• AMAZING display. Never seen anything like it before.
• Much more thinner. It also feels more solid in hands. The glass filling is amazing
• The new camera takes impressive pictures. Its not an SLR, but it beats most of point-and-shoot out there

For those needing to cut their SIM, I used this template to do it. It is really easy, but you have to be careful not to over-cut the plastic.

A sample 720p Video: here

A few sample pictures from its camera (to be updated on the fly as I take more) – Click for full size:

iPhone Pictures:

I am really glad and proud to see Lancaster joining the top-10 Universities in the UK, amongst or even surpassing some other “older players”.

Some links:

• The Times Good University Guide 2011: Lists Lancaster University 10th
• Guardian University League Table 2011: Lists Lancaster University 6th
• The Independent Good University Guide 2011: Lists Lancaster University 8th

While Lancaster is not a Cambridge yet, the University has managed to surpass other older institutions such as UCL, Imperial and Kings. This also shutters the belief that you have to be an old University to dominate the top-10, since Lancaster managed to join the elite 10 in less than 50 years.

Patet omnibus veritas

First, take a look at the contraction quality of their computer hardware. The MacBooks have been remarkable machines, right from the beginning. My first Mac was a 1st-gen Macbook Pro, the first Intel machines that came out from Apple. When I held that laptop in my hands, and felt the sturdiness of the hardware, the great feeling of the aluminium I thought to myself “Wow, what the hell I was using before?”. You can’t even compare Macbooks with Dell/HP and others when it comes to build quality and beauty.

Then comes the OS. The remarkable Mac OS X. All of my life I grew up cursing Windows and their bluescreens. At some point, I also switched to Linux, but the hardware integration was so terrible, that it was even worse than the bluescreens. The difference between Apple and Microsoft when delivering new versions of the Operating System is that Apple introduces new features in the OS, like spotlight, Expose and so on, whereas Microsoft, most of the times, they just change the icons (see Windows 98 to ME, or 2000 to XP). People isn’t just looking at the icons, as it seems, they also care whats going on beyond that. Their OS is so well integrated with the hardware, that when you think about Windows it feels like a nightmare (n.b. I do not know if the situation with Windows 7 improved this area). You don’t get that with any other vendor.

With Apple’s entrance into the mobile market, lots of people came to criticise the company and how it handled the delivery of new features, both in hardware and in the OS. To me, the iPhone was the best phone I ever had. The huge gallery of applications, the multitouch, the best mobile browser and the excellent integration of other sensors in the interface (accelerometers etc.) is simply amazing. Let me ask you this: how do you browse the internet with your Blackberry phone? Still on WAP-alike pages eh? How about applications? Thought so. Sometimes I hear stupid arguments about competitor’s features like: well, my Nokia had multitasking 4 years ago. Well, how slow your phone was when you had 2 applications running? Now I think of it, what kind of applications you used to run back then? Or they compare Blackberry’s battery life with the iPhone’s. The only thing that your blackberry does through out your day is receive emails in a crappy mail client, you can’t do anything more on that thing. You can’t even browse the web on that thing (future browsers they may release will be considered when they release them). Let alone the smaller touch-less screen.

Having multi-tasking on small, embedded devices is a really hard thing to do. Hard, not because of the technology to multitask applications, but how to do implement it in a way that won’t suck up memory and make everything slower. Android and iOS 4 does this correctly. The rest implementations are just lazy and bad. I won’t go on and comment on their new brilliant display, neither the inclusion of a bunch of new sensors in the phone. And yes, I also know about the 3G video calling feature that many phones had from 4-5 years ago. But, have you ever tried video calling? *IF* it works, the quality is simply terrible. The video is continuously breaking and its low-res. Of course, iPhone 4 quality remains to be seen, but if it is the same as the one they showed in the presentation its going to be amazing. Nothing compared to what we ever seen before in a commercial phone.

