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Thesis submitted
Ever seen that movie where this guy has to do an Honours thesis and went through an extended period of staring at the computer trying to code and write technical reports and a 100-page thesis, and he finally went blind and led a pathetic life after that before dying alone? No? Well, I didn't either. Sounds like a pretty boring movie.
Well, anyway, so I've finally submitted my thesis to the examiner for review. That's a veritable mountain off my back, really. What have I gained from this test of willpower, this despairing journey of initial disappointment, this obstacle-ridden trek, this inward journey (yikes!) that made me realize that I'm just not cut out for a life in academia? Well, I can write on and on about this, recounting my experiences, or I can just stop here and link gratuitously to my thesis.
Thesis - The Incremental Genetic Algorithm with the Michigan-style Classifier System (PDF format)
Adding a link to my (much shorter) technical paper: Technical paper - The Incremental Genetic Algorithm with the Michigan-style Classifier System (PDF format), because I see the thesis has become the number 1 result on Google for "incremental genetic algorithm". Good to provide a shorter readup.
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Junk filter improvements in Thunderbird weekly build + new Win32 installer
Scott MacGregor (lead engineer of Mozilla Thunderbird) has recently announced the availability of the 2004-03-12 weekly build with lots of new cool improvements. These improvements include an improved Junk Mail Algorithm, improved IDLE command for IMAP, new smilies (emoticons), and several UI improvements and sundry bugfixes. Another interesting development is the availability of a Win32 installer for Thunderbird.
Improvements and patches to the Junk Mail algorithm allow it to produce the same message scores as SpamBayes (another Bayesian spam filter - so good it is often used as a benchmark). What does this mumbo-jumbo mean? It means Thunderbird is now better at classifying your email as spam (or not) correctly. Scott highly recommends anyone trying out the new junk mail filter to first clear out the training file and retrain it. For that purpose, a new button for clearing the training data has been added (bug 237151) for convenience (previously, we had to delete the training.dat file manually).
Thunderbird's new IDLE support for IMAP (bug 141369) also sees many improvements and bugfixes. Simply put, IDLE is a command that allows IMAP email servers to transmit updates to the client in real time. This saves the client from having to continuously poll the server to achieve the effect of new mail appearing immediately. All in all, an exceptionally useful command that saves Thunderbird the work of polling IMAP servers continuously.
New emoticons (bug 237045) are also included in this build, and the artwork comes from Stephen Horlander of the Pinstripe theme fame. Very nice, compared to the old ones which were terribly dated (I had emoticons turned off because I didn't like them).
The new Win32 installer is an early attempt at rolling out the Mozilla Thunderbird installer targetted for the 0.6 milestone release (as stated in the Mozilla Thunderbird roadmap). I tried it out and it was fully functional, but there are several nitty gritty issues to be sorted out.
Running the installer presents you with this screen:
A little messed up, but this is an early test build after all. Scott is mostly leveraging off the work put into Firefox's Win32 installer. You next get to choose a standard or custom install.
Selecting custom allows you to add additional extensions - at this moment, Scott has only bundled in the Offline extension. Plans are in store to bundle other extensions as well, including the DOM Inspector.
Unfortunately (at least to me), the installer silently places shortcut icons on the desktop, in the start menu, and in the quick launch bar. The installer should have asked first. (I see someone else has already whined about this) I think with sufficient well-founded feedback, the Thunderbird team will come around to getting that feature into the installer.
Get the Thunderbird 2004-03-12 build or the test Win32 installer build to try out these new improvements and changes.
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Firefox profiles are now in "Firefox" folder
A while back, I mentioned that Firefox profiles will be migrated over from the old "Phoenix" directory to a "Firefox" directory. Ben Goodger (Firefox lead engineer) postponed the migration from last Friday to yesterday, and the latest nightly builds now include this change (see bug 203077).
If you are using an official nightly (or an unofficial nightly - see the MozillaZine Firefox Builds forum), you will be prompted with this screen when starting the new build if you have more than 1 profile:
Select the profile you want, and your settings and preferences will be imported:
At this time, it appears that the saved form information is not imported. Can anyone verify this?
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Getting .NET Button ListBar control to work
Dave (DarkAngel) has responded to my call for help regarding the .NET Button ListBar Control and has kindly allowed me to post the solution here. Dave is the man really - he went through the trouble of grabbing the control, loading up VS.NET and working through it step by step with me in his email. All that for a stranger. I love you Dave!
The problem I had was trying to import the .NET Button ListBar Control into my VS.NET Toolbox. The instructions said to import the ButtonListBar.vb file into the project and it should work, but it doesn't in Visual Studio.NET 2003. I think that is the reason it didn't work (that it is VS.NET 2003 instead of just VS.NET).
Opening the ButtonListBar.vb file in the Designer threw out an error (see the call for help entry). Dave fixed that with this solution (also via email):
... move the region event argument classes to the end of the ButtonListBar.
He went on to help me compile the source files into a DLL, which I'm familiar with using for importing controls. Below are his instructions (slightly paraphrased). The credit goes solely to Dave (DarkAngel) - I'm merely reproducing it for the benefit of anyone who next comes across this problem.
- Open up Visual Studio .NET (Visual Studio .NET 2003 to be exact)
- Create a new project by clicking File -> New Project (I'm using Visual Basic, so I chose Visual Basic Project).
- Choose "Windows Control Library".
- What we've done so far is just create a control library project which is ideal for putting new controls in. This will build to a DLL.
- Remove UserControl1.vb (the default file VS.NET creates) from the Solution Explorer (it's unnecessary).
- Right click the project in the solution explorer and select Add -> Add existing item
- Add the ButtonListBar.vb file in the control source files downloaded.
- Build the project (choose to build for "Release").
- The compiled DLL will then be in the bin/ directory of the project folder. You now have the ButtonListBar control in DLL form. All the remains is to add this control into the Toolbar of the project in which you want to use it.
Using the control:
- In the project you want to add the toolbar to, right-click your Toolbox and select "Add/Remove items".
- Click "Browse" under the .net framework components tab.
- Browse to the location of the DLL we just created and double click it.
- Click OK to dismiss the Add/Remove items dialog.
- The ButtonListBar control should now be the bottom entry on your list. (You can right-click and sort alphabetically if you like).
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Firefox mail integration UI just checked in
The Burning Edge reports that the latest Mozilla Firefox nightly builds (2004-03-07) contain the Mail Integration UI newly checked-in by Ben Goodger (bug 214893). It adds a mail toolbar button that allows you to read your mail and newsgroups or send the current link to someone. A Ctrl-M shortcut key has also been added to allow quick access to composing a new e-mail.
See the mail toolbar button in action with the screenshot below.
The number of unread emails is retrieved from the registry (for the Windows version), the same key that allows Windows to display "You have X new messages" at the WinXP logon screen.
If you grab a nightly build, you have to go through a few steps to get it to appear. Go to the View menu -> Toolbars -> Customize. Drag and drop the Mail icon to any place you like on a toolbar.
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