Author Archives: Mirkules

Djokovic Wins Australian Open

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Djokovic wins his first Grand Slam at the Australian Open by defeating the Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in 4 sets 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (7-2). He was the heavy favorite to win against an unseeded Tsonga, who has blasted his way through the tournament with an upset over Rafael Nadal, reaching his first-ever Grand Slam final.

However, Djokovic’s relentlessness and persistence paid off in the end against an inexperienced Tsonga. Despite losing the first set and being cheered against by the audience, he took control halfway through the second set noticing that Tsonga is becoming emotionally and physically drained. With his killer instinct, Djokovic took the third set with relative ease, breaking Tsonga twice, while never facing a single break point himself.

In the final set of the match, things were fairly even until Djokovic called for a trainer timeout, apparently as a result of a cramped hamstring. He had two opportunities to close out the set, but both came on Tsonga’s powerful serve, which could not be broken. The match went into tiebreak — one of Djokovic’s notorious strengths, where he won the match 7-2.

Perhaps Tsonga’s nerves were showing in the final minutes of the game, where, despite not having had any double faults the entire match, he gave away two points. To his credit, however, he served incredibly well throughout the match with 17 Aces. I know I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of one of those serves.

Personally, I think Djokovic is a magnificent player that has a very bright future ahead of him. Compared to when I watched him a year ago, he has advanced by leaps and bounds. Then, I maintained that he was not ready to win a title when he lost to Nadal. Today, however, I firmly believe that this is one of many titles waiting for him, and I have feeling that we’ll be seeing a lot more of him.

One more opinion: I believe he should conduct himself better on the court, and not allow the fans to get inside his head like they did tonight. He should also definitely refrain from yelling obscenities at the fans, and, some would argue, taking off his shirt after winning. Those kinds of things belong in other sports (like Football) but not on a tennis court.

Predictions: At least 5 more grand-slam major titles, with at least 15 more showings in the finals. I think he has achieved the highest level of physical play, and, if he improves his mental game, he will be ranked #1 by the end of this year.

w00t!

MySQL Triggers

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I came across an interesting problem: I needed to create priorities for records in a database so that they would be able to be displayed in a particular order. Moreover, I needed to find a way to reorder the priorities on the fly. My first instinct was for each record to have its own priority (PRI) column. But what would happen on an insert, if, say, the newly inserted item’s priority is somewhere in the middle? I would have to reorder the list. My table looks like this:

Table TEST
ID VARCHAR(10)
PRI INT(5)

I have never used triggers before, but from what I understood, they would have been the perfect solution.

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TI-85 Gaussian Classifier

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Here’s a TI-85 program for the final that calculates the Mean Matrix, Covariances, Cv inverse, and the probability. I split it apart into two programs so that you can easily write down the answers and set your variables.

To calculate Mean, Covariance and Cv Inverse, enter the following into the program menu (I named mine GMEAN). The results are in variables called S and C (Cv Inverse is trivial to compute).

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Buying Houses

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Last week, we went to an open house in our townhouse complex. The price was $389,000 for a 2 Bedroom, 1.5 Bath townhouse with a “stream” view (read: pipe with flowing water). The seller was nice enough to us despite knowing that we are not in the market to buy but rather just curious. She told us it is 1200 sq ft (which, as I found out online later, was a lie — it is listed under 1000 sq. ft).

Anyway, we started talking about saving enough money for a down payment in this crazy housing situation, and she handed us a card of the lender she works with and to give her a call. She said we’d be surprised what we could afford. Alarm bells rang. I would be surprised how much I can afford? Really?

Using an online mortgage calculator, it turns out I need to pay ~$2900/month on a $389,000 mortgage. That’s almost $130,000 per year when you factor in car and student loan payments (who doesn’t have those). What about bills? Electricity? Gas? Food? Fuel? Living expenses? HOA?

This is why the housing market is on the downswing. This sort of pricing simply isn’t sustainable. There are a million and one ways to finance something you can’t afford — but in the end, you still can’t afford it! People are financing $500K houses with interest-only loans, ARMS, or 60-year loans. SIXTY YEARS! These are all signs that the houses are way, WAY overpriced.

The best you can do in these situations is find a cheap place to rent and weather this storm. And when a loan agent tells you that you’d be surprised at how much house you can afford, don’t buy into it. As for that townhouse, it’s still on the market after 2 1/2 months.

Mac OS X Review

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Three weeks ago I acquired a brand new MacBook Pro. This is my first Apple product after having been a Windows and Linux user and developer since I can remember.

I will try to document my switching experience as objectively as possible. I will review the hardware, software, and the GUI experience as it relates to my work and leisure.

In short, there is a lot of work to be done from a usability standpoint from a maker that touts usability as their #1 feature, but overall I am relatively happy with the MacBook Pro.
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Installing PHP on Mac OS X

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I’m back from my surgery. Thankfully, the laptop from my new employer arrived just in time to keep me occupied during recovery. It’s a 17″ MacBook Pro with the 1920×1200 resolution screen (Sah-weet!). 4 GB of RAM. I must say, this is probably the only machine that could have EVER switched me to being a Mac user. I will write a comprehensive review of what (still) bothers the hell out of me (after two weeks of use) in OS X, and what I find really cool (hint: the Unix prompt is #1). Anyway, I digress…

I just had the pleasure of installing PHP on Mac OS X. It took me about 3 hours to compile PHP 5.2.4 with MySQL, GD, and XML DOM API. By 3 hours, I mean, to find all the libraries, download them, compile them and install. I know OS X ships with PHP 4, but c’mon — PHP 4 will be discontinued by the end of the year.
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Slice n’ Dice

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Today is the big day I go under the knife. I’m a little nervous, but I know everything will be fine. The surgeon is about 150 years old, so I know he has the experience. I just hope that I didn’t crush his hand when I shook it. Anyway, thanks to all my friends for the support, and I will see you in the recovery room.

Firefox Searchbar Width

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You can set the width and the maximum widths of the Firefox search bar (the Google/Wiki bar) by performing the following steps:

  1. Locate userChrome-Example.css and rename to userChrome.css in your profile directory (under Windows, it’s usually in:
    C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\profiles\[profile dir]\chrome\
    (Note: some directories might be hidden, so you’ll have to run explorer with the “show hidden files” option)
  2. Insert the following in that file:
    #search-container {
    width: 400px !important;
    max-width: 400px !important;
    }
  3. Save the file, and restart Firefox. Voila, bigger search bar!