Ten the tenth of two thousand ten

Today is a big day, a very nice day and Sunday as well. Today is 10/10/2010.

Few people will remember this day, and there are dozens of more important days in the history of man kind, but considering I haven't blogged in a while, and today I really wanted to, I might as well speak of the date.

For one thing, today is the Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat release date. Ubuntu 10.10 will officially be out (let's hope no delays are to affect this), no more beta's and release candidates.

The other very nice thing about today is the actual date: 10/10/10 - in binary 101010 is 42, which most of you ought to know that's the answer to life, the Universe and everything. Nice day to pick for the Ubuntu release, don't you think?

But most importantly, today is a Sunday, so have a nice weekend everybody.

Dragi prieteni - Yahoo e FAIL!!!

Atăzi spunem NU, de astăzi vreau să nu-l mai văd... nu mai vreau yahoo!!! Spunem nu către yahoo! asta e campania mea de azi. De ceva timp mă tot chinui cu produse aiurea precum yahoo mail şi mai ales yahoo messenger. Să le luăm frumos pe rând.

Yahoo mail. Aveţi în faţa voastră un produs acceptabil, dar muuuuult inferior Google mail. Ce poti face în Gmail si in yahoo nu?

• IMAP si POP3 - adică gratis şi fără probleme (mari) să foloseşti un alt program decât mediul de browser pe care ţi-l dă serviciul. E drept că eu nu folosesc deoarece o parte dintre serviciile de la Google nu merg corespunzător astfel (ca si Priority Inbox, deşi cred că sunt workarounds pentru asta).
• Spam - serios, pe yahoo primesc cca 6-8 spam-ui în inbox pe zi, pe gmail maxim 1 pe lună. Şi Gmail mai poate fi dresat. Adică dacă un mail din inbox care trebuia să fie la spam, îl trimit la spam, Gmail învaţă ca un elev cuminte şi filtrează mai bine spam-urile. Acelaşi lucru lasă de dorit la yahoo.
• Priority Inbox - Ce e şi mai şmecher e că de puţin timp Google a face ca algoritmi ce filtrează spam-ul sa-ţi indice mail-urile importante, ca să şti ce să citeşti prima dată. FOARTE util dacă primeşti multe mail-uri.
• Nu-ţi trânteşte reclame în faţa. [EDIT] Da, sunt reclame şi la Gmail, dar sunt foarte subtile şi nu-ţi taie jumate din ecran. Plus că în general sunt mai relevante.
• Mult mai simplu de navigat.
• [EDIT] Threads. Nu cred că am uitat să menţionez thread-uri. Hai să luăm un caz comun al unei conversaţii pe mail. X îi trimite un mail catre un mailing list cu mai mulţi useri. Y Răspunde, Z pune şi el o întrebare, şi mai apoi X mai trimite un mail cu răspunsul. Cum vor arăta cele 4 mailuri în inbox? Păi în yahoo vor fi 4 mailuri, primul va avea un titlu iar celelalte vor fi găsite cu un Re: în faţa acestuia. In GMail, va aparea 1 singur mail, cu toate cele 4 mail-uri puse în el una după alta ca şi o conversaţie de pe un forum. De asemenea cănd se răspunde la un mail, mail-ul precedent este copiat şi adaugat celui nou. Textul copiat este in Gmail ascuns sub un link mic pe care scrie -show quoted text-, şi astfel conversaţia poate fi urmărită corespunzător ocupând în acelaşi timp mai puţin loc in inbox.
• Şi aşa mai departe.

De astăzi nu mai îmi verific mail-ul de yahoo. Mă uit să vad dacă îl pot pune să raspundă automat la email-uri sau ceva, dar altfel nu mai intru pe acel site infect.

Yahoo messenger. Aici incepe distracţia cu un FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU. Tind să cred că acei oameni care au proiectat acest program şi protocol au gândit tot proiectul timp de 10 minute pe un şervetel la un restaurat, au scris codul de mână şi au şters după aceea toate liniile cu erori ca să compileze.

Programul numit yahoo messenger sincer nu îl mai folosesc de mult din cauza reclamelor care mi le comunica în permanenţă. Momentan folosesc Pidgin în Linux şi Digsby în windows. Dintre cele doua Digsby funcţionează puţin mai bine. Protocolul de la yahoo în schimb e o varză totală din urmatoarele motive:

• Nu e standardizat - se schimbă de la o versiune la alta fapt care face ca toţi cei ce folosesc alte programe decat cel al firmei trebuie să aştepte cam o zi până când este emulat de catre third parties.
• Transferul de fişiere n-a mers nici o dată bine, şi cand foloseam programul cel recomandat făcea fiţe.
• Nu se prinde când îţi pică netu. Deci dacă cineva încearcă să-ţi trimită un mesaj, şi ţie iţi cade netu (sau messu, că există o relaţie foarte suspectă între cele două) mesajul e pierdut în neant, şi pentru că atât de multă lume are încredere în mess, au senzaţia că tu trebuie să fi primit mesajul, astfel eşti un nesimţit pentru că nu le răspunzi. Mai mult de cât atât, nici daca tu trimiţi mesajul şi netu e jos nu se prinde şi nu te anunţă că n-ai putut trimite.
• Din ceva motiv, aceste probleme nu par să aibă relevanţă pentru cei din firmă, a caror singur scop e să facă ciudăţenii precum imvironments (nu voi înţelege acele chestii nici o dată) şi emoticoane animate ciudate.
• Mass-uri. E drept că aici nu firma e de vină, ci evoluţia societaţii româneşti care trimite mesaje cu pupici la toată lumea. Serios, acuma daca trimiteţi mass-uri urmăriţi urmatoarele reguli de bază:
• Merită trimis massul? de obicei nu.
• Dacă e important, trimite-l doar la cei pentru care e important.
• Învaţă să foloseşti emailuri. Mult mai stabile şi mai standardizate.

