Nilu's Plain Ideas

The Band's Visit

2011-12-31T13:15:00.000+02:00

TVR surprised me with a wonderful movie - The Band's Visit - a bittersweet story about an egyptian band lost in Israel.

996 to go

2011-12-19T21:35:00.000+02:00

Soundtrack

2011-12-18T13:40:00.000+02:00

Mediocre movie - great soundtrack...

RFC1855 - The Netiquette

2011-12-04T15:29:00.000+02:00

The RFC1855 is quite an informative document. It is a pity that it is seldom followed these days. More impolite styles have arisen with the "social networks" proliferation.

For example on "Linked In" I am constantly assaulted by guys/girls from Russia or Brasil that I do not know, have never worked with and offer nothing. Linked In is not MySpace/FaceBook/Hi5... Generally there a professional attitude is recommended. 2nd category there are the "students" who try to make themselves remarked on such networks. It is not a bad thing to be there but is totally rude for them to invite people they do not know as their connections. Any kind of etiquette says that if you are not somebody's peer or senior (either by age or function) you do not initiate networking requests. This is like an subordinate is giving hand first.

Here is also Tagged - I have never visited their site but ar regular interval they suggest me people that I should meet - well I am quite a misanthrope and I do not want tomeet people online - I am good with offline + beer.

Another rude category are the spammers and those that sell your email to spammers. The spam comments on my blog are something common now. They try to get their comments published to make some kind of SEO to their pitiful sites by getting back links. They are suckers - the spam protection on blog got quite okay lately.
For the second category - email address sellers - they come from ebay or okazii from where I have bought some stuff. After the purchase I have started to get mail regarding all kind of stuff (from electronic cigarettes to enlargement pills and singles announces). Then a company (mailway) started sending me "promotional" announces - to /dev/null with them.

Shortened foms on forums/StackOverflow: U, 4, 2, plz, hlp... WTF: It is a lot easier to read the whole word rather than trying to understand what the cretinoids wanted to say in their requests for solving homeworks (students again).

Solaris 11

2011-11-21T08:56:00.000+02:00

Oracle finally lauched Solaris 11 (aka SunOS 5.11 update 11/11).
While retaining all major features of Solaris 10 (zones, ZFS, ...) this shifted towards the now defunct OpenSolaris (IPS packaging, elimination of some ancient tools, more GNU-like utilities).
I have installed it and worked OOB flawlessly, install time being of about 10 minutes. The installer seemed a little outdated but worked precisely - similar to a Linux/BSD one. After the fist boot I enjoyed tinkering a little with it. The feeling was that I have been working more with a Debian-like distro than with Solaris as many of the Linux idioms were incorporated.
On this promise Oracle (they promised to invest more on Solaris than Sun did) kept its word and shipped quite a good system. Too bad that they have closed the ARM branch as Solaris has shown enormous potential for embedded devices.

Movies in weekend

2011-11-20T14:37:00.001+02:00

Amazingly, this weekend I have seen two full movies.
Friday I have seen "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes". The story was predictable and linear but the special effects were stunning.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/81/Rise_of_the_Planet_of_the_Apes_Poster.jpg/220px-Rise_of_the_Planet_of_the_Apes_Poster.jpg)

Saturday I have finally seen "Inception". It is a long time since I haven't seen a movie as good as it. I found it to be a modern version of George Roy Hill's 1973 "The Sting" mixed with ideas from"The Neuromancer". The idea of dreams within dreams and the possibility of building worlds (not only scam scenes) takes the plot to a more profound level. There are lots of similarities in the plot and in the characters but Nolan's movie is deeper and have more profound connotations. Most of the cast was remarkable (except for Marion Cottliard which gave a pale representation).

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7f/Inception_ver3.jpg/220px-Inception_ver3.jpg)

Mara One Year Old

2011-10-25T16:14:00.000+03:00

What If?

2011-10-22T11:01:00.001+03:00

As Nokia 's handset sales are going down, I wonder what would happen if they would provide a way to simply port Android on their released phones - E series and such.

IMHO they will gain instant community response - and projects similar with Cyanogen will be born. Possibly this will add market traction to all the other models - as they are very impressive as hardware.

The ideal thing would be a W7/Android dual boot both for them and for us.

Driving Technical Change

2011-10-19T10:36:00.000+03:00

Reading this book I have realized why I have often failed to promote sane techniques in my organization.
I have to brush a lot my selling skills and diplomacy.

Facebook

2011-08-31T00:25:00.001+03:00

(http://www.somegreybloke.com/)

Steve Jobs

2011-08-27T20:30:00.000+03:00

Steve Jobs has resigned. Since then the press started to publish pictures with Jobs as a very sick man.
I really do not want tho see pictures.
I want to remember Jobs as the charismatic visionary that was mastering the "reality distortion field". I want to remember him as the guy in black t-shirt and jeans able to captivate people and create wonderful products.
The IT will miss the magic touch he had on every aspect of IT as he was one of the architects of humanizing this domain and make it accessible to larger masses of people. He transformed the way we interact with computers twice and created maybe the most elegant designs for computers, devices and interfaces.

Thank you for the GUI !
Good luck Mr. Jobs!

Hand-Made Arduino

2011-07-21T13:55:00.001+03:00

It is kind of done. I haven't uploaded the bootloader yet.
It hasn't exploded yet - and this is a good sign.

Update:
1. Bootloader flashed ok with a BusPirate
2. Created the first app for it - works.

Next steps: Connect a PIR sensor and a camera for a nice alarm system.

Banking software

2011-07-12T22:20:00.000+03:00

Even ING's internet banking software has errors.

Probably it is overused - it works way better than most of the other bank's except Raiffeisen's.

The good part is that they show some openness to nowadays tech as Java, Spring and Magnolia.

After a long silence

2011-06-21T14:57:00.000+03:00

Finally I found some time to post. The blog is not dead but I have less time now.
What have I been doing lately?

Not much but:
I have started some electronics projects (a Nixie tube clock and a 3 axis CNC driver) I learnt about valves inn the event of building a valve amp (but I have been scared about transformers). However I have learnt how to use AVR microcontrollers and about *Duino gadgets. I have burnt my fingers soldering and colored them etching the PCBs. I have also discovered the wonderfull Parallax propeller chip.

I am still following some open source projects and get excited by Linux 3.0 and JBoss 7.0 as they might impact my work in the near future.

I have turned down some work offers... Well I am still looking for a change but I want it for better not for worse or at least equal. I have been offered to make "architecture & bugfixing" on .NET 1.0 code... I decided that that's not my wish.

