Station Ripper

You have found an online radio station that you like very much and plays great music?
I have great news for you!!
(sounds a bit like telemarketing, right? :D)

Last week a friend talked to me about StationRipper and I found it interesting enough to try it..
It is program that can rip/make mp3s from the online radio stations. It can "listen" to many stations simultaneously and rip. It automatically separates the songs and puts them in different mp3s and separates mp3s from different stations in different folders. It is very nice.. I have already 1 GB of new music and I have it only one night ripping from 3 stations :)

You can select your favorite stations from shoutcast of course and from a preselected list suggested by StationRipper.. Maybe more.. I didn't explore everything, but still I like it :)

I recommend to try it at least..

I am planning to write a program to go into the folder of the station, and group all songs from the same artists in separate folders. Then I will have artists collections of specific genres (since the stations usually broadcast music of one or two genres).

Windows Update

I was amazed/impressed/happy when I learned how to bypass windows cdkey authentication to download windows updates from the official windows site!!

And especially because it is sooooo easy :)

Description here
Thanks to Poul

Statistics

If you have ever been at casino, you have probably seen the table of the last occurred numbers at roulette..

Also, at Lotto and other games where the player selects numbers, some people keep track of the latest results..

There are 2 totally contradicting points of view.
There are the people that believe that it is meaningfully to keep track of the results
and there are these people that say that it is stupid..

Let's use a perfect dice to explain the two ways of thinking..
(by perfect I mean that you cannot foresee the result of rolling the dice.)

The defenders of the first opinion, say that if you roll the dice A times(A should be BIG number), the number of times you get the "1" should be about A/6. And as A increases(we roll the dice more and more times), the “probability of getting "1" A/6 times gets higher.
So, If we have rolled a dice 20 times and we see that all the times we got "1", it is very likely that "1" will not come the next time, because the other numbers have to occur as well with about the same probability if we were to roll the dice 100 times for example.. And if we get "1" again, then the probability to get any other number, increases comparing to the probability to get "1" again.

But, others believe that all the above analysis makes no sense since the experiments are independent from each other. That means, that the rolling of a dice one more time, has nothing to do with the result of the previous rolling..

I hope I made myself clear.
I guess that the second view is the correct one..

Evaluation of last week

So, I followed some of my friends suggestions..

I met new people,
I played poker,
Went for shopping
Went for coffees and beers,
Drank Beers,
Drank some beers more,
Drank white wine..

Difficult life :)

I didn't have to learn C# since I will take the course
Business programming with the .NET framework

[30] Exams (Complete)

Nice..
I was expecting to do a bit worse, so I am pleased with the result.. Although I don't have the grades yet, I guess(at least hope) that I pass both courses.

* Object Oriented Programming
* Efficient AI Programming

And I passed the project I did about
Programming Context-aware Mobile Systems (Bluetooth on Mobile Devices)

So, I have one week now free.. Until 1st of February I think..
What can I do?
Learn Photoshop?
Learn Flash?
Learn Visual C#?
Become Alcoholic?
Meet more people?
Learn more about the city I live?
Play WOW?
Play another game(Command and Conquer for example)?
Relax and just sit and chill and think about life and who we are and where we are going?

I am more anxious now than when I had exams..
What to do when you have nothing to do?

Back to Denmark

When I left Greece, the temperature was about 17C and the sun was shining.
After 5 hours of traveling, I arrived to a white/dark Copenhagen of 0C..
It is not snowing, but there is snow everywhere :)
And it is still getting dark very early :(

And after about a year of having my desktop computer on my desk, I finally made it work!! I hope at least(it is still installing windows.. You never know..)
But I have great excuses for being so late..

1. I couldn't find a good, cheap and easy to carry tower(tower, only the metal thing).
- solution: check and buy online and they bring it home :)
2. Windows couldn't recognize my SATA drive
- solution: download motherboard's drivers for SATA.
3. I had to put the drivers in a floppy disk and then put them at the desktop, while neither my laptop nor my desktop have floppy disk drive.
- solution: buy a USB floppy disk drive.

