Mircea Bardac /random_thoughts

… Data Structures and Algorithms - first exam.

Pretty interesting. I managed to finish all the 4 problems, as usual, just a few minutes before the end of the allowed time. I was lucky, many of my colleagues weren’t.

This was Saturday.
Next week, 3 more exams:

• Data Processing (not really about to computer science, but data processing in general)
• Differential Equations (that’s algebra and I don’t know if this is the right translation)
• Document Management - LaTeX programming - very interesting this document preparation system - I think I will really use it in the future for my work

I had a few hours today (between my exams) to visit CERF 2004, the largest computers fair in Romania. Taking into account that I didn’t upgrade my computer in a long time, this was a good chance to (only) see the latest technologies.

I can’t really say that something special caught my attention. I only spent some more time looking at some computer cases (really interesting, some of them with frigde components in them). Oh.. HP was also there…

Oh.. forgot: I was almost shocked that I had tons of bags in my hand. I think I had more bags than papers (flyers, brochures & so on). There were other fairs where I couldn’t even find a bag, I had to carry the brochures in my hand, but this time the bags were all over my head. Amaizing…

… the end of the Easter (short) Holiday has come. The students in College are free only on Friday before Easter, Monday & Tuesday after Easter. The highschool students have 2 weeks of holiday.

I’ve discovered that we will recuperate Friday and Tuesday, probably on Saturday. Not enjoyable at all, especially now when the mid-terms period is coming.

(not to mention that I have tons of homework to do…)

I was browsing today through the news on kde.org site and I found the KDE-CVS-Digest (something similar to a report of the recent activities - for the ones who don’t understand).
One thing that really impressed me was a recent optimization that claims to remove flickering and make Konqueror (the file browser in KDE) load directories 2 to 3 times faster. That is something most of the KDE users noticed. Too many redraws makes your computer look slower.

I think this kind of “discoveries” is the reason why I like the OpenSource communities. There’s always somebody who finds/implements something and makes everybody else’s life a lot easier. Everything is so dynamic (some of the people might say too dynamic)and such optimizations make you really enjoy each and every contribution.

I have managed to port & configure my GnuPG keychain from my previous installation (on windows).
Got it working on KMail. I’m still researching how to install the crypto plugin without messing up my system to allow detached signatures.

My public key is available here.