I am still trying to understand what's inside our politician's head - they continue to amaze me with their lack of direction and their inept speech. Frankly & Sadly I think that Romanians will disappear as a nation in some years from now on as the result of the last 20 years policies.

I am still breathing...

Sometimes even coding.

Russian Game Consoles

2011-05-24T21:25:00.000+03:00

When I was a kid the coolest gadget (in '86-89) were the Russian clones of Nintendo handheld consoles.
I have just stumbled on a site that resurrects those in the form of flash games.
Here is the link http://www.pica-pic.com/

Endurance

2011-05-12T23:08:00.000+03:00

Repair the ceiling lamp in a room with a crying baby.

You have to be fast,somehow deaf and fast.... really fast.

Agility...

2011-05-12T21:56:00.000+03:00

I think that an agile is the enterprise where everybody think and act agile. If an eterprise praises just its champions, paladins of the 'best practices' but does nothing in changing the mentality of its management and process staff that is a non-agile enterprise

It is really not enough to have best practices posted in some obscure wiki inside the company, the best practices should become habits of every developer. It is not enough to make web casts 'bout the wonderful agile techniques, scrum and TDD but those concepts should be built in in the MANAGEMENT style.

Why agile managers? Because engineering is ever taken seriously when they propose process improvements and reduction of paperwork. Management should realize that agility is finally about money. Reducing the tasks that are not revenue generating means that the productive ones will increase and the work will be more
productive.

Finally the customer does not give a shit about waterfall/agile but it expects quality and commitment - the same virtues in a project that every PM is looking for. Agile methods (especially XP) have this by design and they produce onlythe exact quantity of results for a successful project.

Further more an agile corporation has people that train themselves, it encourages self training and the adoption of new technologies from ground up. It is totally wrong to use the 'champions' for preaching. Evangelization is not preaching. It is nice to have evangelists - they are gifted, smart, well read and inspired. Preachers are just annoying screaming dorks who know a subject by approximation. Developers inside an agile company learn 7 languages in 7 days because they want it, because they are interested in their craft. Non agile ones stick to one technology, to one language. They might be very good ones, but they are like dinosaurs, they will fear change. They will flock for secure change opportunities with lots of trainings and coaching and then, after mastering the subject again they will stick there again in the same immobility and fear... Agile ones will learn Lisp or Erlang by themselves in order to simplify some annoying tasks in their project and will be able to advocate and evangelize that among peers.

Xubuntu

2011-05-11T19:45:00.000+03:00

After more than 6 years with Ubuntu as my main OS, having Kubuntu or Fedora episodes I finally settled for Xubuntu.
Why? Because Ubuntu lacks Gnome 3 and the new Unity interface is an usability nightmare. I was almost there choosing Kubuntu as I like it's neat look but I felt quite helpless with KDE - as I said before I was unable to add an icon to desktop.
Xubuntu on the other hand is minimalist and all the GUI idioms I know from GTK are there. It takes less resources on my computer and with minimal customizations it has all the features of its Ubuntu/Kubuntu brothers.
Linux Mint - might have also been an alternative but I do not feel that it can keep up with the major distros.

VoceOnline

2011-05-05T22:27:00.000+03:00

DISCLAIMER: this is not publicity

Romtelecom created one of the most innovative and hackable(not crackable) services in the telecom market. It is called VoceOnline and basically it is a SIP service providing a Romanian number (+4037xyyyyyy) both as prepaid or postpaid solutions.

This awesome as I could connect Asterisk/Yate with this number and experiment with my little VXML toy.
Another awesome thing is that I can use a Romanian number wherever in the world and my folks can call me
at local rates an I can call back at the same rates.

I wished that Romtelecom would launch more services as this one.

Rants on the Romanian language

2011-04-20T15:39:00.001+03:00

"Ceau" - the most idiotic greeting formula. It is used only in Timisoara. I think that it is a romanization of the Italian "Ciao" but misspelled. I hate when I receive mails started with "Ceau Nilu" or I am greeted with "Ceau".

"Decat" - is an adverb that requires a negative verb for correct semantics. For positive the correct adverb is "doar". EG: "Nu am decat 5 lei" - is correct but "Am decat 5 lei" is scratching both my ears and the Romanian grammar. In the positive case the expression should be "Am doar 5 lei". But the "meltenesque" population is using the wrong form... I am doomed to hear them.

~~The extreme usage of Accusative in the detriment of the Genitive-Dative forms: "I-am lat lu' fata" instead of "I-am dat fetei"...~~
As my reader Bogdan Alexandru remarked I have put a wrong example on my post. In fact the idea was the usage of the "la" Accusative preposition for expressing the Dative "I-am dat la fata" instead of "I-am dat fetei". The problem is that the substantive "fata" has an Nominative/Accusative form because of the preposition. In my example there is also a problem of accord for the gender - it was an ear scratching expression heard yesterday.

I am not a linguist but I like speaking and hearing a correct language. But what I hear around is just a "gipsy"-anization of the language based on the precarious education in the Romanian institutes. Language is in my opinion a sacred asset for a nation and should be guarded with all the possible energies.

The Lent Paradox

2011-04-20T15:28:00.000+03:00

85% of Romanian population claims to be orthodox.
During the lent I have to eat in an Halal Lebanese restaurant in order to find some appropriate food.
I wonder how many of the 85% are respecting the lent? In fact is quite hard to do it as all the restaurants offer the same meat based menus which are even cheaper than the lent cuisine.
An why the Romanian Orthodox Church does not create small fast foods with food for lent - as the monks have delicious recipes and in this way they can raise funds for charity and construction of the Cathedral.

Just my rants...

ROFL!!!

2011-04-11T22:53:00.003+03:00

Via Alexei I stumbled upon this very funny clip:

IEEE

2011-04-07T08:32:00.001+03:00

For some years now I have been an IEEE member.
I have joined this organization for several reasons - the main one being access to latest "trustworthy" information and research.
This year I decided to give up IEEE. Last year I was roughly paying about 42 USD for one year membership (no printed material) but this year the offer was advertised at 50 USD. When I tried to renew my membership I discovered that the charge was in fact 63 USD (50 Electronic subscription + 13 local chapter). In fact 50% more than last year... For what? Spectrum digital edition and access to a web site? A local chapter that is almost inexistent in my country?
IEEE is a great organization and they have been influential in all aspects of engineering in the last 50 years - but they are growing more expensive year after year... That's a pitty.

