soledad penadés

repeat 4[fd 100 rt 90]

Almost two years ago, I arrived in London at night, 14th september if I'm not wrong. Flight 5138 from Barcelona, with a 25 kg suitcase and a HEAVY phosphorescent orange label on it. Following day I caught the 6 with mrdoob. He left at Edgware Road and I continued until Marble Arch, and just started walking by Oxford Street.

Last time I had been there, it had been at the very rush hour in the afternoon, an animated scene with musicians and lots of tourists shopping and flowing in any direction. And how weird it looked in the morning, with the shops still closed (or almost opening), people rushing for getting to work, all of them with a plastic coffee cup in their hands, some of them even with a croissant or any other pastry. I looked at them curiously, while I was beginning to explore London by myself. I hadn't much more to do, in any case.

I also had a funny mix of places and geography in my mind. All the churches looked to me as if they were St. Martins in the Fields, and even with a map in my hands and being able to watch the Centre Point I still got lost in my erratic way, ending up in circles just around where I work now! I love these coincidences.

Some months ago I had to rush each time I had to buy anything at this area, since most of the shops close at 18.30-19 (I must confess I hate it) and there was no @£$@$£@ way I could get out of the office before 17.30 (I even hated more that fact). And now that we finally moved to the London place it's just getting out the office and being surrounded by everything! No more need for rushing or letting the shopping for the week-end. I feel like in civilisation again, somehow.

And I can also go there by bus, which is something that I hadn't been able to experience yet (I had to go by tube since it was so far that if I had used a bus I would have had to wake up one hour earlier). And I can come back walking which is a delice with all the things which are waiting to be seen in the way back…

I can't be happier! :D 8-> (well, actually I can but I'll leave it for a future post :P ) =d> \:D/

I installed Bon Echo some weeks ago, and first thing I noticed was that some extensions weren't working anymore. Like, for example, webdeveloper toolbar, view source chart, etc… I could find a version of webdeveloper toolbar which worked in Bon Echo but I wanted to know how to do it. And here is it:

Basically each extension developer decides under which versions the extension will be able to work, and they define a range. For example: 0.7 - 1.5.* means an extension will work if you use a firefox version between 0.7 and 1.5 (quite obvious, no?). This means that any extension with this value won't work in Bon Echo, as Bon Echo's version is 2.

To fix this, just save the extension you want to install in any place of your computer. You'll get an xpi file which is actually a zip file. Let's assume it is called extension.xpi. Rename it to extension.zip and uncompress it…  You'll get several files; the important one is install.rdf.

Open install.rdf with any text editor. You'll find an xml file with several configuration values, etc. Look for a pair of values called em:minVersion and em:maxVersion. Most of the extensions which do not work nowadays will have a em:maxVersion value like 1.5.*. Just change 1.5.* with 2, or 3, or whatever which is more than 1.5. Save the modified file.

Now we need to generate again an .xpi file for being able to install it in Firefox. So just compress back all the previous uncompressed files and rename the generated file.zip to file.xpi.

A way of installing this extension is just dragging file.xpi to firefox. The usual pop up warning you before installing an extension will appear; just follow the process as usual.

Some extensions which can be "fixed" like this and seem to work properly: Web Developer Toolbar and View Source chart. (I presume this trick may work in any platform)
Have fun!

So, do you remember a couple of years ago when you began to receive lots of unsolicited SMS.ac invitations to join a scam-looking network with dark purposes?
Well, the nightmare is back. I don't really know if it's related with my recent job search, since I can't remember having updated my Zend.com account but I received this first e-mail:

From: Hande Ozel hozel@corp.sms.ac>
To: me
Date: Aug 2, 2006 1:30 AM
Subject: Be Creative With Your Code
Hi-
I found you on zend.com and considering your development skills, I thought this might interest you. SMS.ac, with 50 million users worldwide, will pay you for your application. There's no cost to you, it's fast and easy, and you get paid quickly.

For more details or to get started, click here. I’ve included some Frequently Asked Questions below. Please contact me if you need help.
Best regards,

Hande Ozel

Business Development
SMS.ac Inc.
Phone: (619)696-1300 ext 1301
hozel@corp.sms.ac
| 741 F. Street | San Diego, CA, 92101 | USA

Obviously I've removed the "click here" link. It simply brings you to a page with specifications of how to use (or that seems) the sms.ac api for doing who knows what. Obviously too, I didn't reply him. It looked SO spammish…

Then 9 days later I got a second e-mail! I then remembered why the name of sms.ac sounded like spam for me:

From: Hande Ozel < hozel@corp.sms.ac>
To: me
Date: Aug 9, 2006 12:16 AM
Subject: Re Application Development
Hi Soledad,

I am writing to follow up and check if you got my email below.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Hande Ozel

Developer Network Associate
SMS.ac Inc.
Ph: 858-729-3330
hozel@corp.sms.ac
| 741 F Street | San Diego, CA, 92101 | USA |

And even more, followed by the first original message, maybe just in case that I forgot what was that about… It's funny to look at the signature and notice his role has changed. From Business Developer to simple Developer Network Associate. Isn't it sad? And the phone number changes as well. Very suspicious. But I didn't care; for the second time I ignored it and guess what!

