February 2007 Archives

Once upon a time, hackers were intelligent people, who really knew what they were doing. Most of them just used it in the wrong way. But they were brilliant in some way.

Now, we are in the teenager hacker era. Stupid hackers (I think they do not deserve the 'hacker' name at all) that think editing a wiki is hacking anything. They just click the 'edit' button, change the text to 'Hacked by StUpIdNaMe' and go away happy. If you add any type of free login control, they create the free account to add that text to the wiki.

Good is to offer flowers. Bad is to forget to sign the card in the flowers. Worst is the company delivering the flowers two days earlier.

When I started using computers people normally used two numbers (or a real number) for software versions. For instance, version 3.2. Later, most software started using three numbers. Mainly because they wanted to use the second digit to decide if the release was stable or not. Now, after the Linux Kernel started using 2.6.19.3 for almost weekly releases, other tools start using also this IP based versioning. For instance, at the moment, Firefox 2.0.0.1 is updating for Firefox 2.0.0.2. I wonder when will they start using IPv6 for software versions :)

I posted previously about my car, a Ford Fiesta like the one in the picture, but with 5 doors, 1.2, gasoline. This is the example of the first sight love. True. When searching for a car (some years ago) I went to see a lot of cars, but when I saw this one, I didn't look anymore. First it is nice. Second, I fit inside (that's important). Third, it was cheaper than most of the others.

Now, looking back, I think it was a good decision. It is true that it drinks a lot of gasoline (probably my fault). It is also true that I had some problems with some details of the car. But I am sure I would have similar problems with other cars. Finally, in more than half a dozen of situations I could manage to control the car and do not crash. I do not have any prove it was the car that help me, but it is nice to trust it.

Some time ago I posted here about DBLP. It is a good service. At least I thought so. Lately the Computer Science department where I am doing my PhD started classifying papers, looking up if the journal or conference is cataloged or not on these kind of sites. DBLP and ISI Knowledge were pointed out.

Now I am sure DBLP is a bad choice for such classification. First, there are some journals and conferences which have one edition/volume cataloged, but not others. But worst! There is (at least one) one journal volume with incomplete information. It includes paper until page 180, and then from 281 till the end.

Luckily, my paper on that volume is on the missing pages. I really do not care if it is cataloged or not in DBLP as my current position at the University is just as student. Thus, I really do not need to have papers on the cataloged journals/conferences. Anyway, as I think that incomplete information is worst than missing information, I sent four emails to DBLP maintainer asking to complete the information. I didn't just ask! I've sent all the work done to be easily included, but I didn't get any answer.

So, probably DBLP is not a good indicator about journals or conferences...

I just bought a Wacom Graphire 4 Classic tablet. In fact, we bought it (me and my PhD teacher). Oh, by the way, my birthday was last Wednesday (as well as his).

At the moment I just tried it on my Mac and it works. Without drivers it works quite well as a mouse. After installing drivers it really mimics the screen. Pointing on a corner, the pointer goes directly to that corner. Quite nice. Regarding drawing software, I am not happy yet. But ArtRage 2 is a good software for painting. In fact, so good, I bought it. For vectorial drawing I tried Inkscape, but it misses somethings, for instance, it doesn't recognize the eraser.

Now, I need to test the Mac OS X 'hand-writing recognition'. I am not sure what it should be, but there is such an option somewhere in the Preferences panel...

Last Thursday I was on Berna Hotel, in Campo Pequeno. I had to meet with a friend to have dinner on Picoas Plaza. So, I headed Saldanha though Republic Avenue. Once on Saldanha I turned right and walked until I got lost, near a blue cross. Can you guess where I was?

Well, I headed back to Saldanha and got the correct path to the restaurant. My friend could guess where the blue cross was...

OpenClipart is a nice project which aims to collect vectorial clipart. Its elected file format is SVG. The problem is that people are redesigning the site and turning it unusable. I can't understand how a 'browse' feature over clipart doesn't show its primary object (the clipart) directly (you need at least one more click per image).

Unthinkable...

After this post: Prostitutes and Literature, a friend asked me: What do you have against prostitutes? Well, this post is my answer. I do not have anything against prostitutes. I think they should do what they want. I just think:

• It is bad if prostitutes are not working for themselves (if they are being explored);
• It is also bad that like any other profession, they do not issue receipts for theirs services.

Yesterday I won a lunch. It wasn't yet paid, but it should be soon. A friend was having some problems with shell 'uniq' command. See his blog post: My "uniq" has problems....

It was plain luck, but I found his problem in my first attempt! Cool!!

I really can't believe I didn't post earlier about Mutopia Project. Mutopia is the Gutenberg Project for music. Mutopia main purpose is to preserve digitally music. Not in MP3 format, or wave or whatever, but in its original format: the score the composer wrote. Also, not scanning the score and saving the (probably low quality) image, but instead, typeset these scores in a nice and powerful music typesetting software: lilypond. Mutopia project includes now more than 800 music scores (including some transcribed by me), for more than 150 composers.

If you know music, and you like classical music, you will love this archive!!

Kwiki is back into business. This is the Perl wiki I list most. The most used, Twiki, is too big to be usable. Also, takes a lot of time to install. Kwiki in the other hand is a simple wiki, quite modular, and easy to extend and modify. For instance, all these are Kwiki pages with different themes: Numexp.org, Perl-Hackers LaTeX, Natura Project Homepage and Oscon wiki.

Nice, huh?

I just bought the set 7470 from lego: a Space Shuttle Discovery. It is one of the best sets I've seen come out from Lego. I did not buy it new (I could not find one new with a reasonable price). I found one used in Canadá. It was two months of waiting, but worth it. The set is in perfect conditions, just missing a 1x1 plate. The seller told me that, but it is so common that I didn't mind about it.

I just do not understand why Lego do not continue producing so high quality products...