Savings

2011-02-20T11:53:00.000+02:00

Google is lately heavily advertising their Google Apps related savings.
I have tweaked the assumptions in order to match the following 5 nines setup:

ZFS + dedup storage backends
clustered frontends (Solaris Cluster):

Postfix + Dovecot + SpamAssasin + OpenLDAP
RoundCube webmail

Mercurial for versioning
MediaWiki for content

The result was:

Do not get me wrong - Google Apps is a great SaaS. However In case of a large organization who happens to be cheap/money conscious, _EXTREMELY_ concerned about privacy and with it's own data centers - there are some alternative solutions. The costs go mainly in hardware as all software used is free and system admins are creative and payed well below the 70 USD/h that Google is assuming.

Lately

2011-01-15T11:24:00.001+02:00

I am spending time with my daughter. Not as much as I'd like.
We listen to all kind of music - she enjoys Mozart and "Dead can Dance".
We also dance sometimes, The Blue Danube waltz - is her favorite.

In the meanwhile VXML scripting and some cracking of a Java based license system. I was lucky with the cracking as the vendor made mostly no obfuscation and DID NOT sign the jar files... It would have been considerably harder to crack it if at leat one of those two have been applied.

I have set up a server(web, mail, etc) for an online community. I installed RoundCube webmail (I was considering Zimbra for that but hardware was terrible) and I found it extremely pleasant to use.

Auld Lang Syne

2010-12-31T20:39:00.000+02:00

Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T15:23:00.000+02:00

MMXI

I wish a better year to everybody!
Peace and prosperity to all of you!

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-21T12:23:00.001+02:00

One psaltic Christmas Carol

And an excellent remaster of an old Romanian carol by Vlaicu Golcea:

(sorry for the audio quality, not the best)

ChillOut

2010-12-21T12:07:00.002+02:00

Leves of Grass

2010-12-05T23:25:00.001+02:00

I haven't seen Edward Norton for a while in movies. But in "Leaves of Grass" he made an excellent role, a mixture of the role from "Fight Club" and "Keeping the Faith".

Add Delivery Platform

2010-11-25T15:26:00.000+02:00

It is a week since I have had my first Android phone. My Nokia E51's battery is dead and buried so I have taken the bod decision to go for a touch phone.

The new phone is a HTC Wildfire because of its dimensions - the other choice was a Desire but despite its richer features its size overwhelmed me.

The touch experience was not so good for me. What I have is not a phone but a gadget with a phone emulator...

The gadget is not really a standalone gadget but rather an add delivery platform for Google who found a smarter way to reach me with its adds. The phone, multimedia and gaming are just add-ons on the ADP.

Technically the phone is okay for a budget one (QVGA, no GPU are the main drawbacks), the software is somehow usable - but after a quick look under the hood (infamous ps axww) I found lots of apps running without any reason. In conclusion not really impressed... The feeling of calling somebody on the Android phone is quite weird - it cannot compare with the material touch of my old phone's keys. The GPS on the other hand is awesome - fast and extremely accurate.

My verdict for Android *****

Support Wikimedia!

2010-11-15T00:03:00.002+02:00

Sirba

2010-11-11T15:15:00.001+02:00

Vladimir Cosma is a Romanian born composer. He is famous for his film music in French movies.
I have stumbled upon this recording of one of his most played pieces - Sirba - a Romanian dance adaptation.
The piece was the theme of the "Le Grand Blonde" with Pierre Richard
The extremely talented people who are playing are Russian students.
Enjoy

This is a true European multicultural experience :)

Change

2010-11-07T20:19:00.000+02:00

Well the motion against Boc cabinet could use this as a reason.

Adrian Paunescu (1943 - 2010)

2010-11-07T15:44:00.003+02:00

Undeva in trecut

Am sa plec intr-o zi,
Intr-un loc nestiut,
Intr-un munte secret,
Undeva in trecut.

Am sa plec in trecut,
Am sa plec intr-o zi,
Sa ajung cand te nasti,
Sa te pot intalni.

Stiu si eu ca-i ciudat
Si ca pasii-mi sunt grei,
Catre nunta din veac
A parintilor mei.

Las de veghe aici
Toti nepotii frumosi,
Eu ma intorc in trecut,
Eu ma intorc la stramosi.

Eu ma intorc la ai mei,
Intr-un mars revansard,
Sunt retrasi in paduri
Langa vreascuri ce ard.

Mai vorbesc despre noi
Si mai mor in razboi,
Se mai mira de cei
Care vin inapoi.

Am sa plec intr-o zi,
Am bagajul intreg,
Am cu mine ce simt,
Ce iubesc si inteleg.

Sunt satul de prezent,
Nu mai vreau viitor,
Dar ma-ntorc in trecut
Ca nu vreau nici sa mor.

Pe un deal coroiat
Curge mustul din teasc
Si batranii se sting
Si copii se nasc.

Eu ma-ntorc in trecut,
Din acest viitor
Si pastorii ma iau
Langa turmele lor.

Si din rodnice nunti,
Urca iarba pe munti,
Tutelarule Zeu,
N-ai de ce sa te-ncrunti.

Mai degraba sa pui
Legea ta peste tot,
Ca stramosi la nepoti
Sa se intoarca inot.

Si, cand vremea va fi,
Printr-un strigat urgent,
Pe noi toti sa ne chemi
Sa venim in prezent.

Sa fim toti pregatiti
De momentul solemn,
Cand va bate in munti
Vechea toaca de lemn.

Si un clopot din cer
O sa dangane sfant,
Ca s-a-ntors Dumnezeu,
Printre-ai lui, pe pamant.

Rest in peace!

The Kite Runner

2010-11-06T09:46:00.002+02:00

Just one word: touching.

Multi headed dragon

2010-10-29T08:45:00.003+03:00

The multinationals with a dash in name (especially the ones that gained the dash through a merger) are like a multiheaded dragon. They look fierce, impressive and aggressive from the outside but they are schizophrenic and divided on the inside.Each head has its own mind and feels that he has its own stomach...

My greatest project so far

2010-10-25T22:35:00.001+03:00

Mara-Elena, born Monday the 25th of October 2010

This Is England

2010-10-19T23:02:00.000+03:00

In memoriam Benoit Mandelbrot

2010-10-18T14:26:00.003+03:00

Benoit Mandelbrot (1924 -2010) revealed some fascinating domains of the mathematics - the fractals.

Although mathematically challenging the fractals are also eye-candy generators.Their delicate structure makes them a place to explore.

eSNACC ASN.1 Compiler

2010-10-14T18:22:00.001+03:00

I have found the eSNACC v1.7 compiler.
I thought it was lost as I couldn't find it anywhere on the net and the original site was gone.
I found it in my archives (luckily).

