http://www.fukung.net/images/2674/designer.gif

I find it so true, it applies to programmers too, in fact it applies to everyone that works providing a service. Enjoy.

1. get linux on a ext2 or 3 partition.
2. get the ext2/3 windows driver
3. load your partition into any letter, I used Z and X
4. download visual studio 2008. (don’t worry you don’t need to install it it will crash before the big download) I used the C3 one.
5. run said installer, and you get a neat error.

Now my question is, why on earth are they unpacking in other letter other than c:? Even better why they don’t do a check instead of taking the last letter available?? nice way to go really, go microsoft!

I’m a long time svn user but doing this with svn presented the following issues.

• having one .svn in each folder is not an option it’s just too much hidden things everywhere plus it will cause some weird clashes
• .svn is a pain, specially when you are grepping the source and you get double results (although I fixed this with a bash alias)
• svn urls are confusing and long
• ignoring files is directory based so svn status will show a ton of things

Today for some reason I started reading the mercurial documentation and it just hit me, this is what I needed. Why? well…

• one folder with all the versioning info
• sane ignores which are file based not path based
• super easy backup. as the distributed version system will let me clone the repository or even better use a Bundle
• in-place import this is a great feature svn is lacking*
• non-intrusive

So lets get dirty first create the repository. And lets add a basic .hgignore, I got the .hgignore file tip from here which means I’m not the first one to come up with this idea. And lets commit that.


$ cd
$ hg init
$ printf "syntax: glob\n*\n" > .hgignore
$ hg commit


Now we need to figure out which files we want to get into the repository so lets figure that out.


$ ls -a1 >> .hgignore

note, that’s a “one” it will output the file in columns, if you didn’t knew that go read the man page, you will love all the switches.

Now we need to edit the .hgignore file a bit delete the following lines

*
syntax: regexp

./
../
also delete (or comment with a #) all the lines of the files you want to version (remember this is an ignore file)

then just start adding files and when you are done commit. And now you have full history of all your changes, Which is awesome for managing your config files, remembering all the tricks in your .vim or .bashrc and exporting them to other machines.

EDIT:

* in-place import means that the original code you import into the versioning system becomes a working copy.

In SVN when you do an import the original tree does not become a working copy of the code, so you have to do an import then a checkout into the same dir from which you imported. It’s very tricky and most people don’t know about it. Although There is a way to trick svn into doing it but most people don’t know about it.

Honestly I didn’t put a lot of attention to this the first time it came around. I just though, it was a bunch of buzz… but it turned out to be a huge success, and even though I still don’t like the toolkit, because it’s way too narrow. (which now I understand why) I have to totally agree with the philosophy. Most of the stuff that is said in this book I have either said, think or didn’t had the words to articulate my thoughts. But I knew it right after reading the “essay” (books is split into “essays” instead of chapters).

It will take you at most 2hrs to read it entirely (if you where like me), maybe a week or more if you haven’t even think of it’s core ideas. and some will probably never understand it. This is how companies should work, this is how software should be build, and this is how I plan to run my company. Anyway without anything else to say please enjoy this little gem of modern software development, Getting Real by 37 signals.

Another example is when you know something that you know will benefit others but you are not allowed to say it, for example there is a way to gain an advantage in getting more papers than what you should get, now the thing is that part of the agreement for you to get more papers involves not telling anyone that you are actually getting more papers because that will generate a momentum that will end up in even more papers being push out. Now the dilema is after you got your papers how there is nothing stopping you from hanging out the information, but whoever gave you the papers trusts in that you won’t release said information.

Another good way of trust is when you are working, you actually give part of your live (according to the local papers it’s 44hours per week) and you are trusting that after 2 or 4 weeks depending on your trust agreement, you will get some papers which you will eventually take to someone else that trusts he can give those papers to someone else so we all get what we want, or don’t want but need or simple don’t want but someone is making us get them.

So in the end the economy is just a huge trust network in which everyone  is just trusting the other part doing good, now the most interesting part of everything is that no one trusts on the other part, and yet the only way they can live in society is with trust, irony is beautiful….

Today someone ask me why aren’t you finish with the java certification, my answer was something like “well you know because ehhh yea”, but in reality I knew exactly why. I have lost faith on the language, java no longer excites me, sure is useful to have the compiler bark at you for every little detail. But they have added so much crap on top of it that programming Java is no longer fun.

