Look, someone's on that tree

09:09 am - Fedora 12

Реших това ревю да го напиша на български, защото достатъчно има изписани на английски. Който ми трябва на английски ще си го намери.
Метод на инсталация: Както обикновено, свалям DVD-то и го монтираме при уеб сървъра:

06:02 pm - Foggy morning

Small panorama in a foggy Sunday morning:

Full size can be downloaded from here. Unfortunately the stain in the upper centre spot I couldn't avoid because automated pano stitcher (autopano-sift-c). Still it is sweet, isn't it?

08:24 pm - Global warming is myth

They say there is nothing wrong with the climate.
I can confirm - there is not!
Today they were putting the Christmas light on the buildings downtown. And they were mowing the grass in front of those buildings. That’s perfectly normal! Especially if you happen to live in Miami....

09:53 pm - Google and the future of Javascript

Recently I have encountered few articles on-line concerning GWT and the future web application, more precisely how they are going to be written. First I read this one (Lost in translation or why GWT is not the future..) and then I saw this one, lastly was this one. As an end of this yesterday Google have decided to open up their Closure library.

I don't "speak" java, so I cannot leverage the benefits of the GWT project. Until recently that is. Then I found out about pyjamas which is "a port of Google Web Toolkit to Python". It is really easy to use (just download it, unpack it and run bootstrap).

With pyjamas I have had the chance to touch the surface of this technology. Went to examples and compiled hello world. And guess what, it generates 96 lines of browser sniffing code and 16626 lines of mozilla optimized javascript code that loads an empty iframe and puts one button and one label on it. I wonder how many code will it generate for tab driven application (I intend to port the wireless management project to GWT just to see how _faster_ it will run). I am not saying anything bad (not yet), it is just that 16 thousand lines of JS code is a bit too much for me to handle right now. I can only assume it is the code that makes sure everything else runs smoothly. Yeah.

If you read the comment bellow the first GWT related link I gave above one can notice that there is no middle way in comprehending the situation - you either love gwt or you are against it for your life. Why is that?

First of all as I see it (by looking on the amount of code generated for a single button and label to be shown to the user) I can tell you will not be tweaking any JS code soon - one will count entirely on the automated generation of it. This will mean that the translator should be extremely good to expose the JS via java considering that it is entirely different language. So we should assume that it is a good starting point for anyone who would want to write complicated web application but does not have the time or willingness to learn javascript and the implementation of it in the different browsers. I consider this a good thing, if you are for example an advanced java developer in theory you should be able to have running web application effortlessly.

On the other hand we have the seasoned web developers (or otherwise - front end developers as they are called these days) that know by heart almost all differences between Mozilla and IE. One such front end engineer will be able to generate the same hello world thing in probably 30 rows of code. To be honest the hello world example is oversimplified and probably writing more robust and complicated application will be s bit faster with GWT, that is if you know java very well and you have had the time to learn the toolkit provided. And if you do not need to use customized widgets.

I consider some of the things done to be useful. But more on that later.

Now, Closure. In javascript closures are something very interesting - those are functions that live longer than the function they are created on. As a result the closure have access to all local variables of the parent function. Which leads to stupefying errors of course if you do not know what you are doing (I recall recent chat with a friend who tried to set onclick property of elements in a for loop using local to the for loop variable as parameter in the function set on the property, which results in the function called not with the current value of the counter when the property is set but with the value of the counter for the closure - i.e. the value when it is already out of range. Very irritating - he said:) ). But this has not much to do with the Google library and application. Closure application is used to shorten (and supposedly optimize) you javascript. In advanced mode it is considered to aggressively remove unused code, check for errors and optimize. It can be used (in advanced mode that is ) only with entry point for the javascript application being in the javascript file itself (so you cannot have the entry point of the application in your html for example a button with onclick property set to the first function called in JS). This first thing will prevent most currently available code to be run on Closure. On the other hand, remember back then, when the separation of presentation and structuring was new and everyone tried to use this new paradigm, while it was not required (browsers still even today can understand mix of html css and js in one and same file mixed in terrible ways) but we were told and made believe that if we all comply with this new hype one day writing html rendering engines would be much easier if the coding rules are more severe. Well, most of all web pages these days follow most of those rules, they validate (even to strict xhtml) and so on, css files became external, no one is using in-line styling.... well, we are now supposed to do the same for javascript. We only need to link to it. And we are not supposed to have in-line properties set to functions. That is if we want to use Closure. I would not be surprised if we are asked to do so by other entities also, not only Google.

So onclick='myFunction' now is becoming document.getElementBy__whateverIcanGetItWith.addEventListener('click',myFunction,false);

Yeah, seems shorter to me. The most interesting part is Closure will rename myFunction to one letter and STILL the whole thing will be longer than the original onclick='whatever' embedded in the html. But that is another story. Closure will also point you to issues in your code you might have not noticed before like reinitialization of local variables and (strangely enough) to mistakes in your code that seem to work; for example Array.push() method called with 4 parameters Closure considers as mistake in my code? And I am pretty sure the code works (before and after shortening it with Closure). From w3school:

The push() method adds one or more elements to the end of an array and returns the new length.