Use it at will (I guess the license permits it)

Simple dependency graphing for Linux/Solaris

2010-10-13T17:52:00.003+03:00

I needed a simple tool that would determine the dependencies between some libraries.
Because I haven't found one (I tried to compile nmdepend but I gave up quickly) I wrote this simple and rudimentary dependency walker that is generating a PDF output.
It takes one argument in the command line and then draws a graph f dependencies for this argument by parsing the output of ldd command. The graph is creating by pushing the list of dependencies to graphviz.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
import popen2
import re
deps = {}
def solve(f):
        if f in deps:
                return deps[f]
        r, w, e = popen2.popen3('ldd '+f)
        e.readlines()
        __deps = []
        for l in r.readlines():
                dep=""
                t=l.split("=>")
                try:
                        left=t[0].strip()
                        right=t[1].strip()
                        if right=="not found":
                                key="./"+left
                        else:
                                key=right              
                except IndexError:
                        key=t[0].strip()
                key=key.split(r" ")[0].strip()
                __deps.append(key)
        deps[f]=__deps
        r.close()
        e.close()
        w.close()
        for dep in __deps: solve(dep)

def export(name):
        r, w, e = popen2.popen3('dot -Tpdf -o/tmp/'+name+".pdf")
        #graphviz output
        w.write('digraph "' + sys.argv[1] + '"{'+"\n")
        w.write('ratio="auto";' + "\n")
        for dep in sorted(deps.keys()):
                for dd in deps[dep]:
                        w.write('"' + dep + '"->"' + dd + '";' + "\n")
        w.write('}' + "\n")
        r.close()
        e.close()
        w.close()
if __name__=="__main__":
        solve(sys.argv[1])
        del deps["statically"]
        export(sys.argv[1])
        #print deps

CMake

2010-10-12T14:46:00.002+03:00

I have recently worked with CMake in order to improve our build system a little.
The old system, based on GNU Make on Linux ans SCCS Make on Solaris had some flaws and it became extremely hard to maintain.CMake seemed a good solution at a first sight as the syntax was clear and most of the things worked out of the box (hierarchical builds, custom build commands).
However CMake misses a very important feature - the variant builds. I am not speaking of the Debug/Release builds but feature bounded builds as in my care custom builds for C7/A7/CH7/J7 ISUP variants. For this kind of builds I need:
1. Different defines
2. Different include paths
3. Different link libraries.

Point 3 can be easily solved with CMake (via TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES), but point 1&2 cannot. I have tried several variants and workarounds and finally I have found one that
worked

SET_PROPERTY(TARGET MainNed_itu APPEND PROPERTY COMPILE_DEFINITIONS  "C7_Q")

Another way was to use SCons for build. It provides some nice features (hierarchical/variant builds) and is easily extensible in Python. It also has a better Java support than CMake.
It was quite easy to migrate the CMakeLists to SConstruct files using a simple script.

Do they have a retarded copywriter?

2010-10-09T23:02:00.000+03:00

I have no idea who is behind the new commercials for Vodafone prepaid.

He/She must be somehow retarded. I really do not get who is really targeted by those stupid commercials.
Maybe I am obtuse but the "Marea Ieseala/Maximia" series are among the most unfunny ideas.

Contrasting those commercials with the ones Orange has now the really suck. Orange's are witty with nice music and really have a story. Even Cosmote have better commercials - funnier and more elaborate.

As for postpaid the situation is even worse. Cerebel is nor funny. Howg!
The internet everywhere prepaid campaign might have been a good but they finally fucked it big time...

Please guys - change the commercials. They really sucks...

In the same idea of bad publicity - the replacement of Romanian flag with the American on the Rom chocolate is also moronic.

I am wondering why do they even organize publicity contests lately (Ad'or or something) as most of the commercials are importer and the others (considering the big accounts behind) are dumb.

Sergey Yesenin

2010-10-09T20:02:00.000+03:00

I Do Not Regret, And I Do Not Shed Tears...

I do not regret, and I do not shed tears,

All, like haze off apple-trees, must pass.

Turning gold, I"m fading, it appears,

I will not be young again, alas.

Having got to know the touch of coolness

I will not feel, as before, so good.

And the land of birch trees, - oh my goodness!-

Cannot make me wander barefoot.

Vagrant"s spirit! You do not so often

Stir the fire of my lips these days.

Oh my freshness, that begins to soften!

Oh my lost emotions, vehement gaze!

Presently I do not feel a yearning,

Oh, my life! Have I been sleeping fast?

Well, it feels like early in the morning

On a rosy horse I"ve galloped past.

We are all to perish, hoping for some favour,

Copper leaves flow slowly down and sway...

May you be redeemed and blessed for ever,

You who came to bloom and pass away...

Multiple file tail

2010-10-02T18:15:00.002+03:00

This is my first attempt to post ode with some syntax highlighting.
I have chose GeSH for convenience and for the fact that I do not really enjoy much Javascript in my pages.
The tool does a "tail -f" on multiple files - like the output of a RollingFileAppender.

UPDATE: In the meanwhile I have found that Alex Gorbatchev's SyntaxHighlighter offers a hosting for it's brushes. In spite of my JS phobia I have chosen it over GeSH as the output looks way better.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import glob
import optparse
import os
import signal
import stat
import sys
import time
files = {}
def info(*text):
        if options.verbose==True:
                for token in text:
                        print token,
                print
       
def handler(sig, frame):
        if sig==signal.SIGUSR1:
                print "*** Caught USR1 ***"
                print "Watched files are: "
                for f in files.keys():
                        print f, " ",
                print
        if sig==signal.SIGINT:
                sys.exit(0)
       
class GenericLogFile:
        def __init__(self, name, label = False):
                self.name = name
                self.label = ""
                if label:
                        self.label=self.name+":"
                self.open()
       
        def close(self):
                self.file.close()
       
        def open(self):
                self.file = open(self.name, "r")
                self.file.seek(0, 2)
                self.lastpos = self.file.tell()
                self.mtime = os.stat(self.name)[stat.ST_MTIME]
                self.inode = os.stat(self.name)[stat.ST_INO]
       
        def reopen(self):
                self.open()
                self.file.seek(0, 0)
       
        def tell(self):
                return self.file.tell()
        def size(self):
                return os.stat(self.name)[stat.ST_SIZE]
               
        def changed(self):
                return os.stat(self.name)[stat.ST_INO]!=self.inode
        def tail(self):
                #Inode changed
                if self.changed():
                        info("***File ", self.name, " was changed")
                        self.close()
                        self.reopen()
               
                size = self.size()
                pos = self.tell()
               
                #File truncated
                if size<pos:
                        info("***File ", self.name, " was truncated(size=",size," pos=",pos,")")
                        self.close()
                        self.open()
                       
                #Data written since we have last checked
                if pos!=size:
                        if self.label=="":
                                info("***File ", self.name)
                        #Display all remaining lines
                        while True:
                                line = self.file.readline()
                                if line!="":
                                        print self.label+line,
                                else:
                                        break
       
               
help="""
DESCRIPTION
        This program works as tail -f for multiple files.
        files   -       any kind of file. They can be specified using shell patterns (*/?)
       
