Mircea Bardac /random_thoughts

It has been a very busy period of my life. I will try to be very short because time is very valuable right now.

The plans for my online presence include:

• revamp personal website
• find a way to keep/publish my old blog (=this blog) contents
• decide on the hosting and the best presentation method for the projects I’ve been working on
• add on my personal website more information about the projects
• post solutions to problems I’ve been facing lately, in order for others to find them

Let’s hope this will take place soon, since I’m extremely busy.

Well, I managed to break my website, when I tried installing PmWiki. I find PmWiki rather interesting, because you only need to unzip the code somewhere and it just works. No need for a special setup, no need for SQL databases - pure filesystem based.

My website is rather picky when it comes to mod_rewrite rules. Removed PmWiki, upgraded Wordpress to the latest version and everything is back! I love stuff which Just works ™.

P.S. I could have a look over some plugins… some improvements wouldn’t hurt, now that I’m at it…

I was commenting in my last blog entry about Google’s recent aquisition - a company producing a windows only closed client.

Today I woke up and what do I see in the news: Google Talk is out - the IM client from Google supports XMPP… Psi is on the supported IM clients list.

Imagine me… with a big wow on my face… I can imagine everyone else in the Jabber (XMPP) world with a similar reaction…

My flow of thoughts and actions:

• oh…
• new potential users…
• Psi…
• we need a HowTo…
• Kev tolds me Psi 0.10-test1 will be out later today
• we need a HowTo
• where would I put the HowTo…
• in the not yet announced Wiki…
• Kev says the Wiki has a go for today
• we need to keep the icons a secret for 0.10-final
• rearranged the Wiki Main Page
• screenshot session started for the Google Talk HowTo
• Google Talk HowTo Wiki page completed
• Google Talk HowTo Wiki for Psi 0.9.3 completed
• Everything (Psi 0.10-test1, wiki, howtos) is out.
• People started joining Psi groupchat room…
• for the first time in history I’ve used the scroolbar to scrool the userlist
• tons of comments…
• went to bed happy.

I’ve also eaten between the lines there. If it does seem like in a rush, it’s because it was a rush.
We want our users to enjoy the very best of Psi that we offer right now.
Lots of thanks to the great Psi Team who helped carrying out successfully this task.

The event was also covered in Jabber Journal #24.

News in the IM world.
Hal mentioned in his blog Google’s future aquisition adding a small emphasis on Jabber support in the future client.

Many of you might have already said something like: Oh boy, Google on the IM market. It’s going to be interesting… . I did the same and then looked at the reasons Google went for this company/product.

I’ve read several blogs/news articles about this, comming up with a single possible killer feature.

Quote InternetNews.com article:

Meetro combines instant messaging with automatic local buddy finding. Users can log in and browse or search profiles of other members in order to find someone compatible who’s nearby and also logged in. The area to be searched can be narrowed to a quarter mile.

“The beauty of Meetro is the direct way in which you connect with people nearby,” Paul Bragiel, CEO of Meetroduction, said in a statement about the software release. “Just run Meetro, double-click on a person and begin chatting immediately. It’s all real-time, which means you see and communicate with local people who are online right now.”

I went to their site to see the wonderful functionality. Imagine my surprise: only Microsoft Windows download.

My first feeling: errr.. what? and that is going to be used by Google?
Not even MacOS, not to mention Linux (at least binaries).

Well, I hope Google changes thinks about this a little and looks into other platforms also. Google Earth is already Windows-only and that is not very thrilling. There are great multi-platform toolkits for developing applications: check out Qt or GTK.

… I know I did
A radical change in my looks occured today: I’ve cut my hair down to 5 mm
I’ve never done this in my entire life. Oh, well, the only time I resembled this look was when I was very very young.

The new haircut will provide an increased airflow for my embedded CPU and data storage facility - the common name for this is: the brain. This new cooling technique I’m experimenting should also come with a new fashion trend

All this will add a touch of confort for the summer.