Ce putem face în privinţa asta? Google Talk! Google talk rezolvă toate problemele de mai sus (exceptând transferuri de fisiere, care sincer n-am avut nevoie nici o dată să le trimit pe GTalk, şi deci nu ştiu cum reacţionează). Pe lângă faptul că GTalk se integrează mult mai bine cu Gmail şi cu toate celelalte servicii de la Google (eu de exemplu folosesc Google: mail, talk, reader, wave(rar), calendar, docs, blogspot, picasa, youtube etc...), e standardizat încă dinaintea apariţiei. Google Talk foloseste protocolul XMPP, protocol deschis. Ce este cel mai genial la acest protocol e că poate comunica şi cu alte servere ce functionează pe baza XMPP. De exemplu am un prieten ce şi-a instalat un astfel de server acasă şi vorbeşte cu mine, care eu sunt pe GTalk. Suportă şi Gtalk video & audio chats şi dacă vrei iţi păstrează arhiva de mess pe gmail (nu ştiu de câte ori am pierdut-o pe cea de la yahoo). Legat de faptul că se prinde când pică netul sunt 2 lucruri de menţionat: 1) verifică mult mai des conexiunea + 2) te anunţă dacă mesajul nu a putut fi trimis.

Dar... toata lumea foloseste yahoo. Şi? cu ce mă consolează asta... toată lumea foloseste windows furat, toata lumea foloseşte office furat, toată lumea foloseşte Facebook (aici nu comentez aşa tare, ca produsul e chiar bine făcut, deşi eu nu sunt interesat), toată lumea poate să folosească orice produs, dar asta nu îl face de calitate. Mess-ul il voi folosi în continuare doar pentru că toată lumea îl foloseşte şi nu ştie că există altceva mai bun şi mai stabil, dar pentru conversaţii serioase... GTalk sau eventual Skype (trebuie să-l instalez iară). Pentru conversaţii şi mai serioase, email-uri, evident de pe Gmail.

Deci? ce am învăţat azi?

1. Yahoo mail nu merită efortul când există ceva mai bun acolo.
2. Yahoo messenger e un produs eşuat şi demn de milă.
3. Citiţi-vă email-urile... SERIOS, după ce terminaţi de citit postul (nu mai e mult) treceţi la email-uri.

Sper că aţi rămas cu câte ceva după acest monolog. O noapte plăcută în continuare.

[EN] A possible new energy source.

Thorium might be what we've been looking for the past few years to save the planet.

According to very important people form CERN (I think some directors, but I'm not sure) thorium has huge energetic potential. Huge means 1 ton of thorium is the equivalent of 200 (yes... two hundred) tons of uranium or 3.5 million tons of coal. That's HUGE. With that energy output, one could power London for one week.

This sound almost perfect, so there should be some catch somewhere? Well let's see abundance. Uranium for example is a pretty rare metal, but thorium is so much, it's annoying. It's considered a waste product when mining, so we have enough. Moreover, uranium has to be processed before usage, but pretty much all thorium out there is a potential power source.

The catch, is about using that power, because the process is not quite simple. In a particle accelerator, when a proton beam hits a chunk of heavy metal (I like the sound of that = )) ), produces excess neutrons. Thorium than absorbs these neutrons and forms uranium-233 which is not found in nature and can release enough energy to power the particle accelerator AND to act as a power plant. The idea needs some refining, but people are hard at work and one company is already working on a design for a proton accelerator.

There's more good news, because this can be deployed everywhere. Nuclear power requires a delicate political process because it can lead to weapon production. No risk of that here though.

Thorium could be the answer we are looking for, for both short term and long term safe power production. Screw dangerous and currently impossible fusion. Postpone slow and renewable energies, work on this dear beloved scientists to get us out of trouble. If we could start making such factories in 6-7 years (where I read said 5...) we just might be able to solve our problems once and for all. Meanwhile, well, we just have to stick to saving energy.

[RO] Blog nou!

În principiu, nu voi mai prea scrie pe acest blog, deoarece eu + Roli ne-am decis să lipim blogurile noastre (el avea rolisz.wordpress.com), şi cam tot ce e legat de Internet, calculatoare, programe, review-uri, tutoriale etc. ce scriam / aveam de gând să scriu se mută acolo.

Blogul acesta nu-l şterg, că poate mai scriu din când în când ceva mai random / personal pe aici (şi că internetul e mare şi n-a suferi din enorma cantitate de date ocupată de marele meu blog...). În fine, atenţia mea se va diminua aici, iar noul blog: The Scrambled Bit a luat deja naştere acum câteva zile. Toţi cei interesaţi sunt invitaţi să citească.

