It is all about me!

you have nothign to prove, except theorems

For the first time since a long time I am awake at 8AM. I am also coffeed-up and ready to start running commands like:

curl 'http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.10.5/Zope-2.10.5-final.tgz' | tar -xzvf -
wget https://launchpad.net/plone/3.0/3.0.3/+download/Plone-3.0.3.tar.gz

I know from experience that at some point I will need PIL so I also installed that from MacPorts:

sudo port install py-pil

which pulled all the prerequisites ala apt-get including python2.4 and installed everything in /opt/local/. Thanks MacPorts! letz install

Update: Apparently there are problems with the readline (”Bus Error” shows up as soon as you type anything) lib on Mac OS X. The solution is to port install readline before installing python24, py-pil etc… It works now.

Zope install from source looks like:

$ curl 'http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.10.5/Zope-2.10.5-final.tgz' | tar -xzvf -
$ mkdir /zopedev/Zope2105 # software home (common to all zope installations)
$ mkdir /zopedev/site1 # instance home (my website)
$ cd Zope-2.10.5-final/
$ ./configure --help
$ ./configure --prefix=/zopedev/Zope2105/ --with-python=/opt/local/bin/python2.4
$ make
$ make install
$ cd ../Zope2105/
$ bin/mkzopeinstance.py # copy stuff from software home to instance home
$ cd ..
$ site1/bin/runzope

Zope is now running. You can see it at: http://localhost:8080

Plone:

$ wget http://effbot.org/media/downloads/elementtree-1.2.6-20050316.tar.gz
$ tar -xvzf elementtree-1.2.6-20050316.tar.gz
$ cd elementtree-1.2.6-20050316
$ sudo /opt/local/bin/python2.4 setup.py install
$ ls site1/lib/
$ ls site1/Products/
$ rm -r site1/lib/
$ rm -r site1/Products
$ cp -R Plone-3.0.3/Products/ site1/Products/
$ cp -R Plone-3.0.3/lib/ site1/lib/


In general installing products is as easy as un-taring them in the Products directory of your site and restarting Zope. Then you can add them from the respective “management interface” — in that respect Plone is just another Product.

More tomorrow… FCKEditor? UML to Product example [1,2]?

In general I must say I am quite impressed with the new features of Plone 3. The page “edit” has been ajaxified. They have categories. Everything looks more mature now and clean. I like what there is now and I like that I could add stuff like hierarchical categories. Tomorrow.

This attracted my attention in the news: Man holds hostages at H. Clinton’s office. Certainly a nice piece of publicity for Hillary since she “dropped everything” and worries about her young staff being held hostage. One fact I didn’t get from the story is whether the guy actually had any explosives on him. Because otherwise - there really isn’t a story. They(the media) will just look stupid. But why burden yourself with facts …

a bit long for a company name
IT consulting
i think this is my calling in life
to give ideas to companies
basically 90% bullshit and then
put the people in contact with
really good developers
i just do research for them
and say “which tools” they should use
i.e. you want to manage homepages file uploads and simple document creation
—> then you need Plone (build an example site for them)
if they like it you refer them to the right people and charge them for the
“research” but really the main thing you are selling is the referral

1000$
200$

10 000$ if it is the right client :)

Have a reliable way of converting .mm files produced with Freemind into well formed latex documents. In particular I want to make latex beamer presentations from the nodes in the tree.

Level 0: Title
Level 1: \section
Level 2: \subsection{
Level 3: \frame \n \frametitle{
Level 4: \item in an itemize environment

Update: I was very excited about coding some python today but I had lost sight of the first rule of software development: Don’t write code, it has already been done. And indeed there is an XSLT script for this exact task. I will tweak it a bit but otherwise the task of the day is finished.

Update 2: I have been reading [1, 2] a bit about XSLT and it is an impressive little language. Very data-centered. I am amazed by how non-mature the whole of computer science is. You’d think that after 5 decades of digital computing people would have figured out the best way to program but you’d be wrong. I guess if you are a genius coder the tools really don’t matter that much since you can build everything from scratch.
Another (unrelated) interesting lead to research is the multimedia package for latex beamer.

