5 ==== Italian profanity ====
7 I just found out that "A Cappella" is how Italians say "in the style of the church".
8 It's used for music played by human voice instead of instruments. Yes, indeed.
9 Nobody could understand why I was grinning :-)
12 ==== Random Birthday Paradox ====
14 I'm writing you this from ChrisBalls's house. cjb for IRC friends.
15 Yesterday was his wife's birthday. And also the birthday of somebody
16 else too. That's where the title came from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox .
18 We're having a lot of fun and getting drunk very quickly. Someone
19 came with a box of Avocados with a picture of Avogardo saying:
20 "let's Party. arriba." It's the things like these that will make it
21 very sad for me to leave this nation.
23 Food is vegan, and incredibly tasty if you ask me. There are people
24 from the office as well as other nerds from other places. One guy
25 showed up with a tee saying: "shut the fuck up and write some
26 code!". We're listening to TheSoundOfSilence from Xyzzy's (*) mp3 player.
27 That's one of my favourite songs, but I thought it was from the Beatles :-)
29 (*) We'll call her Xyzzy 'cause she doesn't want her name to end up on
33 Xyzzy: remember...all is not as it appears to be and the best place to hide something is in plain sight
35 Bernie: hmmm... then I guess I'll hide at OLPC and the USCIS won't find me :-)
37 RandomBirthdayParty.jpg
38 RandomBirthdayPartyHouse.jpg
39 RandomBirthdayPartyTv.jpg
40 RandomBirthdayPartyHall.jpg
45 ==== Long time, no C++ ====
47 The title was inteded to be a joke on "long time, no see", because I've
48 not been updating the blog for some time.
50 But this reminds me that, yes, indeed I've not been doing any C++ for a few
51 months now. That's probably irrelevant to most of you... but this is my blog
52 and I get to decide what goes in. Except when *you* edit it. Damn WikiWikiWeb!
54 The reason we don't have any C++ in the OLPC is that, in the Linux world,
55 C++ never flied that much. The kernel hackers say it's not well suited
56 for kernel programming, and I partially agree. Of course, C++ can't be
57 used for glibc and POSIX system libraries. Even MicrosoftCompany uses C
60 This leaves us with three more layers to exclude: windowing server,
61 desktop and applications.
63 X11 is written in C for historical reasons. Since its internals mostly
64 deal with interfaces and specialization of interfaces, C++ would have
67 Gnome also uses C, for no good reason. KDE is older than Gnome and
68 was entirely written in C++, although I clearly remember g++ 2.7.2 being
69 quite a painful experience. The GObject crap in glib and GTK is expecially
70 ugly, hard to use and error prone due to lack of good OOP support in the
73 And applications? Well, applications in the OLPC are written in Python
74 anyway, like many higher level applications in regular Linux distros.
76 There's a few exceptions: Mozilla is written in C++ and eToys is written
77 in SmallTalk. I don't know about TamTam.
79 '''rasky:''' in fact, with the raise of scripting languages and fully-featured
80 platforms (like Java's), using C++ for doing almost *anything* is the wrong
81 choice. As you said, system programming wants C for several good reasons, and
82 almost anything else can be done in scripting language. I think one last thing
83 that C++ is still good today at is high-performance libraries (eg: math
84 libraries), where you don't want to use C and you need a lot of performance.
85 But C++ is feeling more and more like a dead horse...
87 '''marco:''' About writing kernels in C++:
88 http://okmij.org/ftp/cpp-digest/toy_OS.txt
92 ==== Under pressure ====
94 Miletstone B4 was expected to ship today. I don't care because my work
95 is for due for Trial2. But many of my colleagues were extremely
98 There is one last bug with some laptops not coming out of resume.
99 And it's still not fixed at 21:00. Kernel hackers are scraping
102 We had pizza together and, seeing so many tired faces, I casually asked:
103 "when do we close for summer?".
105 People look at me puzzled: "What do you mean exactly by ''close''?".
107 "Err... companies don't close for summer here in the States?".
109 They look at each other, trying to guess if it's some kind
110 of joke: "Why would companies ever ''close''? They're not schools."
112 I quickly added: "Oh, I'm asking because, you know, most
113 companies in Italy do close a few weeks for summer".
115 At this point everybody laughed like if companies closing
116 was an extremely funny idea.
118 This is one reason why we have a strong economy here: people
119 are extremely committed at work. Will I ever catch up? Hope so.
124 ==== Eutelia Voip ====
126 I have a new public phone number: {{055-3984187}}.
128 It's Eutelia's VOIP service, formerly Skypho. People told me
129 that the quality is good. All the previous phone numbers remain
132 I've also switched from Ekiga to a SIP client that doesn't
135 http://www.twinklephone.com/
137 Actually, the user interface is horrible. But if you close
138 your eyes, it works beautifully.
143 ==== Sleeping At The Office ====
145 We have a futon here. And it's quite comfortable. Sleeping
146 at the office has its pros and cons, hereby listed by Dillinger:
151 ==== Bender Down ====
153 There has been a longstanding outage of our wiki server since yesterday.
154 Today, my sister finally fixed the problem by rebooting both the modem
157 http://bender.codewiz.org/bender.jpg
159 I'm planning to move bender here one day, so I can properly maintain
160 it, but first I need to consolidate my visa position.
165 ==== More laptop news ====
167 Available here: http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=News
169 Some links to videos in the end. There's not much about me, mostly because I've not done
170 much this week besides chasing bugs.
173 ==== Father and son private business ====
175 E' una settimana che non scrivi. Dove sei sparito? -- '''Babbo'''
177 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'''
183 Two days ago I went to the local pub for the HappyHour... the HungryHour actually.
184 And I ordered this tasty dish of Cheese Bacon Fries! Yummy yum!
186 http://gastrologica.com/cheesefries.jpg
188 Ok, it's a disgusting blob of pure fat. And the infamous Cheddar
189 cheese, also known as "solid cholesterol":
191 http://www.dann-online.com/HappyHour/lrg93.jpg
194 If you're looking for something healthy, you can always try a
195 salad. Just make sure you don't get a Caesar salad with its
196 ultra-fat dressing sauce:
198 http://www.kosherblog.net/media/caesar.jpg
200 You may also want to avoid hot dogs drowned in chili sauce:
202 http://onokinegrindz.typepad.com/ono_kine_grindz/images/WaffleDogwithChili-thumb.jpg
204 American pizza is edible and even good... But I recently discovered that
205 Pepperoni aren't vegetables, but a kind of hot salami:
207 http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/PTGPOD/409409~Close-up-of-Pepperoni-Pizza-Posters.jpg
210 And, finally, beware of food franchises pretending to be Italian.
213 http://www.emich.edu/dining/images/sbarro/sbarro.jpg
218 ==== Bernie is going to write something here soon ====