Author: adamo

I am a Greek DevOps Engineer ranting about everything, from email to sports; to living in Athens, Greece.

Thank you Pucciplast!

For our WC we use a Pucciplast ECO built-in tank. It has a clever design and it saves space. However, the plate that holds the flush buttons got damaged. We tried to replace it by contacting the dealer that we bought it in the first place. Unfortunately they were no longer working with their products.

So I turned to Pucciplast and asked them whether I could buy directly two chromium covered cover plates (one to replace the broken one, and one for the future, just in case). Within a day Pucciplast replied that they could not sell us directly the product. However, they would sent us two plates free of charge. Now this is what I call customer support! We were asked to photograph the broken one and send the photo back to them. Which we did.

Today I installed the new cover plate. So there:

Thank you Pucciplast and a big “thank you” to Mrs. Nadia Bosi for making all the arrangements!

Ymail

Νομίζω πως σαν κίνηση άργησε κάτι χρόνια: Το Yahoo! Mail ανακοίνωσε πως δίνει πλέον τη δυνατότητα στους χρήστες να επιλέγουν δύο ακόμα domain names (πέρα από τα κλασσικά yahoo.com, yahoo.gr, yahoo.co.uk, κ.λπ.):

Καλή προσπάθεια, ενδιαφέρον και το press announcement:

“Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced the global availability of two new e-mail domains that will give users the chance to register for the e-mail address or Yahoo! ID they have always wanted. People can finally say goodbye to CutiePie4Ever80 or mattclark1977@yahoo.com and get a new Yahoo! e-mail address at ymail.com and rocketmail.com.”

αλλά γράφει ο Ryan:

“There is not any way to link or merge the accounts.”

Οπότε ποιο το όφελος για κάποιον να “ανοίξει” ένα ymail account και να μη μπορεί να το κάνει link με το υπάρχον Yahoo! Mail account; Εάν δεν μπορεί να το κάνει link / merge / migrate είναι το ίδιο σα να το άνοιγε στο βασικό ανταγωνιστή. Και αφού είναι το ίδιο, γιατί να μην το κάνει κιόλας;

re: My Desktop

Το ζητήσανε ο HSOC και ο Δημήτρης. Μόνο που …δεν έχω desktop: my ...desktop

Είμαι στο τραπέζι του σαλονιού. Όχι τόσο μινιμαλιστικό surrounding όσο αυτό στο unclutterer δηλαδή. Διακρίνονται ένα ραδιοφωνο (που παίζει “Παρέα με τα Νούμερα“) το προστατευτικό οθόνης-πληκτρολογίου του laptop, ένας καναπές και το μπουκάλι νερού του μικρού. Α ναι, το laptop στηρίζεται σε δύο λαστιχένιες σφήνες που κανονικά κρατάνε πόρτες. Ιδέα που πήρα από το lifehacker.

Η πρόσκληση επεκτείνεται στον Ντροπαλό και τον Brute Force.

On documentation…

Γράφει ο Terry Zink*:

“It gets tense when stuff breaks that hasn’t broken in a long time because nobody can remember how to fix it. When you do it once and then leave it, it doesn’t always stick in our memories.”

Είχα την εντύπωση πως σε οργανισμούς που δουλεύουν με παραπάνω από 1,5 Postmaster δεν συμβαίνουν αυτά…


[*] – Ο Terry Zink εργάζεται στο Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services antispam division.

Graph Theory

15+ years ago as an undergraduate I was interested in graphs. Manos then suggested that I should read Christos‘ PhD thesis. Then came work. Then came this paper. Then came even more work. I forgot about graphs. My interest was renewed after spending family vacations with a theorist’s family. Aris presented me with a challenge, while this fall, this man taught me the foundations from a non-CS perspective.

In the words of Steve Yegge:

“Graphs are, like, really really important. More than you think. Even if you already think they’re important, it’s probably more than you think.”

Notice the “really really important” part. For it is not “really2 important”; rather it is more of “reallyn important” (for n >> 2). Go down to your library and read Bela Bollobas’ “Modern Graph Theory” (I found its predecessor “Graph Theory – An Introductory Course”) or even Reinhard Diestel’s “Graph Theory” which is also available online*. For those who read Greek, here is a quick introduction (definitions and theorems but no proofs): Εφαρμογές Θεωρίας Γραφημάτων.

In an era when (almost) everyone seems to be talking about the social graph, or applications that make use of it, you need the mathematical background. If you have an idea that builds on social networks it is almost inevitable that its development and implementation will make use of theorems or more general results of graph theory. So, since you will have to deal with it, why not be prepared? Or even if you have devised a graph data model that can kill the RDBMS+, why not use the theory to support the argument?


[*] – Originally I wanted to write a simple “post-it” on Diestel’s book. However, in the process I decided to make it a typical blog post of three to four paragraphs. You may even want to dig more by reading Bernie Hogan’s “Using Information Networks to Study Social Behavior: An Appraisal “, the stuff over at the NetWiki and the articles in the graph theory section of MarkCC’s Good Math, Bad Math.

[+] – Hank, this is not a polemic on your view on RDBMS; we have already agreed on what parts of this view we disagree.