Salsa at Clarendon Grill

We were there for the first time yesterday. I've found out that there's Salsa lessons and dance every Mon and Tue on Latin Dance web site. It said that Dan and Ann Roman are teaching beginner and intermediate classes from 7pm to 9pm, then DJ plays Salsa music.

We didn't see Ann, but Dan was there. We came at 8pm. There were a lot of people on the small dance floor. It was one hour starting with routine and finishing with a little nice combination. To my taste, there were too many people. The cover charge is 5$, cheap. Dan is a good man and teaches well. So, we'll definitely go there in the future. For those unlucky loners: Dan encourages to switch partners, so you'll have no problem to find a partner :)

Clarendon Grill is a bar. The staff is friendly, parking is free and enough. The bartender (nice guy) told us that Tuesdays are "slower" than Mondays, meaning "not that crowded". It was too packed right after the class, maybe everyone wanted to rehearse the moves :) After 10pm, it was easier to dance.

Fraud Victim's Manual: An explanation of funds and securities wire transfer systems

Fraud Victim's Manual: An explanation of funds and securities wire transfer systems

I was looking for some readable explanation of american wire transfer system, and found this well-written overview.

IBM plans to bring AOP to commercial products this year and next

Huh, really big news for AOP affectionados, especially those into AspectJ!. It seems that it finally took off now.

One more interesting link Concern Manipulation Environment, a subrpoject of Eclipse.

10 members of the House of Representatives protested the EU's sanctions against Microsoft

One of the "concerned citizens" is Jo Ann Davis from Virginia. Well, what can I say? At least she's not from Northern VA. She's from VA's 1st Congressional District.

Among other noble deeds she's done is her support of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Apple G5 claims disputed by Better Business Bureau group

This was nice :)

I didn't like their claim of 'the world's first 64-bit processor for personal computers'. It's plain wrong. What about Sun's workstations?

FM Radio review for DC metro area

I was looking for FM radio stations in DC area with music in Spanish language, and found this web site with reviews.

A couple of weeks ago I found WBPS FM 94.3 myselff, but it's very weak in DC and my radio at home can't tune to it properly too.

Day before yesterday, one of my friends recommended me WPFW, it's supposed to be classic Jazz with Miles Davis type of stuff.

NoVALUG

I haven't been there yet, since I didn't know about NoVALUG. I'm thinking about attending the next meeting on Aug 3, 2004. It's going to be about TeX and LaTeX document publishing system. TeX was the first such system I ever used. It's been developed by Prof. Donald Knuth, the author of The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP) - my favorite book on Computer Science. I learnt algorithms with it. The long awaited Volume 4 is coming soon.

I recall how disgusted was I, when switched from TeX to MS Word. I left the research lab and joined the commecial company, where MS Office was a standard suite. TeX's printouts were and still are uncomparably better than from Word.

I'm curious to see where is TeX now, what are the tools etc. Maybe I'll attend the meeting.

PS2 Linux

Today I found out that Playstation 2 Linux Kit is just 100$ now. I need to learn a little more about this thing. Maybe it's worth buying for educational purposes.

Linux for PlayStation 2 Community has a lot of useful information. Man, I need a double :)

What?! You don't know what is the double?! Then it's time to read some Carlos Castaneda or at least search Google. Do it know!

Well, if you are too lazy, I'll give you a hint: Notes on the Works of Carlos Castaneda, check out the "Tales of Power" book there. I would recommend to read his books in the order they were published.

General Decimal Arithmetic

Once I surprised one of my clients telling them that they should be careful using floating-point arithmetic (double type in Java) for financial calculations. In fact, it's surprising that this was a revelation to them :) C'mon, we've been working on a financial application.

I thought that Java's BigDecimal was inconvinient, due to its limited functionality. Now I see that IBM works on this issue in Java as well as in general computing.

BBC Nomad project

"The Musical Nomad was a production which took place late Summer of 1997, devised & produced by Gary Hayes of BBC Broadcast Interactive. This programme researched new forms of audience interactivity using the latest satellite internet technologies. It was a musical journey in Central Asia from Bukhara in Uzbekistan to the Altai Mountains in Kazakstan - 3500 miles through a magical land full of ancient practice and emotional music with relevant messages for the whole World."

Good job.

