el_ave

The Move

2006-12-12T22:37:29Z

I've moved to wordpress.com
My new blog address is http://aram.wordpress.com/
And you are also welcome at http://codemate.wordpress.com/ where I plan to start writing in the near future.

P.S. please make sure you don't use Internet Explorer (cause it sucks)

Flock the world

2006-10-05T20:57:57Z

Let me start-off this post with this cute button

I've been surfing through the web recently and came across this interesting web browser called Flock. It is very young and raw so far but it looks very promising. This is what's on their main page:

Flock is an amazing new web browser that makes it easier to share media and connect to other people online. Share photos, automatically stay up-to-date with new content from your favorite sites, and search the Web with the most advanced Search Toolbar available today.

I've been using it for last 2 hours or so and I like it. By the way, I'm writing this post from within Flock w/o opening the livejournal page.

Yoxos

2006-09-14T19:55:05Z

I started talking about my last affiliation, eclipse, in my previous post and I remmembered about this cool website that provides really nice service.

It allows you to choose what components of eclipse you need, what plug-ins you need and then download it all in a single zip file!!!

I really recommend it for anyone who's new to eclipse.

Haskell source editor

2006-09-14T19:41:22Z

This term I'm taking (well actually not much choice here, it's an obligatory course) a haskell class (officially it's a functional programming class but 90% will be haskell).
So I decided to take a look at different options available for coding in haskell.

My first choice was Notepad++ and WinHugs. So Notepad++ is for editing and WinHugs is for running my code. I even did my first home work :)
Unfortunately there is no ready to use syntax highlighting scheme for haskell in Notepad++ and I wasn't able to find any in internet.

So I searched for other solutions:
1. There is a mode for TextPad, but I think it's disgusting, so I'm not gonna use it anyway.
2. There is Visual Haskell and it seems to be pretty cool, but it requires installing Visual Studio 2003 and I just don't feel like doing that :)
3. There is a plug-in for Eclipse. And since I'm becoming an eclipse fan lately, I decided to try it. It's pretty nice. It supports both WinHugs and GHC. GHC is a compiler for haskell that seems to perform pretty well. At least results at The Computer Language Shootout are amazingly good. But as of now I find it little bit complicated to use, so I'm sticking with WinHugs for now.

But I'm still hesitating what's better eclipse or notepad++ for my needs. If I had to solve more complex problems in haskell or had to write production code, I would definitely stick with eclipse. But it's hard to choose now.

Sicily

2006-07-29T20:16:47Z

I've been on a vacation recently. I took some notes and tons of photos. So here there are my notes + some photos to make you jealous.

Day 1
• Flight
- Was nice. Good company: one 35-40 year old man and one 20 year old tall and skinny girl. She tried to be little snobby but that didn't last long cause the man is very talkative.
• Bus travel
- The bad news were that we need to travel another 304 km to our hotel. Good news again - good company: all the same + a 25 year old dj, a pretty girl and a talkative woman.
It took ~5 hours. First impression of Sicily was: 'Wow this looks familiar'. At first glance it looked much like Tenerife.
• Hotel President

- It's really close to beach. But they messed up with rooms. As a result, we've got a room w/o balcony, that kind of sucked. My roommate is a nice gentleman, but he's too upset with shortcomings of this hotel.

Day 2
• Breakfast
- Pretty fast :)
• Beach
- Water was super, clean and clear. Nice sea shore. Great sun.
• Dinner
- Good and tasty
• Excursion to Noto

- The city is nice but the rain didn't make me too happy. I tried real Italian "caffe". But I still don't like coffee.
• Supper
- Super supper. Nice food, strange talks.

Day 3
• Beach
• Dinner
- Strange news at the beginning of dinner. Some history: active ones of our group have tried to change our schedule the way they needed and didn't inform the hosting party. As a result: our program is cut down to visiting hotels.
• Taormina

- We only visited hotels but the Captaormina hotel was fantastic.

Day 4
• Syracuse

- A very nice excursion to the ancient city (8th century b.c.)
Visited ancient amphitheater and the old city.
• Beach
- Took some sun bath, swam a little in the ionic sea and in pool. An old man from our group shared his background on geopolitical situation in near east.
• Walk

Day 5
• Catania

- Catania is second biggest city in Sicily.
We happened to arrive on a day when there was big bicycle trial show. There were many spots all around the center.
Unfortunately I didn't find a Puma store ...
• Etna

- It's the biggest (highest and most active) working volcano in europe.
My impression - Fantastic.
I had a feeling like I'm on other planet. Black ground around and steam everywhere + we were there the morning after the night when new eruption had started and it was still erupting when we were up there.

Day 6
• Taormina

- Finally we are able to visit the old taormina.
Fantastic, very very nice place, high in the mountains, smashing views.

Day 7
• The move
- We are leaving the president hotel on the east of the isle and moving to Citta del mare on the west. Nothing special just 4-5 hours in bus talking with this lawyer girl about nothing.

• Citta del mare
- Huge compared to our previous hotel. A lot of different activities available.
I checked out the beach, it's all rocks. But it's fine if u r careful.

Day 8
• Palermo

- We are in historical center of the city. A lot of churches. Very diverse architecture.
• Monreale

- A little town built next to palermo by one of local rulers after he had quarreled with the church.

Day 9
• Cefalu

- Nice little town. I found 2 stores with t-shirts but one didn't have original ones and the other had none with player names.

Day 10
• Palermo (Shopping)
- Unfortunately I found genuine Italy jersey only in one place and they didn't have it with player names :(
• Erice

- High in the mountains. Very nice views. Heh there is a math institute here :)
• Segesta

- Just an ancient temple. But this stuff is beautiful.

0:2

2006-07-04T21:48:53Z

Fantastic game! This is the first game on this world cup that impressed me! Fantastic hit by Grosso and Del Piero scored finally! Hurray!

Photo Gallery

2006-07-02T22:07:28Z

Recently I've been playing around with Tableau it's a nice little photo gallery. Actually I decided to set it up on my laptop because I needed to share my photos. The reason I didn't use filckr or anything similar is that I have too many photos to share, so I think my internet would die uploading giant chunks of photos :)

But! It turned out to be not a very simple task. The gallery was developed on a Mac and as it came out, a web application that runs on mac won't necessarily run on Windows :)))

Most problems where caused by differences in the new line and tab characters.

Finally I've got it running :)

But I'm too lazy to add all these photos one by one, so I'll have to modify it little bit. Unfortunately no time to do that yet :/

I did it!

2006-06-03T21:41:31Z

Yeah! I've just finished reading that weired book on Ruby!

The reason I'm so happy is that I've finally managed to read a book on computer programming from cover to cover :)

Term paper

2006-05-13T18:45:23Z

I'm trying to write the document that describes what I’ve done and how for my term work. And again I come across the problem that I’ve always had. Writing the damn paper is harder than doing the actual work was.

The reason that it upsets me even more now is that I’m starting to realize that in most cases writing that kind of papers is more important than doing the actual work and is paid much better for. So I guess I’ll have to learn doing that. That’s the main reason why you’re able to read this post. And if my attitude to life doesn't change in near future you should be able to read some more soon.