Anyway, the thing is much more difficult to face it than to describe it :)
At least now I know exactly what you need to do..
So, if you have Asus motherboard(I have a7v600-x), go to asus download website and download the latest drive for RAID controller. The zip that you will download, contains a folder DriverDisk and inside this folder you can find the utility MakeDisk.exe, which will create the floppy disk that you want.
Then you go to the problematic pc, put the floppy in the pc, boot from the Windows CD, in the first 5 seconds you press F6(you can see at the bottom of the screen a message saying that if you want to install RAID or other drivers press F6(or something like this)). After pressing F6, life is easy :)

I think that I can see my Windows XP log in screen now :)

METAL HEROES :)

A great post of a great blogger..

unfortunately only in Greek :(

So, αν καταλαβαίνεις ελληνικά, go for it..

Metal Heroes

Sudoku!

The first time I heard about sudoku was in the Efficient AI Programming course at my university. We started talking about Constraint Networks(1,2 if you are interested) and how to create the constrains that could lead to a solution for any given Sudoku. In general I like challenging problems, but this one sounded so easy that I didn't want to waste my time on it.

The next day I realized(and remember the teacher telling something about it) that the newspapers have a sudoku at the last page(like crossword puzzle in Greek newspapers). So, I said, ok let's play with it to see if it is really hard.. It turned out just as I expected..

But since that day I was listening more and more about sudoku and how great it is and I couldn't understand it.. So, I decided to do an online search to find more information about it. The best website that I found with online sudokus is WebSudoku. So, I tried the evil one without trying any other. After 1h and a half I solved it. And for those who didn't laugh yet, I have to say that when I was at the final step of solving it, I was thinking "so, that's sudoku? Maybe hard, but solvable..". So, when I typed the last number, I got a "solved"(or something) and the average time for solving this kind of sudoku.. A bit embarrassed to say it, but it was much less than 10 minutes.. I think it was 2 or 3 minutes.. AND it said that solutions after 20minutes are not considered in the average.. THAT'S the point that I found Sudoku more interesting(in a way) and I understood why people do like it! And there are some competitions as well.. :)

To finish with, I still don't find it that interesting, but when I go into the metro and I get the free newspaper that has a sudoku at the back, I am trying to solve it until I get off the train(about 16minutes). I did it today and I was very happy that when the train stopped, I put the last letter at the sudoku and went out of the train with a sudoku(marked as hard) solved. I know, I still need to practice a lot to be at 2 minutes.. (for evil, not just hard..)

That was the story about me and sudoku ;)

Bank Gang

After trying to "buy" it for a long time, I finally got the song Sleep from Bang Gang. I think that this band will be my next favorite and as I understood from some of their songs, they are going to be in my playlist for a long time.. The last 24hours my playlist contains only Sleep..

The band has also a very nice website which makes me appreciate them even more :)
The website is completely made in flash. Really nice job. Very nice pictures, nice colors, nice atmosphere, nice navigation, nice fades in/out, nice nice.. I am slowly falling in love with them..

You have to listen to some of their songs and especially Sleep!!
...
Walking in my sleep
With my flesh in bed
Still you are there
Just get the fuck out of my dreams
...

Brain cells..

Maybe it is because in Denmark I drink too much beer..
Maybe it is because in Denmark I study too much..
Maybe I burned my brain cells before going to Denmark..
Actually in Greece I was drinking much more often and much more alcohol than in Denmark :)

I cannot focus anymore.. The rate of studying has decreased to (1 page)/(15 minutes)!!!
(Ok, maybe the material is hard, but how much hard?)

I have noticed that at least 3 times I have replied to emails inconsistently. I was reading something else from what was written, so the reply was out of subject..

I can still write some programs, but I have lost the interest to find the best algorithm to solve my problem.. I think I should start playing with mathsChallenge again..

Dubai..

Impressed is not enough.. Excited is not enough either..
I don't know how to express myself after learning about the things that are going on at Dubai..
I had heard about Burj al arab(in Greek.. At least see the last 3 photos!!), but these new islands, were beyond my imagination..

The Palm Islands with the official site,
The WORLD with the official site.

I cannot say much.. Go and check on your own :)

Not the best news, but at least I have a home..

Finally, I guess that the people in charge for approving the applications for the best dorm ever, don't like me..

So, I am in the bad one :(
At least I have good internet connection. Better than last semester's dorm, so I can have a audio/video conversation with my friends :)
I don't know about poker yet (because I saw something strange in Danish), but when I tried to connect to PokerRoom I couldn't :(
I don't what to know if I can play WOW.. I guess I can, but I don't want to test it yet.. I am sure that I can actually, but let's forget it.. I don't want to be like some of my friends :)

That's for the time being..
I am still trying to get the room at the other best great awesome dorm, but with no success..