The first place where I think Java stop being fun, was when you totally needed an IDE to write anything useful, and of course when everyone was using eclipse. Don’t get me wrong eclipse is very nice, it even won me over from netbeans, but what I don’t like about it is when someone has no clue of what’s going on because they have delegated all knowledge of it to the IDE, one particular case version control, you will be impress of how many people don’t know how to work with CVS and/or SVN, just because the smart-asses at eclipse decided to do things “a little different”.

The second place which is actually in order of how I found out and now how much they suck, is J2EE.  Interesting enough the problemwith J2EE is not sun but everyone else. Starting with the application server, why on earth you need a program to run a program unless it’s running several programs? Then the zillion frameworks and crap on top of http + html it’s just ridiculous.

Now that said I finally got my act together and went to take the exam, considering the fact that I barely study for it, that I had about 10 days of party and that the thing asked a lot about “the name of the methods that does foo” I got a not so decent score but I pass. So yes my friends you got a new SJCP in the group (yay!) Now lets keep on bashing on how cobolist it’s starting to be and how big huge and monstrous systems are not the way the computer world should be heading too.

update: for some reason not all videos are loading. Here are the links
google maps
googlegears
data API
geoweb

google maps

googlegears

data API

geoweb

About a year ago a friend of mine announced she was leaving to study a masters in Spain. Something is business as that’s what she studied. After that a dear friend of mine moved over to USA to work, then another business friend went to Spain, and another friend moved over to Argentina. I know someone that is planning on leaving to Australia and another for Canada. I know at least 3 more people that already left to USA. Yesterday yet another friend told me she was going to Spain for yet another master in business, and she is probably going to get married to her boyfriend and he is going to go with her. she also told me she knows a lot of people from our university are doing that too; and no, she doesn’t knows the first two that are already in Spain. Another ex-coworker is going to Spain soon although the time is not business as she is on IT. And I just read the girlfriend of the guy in Argentina is going to Spain.

That makes it at least 15 people I know that are doing i. Now what I find interesting is that all of them share the following. They where great students, they are great people, they excel at their work, and they are not thinking of coming back. They all belong to either IT or business administration, and it seems that business is going to Spain and IT to USA. Now what puzzles me is why? And I think it’s because they have reach the top in here. Not the top as in they are the big boss of their company or CEO, the top as there is nothing better to do than the boring day to day go nowhere maintenance of systems. (note both people and software systems). I’m almost certain most of them are not leaving because of the money, they know they will expend much more money and they won’t win that much, and some of them know how hard moving to another country can be. But I think they are just looking to get out of the loop.

Their “main” site is currently down but you can check it out later at winmerge.org.

Meld is another great app which I found ones I moved 100% to linux.

I really like them both but there is one feature that WinMerge has that I haven’t been able to reproduce in Meld. WinMerge has keyboard shortcuts for everything, so you do something like alt-down, alt left (can’t recall the exact commands) and that will go to the next diff and replace the right file with the left file. In Meld you have (or at least as far as I know) to do the same but with the mouse which makes it slower.

A smaller thing is that WinMerge is faster and I believe it’s both because it’s more mature and because it’s C++ while meld is python+GTK .

And of course Meld gets extra points for the cool effect to reflect changes.

InfraRecorder is what I dream of having for all those years I was using windows, ever since Nero crapped out it’s own UI, I think it was nero 5 or 6 when they redoit to make it idiot proved, which in most cases ruins the experience for the “advanced users”.

InfraRecorder is simple and usefull, the website is very ugly (default wordpress install) and the UI too but who wants a flashy UI if all you need is to burn a CD? Infra has 3 or 4 tabs each with 3 or 4 “links” you click. It was everything you will ever need; burn data, mp3 (with a plugin due to copyright), burn ISO, copy disk-to-disk and delete re-writables.

A warning: If you are trying to burn a CD with a DVD burner (always?) it gives you a dialog, which the first time I read confused me, it’s really asking you if you want to burn a CD or DVD and if you choose the wrong one it will ruin your disk.

