Geek goes to PyCon PL 2012 - day 1

Last week, I went to my first programming conference ever - PyCon PL 2012!

Here's what I wore on the first day:

I fooled a few people that I worked at Google, which wasn't my intention, but this misunderstanding was promptly explained.

Day one was mainly the trip there and being too tired afterwards to party like it's PyCon 2012. Still, the lectures were rich in content and very interesting.

Łukasz Langa talked about Ralph, an asset management system for your data centers. Written in-house to manage the biggest cloud in Poland, it is now open-source. Łukasz talked about how Ralph was born: out of need, when adding new admins wasn't helping to keep the huge and varied infrastructure in order. The beginnings were tough, as there was only one developer and no process like scrum was in place. This one developer wanted to do everything for everyone, which of course couldn't work well. The solutions for this situation were:

1. more devs
2. applying scrum by the book (I never knew that in the real scrum, a task from outside the sprint cancels the entire sprint!)
3. git workflow
4. one good changelog
5. one good backlog
6. thematical sprints.

 The second talk was by PyCon PL's youngest speaker ever, 18-year-old Marek Šuppa. He talked about programming Lego NXT robots with Python and how he taught it to kids. He created his own IDE, nxtIDE, complete with a simulator, for that purpose. The show was the best part:

 The third talk was by lvh, about fractal architectures. Big data is big these days and everyobody is scaling up - but why not scale down first? Why not, for example, shard your data by user and for every user, set up a separate SQLite database? Once you've scaled down this much, scaling up is easy. Well, except when it's not. Some problems arise, like wide queries for statistics, global, non-user-specific data, handling transactions... Depending on your project, these issues might be bigger or smaller and a fractal architecture can be a good solution for you or not. It's not a silver bullet, but definitely an interesting concept.

The last talk on that day was about forms in Python, their challenges and existing solutions. Szymon Pyżalski presented them, along with a framework of his own: Anthrax. (See his page for PyCon materials and more on Anthrax.) Szymon works for STX Next, the daughter company of my previous employer. Having dealt a lot with forms at that job, I knew exactly what Szymon was talking about. :) Since my current job is so different, however, (I basically have one big form!), I wasn't very interested in the details and didn't take many notes.

After the talks, I had a few drinks with STX Next people, then went to sleep.

To be continued...

Geek plays home, starting with the WC

I'm getting married, moving out, then moving in, all that stuff, and today, shopping on-line for cool home items.

Turns out every room in your home can be cool, and the coolest of all can be the toilet.

The Sudoku toilet paper deserves an honorable mention for making it possible:


The toilet seat can bring a lot of fun to the bathroom as well. Well.. sometimes, "WTF was the designer thinking" is more appropriate than "fun". Let this picture speak for itself (or forever hold its peace):

I guess "Pharaoh's treaures" sounds better than "WC content", doesn't it?


This one just feels wrong, and not in a forbidden fruit kind of way:



However, the best toilet ever was posted today by Gizomodo:


This one definitely takes the art of toilet designing to new heights. Or lows, depending on the point of view.

CD's 30th birthday - let's celebrate!

I just learned from Gizmodo that the Compact Disc celebrated its 30th birthday yesterday.


Happy birthday, then CD! Let's celebrate (I know, it was yesterday, but I had a life yesterday).

Since I'm getting married in April, I'm moving out, and for that occasion, I'm getting rid of as much stuff as possible. Uncluttering by me usually means:

1. opening a random drawer
2. looking at the whole bunch of stuff I haven't used for years
3. finding the reasons why it's okay to throw it away (and beating all the "but it's a gift", "but I might use it",...)

And since I'm not good at doing this one huge organizing day, I declutter piece by piece. Piece of the day: tapes. My old and not really working sound system is not going with me (fiance has a much better one). New sound systems don't read tapes. Besides, tapes have low quality and use storage space and it's way better to re-buy everything as mp3. Or even CDs.

Bottom line, I'm celebrating the CD's birthday by throwing my tapes away. How geek.

Good news

Two good news tonight, people!

1. Season 3 of The IT Crowd is good. Watch if you haven't started yet.
2. You can win a 1000$ shopping spree at Think Geek, and the competition's not restricted to the U.S.!

Of course, I sold my soul for the tiny chance of getting all the geek stuff I want. Even my phone number! Don't ask what else I could throw in...

New IT Croud season!

