http://www.shlomifish.org/me/blogs/ http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/61068.html <p> When working with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28software%29" rel="nofollow">git version control system</a> and editing <tt>.git/config</tt> to add a new remote, some people may be tempted to copy and change the <tt>origin</tt> remote that reads something like: </p> <pre> [remote "origin"] fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/* url = git@github.com:shlomif/perl.git </pre> <p> However, note that <tt>origin</tt> also appears at the <tt>fetch = </tt> and needs to be changed there as well, or else all the branches will be placed in <tt>remotes/origin</tt>. Maybe there's a better way to add a new remote using the <tt>git config</tt> commands. </p> <p> Otherwise, I should note that there doesn't seem to be a consensus among git users whether <tt>git pull --rebase</tt> is better than a simple <tt>git pull</tt>: the perl people told me to use <tt>--rebase</tt> and the Amarok people and someone on Freenode's <tt>##programming</tt> told me not to use it. Now I'm just confused. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) git tip perl tech tech tip http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/61068.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/61068.html Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:33:04 GMT http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2012/01/freecell-solver-3100-was-released.html <p> <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> version 3.10.0 has been released. It is available in the form of a source tarball from <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">the download page</a>. </p> <p> This release fixes two bugs - one with the <tt>--max-iters</tt> affecting only the last instance, and one with reading foundations with <tt>0</tt>, and implements many small optimisations and cleanups. It also adds some experimental code with the so-called <tt>delta-states</tt>, where states are compactly encoded based on the original state. This functionality is not available in the main solver yet, but it powers the experimental on-disk-key/value-databases-based solver, which end up not scaling very well during testing. </p> <p> Enjoy! </p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-4706598002123829732?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) version bugs freecell optimizations release fixes code cleanup solving solver tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-4706598002123829732 Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:46:00 +0000 2012-01-15T11:46:47.944-08:00 http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/12/breaking-the-perl-debugger-for-fun-and-profit.html Before I cover the main topic of this entry, here are some short news and action items: If you have not acted against SOPA - the proposed online blacklist/censorship bill, you should. Follow the link for information on how... Shlomi Fish debugger debugging features mongers perl refactoring sopa telaviv http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/12/breaking-the-perl-debugger-for-fun-and-profit.html Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:03:05 -0000 2011-12-26T19:04:52Z http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/60825.html <p> (The Hebrew text will be followed by an English one). </p> <div align="right" dir="rtl"> <p> <b>שימו לב לשינוי במיקום!</b> זהו הבניין שבו קיימנו את מפגשי שוחרי הפרל התל-אביביים בהתחלה, ולא זה ששימש עבור מספר פגישות לאחרונה. </p> <p> ב-28 בדצמבר 2011 (יום רביעי) נערוך את מפגש הפרל החודשי שלנו, והפעם הוא יהיה מיוחד! אנו נפגשים ב-18:30 ומתחילים ב-19:00. כתובת: מכללת שנקר, בניין ראשי ברחוב אנה פרנק, רמת גן, חדר 300. </p> <p> פרטים נוספים ניתן למצוא <a href="http://telaviv.pm.org/" rel="nofollow">באתר של שוחרי הפרל של תל אביב</a>. </p> <p> במפגש זה יהיו ההרצאות הבאות: </p> <ul> <li> <p> <b>ויזואליזציה של המוח של וים</b> - רן עילם - אהבתם אותו ב"תשתיות לפיתוח משחקים בעזרת SDL, Moose ו-Coro", בכיתם בעקבות הביצוע שלו במפגשים אחרי ההרצאות, ותעריצו אותו לחלוטין ב"ויזואליזציה של המוח של וים". האגדה החיה רן עילם ירצה לנו (מתחילים ומומחים כאחד) על וים (Vim) ועל כיצד לעכל את החיה הזאת. מילת אזהרה: שתי השורות הראשונות בקהל יפגעו מלהבות חוצבות כנגד אימקס (Emacs). </p> </li> <li> <p> <b>צרור מודולים שהיה הגיוני לכתוב</b> - סוויר אקס: אני הולך לסקור מספר מודולים לשימושי שכתבתי, מדוע הם נכתבו, ומתי הם שימושיים. בסוף תצטרכו לשפוט אם היה זה בכלל כדאי לכתוב אותם. יהיו גם קלפיות של הצבעה! (אנחנו נכסה את Algorithm::Diff::Callback, App::Genpass, Data::PowerSet::Hash ו-Module::Version.) </p> </li> <li> <p> <b>לשדרג או לא לשדרג - פרל 5.6 כנגד פרל 5.14</b> - עידו קנר כנגד סוויר אקס: מקור גדול של דאגה בקהילת משתמשי הפרל היא האם להשתמש בגרסה עדכנית של פרל ואיזו גרסה צריכה להיחשב "ישנה מדי". מצד אחד, יש לנו את ההנהלה שרוצה עד כמה שפחות עלות ושינויים (ולפעמים גם מנהלי המערכות רוצים בכך), ומצד שני המפתח שרוצה להשתמש בטכנולוגיות החדשות ביותר, ופעמים רבות תקוע במערכות שאבד עליהן כלח. </p> <p> לאור שיקול רציני זה, אנו הולכים, איש בתורו, לתקוע מקל אחד בשני, כשאנו חובשים כובעים מצחיקים, ולדון את הלא מאמינים והכופרים לגיהינום עד שידגלו בצד אחד: 5.6 או 5.14! </p> </li> </ul> <p> המפגש הוא חינמי וכולם מוזמנים. נתראה שם! </p> </div> <h3>English Version</h3> <p> <b>Please note the change of venue.</b> This is the building where we started having TA.pm, and not the one which we used for some of the recent meetings. </p> <p> On 28 December, 2011 (Wednesday), the Tel Aviv Perl Mongers will hold their monthly meetup, and this time it is going to be special. We meet at 18:30 and the talks begin at 19:00. The address is: Shenkar College, main building on Anna Frank street, Ramat Gan, Room 300. </p> <p> One can find more details on <a href="http://telaviv.pm.org/" rel="nofollow">the web-site</a> of the Tel Aviv Perl mongers. </p> <p> This meeting will hold the following talks: </p> <ul> <li> <p> <b>Visualizing the brain of Vim</b> by Ran Eilam - You loved him in "Game frameworks with SDL, Moose and Coro", you cried over his performance in the after-meeting get-togethers, and you will absolutely adore him in "Visualizing the brain of Vim". All-star legend Ran Eilam will talk to us (both beginners and experts) about Vim and how to fathom this incredible beast. I warn you, the first two lines in the audience will be damaged by Emacs flames. </p> </li> <li> <p> <b>A bunch of modules which made sense writing</b> - by Sawyer X: I'm going to cover some utility modules I've written, why they were written and when they are useful. At the end, you'll have to judge whether they were worth writing at all. There will be voting booths available! (We'll cover Algorithm::Diff::Callback, App::Genpass, Data::PowerSet::Hash and Module::Version.) </p> </li> <li> <p> <b>To upgrade or not to upgrade, Perl 5.6 vs. Perl 5.14</b> - ik vs. Sawyer X: A source of great concern in the Perl users community is whether to use an up-to-date Perl and what version should be considered "too old". On one hand, we have the management that wants as little cost and changes as possible (sometimes along with systems administrators), and on the other hand, the developer who wants to use the latest technologies, and is often stuck on obsolete systems. </p> <p> In light of this serious consideration, we're going to take turns poking at each other with a stick, wearing funny hats, damning the unbelievers and heretics until they submit to one side: 5.6 or 5.14! </p> </li> </ul> <p> The entrance to the meeting is free-of-charge, and everyone are welcome to attend. See you there! </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) perl meeting foss http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/60825.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/60825.html Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:52:40 GMT http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/60439.html <p> The normal way to remove a completion for a Bash command (say “mv”) is to do “complete -r mv”. However, with the bash-completion package installed on Mageia Linux Cauldron, this is not enough because it also adds a default completion for every invoked command. So in order to override this behaviour, type “complete -r -D” and then you can remove the commands’ completions permanently, using “complete -r mv” or whatever. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) linux tip bash tech tech tip http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/60439.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/60439.html Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:44:54 GMT http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/12/report-on-the-latest-tel-aviv-perl-mongers-meeting.html I attended the latest Tel Aviv Perl Mongers (TelAviv.pm) meeting the other day, and am writing this report in order to encourage more people to come. We didn't have meetings in September or October due to the Jewish holidays... Shlomi Fish CPAN cpanminus DBI DBIx-Class Firebird Israel local-lib meeting Mongers Perl perlbrew SQL Tel Aviv http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/12/report-on-the-latest-tel-aviv-perl-mongers-meeting.html Sat, 03 Dec 2011 16:10:03 -0000 2011-12-03T16:15:08Z http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/12/execs-portability.html Pop quiz! What does this perl 5 program prints when executed with no arguments? #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; if (! @ARGV) { exec($^X, $0, "hello world"); } else { my $arg = shift(@ARGV); print "Got &lt;$arg&gt;\n"; if (@ARGV)... Shlomi Fish exec perl portability unix whitespace windows http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/12/execs-portability.html Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:28:39 -0000 2011-12-02T12:29:40Z http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/11/reminder-tel-aviv-perl-mongers-meeting-this-wednesday-30-november-2011.html This is a reminder for the upcoming meeting. (The Hebrew text will be followed by an English one). שימו לב לשינוי במיקום! זהו הבניין שבו קיימנו את מפגשי שוחרי הפרל התל-אביביים בהתחלה ולא זה ששימש עבור מספר הפגישות האחרונות.... Shlomi Fish events perl http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/11/reminder-tel-aviv-perl-mongers-meeting-this-wednesday-30-november-2011.html Sun, 27 Nov 2011 09:08:04 -0000 2011-11-27T09:11:21Z http://shlomif.livejournal.com/66158.html <p> I noticed that if I say to myself “Now I’m self-aware.” a few times and try to follow this advice, I acheive a certain state of self-awareness. Eventually, I get distracted, but while I do, it’s interesting. Try it, if you didn’t already. </p> <p> And for the music recommendations: <a href="http://www.greensunmusic.com/" rel="nofollow">Green Sun music</a> is an Israeli producer and composer who produces nice chill-out, new age electronic music. The first three albums are available for free download, and I also bought the mp3 version of his Dream Elements album, and can recommend it. </p> <p> After I bought it, I mentioned Green Sun to my friend (on IM), and he said that his friend had a band and that they released audio files on their site and eventually got a record deal. I asked him for their site and he referred me to <a href="http://machinaesupremacy.com/" rel="nofollow">Machinae Supremacy</a>. My friend thought I wouldn’t like them, but apparently I did - it’s a Metalish-music mixing many genres, with a rich sound, which I found likable (even if sometimes it’s a bit weird.). There are many free downloads there, but the site does not look properly with JavaScript disabled. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) music http://shlomif.livejournal.com/66158.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/66158.html Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:41:26 GMT http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/11/tel-aviv-perl-mongers-meeting-on-30-november-2011.html (The Hebrew text will be followed by an English one). שימו לב לשינוי במיקום! זהו הבניין שבו קיימנו את מפגשי שוחרי הפרל התל-אביביים בהתחלה ולא זה ששימש עבור מספר הפגישות האחרונות. ב-30 בנובמבר 2011 (יום רביעי) נערוך את מפגש... Shlomi Fish events israel meetings perl tel aviv telaviv http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/11/tel-aviv-perl-mongers-meeting-on-30-november-2011.html Sat, 19 Nov 2011 09:09:17 -0000 2011-11-19T09:11:45Z http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/11/my-experience-with-inlinec.html I know I didn't write here for a long time, and I apologise for it, but I have this entry and another one in mind and I hope they can compensate for it. For my work on Freecell Solver,... Shlomi Fish C ctypes gcc Inline Perl QA XS http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/11/my-experience-with-inlinec.html Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:41:12 -0000 2011-11-09T16:42:13Z http://shlomif.livejournal.com/66017.html <p> This is a joke my father told us the other day: </p> <p> A Rabbi lived in a remote shack, and the weather forecast said there will be a large flood. So two people arrived there in a Jeep and told the Rabbi: “Rabbi, there will be a flood, come with us so you'll be saved.” and the Rabbi said: “No, that's OK - God will save me.”. </p> <p> And indeed it started to rain, and there was a lot of water, and so a boat arrived at the Rabbi's house and the people there told the Rabbi: “Rabbi, there's a flood, come with us and you'll be saved.” and the Rabbi told them: “No, that's OK - God will save me.” and he remained there. </p> <p> And it continued to rain, and the water level went up and the Rabbi had to climb to the roof of his shack. A helicopter arrived at his shack, and the people inside told the Rabbi: “Rabbi, there's a big flood. Come with us to safety.”, and the Rabbi said: “No, that's OK - God will save me.”. And the Helicopter left. </p> <p> The water levels rose even more, and the Rabbi drowned, and his soul went to heaven. There he confronted God and asked him: “Dear God, why didn't you save me?”, and God replied “Well, I tried. I sent you a Jeep, a boat - even a helicopter - but you wouldn't accept any of them. What more could I have done?” </p> <hr /> <p> The moral of this story is: God helps them that help God help them. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) humour humor http://shlomif.livejournal.com/66017.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/66017.html Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:53:41 GMT http://shlomif.livejournal.com/65571.html <p> This Yom Kippur, I again went over my blogs from the last year. I mostly blogged in <a href="http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/">my technical blog</a> about tips and events and stuff like that. I did not mention some of the significant good and bad things that happened to me on my blogs, but I guess I have a right for privacy and/or they were of no interest to the world at large. </p> <p> The past year was good for me, but could have been better, and I drew some conclusions from looking back. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) yom kippur http://shlomif.livejournal.com/65571.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/65571.html Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:39:56 GMT http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/60394.html <p> First of all, happy <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosh_Hashanah" rel="nofollow">new Jewish Year</a>. </p> <p> My old Pentium 4 2.4 GHz computer (here's <a href="http://www.advogato.org/person/shlomif/diary/176.html" rel="nofollow">the blog entry where I blogged about getting it back in 22-September-2003</a>) has served me mostly well for 8 years, but recently exhibited many signs of dying and had problems booting a lot of the partitions there. As a result, we bought a new computer to replace it: a Core i3 machine with 8 GB of RAM, a 2 TB hard-disk, and an Intel HD Graphics adapter. I've installed Mageia 1 on it and set it up, and it is now working mostly nicely. </p> <p> I've ran into a few problems with it. From the 1280*1024 screen resolution not working (which required adding a mode line), to <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il/msg61605.html" rel="nofollow">packets being dropped by the network interface</a> (which I found a fix for <a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=713315" rel="nofollow">on a Red Hat bug</a>), to the fact that <a href="https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37629" rel="nofollow">transparency is not working properly</a> when running remote X apps (which is not resolved yet.), but as a general rule - I'm happy. </p> <p> The new computer is much faster than the old one, which wasn't too slow running Linux either. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/60394.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/60394.html Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:23:24 GMT http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/59932.html <p> I've begun working on a JavaScript port of some algorithmic perl code, to allow it to run inside a browser. As a result, I had to find a good JavaScript automated tests library to allow me to write automated tests for the code. I first looked at Test.More and Test.Harness from JSAN (the JavaScript Archive Network) but as it turned out, JSAN was defunct, and no one had time to mark it as such. Then I asked the “Test.Run” developer (another thing I had found on jsan) to instruct me how to get it up and running, and he gave me a link to its archive, which was 1.5 mb compressed (!), and so was not acceptable. </p> <p> I looked at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_unit_testing_frameworks#javascript" rel="nofollow">the Wikipedia list of unit testing frameworks</a>, but there were too many. at least I understood that jsUnit was no longer actively maintained. I looked at Jasmine, which is a bdd framework for JS, but its syntax seemed too horrid and unnatural. </p> <p> Eventually, I decided to ask for recommendation on <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/" rel="nofollow">Stack Overflow</a> and, as after I wrote my title, I found a <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/96066/automated-unit-testing-with-javascript" rel="nofollow">a previous question</a>, where there was a recommendation of <a href="http://docs.jquery.com/Qunit" rel="nofollow">QUnit</a>, which I noticed was developed by the jQuery people, and as I'm fond of jQuery, I decided to look deeper into it. </p> <p> I wasn't disappointed by QUnit - it does what it does well, and I was able to write my test suite using it, so I can recommend it as well. It has primitives that are very similar to perl's <a href="http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Test::More" rel="nofollow">Test::More</a>, and it can even assert that the number of assertions ran within a test are right (like Test::More can). </p> <p> So here's a tip for it: if you're writing your testing code in a different file, and you wish to check that no compile-time or run-time exception was thrown (which will cause qunit to report a success with zero assertions) you should wrap the testing code in a <tt>try { .. } catch</tt> block and in the catch block, run <tt>ok(false...)</tt>. </p> <p> Here's an example from my code: </p> <pre> &lt;!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC &quot;-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN&quot; &quot;http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd&quot;&gt; &lt;html&gt; &lt;head&gt; &lt;title&gt;ABCPath Test&lt;/title&gt; &lt;script src=&quot;jquery-latest.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;link rel=&quot;stylesheet&quot; href=&quot;qunit.css&quot; type=&quot;text/css&quot; media=&quot;screen&quot; /&gt; &lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;qunit.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;joose.mini.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;abc-path.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;abc-path-test.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt; $(document).ready(function () { try { test_abc_path(); } catch (err) { module(&quot;Meta&quot;); test(&quot;global_failure&quot;, function() { ok (false, &#39;test_abc_path() has thrown an exception or is invalid.&#39;); }); } // Hide passed tests by default. $(&#39;#qunit-tests&#39;).addClass(&#39;hidepass&#39;); }); &lt;/script&gt; &lt;/head&gt; &lt;body&gt; &lt;h1 id=&quot;qunit-header&quot;&gt;QUnit example&lt;/h1&gt; &lt;h2 id=&quot;qunit-banner&quot;&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;div id=&quot;qunit-testrunner-toolbar&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt; &lt;h2 id=&quot;qunit-userAgent&quot;&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;ol id=&quot;qunit-tests&quot;&gt;&lt;/ol&gt; &lt;div id=&quot;qunit-fixture&quot;&gt;test markup, will be hidden&lt;/div&gt; &lt;/body&gt; &lt;/html&gt; </pre> <p> Enjoy. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) tip tech testing jquery tech tip perl qa javascript http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/59932.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/59932.html Mon, 05 Sep 2011 13:57:54 GMT http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/59692.html <p> (The Hebrew text will be followed by an English one). </p> <div align="right" dir="rtl"> <p> ב-31 באוגוסט 2011 (יום רביעי) נערוך את מפגש הפרל החודשי שלנו! אנו נפגשים ב-18:30 ומתחילים ב19:00. כתובת: מכללת שנקר, בניין מיטשל, רמת גן, חדר 2106. (<b>שימו לב לשינוי בכתובת מפעמים קודמות.