[EN] Stuff I use - Google docs in Nautilus (Elementary).

Google Docs in Nautilus


Scouring Google Reader as always, I found a brilliant post at OMG! Ubuntu about a nice hack that mounts your Google Docs folder in Nautilus (Ubuntu default file manager for those Windows users out there...).


I said hack because it's more of a workaround than a full program, it does the job perfectly, but as far as I learnt it's not the *best* solution. To install the app, just add the repository, update and install it.


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:doctormo/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gdocs-mount-gtk


It's done, everything is installed and you need just access Applications > Accesories > Google Docs Connection which will prompt you with a standard email + password combo. Than just give it a couple minutes to fetch the data and mount it. After that, all your files stuck on Google Docs will have nice shortcuts in a folder and you will than be able to add, remove or edit in your favorite editor. Furthermore, your documents will appear in Open Document formats, not those ugly MS Office formats (*bleah*).


Nautilus Elementary


Nautilus is the default GNOME File Manager, but it often doesn't feel/look right. It's a bit bulky and raw. Nautilus Elementary is still Nautilus underneath, but it now looks way slicker. It's an uncluttered version to keep it simple. It basically:

• merged the 2 top toolbars into one;
• changed the icon, list, compact drop down menu into 3 nice buttons;
• moved the ugly zoom buttons into a zoom drag bar to the bottom right;
• made the separators thinner and smoother;
• and some other small tweaks.

The installation is really simple and replaces your current Nautilus. This means you'll be using the same program, same command, but with cooler UI.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:am-monkeyd/nautilus-elementary-ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

As far as i know, to uninstall it, remove that repository, and upgrade again (not sure...).

Here's a screenshot of the 2 mixed together.

Enjoy everyone.

[RO] FlossCamp 2010

Salut lume. Am fost ocupat o vreme pe aici şi n-am mai dat semne de viaţă pe acest blog. După cum observaţi din acest post, blogul s-a facut bilingv, dar deoarece îmi e incredibil de lene, nu voi edita posturile anterioare şi voi adauga [EN] doar la posturile viitoare.


*** Even if I don't really expect any foreign readers, this blog has gone bilingual, so from now on Romanian posts will be preceded by [RO] and English posts by [EN]. ***

Floss Camp a fost o ieşire genială cu cortul la munte unde în sfârşit am ajuns să văd cine sunt oamenii din comunităţile Open Source din România. Am avut parte de multe tech talks, un gulaş bun, o plimbare faină prin pădure, pistoale cu bile, banere, vreme bună, vreme proastă, un majorat neaşteptat la o cabană apropiată de camp site la care ne-am infiltrat şi noi şi aşa mai departe.

A fost şi o seară în care s-au ţinut nişte prezentări draguţe în care s-a discutat (printre altele) despre http://fii-liber.ro/ un „blog” destul de nou despre programe şi sisteme libere. De menţionat un acelaşi fel de blog cu vechime: http://incearca.softwareliber.ro. S-a mai vorbit şi despre un proiect mai vechi (anul trecut cred) de promovare Open Source şi GNU/Linux în şcoli prin Sibiu, care ar fi foarte frumos dacă s-ar extinde în toată ţara.

La întoarcere a fost superb iară, că am avut tot vagonul pentru noi. În fine, a fost o experienţă superbă şi vreau să o repet şi la anu.

Ubuntu self support

A very large part of my friends which I have convinced to move to Ubuntu evidently ask me several questions whenever something bad happens to their OS. I sometimes know what to do, but most of the time I know where to search for the answer, just as they know how to google for errors when they are in Windows, however this process seems to be forgotten when any new OS, phone, car, TV or general device is taken into account. While I am not really bothered by these questions (as i generally like to help, and they don't come very often), I feel the need to make a list of really good places to get help.

Websites

• Google of course, I should not have to mention this, but people seem to forget.
• Ubuntuforums if the question hasn't been asked here, than you're probably the first to experience the problem
• Ubuntuguide this is an amazing wiki with short guides for installing Ubuntu and a large array of common applications. Common applications range from some games, ebook readers, text editors, web browsers, IM clients to server applications, virtual machines, software development tools, web publishing and many others. It's mostly composed of links to the original program instalation guide, but it also has instructions for several of the apps described there. Great place to start when looking for something new.
• help.ubuntu.com is another large help database, but I've only used it when google links directed me here.

Local support

• Manuals. I mean really RTFM!!! Want to know how to copy folders? man cp... se what that -r does... it's not that hard people, well made manuals are the source of happiness, even 200 page ones. I'm not telling you to waste your time reading 200 page manuals, but they have a Table of Contents for goodness sake when they are that big. And usually come in HTML or RTF or some smart format when they are that big.
• Help / F1, same as manuals, sometimes that is the manual.

Live support

• IRC. People think it's outdated or something, but IRC's are still one of the best communicating tools out there. Freenode.net is probably the best server out there for computer related help ( irc.freenode.net/7000 ). There are channels for loads of common programs and OSes, but right now we are obviously interested in #ubuntu. For my Romanian pals out there, there's also #ubuntu-ro.
• Ask the forums. Even if you find a solution before someone answers, it might help someone else with the same problem.
• Ask people you know. You should do this after searching websites, local help and IRC's, because those places are dedicated to help you and the friend you're looking for might not be there.

