Lesson Learned

The more I use free software like OpenOffice and Octave, the more I despise it. The whole GNU "revolution" tries to promise the same functionality and performance with no price tag, but falls way short.

Anyone who does math in a scientific or engineering capacity is familiar with Matlab - it's a piece of software that is easy to quickly develop or test mathematical methods. It's known for being easier to use and code (for math purposes) than lower level languages like Java and C, but at the same time much slower.

I have done 2 projects this semester in Octave, a GNU clone of Matlab. The first project generated CT data of a Shepp-Logan phantom and reconstructed it. The Octave version took about an hour to run. The second project (finished this week) was iterative reconstruction for SPECT or PET data. At 1 iteration, the Octave version took about 5 minutes (multiplied by 20 iterations).

Minutes before I turned in the second project, I decided to see how fast THE SAME CODE would run in Matlab. It completed 2 iterations in about 10 SECONDS!!!!

Hypothetical Question: If there was an error in your code, would you prefer to realize the error in 5 minutes or 10 seconds?

I'm done with the whole idea. Goodbye Octave!! Welcome back Matlab!!!

That boy is swimming!

Well...he's in the pool at least.

Kyle and Zoe play...

Movie for 2

Mindy and I were able to make it to a movie yesterday. We saw "Failure to Launch" - one in a string of too many chick flicks I've seen recently. The movie was OK. The two leads (Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker) were forgetable. All of the backup characters, however, were fantastic.

I don't typically give movie reviews. I only bring it up because of how similar it is to my own life. You see, the basic premise of the movie is that this girl is paid to date a guy in order to convince him to move out of his parents house.

I'm pretty sure my parents paid Mindy to date me - not so I would move out of the house, but because they felt bad for me...or something. What do you know, in both cases it works out!!!

Viruses

You may have heard that a new McAfee update considers some Microsoft products viruses.

And who can blame them? There are a lot of people who consider Microsoft products viruses.

With conviction

Have you ever seen a commercial so honest and straightforward it made you want to cry?

See two right here.

And he thought his baby swing was fun!