Should have told ya guys on Friday but I forgot. Anyway, The IT Crowd 3x01 just aired, and it's good, so go and get it!

I swear I don't celebrate Halloween

I swear I don't celebrate Halloween. I just was at a party yesterday. And two years ago too. I don't remember about last year, however - does that mean I partied that hard?

Yesterday's party was at Long Unseen Friend's place and had nothing to do with Halloween: he was just back for a few days (he's an exchange student) and wanted to meet his friends. One guy had had his birthday a few days sooner and therefore receive a few gifts and a cake substitute. Besides that, the party consisted of people sitting on the floor, eating (Long Unseen Friend's Mom prepared lots of great food), drinking beer or juice and talking. Talking consisted of people talking about what they do best and others interrupting them with a "Will you stop talking about your master thesis? We're trying to have a party here!". Almost everyone had to be interrupted in such a way at least once.

No matter how much I appreciate people trying to have fun and forget about school, I kinda miss the times where we would play Set, or worse: the differentiable function (people sit in a circle and someone gives a function and n-th person gives its n-th derivative). Well, nothing lasts for ever, not even that great game, although it could if the starting function was smooth.

Yet another math presentation

The geek life has been a bit harder lately. I spent an entire day and then an entire evening preparing a presentation about the Weil Pairing. Don't ask me what it is - I have been trying to understand it for two years! (Well, I have been trying other things as well during those years, but still, you get the idea.)

"Sweetie, I know you're busy, but I gotta ask you one thing: who's the long unseen friend from the previous post?" messaged me Boyfriend. The brief explanation of Long Unseen Friend being an ex of mine didn't really satisfy him, nor the fact that he missed our appointment and still I set a new one.

But let's not allow the boys to distract us from the Weil Pairing, because I have great news! After those two years, I have finally understood what the Weil Pairing is and how to evaluate it! There's a bad news too: I understood it fully during my presentation. I realized that the example I had picked was by far too simple and I still have a lot of work to do. But hey, I finally got it!

For those of you who speak Polish, know a bit of math and aren't easily scared (anyone still reading?), here are my slides:

A lovely school day

Today was a totally lovely school day.

First I slept until nine. Ate breakfast watching "Lipstick Jungle", showered, read the daily portion of LifeHacker. Ran out of the house afraid to miss the train and had to wait ten minutes. You know, the usual.

School started for me at twelve with a geometry seminar. Just before, I had an "ooops, I forgot I had a blog again" moment and blogged. But back to the seminar, it was really good. The guy was well-prepared, had read a few different sources, understood the subject very well, published the notes... excellent work.

Then a break, during which I got a free coffee (with a mug) from Citibank. Grateful, I decided to honor them with my presence at a case study, which turned out to be a long talk about career opportunities that convinced me that I was already working at the right place, as they were looking for network people and not programmers. I also got a call from a long unseen friend and set up a meeting for tomorrow.

Next came a law class, where I was distracted by the thought of my coming-up presentation about the Weil Pairing. Whatever that is, the fact that I keep getting the n-th power of one instead of a root is highly disturbing. I'm still working on that now that I'm home - and that's how a typical geek day ends.

Geek goes lazy

School starts on Wednesday. Or Thursday. (Anyone knows, by the way?) Anyway, I'm making the most of the last days of freedom, which, besides work, includes mainly this:

Yep, I'm playing the Sims with the newest expansion pack, Apartment Life. Here's a short review and a long review.

Oh, did I mention that I have a brand new hard drive? With a brand new Windows installation out-of-the-box annoying as can be. I got my documents, but my beautifully ordered inbox is gone. I had to google my own father's e-mail address today.

My first time: tea on the laptop

Yesterday, I got my laptop wet for the first time. I had a lot of luck however:

• I knew what to do, so I panicked way less than I could have (thanks anyone who did this before and kept me informed!)
  
• My workmates reacted quickly and helped me do the right things (thanks guys!)
  
• I spilled the tea next to the laptop, and not on it, so actually nothing got inside.
• I had bought cleaning foam a few hours before! Isn't it ironic?
  

Anyway, since it's an important thing to know, I'll post here what are the right things to do when you get your laptop wet, especially as it's one of the tough situations for a geek as there's no time to google.

1. Disconnect the laptop fast as you can.
2. Remove the battery fast as you can. No looking at the screen, no hibernating, just make sure it's off.
3. Leave it to dry for 3 days.

