Category: Technology

I work in technology sector. And I do round a clock, not only from 9 to 5. It is my bread and butter, it is my hobby, it is the fascination of my life. And with the current rate of change particular in information technology (IT), there is always something new to learn, to try, to talk about. I often post news, thoughts, and reviews. And when I do, this is the category I use.

On instant messaging

Pretty often I get complains from certain people that it is impossible to chat with me online in real-time. The thing is, I do use only two protocols for instant messaging: ICQ and IRC.

IRC is by far my favourite one. I like joining a channel or two for a topical discussion. Lately though I’ve been pretty busy and that changed. All I do now is get on the channel with some specific subject, like #perl or #fedora, ask my question, get a set of answers, and leave. Quick help so to speak. IRC is best for real-time discussions, but it needs an agreement on time and place beforehand. If you want to talk, I’ll be all ears.

ICQ is different. ICQ is good for passing a couple of messages back and forward. Also it is pretty indicative about the status of the person – if he or she is open for talk, or busy right now, or totally disconnected from the web. Keeping a serious and time consuing discussion with several people via ICQ is a headache. Also my personal problem with ICQ is that I always forget to switch it on or to switch it off. Popup messages are annoying and distructing, so I switch them off. Taksbar notifications are useless, since my taskbar is a hiding thing. This all makes it pretty difficult to notice when new messages are coming.

Anyway, since I was begged to get online so many times, I ‘ve slightly reconfigured my desktop and I am trying to get used to ICQ. I am using it now for three days in a row. If you don’t want me to quit it once again, now is a good time to message me. My Unique Identification Number (UIN) is 14956994.

Dive into Python

Once in a while I need to write a couple of lines in Python. When that happens I histerically run around the web looking for some quick introduction or tutorial on the language. There are plenty of those, of course. But just to have something handy, I’ll put a link here to Dive Into Python. What is so different about this tutorial is that it is very practical. There are many examples of code and very little explanations and theoretical crap that everyone knows already or can guess from the code. Simply use table of contents and jump to the needed part, where example awaits for you. Great!

Secure programmer: Prevent race conditions

IBM developerWorks runs an excellent article about preventing race conditions – “Secure programmer: Prevent race conditions“. It is written in clean and simple language and explains nicely most common problems with races. It talks about lock files, alternatives to lock files, and doing lock files properly. It features good examples and solutions are described for several languages, including Perl.

This is surely a must read for anyone writing software in general and for multiuser or mutlitasking systems in particular.

Renewed subscription to Linux Weekly News

I have renewed my subscription to Linux Weekly News today. 12 month at once at a professional hacker level was supposed to be $60 USD, but they gave me a discount of 10% which made it $54 USD. Hey, they rule! :)

LWN is the best open source journalism resource that I have ever seen. They do create actual content instead of stupidly copying all those boxes from other sites. They write software reviews. They report from different summits and exsibitions. They look into new Linux distributions. They explain kernel internals in such a way that simple people can understand. They provide an insight into court rooms where important legal battles are in progress. These guys are excellent. I wish there were more resources like this on the web. I would easily spend the money on subscription to support them.