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 T ahirt 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
27 ==== Long time, no C++ ====
29 The title was inteded to be a joke on "long time, no see", because I've
30 not been updating the blog for some time.
32 But this reminds me that, yes, indeed I've not been doing any C++ for a few
33 months now. That's probably irrelevant to most of you... but this is my blog
34 and I get to decide what goes in. Except when *you* edit it. Damn WikiWikiWeb!
36 The reason we don't have any C++ in the OLPC is that, in the Linux world,
37 C++ never flied that much. The kernel hackers say it's not well suited
38 for kernel programming, and I partially agree. Of course, C++ can't be
39 used for glibc and POSIX system libraries. Even MicrosoftCompany uses C
42 This leaves us with three more layers to exclude: windowing server,
43 desktop and applications.
45 X11 is written in C for historical reasons. Since its internals mostly
46 deal with interfaces and specialization of interfaces, C++ would have
49 Gnome also uses C, for no good reason. KDE is older than Gnome and
50 was entirely written in C++, although I clearly remember g++ 2.7.2 being
51 quite a painful experience. The GObject crap in glib and GTK is expecially
52 ugly, hard to use and error prone due to lack of good OOP support in the
55 And applications? Well, applications in the OLPC are written in Python
56 anyway, like many higher level applications in regular Linux distros.
58 There's a few exceptions: Mozilla is written in C++ and eToys is written
59 in SmallTalk. I don't know about TamTam.
61 '''rasky:''' in fact, with the raise of scripting languages and fully-featured
62 platforms (like Java's), using C++ for doing almost *anything* is the wrong
63 choice. As you said, system programming wants C for several good reasons, and
64 almost anything else can be done in scripting language. I think one last thing
65 that C++ is still good today at is high-performance libraries (eg: math
66 libraries), where you don't want to use C and you need a lot of performance.
67 But C++ is feeling more and more like a dead horse...
69 '''marco:''' About writing kernels in C++:
70 http://okmij.org/ftp/cpp-digest/toy_OS.txt
74 ==== Under pressure ====
76 Miletstone B4 was expected to ship today. I don't care because my work
77 is for due for Trial2. But many of my colleagues were extremely
80 There is one last bug with some laptops not coming out of resume.
81 And it's still not fixed at 21:00. Kernel hackers are scraping
84 We had pizza together and, seeing so many tired faces, I casually asked:
85 "when do we close for summer?".
87 People look at me puzzled: "What do you mean exactly by ''close''?".
89 "Err... companies don't close for summer here in the States?".
91 They look at each other, trying to guess if it's some kind
92 of joke: "Why would companies ever ''close''? They're not schools."
94 I quickly added: "Oh, I'm asking because, you know, most
95 companies in Italy do close a few weeks for summer".
97 At this point everybody laughed like if companies closing
98 was an extremely funny idea.
100 This is one reason why we have a strong economy here: people
101 are extremely committed at work. Will I ever catch up? Hope so.
106 ==== Eutelia Voip ====
108 I have a new public phone number: {{055-3984187}}.
110 It's Eutelia's VOIP service, formerly Skypho. People told me
111 that the quality is good. All the previous phone numbers remain
114 I've also switched from Ekiga to a SIP client that doesn't
117 http://www.twinklephone.com/
119 Actually, the user interface is horrible. But if you close
120 your eyes, it works beautifully.
125 ==== Sleeping At The Office ====
127 We have a futon here. And it's quite comfortable. Sleeping
128 at the office has its pros and cons, hereby listed by Dillinger:
133 ==== Bender Down ====
135 There has been a longstanding outage of our wiki server since yesterday.
136 Today, my sister finally fixed the problem by rebooting both the modem
139 http://bender.codewiz.org/bender.jpg
141 I'm planning to move bender here one day, so I can properly maintain
142 it, but first I need to consolidate my visa position.
147 ==== More laptop news ====
149 Available here: http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=News
151 Some links to videos in the end. There's not much about me, mostly because I've not done
152 much this week besides chasing bugs.
155 ==== Father and son private business ====
157 E' una settimana che non scrivi. Dove sei sparito? -- '''Babbo'''
159 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'''
165 Two days ago I went to the local pub for the HappyHour... the HungryHour actually.
166 And I ordered this tasty dish of Cheese Bacon Fries! Yummy yum!
168 http://gastrologica.com/cheesefries.jpg
170 Ok, it's a disgusting blob of pure fat. And the infamous Cheddar
171 cheese, also known as "solid cholesterol":
173 http://www.dann-online.com/HappyHour/lrg93.jpg
176 If you're looking for something healthy, you can always try a
177 salad. Just make sure you don't get a Caesar salad with its
178 ultra-fat dressing sauce:
180 http://www.kosherblog.net/media/caesar.jpg
182 You may also want to avoid hot dogs drowned in chili sauce:
184 http://onokinegrindz.typepad.com/ono_kine_grindz/images/WaffleDogwithChili-thumb.jpg
186 American pizza is edible and even good... But I recently discovered that
187 Pepperoni aren't vegetables, but a kind of hot salami:
189 http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/PTGPOD/409409~Close-up-of-Pepperoni-Pizza-Posters.jpg
192 And, finally, beware of food franchises pretending to be Italian.
195 http://www.emich.edu/dining/images/sbarro/sbarro.jpg
200 ==== Bernie is going to write something here soon ====