Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, “On the Art of Writing: Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913–1914,” Cambridge: University Press, 1916, Bartleby.com, 2000. www.bartleby.com/190/. 24 August 2008

This means that I am extremely “visual” and “intuitive learner.” This makes sense, because my class notes are often drawings. I also try to visualize what people tell me.

Advantages are being “better at grasping new concepts” as well as “working faster and being more innovative.” I noticed this when doing forensics at Mobile Armor.

Possible pitfalls are “missing important details” and “making careless mistakes in calculations or hands-on work.” Thankfully, being aware of such issues helps to complete tasks successfully.

Richard M. Felder and Barbara A. Solomon, “Learning Styles and Strategies,” North Carolina State University, 18 August 2008, http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSdir/styles.htm

• Audio
• OpenOffice.Org Slides
• PowerPoint Slides

int size = 123; // bytes
int location = 4; // sectors
int new_location = location + size;

This is legal C, but a human reader sees the mistake of adding two variables of different scale.

The first method for scale awareness is to define types using the already existing tools. In the bytes and sectors example, an engineer can create a struct for sectors and a struct for bytes with accompanying arithmetic and conversion functions.

typedef struct {
      int value : 0;
} sector;
sector add(sector, sector);
sector sub(sector, sector);
byte to_bytes(sector);

class Sector {
    int value = 0;
    void add(Sector);
    void sub(Sector);
    Byte toBytes();
}

Scale aware software can prevent conversion errors.

The second method for scale awareness is a built-in compiler construct for defining scale relationships. Using such tool, an engineer can define a sector to be equal to 512 bytes. The compiler can then evaluate the addition of bytes and sectors as an expression of type byte, converting sectors to bytes at run-time.

typedef int sector;
typedef int byte;
scaledef sector = 512 byte;
byte size = 123;
sector location = 4;
byte new_location = location + size;

A modified C compiler can verify existence of scale conversions at compile time and perform the conversions at run time.

There are arguments in favor of both methods. Types can be placed into a standalone software library. This ensures modularity by separating the standard library, the scales library, and the controlling module that utilizes these libraries. However, because it is hard to account for all possible types of scales and conversions, the scales library must be constantly modified and updated, defeating one of the main advantages of modularity – code reuse.

The argument in favor of scaledef lies in its inherent simplicity from an engineer’s perspective. Having only one line of scaling definition increases readability of software source. The guarantee of automatic conversions by the compiler allows an engineer to concentrate on the higher level of logic rather than dwelling upon the details of ubiquitous conversions.

The software engineering community can benefit from a study in the quality of software produced by engineers who use the scale aware paradigm as compared to those who perform manual conversions. An other benefit of such study is the collection of first prototypes of the software libraries for scaling.

UN has a committee on environment preservation, and holds annual international conferences. We have not seen much progress. The problem is in the soft and unequal requirements.

The best way to make the requirements hard is to bar the percentage of trade equal to the percentage of unmet financial obligations per country. This will make countries very much motivated to meet their contribution promises and possibly lower them.

To make the requirements fair, every country must contribute the same percentage of their gross domestic product to the cause of environmental improvement. This will be the resource for building renewable, non-polluting sources of energy like wind and solar panel farms.

Following these rules, the countries will strive to meet their contribution promises in order to keep trade uninterrupted. The incentive to grow the gross domestic product is also preserved.

We be the softwarrre pirrrates!

• gvocab remembers session state after closing
• mistakes are crossed out, hints are bold
• faster start up time with a progress bar for reading the words xml file

Click to view the screenshot:

It turned out that gconf recommends to not store anything except properties in the gconf database. gvocab stores session state in ~/.gnome2/gvocab/session.xml, similar to gedit, which stores its own session information in ~/.gnome2/gedit/sessions/gedit-*.

For the next release, I am planning improvement to the teaching algorithm. I think a word should not be marked as learned the first time the user guessed its meaning right. Repetition is essential to learning.