What to do when all things fail?

• Well, there's a saying out there in IT support: "Have you tried turning it off and on again?". Like I mean it.

I hope someone finds this useful (especially the links up there) and most of it can be applied to a very large variety of problems. Like XKCD said, we don't know everything... this is what we usually do.

Enjoy, everyone.

Stuff I will use - LyX and LaTeX

A few hours ago, I discovered the future (and past...) of awesome document editing. Right now I'm in the process of saying goodbye to both Microsoft Office and Open Office.org for something which in my opinion is way better.

LaTeX

LaTeX is a document preparation system. It is a format whose purpose is to give the author a WYSIWYM (What you see is what you mean) way of doing things instead of WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get). Most document editors (like Ms Office and Open Office) go for the other method and require you actually format documents instead of writing them. LaTeX allows you to focus on writing the contents of your document and organize it with common items like images, chapters, sections, subsections, lists, tables, equations and loads more. These are then processed by the editor and are arranged at the end without disturbing the author in the process of his work.

LyX

LyX is the user friendly version of LaTeX. When writing LaTeX documents, you're pretty much writing code, because you have to add certain parameters before paragraphs and such. LyX is not quite LaTeX, there are few features that each system has that the other one doesn't, but they are almost identical in concept and internal format (as far as I know). LyX brings the power of LaTeX to a GUI and even with some differences in format, it also allows you to type LaTeX directives.

What is soooo cool about the system? This is what I find amazing until now, and I expect the list to grow:

• Chapter, Section, Subsection, Subsubsection, Paragraph, Subparagraph system is awesom. It automatically numbers them even if one part is deleted or moved, it automatically creates a Table of Contents which can be added in the document and so on. (You can also add unnumbered sections).
• Consistency in format. I am always bothered with choosing fonts and stuff in Office editors, here everything is simple and there are few common formats that make sense (Enchanced text, Code...).
• Labels and references. You can add a label to a section for example, and refer to it somewhere, where it will print the section number, the page on which it is and so on, even if these move. There are similar labels for Biographical references and so on.
• Notes. You can add notes, and these will not be printed and can be collapsed while editing
• Footnotes. These will be placed at the bottom of the page and can be collapsed like notes.
• Index entries. You know those large indexes at the end of the book? You just add an index entry somewhere in the text with a keyword and if an index is added at the end of the book it will contain this entry with a reference to the page.
• Designed for PDF and DVI formats which are both device independent (and way more professional that god forsaken .doc's - people... please never use .doc's, at least export the PDF).
• Math expressions. That's actually the best thing LaTeX is known for. I've seen several formulas online in LaTeX format and at first I thought that's all it does.

Now you might think "Hey, I want deeper control in the format of my documents". Well there's two very good answers to this:

1. No, you don't. There are so many different document types and formats here for articles, reports, books, letters, math articles, science reports and so on and all of them are standardized.
2. If you still don't like it, well everything is still customizable, so make it the way you want

This has been my best recent discovery and has changed my perspective of what a document editor is supposed to do. I still have to get around a bit with more advanced features but right now it seems Open Office.org is getting kicked out. LyX is also cross-platform and open source (big pluses here).

Enjoy everyone.

Stuff I use - Grooveshark

Before I start talking about Grooveshark, "Stuff I use" will be a category of posts where I intend to describe programs, websites, services... that I have used for some time now and have become an active part of my life.

Grooveshark


Grooveshark is by far the best music streaming service I know out there. Better than Last.fm, better than radio stations. Why?

• It's free (no account required).
• It's does not have geographical restrictions (at least not for Romania, never bothered to check if it works anywhere else).
• Library is updated by users (that means you can find basically ANY song... but sometimes the metadata is a bit off)
• You can play any song, anytime and even seek to any position in the song.
• You have a play queue which can have 200 (I'm not sure about the number, I might be WAY of, this I read in the FAQs and I'm not sure it related to this) which you can play in order, shuffled, repeat none, all or 1 song, and even add cross fade. It's your active playlist.
• You can go into Radio mode, which gives random songs that resemble what is currently in your play queue (like Last.fm does) or you can tune into preset genre radio stations.

Now I don't know details, but everyone there, every FAQ and every forum assures me it's legal even if users upload the music, which is awesome. But that feature list I said up there only scratches the surface. There are also free accounts which add even more great stuff.

• Personal library and Favorites section (5000 songs in library and 500 favorites for free accounts). This can be extended to 10 times the number for VIP accounts (3$ a month - 30$ a year).
• Keep track of user generated playlists. I have no idea how many one can have or how many songs can one contain, but the songs in those playlists don't have to be saved to the library.
• Create songs widgets that can be embedded on any website. (This could be available without an account, I'm not sure).
• Create playlist widgets the same way.
• Social features like friends and stuff.

The only thing I find it lacks is keyboard shortcuts. At least I don't know them. There are shortcuts for the downloadable app which runs on Adobe AIR (cross platform pluses : D) but it's for VIPs only : (.

The website is really too cool for music fans. Here's one of those widgets with a cool song I discovered last night.

