became a postal legend. With one heroic deed, Charles Caplan saved many of America’s most prominent leaders from certain danger and possible death.
- Illegal Export of Poison Gas - Yun was monitored while Charles Caplan asked him to procure a quantity of the deadly nerve gas Sarin.
- The Rainier Valley Harmonizers - Baritone
- 2001 Junior Olympics - Third Place in Under 16 Boys Table Tennis
- The Mayor of a Fictional Town
- A Dentist - Dr. Charles Caplan, of Madison, Wis., never found a chair that comfortably supported his tall body, so he founded a company that eventually became known as Orascoptic Research. He was one of the first to develop a fully adjustable chair with arms, one that resolved many ergonomic issues. But it still could not be positioned low enough for other clinicians.
Posted by Chuck at 02:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 14, 2004
Message Sent
Thanks for contacting me. If you submitted a valid email address, I will be contacting you. Please click here to return to my Web Log.Posted by Chuck at 11:11 AM
Contact Me
Posted by Chuck at 10:52 AM