We don’t need gesture support in X. Gestures depend a lot on the context. A gesture in one context can mean something different in a different context. And the only thing that knows the context is the application. This is very similar to a button press. Pressing a mouse button can mean a zillion different things, depending where and when it happens. That’s why all X does is relay the button press to a client application, which then does the right thing.

Which in short means the X server will just send an event to the client, remember that in X terms the client is the Desktop Environment (gnome,kde,enlightenment) or the window manager (fluxbox,w3m, etc.).

To your multi-touch driver all this doesn’t matter. It sends blob events, the server takes care of the rest. You’re guaranteed to be able to interact with any X application. X doesn’t care about the hardware. You can use your DiamondTouch, your FTIR table or - if you can afford one - your MS Surface table.

which means that ANY application can work with multi-touch, in fact ones GTK gets support for BlobEvents all your program has to do is support one more event and process it.

Even better you can use the mouse and keyboard and multitouch all together as MPX is just another driver!

Full article here which is the cool part which is the reason why I’m not liking the video from here, so go read the artcle and watch it in action.

This is like xgl for multi touch displays!!

UPDATE: here is the promised point-to-point response

I have added the subscribe to comments plugin (anyone could tell me if it’s working?), upgraded to wordpress 2.2.1 and I have a new theme which is supposed to be very nice to edit.

I recently read this post by Mark Pilgrim, which was great. He also link to the response to Jobs letter about no-DRM music, which was even better. Now how about this two gems.
Corporate Gibberish Generator and
web2.0 bullshit generator

The Hindu proxy is a mecanish for tunneling connections over networks which have gone thru a certified stupid security (CSS) clearance which esencially blocks the normal networking tools, like ssh, telnet, http, et all.

1. Overview of operations

When a capable human being needs to access a resource block by a policy implemented by the CSS, he/she needs to connect to a hindu proxy in order to accomplish a task, such as running cat on a file.
The luser connect to any chat service which is pre-connected to the hindu proxy, and sends a hi request.
The hindu proxy replies with a random phrase which normally means hi.
The luser being should write a request for the server with the server, protocol, user and pass, which must be pass in clear text.
The process above needs to be repeated until the luser receives a valid ack.
The luser should send a series of shell commands which must be sequential and can’t be chained together, to which he must be sure won’t fail to be parsed by whatever shell environment the hindu proxy connected to, ways to determine the actual shell are left to the implementer and will vary from vendor to vendor.
The hindu proxy will have a buffer of 1 command which may not be longer than the current lenght of his chat window, overflows will be ignored or interpret as carriage returns.
The hindu proxy will copy&paste the request from the chat into the shell, the actual method is implementation dependant, as well as the handling of errors and overflows.
The hindu proxy will wait a random ammount of time for a response from the real server, after which it will send the response “it’s not working”
If the above timeout is never reach the hindu proxy will utilize the above copy@paste rutine to send the results back to the luser
2. Error handling
All errors reported by the server may or may not be proxied back to the luser
All errors reported by the hundi proxy may or may not be proxied back to the luser
All errors reported by the IM system may or may not be proxied back to the luser

3. The copy&paste protocol
The hindu proxy may implement several ways of transfering data, the recommended implementation is to relay the operation to the underliying operating system, although must implementations today utilze the “read,switchwindow,type” protocol

4. Security considerations
This protocol is vulnerable to the following:
- someone reading you IM window
- someone reading the hindu’s IM window
- the hindu leaving his workstation unlock
- anyone with access to the hindu workstation as the log files have read access to everyone by default
- Any sniffing software
In case you didn’t notice that was a joke, as per warchief request there is an editable version here

For example the shell and rm, yes you know where I’m going. It turns out that the following command inside a makefile @rm -rf $(PREFIX)/bin/deluge does something really extrange. And yes it’s all my fault because I force it twice.

For some reason the r flag went to $(PREFIX)/bin and deleted everything, which I’m stil confused as to why.

ohh yes and $(PREFIX) was set to /usr, lovely isn’t it?

any ideas of how can I restore those files? I assume if I get the basic binaries for installing .deb it will show me the broken packages (read: all packages) then I could reinstall them all?

update:  So I got a liveCD and reinstalled my / keeping intact the home, this is one of the things I love about unix, even my windows positions where intact all I had to do was use the same username.