Enjoy everyone, and have fun listening.

Thought computing

A few hours ago TED published a talk about a headset that can read your brainwaves and interpret them. At first I was VERY skeptical about the headset, but they've brought it on camera and showed a demonstration using a blank profile (everyone thinks a bit differently, and a profile has to be created for each user). The user was faced with a box and he has the job to move it around in space. It took 8 seconds for the system to learn each "command" the user was about to do. They first demonstrated pulling the box towards the screen and then a more difficult task of vanishing the box. They said this was more challenging because the user has no real life reference to imagine a box fading away.

After the demonstration ended, they showed a video with possible applications some of which where just awesome: levitating objects in games, changing game colors to fit your mood and enhance the experience, controlling your wheelchair and some simple applications like turning off the lights and closing the curtains.

This technology seems to be more like a proof of concept than a product. It works on a small number of commands, but as the pool grows it's bound to get buggy just like voice recognition does. Moreover, this project should be used as a centralized control system so that you can use it's input for basically any device in you own (computer, air conditioning, TV, lights, car, gaming consoles...).

If we already have such devices around it makes one wonder what will come out of the labs in 10 years time. I'll leave you with the video to enjoy the full talk.

The file transfer problem

I've been having file transfer problems ever since I've migrated to Linux because I generally have to send files to people I chat with and those idiots at Yahoo don't want to make a god damn client which works properly on this OS (Linux is not to blame for heaven's sake...).

Over the years I kept finding several web sites and services that helped deal with this situation. However imperfect some may be, I will list as many as I can remember here and further add new ones from comments (if any).

Text / Documents transfers

• Pastebin - Best thing ever.
• Allows unlimited and anonymous plain text sharing.
• Provides syntax highlighting.
• There's also a few more settings you can change like post expiration or visibility, but even without them it's the one and only service I need.
• There is also a Linux program pastebinit which allows sending text files to sites like pastebin (there are more than one obviously) from the command line.
• IdeOne - Similar to Pastebin, but it's made for code snippets.
• It actually compiles and runs the code besides letting you share it.
• It supports about 40 languages ranging from C, Java, Python, Ruby... to obscure languages like Brainf**k and whitespace. Doesn't work with LOLCODE : ( at least not yet.
• Google Docs - Document sharing.
• Keeps track of your documents and allows you to show them to anyone you wish.
• Allows collaboration editing. More than one person may edit the same document at one time.
• As far as I can remember, you can upload random files as well, but I think there's a 1 GB limit.

Image transfers

• Imgur - My personal favorite. 
• It allows unregistered uploads (and gives a deletion link for the first time the image is viewed so you can remove it). 
• You can make unregistered albums (but can only upload one image at a time), and I don't know if you can edit it later on. 
• You can make a free account which keeps track of your images and albums and allows bulk uploads as well.
• There is also a set of free tools and extensions for the site.
• Imageshack - Similar to Imgur, but as far as I know more restrictive for unregistered users. I don't like it that much though.
• Picasa - The Google variant.
• Gives you 1 GB of space for your image albums and gives several features for your albums.

Single files

• Jetbytes - Just select a file and it will generate a one time valid link. One must only send that link to anyone and he/she will start downloading. It's that simple.
• FilesOverMiles - Same as Jetbytes, but the link is valid for more than one download as long as the uploader keeps his browser open.
• [Edit] MegaUpload - Free 1GB uploads.
• I've just discovered how powerful this site can be when asking for pictures from people who have no idea that torrents are.
• It allows free uploads even without an account.
• Bugs you with ads and wait timers (but that's ok sometimes).
• Allows resuming interrupted downloads with a free account.
• Allows organizing files into folders for free accounts.
• Your files will be deleted if not downloaded for 3 months.

Multiple files

• Archive them! - I mean seriously, even when Pidgin transfer works I have to accept each file individually. That's what archiving is for dammit.
• Emails - Good ol' email never let me down.
• Emails are the most basic and brilliant way for sending data.
• The problem: size limits which differ from provider to provider, and is generally 10 or 25 MB.
• Drop.io - The 100 MB dream.
• You can upload any number of files of any type.
• You can preview several of them online.
• You can group, sort, search through and download any number of them.
• You can password drops and have administrator and guest passwords (no users involved).
• You can have any number of 100 MB drops.
• There is also a paid version for more space / drop, but I never bothered to get details.
• Torrents - the master of all file transfers.
• Everyone knows how torrents work, but few people realize how powerful they are and how they can be used for casual transfers. You can obviously send limitless data.
• Torrents require a tracker to work so this might appear as a problem at first, but a couple minutes of googling brought me to http://openbittorrent.com/ a free tracker perfect for casual transfers. Very simple instructions of how to use it are found on their site.

I hope this list might be useful to anyone having problems sending stuff by messenger (not a very reliable service...) and I will update this list as I find new or better ways of sending stuff.

LOLCODE

HAI everyone!
I've been stumbling this morning and found a really cool programming language called LOLCODE. I have no idea what compilers are out there, but the syntax is brilliant and I just had to show it to you guys. I will talk about some aspects in this post, but for full specs vizit http://lolcode.com/specs/1.2 .

