3 The story continues in the [[blog/2007/07|July 2007 blog]].
7 ==== Italian profanity ====
9 I just found out that "A Cappella" is how Italians say "in the style of the church".
10 It's used for music played by human voice instead of instruments. Yes, indeed.
11 Nobody could understand why I was grinning :-)
15 ==== Random Birthday Paradox ====
17 I'm writing you this from ChrisBalls's house. cjb for IRC friends.
18 Yesterday was his wife's birthday. And also the birthday of somebody
19 else too. That's where the title came from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox .
21 We're having a lot of fun and getting drunk very quickly. Someone
22 came with a box of Avocados with a picture of Avogardo saying:
23 "let's Party. arriba." It's the things like these that will make it
24 very sad for me to leave this nation.
26 Food is vegan, and incredibly tasty if you ask me. There are people
27 from the office as well as other nerds from other places. One guy
28 showed up with a tee saying: "shut the fuck up and write some
29 code!". We're listening to TheSoundOfSilence from Xyzzy's (*) mp3 player.
30 That's one of my favourite songs, but I thought it was from the Beatles :-)
32 (*) We'll call her Xyzzy 'cause she doesn't want her name to end up on
36 Xyzzy: remember...all is not as it appears to be and the best place to hide something is in plain sight
38 Bernie: hmmm... then I guess I'll hide at OLPC and the USCIS won't find me :-)
40 RandomBirthdayParty.jpg
41 RandomBirthdayPartyHouse.jpg
42 RandomBirthdayPartyTv.jpg
43 RandomBirthdayPartyHall.jpg
48 ==== Long time, no C++ ====
50 The title was inteded to be a joke on "long time, no see", because I've
51 not been updating the blog for some time.
53 But this reminds me that, yes, indeed I've not been doing any C++ for a few
54 months now. That's probably irrelevant to most of you... but this is my blog
55 and I get to decide what goes in. Except when *you* edit it. Damn WikiWikiWeb!
57 The reason we don't have any C++ in the OLPC is that, in the Linux world,
58 C++ never flied that much. The kernel hackers say it's not well suited
59 for kernel programming, and I partially agree. Of course, C++ can't be
60 used for glibc and POSIX system libraries. Even MicrosoftCompany uses C
63 This leaves us with three more layers to exclude: windowing server,
64 desktop and applications.
66 X11 is written in C for historical reasons. Since its internals mostly
67 deal with interfaces and specialization of interfaces, C++ would have
70 Gnome also uses C, for no good reason. KDE is older than Gnome and
71 was entirely written in C++, although I clearly remember g++ 2.7.2 being
72 quite a painful experience. The GObject crap in glib and GTK is expecially
73 ugly, hard to use and error prone due to lack of good OOP support in the
76 And applications? Well, applications in the OLPC are written in Python
77 anyway, like many higher level applications in regular Linux distros.
79 There's a few exceptions: Mozilla is written in C++ and eToys is written
80 in SmallTalk. I don't know about TamTam.
82 '''rasky:''' in fact, with the raise of scripting languages and fully-featured
83 platforms (like Java's), using C++ for doing almost *anything* is the wrong
84 choice. As you said, system programming wants C for several good reasons, and
85 almost anything else can be done in scripting language. I think one last thing
86 that C++ is still good today at is high-performance libraries (eg: math
87 libraries), where you don't want to use C and you need a lot of performance.
88 But C++ is feeling more and more like a dead horse...
90 '''marco:''' About writing kernels in C++:
91 http://okmij.org/ftp/cpp-digest/toy_OS.txt
95 ==== Under pressure ====
97 Miletstone B4 was expected to ship today. I don't care because my work
98 is for due for Trial2. But many of my colleagues were extremely
101 There is one last bug with some laptops not coming out of resume.
102 And it's still not fixed at 21:00. Kernel hackers are scraping
105 We had pizza together and, seeing so many tired faces, I casually asked:
106 "when do we close for summer?".
108 People look at me puzzled: "What do you mean exactly by ''close''?".
110 "Err... companies don't close for summer here in the States?".
112 They look at each other, trying to guess if it's some kind
113 of joke: "Why would companies ever ''close''? They're not schools."
115 I quickly added: "Oh, I'm asking because, you know, most
116 companies in Italy do close a few weeks for summer".
118 At this point everybody laughed like if companies closing
119 was an extremely funny idea.
121 This is one reason why we have a strong economy here: people
122 are extremely committed at work. Will I ever catch up? Hope so.
127 ==== Eutelia Voip ====
129 I have a new public phone number: {{055-3984187}}.
131 It's Eutelia's VOIP service, formerly Skypho. People told me
132 that the quality is good. All the previous phone numbers remain
135 I've also switched from Ekiga to a SIP client that doesn't
138 http://www.twinklephone.com/
140 Actually, the user interface is horrible. But if you close
141 your eyes, it works beautifully.
146 ==== Sleeping At The Office ====
148 We have a futon here. And it's quite comfortable. Sleeping
149 at the office has its pros and cons, hereby listed by Dillinger:
154 ==== Bender Down ====
156 There has been a longstanding outage of our wiki server since yesterday.
157 Today, my sister finally fixed the problem by rebooting both the modem
160 http://bender.codewiz.org/bender.jpg
162 I'm planning to move bender here one day, so I can properly maintain
163 it, but first I need to consolidate my visa position.
168 ==== More laptop news ====
170 Available here: http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=News
172 Some links to videos in the end. There's not much about me, mostly because I've not done
173 much this week besides chasing bugs.
176 ==== Father and son private business ====
178 E' una settimana che non scrivi. Dove sei sparito? -- '''Babbo'''
180 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'''
186 Two days ago I went to the local pub for the HappyHour... the HungryHour actually.
187 And I ordered this tasty dish of Cheese Bacon Fries! Yummy yum!
189 http://gastrologica.com/cheesefries.jpg
191 Ok, it's a disgusting blob of pure fat. And the infamous Cheddar
192 cheese, also known as "solid cholesterol":
194 http://www.dann-online.com/HappyHour/lrg93.jpg
197 If you're looking for something healthy, you can always try a
198 salad. Just make sure you don't get a Caesar salad with its
199 ultra-fat dressing sauce:
201 http://www.kosherblog.net/media/caesar.jpg
203 You may also want to avoid hot dogs drowned in chili sauce:
205 http://onokinegrindz.typepad.com/ono_kine_grindz/images/WaffleDogwithChili-thumb.jpg
207 American pizza is edible and even good... But I recently discovered that
208 Pepperoni aren't vegetables, but a kind of hot salami:
210 http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/PTGPOD/409409~Close-up-of-Pepperoni-Pizza-Posters.jpg
213 And, finally, beware of food franchises pretending to be Italian.
216 http://jrfowler.com/SbarroLogo.JPG
220 ==== Bernie is going to write something here soon ====