        -v              -       verbose output
        -l              -       label each line with the file ith has been read from
        -h              -       prints this help
       
WARNING
        Please enclose the filename patterns between single/double quotes in order to prevent
        shell globbing.
       
SIGNALS
        USR1    -       dumps a list of the open files
       
"""
def init():
        global options, args, parser, config
        #Initialization
        parser = optparse.OptionParser(help)
        parser.add_option("-l", "--label",  action="store_true", dest="label", help="label each line with the name of the file from that it was read")
        parser.add_option("-v", "--verbose",  action="store_true", dest="verbose", help="print more verbose diagnostics")
        (options, args) = parser.parse_args()
        signal.signal(signal.SIGUSR1, handler)
        signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, handler)
       
if __name__=='__main__':
        init()
        if len(args)!=0:
                lst = glob.glob(sys.argv[1])
                if len(lst)==0:
                        print "WARNING: No file matched the input yet!"
        else:
                parser.error("Incorrect number of arguments")
                parser.print_help()
               

#Initial situation
        #Get all the files already present
        for f in lst:
                if not f in files:
                        print "Added ", f
                        files[f] = GenericLogFile(f, options.label)
       
        #Main loop
        while True:
                lst = glob.glob(pattern)
               
                for f in files.keys():
                        if f not in lst:
                                #We no longer need this file...
                                info("Deleted ", f)
                                del files[f]
                                continue
                        else:
                                files[f].tail()
                       
                for f in lst:
                        if not f in files:
                                info("Added ", f)
                                #This is a file that appeared during program run.
                                #We have to print it all
                                files[f] = GenericLogFile(f, options.label)
                                files[f].reopen()
                                files[f].tail()
                time.sleep(1)

Idomeneo Ouverure by W.A.Mozart

2010-09-28T16:57:00.001+03:00

One of my dearest pieces

How others see the present

2010-09-25T20:57:00.002+03:00

I have found this interview with the painter Vasile Gheorghita.
Romania - as he sees it...

Pictor - Vasile Gheorghita. Revoltatul.

Val Munteanu's Illustrations

2010-09-25T13:51:00.000+03:00

Almost forgotten now, Val Munteanu had a distinct style in all the artwork he has done. The characters drawn in a medieval like style, resembling old books miniatures or vitralia, populated some of the books I have cherished.

Hackintosh for Toshiba

2010-09-17T17:30:00.002+03:00

I have installed OS-X on my decaying Toshiba U400-13k.
I have the following result:

Graphics - YES (NO QE)
Sound - YES (VoodooHDA)
Bluetooth - NO
Network - NO (Marvell Yukon)
Wireless - NO (Intel 4965)

I have had some issue with the Firewire onboard controller, it continuously gave me the following error:

com.apple.driver.AppleFWOHCI FireWire (OHCI): start - unable to get device memory

The solution was simple - remove all the Firewire kexts from /System/Library/Extensions.

Moreover I was quite impressed that GRUB2 is able to boot the system - so no need for Chameleon.

UPDATE:

I have followed this thread and I have made Bluetooth work.

Addictive game

2010-09-12T13:43:00.004+03:00

http://www.bubblebox.com/swf6/1290/gen.swf

Virtual Lab

2010-09-03T19:17:00.000+03:00

Finally the VMware licenses arrived and were installed.
So I was busy virtualizing most of the expensive lab hardware we were using.
The SIGTRAN simulators, the signaling gateway, the TTS/ASR machines and some of the development machines. They are all sitting inside a nice DL380G6 box.

Desktop Linux

2010-08-29T10:26:00.001+03:00

I have finally managed to make the desktop look usable.
BOM:
1. Conky Colors: http://www.webupd8.org/2010/08/conky-colors-gets-beautiful-new-cairo.html
2. Droid TTF fonts for desktop and Inconsolata for monospaced.
3. Ubuntu tweak - enables icons in menus
4. Cairo Dock - Mac like appearance (with OpenGL)
5. Faenza icon theme
6. Ambiance Maverick beta theme

33y3m3d

2010-08-27T12:20:00.000+03:00

33Y 3M 3D

Gandul Matei

2010-08-22T21:17:00.000+03:00

Finally, after three years since Alexei left for US, I have been able to get all their albums. The sound is cool, reminds me of the first Zdob&Zdub albums.

Frustrations

2010-08-22T16:10:00.001+03:00

I am growing frustrated by Ubuntu inconsistencies.
Each flavor has its own GUI idioms and from a usability point of view it is a nightmare switching around them. I felt idiot as I was unable to add an icon to Kubuntu's screen or making Gnome not interfere with Xfce.
I will try PinguyOS - if it's the same crap I will consider other alternatives (OS-X).

Russian movies

2010-08-22T16:06:00.002+03:00

The Russian cinematography is somehow unique. They are doing sometimes great movies, that remain in your memory for ages. It was the case with Stalker, Station for Two,The Barber of Siberia or more recently Ostrov.

I have just seen "Admiral" - a movie about the life of Alexander Kolchak and his love affair with Anna Timireva.
To my shame I knew almost nothing about Kolchak or his white resistance against the Bolsheviks in Siberia - this movie gave me something to chew on. The movie is visually rich in every aspect. Naval battle, ballroom scenes, the frozen Siberia - everything is cautiously reconstructed. IMHO it worth seeing.

Muhahahaha!

2010-08-14T09:35:00.002+03:00

Joy!

2010-08-12T13:36:00.001+03:00

Sometimes the day gives me surprises, some of them are able to make my day brighter!
Today is one of those bright days... I have just learnt that one of my dear friends has been selected for a Microsoft position. I' very glad for him as he is one of the most gifted developers I've ever seen!

P!=NP

2010-08-12T12:06:00.000+03:00

According to this paper it seems that P!=NP.
Another mathematical hard problem is apparently solved.

