5 ==== Random Birthday Paradox ====
7 I'm writing you this from ChrisBalls's house. cjb for IRC freins.
8 Yesterday was his wife's birthday. And also the birthday of somebody
9 else too. That's where the title came from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox .
11 We're having a lot of fun and getting drunk very quickly. Someone
12 came with a box of Avocados with a picture of Avogardo saying:
13 "let's Party. arriba." It's the things like these that will make it
14 very sad for me to leave this nation.
16 Food is vegan, and incredibly tasty if you ask me. There are people
17 from the office as well as other nerds from other places. One guy
18 showed up with a tee saying: "shut the fuck up and write some
19 code!". We're listening to TheSoundOfSilence from Xyzzy's (*) mp3 player.
20 That's one of my favourite songs, but I thought it was from the Beatles :-)
22 (*) We'll call her Xyzzy 'cause she doesn't want her name to end up on
25 RandomBirthdayParty.jpg
26 RandomBirthdayPartyHouse.jpg
31 ==== Long time, no C++ ====
33 The title was inteded to be a joke on "long time, no see", because I've
34 not been updating the blog for some time.
36 But this reminds me that, yes, indeed I've not been doing any C++ for a few
37 months now. That's probably irrelevant to most of you... but this is my blog
38 and I get to decide what goes in. Except when *you* edit it. Damn WikiWikiWeb!
40 The reason we don't have any C++ in the OLPC is that, in the Linux world,
41 C++ never flied that much. The kernel hackers say it's not well suited
42 for kernel programming, and I partially agree. Of course, C++ can't be
43 used for glibc and POSIX system libraries. Even MicrosoftCompany uses C
46 This leaves us with three more layers to exclude: windowing server,
47 desktop and applications.
49 X11 is written in C for historical reasons. Since its internals mostly
50 deal with interfaces and specialization of interfaces, C++ would have
53 Gnome also uses C, for no good reason. KDE is older than Gnome and
54 was entirely written in C++, although I clearly remember g++ 2.7.2 being
55 quite a painful experience. The GObject crap in glib and GTK is expecially
56 ugly, hard to use and error prone due to lack of good OOP support in the
59 And applications? Well, applications in the OLPC are written in Python
60 anyway, like many higher level applications in regular Linux distros.
62 There's a few exceptions: Mozilla is written in C++ and eToys is written
63 in SmallTalk. I don't know about TamTam.
65 '''rasky:''' in fact, with the raise of scripting languages and fully-featured
66 platforms (like Java's), using C++ for doing almost *anything* is the wrong
67 choice. As you said, system programming wants C for several good reasons, and
68 almost anything else can be done in scripting language. I think one last thing
69 that C++ is still good today at is high-performance libraries (eg: math
70 libraries), where you don't want to use C and you need a lot of performance.
71 But C++ is feeling more and more like a dead horse...
73 '''marco:''' About writing kernels in C++:
74 http://okmij.org/ftp/cpp-digest/toy_OS.txt
78 ==== Under pressure ====
80 Miletstone B4 was expected to ship today. I don't care because my work
81 is for due for Trial2. But many of my colleagues were extremely
84 There is one last bug with some laptops not coming out of resume.
85 And it's still not fixed at 21:00. Kernel hackers are scraping
88 We had pizza together and, seeing so many tired faces, I casually asked:
89 "when do we close for summer?".
91 People look at me puzzled: "What do you mean exactly by ''close''?".
93 "Err... companies don't close for summer here in the States?".
95 They look at each other, trying to guess if it's some kind
96 of joke: "Why would companies ever ''close''? They're not schools."
98 I quickly added: "Oh, I'm asking because, you know, most
99 companies in Italy do close a few weeks for summer".
101 At this point everybody laughed like if companies closing
102 was an extremely funny idea.
104 This is one reason why we have a strong economy here: people
105 are extremely committed at work. Will I ever catch up? Hope so.
110 ==== Eutelia Voip ====
112 I have a new public phone number: {{055-3984187}}.
114 It's Eutelia's VOIP service, formerly Skypho. People told me
115 that the quality is good. All the previous phone numbers remain
118 I've also switched from Ekiga to a SIP client that doesn't
121 http://www.twinklephone.com/
123 Actually, the user interface is horrible. But if you close
124 your eyes, it works beautifully.
129 ==== Sleeping At The Office ====
131 We have a futon here. And it's quite comfortable. Sleeping
132 at the office has its pros and cons, hereby listed by Dillinger:
137 ==== Bender Down ====
139 There has been a longstanding outage of our wiki server since yesterday.
140 Today, my sister finally fixed the problem by rebooting both the modem
143 http://bender.codewiz.org/bender.jpg
145 I'm planning to move bender here one day, so I can properly maintain
146 it, but first I need to consolidate my visa position.
151 ==== More laptop news ====
153 Available here: http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=News
155 Some links to videos in the end. There's not much about me, mostly because I've not done
156 much this week besides chasing bugs.
159 ==== Father and son private business ====
161 E' una settimana che non scrivi. Dove sei sparito? -- '''Babbo'''
163 Avevo problemi di ADSL piuttosto gravi su questo server... ora e' a posto, ma oggi ho da finire delle cose urgenti. Vedo di scrivere due righe nel w/e, scusate tanto -- '''bernie'''
169 Two days ago I went to the local pub for the HappyHour... the HungryHour actually.
170 And I ordered this tasty dish of Cheese Bacon Fries! Yummy yum!
172 http://gastrologica.com/cheesefries.jpg
174 Ok, it's a disgusting blob of pure fat. And the infamous Cheddar
175 cheese, also known as "solid cholesterol":
177 http://www.dann-online.com/HappyHour/lrg93.jpg
180 If you're looking for something healthy, you can always try a
181 salad. Just make sure you don't get a Caesar salad with its
182 ultra-fat dressing sauce:
184 http://www.kosherblog.net/media/caesar.jpg
186 You may also want to avoid hot dogs drowned in chili sauce:
188 http://onokinegrindz.typepad.com/ono_kine_grindz/images/WaffleDogwithChili-thumb.jpg
190 American pizza is edible and even good... But I recently discovered that
191 Pepperoni aren't vegetables, but a kind of hot salami:
193 http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/PTGPOD/409409~Close-up-of-Pepperoni-Pizza-Posters.jpg
196 And, finally, beware of food franchises pretending to be Italian.
199 http://www.emich.edu/dining/images/sbarro/sbarro.jpg
204 ==== Bernie is going to write something here soon ====