I haven't posted for a while… mainly because I have been working on Aggreg8 and on my Multimedia Technology Project, I've mentioned it before, an implementation of the LZW compression algorithm, I have it working for ascii text documents, I can compress a 10kb file to a 5kb file. It's pretty cool really. Here's the output form the compression.

Compressed file : "ca438ContAssess.txt.lzw" (4631 bytes)
Decompressed file : "ca438ContAssess.txt.lzw.out" (9083 bytes)
Decompression Dictionary file : "ca438ContAssess.txt.lzw.out.dct" (199666 bytes)
Number of entries in Dictionary : 3491
Minimum code size : 7
Maximum code size : 12

Which I am quite proud of. It seems that Mozilla now comes fully equiped with the kitchen sink. see : http://www.mozilla.org/catalog/web-developer/examples/kitchensink.xml . This example is now loaded into the new releases of Mozilla because of comments that Mozilla was a bloated product and might as well include the Kitchen sink(i.e. it comes with to much).

It seems Redbrick have had a revamp of their homepage, check it out http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie. I won't be posting here that much from now on, as I will mostly be concentrating on my Aggreg8 weblog. Also Redbrick have enabled their PHP file upload again (it was disabled for security reasons for a few months). I have written a few PHP scripts that work like a web based FTP client, It's pretty cool so anybody that wants that , I'll give you my code. (I'm quite proud of it as it is), We got our Multimedia Technology Continuous assignment today where we have to implement the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) compression algorithm
It seems like an OK project and hopefully won't take too long. We also got the our OO Design Project which is write a Z (zed) spec for our fourth year project or to write a Z spec. for the game "Draughts". which also seems ok. happy days really.

See http://cogworks.manilasites.com/2003/02/14 where you'll see a mention and a link to my project Aggreg8, at first I thought the "joshua" mentioned" was the Joshua I know from Intel but after further inspection I don't think this is the case. (There is a Joshua on the Mozdev admin team). I am currently in contact with another developer who is developing something similar to Aggreg8 which means that I will have someone to get ideas from and also to bounce ideas off.
Exams: As mentioned before, I wasn't happy with my Digital Signal Processing grade (41%) so I went to see my lecturer who said he would have another look at the paper and let me know if It is worth apealling the grade and asking for a re-check. (hopefully the answer will be yes).
My RSS feeds that I created at the weekend seem to working perfectly, I found a web-vased RSS reader @ http://soapclient.com/rss/rss.html , just enter in the URI of the Feed and away you go, the URI's of my Feeds are listed below:
http://www.aggreg8.net/Updates/rss.php (Aggreg8.net)
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~proche/index/rss.php (Philroche.net)

A get well soon goes out to Enda's Dad who had a stroke at the beginning of the weekend, If he is anyway as tough as his son (Enda that is) he'll be back on his feet in no time……….(the grapes are for him)

RSS Feed finally up and functional at last after much talk , I pulled a "most of the nighter" to get it up and running, A link to it will always be on the main page and also on the weblog page just click on the "RSS Valid" image like the one to the right. I contains the last three posts, The "RSS Valid" image is similar as the radio userland "XML" image( ) i.e. that there is an RSS feed present on this site, You can use this feed in your current aggregator or in Aggreg8, once I get it finished that is. The Feed is in RSS 1.0 format and I propose having a 2.0 version soon too. The 1.0 feed is valid, and you can check it's validity here. Anyway happy Aggregating folks,

The Exam results are out today (should be out by now [4pm]) so I am head wrecked. I'll post the minute I get them, I have been doing loads of research for my 4th Year project (Aggreg8). As I have mentioned before you can follow my progress on my Aggreg8 weblog.

4th Year First Semester Exam Results:

I'm not too happy about DSP and I think I will contest that mark as I was looking at the exam paper last night and I definitely feel that I did beter than 41%. I'm very happy with the rest though especially OO Design which was one of the hardest modules, as was Databases.

Please George can we go to war, please, please, please, please…..(click on link below)
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~proche/index/pictures/bushblairplead.gif
George's reasons for war are not what he makes them out to be…….(click on the link below)
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~proche/index/pictures/bushoilgoingtowar.jpg

http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~proche/index/Comedy/conjugal_visit.mp3
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~proche/index/Comedy/TowYardComplaint.mp3

My Car passed her NCT test today no bother to her. I now have a road legal car untill February 2005. Which is great as it will still be fine by the time I get back from OZ.

I am starting to get stresed out already about college with projects coming up already. Our security ptotocols project is due on the 18th February(Only the first part, there are 3 more parts to be done too). It seems ok though and I hope to have it done by the end of next week….Whoever thought that final year would be hard work?.

You can see my college timetable here Not too many lectures as you can see but there is a whole lot of independent study to be done. My streams (Software Engineering) timetable is here.

 No more Holiday for Philipousis(that's me). Back to the hard graft of college. I had my first lecture today..Security protocols where we were given our first project already. Sounds like a good module though.

I got the results for my Weblogs What, How and Why?. essay….80% which i am very happy with as it was a risky topic to choose for the essay as it was not directly related to our course work.

As y'all might have noticed I have changed the color scheme and the layout of my webpage(for the better I hope). All the links are still all in the same places really only some are split into menus and so forth.

I will be starting to work on Aggreg8 now so keep an eye on the projects progress.

A very good link for all y'all that wish to set up a domain for yourselves, is http://www.zoneedit.com. A free nameserver host. Another great free service (although I have upgraded to member status) is http://www.fastmail.fm It is the sleekest and fastest web mail about….truly excellent.

Paddy and Colm leave for OZ on Thursady so this Blog is in their honour, Have a good one lads and do us proud….see you there in June. [watch out for the lady boys in thailand].