Last sunday I upgraded my website software… phew!, It was a long task, but final result was very pleasant :-). Right now it’s running on Wordpress 1.5. Very nice. One major change was the use of subdomains instead of subdirectories. I pretend to keep all blogs cleaner by putting each one in its own subdomain space. The price is some broken links on the net ;-)…

This tree is in my garden… yummi, yummi

Two months ago I designed this logo for an internal company product contest. I didn’t win, but I learned a lot. Xara made the work very simple, and well… hope you like it as much as I do…

Ubuntu 8.04 was released last week. This release includes features like:

• Firefox 3 Beta 5: Web browser
• Desktop Effects enabled by default: Window shadows, wobbling, animations, desktop on a 3D cube, transparency and a lot more.
• Gnome 2.22: Window manager
• Open Office 2.4: Office productivity suite.
• PDF printer… and a lot more.

More information on ubuntu.com and gnome.org

Three weeks ago I had to work on polyominoes for a final project. Since I had to program an enumeration quickly, I wanted to find a simple algorithm to do it. Well, my search was hard. I barely found information on enumeration algorithms and read the work of many people including Redelmeier, Knuth and Ares Ribó. I chose to go the Redelmeier way because of the short time to complete the task. Here you can find part of my work, as well as some documents that explain more on this topic.

Presentation: Polyominoes

Redelmeier’s algorithm: Counting Polyominoes, Yet Another Attack

and finally (special thanks to Luc Maranget): Implementation in C

Ok, first time was fun, but now I hate it… I have deleted about 1000 spam comments in about a week… suggestions accepted…

Hey!, today while checking the comments for my site I found the amazing quantity of 117 comments… all of them spam! hahaha… this is a new record!

Finally, after six months… it was so heavy. This is my garden covered by hail.

Photoshop is one of those so popular applications often missed in the Linux world. Ok, ok, the GIMP is there, but you have to learn to use it. Even moving a simple selection around becomes a hard to accomplish task. This makes me think, about all that people who has spent so many hours learning Photoshop. The solution: programming an interface very similar to Photoshop. And I mean, get the same keyboard shortcuts, menus, get an MDI interface, arrange tools in a similar way, etc.

Once this is accomplished, adoption should go up quickly. That’s something similar to what is happening to the Evolution project. Give people what they are used to use. People (often) don’t want to learn a new program to do what they already do with another tool. They are so busy making businesses, doing accounting, constructing buildings, playing an instrument or just resting. Most people don’t like to sit in front of a computer to write a blog or read the slashdot. They want to quickly start getting the money they spent on their computers back. The computer they purchased to help them get their job done faster. After all, that’s what most people get a computer for.

We, as programmers and as Linux / Open Source promoters, have the responsibility to keep making this world more attractive to the average person. Some projects have emerged on this topic, like the one started by Scott Moschella: GIMPShop, but as long as the group of programmers in charge of the GIMP don’t start merging this type of improvement to their main branch things will sadly remain the same.

By now, I will go look for a good tutorial of the GIMP.

Update:

Ok, ok, I like it now!, There are still certain things I miss from Photoshop like filter previews, but I must say the selection tools are great!

Another tool that deserves a special mention is Xara, once you learn how to use it (it takes about 45 minutes to get a good usage level) you’ll discover drawing bezier curves is easier than in Illustrator.

Do you want to know how to set up Oracle? It is pretty simple and this tutorial will take you step by step through the installation process.

Installing Oracle XE on Ubuntu.

Hey there!, I’m back after a week in the hospital. Must say I really missed the Internet. My recommendation: don’t skip any meal! Always make time to eat and enjoy every food. According to some Japanese ideals, you should enjoy each bite and let your body shake to the flavors mix. After all, this week was just a reminder to keep my life in balance…

I’m really excited about WebDAV! It just works! This is a tutorial I wrote:

http://andres.jaimes.net/setting-up-a-webdav-server/

Some minor issues are pending, but I’ll keep you posted. 

Happy new year!!!

This seems like the neverending story, and because I’m tired of it I want to share my understanding:

• Association: Used when one instance should send a message to another instance. There’s no a whole / part relationship. In Java this can be an instance calling another instance’s methods. Examples of this can be a Customer and its persistance mechanism (DAO - data access object). They just send messages between each other.
• Aggregation: Used to represent a whole / part relationship. The creation and destruction of child objects is not controlled by their parent. For example, a Binder and its sheets. You can destroy your binder and save your sheets for later usage… or for another binder.
• Composition: Like an aggregation but the life span of child objects is controlled by their parent. For example, a Notebook and its sheets… If you create a notebook, you need to create sheets to fill it with. If you destroy your notebook you will destroy all your sheets. You know you have a composition when you no longer need the child objects once the parent has been destroyed.

