October 2005 Archives

I am an OpenSource apologist, I use Linux, I program Perl, I use inkscape, I have an opensource gnome application, I write GPL software and OpenSource perl modules.

Meanwhile, I see a lot of closed minds in the open-source community, which makes project fail. In the extended entry for this post you can see my fight with two different open-source communities (Perl and Gtk+/Gnome) to make them interact, and the results I had.

Well, this would be easier to comment in Portuguese, but here goes an international comment. The story is not as good as we are used to. We know that since the dead of Goscinny, the guy who wrote the stories, they start loosing quality. Uderzo continues with nice drawings, but lost the specific humor from the old stories.

But that was expected and any fan from Asterix would not be expecting a spetacular story in this book. The really annoying thing it the Portuguese version of this book. The old publisher for these books disappeared and a new publisher took place. The translators should be new, as it is easy to understand they are not Asterix fans. Starts with the translation of the names of the village inhabitants. Good they maintained Asterix, Obelix and Panoramix. But everybody knows that the other names are french and have special meaning. Like Assurancetourix which means asurance against all risks. So, translating these names was a crime. Some other details were lost. Like the stupid or childish way of Obelix react.

The worst thing is that I've head that the new publisher asked to re-translate all the old books. Stupid publishers.

Installed the Komodo beta for MacOSX, and these are my first impressions: too heavy (more than 30 seconds to load on my PowerBook 1GB RAM, 1.5Ghz), simple code highlight, no POD highlight, templates for Perl files does not include POD, complaing about returning without using return... and... well.. nothing more.

This was what I could find in the two minutes I used it. Deleted from the disk, and continuing using emacs.

I replied to the email I talk in the previous post. Can you guess what was the answer?

Nomatica suckz. Ordered the Canon Powershot S2 IS and I'm waiting for three weeks. Sent an email asking for the availability and received this answer:

-- 
Estimado cliente,

Na sequência da sua comunicação E-mail, venho pela presente informar-lhe
que a sua encomenda continua pendente por aguardarmos receber o artigo
que nos encomendou.  Infelizmente nao nos foi indicada uma data prevista
de chegada do material por parte dos nossos fornecedores. Deste modo, 
caso considere a demora acentuada, podera alterar a sua encomenda
escolhendo um outro produto do nosso site ou anular a compra.

Obrigada pela sua atenção,
A Nomatica agradece-lhe pela sua escolha !

Ao seu dispor para quaisquer esclarecimentos, apresento os meus melhores
cumprimentos.

Serviço Comercial Português da Nomatica

Nomatica
BP 53393 31133 Balma cedex
França.

Fax : 00 335 67 739 941
Até breve na www.nomatica.pt
Nomatica N°1 Europeu na Net
A maior gama !
Os melhores preços !

Notice the -- at the top? This is a signature!!! They don't write an answer at all. They just have a signature and send the same text to all customers.

Unfortunately, I've already paid the camera. I don't have a VISA, so I did a wire tranfer of the money. To do it, I've paid more about 40 euros. So, if I request the money back, I'll lose 40 euros.

So, at the moment, the best I can do is bad advertising. If you want to buy a camera, forget nomatica.

Just discovered this nice application when checking for new versions of OmniGraffle. OmniWeb is a web-browser. Nothing new. But it includes a very nice interface. For instance, the now common concept of tabs are shown as small images of the webpage. Well, just download it and test it.

Unfortunately, I'll not use it because it is very slow loading pages, and second because it is a commercial software (Firefox is free, you know).

Last night went to see this movie. I was not very interested, and went for the company and for a different evening. But the movie surprised me. It includes a lot of flaws (and a lot of them regarding the main actors) but it is fun. It has action, humor, horror and thriller parts. Nice special effect and some nice girls as well.

Being a sci-fi movie with lots of spacecrafts, misses a lot of reallity in them. In fact it is easy to notice they are all computer rendered. Oh well, just some details...

Two weeks and me waiting for my Canon Powershot S2 IS. Mailed Nomatica about this, and they are waiting for Canon. So, it might be Canon fault and not Nomatica fault. The truth is that this is quite boring... I want my new toy!!!!

Today was browsing, and working, while firefox says it wants to update itself in the next firefox reboot. Ok, I said... let me finish. At the end, restarted firefox, and here I have, beta2. I had the beta 1 version. So, it seems to work... smoothly. Nice.

I am populating a database. Three tables, two with more than 2500000 records, and the other with more than that. I have three text files with a record by line, with tabs delimiting fields. Two of the tables have a primary key (integer field) and the other a compound primary key (two integers). The first two tables have two fields, the last has three fields. I am using PostgreSQL, and using the \copy table from 'file' command. Unfortunately this is taking an eternity.

I tried to import them without defining the key, and it was a lot faster, but PGadmin III don't let me create the key after the import.

So, is there any other, faster, way to import these three tables?

Just ordered that Powershot S2 IS camera from Canon. If you don't remember, here is the image:

Now, what should arive faster? The legos or the camera? The camera, of course. I need it to make a full report of the building of the lego toys.

Yes, I am a lego freak. I love lego toys. Specially the Technic ones.
For example, just ordered these two sets this week:

I need to put my hands on them really, really quickly.