</b>). במפגש זה נשמע הרצאות אודות מערכת ניהול הגרסאות git. </p> <p> פרטים נוספים ניתן למצוא <a href="http://telaviv.pm.org/" rel="nofollow">באתר של שוחרי הפרל של תל אביב</a> </p> <p> במפגש זה יהיו ההרצאות הבאות: </p> <ul> <li> <p> <b>Git</b> - Git הינה מערכת ניהול גרסאות מבוזרת. היא מהווה כלי שימושי למפתחים ומתפשטת כמו אש, בשל טבעה השימושי, והשימוש שנעשה בה בפיתוח הגרעין של לינוקס, ספריות ותוכנות קוד פתוח רבות, ובתוך מספר רב של ארגונים. בכוונתי ללמד אותו. (סוייר - 40 דקות). </p> </li> <li> <p> <b>Gitflow</b> - Gitflow הינו כלי מעטפת שימושי שמאפשר לכם להסדיר תהליך פיתוח יותר מובנה, הלוקח בחשבון תכונות, גרסאות היוצאות לאור, תיקונים חמים ועוד. הוא שימושי מאוד כאשר מספר מפתחים עובדים עובדים על התוכנה בשילוב משלב, צוות בקרת איכות, צוות פיתוח, וכן הלאה. בכוונתי להדגים גם אותו! (סוייר - 40 דקות). </p> </li> </ul> <p> המפגש הוא חינמי וכולם מוזמנים. נתראה שם! </p> </div> <h3>English Version</h3> <p> <b>Please note the change of venue.</b> We're moving to the next adjacent building to where we were. You can use the original entrance or use the listed address. </p> <p> On 31 August, 2011 (Wednesday), the Tel Aviv Perl Mongers will hold their monthly meetup. We meet at 18:30 and start at 19:00. The address is: Shenkar College, Mitchel building, Yeda Am 8, Ramat Gan, Room 2106. The theme of this meeting will be the git version control system. </p> <p> One can find more details in <a href="http://telaviv.pm.org/" rel="nofollow">the web-site</a> of the Tel Aviv Perl mongers. </p> <p> This meeting will hold the following talks: </p> <ul> <li> <p> <b>Git</b> - Git is a decentralized code revision management system. It's becoming a valuable tool for developers (whether programmers, designers, or other) and is spreading like fire due to its useful nature, being used in the Linux Kernel development, many free software libraries and programs and many organizations alike. I intend to teach it to you. (Sawyer - 40 minutes). </p> </li> <li> <p> <b>Gitflow</b> - Gitflow is a useful wrapper tool to allow you to set a more streamlined development process, taking into account features, releases, hot fixes and more. It's very useful when using multiple developers with an integrator, a QA, a dev team, and so on. I intend to showcase it as well! (Sawyer - 40 minutes.) </p> </li> </ul> <p> The entrance to the meeting is free-of-charge and everyone are welcome to attend. See you there! </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) perl meeting foss http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/59692.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/59692.html Mon, 29 Aug 2011 10:18:22 GMT http://shlomif.livejournal.com/65423.html <p> I've begun working on a JavaScript port of some algorithmic Perl code, to allow it to run inside a browser. As a result, I had to find a good JavaScript automated tests library to allow me to write automated tests for the code. I first looked at Test.More and Test.Harness from JSAN (the JavaScript Archive Network) but as it turned out, JSAN was defunct, and no one had time to mark it as such. Then I asked the “Test.Run” developer (another thing I had found on JSAN) to instruct me how to get it up and running, and he gave me a link to its archive, which was 1.5 MB compressed (!), and so was not acceptable. </p> <p> I looked at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unit_testing_frameworks#JavaScript" rel="nofollow">the wikipedia list of unit testing frameworks</a>, but there were too many. At least I understood that JSUnit was no longer actively maintained. I looked at Jasmine, which is a BDD framework for JS, but its syntax seemed too horrid and unnatural. </p> <p> Eventually, I decided to ask for recommendation on <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/" rel="nofollow">Stack Overflow</a> and, as after I wrote my title, I found a <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/96066/automated-unit-testing-with-javascript" rel="nofollow">a previous question</a>, where there was a recommendation of <a href="http://docs.jquery.com/Qunit" rel="nofollow">QUnit</a>, which I noticed was developed by the jQuery people, and as I'm fond of jQuery, I decided to look deeper into it. </p> <p> I wasn't disappointed by QUnit - it does what it does well, and I was able to write my test suite using it, so I can recommend it as well. It has primitives that are very similar to Perl's <a href="http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Test::More" rel="nofollow">Test::More</a>, and it can even assert that the number of assertions ran within a test are right (like Test::More can). </p> <p> So here's a tip for it: if you're writing your testing code in a different file, and you wish to check that no compile-time or run-time exception was thrown (which will cause QUnit to report a success with zero assertions) you should wrap the testing code in a <tt>try { .. } catch</tt> block and in the catch block, run <tt>ok(false...)</tt>. </p> <p> Here's an example from my code: </p> <pre> &lt;!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC &quot;-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN&quot; &quot;http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd&quot;&gt; &lt;html&gt; &lt;head&gt; &lt;title&gt;ABCPath Test&lt;/title&gt; &lt;script src=&quot;jquery-latest.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;link rel=&quot;stylesheet&quot; href=&quot;qunit.css&quot; type=&quot;text/css&quot; media=&quot;screen&quot; /&gt; &lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;qunit.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;joose.mini.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;abc-path.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;abc-path-test.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt; &lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt; $(document).ready(function () { try { test_abc_path(); } catch (err) { module(&quot;Meta&quot;); test(&quot;global_failure&quot;, function() { ok (false, &#39;test_abc_path() has thrown an exception or is invalid.&#39;); }); } // Hide passed tests by default. $(&#39;#qunit-tests&#39;).addClass(&#39;hidepass&#39;); }); &lt;/script&gt; &lt;/head&gt; &lt;body&gt; &lt;h1 id=&quot;qunit-header&quot;&gt;QUnit example&lt;/h1&gt; &lt;h2 id=&quot;qunit-banner&quot;&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;div id=&quot;qunit-testrunner-toolbar&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt; &lt;h2 id=&quot;qunit-userAgent&quot;&gt;&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;ol id=&quot;qunit-tests&quot;&gt;&lt;/ol&gt; &lt;div id=&quot;qunit-fixture&quot;&gt;test markup, will be hidden&lt;/div&gt; &lt;/body&gt; &lt;/html&gt; </pre> <p> Enjoy. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) qa tip javascript perl tech testing http://shlomif.livejournal.com/65423.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/65423.html Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:33:14 GMT http://shlomif.livejournal.com/65084.html <p> I received the book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Gump_%28novel%29" rel="nofollow"><i>Forrest Gump</i></a>, as a present of gratitude after I tried to help someone with a problem he encountered with <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/" rel="nofollow">Freecell Solver</a>. I finished reading it a while ago, and would like to review it here, as a token for being given it. </p> <p> The book is great, and I liked it better than the film (which was based on it). In the film, it is implied that Forrest Gump is a retard, but in the book, he is an idiot-savant, who excels in mathematics, music, and some other mental activities. In the book, Forrest stumbles upon life, one weird happening after another, in a very lovable way, and the story is captivating, funny and entertaining. </p> <p> I can recommend this book, and I also recommend <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gump_and_Co." rel="nofollow">its sequel</a>, which I had read before reading the first book. </p> <h3>Humble Indie Bundle 3</h3> <p> I suggest you look at the <a href="http://www.humblebundle.com/" rel="nofollow">Humble Indie Bundle 3</a>, which allows you to pay how much you want for seven indie games, and split the proceeds between charity and the developers of the games. I've bought the bundle (as I did the previous one) and am now enjoying the game Crayon Physics Deluxe, which is great. </p> <h3>Personal Log</h3> <p> I've felt under the weather a while ago, but hopefully, this is mostly behind me. In the past few days, I've kept myself busy by studying <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_theory" rel="nofollow">Group theory</a>, watching episodes of The Muppet Show, translating some code from Perl to JavaScript (which has given me a lot of fodder for my <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/javascript/" rel="nofollow">JavaScript</a> page), and playing various games. </p> <p> I've been feeling guilty about not having been following my RSS feeds for a long while. I've started to become not very fond of Akregator (the KDE feeds' aggregator), due to its lack of RSS service support, and I feel that the developers' plan to port it to Akonadi will make it even worse. I've found two other feeds' aggregators (one for Firefox and the other one for GNOME/gtk+) either slow or annoying, and so am left without an aggregator. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) http://shlomif.livejournal.com/65084.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/65084.html Sun, 07 Aug 2011 16:35:11 GMT http://shlomif-hsite.livejournal.com/16447.html <p> Here are the recent updates for Shlomi Fish’s Homepage. The first highlight is that I’ve gone over the site and converted most ASCII single quotes and double quotes I could find to their Unicode equivalents. In the process, I corrected many typos, XHTML validation problems, and other issues. </p> <p> There are new <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/" rel="nofollow">fortune cookies</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> The worst way to waste your time is to never waste it. </p> </blockquote> <p> There’s a translation of the of <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/" rel="nofollow">Human Hacking Field Guide</a> to Written Arabic. This was done by Vieq - thanks! </p> <p> The Hebrew translation of the screenplay <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/humanity/" rel="nofollow"><i>Humanity - the Movie</i></a> is now complete. </p> <p> Furthermore, the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/XML-Grammar/Fiction/" rel="nofollow">XML-Grammar-Fiction page</a> was enhanced with examples and links. </p> <p> There’s a new <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/Test.pm-Converter/" rel="nofollow">Test.pm to Test::More partial converter</a>, which may be of interest to programmers maintaining legacy Perl code. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) fortune screenplay translations humor hebrew english web cookies arabic http://shlomif-hsite.livejournal.com/16447.html http://shlomif-hsite.livejournal.com/16447.html Sat, 23 Jul 2011 09:48:24 GMT http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/59478.html <p> In order to send a signal (such as kill) to all process of a certain UNIX user, one can do: </p> <pre> pkill -U "$username" </pre> <p> To kill them forcibly using the 9 signal ("SIGKILL"), you can do: </p> <pre> pkill -9 -U "$username" </pre> <p> To just list their process IDs, you can do: </p> <pre> pgrep -U "$username" </pre> <h3>Personal Log</h3> <p> svn.berlios.de has <a href="https://developer.berlios.de/bugs/?func=detailbug&amp;bug_id=18269&amp;group_id=1" rel="nofollow">not been available in the past day</a> , which really drives me mad, so I decided to: </p> <ol> <li>Do stuff that don't require it, like blog or work on non-svn.berlios.de code.