gazihan's blog

Creating DLLs in Windows
Submitted by gazihan on Tue, 2008-11-11 23:53.I've always seen and hated those weird macros that preceded functions of header files. Why couldn't they be clean and simple? I hated them because I didn't know much about them, they seemed arbitrary, prone to error, non-standard, no way of knowing the real motivation behind.
Not anymore. Today I had to create an intermediary DLL between two different object file formats and I had to go down to the level of dirty and hacky in the quest to make it work. And I stumbled upon this awesome page that has the "ultimate header file" template. I discovered half the things there myself, but it nailed the coffin of problems for me.
Here are the problems that I had to tackle in general:

iPhone simulator
Submitted by gazihan on Sun, 2008-10-19 09:30.hahaha I might not have an iPhone but I have the simulator. I'll edit this and add a screenshot:)
(attached is the screenshot)

Developing in Windows!
Submitted by gazihan on Tue, 2008-09-09 09:27.Here we go. I formatted my laptop hard drive, wiping away both Windows and Gentoo Linux... It was a tough choice nevertheless, but I had to because (1) my reiserfs partition got corrupted and some config files at my home directory were unwriteable (creating all kinds of fun), (2) my windows partition was too small to do any development on, (3) with the advisor change, I stopped using my laptop at work. I also stopped using Linux at work and entered into the mighty world of Java and Windows, a very positive experience indeed.

Askerlik / Military Service
Submitted by gazihan on Sun, 2008-07-06 18:27.Bir haftadir 21 gunluk vatani gorevimi yapiyorum, merak eden herkese selamlar, ben iyiyim.
I've been doing my military service for a week now. I'm OK in case you were wondering.

IBDS patch: fixed step size for precise collisions
Submitted by gazihan on Fri, 2008-05-02 06:40.Right now, the binarySearch for collisions stop when the distance for the first contact is within the collision tolerance. For high tolerance values this seems to be ok, but high tolerance creates less accurate simulations.
When the tolerance is low, the while loop in Simulation::binarySearch() actually gets executed and the simulation ends up stepping lower than the real step size. This is easily verified by doing sim->getCollisionDetection ()->setTolerance (0.0001) in CollisionModel.cpp. As the bodies start hitting the ground, the actual timestep varies as can be seen by the time display on the render window. I think this is bad, since most applications would expect the simulation to have the same step size everytime it is stepped. Attached is a patch that forces Simulation::timeStep() not to return till the expected timestep is reached.

Pazaraa giideelim
Submitted by gazihan on Sun, 2008-04-06 06:07.Erhan'in istegi uzerine gecen cumartesi pazara gidis-gelisim an be an karsinizda. Bu postun ana fikri: biz de insaniz bizim de pazarimiz var. Turkiye'dekileri aratiyo gerci ama olsun.
Maceraya evden basliyoruz. Bu bizim evin arkasi. Gordugunuz gibi muteahit Karadeniz'li oldugundan tahta yangin merdivenimiz var:
Devamini gormek icin asagidaki "read more" veya ustteki "Pazaraa giideelim" linkine basin.

Yet Another (and rightly so) Linux-Windows Rant
Submitted by gazihan on Fri, 2008-03-21 22:05.Oh boy. I saw this comment rant when I surfed over to the news about KDE looking for summer of code dudes. While I agree 100% with most of the comments he makes there, I'm a Linux user by choice - such a paradox...
It's not necessarily that Windows is far more superior than Linux, it's just that simple and intuitive tasks get done in Windows easier than they are in Linux and things in Windows just work without problems most often than in Linux. On the contrary, Linux shines when you are obsessive about how you want things done, therefore it's occasionally more fun.
You want to do NAT in Windows? You buy Wingate and you are done. You can see all the connections live on the Window and you have a lot of control over what happens with it, very discrete from anything else in the system. In Linux you have to learn what iptables is, how you sort of indirectly use its internal structure for NATing, etc.
(a) If you have time to do all that, great. Now you are an iptables guru and it'll be very helpful for many other things you will want to do at some point in the future. This definitely is a plus over a simple solution that works and does just what you want. (b) BUT, if you DO want a simple solution that works and does just what you want, your best bet is to find a howto and copy and paste a bunch of commands that you don't have much idea about. In such a case you'll have much less control over the whole thing, and when it breaks you'll spend much more time on it since you'll most likely have to revert to (a). This is definitely bad for the person that wants simplicity.

Calculating Jacobian without DH Parameters
Submitted by gazihan on Tue, 2008-03-18 17:26.This is not exactly a development contribution in terms of code, it's more like an idea. Nevertheless, I wanted to note that I was helpful to someone doing some development by leading them to the right direction on the ode-users mailing list.

Curlpp acknowledgement of my patch
Submitted by gazihan on Wed, 2008-03-05 05:40.Curlpp had a recent release that acknowledged me by name for submitting a patch.

Music to listen to while working
Submitted by gazihan on Sun, 2008-01-27 03:28.When I'm working on code, most of the time it's really hard for me to sit still and just do it. Most of the time I have to have some other enjoyable thing going on at the same time. I surf, watch videos, listen to music... Sometimes I find a great balance and get a lot done, but sometimes these secondary activities get too distracting and affect my productivity badly. I recently created a nice playlist that could keep my hyperactive side at bay, but after a while the songs got too familiar and started to be distracting.
In quest to find the best working supplement, I started to listen to the in-game musics of Warcraft III. They definitely are composed to supplement some other mind-intensive action, game playing. They are not distracting, but supplementing and feeding with feelings like glory and victory. So far it is working very very nicely and I get a lot done while listening to them. Highly recommended for anybody looking for something to do while engaging in mind-intensive tasks such as coding.
