CodeAngel.org

Mathematica 6.0 has been released today! Mathematica 6 has gone in a different direction than any of it's predecessors. It allows users to create dynamic interfaces quickly and easily. It also allows interactivity beyond what any previous version offered.

Mathematica is a highly interactive functional programming language that allows almost anyone to produce mathematical models and simple code with little knowledge of computer science. With Mathematica 6 it allows users to create interactive dynamic interfaces in a few lines of code that would take a traditional programming language thousands of lines to produce. Mathematica has the ability to connect to the internet and databases, parse xml, has regular expression functionality, and anything else that I would need for my day to day programming tasks. Even though it was originally built for mathematicians and scientist, almost anybody can benefit from using Mathematica for their programming needs.

Along with Mathematica 6, Wolfram Research also released a free Mathematica Player that allows you to download and run free Mathematica notebooks from Wolfram's Demonstration Project and allows you to experience what Mathematica 6 can do!

This movie was a great way to re-live my childhood. A story about 4 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ninjas + Turtles = Win. I have been waiting for the release of this film since I first heard of it 9 months ago. I was enthralled when I saw the first trailer about 3 months ago. I had to see it on opening day.

When I was a wee lad, I watched the cartoon religiously. I had the toys. In fact I recall that a Michaelangelo action figure is the first toy I bought with my own money. I dressed up like Splinter for Halloween one year as a kid. I probably drove my parents crazy watching the movies over and over.

I remember the first three movies. Live action movies with men in big rubber suits and makeup that they could hardly even move was the theme to all of the movies. Big rubber suits are not conducive to ninja like skillz, not to mention make the turtles look really really fat.

Then this new movie came out. Done with computer animation, the way it was meant to be. Turtles could actually act and move like ninjas. The fight scenes were awesome. The characters were done very well. The villains were cool. This movie just all out rocked.

Only complaint I heard was the fact that April O'Neil has a unbelievable skinny waist and hoooge boobs that made her look like an alien. Those complaints were from the girls I went to see the movie with. I, however, approved. ^_^

So, if you grew up with the turtles, this movie is awesome. If you have kids, take them to see the movie, they'll love it. For everyone else, well, you'll find it entertaining at least. This movie seems to target either kids or people who grew up with turtles on their T.V. But, I think most audiences would love this movie.

I give this movie 4.5 angel wings out of 5.

Last week I took my family and friends out to see the Engineering Open House (EOH) at the University of Illinois. The open house showcased the different aspects of engineering in a science fair format. The exhibits ranged from things interesting and cool for adults, to things fun and exciting for the kids. One exhibit, titled R.A.G.E. Beyond The Ether, located in the Computer Science section was the highlight of my day. Second place would have to go to a Distributed Music Library system which I might highlight in another article.

R.A.G.E. Beyond the Ether was, in my opinion, an overly pompous name. Cool for kids I guess. I believe the main point of the exhibit was to see how computer vulnerabilities were discovered, and what was at risk. Unfortunately I believe the college kids at this exhibit were misunderstood, as an older gentleman asking questions quickly labeled the students as Virus Writers. The students, and most certainly I, dismissed such an ignorant statement. The students, rather than writing and distributing virii primarily aimed at selling male enhancement pills, were actually working on a potentially important discovery in computer security.

It's Here at last! CodeAngel.org is a project I have been working on, on and off, for almost a year! CodeAngel.org is my blog. The software behind this was written by me, and of course those who wrote the libraries behind it. The application base was written with the Zend Framework. I started writing this blog when Zend Framework was on 0.1.2 and at this time of writing is running on 0.8.0, I'll continue to update this blog based on Zend Framework perhaps perpetually.

The main reason I wrote my own blog software, instead of say use any of those 100s of other blog and content management software out there, is for two reasons. One reason is that I wanted a project to better understand MVC and how it applied to Web Development. The other reason why I reinvented the wheel, all the wheels out there didn't fit my car.