Finally, the best thing about Apple, is when they deliver a new feature, it is actually working, the way it was supposed to be. It might not be as advanced as we would like (see the camera app, it just gained digital zoom in the latest iteration of the OS), but at least it works properly. To me, working according to specs is more important than breaking occasionaly and delivering “some more” advanced features.

Apple makes mistakes as well, everybody does. But that doesn’t stop their products from being awesome.

First you start off with simple things. You want to be a good boy, make your parents love you, etc. I think thats the first stage, a stage that everybody goes by. And then you “evolve” into what psychologist call “reinforcement”, which can be either positive or negative. You are motivated to do (or not do) something by either rewards or a negative impact. I can remember a few occasions when growing up that this was a crucial part of my everyday thinking. Leveraging the pros and cons of doing or not doing things and picking the best possible route for myself. Also at times you are also being motivated at impressing others, namely girls (hey, there’s no shame in that. You all did it!) or your peers, but thats really not a good idea.

As you form a character of your own, with influences from your environment, fictional characters, celebrities and myths however, the above motivational schemes cease to exist, or their importance gets denominated over time. You form your own interests, you set your own targets in live and you stop caring about taking good grades in Art or Geography at school.

Unfortunately, we don’t get the change to do that many things in life. Because life is brief, and then you die. And the things you choose to do, should be really excellent. Once I realised that, during mid high-school, I understood that I must set the targets in my life no matter what repercussions they might carry and what other people think of them. That includes my parents as well.

Knowing the above, it motivates you to excel at the things you have chosen to do. You set targets, levels, acceptable parameters. Whatever you chose to do with your life, it better be damn good, and it’d better worth it. This is what pushed me forward back in school, what pushed me out of the army days, what pushed me though my University degree. What is currently pushing me during my PhD and working at the same time (at Cablenet).

Another thing, that always bothered me is that people tend to compare your achievements with others. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. Motivation is really bad when it comes from jealousy. Why worry about others? Worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The race is long, and at the end is only with yourself. Not with your colleagues, not with your friends. Your own personal goals, aspirations and targets should be the criteria for yourself. Of course, that said, whatever you do don’t congratulate yourself too much and don’t berate yourself either.

And a motivational, cheesy quote (which I think its quite nice) for closing up:

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

– Muhammad Ali

• Ditched the sidebar: I found that it wasn’t serving any cause, other than obstructing the content. This was more obvious when I got the iPad, because of the smaller screen.

• Upgraded photo space: Instead of cramming the photos on the sidebar, I moved them into a more prominent space, just below the header. For the integration and presentation I used a slightly modified version of FlickrAPI to fetch my photostream from Flickr and JQuery/Lightbox for the nifty popup. I also got rid of the FAlbum, nobody used those sections of the blog; better to redirect everyone to flickr instead.
• More elaborate categorisation: On the older version I used just three categories: life, work and university. While I thought that they would be sufficient, I found them quite restrictive, however, I do like the simplicity. So instead I changed the titles to me, us and extras, keeping the 3 main category simplicity, but introducing subcategories. More information about categories can be found here.
• Stronger integration with Social Networks: Since everyone uses them nowadays (well almost everyone), I moved my LastFM and Twitter streams into a bigger space, just below the blog post. Since my Twitter/LastFM are more often updated than this blog, they deserve the extra space. Additionally, I make use of the new Facebook API to introduce the “Like” button just below every blog-post. I am still kinda skeptical about that, we’ll see how it goes.
• Typography: I switch the blog font to Georgia, it simply looks better!

Hope you like it!

First of all, the salaries in Cyprus for Engineers of all sorts start from 1300-1400E (BSc. degree award or equivalent) vs. 2000+GBP in the UK (even more if your work-place is in a big place like London). If you compare this salary to a sales person for example, which requires no degree whatsoever, the difference is simply remarkable. It is true, that he who sucks up goes forward in Cyprus, and we, geeks, possess no such skill, so we are doomed to stay forever at the base of the pyramid.

