Albie's Weblog

Half Life 2

null — 2004-11-25T09:35:08+00:00

I never played Half Life 1. People around me talked a lot about it, but I did never try it. Half Life 2 is out and friends talked a lot about it again. Well, I tried it!

Amazing graphics! Amazing! And it runs smooth on an AMD Athlon 1700+. It rocks and rolls! Amazing!

It Works! It Works!

null — 2004-11-23T17:12:00+00:00

Ok, user support complete for a few... days, I hope. The program is running and giving results. Uff!

User support

null — 2004-11-23T14:59:51+00:00

Continuing the last post story, the user installed the application. Finally. But, no, my headache is not over, yet. Now she can't run it. First, she tries to execute it on /opt/bin/ as a user, and the program does not work because it needs to create temporary files. Also, she can't execute it in her home directory because the program is not in the path. And to end up with, she doesn't know how to change her path. Oh, God!

Windows shit

null — 2004-11-22T19:47:15+00:00

In my master thesis I wrote a software and the install procedure is based on autoconf/automake stuff. I heard there are better ways, but this is not bad.

So far so good. Various people installed it, and it work. Now, a girl doing PhD got it, and couldn't install it. After a conversation with about 15 mails I got the problem: she unziped the tarball with Winzip. And Winzip don't look to files as bytes sequences... at least, not textual files. It adds that annoying ^M: Windows shit!!

RSSer - Part Two

null — 2004-11-21T16:47:04+00:00

Now, the RSSer is a little more dynamic. Now, there are two scripts. The first one fetches the feeds and creates a database. The other, is a navigation CGI you can see here.

RSSer

null — 2004-11-20T18:53:49+00:00

Today I wrote a new tool: RSSer. It takes a configuration file with an ID and a RSS-feed URL per-line. Then, it fetches those feeds, process them and create a single page with them ordered.

OK, maybe there are already tools like these. But this is mine and it was very fun to write. About 100 lines including HTML and StyleSheet.

Want to see the result? Point here. It is static, by the way. Send comments, please.

Now, I don't know if I should make this more robust and put on CPAN. What do you think?

Very soon, I might also add some more dynamism... to create a static database, and add a CGI to make the site browsable and configurable.

Palm Zire 31

null — 2004-11-19T21:43:44+00:00

I just bought a Palm. For years I wondered if I would buy, or not one. Well, I bought it. It is very nice for the price, with color display, some nice software and, hopefully, it would be useful.

Now, the next thing I need to do is... know how to use it in Linux. Not properly the synchronization stuff. I just want to be able to copy files to and from it.

I need to buy a memory card so I can hear some music too. In fact, that's why I need to learn how to copy these files under Linux.

The Perl Review

null — 2004-11-18T08:18:52+00:00

I think most of the perl users that read my blog (I just can think on one person) already subscribe The Perl Review. But if I am wrong, you are from Europe and you like Perl, subscribe The Perl Review. We need a couple more subscribers such that printing in Europe is possible.

Patrick Volkerding is sick

null — 2004-11-16T21:01:22+00:00

People who know me, know that I'm a Slackware freak. So, I feel I should post here something about Pat. He is sick. He needs help. Basically, if you are a doctor or know a good one, please read this link.

Need for speed Underground - 2

null — 2004-11-15T09:42:40+00:00

Two days without entries, and this is all NFSU2 fault. The game is very nice, with some stolen features from Grand Theft Auto. Not compared to GTA in style, but still a good game while we wait for GTA-SanAndreas.

This is the first game where the car handling is very good, although I play this using a keyboard (yuck!). Also, the catch-up of other speeders is an interesting add-on, as well as the possibility to drive along a city. Regarding driving along the city, they added traffic signs showing directions... very handy.

A much better game than the original NFSU.

Syndication

null — 2004-11-12T11:05:52+00:00

I forgot to told you, my dear readers, that this blog is syndicated on Planet BotFu, where all the folks from #botfu blog their lifes.

The Dictionary Project

null — 2004-11-11T20:09:44+00:00

Remember the dictionary project? Unfortunately, I didn't know correctly Portuguese legislation. The copyright is still active, given that we must count 70 years from the author death, and not 70 years from the dictionary publishing, as I imagined.

This Weblog

null — 2004-11-10T19:06:36+00:00

As I said previously on use.perl, I might have lost readers. I wonder how many of them continue to read my stupid entries. If you are one of them, thanks! I'll continue to write stupid entries! :-)

Dictionary Project

null — 2004-11-09T14:25:12+00:00

To have a free-available, open-source dictionary is difficult. There are some easy to access using the web, but you can't just download it and to what you want with it. If this is a little true to the English, imagine for the Portuguese.

Given that, our group at the Minho's University (Braga, Portugal) started a new project. To digitalize an old (copyright free) dictionary. It is too bad to do OCR, so we need help. It consists of about 1500 pages. So, we invite people to digitalize a page of the dictionary. Of course, we ask specially to Portuguese or Brazillian folks, given that sometimes it is hard to understand the image, and you need to get from context.

Here is the address for the interested: Dictionary Project

Going to other universities

null — 2004-11-08T11:23:08+00:00

Today I'm going to Oporto, to the university where they teach languages, linguistics an so on. This is a nice trip. Can you guess why?

Yeah, girls. Tons of them.

I don't why they don't like engineer or sciences (well, most of them), but we will discuss that later, on another blog entry.