7 Since I'm basically forced out of the UnitedStates, I'm thinking
10 http://www.guadec.org/
12 I've never been a strong Gnome supporter. Actually, I've not
13 even been a Gnome user until lately.
15 Then why? Well, one reason is that it's in Birmingham, next to
16 where my friend Cristina lives. She invited me so many times
17 to visit her in England, and I really wanted to, but I never
18 had the opportunity to do it in so many years.
20 Another good reason is that some of the OLPC people will be
21 there. And I'll be able to meet many other non-OLPC hackers
24 If you want to come over, please contact me.
28 My body mass increased to 154 pounds. Or the gravity
29 of earth increased just too fool me.
33 I've updated the license of PikiPlus to GPLv3, and I invite
34 you to do the same with your programs and with any programs
35 distributed under the GPLv2 with the "or later version" clause.
39 ==== Italian profanity ====
41 I just found out that "A Cappella" is how Italians say "in the style of the church".
42 It's used for music played by human voice instead of instruments. Yes, indeed.
43 Nobody could understand why I was grinning :-)
47 ==== Random Birthday Paradox ====
49 I'm writing you this from ChrisBalls's house. cjb for IRC friends.
50 Yesterday was his wife's birthday. And also the birthday of somebody
51 else too. That's where the title came from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox .
53 We're having a lot of fun and getting drunk very quickly. Someone
54 came with a box of Avocados with a picture of Avogardo saying:
55 "let's Party. arriba." It's the things like these that will make it
56 very sad for me to leave this nation.
58 Food is vegan, and incredibly tasty if you ask me. There are people
59 from the office as well as other nerds from other places. One guy
60 showed up with a tee saying: "shut the fuck up and write some
61 code!". We're listening to TheSoundOfSilence from Xyzzy's (*) mp3 player.
62 That's one of my favourite songs, but I thought it was from the Beatles :-)
64 (*) We'll call her Xyzzy 'cause she doesn't want her name to end up on
68 Xyzzy: remember...all is not as it appears to be and the best place to hide something is in plain sight
70 Bernie: hmmm... then I guess I'll hide at OLPC and the USCIS won't find me :-)
72 RandomBirthdayParty.jpg
73 RandomBirthdayPartyHouse.jpg
74 RandomBirthdayPartyTv.jpg
75 RandomBirthdayPartyHall.jpg
80 ==== Long time, no C++ ====
82 The title was inteded to be a joke on "long time, no see", because I've
83 not been updating the blog for some time.
85 But this reminds me that, yes, indeed I've not been doing any C++ for a few
86 months now. That's probably irrelevant to most of you... but this is my blog
87 and I get to decide what goes in. Except when *you* edit it. Damn WikiWikiWeb!
89 The reason we don't have any C++ in the OLPC is that, in the Linux world,
90 C++ never flied that much. The kernel hackers say it's not well suited
91 for kernel programming, and I partially agree. Of course, C++ can't be
92 used for glibc and POSIX system libraries. Even MicrosoftCompany uses C
95 This leaves us with three more layers to exclude: windowing server,
96 desktop and applications.
98 X11 is written in C for historical reasons. Since its internals mostly
99 deal with interfaces and specialization of interfaces, C++ would have
100 been very beneficial.
102 Gnome also uses C, for no good reason. KDE is older than Gnome and
103 was entirely written in C++, although I clearly remember g++ 2.7.2 being
104 quite a painful experience. The GObject crap in glib and GTK is expecially
105 ugly, hard to use and error prone due to lack of good OOP support in the
108 And applications? Well, applications in the OLPC are written in Python
109 anyway, like many higher level applications in regular Linux distros.
111 There's a few exceptions: Mozilla is written in C++ and eToys is written
112 in SmallTalk. I don't know about TamTam.
114 '''rasky:''' in fact, with the raise of scripting languages and fully-featured
115 platforms (like Java's), using C++ for doing almost *anything* is the wrong
116 choice. As you said, system programming wants C for several good reasons, and
117 almost anything else can be done in scripting language. I think one last thing
118 that C++ is still good today at is high-performance libraries (eg: math
119 libraries), where you don't want to use C and you need a lot of performance.
120 But C++ is feeling more and more like a dead horse...
122 '''marco:''' About writing kernels in C++:
123 http://okmij.org/ftp/cpp-digest/toy_OS.txt
127 ==== Under pressure ====
129 Miletstone B4 was expected to ship today. I don't care because my work
130 is for due for Trial2. But many of my colleagues were extremely
133 There is one last bug with some laptops not coming out of resume.
134 And it's still not fixed at 21:00. Kernel hackers are scraping
137 We had pizza together and, seeing so many tired faces, I casually asked:
138 "when do we close for summer?".
140 People look at me puzzled: "What do you mean exactly by ''close''?".
142 "Err... companies don't close for summer here in the States?".
144 They look at each other, trying to guess if it's some kind
145 of joke: "Why would companies ever ''close''? They're not schools."
147 I quickly added: "Oh, I'm asking because, you know, most
148 companies in Italy do close a few weeks for summer".
150 At this point everybody laughed like if companies closing
151 was an extremely funny idea.
153 This is one reason why we have a strong economy here: people
154 are extremely committed at work. Will I ever catch up? Hope so.
159 ==== Eutelia Voip ====
161 I have a new public phone number: {{055-3984187}}.
163 It's Eutelia's VOIP service, formerly Skypho. People told me
164 that the quality is good. All the previous phone numbers remain
167 I've also switched from Ekiga to a SIP client that doesn't
170 http://www.twinklephone.com/
172 Actually, the user interface is horrible. But if you close
173 your eyes, it works beautifully.
178 ==== Sleeping At The Office ====
180 We have a futon here. And it's quite comfortable. Sleeping
181 at the office has its pros and cons, hereby listed by Dillinger:
186 ==== Bender Down ====
188 There has been a longstanding outage of our wiki server since yesterday.
189 Today, my sister finally fixed the problem by rebooting both the modem
192 http://bender.codewiz.org/bender.jpg
194 I'm planning to move bender here one day, so I can properly maintain
195 it, but first I need to consolidate my visa position.
200 ==== More laptop news ====
202 Available here: http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=News
204 Some links to videos in the end. There's not much about me, mostly because I've not done
205 much this week besides chasing bugs.
208 ==== Father and son private business ====
210 E' una settimana che non scrivi. Dove sei sparito? -- '''Babbo'''
212 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'''
218 Two days ago I went to the local pub for the HappyHour... the HungryHour actually.
219 And I ordered this tasty dish of Cheese Bacon Fries! Yummy yum!
221 http://gastrologica.com/cheesefries.jpg
223 Ok, it's a disgusting blob of pure fat. And the infamous Cheddar
224 cheese, also known as "solid cholesterol":
226 http://www.dann-online.com/HappyHour/lrg93.jpg
229 If you're looking for something healthy, you can always try a
230 salad. Just make sure you don't get a Caesar salad with its
231 ultra-fat dressing sauce:
233 http://www.kosherblog.net/media/caesar.jpg
235 You may also want to avoid hot dogs drowned in chili sauce:
237 http://onokinegrindz.typepad.com/ono_kine_grindz/images/WaffleDogwithChili-thumb.jpg
239 American pizza is edible and even good... But I recently discovered that
240 Pepperoni aren't vegetables, but a kind of hot salami:
242 http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/PTGPOD/409409~Close-up-of-Pepperoni-Pizza-Posters.jpg
245 And, finally, beware of food franchises pretending to be Italian.
248 http://www.emich.edu/dining/images/sbarro/sbarro.jpg
253 ==== Bernie is going to write something here soon ====