</li> <li>Transition most of my code away from svn.berlios.de to bitbucket.org and Mercurial once it is up.</li> </ol> <p> Cheers. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) tip tech tech tip http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/59478.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/59478.html Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:41:30 GMT http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/59157.html <p> Here are some more <a href="http://www.vim.org/" rel="nofollow">Vim</a> tips I collected recently: </p> <ol> <li> <p> One can repeat the last <a href="http://shlomif.livejournal.com/33453.html">t, f, T or F command</a> which moves to the next specified character in a line, or right before that, using <a href="http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/motion.html#;" rel="nofollow">;</a>, and repeat in the opposite direction using <a href="http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/motion.html#," rel="nofollow">,</a>. I discovered those after starting to read through the vim <tt>usr_*</tt> manuals. </p> </li> <li> <p> One can get the Unicode value of the character under the cursor using the <tt>:ascii</tt> command-line command or the <tt>ga</tt> normal mode command. </p> </li> <li> <p> If you want to find how many lines/words/etc. are in a visual block, you can select it using "v" and friends and then type <tt>g-Ctrl+G</tt>. </p> </li> <li> <p> Finally, you can pipe the contents of the buffer or a range to an external program and view its output temporarily. So you can say <tt>:w !grep 'FOO' | wc -l</tt> to find the number of lines containing 'FOO', or <tt>:'a,'bw !grep 'FOO' | wc -l</tt> within a range. </p> </li> </ol> <p> I should note that one thing that annoyed me lately, is the fact that after I have a visual selection (<tt>v</tt> or <tt>V</tt>), I sometimes press <tt>u</tt> instead of <tt>y</tt> (because they are so nearby) and so cause the selection to become lowercase instead of yanking it. </p> <p> Happy Vimming! </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) tip vim tip tech vim tech tip http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/59157.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/59157.html Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:09:11 GMT http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/58907.html <p> One time when trying to do something with code.google.com, I got a server error. I recorded the HTTP session that led to it and converted it to a self-reproducing Perl script, which still gives me this error. I reported this error to Google on the relevant forums twice, but I did not get a reply. So in the name of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_disclosure" rel="nofollow">full disclosure</a>, I'm reporting it here. </p> <p> The script in question can be found as <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/Files/files/code/bugs/c.g.c-error.txt" rel="nofollow">a text file on my homepage</a> or as <a href="http://paste.debian.net/122853/" rel="nofollow">a paste.debian.net paste</a>. I don't know what the implications of this error are, but it should still be dealt with and it wasn't. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) bug google security http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/58907.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/58907.html Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:23:27 GMT http://fc-solve.blogspot.com/2011/07/freecell-solver-380-was-released.html <p> <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/">Freecell Solver</a> version 3.8.0 has been released. It is available in the form of a source tarball from <a href="http://fc-solve.berlios.de/download.html">the download page</a>. </p> <p> This release fixes some crashes using <tt>--trim-max-stored-states</tt>, adds a more meaningful man page instead of the token one that was previously present, adds <tt>scripts/parallel-range-solver-total</tt> to solve a range of deals in parallel by splitting them into chunks, and many smaller improvements and fixes. </p> <p> We also forgot to mention the 3.6.0 release, which fixed the installation of <tt>fcs_dllexport.h</tt>, added the <tt>--tracemem</tt> compile time option, added a bug fix for incrementally increasing the iterations/stored-states limits, added a built-in version of <a href="http://www.kylheku.com/~kaz/kazlib.html">kazlib</a>'s balanced binary search tree as a possible back-end for storage, and had some other improvements. </p> <p> Enjoy! </p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/96099636168698788-2745502186764392027?l=fc-solve.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) version bugs freecell release fixes code cleanup solving solver tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96099636168698788.post-2745502186764392027 Sun, 03 Jul 2011 14:36:00 +0000 2011-07-03T07:37:49.364-07:00 http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/58669.html <p> Here is a message to everyone who is concerned: </p> <ol> <li> Please don't ask me if I want any Google Plus invites. </li> <li> Please don't ask me if I can give any Google Plus invites. </li> <li> It would be a good idea to refrain from doing both of these to other people as well. </li> </ol> <p> This Google Plus invites thing starts the whole Google Wave thing all over again, and is incredibly anti-social (which is ironic for a social network). So you have been warned. If any of you violate either of these, they will be referred to this post. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) hype google http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/58669.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/58669.html Sun, 03 Jul 2011 10:15:40 GMT http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/06/ppi-based-script-to-convert-testpm-based-test-programs-to-testmore.html Some CPAN modules I inherited used the old Test.pm for some of their t/*.t scripts instead of the more modern Test::More. This annoys me to no end because Test.pm is very limited. When I worked on Config-IniFiles, I did... Shlomi Fish Perl PPI QA http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/06/ppi-based-script-to-convert-testpm-based-test-programs-to-testmore.html Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:00:36 -0000 2011-06-23T20:02:04Z http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/06/resuming-maintenance-of-xml-libxml.html For a long while, work on the XML-LibXML CPAN module halted as the existing maintainer was busy. After a discussion on the Perl-in-XML mailing list, some people and I were given co-maintainer status and we resumed its maintenance inside... Shlomi Fish CPAN libxml XML http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/06/resuming-maintenance-of-xml-libxml.html Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:38:13 -0000 2011-06-20T14:39:09Z http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/06/transferring-a-ticket-to-yapceurope2011.html I originally planned to attend YAPC::Europe::2011 in Riga, Latvia (on 15-17 August, 2011), and so bought an early bird ticket, but will no longer be able to attend due to personal reasons. As a result, I'm now seaking to... Shlomi Fish YAPC http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/06/transferring-a-ticket-to-yapceurope2011.html Mon, 20 Jun 2011 08:13:24 -0000 2011-06-20T08:14:58Z http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/58391.html <p> I've written <a href="https://bitbucket.org/shlomif/kde4-virtual-desktop-names" rel="nofollow">a small command-line utility</a> to change the names of the KDE 4 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_desktop" rel="nofollow">virtual desktops</a> (also known as "virtual workspaces"). </p> <p> To use it, do something like this: </p> <pre> #!/bin/bash ./set_kde4_virtual_desktop_names \ "Main" "Devel" "Chat" "Donkey" \ "Music" "Config" "Workspace 7" "Games" </pre> <p> I've originally thought I could do it by setting the value of <tt>_NET_DESKTOP_NAMES</tt> in xprop, but that turned out to be futile. Then I decided that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery and ripped the relevant code out of kdebase-workspace, and after some modifications, it worked. I'd like to thank <tt>pinotree</tt> from <tt>#kde-devel</tt> for some assistance. </p> <p> Here is the code, but the repository also contains a <tt>CMakeLists.txt</tt> file: </p> <pre> /* * A program to set the names of KDE 4&#39; virtual desktops (a.k.a virtual * workspaces). * * Adapted from kdebase-workspace-4.6.4 &#39;s * kwin/kcmkwin/kwindesktop/main.cpp , which is: ******************************************************************** KWin - the KDE window manager This file is part of the KDE project. Copyright (C) 2009 Martin Gräßlin &lt;kde@martin-graesslin.com&gt; This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see &lt;http://www.gnu.org/licenses/&gt;. ********************************************************************* * * Skeleton of KApplication taken from: * http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/First_program * * Written by Shlomi Fish ( http://www.shlomifish.org/ ) while disclaiming * all rights on the modifications. * */ #include &lt;QX11Info&gt; #include &lt;NETRootInfo&gt; #include &lt;KApplication&gt; #include &lt;KAboutData&gt; #include &lt;KCmdLineArgs&gt; #include &lt;KMessageBox&gt; #include &lt;KLocale&gt; int main(int argc, char * argv[]) { KAboutData aboutData( // The program name used internally. &quot;tutorial1&quot;, // The message catalog name // If null, program name is used instead. 0, // A displayable program name string. ki18n(&quot;Tutorial 1&quot;), // The program version string. &quot;1.0&quot;, // Short description of what the app does. ki18n(&quot;Displays a KMessageBox popup&quot;), // The license this code is released under KAboutData::License_GPL, // Copyright Statement ki18n(&quot;(c) 2007&quot;), // Optional text shown in the About box. // Can contain any information desired. ki18n(&quot;Some text...&quot;), // The program homepage string. &quot;http://example.com/&quot;, // The bug report email address &quot;submit@bugs.kde.org&quot;); KCmdLineArgs::init( argc, argv, &amp;aboutData ); KCmdLineOptions options; options.add(&quot;!