LOLCODE FILZ !!1
All LOLCODE source files begin with HAI and end with KTHXBYE. = ))
All commands are placed on separate lines, or separated by a comma ",".

COMENTZ !!1
Single line comments are marked by the BTW keyword.
BTW this is a comment.

Multi line comments are marked between OBTW and TLDR (which i just found out means Too Long, Don't Read).
OBTW this is a very long
and boooooring comment
so skip it 
TLDR


VARIABLZ !!1
Variables must start with a letter and are case sensitive, though most people make everything capitalized just for fun. Variables are declared with I HAZ A, initialized with ITZ and assigned with R.
I HAZ A VAR        BTW VAR is null and untyped (or NOOB)
I HAZ A DOG ITZ 4  BTW DOG is 4 and of type NUMBR
VAR R "THREE"      BTW now VAR is "THREE" and of type YARN
VAR R 4.3          BTW now VAR is 4.3 and of type NUMBAR


VARIABL TAIPZ !!1
As you probably figured, untyped variables are NOOB (can ony be interpreted as a boolean false), integers are NUMBR, floats are NUMBAR and strings are YARN. There's also a boolean type called TROOF and can be WIN (true) or FAIL (false).


INPUTZ/OUTPUTZ !!1
Printing is done with the keyword VISIBLE, INVISIBLE prints to stderr (errors...) and input is handled with GIMMEH.

IFZ !!1
The if keyword O RLY? is placed after the expression checked and than you have YA RLY for the true part and NO WAI for the false part. YA RLY is closed by the NO WAI block, and the NO WAI block is cloed by OIC.
BOTH SAEM ANIMAL AN "CAT", O RLY?    BTW WIN if ANIMAL == "CAT"
    YA RLY, VISIBLE "JOO HAZ A CAT"
    NO WAI, VISIBLE "JOO SUX"
OIC


LUPZ !!1
Loops are started by IM IN YR <label> keyword and ended by IM OUTTA YR <label> keyword. This is by default an infinite loop and has to be ended by GTFO keyword = )). There is a more complex way to write a loop. See their site details. The <label> has to be the same for a loop, but i'm not sure if it's used any other way.

FUNCTIONZ !!1
Functions are defined with HOW DUZ I <function name> [YR <argument1> AN YR <argument2> AN YR <argument3> ...] and ended with IF U SAY SO. If the function returns something it can return a variable with the FOUND UR keyword or a NOOB with the obvious GTFO keyword.


Well that about all I planed to say about LOLCODE. Hope you had fun reading this and if you ever try coding in this language and make some trivial code that looks funny you're free to leave a comment with it.


Enjoy everyone!
KTHXBYE
         

Yes, we're getting cool games on Linux

Valve has announced they will be releasing a Linux version of their Steam content delivery platform and Source Engine. That's epic news for every Linux gamer out there, and every windows user not giving up because of games. There's not really much to discus about the subject, but here's the original post for those interested: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_steam_announcement&num=1

Have a nice day!

Portal is coming back!

Although most of you guys probably know this, not long ago Portal 2 was announced.


Portal was one of my favorite puzzle games but it felt like a small test being a short game and not that difficult. Portal 2 however took it's time to grow and is going to be 4 times as long as the first one with 2 campaigns, one for single player and one for co-op both being twice the length of the original game.


Portal 2 starts just where Portal left us, but dozens or maybe even hundreds of years in the future. Gladis (the big robot you blew up last game) is now rebuilding the facility and you are trying to escape. You will have friends along the road who are trying as well to run from Gladis, but that is just about everything we know about the story.


The game has several new elements to play with besides boxes, portals, switches and whatever else was in the previous game. They've added "Excursion vents" which negate gravity and slowly push you in a direction, they also travel through portals of course, "Faith plates", pieces of floor which push you around, "Thermal discouragement beams" which are like the energy spheres from Portal 1, but are continuous beams of energy which can be bent with some mirror cubes and "Pneumatic diversity vents" which suck everything from area A and transport it through a big pipe to area B. There might be other game elements of which I don't know about.


The game will be launching in 2011. As far as I know it's almost finished, but the team wants to test it over and over and over and over again to maximize the gameplay experience.


I'll leave you now with this amazing teaser and for anyone who wants to see more: http://media.pc.ign.com/media/142/14237322/vids_1.html here's a bunch of really nice videos about the game. Just remember, THE CAKE IS A LIE!

Is Google going after Facebook?

Google is stretching out it's boundaries as far as it can, and rumors started a few days ago that Google is on to build a full scale social network modeled after Facebook.

Google started digging into the social internet some time ago with Google Buzz, a very sweet concept of integrating status updates into GMail, but i'm not sure how successful it got as I don't use neither Buzz nor Twitter. Now Google is making "Google me" which is now a confirmed and high priority project. As far as I learned, Google assumed Facebook's growth would slow in time, and now they are pretty scared and set up to regain lost ground.

Isn't this move a bit late? I mean I know Google can offer way better services, servers and so on then most other companies out there, but this is all about popularity and public interest, which is already focused on Facebook. If their scheme works, there's going to be a really nice social network war out there, although I seriously doubt that.

Anyway, Google Me is definitely going to come out pretty soon and we'll all see what big, high priority social monster they are now building.