In Cyprus, my dear reader, nobody cares about the person who is sweating to get the work done. In Cyprus always takes the credit the one that manages to sell your product that you’ve build. The management doesn’t care how much effort you’ve put in (hence, no engineer is awarded a bonus when the network is rock-solid, but sales people are awarded a bonus on top of their fat salary if they manage to sell a part of it), as long as its working and we can sell it. I am not saying that a sales person isn’t putting effort to sell something, but at the end of the day if your product receives enough marketing exposure and it is better quality and competitive priced against the competition it practically sells itself. However, if you don’t have capable engineers, people to make the best out of the budget you assign to them, people to make a living network out of a bunch of fibre patch-cords and life-less switches and routers you can’t sell anything. And if you can’t maintain it, you’ll end up loosing everything you’ve sold.

Your knowledge goes completely unappreciated. If you don’t work to build something from the bottom up, but you enjoy the end result, you just take it for granted. Who cares about the engineers that constructed the plane I am on? (But you always remember them when something goes wrong). Its like you’ve been given the knowledge to build networks, to build planes and cars, to program computers from birth. Its no lie that you have to spend a considerable portion of the best years of your life studying hard to begin scratching the surface of the science you love. Its no lie that you have to spend years studying, reading, understanding, practicing before you fully understand the complexities hidden under the hood of your car’s engine or whats going on on the other end of your computer monitor, deep inside a complex and nested computer network. It might take 1 hour and a few words in a terminal to solve your problem and it seems simple, but to get to that point you need years of hard-work. But when something goes wrong, then you magically become the king of the world. You become the centre of the universe, and they remember where your office is. Please, enough of the irony.

And lets face it, engineering is not for everyone. Not everyone can handle pressure, deadlines, an upset customer, the risk of a decision, the skill of troubleshooting and the skill of making a computer understand him. As an anonymous cleverly put it:

There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary, and those who don’t

Please, take a moment and try to imagine you, living in a world without engineers. Without technology and innovation. Start thinking what you would do without electricity, your car, planes, internet, computers, mobile phones, houses and bridges. Your dependancy on engineers can not be hidden, and lets face it, they make YOUR WORLD TICK.

Dear reader, don’t get me wrong. We are not doing it for money or fame. We are engineers because we like challenges. We are engineers because we enjoy lifting the world on our shoulders and push it forward, even if we end up being the invisible force that magically does it for the rest of you. We are engineers and we won’t tolerate any more abuse, verbal or otherwise. We are engineers because knowledge is power.

Disclaimer: The above post has no relation with any real person or work environment.

PS: There is no place like ::1

At first, I tried to tackle the problem by using a Wiki. This worked pretty well for a period: I could categorise my data, relate the data with an academic paper so I could build my library and create meeting minutes notes. However, it proved difficult (if not impossible) to have all this data offline and searchable. Not be able to use Mac OS X’s Spotlight is simply put: painful.

So I tried to move to document-oriented notes taken on Pages, but it wasn’t practical: no way to associate that with PDF papers. I also tried Papers, but then again it was not exactly what I was looking for. It was possible to add tags & notes on Papers, but what happens with the rest of the data I needed to keep in a library?

After some Googling around, I stumbled across Evernote. To sum-up it gives you 3 amazing features:

• Store anything: From PDFs to Images, Text, Webpages, Voice clips. ANYTHING
• Search on anything: Even on hard-written notes (apparently they run some OCR on the server-side, pretty neat). Spotlight works too!
• Organization: Organize everything into notebooks, tag them. Every word is indexed
• Available anywhere: On my iPhone, on my Mac, online and the best thing is that everything is in Sync. No more worries how to synchronise data or how to backup them efficiently

Its pretty easy to organise everything the way you have them in your mind. A few tips if you’re wondering how exactly I’m using Evernote for research:

