Archive for April, 2005

Moved!

Published by ugo on April 8, 2005 in miscellaneous. 0 Comments

After a long afternoon’s work, everything is moved to the new hosting provider, earlier than expected. I’d especially like to thank:

  • Bertrand, for referring me to Bytemark. Nice service so far, but I noticed Apache dies every night while trying to rotate logs. I need to fix it soon.
  • Stefano, for installing and configuring the necessary software.
  • Wordpress, a truly great software package. In particular, it’s “import from RSS” feature was great when it came to migrating all the old posts.
  • WP Themes, for their nice Connections theme. I’ll have to change the header graphic, though, in order to distinguish myself from the countless other sites that will certainly use it.
  • Apache’s mod_rewrite, which lets me redirect people still coming through the old URLs to the right page. The new URLs are much cooler, by the way.

I still need to move most of the old pages to the new categories, one by one. I will do it little by little in the coming days.

If you spot troubles, please leave a comment here or mail me.

Moving

Published by ugo on April 7, 2005 in miscellaneous. 0 Comments

Bytemark logo.pngI've started to move this site over at Bytemark. I imported all the posts and images, but don't know if I'll be able to move comments. Now I need to set up some redirects or rewrites so that the old URLs continue to work. With 180 posts, it's going to take a while, but I hope that I can complete the switch over the weekend or maybe earlier.

If you come here and see a completely different appearance, you'll know the switch is over.

Re: When C doesn't compile

Published by ugo on April 6, 2005 in devel. 0 Comments

The C Programming Language
It's been years since I last used a Microsoft C compiler, but I can recall that, at some point in time, Visual C was perfectly capable of accepting valid, ANSI standard C code. So I'm a bit suspicious when I read things like:

Berin Loritsch: “Apparently it is OK to have a struct declared as a stack variable in GCC but not in Visual C. I have to declare the struct for use outside the function! When I do that everything works OK. I find this to be a problem, but at this stage of the game it is not that big a deal. The issue is that C is not C. I have to write the software so that both pieces work.”

Well, C has been C since 1989, if I remember correctly. And while Microsoft wouldn't certainly be above redefining it somehow to fit their needs, I simply cannot believe that the Visual C compiler won't accept code like:

typedef struct
{
    int numProcessors;
} sysinfo;

int main(void) {
    sysinfo info;
    info.numProcessors = 1;
    return 0;
}

To me, this looks kosher.

Growing Groovy

Published by ugo on April 6, 2005 in devel and java. 0 Comments

groovy-logo.png
James Strachan: “I'm really proud of the team and what we've achieved with the new Groovy JSR 01 release that's just gone out. Who-hoo!

This is the first full release of the JSR version of Groovy; we've integrated the new parser, got it well and trully bedded down and all our test cases pass (finally :). This was a huge amount of work and I'd like to thank all those on the team who worked real hard to get Groovy-JSR stable.”

This is really great news. I had lots of expectations regarding Groovy, but decided to hold off until the viability of the project looked better and the constant bikeshedding arguments over the syntax had ended. I must say that the future looks definitely brighter now. Keep up the good work!

No more gripes with Laszlo

Published by ugo on April 5, 2005 in devel. 1 Comment

Some time ago I picked up a rant by Geert Bevin about his problems with Laszlo.

Now it seems many of his previous gripes have been resolved. I refer this for the sake of completeness, but I don't think I'll be playing with Laszlo anytime soon, but who knows?

Lepido, an IDE for Apache Cocoon

Published by ugo on April 5, 2005 in cocoon. 1 Comment

EclipseBannerPic.jpg
Today, Sylvain publicly announced the creation of the Lepido project:

The Lepido project is a proposed open source project under the Eclipse Technology Project.

[…] The purpose of this project is therefore to build a set of opensource tools to ease the development of web applications with Apache Cocoon. These tools will include wizards to quickly lay out a project structure, dedicated editors for the various XML files involved in application development, and runtime tools such as debuggers or profilers. Lepido will provide a usable feature set along with an extensible framework to build new editors and features.

I think a good toolset can do much to ease the acceptance of Cocoon among developers. So, welcome Lepido!

On related news, the sixth milestone release of Eclipse 3.1 has also been announced today. I hope it fixes the problems I've been having lately with M5, namely: losing preferences, not reloading changed files after a CVS commit, slow startup time.

Testing Y!Q search

Published by ugo on April 5, 2005 in miscellaneous. 0 Comments

Diego: “I'm going to be testing y!q search for the next few weeks and see how it goes”

Y!Q

I've been testing it too for about ten days, but I don't know how it goes. I was hoping that Yahoo! would have given us some tool for monitoring its usage, but this does not seem to be the case, yet. I'm not even sure I implemented it correctly, but seeing as Diego did it, I'm feeling more confident now. We'll see, I guess!

Yahoo! Search woes

Published by ugo on April 4, 2005 in web. 1 Comment

Yahoo! SearchI'm having troubles with Yahoo! Search results. If you look at this results page, you'll see that the URLs that are printed beneath each result (the green ones) are OK, but if you click on the page titles (the blue links) you are redirected to the home page.

