A few posts ago I wrote about my discomfort about stacked bar graphs and the fact I prefer to use simple table with gradients as background. My only regret then was that the table was built in a spreadsheet. I would have liked to keep the data as it is but also have a nice representation of these categorical data. This evening I spent some time analysing results from a survey and took the opportunity to buid these representations in R. ...
[caption id=“attachment_1093” align=“aligncenter” width=“497” caption=“ql2400 and ql2500 update in Fedora 14”] [/caption] Although some people think it’s a joke (see kalev’s comment on 2011-09-17 19:13:44 in the bugfix report), I won’t install this update; I agree it’s funny but refusing to install it at least gives me the feeling I have still something to say on my system (that’s also what free software are for, isn’t it?). ...
When I studied biology as well as when I did my Ph.D., our professors were always after us because of references. I think with their precious help we learnt the art of referencing: choosing good references, citing them at the appropriate location in a text and, of course, giving enough information at the bottom of the text to allow the reader to find these references. I just finished reading two articles in a recent edition of The Economist and they reminded me how important are these references. These articles are What would Jesus hack? and Worrying about wireless. ...
Following some comments on the dependency to version 4 of the .Net framework, I rewrote ForbidSleepingMode in C++. You can open and compile the project with Qt (open source). The source code is of course updated. The mandatory screenshot as well :-) As you can see, I took the opportunity to add a small field where you can specify your own interval at which the program will “tickle” your computer.
I just put my first small tool on GitHub: forbidSleepingMode. It will forbid your (Windows) computer to enter into sleep mode, acting as if there was activity all the time. I’m sure you can think of 1001 productive uses for such tool. Technically, it just sends a “tickle” to the computer every 10 minutes forcing the display to remain on (hence: don’t set your screensaver to come before 10 minutes). Build it with Visual Studio 10 (I know, I know …). ...
No issue, installation even smoother than the installation of Fedora 13 on the same machine, last month.
I quickly needed a new laptop to continue working and I found a Toshiba Satellite L670-10K. It’s a nice entry-level laptop with a dual core processor (I didn’t know Intel was still doing Pentium-branded processors) and a 17" screen ( read the specs for other details). I downloaded the latest Fedora Linux (version 13, 64 bits ; and version 14 is coming soon) and installed it from the LiveCD. Nearly everything was recognized out-of-the-box: screen resolution, graphical card (Intel, with 3D effects), wired network, webcam, card reader, sound card, etc. ...
After Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny, the Blender Foundation released Sintel. Technically, I think it’s superb. IMHO, the only negative point is, as for the two previous films, the story is rather minimal but it’s becoming better and better. But this doesn’t prevent me from enjoying watching it! [youtube &fs=1&hl=en_US]
Today, September 18th 2010, it’s Freedom Software Day all over the world. It is an annual worldwide celebration of Free Software, a public education effort with the aim of increasing awareness of Free Software and its virtues, and encouraging its use. On the SFD website, there isn’t a lot of events registered for Belgium. There is only one, in fact, in Oostende ( LiLiT is doing an install party in Liege but I can’t see any reference to SFD; still, it’s a good initiative!). Well, a SFD on September 18th in Belgium might not have been a good idea if the goal is to increase awareness of Free Software: more than half of the population is celebrating the Walloon Region or preparing a Sunday without car in Brussels (while others are just looking for a government since April 2010!). So, at a personal level, I decided to give Ubuntu a try ( 10.04 LTS). ...
I just watched a video from Larry Gadea working at Twitter: Twitter - Murder Bittorrent Deploy System (speaking at CUSEC 2010). Briefly, the problem Twitter was facing was the deployment of updates to thousands of servers in a short amount of time and dealing with errors (broken servers, e.g.). A nice, simple, cool and free way of solving this issue was to use the Bittorrent protocol (via Python and a stack of other free software) to actually deploy updates. In summary, you go from a unique repository facing thousands requests approximately at the same time: ...