Latest

2010-08-10T20:15:00.001+03:00

Not much those days.
I have worked on some ugly and old C++ code - it hasn't been maintained since 2005. I had to port it from Solaris/SPARC to Linux/x86-64. With some hacks (especially on the C++ dialect used by Forte and not understood by g++) I made it work. In the end I wanted to give it a bump and I stubbed the old traces implementation towards a log4cxx one.

Jonathan's Schwartz still at Oracle

2010-07-27T21:58:00.001+03:00

He is still there,looking up to the...Sun...

It seems that the Oracle rebranding forgot the ex CEO on some pages.

Clouds-B-Gone

2010-07-26T21:46:00.002+03:00

Vacation - Part II

2010-07-19T09:00:00.000+03:00

A short trip home in Maramures.
The tallest wooden buildings in Romania:

The wooden church of Surdesti (73m)

The wooden church of Sapanta-Peri monastery (78m)

Romanian television

2010-07-13T11:23:00.000+03:00

While I have been away I had satellite TV in my apartment in Croatia.
The only Romanian television station was TVRi... Awful...
All the shows were a salad. For example a show about problems in Romanian tourism had as guests two business men and one singer (Traistariu the castretto). The first guests were talking about how to make tourism more efficient in Romania while Traistariu sang an old tune and spoke about Japan :P.
The host of the show was evidently not able to handle it.

Another morning show "Intalnire la malul marii" was hosted by two aging/consumed whore like girls. The show was also an uninspired mix of young un-tallented starlets wanabes (Romanian name for them is "pitzipoance"), gypsies and manele singers, old actors and such... Awful again.

The afternoon I have once seen a cultural show about Vasile Parizescu's Romanian painting collection - one of the largest and most valuable in Romania. The producer/host Irina Irsai illustrated the show with the most uninspired rags. In the meanwhile she offered a deep look under her skirt and she was constantly interrupting the guest when he spoke about significant episodes of his life. The montage of the looked as it have been made by a 3 years old kid.

Another afternoon show was an educational one - again with no wit. It was plain and dumb and repetitive. The host had as much pedagogical apprehension as an old boot while the kids in the show were evidently bored and mechanically repeating the lines in the script. The funniest one was a slow teenager with an earing taht was saying platitudes from behind a tree.

The scrolling banners were both in Romanian and in Romglish - a word by word translation of the Romanian version with some spelling and grammar mistakes.

However the only good show were the news and in one day the Traian Basescu's interview.
I almost regretted that I have even turned on TV... but I needed some background during breakfast/dinner.

Vacation... never too long

2010-07-11T13:10:00.000+03:00

This year I spent my hollydays in Baska, Krk island in Croatia.
It was a relaxing vacation in a wonderful place.
I have enjoyed bot the stay there, the marvelous landscape, excellent cuisine and the crystal clear water. The place is loaded with history dating back to Roman period. The trip through Serbia and especially Croatia - with its mountains and dense forests was also extremely enjoyable.

A good place for business

2010-06-26T23:19:00.000+03:00

Comparing those three countries we see that Serbia is by far the most interesting both for corporations and common people.

Country	Personal tax	Corporate tax	VAT
Romania	16%	16%	24% (since 26 june 2010)
Russia	24%	13%	18%
Serbia	10%	14%	18% (8% basic necessities as bread, milk etc.)

Dog training

2010-06-22T17:59:00.001+03:00

When you have a dog you train it by giving it goodies when it does something good and by giving him a small punishment when he does something bad IMMEDIATELY after it did it.
With a team I think the incentives should also be given immediately after a project is finished or a month later... tops. And the incentives should be real - something people could use or value.
Today I have received an email at 14:00 that we are invited at 16:30 for a small 'party' in a total value of 60 EUR for all 23 of us as sign that management appreciates our work... This is happening at 4 months after the end of the project. what can I, a poor dog, learn from this... Nothing except this is just a master's caprice.
I really do not understand this kind of policies. It would have been better for the management to do nothing instead. "That's lame" I would say.
Moreover I have discovered that management in my group rarely uses the magical Outlook facilities as Calendar or Tasks - everything is on email - preferably at the end or in between a long thread of them.
Meetings are quite ad-hoc and quite de scoped and incredibly long - over one hour to decide simple things and WITHOUT any action points or concrete measurable outcomes afterwards.

Aerosmith concert @ Bucharest

2010-06-19T22:13:00.002+03:00

I am not their fan but this is a tune I like:

Chinese spam

2010-06-06T14:24:00.000+03:00

I decided a couple of months ago to moderate comment due to the fact that the chinese/taiwanese spammers were publising crap on the comments on my blog.
They did not stop but it seems to me that they even increased their posting rate...
Iam looking for some automated spam protection.

Precious

2010-06-06T14:20:00.001+03:00

Fedora experience

2010-05-29T19:30:00.000+03:00

After more than two years since my last Fedora install, frustrated by Ubuntu's glitches,I reinstalled Fedora 13 on my laptop.
It was a pleasant surprise to see how much it evolved since my last contact with it.
The installation was smooth - from the live CD.
It recognized all my hardware including the elusive Toshiba bluetooth module
The graphics are a little childish in my opinion but they are somehow consistent and appealing. On the original installation I had no OpenOffice, flash or codecs -
but they were simple to add from third party repositories.

There were also a couple of other things that I learnt from Fedora:
1. The bluetooth problem on Toshiba is not coming from kernel but from the modules shipped by Cannonical in their distro. I have recompiled the kernel on Ubuntu with toshiba support and bluetooth started to work by default - so I do not need my Omnibook hacked bluetooth module.

2. The fonts are correctly rendered by Xft - the problem is in the Gnome themes - especially in Cannonical custom ones. Reverting to plain old Mist evrything looked better.

In the meanwhile I am trying to merge Plymouth 0.8.3 on 0.8.2-ubuntu and rebuild the package.

Free Monday

2010-05-24T13:11:00.000+03:00

As the Penteost's Monday was free I took advantage and enjoyed a long lazy morning. So I've seen a nice animation - "Up".

The characters were funny and the story quite witty,although bitter-sweet sometimes.