The difference is small but important: the URL you are redirected to is missing a slash. For example it is:

http://agylen.com/blojsom/blog/devel?permalink=Danese_Cooper_Leaving_Sun.txt

But it should be:

http://agylen.com/blojsom/blog/devel/?permalink=Danese_Cooper_Leaving_Sun.txt

See the difference? I don't know where that slash disappeared, but it's making Yahoo! Search results pretty much useless when it comes to finding content on this site.

One possible fix could be making blojsom less picky when it comes to serving posts. Another one would be fixing Yahoo!

I'm hoping that either David, Jeremy or maybe Russell are listening.

Worst Clock I've Ever Owned

Published by ugo on April 4, 2005 in personal. 0 Comments

58.jpgRussell Beattie Notebook - Best Clock I've Ever Owned: “This device is a perfect example of doing only one thing, and doing it well. You buy this clock, and you plug it in. You then choose one of the four American timezones (sorry everyone else, it's a U.S.-only clock). Then you click the alarm button and go up or down to your time and you're done. How user friendly is that?

The best part? It changes the hour on Daylight Savings Time by itself. We forgot this year, yet didn't have to”

You're lucky, Russ, you didn't buy an Oregon Scientific clock as I did. What's wrong with it is that 1) it eats batteries for lunch; a couple of AAA batteries will last no more than a month and 2) there's no buffer battery, so when you swap batteries, which happens every month, all settings, including alarm times are reset. Plus, it wasn't even cheap!

I think I will avoid Oregon Scientific products in the future.

About Religion (part III)

Published by ugo on April 4, 2005 in personal. 0 Comments

This is my last post about religion, after part I and part II. Unfortunately, I have to pick on dear friend Matthew:

The Silent Penguin: A growing girl: “I'm the non-religious member of the family but my wife and I came to an early agreement that we would do our best to always show our children both sides of the coin so that they can then choose their personal view on the subject when they are ready to do so.”

I'm almost exactly in the same situation as yours, Matthew, even though my daughter is a little younger than yours. I consider myself an atheist, for all practical purposes, yet my daughter will have her holy communion, like all good catholic girls.

But I won't say this is because I want to show her “both sides of the coin”. With all due respect, this is BS.

First of all, there aren't just two sides to this coin. Assuming one side is atheism, why just pick christianity — and of the catholic variety — as the other side? Why not protestantism, judaism, buddhism or islam?

Second, even if there are many sides to this coin, she will be presented with just one. When our respective daughters come home from their religious teaching (I don't know how it's called in English or German, but here we call it the equivalent of “doctrine”, from Latin “docere”, which is also the root for “indoctrination”, by the way) where they've been taught about the Immaculate Conception and such, are we going to expose them to the alternative view and tell them that “it ain't necessarily so”?

Come on, we're not kidding anyone, are we? The reason you and me are allowing this is because we are conformists, not for ourselves but for the sake of our children. We don't want our daughters to stand out because they're not having their holy communion. Such is the strength of a popular religion.

And of course we don't want to have a fight with our wives ;).

$100.00

Published by ugo on April 4, 2005 in personal. 0 Comments

One Hundred Dollars.jpg$100,000 - The Jason Calacanis Weblog: “Google AdSense is impressive—really impressive.
We started playing with it in September and three days ago I relized that we broke the $100,000 mark.”

This weekend, I broke my little mark too: $100.00 plus spare change in AdSense revenues. Having started with AdSense around the mid of January, it's not bad. What's even better is that the trend seems to be upward. I'm stashing away the money for funding my web activities. This mainly means hosting fees for this site and this other one, when I'll start doing things in earnest. Up to now, I'm mostly in stealth mode.

(Via Darren.)

About Religion (part II)

Published by ugo on April 3, 2005 in personal. 1 Comment

I wrote here about the first gripe I have with respect to the mourning for the Pope's death. Here's part two.

Yesterday night, when the Pope's death was announced to the people on St.Peter's Square, the cardinal reading the announcement asked that people “accompany with silence the first moments of the Holy Father's meeting with God” (quoting from memory).

What happened immediately is that many thousands people started applauding. Can't you shut up and show some respect, you dickheads! This is not a fucking show.

Pope John Paul II was a great man, much greater than his flock. I don't know about other countries, but in Italy most catholics are a bunch of ignorant hypocrites. I am an atheist but I know more about the Bible and the Gospels than 99% of self-proclaimed catholics. Applauding at funerals, as has become strangely customary here, is proof of this. It is a demonstration of ignorance, disrespect and lack of sensitivity. Doing it when you are explicitly asked for silence, is an insult. You disgust me.

About Religion (part I)

Published by ugo on April 3, 2005 in personal. 0 Comments

I don't usually write, or even care much, about religion, but the events of these days, and one particular blog post, prompted me to say something. Be warned, I have two or three gripes here, so this might raise a bit of controversy, but as Dave writes: “Too much footsie in the blogosphere. Enough. […] Make some new enemies for a change.”

