Archive for July, 2007

If you're reading this post then you've probably been redirected to monda.hu from laci.monda.hu. I learn more and more on SEO and I also apply in practice what I learn. This is one step of the many. Being present on a higher level domain gives you better rankings.

monda.hu was mostly unused. It only had the welcome screen of my family, some links and some scripts.

I've recently trashed my feed reader, Feedy. I started it about a half year ago, but it took too much time to maintain it. I knew about Google Reader for a long time, but I didn't like it's interface. Now that I use it for two weeks I have no doubts about its superior usability. I'm very satisfied with it.

Although I doubt anyone would use Feedy, I put it out, because I think it has a nice UI and a good database layout that prevents feed duplication pretty effectively so it may be a good base for developing a more robust feed reader.

feedy.tar.bz2 is not a release. A release is a carefully compiled end product that is easy to install. Feedy is not easy to install, but check out the README file for some information.

Lastly but not leastly here are some screenshots:

The news items screen

The config screen

I was at the BalaTone-Festival last weekend where the Fauna Association was present. They protect animal rights which is a very important thing in my opinion. I helped him in their campaign by being a poor chicken for a minute who grown up in factory farming. I have a sad look on the picture because I'm a poor chicken.

They misspelled my beautiful name on the original gallery page. What a shameful deed!

Wordpress has a nasty feature called smart quotes or curly quotes. It transforms " " quote pairs into “ (“) ” (“) HTML entities. It may look good with ordinary text, but it seriously messes up code.

The Unfancy Quote WordPress plugin was a breath of fresh air to me regarding this pain. I can only recommend it to every developers out there!

When you restart your GNOME / KDE session, Firefox asks you the same boring question once again:

Seems familiar?

The reason it happens is that Firefox doesn't implement the X session protocol so every time you log out from your Linux desktop, Firefox gets mercilessly killed. I don't plan to patch Firefox to implement X session protocol, because I don't have the special knowledge and it'd took too much time for me, but I present you a pretty good hack that works really nice.

Edit {your-firefox-directory}/components/nsSessionStartup.js as follows:

Original code:

// prompt and check prefs
this._doRestore = this._lastSessionCrashed ? this._doRecoverSession() : this._doResumeSession();

Updated code:

// prompt and check prefs
var ignoreSessionCrash = this._getPref("sessionstore.ignore_session_crash", false);
this._doRestore = !ignoreSessionCrash && this._lastSessionCrashed
                      ? this._doRecoverSession()
                      : this._doResumeSession();

From now on if you want to always restore your session upon startup, you have to set the sessionstore.ignore_session_crash variable to true within the about:config page of Firefox (you have to type about:config in the address bar).

if Firefox keeps crashing due to an evil web page that is saved in your session, then you have to manually set the sessionstore.ignore_session_crash variable to false by editing the {your-home-directory}/.mozilla/firefox/{your-profile-dir}/prefs.js file as follows:

original line: user_pref("browser.sessionstore.ignore_session_crash", true);
updated line: user_pref("browser.sessionstore.ignore_session_crash", false);

Good luck hacking your Firefox until the X session protocol gets implemented in it!

http://www.worldometers.info/

Thanks for the link Dömi!

I'm a big fan of personal information management software. I recently used Remember The Milk and was pretty satisfied with it, but I'm always in constant exploration and found something better: Google Calendar. It has a unique feature that makes it so immensely useful: sharing calendars. The user interface is the standard Google quality so one feels like using a perfectly built desktop application.

I've just created and shared my first three calendars which are potentially useful for my Hungarian fellas:

• Magyarországi fesztiválok:
• Magyarországi munkanapok és szabadnapok:
• Magyarországi óraátállí­tások:

Have a good time using them!

Unfortunately Google Calendar cannot entirely replace Remember The Milk, because it's not a todo list manager, but I found that Google Calendar is more intuitive for me because the calendar layout makes me aware of time.

• The Humanized Weblog is a powerhouse of usability articles. I've never seen a place with such high quality articles like this one. I've just read them all and learnt so many new stuff that it's insane! Aza Raskin, son of Jef Raskin is an incredibly talented interaction designer. The apple never falls far from the tree. I plan to read Jef Raskin's book, The Human Interface.
• Your Guide to Never Feeling Tired Again
• Success recipes most people know, but too few follow
• Web App Autospy - Four web application startup companies are compared in this article. Interesting read.

As of 2007-07-01 I have a BSc degree in Computer Science. I feel relieved. It took lots of hard work for me to make this happen and I'm glad I'm over it. If one asked me what does it mean to me getting my diploma I'd happily answer to his / her question.

It means nothing to me. Absolutely nothing.

I have to make a confession. I've cheated. I've cheated 100% to complete the two hardest exams of the university: formal languages and complexity theory. I couldn't have done these two courses without cheating. I've cheated in such elaborate and subtle ways that it was absolutely impossible to them to catch me. Why do I confess it? Am I proud of it?

I am, because I honestly believe that this is a fucked up kind of education. In order to be successfull in such a system, you have to resist to think way too often and instead remember formal shit, symbol by symbol. Many people I know who teaches in academic circles are so attached of their rigid models of knowledge that they feel the urging need of capturing other people in their own prison. This attachement manifests itself in the merciless and pointless ways they test students who want to pass their exams. In my experience school generally rewards formal knowledge and discredits creativity, but my ultimate problem is that they don't teach you to think better. They give you outdated specifics and useless generalities. Regarding the Free Software Word, there was almost no mention of its culture, history and morals at all.

I've experienced way too many times that too often the smartest people are the ones without a paper. Miguel De Icaza, a person who I have the uppermost respect toward doesn't have a diploma. Larry Ellison and Bill Gates left the university without competing their degree. I don't need any further evidences.

I don't know how things are in other countries but I despise the Hungarian education system and don't give a shit of any paper people may have, because it means nothing to me. Not a damn thing.

Approaching…

Got the paper, misery over!