From: Hande Ozel
To: me
Date: Aug 18, 2006 1:14 AM
Subject: Developer Network-
Hi Soledad,

I haven't heard back from you regarding my email below.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you get started, or if you would like me to remove you from my list.

Best regards,

Hande Ozel
Developer Network Associate
SMS.ac Inc.
Office: (619) 817-1309
hozel@corp.sms.ac
| 741 F Street | San Diego, CA, 92101 | USA |

Oh! another phone number change! What is going on with this people? do they have so many friends that they need three different numbers for the same person?

Yes Hande, you can help me by turning off your damn computer and stop sending these junk messages. Of course delete me from your stupid list as I don't want to earn money fast and easily - at least not while giving any income to sms.ac.

And seems like he's done the same to more people. And do not forget sms.ac itself! Feel free to send Hande any kind of suggestion on behalf of me… :P

I submitted some applications for several jobs at the beginning of past month, and my life has not been the same since then. At the beginning I just had a little time for having lunch from 12.30 to 13. All the other hours, from 9 to 17.30, were a constant riiiiing riiiiing riiiiing from stressed recruiters which most of the times didn't have a clue on what they were talking about and even more insisted in me describing the topics in which I was interested for a future job.

I even had to deter one of those brilliant recruiters asking stupid questions: are you really asking me to describe you what is AJAX? are you really interested in it? do you know what is XML? not at all? then why are you asking me this?

At the beginning I even thought that recruitment agencies did a good service, resulting in a good selection of apt candidates and removing the useless applications. But come in, how are they going to distinguish between a bad and a good candidate if they don't know what they are talking about?

There were too some agencies which were specialised in IT skills, and knew what they had to ask. Even though, they add too much overhead to the process. They ask you to fill questionaries, answer stupid tests which anybody can (and should) reply just by googling a bit - which makes the whole thing clumsy. Frankly, those questions are of no-use for day to day work. That kind of
superspecific questions about the TCP/IP protocol or a weird SQL query for Oracle server version blah will appear on a real-life job one time in 25 years, approximately. Even less if your work involves the development of web applications.
And that's not all. Since I got my current job -not by an agency but contacting directly the company- I still have had recruiters calls. Lots of them, actually. They are beginning to be really annoying. I finally have started to not to reply to any number which is hidden. But when you pick the phone, even if it's just for being educated, and after politely listening to their introduction you tell them that thank you but I got a job already, it's their turn for impertinence:

- So where do you work now?
- I'm afraid but that's not your business
- No, I can't do anything with the name, which company is it?
- I am not going to tell you, thank you
- And where is it located?
- Why do you want to know it?
- Could I know approximately how much is the salary?
(then I hang down the phone)

Come on, recruiters. Who do you think you are? You look like amateur gossipers, not skilled professionals on which an employee can rely! Would you trust a "somebody" calling you with a withheld phone number and asking you such kind of personal details?

Ridiculous…

¿Dónde está? ¿A dónde se fué? ¿Porque spd.planet-d.net ya no funciona? ¿Y por qué escena.org redirecciona a untergrund.net? En respuesta a las cábalas de sergeeo:

Ya hacía unos meses que la cosa estaba petardeando de mala manera. La cosa = el servidor, es decir, planet-d. Se habló y se comentó de qué hacer y qué no hacer, pero al final no se hizo nada y finalmente este julio hizo PUM y dejó de ir en absoluto.

Tras la euskal, surgió bastante gente interesada por los foros de la euskal misma, y la verdad es que me sabía bastante mal que ninguno de los newbies supiera por donde empezar ni tuviera un punto de referencia que no fuera un foro de pouet con miles de BASS, DUNGEON HORROR y tal, así que me dije que empezaría a hacer algo, a ver si así se picaba alguno de los admins anteriores de escena.org (entre los cuales yo no estaba, por si no está claro). Esto impulsó la creación espontánea de tdsb: the demoscener savers brigade, con una primera misión claramente definida: ¡resucitar escena.org!
Pero había que conseguir una copia de la base de datos. Ahí empezó el horror, terror y pavor. La última copia que tenían era de enero, así que se habían perdido seis meses de fantásticas noticias e instructivos mensajes en el foro. ¡Esto no podía quedar así! Preguntando aquí y allí, al final hemos conseguido una copia reciente de la base de datos.

Así que lo que está ocurriendo ahora es que se está cociendo la famosa escena.org v2. Las funcionalidades básicas de V1 están casi por completo reconstruidas, sólo que con un código mucho más limpio y especialmente liviano (¡muerte a la maquetación con tablas, mal que le pese a janfri!).

Le falta aún muchísimo trabajo pero al menos parece que no está detenido y las ideas empiezan a fluir alegremente… que es lo que interesa. Ahora, fecha estimada, pues ni idea :P

¡Cuando esté acabada! O le colgamos un BETA como una casa \o/