+command&quot;); KCmdLineArgs::addCmdLineOptions( options ); KApplication app; KCmdLineArgs * parsedArgs = KCmdLineArgs::parsedArgs(); QStringList desktopNames; for (int i = 0; i &lt; parsedArgs-&gt;count() ; i++) { desktopNames &lt;&lt; parsedArgs-&gt;arg(i); } int numDesktops = desktopNames.count(); #ifdef Q_WS_X11 NETRootInfo info( QX11Info::display(), NET::NumberOfDesktops | NET::DesktopNames ); // set desktop names for( int i = 1; i &lt;= numDesktops; i++ ) { QString desktopName = desktopNames[ i -1 ]; info.setDesktopName( i, desktopName.toUtf8()); info.activate(); } // set number of desktops info.setNumberOfDesktops( numDesktops ); info.activate(); XSync(QX11Info::display(), false); #endif return 0; } </pre> <p> Hope you like it. The reason I've written it is because the names of the virtual desktops got reset for me in KDE 4 and I didn't want to set them times and again. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) tip tech tech tip kde http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/58391.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/58391.html Thu, 16 Jun 2011 07:56:15 GMT http://shlomif.livejournal.com/64869.html <div dir="rtl" align="right"> <p> באוניברסיטת תל אביב הולך להתקיים ביום שלישי, ה-31 במאי (השבוע) <b>שבוע הספר האלטרנטיבי</b> (ראו את <a href="http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=122261137854339&amp;ref=ts" rel="nofollow">הדף של האירוע בפייסבוק</a> ) באוניברסיטת תל אביב, ממול לבניין גילמן, הפקולטה למדעי הרוח, בין השעות 09:30 בבוקר ל-16:30 אחה"צ. </p> <p> אם לקרוא מהתיאור: </p> <blockquote> <p> ביום שלישי ה31/5 אנחנו עורכים יום אלטרנטיבי לקראת שבוע הספר בשיתוף האגודה והחוג לספרות באוניברסיטה מ10:00 בוקר ועד אחר הצהריים יוצבו דוכני ספרים של יוצרים עצמאים ויוצרים חדשים, "ספר תמורת ספר" הביאו ספר שעשה את שלו והחליפו אותו באחר או לחלופין לתרומה על הדשא מול גילמן תעמוד במה פתוחה לקריאת שירה ופרוזה קצרה שתפעל בהפסקות הלימודים בואו לקרוא ולהקריא, לשמוע ולהשמיע, לדפדף וליהנות מחווית ספרות שלא תמצאו בדוכני שבוע ספר רגילים ותהיה בירה בזול </p> <p> רשימה חלקית של משתתפות ומשתתפים: כתב העת מעין, מתי שמואלוף, בסטרבות, כתב העת אלת המסטיק, סמטאות ספרים, המשורר עידו הראל, כתב העת אלמנך, מגזין איי-5, אביגיל פקלמן, גולדמונד ספרים. </p> <p> מבטיחים הפתעות נוספות! </p> </blockquote> <p> גם אני מתכוון לבוא לשם כדי להקריא <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/" rel="nofollow">מהסיפורים שלי</a> (ובכללם נובילות, תסריטים, אמרות שפר, ומובאות), שחלקם התחלתי לתרגם לעברית לקראת האירוע. אני מקווה לראות גם אתכם שם. </p> <p> קריאה נעימה! </p> </div> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) stories tau israel university tel aviv http://shlomif.livejournal.com/64869.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/64869.html Sat, 28 May 2011 21:03:30 GMT http://shlomif-hsite.livejournal.com/16317.html <p> Here are the recent updates for Shlomi Fish’s Homepage. Most of these are ongoing translations of various English stories to Hebrew. These were done in preparation for the “Alternative Book Week” in <a href="http://www.tau.ac.il/" rel="nofollow">Tel Aviv University</a> (see its <a href="http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=122261137854339" rel="nofollow">Facebook page</a>). It is going to take place on Tuesday, 31 May 2011 between 09:30 and 16:30 in Tel Aviv University, next to the Gilman building, the department of Humanities. Several indepentant writers are going to read from their prose there, including me. You are welcome to attend, listen to the participating writers, and provide us with welcome support and input. Hope to see you there! </p> <p> There’s <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#cats-in-soviet-russia" rel="nofollow">a new joke in the aphorisms and quotes page</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> In Soviet Russia, cats own you. No, wait! Cats own you everywhere. </p> </blockquote> <p> I posted the first part of my <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Selena-Mandrake/" rel="nofollow"><i>Selena Mandrake - The Slayer</i></a> screenplay to <a href="http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6989657/1/" rel="nofollow">its place in FanFiction.net</a> where one can rate it and post comments. There is some new text in the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Selena-Mandrake/ideas.txt" rel="nofollow">ideas for the future</a> document. </p> <p> I started preparing a <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/humanity/ongoing-text-hebrew.html" rel="nofollow">Hebrew translation</a> of my <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/humanity/" rel="nofollow"><i>Humanity - The Movie</i></a> screenplay. </p> <p> There are two new fortunes in <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/" rel="nofollow">fortune collection</a>. </p> <p> We now mirror the web parody <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/was-the-death-star-attack-an-inside-job/" rel="nofollow">“Uncomfortable Questions: Was the Death Star Attack an Inside Job?”</a> (via Websurdity and <a href="http://www.debunking911.com/questions.htm" rel="nofollow">Debunking 911</a>). </p> <p> The various screenplays in English in the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/stories/" rel="nofollow">stories section</a> now have better capitalisation, punctuation and grammar, and their visual style was also improved. There are also many grammatical corrections to the story <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/" rel="nofollow"><i>The Human Hacking Field Guide</i></a> and a lot of progress was made in <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/hebrew-v2.html" rel="nofollow">its Hebrew translation</a>. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/XML-Grammar/Fiction/" rel="nofollow">The XML-Grammar-Fiction page</a> now contains coverage of Screenplay-Text and Screenplay-XML, as well as examples for the grammars and their outputs. </p> <p> Enjoy! </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) translations hebrew cc fanfiction cookies humour fortune screenplay creativecommons humor english web starwars hack hacking http://shlomif-hsite.livejournal.com/16317.html http://shlomif-hsite.livejournal.com/16317.html Fri, 27 May 2011 15:29:44 GMT http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/58200.html <p> By default, the <a href="http://kate-editor.org/">Kate editor of the KDE project</a> displays Hebrew/Arabic text etc. left aligned in the window instead of aligned to the right edge of the window even after the "Enhanced support for languages written right-to-left" is checked in the <tt>qtconfig</tt> applet. To remedy this you need to invoke Kate, go to its configuration screen ("Settings → Configure Kate", <b>not</b> the KDE global systemsettings application) and then go to “Editor Component → Appearance → General → Dynamic Word Wrap” and toggle it on and after doing that the mostly Hebrew lines will be properly aligned. </p> <p> (I don't know why the “Dynamic Word Wrap” should affect that, and it took a long time to realise this was the problem due to the web searches and the KDE developers on IRC being ignorant, but that seems to be the solution to this.) </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) bidi tip tech hebrew rtl tech tip kde http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/58200.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/58200.html Wed, 18 May 2011 02:42:18 GMT http://shlomif-hsite.livejournal.com/16110.html <p> Here is what’s new on <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/">Shlomi Fish’s Homepage</a> since the last update. It’s been a month and there are many major changes. </p> <p> A new work-in-progress screenplay titled <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Selena-Mandrake/"><i>Selena Mandrake - The Slayer</i></a> can be found in the stories section. This is a supernatural dramedie, that is a parody/tribute/spin-off of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer">Buffy the Vampire Slayer</a> and some other works of fiction and non-fiction. I have a pretty good roadmap for what I’d like to write there so I hope to get the first draft soon. </p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Selena:</strong> This reminds me. I really should update my Mandriva system at home. I have not in several days, now. And to think I originally had my friend Aaron install Mandrake Linux for me, because I thought it was cool that it was called the same as my last name. </p> <p><strong>Jessica:</strong> Heh, maybe you should become Selena Mandriva now. </p> <p><strong>Jonathan:</strong> Or Selena Mageia. </p> <p> [ Selena bursts out laughing. ] </p> <p><strong>Selena:</strong> That sounds like a name of a vampire slayer… or a vampire. </p> <p><strong>Jonathan:</strong> Or both. </p> <p><strong>Selena:</strong> Yeah. I told you about how I was nicknamed “Puffy” and then “Buffy” during one summer camp, right? </p> <p><strong>Jessica:</strong> Yes, many times. </p> <p><strong>Selena:</strong> Yeah, I found it amusing at the time. For a while afterwards, I insisted that my friends call me “Buffy” until I realised it was silly, and reverted back to “Selena”. </p> </blockquote> <p> I’ve also began translating the second version of my novella <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/"><i>The Human Hacking Field Guide</i></a> to Hebrew. One can find <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/hebrew-v2.html">the ongoing Hebrew translation</a> and its <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/human-hacking-field-guide-hebrew-v2.txt">Fiction-Text source</a>, under CC-by-sa - same licence as the English original. In addition, I can say that the story is being translated to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Standard_Arabic">Modern Standard Arabic</a> in the OpenDocument format by an Egyptian enthusiast of open-source software, and more translations will be welcome. </p> <p> In addition to all that, version 7 of my novella <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/TheEnemy/"><i>The Enemy and How I Helped to Fight It</i></a>, in Hebrew and English, with many improvements is now available online. I especially would like to thank <a href="http://www.miriamereztranslations.co.il/">Miriam Erez Translations</a> for providing some copy-editing work. </p> <p> Moreover, I explicitly marked many of the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/">the works of fiction</a> on the site, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/">the essays</a>, and the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/">software resources</a> with a Creative Commons licence. Share and enjoy! </p> <p> There are some style tweaks, I’ve documented the use of the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/#evilphish-emblem">EvilPHish emblem</a>, and there are some new <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">fortune cookies</a>: </p> <blockquote> <ul> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Mithaldu: I think most contemporary T.V. kinda sucks.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Mithaldu: it seems very phony.</li> <li><b>Mithaldu:</b> rindolf: same, i haven’t actually switched on my tv in five years</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> I prefer a YouTube video of a kitten riding on a turtle.