Articles by Alex Kamburov

Yesterday, I had a problem with my Logitech H330 headset. Out of nowhere the microphone started producing a static noise. What eventually solved my problem is to change the sample rate from 16 kHz (Tape Recorder Quality) to 32 kHz (FM Radio Quality). Here are the steps:

This blog post is a reply to Mark Seemann's warning: Beware of Productivity Tools . I suppose I fall in the category of those that "feel passionate about ReSharper" and I simply couldn't resist the temptation to share my passion. My background is Java and in that environment there are plenty of IDEs a developer can choose from. Given that, you're encouraged to try them all and to select the tool that best does the job. Talking about an IDE (not Notepad), one of the smartest IDEs out there is IntelliJ IDEA by JetBrains. The guys at JetBrains have never left a Java developer breath, I think. With their constant improvements, there was always something to read about and learn. Simply amazed by their innovation and still waiting for some of the goodies to come to Visual Studio, like Auto-Save and Local History. I switched to .NET only recently (1-2 years ago) but I still remember the initial frustration with Visual Studio. It was like using the good old Delphi IDE...

While configuring the Sitecore Social Connected module ( v1.3.0 rev.121016) in a new installation, I bumped into the following problem. When I try to add a new network account, the wizard page that allows me to select the application is empty: After struggling for a while, I figured out that the form is not initializing well and noticed that the Back button is enabled. It turns out that the option to  "Always skip the first page of wizards" is interfering. You need to click the Back button and you're taken to the Welcome page:    Now you click Next and the form initializes correctly with the network selected and applications drop down loaded: Update Dec 4, 2012: The issue is fixed in Sitecore Social Connected 1.3.1 rev. 121129 released on Nov 29. The bullet states: A network account couldn't be created using the wizard if 'Always skip the first page of wizards' check box was selected (375796). 

It was a pretty big revelation for me to find out that Evolution Theory is not something that popped up a few hundred years ago. Darwin's role is much more recent and as the American zoologist and paleontologist George Simpson stated, "Darwin... finally and definitely established evolution as a fact." Before this fact being acknowledged by a modern scientific community, a lot of men of science have written about their observations. This comes only to confirm the saying that all new is well-forgotten old. The detail that old men have managed to reach is amazing. They went as far as recognizing apes as our closest relatives. The first source that came into my sight to support all this is interestingly enough of Arabic origin, The Muqaddimah. Here's an excerpt: This is the case with the simple material elements; it is the case with palms and vines, (which constitute) the last stage of plants, in their relation to snails and shellfish, (which constitute) the (low...

I just read an interesting article covering a project for artificial neural network created from DNA . What is even more interesting is a slide from the presentation of the research: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgGBZZYEm_Y&t=3m59s It's fascinating that intelligence is "devolved" to simple molecule interactions. This reminds me of how the computer is brought to life by one of nature's tools: the human.

Направете си фланелка, PSD и EPS файловете са достъпни тук: http://www.bulblog.com/?p=3410

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this article is strictly for educational purposes! I cannot guarantee that the described files work for everybody. My Nokia 6120 classic has just regained its smartphone title in my eyes :) After installing iON BatteryTimer FREE v1.05 (which I recommend to everybody) from Ovi Store a month ago, today I managed to update the very limited Nokia Maps 2.0 software to Nokia (Ovi) Maps 3.01 :) The sudden impulse to look again for an update of the Maps software, although several unsuccessful attempts to update it through Nokia Ovi Suite, came after reading the following discussion: http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/t5/Maps-Navigation-and-GPS/Nokia-Maps-2-0-3-0-Install-Error-Nokia-6120-Navigator-DENY/td-p/462375 Someone has managed to update the program by changing the certificate with a self-signed and going around the limitation imposed on Nokia 6120 classic. The first step was to get the .sis file. I didn't want to bother hacking Ovi ...

" Visual perception is the ability to interpret information and surroundings from the effects of visible light reaching the eye. The resulting perception is also known as eyesight, sight, or vision (adjectival form: visual, optical, or ocular)."  Visual perception , Wikipedia We have had optical character recognition (OCR) for years now. Reading can be perceived as an important ability of our visual perception and we have more or less cracked it. What we don't have is the ability to acquire 3D models from a simple 2D camera, just like our eyes can. Or at least I thought so. An article that I read recently has pushed me to google for such type of software. Interestingly enough just a few weeks ago I was thinking about such a system and its (big) importance to AI development. Google provided an article immediately, and it dated from 2009! Creating 3D models with a simple webcam (w/ Video) described a system just like the one that I envisioned and provided a nice vid...

