Reading List: Ringworld

No wonder this has won both Hugo and Nebula awards in 1970/71.

I was not very fond of Niven's writing style (this is the first Larry Niven book I read) and maybe he used it for this book only.  The plot though was ingenious.  The idea of the Ringworld was very interesting. It kept me entertained from the beginning until the end.

Highly recommended! :)  Read more about the plot on wikipedia.

Reading List: Time Enough for Love

Lazarus Long
1916-4272
The capstone and crowning achievement of Heinlein's famous Future History, TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE follows Lazarus Long through a vast and magnificent timescape of centuries and worlds. Heinlein's longest and most ambitious work, it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it; and so in love with Time that he became his own ancestor

(From the books back cover)

I think Heimlein is one of my favorite authors. "Time enough for Love" was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel (1973) and the Hugo and Locus Awards (1974) and although did not finally win, nonetheless it is quite an interesting read.

As always, I cannot outdo the Wikipedia article on the book.

Change the timezone in Ubuntu server

Couldn't be easier:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Then follow the text wizard.

First International Space Station overhead pass

Today I saw my first overhead pass of the ISS.

For some time I was registered to Twisst and I was receiving their notifications on Twitter but I never actually bothered to really look up and see the station fly overhead.  Well, in my defense, living in Athens, with all this light pollution you can barely see the sky and the stars, so I was waiting for the right opportunity before I actually tried.

So, today at 20:52 (right as Twisst predicted) I saw the ISS. The brightness was supposed to be at a magnitude of -1.6 (I have no idea how bright that is) and I was wondering what was I was supposed to be looking at.  Suddenly, approximately where I was looking at, a very bright star appeared out of nowhere.  And I could see it with a naked eye.

It was brighter than the other current stars I could see at the moment and it moved at a pretty high speed accross the sky.  It looked like an airplane was flying overhead, but at a quite fast pace.  The whole pass took approximately 5 minutes and the station traversed an arc almost two thirds of the sky. Then, slowly, in 5-6 seconds, while it was still moving, faded out to nothing.

I must have look like an idiot, standing there in the middle of the park (it was Azul's nightly walk) gazing at the sky for five minutes.  But, I think it was worth it...

Translating an online PDF document with Google Translate

Hey,

If you pass the link of the online PDF document to the Google Translate service then Google will extract the text from the PDF and translate it in the language that you selected.  It doesn't keep the exact same page formatting but the PDF is now very readable.  Much more readable than it was before... :)

I didn't know that!

stratos?ear.com word play

It's funny how many of the following domain names are actually working (and how many of the letter combinations actually make sense):

www.stratosaear.com www.stratosbear.com www.stratoscear.com www.stratosdear.com www.stratoseear.com www.stratosfear.com works! www.stratosgear.com obviously! www.stratoshear.com works! www.stratosiear.com www.stratosjear.com www.stratoskear.com www.stratoslear.com works! www.stratosmear.com

www.stratosnear.com www.stratosoear.com www.stratospear.com www.stratosqear.com www.stratosrear.com www.stratossear.com www.stratostear.com www.stratosuear.com www.stratosvear.com www.stratoswear.com works! www.stratosxear.com www.stratosyear.com www.stratoszear.com

Απατεωνιές στην τιμολόγηση internet της Cosmote

Ξαφνικά άρχισαν να μου έρχονται κάποια SMS στο καρτοκινητό μου ότι:

ΜΟΛΙΣ ΣΥΝΔΕΘΗΚΕΣ ΣΤΟ INTERNET ΜΕ ΧΡΕΩΣΗ 1Ε ΓΙΑ 24 ΩΡΕΣ. ΜΠΟΡΕΙΣ ΝΑ ΣΕΡΦΑΡΕΙΣ ΑΠΕΡΙΟΡΙΣΤΑ ΑΠΟ ΤΟ ΚΙΝΗΤΟ ΣΟΥ ΜΕΧΡΙ ΤΙΣ 22/05/11 11:45 ΧΩΡΙΣ ΕΠΙΠΛΕΟΝ ΧΡΕΩΣΗ.