• Notebooks for different tasks: I differentiate different tasks or projects and I group them on a notebook together. For example: I have a notebook for my PhD-related reading, a different one for a side-project and a different one for a topic I am reading on (e.g. Systems).
• When reading a new academic Paper, I just click the Safari’s link, and the PDF is magically copied into Evernote with its URL source. After reading the paper, and I want to append any notes on it (like a summary or crucial points) I just append them on the top. Of course, I always tag the paper: “Paper”, “Autonomic Management”, “Policies”. So when I want to get all papers on Autonomic Management it is easy as 2 clicks. Extremely handy!
• If I have a task or project notebook, I always have a principal Note marked as “To-do”. It lists all the pending tasks that need to be completed, per project readily available

If someone from Evernote reads this (thanks for a great product!), I have a wishlist:

• Collaborative notes!
• Ability to draw or take notes on PDFs and/or Images. This would be really handy
• Reminders or notifications attached somehow on notes (or the ability to sync with iCal do add a reminder)

And the BEST of ALL is that its Free!

Before I start complaining, I should note that this post does not wish to defame the work done by all journalists in Cyprus — there are some who believe in what they are doing and the quality of their work is superb. This post is only meant to criticise the black sheep in that community, that expose the ugly side of Cypriot media. In the first revision of the post I also included links to various newspapers demonstrating the behaviour I will talk about, however, since my goal is not to accuse but to stimulate your thoughts I decided to leave them out.

First, there are noumerous examples of news articles that instead of exposing the facts, and just the facts, authors include their own personal opinion in them. Of course, everyone is entitled to his opinion, but when it comes to reporting facts and news your opinion, dear journalist, is irrelevant. Facts are facts, your opinion is your opinion, please don’t mess it up! If you want to express your opinion, please do so in a different article, marking it: MY OPINION. Some of us care to read just facts, I don’t need your commenting on them, I can figure out whats going on by myself. Additionally, mocking people and criticising their job, when you’re just in front of a computer typing an article doesn’t make you a hero, it makes you a jerk. In foreign press, when you want to criticise someone else, you first must be ready to face the consequences and any further judgement upon your work and second you must know what you are talking about. If you are no expert, please shut up, and stop talking. If you want to report just the news, go ahead, thats fine, but KEEP YOUR OPINION TO YOURSELF.

Then I move on to statistics. There are plenty of articles out there that cite “scientific research” and “trusted sources”. There are articles warning us of “health risks”, “human behaviour” and so on. But they almost never cite their sources, or they never give clear statistics figures. Sometimes their statistics numbers don’t add up, where is the missing percentage dear journalist? Your dog ate it? They also never tell us how many people were chosen to participate, how many finished the survey and why the rest of them did not participate or never completed the survey. Not reporting part of their project is concealing the truth, and a concealed truth is not a “partial truth”, there is no such thing, its a LIE. Of course, the real issue is that the majority of your readers can’t read through the numbers, or else we wouldn’t be having this discussion, but then again does this gives you the right to mess up with the numbers?

Continuing with the citation problem. You can’t tell us that “an american research said X”, you must tell us exactly WHICH american research. Was that research peer-reviewed via a journal or a publication, or you, my dear expert journalist, thought it was legit and it made its way into the news? This is how misleading facts are spread around via “legitimate” channels. The media must expose their source of information when it comes to scientific studies and warnings in order to stop spreading inaccuracies and avoid starting a general panic over illegitimate data.

Journalists and media ghouls must be really conscious on the amount of exposure a subject takes. We’ve all seen how manipulative the media can be, they can take a small incident and transform it into the issue of the century with overexposure, publishing the same thing over and over again in order to cause a general panic or expose someone they do not really like. Unfortunately Cyprus is small, and everyone is influenced by the political parties. For me, it is a blasphemy for a media house to be owned by a political party. It is outrageous when owners of media houses to say publicly that they elected a specific president because they exposed the “right news“. What are the right news, and who are you to judge that?

I sincerely hope that now that Cyprus is walking out of the shadows of the past, now that over 60% of our youth goes to Universities that this situation is going to improve. I hope that now that people are educated will start complaining more about the declining quality of the media in Cyprus and start demanding quality press, like the rest of our Europe neighbours have.