Syntax

12:27 pm - Rodrigo y Gabriela

И така докато съм се заровил в една ДЕБЕЛА ПРАШНА книга по история на музиката и чета за господството на Жан Батист Люли по време на Луи 14 и годините следващи смъртта му рекох да послушам малко съвременна музика, че има още поне 30 страници до създаването на концерта като музикална форма. И какво да видя - попадам на Родриго и Габриела - ей много са добри с тия китари, страшни направо, Ал Ди Меола също е уникат, ама тия просто ме грабнаха защото са много чаровен дует. Може да си ги дръпнете от ей те тук в любимия си формат. На мен любимото ми е Hanuman. Обръщам внимание, че това е изскачащ прозорец в граден в него wmv файл. Ако не се кефите - следвайте си нормалната логика - десен клик и от менюто - запази. Чисто и просто - като къпан милиционер.

09:24 am - Classical music on akordeon

Anyone into Vivaldi's Seasons? How about an overweight Russian boy? Well, I am giving you Alexandr Hrustevich (Александр Хрустевич), my God he is really good! I was impressed, besides I really like Vivaldi:)
Enjoy!

Link to video in YouTube
In addition I would recommend this scerco - one of my favourite. If you are not much into classical you might recall a hot scene from QAF with it then:)

04:41 pm - Gnome shell and what it means for mom

Attention!! Major rant follows!

Note: this will be analysis of the path Gnome has taken towards the 3.0 release.

All the hype is there - all over Fedora planet everyone is talking about switching to rawhide just to be able to try out the new Gnome shell.

Here is my point of view on this (some would be surprised I guess).

• drivers on 45% of the user will not be ready for the release (goodbye Nvidia cards - unless you manage to install the proprietary driver first - which excludes the new users completely)
• if it is not turned on by default (see previous point of why it should not be) all “not enthusiast” users will never see it coming at them, if the older behaviour is supported they will most probably stay with it until it is completely removed and either way the change will be forced upon them
• power user are also not happy with it - most confess that they find it slowing down on their day to day use of the computer
• the conceptual switch from document to task oriented work model could have been done without the bling
• low end tech users will be left completely out of the picture - this is the point I am going to emphasize most in this text, because people I know and love will be no more able to use the laptop for as simple task as playing a card game!

06:50 pm - Woking, working and then BooM!

And guess what I have found out today!

Vim has automatic file saving (turned on by default as I didn’t even had idea this is supported) and my ass was saved from a major disaster (when openbox decided it is time to start behave as idiot and loose focus and then when restarted it took the whole X server with it)

So... vim is officially my new favorite editor. Congratulations Vim!

06:43 pm - Strange days on planet Earth

And just when I thought I have seen it all this came into my life: channel4’s Bodyshock - Age 8 and wanting a sex change.

It has to be seen to be believed, children at age 5 to 6 want to be of the opposite sex. And their parents allowing it. I am too old for this, kids choosing their sex at that age and making such dramatic change in their life. For example testosterone treatment ends the growth (so the sooner it starts the shorter the to-be-guy will remain) as well as fertility becomes impossible. I am not sure how will I (will I be able) to handle such thing if it happens with my child. This scared the hell out of me. And there are even more scary things on the web site of the program.

Strange days on planet Earth I would say...

11:00 am - Георги Дончев в жълт (нещо си)

Цитат на деня:
Георги Дончев: Преспах първо със Стивън от "Boyzone" а след това и с мъжа му.



Такаа, понеже господин Дончев очевидно го тресе звездоманията, ето какъв кратък анализ на бъдещите му кратки среща можем да направим.

• понеже явно е тръгнал по веригата начело със Гетли (демек въпросния Стивън, който наскоро почина) и вече е спал с мъжа му, логично е да предположим, че ще започне да преспива с бившите му мъже, следователно следващият му партньор за секс би трябвало да бъде Илой де Йонг (бившия гаджок на Стивън) 

• Понеже Стъвън не раздуха никоя друга своя афера с изпълнител от boy  група от деветдесетте години можем спокойно да преминем плавно към останалите така наречени момчешки групи, най-известна в БГ от които беше Take that. За голямо прискърбие на г-н Дончев обаче никой от членовете на тази група не се оказа хомо. Ето защо преминаваме към слдващата по популярност група, която на всичкото отгоре все още има действащи членове - NSync. За целта Георги ще трябва да прелети до САЩ, но какво би спряло този напорист млад сексапилен българин когато се е отправил право с прегръдките на Ланс Бас?

• Така и така г-н Дончев се е озаовал вече с САЩ (заради Ланс Бас както се разбира), защо да пропуска шанса и да не разшири "мирогледа" си, Ланс и Ричард (a.k.a. Reichen) са приятели, нали така? (е, не ми се отчитат след раздялата си, колкото и странно да е това..), той е модел, актьор и от време на време пее някакви работи, значи става! Бам и готово - в легло с Рич (ок де може да не е легло, може и другаде).