After that, it should work but may be dirty and sticky. Now you can google on how to clean it.

By the way, here's a story about a laptop that has been cooked in an oven and worked afterwards.

Two days offline ("offline" as in "without internet connection")

Two days offline - can you believe it? We've switched operators so for almost two entire days we've been to Hades... erm, offline. So how did we survive?

Dad was at work. Mom's not addicted. Brother was gaming the whole time. Other Brother delivered some good quotes in response to "watcha doing while you're offline?":

I'm programming in C++ without documentation.

And later:

I'm trying every game that came with my Linux distribution.

(He's using Fedora, by the way.)

So, parents, if you're ever worrying that internet might be a bad influence for your kids, think how bad no internet is for them.

What about me? I didn't suffer that much. On the first day, I was at work and then with Boyfriend. On the second day, I went to my favorite mall to clear it off the final summer sales. I came back with 17 t-shirts, 5 sweaters, one skirt, cheap sunglasses, one necklace and one night gown. Oh, and a new "loyal customer" card from Top Secret thanks to the 17 t-shirts and 5 sweaters. That was cool, but now I'm on-line and that makes me happier than the biggest shopping trip.

How geeks make popcorn

Sadly, it's a hoax.

You know you're a geek when...

Well, you know you're a geek when it's written all over your blog, but besides that, there are many situations in life that prove you geek. I just had one again.

Boyfriend got an MacBook today and as I'm writing this, he's figuring everything out about this new computer. So I told him:

You know what I'd start with? I'd browse Lifehacker.com, they've got plenty of tips and software suggestions for Macs.

He liked my advice. So did I. A second later, I was browsing http://lifehacker.com/search/mac/ myself. There's a lot of cool stuff there, including:

• Mac security basics

  If you're worried about the new Mac-targeting worm, or Mac security in general, Mac Geekery has a nice introduction for you.

• Get things done on your Mac

  Journalist Giles Turnbull publishes a plain English primer of methods, tools and resources for Mac users to organize their workflow and get stuff done.

• 10 things for new Mac owners

  If you've got a new Mac and are looking for ways to get the most from it, Paul Stamatiou has a great post for you.

• The best twenty Mac apps you've never heard of
• Speed up your Mac While we all wait for Leopard to get released, here are 52 Ways to Speed Up OS X.

I quickly found myself thinking:

Hey, it would be so cool to have a MacBook right know and discover a new OS and its possibilities and the tricks and the software and everything...

You know you're a geek when you feel a sudden desire of acquiring a new computer, not because of its parameters, not because of the marketing, but for the thrill of software discovery.

You know you do it too much (yet again) when...

I recently had one of these "you know you do it too much when" moments.

I wanted to call one guy form the team project about the team project. I looked for his number in my address book in my cell phone - it wasn't there, as I had never called him before. I looked on my laptop for his number, but didn't fint it. Well, the hard drive had been formated. I looked on my Nokia 770, but it wasn't there either. Well, the memory had been cleaned several times.

The conclusion was: I format my drives more often than I call people. Not good. Geek, but not good.

We're setting a Guinness World Record!

Let's set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours!

All there is to do is to sign-up and then download Firefox 3 on Download Day.



I hope I'll see you all there! Spread the word!

TV is dead because the web is way too cool

I almost don't watch TV. Sincerely, with all the great stuff the web has to offer nowadays, it's really hard to make time for something as primitive as TV.

First, I'm learing Java. So, both my Firefoxes (one under Windows and one under Ubuntu) have a dozen of tabs with Java documentation opened.

Second, I'm learing Spanish. I only spend about 10 minutes a day on Babbel, but I know that any other language course is close at hand (and I miss my dear Arabic).

I think you can see a pattern emerging here: I love learning. I think one ofn the greatest things to have is a cool skill. I wish I was able to do a cartwheel for example. Well, for skills like that, there's WikiHow.

I'm interested in security, but never had a class about it. My school now has a new program in computer science and there is a security course. Reason for jealousy? Absolutely not! There also is a new site with all the content of all the classes, so I just downloaded and printed some pdfs and here we are - the security knowledge is mine!

Still hungry for knowledge? Check this Metafilter thread for tons and tons of cool educative videos.

Now I'm set for at least a dozen of lifetimes of browsing the web. TV is dead.

Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" is out

Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" is out. Actually, it has been since Thursday, so I guess I'm a little late for the party.

