29th June 2005, 06:57 pm
I had my first two exams at the [ETH][] today: first a one hour written test in the Object-Oriented Software Construction course, followed by a two hour test in the Language Based Security course.
Both tests went fine, I think. The OOSC test was the easiest one; at the LBS test I didn’t have time to answer all the questions. The questions in both tests were a mixture of “explain this concept” and multiple-choice questions.
The written tests I’ve had in Denmark were all structured a bit differently: there you get maybe four or five major questions and for each major question there will be around four minor questions. And you have to write something or calculate something for each, not just write “True/False”. But on the other hand, then it’s nice when you just have to mark the right answer, for then you don’t have to write so much — my handwriting is… well… not optimal, and I always get tired in my hand when having to write too much.
My next exam will be on Tuesday, and after that I’ll have my summer holidays. Then comes the exams in my other three courses, but that’s way into the future! :-)
29th June 2005, 10:21 am
If you’re running a [WordPress][] blog, then please go upgrade now to version 1.5.1.3. A serious security vulnerability has been found in version 1.5.1.2 “Strayhorn” which can lead to remote code execution.
Read the official announcement here.
28th June 2005, 01:08 am
I’ve just sent an email to the teaching assistant with the Object Spyglass project which I’ve been working on the last couple of weeks together with Peter Brandt in the Object-Oriented Software Construction class at the [ETH][].
It’s nice to have it done, and in the end it turned out quite well I think. Take a look for your self:
You can also download everything, including the Eiffel source code, as object-spyglass.tar.gz or object-spyglass.zip if you’re interested.
An interesting thing (at least for me as a big [LaTeX][] fan) is the way
the documentation was produced: the [XHTML][] documents were
translated into beautiful LaTeX code in a fully automated way using
eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT). That is just
way too cool, for now I have two versions for free! And both look quite
good IMHO… :-) The stylesheet (which I didn’t write completely from scratch)
is also included.
26th June 2005, 04:58 pm
Once again it’s summer here in Switzerland! This time it’s for real: we’ve had temperatures of more than 30 °C (that’s 86 °F for you American guys…) the last couple of days. Stéphanie has switched from normal coffee to ice coffee and I’ve begun putting ice cubes in my milk…
The huge thunderstorm we had two days ago didn’t really cool things down as much as one could have hoped — the weather forecasts promise more thunder next week and a little lower temperatures, a “cool” 25°C :-)
25th June 2005, 12:47 am
Tonight we had a huge thunderstorm, which could be seen from our
balcony. It was quite intensive, even though it was not directly over
Buchs but nearby to the East.
I went out on our balcony, equipped with my trusty SONY DSC-V1
digital camera, wanting to see if I could capture a bolt of
lightning with it. And I succeeded! I’ve never been able to shoot at
the right moment before, but tonight was my lucky night :-)
The first photo is taken with a shutter speed of 2 seconds, and that’s
why the sky has turned quite blue even though it’s half past ten in
the evening.
The second photo was taken with a smaller exposure, just half a
second. In both photos one can see the “skyline” of Buchs at the
bottom :-) We actually have a really nice view from our balcony of our
apartment — of nothing in particular, but nice anyway.