M�tter Museum

"The Museum's collections include over 20,000 objects, including approximately 900 fluid-preserved anatomical and pathological specimens; 10,000+ medical instruments and apparati, primarily dating between 1750 and the present; ca. 400 anatomical and pathological models in plaster, wax, papier mache, and plastic; ca. 200 items of memorabilia of famous scientists and physicians; and ca. 1500 medical illustrations in the form of lantern slides, 35 mm. slides, photographs, drawings, and prints. The Museum continues to receive medical instruments and specimens donated by Fellows, other physicians, and individuals.

The College Collections include over 160 portraits in oil and other media; 75 portrait busts; 600 medical medals, badges, and coins; and 25 silver presentation pieces."

I wanna go there!!!

AudioGrabber

AudioGrabber is a very simple tool to rip CDs into mp3, it's freeware. It comes with LAME MP3 DLL codec. I used them together to backup copy my legally purchased CDs :)

Music Sampling Tips

I'm trying to collect good links to musical instrument sampling web sites. I've got a reference to E-mu Systems from the site in the subject.

Interesting discussion of free software for sampling and the references to synthedit and ModPlug.

Nayryz 2004 in Brooklyn, NY

Official web site of Nauryz 2004 celebration in Brooklyn, NY.

It was in Baku Restaurant (Neptune - Ocean). There were approx. 250 people from Kazakhstan, mostly Kazakhs. The restaurant is pretty large. There were several tables (for 12 persons?) arranged. We started at 5pm, then at 7pm children gave a little concert: singing Kazakh folk song, piano rendition of two Kazakh songs, dance (Kazakh and hip-hop), hula-hoop (this was especially impressive), guitar + vocal etc. After the break, we had adults singing and playing piano and guitar, Kobyz, violin. With exception of Chopin's piece and Shakira's hit song, everything esle was Kazakh music.

All performers live in US, some of them are or were professional musicians. Unfortunately, sound quality wasn't very good, especially the mics. Anyways, every performer made the best effort, and we could enjoy music. We, Kazakhs, can't get away partying without singing or playing dombra. It's not always on high professional level, but as long as it's good enough we are Ok :)

I've met quite a few people there, and hopefully made a couple of new friends. We stayed at our friends' home in Brooklyn. We had to go next day, but other Kazakhs were going to gather on Sun, March 21 somewhere in Queens to get to know each other better. The format of the celebration night wasn't very helpful in networking, because it was a little more formal that it should be, imho. We've had speeches of Kazakhstan's UN mission people in the beginning. Oh, by the way, there were mini-competitions for Mister and Miss Nauryz 2004 :)

Overall I liked it. I'm waiting for photo gallery :)

Белый Ветер (White Wind)

Белый Ветер - my class-mate Talgat's company, retail computer shop.

I've no idea what is "white wind" supposed to mean.

SmallnetBuilder

I like this web site with a lot of usefull info on wireless netowrking for home.

I also found Seattle Wireless site with this article on Linksys Wrt54g router. I think that my routers at home have the same chipsets and similar firmware on Linux.

Local Salsa links

I found this Web site very useful. There's a lot of info on local Salsa events and classes.

Beverley Ann Rees teaches Salsa at Sport and Health club in Tysons Corner, VA. She's good at teaching dance techniques for beginners, imho. Pace is very slo-ow. As slow as the slowest student. Students were mostly over 35. Pay was 40$ per month (4 classes), if you miss a class it's gone. Additional classes in the same month have discounts.

Cecilia Villalobos teaches Salsa in Virginia Ballroom. She was charging 55 for 5 classes, but you could use these classes any time. It's very convinient. The classes are very different from Beverly's. Students are mostly young, under 30. In the beginning everyone excersizes foot-work for 20 minutes or so, then she shows one combination. After that students practice this combination for the rest of the class switching partners. She has a couple of really advanced guys helping her, so you can ask for help anyone of them. At the end you bring your ticket and she punches it. You can join a class any time and buy a ticket.

Unfortunately VA Ballroom web site is down, so you can check this out.

NoVAJUG

This is a Web site of Northern Virginia Java User Group. It's down quite often, maybe because it's written in Java :) Ha-ha, just kidding.

We meet bi-monthly. I go to meetings when there's an interesting talk or a speaker. Members are Java/J2EE professionals mostly.

