Valores Misturados

So ... we received some ... cubes ... from the company, displaying the company values ... like ... efficiency, collaboration, growth ... all that!


Creativity was not among them, but, we improvised anyway and here you go:

We call this ... "Valores Misturados"

Design patterns as language defficiencies

The stance of the "Design Patterns" movement seems to be that it is somehow inevitable that programmers will need to implement Visitors, Abstract Factories, Decorators, and Façades. But these are no more inevitable than the need to implement Subroutine Calls or Object-Oriented Classes in the source language. These patterns should be seen as defects or missing features in Java and C++. The best response to identification of these patterns is to ask what defects in those languages cause the patterns to be necessary, and how the languages might provide better support for solving these kinds of problems.

(Full article here)

some more pictures

In the cabin of the Catamaran

We were between dives and the rain had jst stopped; I went to the cabin and asked if I was allowed to take some pictures; This is one of them.


self portrait (well ... sort-of)

This was taken using the ship's night/signaling strobe.


surface interval

Some of the divers (well ... all of them usually) gather and chat on the deck between dives; This guy was standing in the doorway, not really in the dry area, but chatting with the ones inside.

that's me

( picture taken by F, processed by me; Thanks F :) )

that special someone

I've been waiting for "a special someone" for a few years, and there are lot of people "out there" at the moment who are doing the same.

Here's my message to them:
The "special someone" you've been looking for, is't real. She (or he or it - as it may be the case) doesn't exist.

It's a frigment of your immagination.

Let's call this fenomenon - for lack of a better word - Hollywoodization? It's not a Hollywood effect, but the same effect that actually makes Hollywood be ... well ... Hollywood (so, it's a good name).

I had a chat with someone today and we talked about meeting a "special person" - in this case, someone endowed by God with healing powers, described as "Fenomenon <First Name> <Last Name>" in books written about her, and who heals by touch.

Wether - or not - that person was endowed by God with special powers is not what I'm arguing here (personally I don't remember endowing anyone any differenly than the others when I created the human race, but then again, a lot of details are missing from my recollections lately, so who knows? Maybe I did ... ).

What I hept trying to convince my friend was that there is no "special person" at all. Everything - and anything - that person is, you are also, as am I.

Then, I realized the mechanism is the same as waiting for the "special someone" that will heal your emotional wounds - and love you and pet you and call you George - waiting for the "special someone" that will solve your problems, that will "fix the corruption problem in Romania", and so on and so forth.


So, here's my message to all of you dreamers out there (utnapistim included in that category every now and then):

Wake up

There's no person to accept you unless you accept yourself;

There's no person that can fix your external circumstances unless you're willing - and trying - to change them yourself.

Whatever paranormal, special powers given by God someone has, youI have them also; (Well, ok, ok, maybe you have them too; I'm trying for a serious approach here, so give me a break).

Sensibility (over energy, bioenergy, artistic talent or anything else for that matter) is just that: sensibility.

If you really want to think about "special people" ... well ... go ahead: there's six billion of us around.

And in the end, nobody's special!
except utnapistim

from a few days ago

ingenuity

here

some more pictures

I have nothing to say right now, but here are some pictures:

a public improvement film

Women, know your limits (funny)

raining

It started around an hour ago and it just stopped. Anyway, the hour or so it rained, it was spectacular. I went to the balcony with D and chatted; Well ... he smoked and I took pictures ...







Now, it just started raining again ...

evening clouds

We were talking (me, F and L) on Saturday evening and I looked out and saw the clouds lit by sunset light.

It was truly spectacular.

diving @ Akrotiri Fish Reserve

snorkeling video

second rain of the season

I'm two days late with this picture, but I didn't make the time to upload pictures.

some reasons I like C++

I've been thinking lately (actually I had a talk w/ L about C++ and this started everything) and I wanted to post something on the reasons I like C++ (compared to C# and java at least);

So, let me see ...

First, there's the whole "destructor call being made at a determinstic time". Garbage collected languages don't do this; they only guarantee the destructor will be called sometimes before the next Big Bang.

This allows automation of writing some tasks (which can be further extended by using generic functors and execution sentinels), leading to one-liners for adding state rollbacks, finalizing (committing) transactions, releasing resources, exception-safe allocations (yes, I know this is not an issue in the other two languages, but I like the degree of control), and releasing race condition locks.

Second, there is the whole template system. I don't mean here the

ok, you have a list supporting only Foo objects, so you have type safety

bla-bla-bla, that all C++ courses will tell you about in the first lesson.

That's ... not really spectacular.

It's the other, less visible capabilities you get; optimizations by type, completely hidden to the outside world (see the separate implementation of std::vector<bool> for an example).

It's the capability of using type traits, allowing one to switch from std::string to case-insensitive strings by only implementing case-insensitive comparision operators in a std::type_traits<char> structure and instantiating the std::basic_string template.

It's also the ability to add metadata to the system in an efficient matter, symilar to the C# code attributes system (except for two aspects: first, it's not defined by default, second it's implementation - if you need one - can be anything you choose).

Then (third if you will) there is the flexible (customizable) input/output system (although I have seldom seen code that actually takes advantage of it), the extensible memory management features (new and delete transparent overloading and the std::allocator usage), the operators overloading and I'm sure I could think of more.

apparently, I'm male

Hey, check this out: apparently, I'm male. I pasted one of my text blog entries into the gender genie and it predicted I'm male.

Well ... that's nice.

I generated a PGP key pair yesterday, to use with my email

here is the public key:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)
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=twJQ
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

random update

I've been neglecting my weblog lately, so today, having a few minutes I decided to post "some form of update".

let's see ... yesterday D convinced me to go to Kurion, where I had a good sleep on the beach; I also had a flat tire, so I had L pick me up half way home (thanks L, you're a life saver :) ).

I also started neglecting going to the pool ... and after only one week :( ... I'll go there tomorrow morning anyway, so no big deal.

Other than that (and the party at V&L's place), boredom, boring, nothing new et caetera et caetera.

... other than some pictures I took in the last few days.

tubes

the tubes of the internet (Ted Stevens)

balancing point

here.

something about meditation

I started going to the pool yesterday, before comming to office. This changes my days completely, from being physically tired on the way to office to being high on endorphins again (and this time without using reiki), to the detachment and peace I've been missing lately.

I also understood the effect (well ... one of them) that meditation has on the mind (the one Osho called "creating an empty space"):

it is an expansion of consciousness, something allowing that type of "unfocused attention", that is naturally centered on your own being and that leads with no effort or attempt on your part, to detachment and inner peace; to an almost "double perception ", first of yourself and second of the things around you ... or some other "bla-bla-bla" that sounds smart like that.

It's impossible to describe to someone who's never payed attention to it before, so I'm not sure why I'm actually writing about it anyway.

back from holyday

so, hey, I'm back (yeah, yeah, "once as bad, twice as ugly", I know ... I know).

Anyway, I came to office early, found the office empty and started reading my mail.

- but first, I saw this (I only added the smile, since it was missing)