Burnout, a psychological response to “long-term exhaustion and diminished interest”, was first defined by an American Psychoanalyst Herbert Freudenberger. He defines burnout as “a demon born of the society and times we live in and our on going struggle to invest our lives with meaning. [...] (It) is not a condition that gets better by being ignored. Nor it is any kind of disgrace. On the contrary, it’s a problem born of good intentions.” [1].

Burnout goes through phases, but I am not going to write those here — its not the point. You can read about them here. The point of this article is to set targets on how to recover.

First step is to identify that something is going wrong. In my case I was able to identify it myself: nothing had the attraction it used to have. And what I mean by that: I was bored of everything: my research, my work, my life. I became more indifferent to some situations that I used to care greatly. Personal time was getting less and less with reducing sleep hours.

Then I tried to stop. However, stopping isn’t that easy: dependencies, responsibilities and promises. So I tried elaborating the issues I was facing at work with my employer, which understood the problem and things are starting to improve slowly on the work front. Being an engineer is extremely hard: you are expected to be on-call 24/7, you are expected to answer emails at 10PM at night, expected to check the status of the whole network. However, this sucks all your available mental power. I can not remember when I last had a holiday without having to answer a phone or check work-related emails. I can not remember a weekend passing without having to spend X hours catching up with email. I am taking a step back from that. No more email-answering on off-hours time, no more support or discussions on non-critical or work related issues when my work hours are over. And holidays are holidays.

Third step is to introduce boundaries and expectations. If everyone expected 110% from you up until now, let them know that you are not going to do that anymore. The days of 9-to-5 work hours are long gone and the boundaries between home and work are blurring. Especially when the office is “downstairs” or in the other room, in cases like myself. Unfortunately, I’ve learned the hard way that you don’t get a medal of honour for replying to email in the wee-hours, nor you become a better person if you check your Twitter every 1 minute. Setting sufficient boundaries between work and home has not only become a requirement in our ultra-connected and online world, but we must fight for it. Please understand people, its not all about the money, its about your mental health and happiness. Our lives are too short to be wasted like this.

As a creative type (yes, programmers, engineers and researchers are creative types. No balls no opinion, thank you), I find myself working more efficiently early in the morning, when everything is silent. The following words from Ernest Hemingway found a place in my heart when I read them:

“When I am working on a book or story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and you know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.“

I am trying to slowly move all my creative work earlier in the day, so I can be as fresh and energetic as possible when I am doing it. Even to the small percentage I’ve accomplished that I found that the work I produce during these hours is much better and I find myself to be more productive. Having the rest of the “business day” for 2nd class problems is a must, and free up that precious hour with creativity instead of dealing with instant messages and email.

This brings me to focus. Unfortunately, everything is instant nowadays: instant emails, instant chats, twitter, Facebook, phone calls. I tried closing my IM while working, and my productivity increased dramatically. And no, I am not chatting with friends, I am constantly interrupted by work-related questions and requests for hand-holding. Try to focus on stuff you are good and love doing, and leaving behind, if possible, what is soul draining: If you are a network engineer, focus on building scalable great networks not explain what is an IP to a client, if you are a developer, focus on building great web applications.

Balance via a process. A process guarantees to put your work into a timeline. It focuses more on getting things done than worrying what’s next. It is also important to let others know about this process, to understand how you work. When feeling overloaded and imbalanced: stop, decompress, communicate and focus.

A life should mean just that: life. You have your work-hours to be consumed by work.

[1] “Burn-Out: The High Cost of High Achievement.” Dr. Herbert J. Freudenberger with Geraldine Richelson, 0-385-15664-2, 1980

Yesterday Apple announced their latest creation: the iPad. It is a revolutionary multi-touch tablet, running the 75-Million-users-famous iPhone OS. However, the press was not so welcoming with the announcement, and this makes me wonder why. I do not want to sound like an Apple fan-boy now, but I want to take a look at the facts before judging the device too cruelly.