Here's David Medinets' blog , one of the members of the group.

One more blog by Alice Marie Marshall this time, she also goes to meetings.

Vadim's Blog

It's my friend Vadim's blog.

Richard Stallman spoke in YORKTOWN HIGH SCHOOL LIBRE USERS GROUP

Ok, we've been there. Richard spoke about history of GNU and FSF, "Copyleft", GNU/Linux and modern challenges to software freedom. I think that for the most part I was already familiar with these subjects and speaker's stand on them, but nevertheless it was very interesting to see him live.

I've heard about FSF and copyleft many years ago, when I received a letter inviting to join FSF or something like that. I think it was in 1990-92 period. I remember that I liked the idea of freedom of software, because it was very much in line with my work at that time in science. We used some GNU software, such as GCC, f2c and DJGPP (my favorite C++ compiler for MS-DOS).

This talk gave me a little more of Mr Stallman's personal views on the subject. There were about 30-40 people, I guess, regulars of this Linux group. Students were filming the speech. Mr Stallman was very tired and jet-lagged after a long flight from Vietnam, so the questions part was very short, just 15 minutes. I think that he wasn't at his best yesterday due to the circumstances. It's a pity.

By the way, there wasn't a SINGLE QUESTION ABOUT SCO! :) That's a miracle. He spoke a lot about why it's GNU/Linux not Linux. I've heard this argument before, but yesterday I finally understood why it's really important.

One point I'd like to mention: in the beginning of his speech, Mr Stallman said that he came from Vietnam and that there is no notion of software freedom in that country. It strikes me very much. I thought that the situation there must be similar to what was in USSR. In USSR we had a total "freedom" in sense that software was freely distributed among scientists and programmers.

The flip side of this situation is that we used to say that "in USSR we can sell only one copy of software". After you sell one copy, everyone esle will freely distribute it, and you got no money. I wanted to speak about it with Mr Stallman, but he was too tired at the end and wrapped up the meeting quickly. I'm curious to know what he thinks about. In USSR we, programmers, didn't have any incentives to sell packaged software. The only thing we could do is custom developed software or support. How do free software advocates see this working in USA if free software comes mainstream?

Salsa in NY

COPACABANA Club review - I was looking for Salsa night clubs in NY. We plan to be in New York, and I want to try their night life. This club seems to be an interesting candidate for a little Salsa adventure :) Actually, the club\s web site is this.

I found one more NY Salsa/Mambo info web site, it's www.JustSalsa.com with NY pages.

Sybase stored procedures with Resultsets from Java

I finally figured out how to retrieve a Resultset from Sybase stored procedures using JSTL and ESQL in Cocoon XSP. I put my first Wiki on the subject in "old" Cocoon Wiki web site. There's a new Wiki site, but it's still under construction.

IMAX Jazz Cafe

Tonight we went to DC to IMAX Jazz Cafe and enjoyed a very nice live jazz music by Federal Jazz Commission band. It's sort of an old "classic" jazz. Clarinetist was especially good.

ONJava.com: Configuring JBoss 4.0 JDBC Connectivity [Feb. 25, 2004]

ONJava.com: Configuring JBoss 4.0 JDBC Connectivity [Feb. 25, 2004] - I was looking for JDBC URL configuration for Sybase jConnect driver. Sybase's documentation sucks big time. Basically, all you need is to add jconn2.jar to a classpath, then connection URL:
jdbc:sybase:Tds:_host_:_port_/_database_?user=_username_?password=_password_

Driver class is: com.sybase.jdbc2.jdbc.SybDriver

On my server, a port is 5001, but it can be anything.

Connecting to SQL Anywhere 5.x.xx from a Java application using jConnect - this link also have some useful info, including Sybase URL formats:

dbc:sybase:Tds:host:port
jdbc:sybase:Tds:host:port/
jdbc:sybase:Tds:host:port/database
jdbc:sybase:Tds:host:port/database?property=value[?property=value]
jdbc:sybase:Tds:host:port?property=value[?property=value]

esql stored procedure problem - one solution

esql stored procedure problem - one solution - this is supposed to explain how to call Sybase stored procedure from Cocoon XSP.

Yorktown High School Libre Users Group

Yorktown High School Libre Users Group - I just have found this User Group. They had very interesting meetings in the past. It's a pity I didn't know about them.