Στην αρχή νόμιζα ότι έκανα εγώ κάποιο λάθος, αλλά σήμερα διασταύρωσα με την αδερφή μου ότι γίνεται και σε εκείνην το ίδιο.  Σε αυτήν είχαν ήδη χρεώσει περίπου 20 ευρώ και όταν πήρε τηλέφωνο την εξυπηρέτηση πελατών της είπαν ότι είναι μια καινούρια υπηρεσία της Cosmote και αν δεν την θέλει μπορεί να την απενεργοποιήσει.

Συγνώμη!!! Με ρώτησε κανείς εμένα αν θέλω αυτήν την "καινούρια υπηρεσία" πριν αρχίσουν να μου την χρεώνουν; Έστειλα εγώ κανένα SMS ενεργοποίησης πουθενά;

Ποιός ξέρει πόσα παράνομα τέτοια ευρώ έχει μαζέψει η Cosmote με αυτήν την απάτη.

Έλεος...

[Update 1η Ιουνίου 2011]:


Μετά από λίγο googling βρήκα τα εξής:

• Αυτή η υπηρεσία λέγεται Cosmote Internet Day Pass.
• Σύμφωνα με τα λεγόμενα τους:

"Η υπηρεσία COSMOTE Internet Day Pass είναι προενεργοποιημένη σε όλους τους συνδρομητές Συμβολαίου, ΚαρτοΣυμβολαίου και Καρτοκινητής που δεν έχουν ενεργοποιημένο κάποιο πρόγραμμα ή πρόσθετη υπηρεσία που να παρέχει πρόσβαση στο Internet."

• Και πάλι, επιμένω, κανείς δεν με ρώτησε αν θέλω την αυτόματη ενεργοποίηση. 
• Τέλος, για να απαλαγείς από τις χρεώσεις (κάτι που θα έπρεπε να αναφέρεται και στα SMS που στέλνουν) απλά στείλε δωρεάν SMS με τις λέξεις END DAY στο 1333.

[Update 30 Σεπτεμβρίου 2011]:


Το μύνημα ξαναεπέστρεψε (μαζί με την χρέωση).  Τώρα, και καλά, το έχουν "φτιάξει λίγο" γιατί μερικά δευτερόλεπτα μετά το πρώτο μύνημα (με το ΜΟΛΙΣ ΣΥΝΔΕΘΗΚΕΣ ΣΤΟ INTERNET κτλ κτλ) σου στέλνουν κι' άλλο μύνημα που λέει:

ΑΝ ΕΧΕΙΣ SMARTPHONE ΣΥΣΚΕΥΗ Η ΠΡΟΣΒΑΣΗ ΣΤΟ INTERNET ΙΣΩΣ ΟΦΕΙΛΕΤΑΙ ΣΕ ΕΦΑΡΜΟΓΕΣ (ΚΑΙΡΟΣ-ΝΕΑ-Ε-MAIL) ΠΟΥ ΣΥΝΔΕΟΝΤΑΙ ΑΥΤΟΜΑΤΑ. ΓΙΑ ΠΛΗΡΟΦΟΡΙΕΣ ΚΑΛΕΣΕ ΤΟ 13838

Βασικά, δηλαδή, φταίει η συσκευή σου που είναι smartphone και έχει την απαίτηση να συνδεθεί στο internet.  Δεν φταίμε εμείς, η Cosmote, που ξεδιάντροπα αποφασίσαμε για σένα ότι θέλεις να χρεώνεσαι κάθε μέρα ένα ευρώ χωρίς να έχεις ερωτηθεί πρώτα! Όχι, μάλλον φταίνε οι εφαρμογές του τηλεφώνου σου.

Επίσης στο μύνημα που σου στέλνουμε ΔΕΝ σου λέμε πως να το απενεργοποιήσεις, αλλά πάρε μας τηλέφωνο να σε χρεώσουμε και γι'αυτό.  Άσε που μερικοί μπορεί και να μην το κάνουνε, οπότε θα συνεχίσουμε να τους χρεώνουμε τα ευρώ.