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Mithaldu: :-)</li> <li><b>Mithaldu:</b> :D</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Mithaldu: yes.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Mithaldu: there is one, BTW.</li> <li><b>Mithaldu:</b> oh i do not doubt that</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Don’t know if it’s authentic.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> I saw a friendly cat today, and he purred after I scratched his head.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> I like Friendly cats.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> I think lolcats are very subversive.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Or were.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> “Ceiling cat is watching you”</li> <li><b>Mithaldu:</b> cats are the definition of subversive</li> <li><b>Mithaldu:</b> they adopt you</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Mithaldu: heh.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> In Soviet Russia, cats own you!</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> In Soviet Russia, cats are your master!</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Well, in Soviet Russia and everywhere.</li> <li><b>kent\n:</b> rindolf: you got it backwards.</li> <li><b>kent\n:</b> In soviet russia, cats are actually your pets.</li> <li><b>Mithaldu:</b> hahaha</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> kent\n: heh.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> kent\n++</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> I feel better now.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Empowered but calm.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Thanks to the cats jokes.</li> <li><b>Mithaldu:</b> world healing by cat jokes</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Hopefully, I’ll sleep well tonight.</li> <li><b>kent\n:</b> Next on the agenda. DICK JOKES!</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> Mithaldu: cats are good for healing I think.</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> kent\n: NO!!!!!</li> <li><b>kent\n:</b> ( don’t worry, this won’t take long )</li> <li><b>Mithaldu:</b> yes, as long as you do not own cables</li> <li><b>Mithaldu:</b> kent\n: you mean it won’t BE very long</li> <li><b>Mithaldu:</b> hurr hurr</li> <li><b>rindolf:</b> kent\n: I’ve got 99 problems but kent\n ain’t one.</li> <li><b>kent\n:</b> ;)</li> </ul> </blockquote> <p> Hope you enjoy the new stuff on the site and stay tuned for more. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) vampires translations hebrew cc cookies humour fortune buffy screenplay creativecommons humor english web hack hacking http://shlomif-hsite.livejournal.com/16110.html http://shlomif-hsite.livejournal.com/16110.html Fri, 13 May 2011 18:19:16 GMT http://shlomif.livejournal.com/64707.html <p> I'm taking a break from the usual political and philosophical posts in this blog and posting a review of a film I recently saw and enjoyed. </p> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Just_Go_with_It_Poster.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img alt="Just Go with It Poster.jpg" src="Film_Review_of_Just_Go_with_It_files/220px-Just_Go_with_It_Poster.jpg" style="float:right;" height="326" width="220" /></a> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Go_With_It" title="Just Go With It" rel="nofollow">Just Go With It</a> is a Hollywood film starring <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Sandler" title="Adam Sandler" rel="nofollow">Adam Sandler</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Aniston" title="Jennifer Aniston" rel="nofollow">Jennifer Aniston</a>. I give this film a rating of 9/10, and can highly recommend it.</p> <h2> General Impression from the Movie </h2> <p>The movie is very funny, insightful, entertaining, and in general - highly recommended. The acting is great, there are many beautiful scenes in the movie (of Hawaii, etc.), there are many sexy elements to the film, and it is a very fun and thought-provoking movie. I'll discuss the various messages of the movie, and the mental and emotional experience it has given me, only after I discuss its bad aspects. This is done in order to get them out of the way.</p> <h2> The Bad Aspects of the Movie </h2> <p>The first bad aspect of the movie is that the plot is very shopworn and expected. I could figure out most of what will happen throughout the movie till its end after reading the beginning of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Go_With_It" title="Just Go With It" rel="nofollow">the wikipedia summary of the plot</a>. Despite all that, there are still many unexpected elements and plot devices and many funny moments.</p> <p>Another bad aspect is that the film gets unrealistic very quickly as the characters build more and more absurd lies, and the character of Palmer (played by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Decker" title="Brooklyn Decker" rel="nofollow">Brooklyn Decker</a>), continues to believe them, while it is obvious that any woman of her intelligence and general ability to sense when someone is lying (or much below that), would have become extremely suspicious, if not completely emotional about it, a short time into the movie. In addition, I think that the screenplay writer went to too great lengths to make us believe that Palmer was indeed more stupid and immature than she actually first appeared to be (like the fact that Seventeen was her favourite magazine, or that she was permanently scarred from the fact that 'N Sync broke up). I believe that the film could have given a more well-rounded message if it still presented her as an intelligent and well-rounded woman.</p> <p>We are also required to suspend disbelief for Adam Sandler's character of a Don Juan, who uses a wedding ring to lie to women and get them into bed. A real life character of such would have become impotent a long time ago, but I suppose it is a necessary plot device and is one of the film's "known bugs".</p> <p>Moreover, the film consciously sports many common myths, fashions and hyperboles in 90s or sometimes even more modern American culture, up to the extent of nausea. These stereotypes add to the spice of the movie, and are done with good humour, but they may be a little too much.</p> <p>As a result, I've been feeling that this film may be too polished and a prime example of the Hollywood successful film assembly line, which has become a bit too overdone lately. I really think the film's script writers and director, could have used less of such stereotypes, while still experiencing the emotional and intellectual process that the film-makers wanted us to go through.</p> <h2> Insights from the Movie </h2> <p>Decker's character is initially portrayed as intelligent and sexy, both physically and verbally, and a worthy competition to Jennifer Aniston. As the movie progresses we think of her more as na&#xEF;ve, good-hearted and childish, which causes the audience to more pity her than be attracted to her, so the movie makers were successful.</p> <p>On the other hand, Jennifer Aniston convincingly portrays the single-parent mother, who is surprised to discover she can still be very chic, intelligent, inventive, and most importantly - sexy, until the audience is genuinely more attracted to her instead of her younger and extremely physically attractive competition.</p> <p>Adam Sandler is very convincing as a modern day <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_%28mythology%29" title="Pygmalion (mythology)" rel="nofollow">pygmalion</a> who gradually turns his unattractive underling (Aniston), whom he believes is not his type, into a woman whom he finds extremely attractive up to falling in love with.</p> <p>I think one of the main hidden messages of the movie, despite a common belief to the contrary, was that sexy women (and men, naturally) are not incompetent, and "sleazy", but quite the opposite - that their sexiness is indicative of a great competency and confidence and maybe even being a noble and honest person.</p> <p>Naturally, the movie calls upon women in their 30s and 40s (or even older), including those that have children from prior marriages, to acknowledge the fact that they still have sex appeal, and that they can compete for the attention of attractive men.</p> <p>One thing I'm ambivalent about the film is its implication that it is hard to bridge the gap between the members of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X" title="Generation X" rel="nofollow">Generation X</a> and younger people. While being born in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977" title="1977" rel="nofollow">1977</a> (and have turned 34 in 2011), which may be the edge-of-generation-X, and that I feel a lot of cultural dissonance between people of younger age (who mostly have not watched <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Bride" title="The Princess Bride" rel="nofollow">The Princess Bride</a>, care little about such popular 90's T.V. shows as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends" title="Friends" rel="nofollow">Friends</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation" title="Star Trek: The Next Generation" rel="nofollow">Star Trek: The Next Generation</a> (and "Deep Space Nine"), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer" title="Buffy the Vampire Slayer" rel="nofollow">Buffy the Vampire Slayer</a>, and are not excited about many hits of the late 80s and 90s), I still feel that we can find a common ground. I also don't rule out that mature men who are romantically involved with much younger women (or vice versa), expect them to behave in an immature way, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Meaning, older women are not necessarily more mature, but when in a relationship with them, they are expected to behave more maturely, due to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect" title="Halo effect" rel="nofollow">Halo effect</a>.</p> <h3> Jennifer Aniston </h3> <p>I was out of touch with gossip about Jennifer Aniston for a while (though I have naturally heard about Brad Pitt breaking up with her), so I was pleasantly surprised to read on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Aniston" rel="nofollow" rel="nofollow">her wikipedia page</a> that after her breakout role in the Television show <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends" title="Friends" rel="nofollow">Friends</a>, she ended up becoming a very successful Film and Television actress, breaking the "Friends" curse. However, while in the film in question, she portrays a middle-aged woman, who has two children whom she cares about a lot and ends up at a dead end career, in real life, Aniston had a successful career, and a string of bad relationships (although she is the godmother of her associate and friend's Courtney Cox-Arquette daughter). It's hard to know whether Aniston wanted to have children within a steady relationship, or that she put her career first, but it's still highly probable that making <i>Just Go With It</i> was painful for her.