I just watched the movie Transcendent Man . In general it was a good documentary packing Ray Kurzweil's reflections on the exponential growth of evolution. Apart from talking about scientific predictions, there were a lot of human desires that were portrayed. Like Ray's obsession with  resurrecting some part of his father. At the end of the movie, as a conclusion, Ray was speaking about the explosion of intelligence in the Universe. I stayed for a couple of minutes, reiterating on what I have thought before and synchronizing it with what I saw in the film. I stopped at the idea of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and its relevance to the Universe. All that evolution (or the Universe) has created up until now, we are gradually trying to compact it in our brains so that we can make predictions on what will happen next. We are, to our knowledge, the most flexible form of existence in our Universe. Being a bit limited though, we're looking for help to be able to do our...

Rendering of the introduction of the Taare Zameen Par 's Wikipedia article as a graph (click to enlarge):

Recently it was brought to my attention that the user agent string of the mobile version of Google AdsBot caused problems on a .NET site running Sitecore CMS. The exception is:      Stack trace:    at System.Number.StringToNumber(String str, NumberStyles options, NumberBuffer& number, NumberFormatInfo info, Boolean parseDecimal)    at System.Number.ParseInt32(String s, NumberStyles style, NumberFormatInfo info)    at System.Web.Configuration.HttpCapabilitiesBase.get_MajorVersion()    at Sitecore.UIUtil.SupportsInlineEditing()    at Sitecore.Sites.SiteContext.SetDisableWebEditEditing(String value)    at Sitecore.Sites.SiteContext.ProcessQueryString()    at Sitecore.Sites.SiteContext..ctor(SiteInfo info, Boolean processQueryString)    at Sitecore.Sites.SiteContextFactory.GetSiteContext(String hostName, String fullPath, Int32 portNumber)    at Sitecore.Pipelines....

Recently, I had to concatenate and put in one line (comma separated) the results of a query in Oracle. After one version using replace, xmlagg and xmlelement which had several problems and some reading online I compiled the following code: select rtrim(dbms_xmlgen.convert(xmlagg(xmlelement(e, mycolumn || ', ')).extract('//text()').getClobVal(), 1), ', ') from mytable The extract/getClobVal trick came from "ORA-19011 Character string buffer too small when used with XMLAGG function": http://oracle.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/oracle-dev-l/ora19011-character-string-buffer-too-small-when-used-with-xmlagg-function-3882635 The dbms_xmlgen.convert trick came from "HOWTO: Avoid Conversion of Escape Codes": http://www.liberidu.com/blog/?p=635 Enjoy :-)

StatSVN retrieves information from a Subversion repository and generates various tables and charts describing the project development. You can get the software this page: http://www.statsvn.org/downloads.html Inside the archive (statsvn-0.7.0.zip) you have a readme.txt and a statsvn.jar . It would've been nice to be able to run StatSVN directly so I played a bit to create this bat file: set home=%cd% set /p project=Project folder: set report=report cd /d %project% del svn.log svn log --xml -v > svn.log cd /d %home% rd /s /q %report% java -jar statsvn.jar -output-dir %report% %project%\svn.log %project% del %project%\svn.log %report%\index.html Just create the bat file in the folder where you extracted StatSVN, run it, paste your project's folder path and wait for the magic to happen. The report will be generated in a folder named report and the report's index.html should be opened in your browser.

We live in our Universe. We all study it and learn about it so that we can live in it. Human civilization systematized all knowledge into sciences like mathematics (from Greek: learning , study , science ), physics (from Greek: nature ), biology, chemistry, etc. The system of sciences is helping us understand where we are, but it is also enabling us to influence the World. The result? We have the Universe and our tiny, dense information structure called sciences. The Universe is "building" the sciences through us and gets influenced by the sciences through us. You can call the sciences, one dimension of our contribution as a society. You can also call the sciences a living organism that moves around and interacts with its environment. Here is an ugly sketch of the pyramid of influences: All the dots are in the Universe. The black ones are the inanimate objects. The red ones are the people on Earth. The blue ones are the objects of science. What is interesting to note here i...

During our lives, while learning about the world, we see that everything is composed of something else. Everything evolves into something else. Things change. And then, there are singularities. Singularities are points of the world that the human cannot perceive into. There is The Big Bang that came from a single point. There are those quantum particles that space is "composed of" (maybe not a good example ^^). All those points hide an unimaginable amount of wow. Maybe those points are even more important than all the unknown worlds and undiscovered features of the world we are somewhat able to observe now. What I thought about today is the " Technological Singularity ". The advancement in speed, intelligence, etc. will ultimately bring humans to a new frontier where a new era will begin. This brings thoughts about the end of all things just like any other singularity out there. It's tempting. Our society is a platform, a test-tube, for those scientific endeavor...