Πήρα πάλι τηλέφωνο για να δώ πως τελικά απενεργοποιήται αυτό το πράγμα.  Για να σας γλυτώσω και τα άλλα 0.135€ που σε χρεώνουν στο 13838 (οι ρεζίληδες) οι οδηγίες είναι οι εξής:

(όπως είχα αναφέρει και πριν) Στέλνεις END DAY στο 1333.

Απαντάνε με:

ΤΟ ΑΙΤΗΜΑ ΣΑΣ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΥΠΟ ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ

και μετά από λίγο:

ΤΟ ΑΙΤΗΜΑ ΣΑΣ ΓΙΑ ΑΠΕΝΕΡΓΟΠΟΙΗΣΗ ΤΗΣ ΥΠΗΡΕΣΙΑΣ COSMOTE INTERNET DAY PASS ΟΛΟΚΛΗΡΩΘΗΚΕ.

Javascript PC Emulator - Technical Notes

It's amazing what you can do if you put your mind to it.

 Just visit: http://bellard.org/jslinux/

Quoting from his technical notes:

Javascript PC Emulator - Technical Notes: "What's the use ?

• I did it for fun, just because newer Javascript Engines are fast enough to do complicated things. Real use could be: Benchmarking of Javascript engines (how much time takes your Javascript engine to boot Linux ?). For this particular application, efficient handling of 32 bit signed and unsigned integers and of typed arrays is important.
• Learning to use command line Unix tools without leaving the browser.
• Client side processing using an x86 library, for example for cryptographic purposes. For such application, the x86 emulator can be modified to provide an API to load x86 dynamic libraries and to provide a js-ctypes like API to call the C/C++ functions from javascript.
• A more advanced version would allow to use old DOS PC software such as games."

Adding Syntax hilighting to Blogger posts

Add the following code right before the close of the </head> tag.



[Update]
Scrap the above. I switched to Google's code prettify.

Recording streaming audio workflow

My choice of Ubuntu tools for recording, splitting and tagging streaming audio.

Configure Ubuntu server to send email through Gmail

Edit the `/etc/postfix/main.cf` file and set the follow values:

smtpd_tls_key_file =
smtp_use_tls = yes
relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587
transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous

Create/edit the `/etc/postfix/transport` file with:

gmail.com smtp:[smtp.gmail.com]:587

Create/edit the `/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd` file with:

[smtp.gmail.com]:587 username@gmail.com:password

Obviously, change the `username` and `password` values.

Note: If you use Google's 2-step verification you should not use your traditional password, but rather visit the https://www.google.com/accounts/b/0/IssuedAuthSubTokens page and generate a new password for postfix.

Finally, issue:



Profit.

Create and mount xfs filesystem

Couldn't be easier:

$ sudo apt-get install xfsprogs
$ sudo mkfs.xfs /dev/sdf

Add to fstab:

/dev/sdf   /my/location   xfs  defaults,nobootwait,noatime    0    0

This was tested on Amazon EC2 with EBS volumes.

Installing MySQL module in Django virtualenv

In order to correctly install mysql bindings in a Django virtualenv you need:

First install some Ubuntu dependencies:



Then create the virtual env and install the python packages:



I was missing the `libmysqlclient-dev` package and I was getting a `EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found` when running the `pip install mysql-python`.

Change codepage on windows console

If find this essential when administrating ORACLE databases from the command line and the locale of the database is set to Greek. I prefer to read the output in Greek rather in gibberish:

chcp 1253

Dune

I was looking to print a nice PnP (Print and Play) game and I came across Dune.

The game is nicely redone, from it's original 1979 publishing, so thick with theme from the book, that really made me wanna read the book again. First time I read it was while a was a freshman in university (back in '89).

And in case you didn't know, this book is often quoted as THE best science fiction novel with more than 12 million copies sold worldwide.

The wikipedia article is very informative, too.

Convert an A4 sized .pdf file to A5 size

I was working on a LyX document based on the Tufte layout and unfortunately the page layout was available at A4 page sizes only (ok, US letter, too, but that doesn't count :)

I could try and learn Latex and create my own page size but the task looked monumental. I am sure the solution might be easy enough, but I just couldn't do it myself. Googling for A5 sized tufte layouts didn't help either.

So to the command line it is.