Well, I visited the download page on Thursday, unuware of anything, because I had a fast connection at school, so it was a good time to get it just in case I ever felt like updating, and there was still 7.10. I must have been a few hours early. I got some beta instead.

Okay, you know when you're a geek when you're concerned about missing the new OS' premiere. If it makes you feel any better, I have a few other concerns, like not having been told that one of my friends is getting married today, but I don't feel like elaborating on these.

Back to Ubuntu. LifeHacker has a very enthousiastic review, and my friend just blogged about an interesting way to make the system use the memory in a more efficient way, claiming Hardy is the best OS he has ever had installed. Looking great, but in just a month after formatting my hard drive and reinstalling everything, I don't really feel like updating. And three weeks after completing the Operating Systems class, I'm not touching the system with a pole.

One Laptop Per Child

One Laptop Per Child is one of the coolest projects I have ever seen. The mission of the One Laptop per Child association is to develop a low-cost laptop—the "XO Laptop"—to revolutionize how we educate the world's children.

Nicholas Negroponte says on the website:

It's an education project, not a laptop project.

Well, my reaction is:

Did somebody say laptop?

Anyway, it's really an awesome project and I've been thinking of participating for a month now, but school has been keeping me very busy all the time. I've actually been thinking of volunteering somewhere for a very long time. I even did it a bit in high school (with elder people, I'm a good listener). However, in college, I could never make time for that. When I'm already overwhelmed by my classes (this two-majors thing ain't easy) and exhausted by all the travelling (it takes me an hour to get to school), I'm not really eager to do some more travelling. I'm also not really able to make some commitments right now with everything that goes on at school: the operating systems lab is not yet over for me, the team is already kicking my pretty little but about the team project...

Anyway, OLPC seems like the best opportunity ever for me. I could contribute form home, evening, whenever I have time. Also, what is really important for me, I could make a good use of my skills. I know that the most important kind of help is not technical and doesn't often look impressive from the outside, but geek volunteers are needed too. So you won't see me walking homeless dogs or something when I can use my tech and lingo skills to do something great.

So, now that OLPC has been accepted for the Google Summer of Code, it' on absolute top of my whishlist. I'm just a bit afraid that this project is really popular (quite a few project ideashave already been taken!) and that I might not be selected (which would mean plan B: get a normal job for the summer ). I only have a week to pick one and write an awesome proposal. Wish me luck!

Installing, installing, installing....

Today is a pretty typical geek day. Basically, it means sitting at the computer all day long.

Having formatted my hard drive on Friday, I re-installed Windows XP from my recovery CD. Then I installed Ubuntu 7.10, only 34 days before Ubuntu 8.04 is out (you can get the beta if you can't wait, but I don't like the word "beta", or read a review here).

Sunday was Easter, so all I did was install The Sims 2, among with the expansion packs: Open For Business, Bon Voyage and Free Time. Then played a lot.

On Monday, I continued celebrating and installed Visual Studio C# and Visual Web Developer, both express editions of course. However, I didn't even have the time to run one of them.

Today, back to the serious stuff. Right now, getting the 204 important security updates Ubuntu has got for me. Then, installing Java and Eclipse. Then, Sugar, because One Laptop Per Child has been accepted for Google Summer of Code and I'd love to do something with them. Then, Thunderbird, which I'd love to see working under both Linux and Windows, using the same mail folders of course. Then, some SVN client, then, the libraries I need for my team project, namely Tuscany SDO and Apache Maven. Then, getting to work.

Ah, an entire day at the computer. I'm feeling so good right now.

Happy Pi day everyone!

Today, March 14h, is Pi day!

It is of course a great occasion to:

1. Show off how geek you are, for instance by wearing this:



2. Eat pie. Or pi-zza.
By the way, did you know that the volume of a pizza of radius z and thickness a is "pi z z a"?



3. Learn stuff. Never in the world would I have suspected that Wisława Szymborska, Polish poet and Noble Prize winner, wrote a poem about pi! (Original version here.) I don't get that poem, just as I don't get anything else she wrote, but it's nice to see she took some interest in science.

Another geek holiday to look forward to is Square Root day, which is more exceptional as it doesn't happen every year, the next one being 3/3/9. As of today, happy Pi day everyone!

Sources: Pi t-shirt, pi pie, pi pizza, pizza volume quote.