</p> <p>After talking about that with my mother, we agreed that there are many factors that inhibit a successful Hollywood actress from raising a family (among them needing to travel a lot on demand, the prying eyes of the media, including a lot of jealousy and envy, and an otherwise very busy schedule), so naturally a decision not to have children is a valid approach.</p> <h3> Adam Sandler </h3> <p>I don't recall seeing any previous films with Sandler in them, but he appears to be a fine comedian and a drama actor, and I'd like to catch up with some of his previous motion pictures, when I have some spare time.</p> <h3> Brooklyn Decker </h3> <p>This is Decker's first appearance in a film, and she was obviously chosen for it, because of her good looks and her youth. Nevertheless, she appears to play very well, within the purposely unrealistic behavioural constraints that her character exhibits in the plot. As a model, with some natural aspirations for becoming an actress, Decker could have done much worse than this film, and I'm looking forward to see her in future films.</p> <h3> The Children </h3> <p>The Child actors who were picked up for playing the two children in the film give a convincing and funny performance.</p> <h2> Verdict </h2> <p>I enjoyed watching Just Go With It, and it apparently has many deeper meanings, both positive and negative. You should probably watch it.</p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) movie http://shlomif.livejournal.com/64707.html http://shlomif.livejournal.com/64707.html Mon, 09 May 2011 17:22:02 GMT http://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1342.html <p> We are Qs! Q is us! We have formed the Q continuum. And soon everyone will be happy, shining, benevolent, unstoppable, Qs. And the New Age will finally begin, succeeding Modernism and post-Modernism. </p> <p> So who are Qs? Read my screenplay <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/">Star Trek: "We, the Living Dead"</a>, to find out. But here's a short summary: </p> <h2>Animals</h2> <p> Animals live their life without choice. They are self-controlling and alive, but have no choice. Humans are not like that. Human are conscious, they are sentient, they have choice. </p> <h2>Mortals</h2> <p> Mortals are everyday humans. They can be very bad or very good or somewhere between that. But they are still mortals and their psyche may die, leaving them as dead human beings. As people with psyche death, they become resentful and less and less capable, and more envious and eventually bad, mystical people, who are parasites and try to suck life out of the living. Sometimes they succeed, but often they don't because mortals and especially vampires (see below) know better. </p> <h2>Vampires</h2> <p> Vampires are mortals who have determined to stay young forever (at least in their heart), to keep a live and healthy psyche and to enjoy life, more and more no matter what happens to them. </p> <h2>Rings</h2> <p> Rings are supreme vampires. Not only are they vampires, but they are very influential and turn all those around them into vampires, and can see through irrationality and illogicality . Even if they are not violent, they cannot lose and cannot be stopped. </p> <p> There were nine (9) most notable rings in human history: </p> <ol> <li>Moses - The Jew</li> <li>Cyrus - The Liberator</li> <li>Aristotle - The Objective</li> <li>Muhammad - The Messenger</li> <li>Saladin - The Just</li> <li>Gutenberg - The Printer</li> <li>Galileo - The Scientist</li> <li>George Washington - The Liberal</li> <li>Ayn Rand - The Objectivist</li> </ol> <p> Ayn Rand's legacy was that many people who have read her words (or better, learned from her deeds) became rings themselves. So there was no use in keeping track of more. But what's missing? </p> <h2>Q - The Invisible</h2> <p> Q is the one ring of the lord of darkness (= the Q continuum). He is “The Invisible”, the most legendary vampire profile of all who was believed that they would never be found signifying the invisible hand that guides history. Even if he's fictional and imaginary, he is alive - he lives in our hearts and minds. Q's legacy was that he jumpstarted what is now one of the universe's most advanced civilisations, while still not being omnipotent (which is a logical and mathematical impossibility), and still starting off as a mortal. What made Q extraordinary, is that he was a ring who expected anyone else to be rings. Not only that, but he expected everyone else to become Qs and thus multiply exponentially. </p> <p> Q is not someone else. We don't have to go afar to seek the holy grail. Q is us. We are Q. We will ascend from mortals to vampires to rings to Qs. We will be invincible, and no one will be able to stop us. </p> <h2>Who are the Qs of today?</h2> <p> <a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peter_Ustinov">Peter Ustinov</a> (a great ring of the past) once said that “If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue”. Back when he said that, Vogue was more subversive and avant-garde and was considered a culture of low taste. Nowadays, Vogue is more established, and many intelligent women and men will boast writing for it in their bio or resume. The same goes for Playboy, BTW. </p> <p> So if an artist as avantgarde and as controversial as Ayn Rand lived today who will she be? No, she will not be on Flickr, which is great as it is, is not too subversive. She will likely be someone like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Grimmie">Christina Grimmie</a>. Ms. Grimmie may only be a vampirella, but if she is determined, she too can become a ring and a Q. And so can you. </p> <h2>What will the Qs be like?</h2> <p> The male and female Qs will be young-at-heart-if-not-in-body. They will be attractive and sexy. They will be very diverse. They will share their knowledge, and give away all their "secrets". They will be admired and lusted. They will be able to have any true parasite (many men, but especially many women) admit this is the case for them by using simple <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method">Socratic irony</a>. While not being supermen and superwomen, they will be resourceful and the anti-thesis of needy, and will try to never blame external factors in their own problems. </p> <p> The enemies of the Qs will be no match for their power, for they possess power far greater than firearms. They will possess the power of The Slayer, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milady_de_Winter">Milady de Winter</a>, a formidable vampirella, who was sexy, competent and independent and only portrayed as an non-realistic criminal mastermind, who could "slay" all the truly evil people she encountered ("slay" - not kill). Moreover, they will possess the power of The Dispeller, the fictional Selena Mandrake, an Anglo-American female girl in her senior year in high school today, who was the first one who was able to slay The Slayer, because she did not slay individual people, but actually focused on dispelling their prejudices and superstitions. The Dispeller is one step ahead of The Slayer like The Liberator was one step ahead of The Free, and the Liberal was one step ahead of Liberator. (And who knows what the future will bring.). </p> <p> Despite being Qs, they will never look down on other vampires or even other mortals, because they know that they don't know, and that dismissing a less experienced, or less talented, person, as someone who cannot teach them anything is something only "fools" do, and an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem">ad-hominem</a>. Some very inexperienced people can beat highly experienced ones at their own game, because that's how nature is. </p> <p> Finally, the Qs will not aim to be "original", they will aim to be good. They will restore the age-long tradition of fan art (which is prevalent in such ancient books as the Hebrew Bible and the Greek writings), and it will be considered a first-class citizen, in comparison to having 100% original artworks. </p> <p> The Qs of today will be the winners, and together they will start the New Age, an exciting age where people are sexy, hard-working-and-have-a-lot-of-fun-in-the-process; are masters of their own future and destiny; know that the worst way to waste your time is to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momo_%28novel%29">never waste it</a>; and that regardless of how complicated and comprehensive your rules are, you must always use logic and reason, that justice is defined as practised by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin">Saladin</a> and Gandhi, not the simplistic "eye for an eye, tooth for the tooth" of the Jewish Torah; and they will never blindly follow orders, because that is what ultimately caused all the great human-made calamities in the past, including World War II. </p> <p> It will be a great age. </p> <p> Sincerely yours, -- <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/">Shlomi Fish</a>, The Eternal Jew, The Neo-Tech Invisible, and a Q. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) internet objectivism q neotech mysticism startrek revolution power insanity http://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1342.html http://shlomifish.livejournal.com/1342.html Sat, 30 Apr 2011 13:26:04 GMT http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/04/introduction-to-blogsperlorg-texttable.html Hello, Perl bloggers! I decided to start blogging about a most of my exclusively Perl-related stuff here on blogs.perl.org, in hope of getting more comments from active Perlers. (Until now, I've blogged about it on my technical LiveJournal blog... Shlomi Fish cpan dos perl table text unicode http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2011/04/introduction-to-blogsperlorg-texttable.html Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:07:28 -0000 2011-04-21T13:12:24Z http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/57943.html <p> Some days ago I needed to speed up validating an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML">XHTML</a> document (the module XHTML 1.1) based on the DTDs provided by the W3C, so I sought a way to cache them on the disk. Problem is I could not effectively download them from the W3C because their download speed was throttled. </p> <p> Eventually, <a href="http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/HOWTO_W3C_Validator">the Gentoo Wiki's “W3C Validator HOWTO” document</a> provided some insights. Just download <a href="http://validator.w3.org/sgml-lib.tar.gz">http://validator.w3.org/sgml-lib.tar.gz</a>, unpack it, cd to its directory and do <tt>export XML_CATALOG_FILES="$(pwd)/catalog.xml"</tt> to set the XML catalogue appropriately. It's too bad I could not find a Mandriva Linux package for that. </p> <p> Anyway, after I did that, the validation and other XML processing worked nicely. </p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) xml tip web tech html tech tip http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/57943.