First, lets take a good look at the specs, and see what Apple has achieved here:

• Size: 242.8mm X 189.7mm X 13.4 X — Incredibly thin. Try comparing this with equivalent Tablet offerings or netbooks.
• Display: 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology. IPS means greater viewing angle and the LED means more vibrant colours and brighter display at lower energy costs. We all know what multi-touch is, right?
• CPU: 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed System on a Chip Processor. Another breakthrough: when a company designs the software for its own processor, you can expect marvels when it comes to performance, optimisation and energy savings. How fast this is, and how it compares with Intel Atom it waits to be seen.
• Storage: 16-64GB SSD Drives. By far exceeding in capacity the equivalent offerings in the netbook area. SSD comes expensive tho.
• Connectivity: WiFi (802.11n), Bluetooth (2.1+EDR), and 3G (optional). Digital Compass and Assisted GPS (only on 3G models).

All of the above are packed in a very slick, thin, light, aluminium package. Don’t even get me started how bulky and ugly the existing tablets or netbooks are. Its also backed with iPhone OS, which has made miracles on the phone marked and revolutionised the cell-phone industry. Take a moment and think what was before the iPhone. Nothing exciting eh? The iPhone platform revolutionised mobile User Interfaces, and even with its shortcomings as a device, it is still the best you can get in terms of mobile web browser, media player and the vast library of applications.

Now, imagine having almost twice as much the processing power of the iPhone in a 9.7 inch tablet. Imagine the possibilities with multi-touch applications. When developers get the hang of the new Software Development Kit, I promise you that we are going to see some AMAZING applications. Also, lets not forget the price: 499$ for the 16GB wifi model.

Of course, Apple demos of the new iPad weren’t so polished. To me, iPad now is something like the 1st gen iPhone when it was introduced. A brand new platform seeking for acceptance, so it can give it a push for later. If you recall, the 1st gen iPhone had no 3G connectivity, no AppStore, no iTunes store, no nothing. Just the stock applications. Now Apple made a head-start with these applications, but the OS is still lacking behind: no multi-tasking support, the welcome screen seems kinda, no flash support empty and so on. But lets not forget that we are talking about a device that has not yet seen the face of the earth, we’ve just seen it on a demo. And I am positive that Apple is going to push an OS upgrade for these devices to make as much from it as possible.

However, the press was really harsh to device. It reminds me the post we saw on Slashdot a few years ago: Apple Releases lame iPod. Aw really? What is the dominant portable music platform now, eh Slashdot, with 250m units sold? Apple is the victim of the rumours that are created around “expected” devices. Their mysticism around new product in these cases comes like a boomerang, as people start speculating about new product announces and they expect something extraordinary. Well, reality check people: Apple is a company like any other. They can not build the perfect product, but they do their best to get one thats innovative enough out there. This does not mean that every thing thats being distributed as a rumour must be a part of the final product — so guys, please, do not get disappointed if “teleport support” has not made into the iPad. This is plain stupid.

What I really like about Apple is that normally they don’t get a product out that doesn’t just works. However, this means that sometimes they drop out features that 10-15% of the users out there might find useful, such as generic USB support or an OLED display. Also, lets not forget that Apple is a company, not the messiah, and they want to make money. Of course they are going to release an OLED version later on, or one with a Camera: but not before they make some money and cover some R&D costs before they do that.

To sum up, I think the problem here is that the rumours were transformed into a real product, even before the product was announced by Apple — hence, many of the reporters were disappointed by the fact much of the rumours did not make it into the real product. If you take the device and compare it with the rest of offerings in the same space, you will then see the amount of technology and innovation that they put in. Well, OK, yes its a large iPhone, but then again its much more.

I am sure that iPad will be a great success, and it will, in fact, revolutionise the way we interact with computers, not instantly, but it will sure have a great impact. For now, I’ll have to be patient another 60-90 days to get my hands on it!