Notes

In case you usually browse my darcs repos, I switched to the new web interface.

The old one is still available.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 05:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Recently I downloaded a copy of Confluence due to the new licensing option, Personal Edition.

So far I'm still getting to know the application but it seems quite good and in a corporate environment like the one I work at the mail integration and access control features are essential. I'm tempted to try a full trial license during August, with the JIRA integration also.

Will see how my personal evaluation goes. In the meantime, check the notes that Rui took with his installation. One thing though: it's not closed source. You get full source code with the commercial versions of Confluence.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Does anybody know where can I buy a IAXy in a European online store?

Very much appreciated any pointers.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 01:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Got a Skype phone for the wife, let see how it goes. It looks good.

You connect it to your Windows PC via USB and to a PTSN line. Then you can see who is online on your Skype buddy list and call them directly. You can also dial PTSN numbers.

The phone is wireless DECT-based, and so far, in my limited testing, it works very very well.

Technorati Tags: skype

Posted by Pedro Melo at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

My ADSL2+ link is now up and running. 2048 down, 256 up. It was painless to install and configure the Huawei router provided by the ISP I'm using. Connected my old Airport base station in bridge mode.

Now I can work without having to worry about the bill at the end of the month. Last month, I had a €99 surprise from my previous ISP. Well, it was expected. I'm not accustomed to use a pay-per-use link.

I was just browsing their marketing site, and this page stands out. Not bad, but for a real switcher-like experience, the videos are lacking some background music :).

Technorati Tags: airport, adsl

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Pure fun. For me, the best WTF bar none..

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Back from vacation. One week on a luxurious hotel and spa. Sometimes you have to indulge yourself.

In fact, I got back Tuesday, but I was catching up on email and feeds: around 400 mails (after the 3645 spam messages got put aside by the wonderful SpamSieve) and 750 items on NetNewsWire.

Now back to our regular programming.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)

Today, around 12:00, software patents will be up for vote at the European Parliament. You can follow it live.

At work, we put a site (Portuguese only) to spread the good word. You can also find an editorial of my CTO about the subject.

The process is something like this: first there will be a vote of a proposal to reject. If this vote is approved, the whole process goes back to the beginning.

If not, then the 21 amendments will be voted, and for each ammendemnt to pass, a majority is required. That's 365 of 729 votes.

As always, you can find information about all this at the Software Patents vs Parliamentary Democracy website.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (view)

In case you need circular structures in Perl, you should known about Scalar::Util and it's weaken function.

See this example:

package T;

sub DESTROY {
  my $self = shift;
  print STDERR "Bye bye: $self->{name}\n";
}

package main;
use Scalar::Util qw( weaken );

{
  my $a = bless { name => 'a' }, 'T';
  my $b = bless { name => 'b' }, 'T';

  $a->{b} = $b;
  $b->{a} = $a;
}
print "Should see a destroy 'a' and 'b', but you wont...\n";

{
  my $c = bless { name => 'c' }, 'T';
  my $d = bless { name => 'd' }, 'T';

  $c->{d} = weaken($d);
  $d->{c} = weaken($c);
}
print "Should see a destroy 'c' and 'd'!\n";
print "Now you'll see a destroy 'a' and 'b'\n";

The output is this:

Should see a destroy 'a' and 'b', but you wont...
Bye bye: d
Bye bye: c
Should see a destroy 'c' and 'd'!
Now you'll see a destroy 'a' and 'b'
Bye bye: b
Bye bye: a

The problem is that in the first block, although the $a and $b are no longer in scope, each one holds a reference to the other, and that prevents them both from being destroyed.

In the second block, each one of $c and $d takes a weak reference to each other. Weak references don't increment the reference count internal to all Perl variables, so at the end of the block, they are correctly destroyed.

You've warned.

Posted by Pedro Melo at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (view)