Последните дни излезе новината, че Светия Синод на Българската православна църква иска задължително обучение по религия в училище. Хайде нова акция... Светият Синод иска задължително обучение по религия в училище: http://dariknews.bg/view_article.php?article_id=592334 ДСБ подкрепи искането за задължително обучение по религия: http://dariknews.bg/view_article.php?article_id=593318&audio_id=63200 Негово Високопреосвещенство Ловчанският митрополит Гавраил: http://www.vsekiden.com/77609 Ясно е, че в последно време, политическия елит е застанал зад Светия Синод и може би това е плода на разговорите им. Предполагам има и още, но само бъдещето ще покаже. Какво наблюдаваме в исторически план? Религията, подкрепяна от вярата на народа, е успяла да съхрани българския дух. Комунизмът унищожава религията, за да може хората да вярват само в него и да го подкрепят. Когато той си заминава, хората първоначално се опитват да вярват в държавата. Цялата тази смяна на правителства и партии ...

Днес получих следния SMS: Mtel Vi predstavia: Unikalna oferta ot SMS za Milioni! BEZPLATEN SMS s Vasheto EGN na nomer 9999 i moje da spechelite 20 000 leva oshte dnes! Ne e za izpuskane! Стори ми се доста съмнителна цялата работа и се разтърсих. Намерих следните форуми и статии: Номер 9999: http://www.ipmart-bg.com/archive/index.php/t-28709.html МТел продължава да спами* с SMS за милиони: http://varnanews.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=472:-sms-&catid=44:newsbulgaria&Itemid=91 Внимание, МТел събира ЕГН-та противозаконно: http://varnanews.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=468:2010-09-23-06-21-08&catid=44:newsbulgaria&Itemid=91 Бихте ли си дали ЕГН-то на номер 9999: http://www.mobilebulgaria.com/forum/307145/1/0/0/%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%85%D1%82%D0%B5-%D0%BB%D0%B8-%D1%81%D0%B8-%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8-%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%BD-%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%80-9999 Оказва се, че става въпрос за играта SMS за мили...

The Universe. It's there. The mind is in the Universe. It's part of the Universe. It's the Universe. We make the abstraction that what we do is decided by us. Just as the Earth can think of herself as orbiting the Sun. Earth is part of the Universe, so are we. All is natural. AGI is in the Universe. It's part of the Universe. It's the Universe. We make the abstraction that if a computer does something that seems intelligent to us, it has a mind similar to ours. What is happening actually? What is all this mumbo jumbo? Can I please have another view on the matter? The U(niverse) can have virtual U(s) in it. The creators of those U(s) are the "thinkers". They make a dense representation of the U and act upon the real U "intelligently" according to their will. For example our knowledge is that dense representation. Our will is actually the next move that was given to us. But it was given by the same U. We cannot be intelligent and be part of the U. ...

If you have noticed, recently a lot of web sites have acquired Facebook's like button . At first I didn't see the broad implications of this tiny button if it wasn't for a f8 LIVE video I watched last week. At this year's f8 LIVE , Mark Zuckerberg and Bret Taylor introduced the Open Graph protocol . For the total nubs, graphs are (according to Wikipedia's article on Graph theory ) mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects from a certain collection. Now, I have read about graphs here and there. They're visible in the following fields: My dictionaries' future projects all ended up in graph-like structures. My recent reading of articles on AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) have also been related to graphs. If our gray matter is the synthesizing algorithm (see my article on the brain , in bulgarian) then it's cooperation with white matter (being a network layer) forms a good candidate for saying that our intelligence and ...

It turns out that I have already written down some ideas on the matter: Развитието на Света (Еволюция) What (most) sciences are all about Biology, Sociology, Chemistry, History, Astrophysics, Physics... Evolution , Galaxy formation and evolution , Human evolution , Technological evolution (1)... Studying what is now, how it came to be and how it will change. How do you call this phenomenon: Universal evolution or General evolution? I think simply Evolution will do. Please fix Wikipedia's article on evolution and all those references to evolution theory concerning only living beings. Ervin László is said to be one of the men whose "goal was to explore whether it might be possible to use the chaos theory to identify a new general theory of evolution". He's the man behind the Akashic Field Theory which states that an informational field can explain why our universe appears to be fine-tuned as to form galaxies and conscious lifeforms; and why evolution is an informed,...