When you have an idea you won’t work on, share it

Someone else will pick it up and do better work than you ever planned to.

The story goes like this: I was always fascinated by surveys like the ones Netcraft did. Over the years, more organizations added their own surveys, redoing what Netcraft did, or complementing what already existed with new research and data. I was always interested in redoing some of this stuff at the national scale, namely observing how the global surveys compare with similar ones about “greek” IP addresses or .GR domains.

Alas, two were the problems. .GR data is not easy to get access to and of course time there is not.

However a few months ago I bumped into this DNS census list which contains .GR data one can work on. And stuff that I wanted to do came back to haunt me. Knowing that I would not be able to find the time to do so, I hinted to my friends at Project Zero what would be something nice to work on. A few weeks later they came back with their preliminary results.

I am eagerly waiting for the next parts of their analysis.

Εστία

To Σάββατο 30 Μαρτίου 2013 ήταν η τελευταία ημέρα λειτουργίας του ιστορικού βιβλιοπωλείου της Εστίας στην οδό Σόλωνος 60 στο κέντρο της Αθήνας. Τις επόμενες μέρες κάποιοι άνθρωποι εξέφρασαν τα συναισθήματα τους αφήνοντας σημειώματα πάνω στην πόρτα.

Εστία, η πόρτα
Εστία, η πόρτα

Σε λιγότερο από μήνα, τα μηνύματα αυτά είχαν αφαιρεθεί:

Continue reading “Εστία” →

This is not free Internet access

I just had the chance to browse through the proposal PDF (local copy) about implementing free WiFi access throughout Greece, a promise made by the Prime Minister of Greece on 2013/11/5. It basically boils down to this:

Free WiFi Internet access is 30 minutes to surf the web. Then you disconnect and reconnect.

This is not free WiFi. This is not free Internet access and this is definitely not a growth enabler. Simply put:

This is how the environment embarrasses the Prime Minister (and the country if implemented verbatim).

Where is POP3? IMAP? SMTP? Hell! Where is ssh? This is the Free Big Firewall of Greece.

You people are supposed to know that the Internet is the network and the World Wide Web is a network application. You still have time to change the slides.

Error: {cannot_discover_cluster,”The nodes provided are either offline or not running”}

When you have hosts with multiple interfaces that you want them to be parts of a RabbitMQ cluster, you may get this error:

Error: {cannot_discover_cluster,"The nodes provided are either offline or not running"}

This may happen when you want all communication to go through a specific interface for each host. In such cases after setting up the DNS and/or /etc/hosts correctly, it may help you to explicitly set RABBITMQ_NODE_IP_ADDRESS and RABBITMQ_NODENAME in /etc/rabbitmq/rabbitmq-env.conf.

Then you may proceed with the rest of the instructions.

The Elements of Computing Style

I bought The Elements of Computing Style on an impulse, mainly because it is written by dds and I do not own any of his other books. So I did not even pay attention to the subtitle:

190+ Tips for Busy Knowledge Workers

So what I expected was a book with advise on writing code, or on choosing certain algorithms for solutions of certain (small compared to Big Data) sizes. But this is a productivity book of another kind. It offers advise from when to read email in order to make the most of your available worktime to whether your chair should have arms or not and why. It is written in a clear flowing style and if you’ve ever heard dds speak, you almost listen his voice while reading it. It is not heavy stuff and this makes it an excellent companion for the bus.

Given my aversion to certain word processors I particularly enjoyed advise on how to handle documents with them and picked up a few helpful tips along the way. Travelling advise was fun even though it does not affect me and I find chapter 2 (Work Habits) the most important one since it offers ways to deal with interruptions of the flow:

It can take us more than 15 minutes to enter into such a state of focused attention, and only a trivial interruption to exit from it.

Best advise from the book: LOG YOUR CHANGES

The book is available from Lean Publications which makes it an interesting experiment as it has both a minimum and a suggested price and as you decide how much you’re going to pay for it, you are immediately informed how much of your money goes directly to the author.

WTF?

“illnesses like cancer are not considered urgent, unless you are in the final stages.”

Because you know, then the State can exhibit “humane” behavior. The idiocy of this kind of thinking is beyond me. There are cases where the early stages should be treated as urgent. You know why? Because it is an investment and it works this way: You treat their condition and they get to work and pay you taxes. Wait until they get to the final stage and you’re billed for whatever treatment you offer them without any actual fiscal or moral return.

Then again, such thinking should not surprise me: A system does what a system does, despite its stated purpose. We know from Systemantics that the stated purpose is never served.

Update: This is not a post about cancer. This is about how a health system chooses to treat chronic situations. I thought it was obvious. Chronic situations are a real productivity killer, but hey what do I know, right?

2-0

Καιρό είχα να γράψω δυο γραμμές για την ομάδα. Είμαι μεγάλος φαν του Τσόρι (υπάρχει φίλος που λαμβάνει SMS με το κείμενο “Τσόρι ρε!” όποτε βάζει γκολ).

Νομίζω πως κανείς Ολυμπιακός (ή Παναθηναϊκός) δεν έχει ξεχάσει την δήλωση του Σερ. Έστω κι αν ήταν μούφα μια και είχε πει “The key factor in European games is respect, whether we are playing Inter Milan or Real Madrid” και δεν είχε αναφερθεί στον Ολυμπιακό.

Από την άλλη σκέφτομαι πως εάν παίζαμε με τον Σερ Άλεξ στον πάγκο, μπορεί και να μην κερδίζαμε.

Ωραίο ήταν.

Δεν είδα τον αγώνα. Άκουγα το δημόσιο ραδιόφωνο κάνοντας debugging. Και πήγε μια χαρά.