The Book Of Eli

2010-05-23T17:35:00.000+03:00

This is a not so good mix between "Mad Max", "The Road" and "Fahrenheit 451". I still wonder how two excellent actors as Oldman and Washington could accept the roles in it. As for Mila Kunis - well, it is still Jackie from "The 70's Show"

SWT/Eclipse

2010-05-22T00:21:00.001+03:00

There is too much space around widgets in GTK version of Eclipse. I am trying to understand what is cause the bad SWT spacing. Windows/Mac looks better.
It is quite annoying the look and on my 1280x800 it consumes about 4 text lines on the screen

2004 - 2009 - IT press

2010-05-20T16:46:00.000+03:00

Kind	2004	2010
Algorithms	1 (GInfo)	0
Professional IT	1 (NET Report)	0
General IT	4+ (PC Magazine, CHIP, Computerworld, PC Practic)	2
Gaming	2+ (Level, XtremPC)	2
Linux	1 (Linux Magazine)	0

In the meanwhile many other magazines have disappeared (Gazeta Matematica...).

What could be the cause of the extinction of those mags? Internet? Or the lack of interest into quality articles.

In other countries those magazines survived and really thrived.

In Romania it seems that they had the same faith as the rest of the written culture...

Strange new Vodafone APN

2010-05-19T22:11:00.000+03:00

This is my wvdial.conf dialer.

[Dialer cartela]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"ip","tobe.vodafone.ro"
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Phone = *99***#
ISDN = 0
Password = vodafone
New PPPD = yes
Username = tobe.vodafone.ro
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Baud =  460800

Strangely Ubuntu's graphical network applet is unable to deal with this new APN while wvdial manages to make adial-up connection.

A la Roumanie

2010-05-11T19:36:00.002+03:00

Recently our enlightened government announced 15% reduction of the pensions and 25% reduction of the salaries for the employees in the public sector.
They also announced that other tax facilities will be revoked (16% tax extemption for programmers, maternal help, ...). Hospitals and schools will be closed, lots of people will go in unemployment. The country is almost in the same situation as after a war.
I am not complaining... It could be worse. See the case of Korea in 1993. But the people there trusted the government and donated for the whole country. I really think that there are persons that would do the same here... but... we have nobody to trust on this world.

Going headless again

2010-05-09T11:16:00.001+03:00

After the launch of Ubuntu 10.04 I decided that I have to upgrade to this LTS.
On laptop it was easy but on my server I had a problem. No keyboard and no screen were attached to it - so again I had to do a headless install.
Last time I made a hack with a USB stick but it was quite ugly.
Now I decided to do something cleaner.
The outcome was simple I modified the file isolinux/isolinux.cfg to accommodate aserial console. My file looks like:

serial 0 115200
console 0
prompt 1
timeout 30
default install
label install
  menu label ^Install Ubuntu Server
  kernel /install/vmlinuz
  append console=ttyS0,115200n8 file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu-server.seed initrd=/install/initrd.gz quiet --
label minimal
  menu label Install ^Minimal Server
  kernel /install/vmlinuz
  append console=ttyS0,115200n8 file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu-server-minimal.seed initrd=/install/initrd.gz quiet --
label minimalvm
  menu label Install Minimal ^VM
  kernel /install/vmlinuz
  append console=ttyS0,115200n8 file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu-server-minimalvm.seed initrd=/install/initrd.gz quiet --
label rescue
  menu label ^Rescue a broken system
  kernel /install/vmlinuz

With this modification in place I have rewrtten the CD and everything worked as a charm.

Movies evening

2010-05-08T12:43:00.000+03:00

"Billy Elliot"

I have seen a nice movie about passion and courage to escape. "Billy Elliot"'s cast simply stars. Jame Bell's and Gary Lewis's performances are stunning.

"Takva"

The transformation of the ascetic Muharrem to a ruthless man, from serenity to anger. Muharrem is always looking for God and try to act in His name... But the temptation is tormenting his life. A must see.

64bits upgrade

2010-05-01T09:54:00.002+03:00

I have just discovered to my surprise that my home machine is 64 bits capable.

cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor    : 0
vendor_id    : GenuineIntel
cpu family    : 15
model        : 4
model name    : Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.66GHz
stepping    : 9
cpu MHz        : 2660.159
cache size    : 256 KB
fdiv_bug    : no
hlt_bug        : no
f00f_bug    : no
coma_bug    : no
fpu        : yes
fpu_exception    : yes
cpuid level    : 5
wp        : yes
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc up pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl tm2 cid cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips    : 5320.31
clflush size    : 64

So the logical step would be to upgrade to a 64bits OS. 10.04 or OpenSolaris?

No Computer Day

2010-04-25T11:19:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I had a "No Computer Day".
Surprisingly enough I found that I still had plenty to do without any shade of boredom.

Tragedy in Poland

2010-04-11T10:07:00.001+03:00

It is tragical what happened to the Poland's president Lech Kaczynski. God rest their souls in peace!
I admired the dignity and solidarity of the Poles in such a hard moment.

Still I am wondering what would have been the Romanians reactions in a similar situation. What if the plane have contained Basescu, Boc, Udrea, Nastase and others... I wonder where in the line between redemption and tragedy in some cases.

I will moderate comments

2010-04-07T17:35:00.001+03:00

I have seen lately that the open comments on my blog were abused by some spammers that were posting ads to online video chatting/adult video/dating and stuff.
Thus I have decided to moderate comments just to get rid of those... Sorry for the inconvenience.

Total war

2010-04-05T19:21:00.000+03:00

Google seems to be at war with almost everyone (including Apple).
They are fighting not only on search but also against telecoms, CDNs, OS companies.
In order to survive they need good weapons.
In order to get that they need creative, hard working, brilliant engineers. This is why they are recruiting only the "creme de la creme" for their war. Young PhDs, extremely creative and original are gradually reaching that critical mass that will permit Google to win against the coalition of all rivals.
It is like the blitzkrieg in WW2 when heavy mechanized troops were able to obliterate the enemies in almost no time.
I think that the managers and CEOs outside Google should read Sun Tzu and Claus von Clausevitz fast. And really learn from them.

The Descent from the Cross

2010-04-02T18:58:00.001+03:00

Holy Thursday Hymns

2010-04-01T19:08:00.002+03:00

Lacrimosa

2010-03-31T20:17:00.002+03:00

En atendant Ubuntu

2010-03-31T20:07:00.001+03:00

There is aboutone month to Lucid Lynx.
In the meanwhile it seems that the video configuration on my laptop is totally chaotic at bot time. The native resolution of the screen is 1280x800 but often (about 30% of the cases) at reboot the resolution is set to 1024x768 and that looks horrible on my screen.
I have tried to understand the behavior but I hadn't been able to.
So I decided to make a hack to fix the resolution to 1280x800.
1. I have run the command Xorg -configure and I got a file named xorg.conf.new that I moved in /etc/X11 under the name xorg.conf
2. I have launched the xvidtune command during a session that booted right and I have displayed the current settings by pressing "Show" button. The current settings were displayed on the terminal from that I've launched xvidtune.
3. I have edited the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf and I have added the following section at the end

Section "Modes"
        Identifier "Custom"
        ModeLine        "1280x800"     71.00   1280 1328 1360 1440    800  803  809  823 -hsync -vsync
EndSection

4. I have edited the section "Monitor" to look like:

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
        VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
        ModelName    "Monitor Model"
        UseModes     "Custom"
EndSection

5. Saved the file and restarted

Now on any reboot I get the default 1280x800 resolution.
Still I am not quite happy with the remaining question of why the resolution is not set correctly at boot time. I'll have to investigate it on my own.