Prince of Persia the Forgotten Sands - review

I'ts been a while since Ubisoft released a cool Prince of Persia game, but they came back with Forgotten Sands... which is more like a spin off the series.

The game, which is 99% unrelated to the previous games from the story perspective, shows the story of a prince (nameless, as usual) who visits his brother (Malik) to become a great warrior, The story is pretty linear and mostly predictable, except for a few turning points which change the prince's objectives, but that's about it. You know who's your ally, and who's your enemy, and who's the idiot charging and causing all your problems and "moral difficulties". The game is supposed to take place between Sands of Time and Warrior within... but it doesn't really make any sense, and could be another series all together.

The bad part - Combat.
Prince of Persia 2008 made a horrible mistake of having only boss battles with really cool combos, but it SUCKED big time. Now forgotten sands brings you a whole bunch of like 40 enemies to fight at once, which is awesome... but the combo system is gone completely. You still have kicks and slashes, but they no longer tie into combos. There's just one combo I figured out, 4 slashes and a power slash => double power slash... which is not that great anyways.

There are some cool enemies who appear towards the second part of the game (summoners and "epic" summoners) which create undead sand monsters or powerfull undead sandmonster (have no ideea how they are officially caled) and if not taken care of early, they can keep you busy for some time. They are also the most annoying lesser enemies because they knock you down if you stay close for some time.

There is a fun part about the combat though. You can bounce on sand monster heads. Sure you can slash them in a failed way from up there, but it's way more fun to jump around from head to head = )).

The awesome part - Acrobatics.
Acrobatics have been upgraded way beyond anything Ubisoft has thrown out on the market (as far as i played). The idiot moves from PoP2008 (like ceiling run) have gone out and they kept to the old approach of jumps, ledges and wall runs. However, they added 3 awesome acrobatic powers.

Power 1 - Freeze.
You have dozens of watter jets, pillars and curtains of watter that you can solidify at will. Even if it sounds dumb, from a gameplay point of view it's amazing. You have watter jets coming sequentially from the wall and you have to freeze and unfreeze them while you're in the air and jumping between them and wait for them to change position while you're in the air. You have to go on a frozen jet and unfreze to jump through a curtain and freeze again to land on another jet and so on. It's just epic.

Power 2 - Dash (I'm sure it's called differently).
This allows you to dash toward an enemy and kill him. You can't really use it in combat, but that's not it's purpose. It's not that amazing as the Freeze ability but it looks pretty fun to jump from vulture to vulture in mid air.

Power 3 - Memory recall.
Razia, the djin helping you, gives you her memories of a certain section of the kingdom you're fighting in and so you can recall sections of it one at a time and use them as ordinary acrobatic platform elements and, as the game says, see the former glory of the kingdom in ruins. This is not that great as the freeze ability, but it works the same way, except here you tap to recall a section whereas you hold a key you freeze.

The brilliant part. Towards the end of the game you have to use all these powers together and (if playing on a PC) you have you left arm jammed on directional keys, freeze ability, jump, roll (same button for dash) and memory recall and it feels just awesome (too may times I've used this word here, but for the acrobatic part of the game it fits perfectly.)

The soundtrack.
This is again really good, but i still think Stuart Chatwood would have done a better job (see the other PoP soundtracks... especially the Warrior Within one).

Overall.
It's a great game and a bit short. I give it a 8.7/10 for the Acrobatics and Soundtrack. I it deserves less because of the way too easy click, click, click combat (even on the highest difficulty which is marked as Normal), but I really loved jumping around and acrobatic powers amazed me more than I expected. I strongly not recommend playing it on Easy because even the acrobatics are simpler.

GoogleCL

I've just installed GoogleCL.


GoogleCL allows you to acces some basic functionality on blogger, youtube, picasa, contacs and calendar. I'll keep this post short because i have no ideea how this is going to work, what title this post will have (like will it be the first line of this file, or the title parameter i will give to the function).
I've written this in a .txt on my computer and uploaded through GoogleCL. I hope I will be amazed by the result but right now I don't know what to expect.


So..... here goes nothing. Enjoy everyone!


[Edit]


So it turned out as expected, but i changed the font... gotta set this one default though.

Conky - Rediscovered

Hello everyone. I know it's been a long time, but I've pretty much forgotten about posting all together : ).


It was a very nice Friday morning when I decided (again) that I don't like my damn desktop (too boring), so I started looking for a new wallpaper. After about 20-30 minutes searching (I was reaaaaly slow and didn't know what I wanted) I got here http://lyx91.deviantart.com/art/Techno-wallpaper-60142158 and loved the way the artist made that overlay over the wallpaper. It bugged me for a while, but then I suddenly realized I should resurrect conky and try to integrate it with the wallpaper.


What is conky?
Conky is a lightweight system monitor for X. It uses configuration files to gather information about window placement, transparency, fonts and other display options and, of course, information about what is to be rendered. It provides a HUGE variable database to work with ranging from battery, CPU, RAM, Swap, time data, to information about current processes, network graphs, mpd and xmms2 support (and probably a few other music players) and it even has an EvE Online skill monitor which shows how long you have to wait for your current skill to be done (PS. I don't play EvE though I could make another post about it's awesomeness). And if that's not enough, it has a few commands to execute external programs and do whatever it wants with the output.