First gripe: About the Pope's death. I felt quite sad for his illness. He was a great man, one of the most important men of the last century and he dedicated all his life to what he believed in. I didn't feel particularly sad for his death, rather relieved that his suffering was over.

Anyway, whatever my feelings are, all of Italy's institutions and media think that I should mourn. For three days, no less! So we have no movies on the TV, apart from whatever they can find about the Gospels or the life of some saint. No sports at all: No football matches and no showing of the F1 Grand Prix, which was held in Bahrain, a muslim country, otherwise they could have probably stopped that also. No news but endless showing of people in St.Peter's Square.

Notice that they didn't do this for 9/11. Three thousand innocent people die a horrible death, but the show must go on. One old man dies in his bed and everything stops. That's hypocrisy!

Well, if you're a member of that religious sect that is called “The Catholic Church”, you can mourn all you want. I'm not forcing you to watch my Sunday football match, so please do not force me to mourn your ex-chief. I have no desire to, thanks.
Besides football matches, which don't matter much, all of this reminds me that the purported separation of state and church is but a fairy tale, at least in this country.

Since this entry is already quite long, I will post my other two gripes later. Stay tuned, if you wish.

The Bamboo Forest

Published by ugo on April 3, 2005 in personal and photography. 1 Comment

Actually it's not a forest, but a small patch of land in the heart of the Po river's valley, in northern Italy. Onto this patch of land, a thick grove of bamboo trees, several meters high, has inexplicably grown. Inexplicably because bamboos are not typically found growing wildly in this part of the world.

Bamboo forest

Some might say that this is the effect of the tropicalization of our continental climate due to global warming, but in reality the grove has been there since many years ago. Probably some seeds were carried there by a flood of the nearby Ticino river and found an apt soil and climate. Being in the lowlands near the river, the place is quite humid.

Like invaders from an outer planet, the bamboos have colonized this patch by killing every other plant. Nothing grows between bamboos and, finding no limbs strong enough, birds don't nest there. Given enough time, they will maybe expand to the whole wood, up to the limits of the river on one side and the cultivated fields on the other one.

For your viewing pleasure, I've uploaded some photos to this Flickr photoset.

Four megabits at home

Published by ugo on April 1, 2005 in personal. 0 Comments

I just called Telecom Italia and ordered an upgrade of my 1.2Mbps ADSL subscription to 4Mbps (Alice 4 Mega), for only 3€ more than what I am paying now: about 40€ instead of 37€. I'm sure there are some countries where you can get such bandwidth for less, but this is Italy after all. Considering that I went from 64Kbps ISDN to 640Kbps ADSL, then to 1.2Mbps ADSL and now 4Mbps, all for about the same price and in a few years, there's really nothing to complain about. Four megabits is actually twice as much as I get at the office!

They said that it will take 3-4 days for the upgrade to be effective. Also, they weren't sure if the modem will need upgrading. If that is the case, I'm afraid they will bring me an USB-only modem, which I have no use for. When I started this subscription, I asked specifically for an Ethernet modem, and of course when they installed the line they brought an USB one, which was immediately sent back to be substituted. Since that mistake took a few days to fix, I sure hope it's not happening again this time.

Joho on WordPress

Published by ugo on April 1, 2005 in web. 0 Comments

When I was posting my opinion on the WordPress Affair yesterday, I was a bit afraid I was going to say something embarrassing. After all, the issue involves things like money, feelings, trust and reputation. You have to be careful, show some tolerance and avoid the easy path of outrage and indignation. Add to that the fact that it was 2 AM, which does not help with clarity of mind.

Anyway, I was relieved this morning when I read David Weinberger's opinion on the issue, which is pretty much similar to mine (emphasis mine):

We're all human. But I don't think the problem is that WordPress made some money. It's the fact that link farms make one of our tools, Google, less useful. And it's the lack of transparency.

[…] So, IMO, WordPress made a mistake. The mistake definitely wasn't making money. It was making money in a way that works against the interests of the Web community. As Shelley says, that doesn't make the WordPress code any worse, and I may switch from Movable Type to WordPress at some point. Forgiveness is totally in order. Yet the abrading of joy does matter.

WordPress code is indeed quite good. Well, at least judging from how well it works: I never looked at the source code itself. So much that I am seriously considering switching this blog — and possibly also this one, while this one is already on it — to WordPress.

When I do, I might also consider doing a donation, given that the ads I have here are starting to bring in a little money. Since I was the first to invoke transparency, I will reveal that “a little money” means about $60 in the last month.

Gmail Rich Text Editing

Published by ugo on April 1, 2005 in web. 0 Comments

Looks like Google has given two nice presents to us Gmail users. Rich text editing:

Gmail screenshot

And growing disk space. Continuously growing in small increments, actually:

You are currently using 28 MB (2%) of your 1178 MB.

You are currently using 28 MB (2%) of your 1179 MB.

…

Now, if they started giving access to Gmail via IMAP, I might just drop all my other mailboxes and use Gmail exclusively. Sorry but POP just doesn't cut it for me.