Hackintoshing again

2010-03-30T14:54:00.003+03:00

I succeeded to install 10.6 on a Dell XPS 1330.
For sound I've used VoodooHDA. NVidia 8400GS was discocvered by default - QE works. Bluetooth operational. Camera is recognised as iSight hence also Photobooth works
Network and wireless are not working.
Next step is to jailbreak an iPod Touch (or enroll in Apple's Developer Program) whichever is fastest.

What I've read lately

2010-03-29T10:48:00.003+03:00

1. Ursula K Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness
I was captivated by the story and the almost credible ice world imagined. The characters were quite well presented and the story told in a very nice language. The narration had some logical discontinuities but overall it was quite enjoyable.

2. Pascal Bruckner - Mon Petit Mari
I do not like Bruckner much. For me he just wants to show off in a genuine French way. Still his work has some profound touches and explores difficult themes. This book is bitterly funny. The efforts put by Leon into being a father for his family against his odd height are heroic but sadly unsuccessful. I was a nice weekend reading.

3. Dino Buzzati - The Tartar Steppe
A book for my current state of mind - it seems the I sometimes act as Giovanni Drogo. I dream of a great destiny, a fight in that I will demonstrate my value but instead I got only the sad Tartar's steppe.

Music for Weekend

2010-03-26T19:52:00.001+02:00

I love Perlman's interpretation. I have recently listen to Hillary Hahn's and I found her to be too fast.

And another one:

Baba Yaga!

16th March post followup

2010-03-26T17:07:00.003+02:00

As I have expected - they did not took me.
However it was cool to go there and to solve their puzzles.

Razvan

2010-03-23T22:42:00.005+02:00

I have discovered that Razvan Pocaznoi is back online!
I found his blog by pure chance (googled for him) http://razvanpocaznoi.wordpress.com/
When I'll see you on twitter?

Matthew 25 - The Parable of Talents

2010-03-22T15:01:00.004+02:00

The Parable of the Talents - Matthew 25,14-30

14 "Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them.

15 To one he gave five talents[a] of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey.

16 The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more.

17 So also, the one with the two talents gained two more.

18 But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money.

19 "After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them.

20 The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. 'Master,' he said, 'you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.'

21 "His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!'

22 "The man with the two talents also came. 'Master,' he said, 'you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.'

23 "His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!'

24 "Then the man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.

25 So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.'

26 "His master replied, 'You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?

27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

28 " 'Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents.

29 For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.

30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

---

Incredible or not this parable might be seen also in project/risk management.
The case of the servant with only one talent. He represent the low cost - low investment centre. As he does not have the courage of investing and risking he lost everything. The other two - risked more but won. He risked nothing and lost everything on long term.

In my company we have just had an opportunity to prove ourselves. The management did not want to take risks. Somehow they have buried their talent (aka played safe). It could have been a hard project but it could have been also the baptism of fire for many developers in a real-world project.

Sadly, as the times are tough, I am more than curious of the Master's reaction.

Spring

2010-03-21T19:22:00.004+02:00

The Spring has finally came.
After the Equinox I have just heard a nightingale singing near my window.
I was going to post a video of Vivaldi's Spring and I couldn't decide which one I liked more. The punk faced Nikel Kennedy's passionate playing or the majestic interpretation of Anne-Sophie Mutter under HvK's direction. So as haven't recorded the spectacular nightingale I've heard I decided to post this:

Back to mainframe?

2010-03-21T19:05:00.002+02:00

After the micro revolution when 8 bits machines revolutionized the IT, IBM and Microsoft did an excellent job in democratizing the PC platform. It is without doubt them who made possible and affordable the personal computer.
Now after about 30 years the mainframe is striking back again. It's new incarnation is now the cloud.
I agree that clouds are beneficial for some situations - but pushing more and more from desktop to cloud will have some unexpected consequences on the long time.
The one I fear the most is the lack of privacy - the contents of the cloud can be easily controlled by some organizations while they cannot do anything to your PC's disk if it is well protected from the net. Also one can be easily tracked down in the cloud.
I am quite sure that the internet was not really meant for this. Internet was meant for collaboration and openness over standards, not for greedy takeover of user's data.
On the long time the server market will divide between a couple of strong producers and a couple of strong buyers because most of the clients will buy cloudware instead of increasing their CAPEX to buy hardware. This is not beneficial for the market nor for the final user as the result might be not the most adapted to its needs. Also the applications will evolve quite strangely and they will rely on the cloud more and more. The fun of low-level programming will go away.

Resist the cloud! Make hardware and food reserves!

Valentin Gheorghiu

2010-03-20T21:57:00.002+02:00

I have learnt that today is his 82th birthday!
Happy birthday maestro!
His interpretation of Beethoven's 14th Piano Sonata ("Moonlight") made me continue the 4 year piano lessons I was taking in that period.
Altogether with Hans Eckart Schlandt, Stefan Ruha, Aurelian Octav Popa and Dan Grigore - he was one of the frequent names in my vinyl play list of the 1987 - 1991.

Decaying Blog

2010-03-19T11:03:00.003+02:00

Looking back on some old pages of my blog I have seen that some of the links and images are no longer available.
I felt a little bit disappointed but even internet changes and URLs start pointing to nothingness.
That's quite zen... http://nothingness or http://decaying

Google interview

2010-03-16T16:56:00.003+02:00

I had today my Google interview in Dublin.
It was tough. As I have given all my programming exams in the same day.
Five interview rounds. Each one with its set of problems.
Frankly I have expected to write more code than I wrote.
Finally I wrote - a bit of Python and C.
I have to tell that the problems are not so complicated as countless sites describe them. They are fair and if you are not a "non programming programmer" they can be done.
All people I met were smart and not aggressive towards me. They knew their stuff well. From coding to system administration they were true professionals.
I am not too optimistic on the outcome, but hey, it was like gymnastics for mind (and I got to visit Dublin).