What did I do?
I started out nice and easy and added some data on screen about the time and basic system information (like kernel version, hostname, distribution, available updates...) and placed them around that circle in the top left corner.
Next, I placed some information about the CPU usage: some CPU graphs, RAM and Swap data and a top processes list sorted by both CPU and memory usage.


Then I got to the hard part. I wanted weather forecast displayed so I started looking for some scripts to do that. After a long and winding road, i got here, found this guy who had some really cool scripts designed for conky including one made for forecasting. It required registering with some weather website and setting up some data feed from there, so no cheap hacking involved, but the script was brilliant and used some conky templates to set up the layout.


The only other problem I faced was with displaying data about the current song in Rhythmbox. Again I had to find a script, but the same guy had one so I used that.


So, this is what came out of my bored morning. I hope you like it.

Now I'm looking fore some really cool Ubuntu theme to go with this. If anyone has any ideas, please leave a comment ^_^.

Enjoy, everyone!

Linux foundation video contest

A few days ago, The Linux Foundation announced their second video contest. Last year, they called it the "We're Linux" video contest and it focused on showing what people find nice and attractive at Linux, but this year, they spiced it up a bit. The contest is about making a Super Bowl (which is some american event I don't get) ad. They want to see how a Linux ad running during this event would look like.


Here is the link to the contest if anyone is interested.
http://video.linuxfoundation.org/contest/we-are-linux-superbowl-ad-contest


Last year, they had some pretty impressive videos, although just a few, as most of them were quite bad. Although the winner is really great and I just have to insert it here:





Meanwhile, while Europe embraces open source alternatives, Romania is loosing all senses in economics and intends to pay microsloth 90 milion euros until 2012 for 163,427 windows licences for more than 30 public institutions. I know this is not really related to the video contest, but I must complain somewhere, and I don't want to make another post. I really do not understand this move, because it's the one place where we can easily save some money as a country buried under debts to the EU.

Talking about the iPad

Before i go talking about the new big thing from apple, some of you might not know that I'm a BIG supporter of open source standards, software, technologies and so on. So I added a banner in the sidebar of this blog linking to a very nice Romanian open source community (for all you Romanians like me : D).


Now... about that pad thing


There was a big fuss about the product, so, naturally, I wanted to watch the presentation. 10 seconds after the tablet appeared on stage I decided it failed all expectations. 1st bad thing: not widescreen. I mean it's kinda' widescreen, but still looks too bulky. 2nd bad thing: how idiot do you have to be to start the presentation by saying that "you can change the wallpaper". If you get to the point where you say _that_ in a presentation. That utterly means - "this product's got nothing special... so we're gonna show you how well it does what other products do". Apart from the amazing ability to change a wallpaper, they kept the UI of the iPhone. Why would you do that? That user interface was designed for small devices. I watched the presentation for about 10-20 minutes more, than I just got angry and ditched it.


Leaving the design behind, I started looking for some technical specs about the product. Surely if it looks bad, at least it works OK, but no, it's way worse than I expected. Here's the official list: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/ and I'm going to walk you through it, skipping a few areas of course : D.
Part 1: Display: "widescreen" with a screen resolution of 1024 * 768 : D how cool is having a 4:3 screen stretched to the bone. Are those rectangular pixels or what?
Part 2: Wireless and cellular. The idea of having such features is outrageous. I mean you're going to walk around with a A4 sized phone around? You're going to shove it in your pocket? You're going to permanently carry it in your bag and wait for people to call you? Imagine how a 0.7 kg phone goes off on vibrate : )).
Part 3: Input and output & In the box. I know I'm not taking them in order, but this relates to further parts of this description. So, the device has: a Dock Connector, 3.5 mm stereo headphone Jack and a SIM card tray (again book sized phones). Does it feel like there's something missing? Anyone? Yes, of course... a USB. Not even one USB connector on this device. But wait, they have a solution: In the box: Dock Connector to USB cable. So... we're gonna carry a cable with us all the time, that's useful.
Part 4: 16GB Hard drive. I know you have larger versions as well, but they go incrementally by 100$, that's outrageous.
Part 5: Processor: 1GHz. So they made it as powerful as the Nexus One. Ow wait, no, they stripped out multitasking. I mean even the iPhone had multitasking. That fact alone makes this product less valuable than plain paper.
Part 6: Mail attachment support. What the hell is that? You're giving software specs? Like I can't even attach Open Office files? If a Comodore 64 had interent (I can't guarantee : )) ) it would be able attach anything. Mail is supposed to have attachments of any type.
Part 7: Battery and power. Charged via power addapter or USB to computer system. Hmmmm that's just wrong because you like have NO USB SLOTS.
Part 8: This does not appear at that link, but you can only install stuff from the apple store. Essentially, Apple decides what you are going to do with you're new rock.


There are several other parts I could write, but It's pretty much useless so I'l give you some links for further reading.
http://gizmodo.com/5458382/8-things-that-suck-about-the-ipad
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/27/defective_by_design/
And finally, how the ipad should have been like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIPjJElVx0U


So, everyone, I hope you can see the product sucks big time, and, as usually, have fun and enjoy guys.