Have you ever tried to access an Oracle database from PHP? Well, if you are a newbie (like me) this is a great manual that will take you from PHP compilation to XML generated results:

Download: The Underground PHP and Oracle Manual
By Christopher Jones and Alison Holloway

The book includes:

1. PHP Oracle Extensions
2. Installing Oracle Database 10g Express Edition
3. Using Oracle Database 10g
4. Installing Apache HTTP Server
5. Installing PHP
6. Connecting to Oracle Using OCI8
7. Executing SQL Statements with OCI8
8. Using PL/SQL with OCI8
9. and much more…

Among others, this new release of Ubuntu features:

• 3D Screen effects enabled by default: This is soooo cool! Plus, right click on your desktop, select Change Desktop Background, select Visual Effects and click on Extra… now go move a Window.
• Themes, backgrounds, fonts, toolbars and visual effects have all been consolidated into a single form.
• Desktop search: Quick search all your files, web, email, etc.
• Pidgin - New name for the Gaim Internet Messenger, it features more icons and MSN icons are now shown for all your contacts.
• User Switch button - Just click on it and switch among mom, dad or kids!

Ajax Hacks takes you step by step through an 80 tips journey going from the very basics - how to GET or POST - to advanced topics like performance tuning, caching and web services interaction.

AJAX Hacks by Bruce Perry
ISBN: 0-596-10169-4

Two days ago, while surfing a gov’s page, I got stuck at the very last step of a report generator. I right clicked the page, looked for a link and see the problem: an <object> tag with a classid parameter. That object referenced a PDF file. And because the problem could be fixed by adding a simple link, I decided to give them a call. A lady answered the phone and listened carefully to my request. Kindly accepted to pass my suggestion to the IT department, where an IT Specialist would call me back. Very easy huh? So, why I had not tried that before? How many websites in the world, eager to get fixed, to attract new viewers, are just wating for a call? I’m sure many people do it, but from now on, guys count on me. I want to add my vote so all my favorite websites work on my favorite operating system. The more we are, the easier things will change. We’re just waiting for you.

Sweet…

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04
Controls: Clearlooks
Window Border: Clearlooks Alternative
Icons: Dropline Neu!

I have always considered myself a C++ guy. That was one of the first languages I learned. But, life has taken me through many different paths, and I have needed to learn others. It was seven years ago, when I tried my first cup of Java and I realized objects were a must: Why did I need to create an additional class to return a compound value? another file?, I could do a “one-liner” in C++. As time went by, I stopped thinking on certain optimizations like inline and char arrays and started thinking more seriously on blueprints. After all that time, I look back and realize those blueprints let me build lots of great projects. And market is not really interested on optimizations but on quick and effective development. So blueprints came into my life. Java gave me for many years what I needed but always had the feeling that it was not good enough for desktop applications. Then, SWT appeared. Finally a framework that felt rock solid… but only in Windows.

Never been a M$ guy, I needed to learn VB and C# during the last year. Must say first time I tried C# I loved it! It is like a mix of C++ and Java… best of both worlds! Code is pretty clean. IDE was nice and fast. There were thousands of snippets in the Internet. Contained many features not included in Java at that time like enums or operator overloading. But… but… it is M$ and it is not a multiplatform environment… And for some months I tried to convince my self it didn’t matter, until I had to work on a file uploader. This project needed to run on a browser and C# is not installed by default on them (neither Java, but it is easy to do it). So applets looked like the obvious option to solve this (and it also looked like the perfect excuse to use Java again). I surfed to java.sun.com and downloaded the latest sdk version. Downloaded netbeans too, and installed them both in my ubuntu computer. First surprise was look and feel is not Metal! In fact, it was merging very good with my current environment. After some clicks, stability seemed excellent. What was really exciting was the visual interface designer: it is the best that I’ve ever used. Quickly assembled some prototypes and tried them on Linux and Windows, getting great results… old slow swing was improved with some new native code, which gave it the required push to consider it for serious desktop application programming.

Lots of improvements have been done since last time I used java. And makes me so glad that such a good language keeps improving year after year. Most requested things have been incorporated like enums and last thing I read was that a class for handling the Windows’ Tray* was on their way to getting into the default Java distribution. Such improvements are mainly focused in getting us the required tools to develop better applications.

If you want to learn more on the latest Java improvements point your browser to http://java.sun.com/ and http://www.netbeans.org/

(* see http://java.sun.com/…/J2SE/Desktop/javase6/)