Sunday, August 29, 2010

Desktop Linux


I have finally managed to make the desktop look usable.
BOM:
1. Conky Colors: http://www.webupd8.org/2010/08/conky-colors-gets-beautiful-new-cairo.html
2. Droid TTF fonts for desktop and Inconsolata for monospaced.
3. Ubuntu tweak - enables icons in menus
4. Cairo Dock - Mac like appearance (with OpenGL)
5. Faenza icon theme
6. Ambiance Maverick beta theme

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Gandul Matei


Finally, after three years since Alexei left for US, I have been able to get all their albums. The sound is cool, reminds me of the first Zdob&Zdub albums.

Frustrations

I am growing frustrated by Ubuntu inconsistencies.
Each flavor has its own GUI idioms and from a usability point of view it is a nightmare switching around them. I felt idiot as I was unable to add an icon to Kubuntu's screen or making Gnome not interfere with Xfce.
I will try PinguyOS - if it's the same crap I will consider other alternatives (OS-X).

Russian movies


The Russian cinematography is somehow unique. They are doing sometimes great movies, that remain in your memory for ages. It was the case with Stalker, Station for Two,The Barber of Siberia or more recently Ostrov.

I have just seen "Admiral" - a movie about the life of Alexander Kolchak and his love affair with Anna Timireva.
To my shame I knew almost nothing about Kolchak or his white resistance against the Bolsheviks in Siberia - this movie gave me something to chew on. The movie is visually rich in every aspect. Naval battle, ballroom scenes, the frozen Siberia - everything is cautiously reconstructed. IMHO it worth seeing.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Joy!

Sometimes the day gives me surprises, some of them are able to make my day brighter!
Today is one of those bright days... I have just learnt that one of my dear friends has been selected for a Microsoft position. I' very glad for him as he is one of the most gifted developers I've ever seen!

P!=NP

According to this paper it seems that P!=NP.
Another mathematical hard problem is apparently solved.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Latest

Not much those days.
I have worked on some ugly and old C++ code - it hasn't been maintained since 2005. I had to port it from Solaris/SPARC to Linux/x86-64. With some hacks (especially on the C++ dialect used by Forte and not understood by g++) I made it work. In the end I wanted to give it a bump and I stubbed the old traces implementation towards a log4cxx one.