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/57943.html Sat, 16 Apr 2011 20:09:58 GMT http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/57811.html <p> All languages of the world suck. If you require people to declare variables (like in Pascal, C, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheme_%28programming_language%29">Scheme</a> or Perl 5 with <a href="http://perldoc.perl.org/strict.html">strict</a>), then people will tell you they like variables to spring up upon first use. Without variable declarations, then you get various weird side-effects of the implicit scoping. If you use curly braces for scoping, then you'll have to type more and there's more clutter. With indentation-based scoping (like in Python), you'll find it hard to introduce multiple-expression <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus#First-class_functions">lambdas</a>. </p> <p> Rob Pike and Paul Graham hated object oriented programming (OOP) and so they didn't introduce it in their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28programming_language%29">"Go"</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_%28programming_language%29">"Arc"</a> languages, well after OOP has become mainstream. And guess what? Many people, including me, think that OOP is still a good thing (and no, in my opinion, C++ did not do OOP very well) and so gave up on Arc quickly and did not look closely at Go. Many people who oppose OOP claim that it mashes together many separate feature, such as typing, capability of being instantiated, and polymorphism which belong as separate features in the language, but naturally it <b>is</b> convenient to have them integrated as one, because they are often useful together. </p> <p> Dynamically typed languages (like Perl 5, Python, Ruby, or Lisp) possibly suffer from many subtle errors&#160;; Statically typed languages (like Haskell) are less expressive and it seems that about one third of the language design papers published on <a href="http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/">Lambda the Ultimate</a> are about various funky extensions to the Haskell type system to allow for better expressiveness. </p> <p>Purely functional languages have no assignment and most people find them harder, in part because the world around us has a lot of state, and they also need to do funky compiler tricks to make you feel like you don't need assignment. Non-functional languages have side-effects and so are prone to many errors.</p> <p>If you have goto or goto-like statements (such as exceptions or Perl 5's "last LABEL;" (more like "break" in C) or "next LABEL;"), then you encourage code to not be factored correctly. If you don't have such stuff, then programmers will hate you for having to go through many hoops to write quick-and-dirty code.</p> <p>Perl 5 has a dedicated regular expression syntax which is treated magically by the parser. PHP and Java use strings for them, and require weird escaping and backslashing rules to interpolate the sub-regexes inside them. And if you incorporate a first-order syntax for regular expressions, then people will want similar first-order syntaxes for XPath, for XML (like some recent versions of Visual Basic .NET have), and for all other grammars you may need to embed.</p> <p>Finally, many people absolutely hate all the clutter created by the leading <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil_%28computer_programming%29">sigils</a> of Perl 5 (the "$", "@", etc.), and similar languages, but they allow for much better backward compatibility, facilitate the so-called "interpolation" (= embedding inside strings), and also give some important visual cues when skimming code (even without syntax highlighting).</p> <p><b>You are damned either way</b>, whatever you do.</p> <p>I could have gone on, but I think I got my message across. Thing is, when designing a programming language, you need to make a lot of design decisions - what to include, what to exclude, etc. However, many of these design decisions are not 100% advantages or 100% disadvantages, but in fact trade-offs, and many people will question them and be unhappy. You can never please all the people. So make a design decision, and stick with it, and realise that <b>your programming language must suck</b>, but that it may suck less for some tasks, or for some people.</p> <p>Joel on Software <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2003/10/15.html">refers</a> to the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400040507/joelonsoftware/ref=nosim"><i>Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design</i></a>, which I have not read, but I've concluded it holds for programming language design. Moreover, even when writing code, we run into many trade-offs. For example, if our methods or functions are very short, then they are easier to over-ride and re-use, but, in that case, the code would be harder to follow and will perform worse than code with longer methods.</p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) perl languages programming http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/57811.html http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/57811.html Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:53:56 GMT http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/5611132184/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/shlomif/">Shlomi Fish</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/5611132184/" title="Photo of a bench with a White Wagtail bird."><img src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5067/5611132184_496d7bb484_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Photo of a bench with a White Wagtail bird." /></a></p> <p>I saw a White Wagtail bird over there next to the bench and tried to catch<br /> it with the camera. I was able to but it's very small. Still, it's a nice<br /> photo of the bench.<br /> <br /> Oh, and I should note that someone decided to sponsor my renewed Flickr.com<br /> subscription as an appreciation for my recent post about dealing with <br /> provocative Internet people (see <a href="http://unarmed.shlomifish.org/909.html" rel="nofollow">unarmed.shlomifish.org/909.html</a> ), so<br /> thanks! This motivated me to take and upload more photos here.<br /> <br /> This photo was taken in Ramat Aviv Gimel, Tel Aviv, Israel.<br /> <br /> This photo is made available under the Public Domain (CC-Zero / CC0). However,<br /> if you make use of this work, or otherwise like it, then crediting me as its originator (giving attribution), sharing derived works under liberal licences, or <br /> a donation of money or goods (see <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/donate/" rel="nofollow">www.shlomifish.org/meta/donate/</a> )<br /> would all be appreciated. See this resource on my page for what the public <br /> domain means: <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/copyrights/" rel="nofollow">www.shlomifish.org/meta/copyrights/</a> .<br /> <br /> This photo is public domain, but is marked as CC-by, because it's the closest<br /> option that Flickr offers.</p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/5611132184 Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:21:28 -0700 http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/5603132865/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/shlomif/">Shlomi Fish</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/5603132865/" title="Playful Black Dog from a Distance"><img src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5149/5603132865_fc27b714f5_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Playful Black Dog from a Distance" /></a></p> <p>Playful dogs near the supermarket. They were running after each other in circles. This is a photo of the black dog running.<br /> <br /> Oh, and I should note that someone decided to sponsor my renewed Flickr.com<br /> subscription as an appreciation for my recent post about dealing with <br /> provocative Internet people (see <a href="http://unarmed.shlomifish.org/909.html" rel="nofollow">unarmed.shlomifish.org/909.html</a> ), so<br /> thanks! This motivated me to take and upload more photos here.<br /> <br /> This photo was taken in Ramat Aviv Gimel, Tel Aviv, Israel.<br /> <br /> This photo is made available under the Public Domain (CC-Zero / CC0). However,<br /> if you make use of this work, or otherwise like it, then crediting me as its originator (giving attribution), sharing derived works under liberal licences, or <br /> a donation of money or goods (see <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/donate/" rel="nofollow">www.shlomifish.org/meta/donate/</a> )<br /> would all be appreciated. See this resource on my page for what the public <br /> domain means: <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/copyrights/" rel="nofollow">www.shlomifish.org/meta/copyrights/</a> .<br /> <br /> This photo is public domain, but is marked as CC-by, because it's the closest<br /> option that Flickr offers.</p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/5603132865 Sat, 09 Apr 2011 10:25:39 -0700 http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/5603713220/ <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/shlomif/">Shlomi Fish</a> posted a photo:</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/5603713220/" title="Ascent to a building"><img src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5107/5603713220_044902bb6d_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="Ascent to a building" /></a></p> <p>An ascent into a building in Feinstein Street. I took three photos and this is the one that came out the best.<br /> <br /> Oh, and I should note that someone decided to sponsor my renewed Flickr.com<br /> subscription as an appreciation for my recent post about dealing with <br /> provocative Internet people (see <a href="http://unarmed.shlomifish.org/909.html" rel="nofollow">unarmed.shlomifish.org/909.html</a> ), so<br /> thanks! This motivated me to take and upload more photos here.<br /> <br /> This photo was taken in Ramat Aviv Gimel, Tel Aviv, Israel.<br /> <br /> This photo is made available under the Public Domain (CC-Zero / CC0). However,<br /> if you make use of this work, or otherwise like it, then crediting me as its originator (giving attribution), sharing derived works under liberal licences, or <br /> a donation of money or goods (see <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/donate/" rel="nofollow">www.shlomifish.org/meta/donate/</a> )<br /> would all be appreciated. See this resource on my page for what the public <br /> domain means: <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/copyrights/" rel="nofollow">www.shlomifish.org/meta/copyrights/</a> .<br /> <br /> This photo is public domain, but is marked as CC-by, because it's the closest<br /> option that Flickr offers.</p> Shlomi Fish ( shlomif@iglu.org.il ) tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/5603713220 Sat, 09 Apr 2011 10:24:25 -0700