Now I must go fry 2 eggs, warm some beans, boil 2 halal sausages and have a quality greasy “English” breakfast. It is 3PM after all…

I got some crutches from the Montreal General. Now, in addition to hopping, I can swing around on these 6′ aluminum sticks. The motion is quite pleasant but the trauma caused to my armpits isn’t worth the switch. It is so much better to just hop on my left leg on my way to the kitchen…

Tomorrow I am expecting another visit from my house doctor. I can’t even begin to explain how attracted I am to her. She is like an angel that comes to bring me food and chocolate and herself. I don’t know how I would rate her compared to M. in terms of desirability. The relationship is very different. She wants her distance and it is just for sex whereas with M. there is no sex at all and she wants to be friends. I am just really happy with the situation I am in right now. And I can’t wait until she shows up at my door tomorrow. All that smiling, all that energy and those sweet asian curves and the attitude…

In other news I installed the EasyEclipse Python. I am not sure what it does but I am not afraid to find out. Tomorrow.

Oh Jianing has come. Time to go to the kitchen stove and heat the knives…

What is up with the command prompt i.e. Terminal?!
I am trying hard to get some good fonts to work with it. Why is there no color highlighting?
I guess I should download the Mac OS X developer’s tools… or maybe iTerm ?
Or both.

The developer tools are 900Mb though.
Hmm…. i should wait until nightfall so my usage of the neighbour’s internet will not be too apparent. Guess we have to put the Zope/Plone development on hold for a few hours.

Otherwise the Mac OS X experience has been good if a bit simplified. All this dragging and dropping of .app files is kind of tedious but not complicated. Sure beats sitting through the questions asked by windows installers…. but doesn’t even come close to apt-get install in Debian.

Things are generally pretty though. The folder views not so much. Finder as a whole is stupid. It is trying to conform to some age old mac traditions but really doesn’t offer any good way of browsing things. I prefer windows at this point because I am more familiar with it.

to be continued …

In other news: I twisted my foot in a violent manner. I won’t be able to walk for a week or so. I hope there is no long term damage. It was a pretty stupid move I tried to pull where I twisted my leg behind the assailant’s leg and then we both fell. At the end of the fall my foot was pointing in a direction that it wasn’t able to point in before…
I’ll be OK I’m sure. Kato na kuche shte mi mine.

There is no more excuses. It is time the house got the cleanup it needs.
Aint no party like a (cleaning) gangsta party.

Here I am sitting in front of this humongous thing.
Itz-a-nice, but not overwhelming.
I can sit comfortably far and witha few CTL+< +> I can get a size of font that looks nice.

Thinking about it… it is also UNIX like linux but the fonts here work right out of the box.
I am probably going to increase my level of geekiness if I continue using this machine but I should focus on the things that matter like Zope and Plone and coding applications is Python. Not other stupid hedonistic pleasures.

Speaking of geek-thoughts….. who wants to hear the latest “idea” my pot-inspired mind has “pondue”?
I really liked the video where they use flash to make a simple animation with words and some symbols. I want to build an application that can create such videos.
The input is the base track, the mid sound and the high pitched sounds… and you can attach to them the effects you want. Also if you have the lyrics of the song you can add them along too. Just have a timeline tool that works smoothly.
Then you have Music Video 2.0

Ok. that is enough. I am happy OS 10.4 simply recognizes the NTFS drive. Everything works. That-a-nice.
Tomorrow we learn how to burn DVDs full of Arabic audio lessons, catchy or profound music and provocative videos.

I can see myself writing more…

Life has gotten interesting lately. Lots of things happening. It is good to be healthy !
This morning I gave an almost improvised talk about qit. People listened. They also gave me pizza afterwards so it can’t have been that bad…
The mac has arrived. I should go and get it and then prove the world I have coding skills.
Above all this though…. and I would give it up instantly …. is my expectation of a call from her. What are these big life changes she is talking about? Should I pester her with questions? Should I ignore her again like I did for 2 weeks? Or maybe write her letters.

Collect the many directions. Collect the spilling mental energy …. yes….. like that.
Now focus it on the paper printed out in front of you. Go.

That is so weird. She messaged and she’s like how are you. I reply. She’s not very chatty so I decide to call. And there I am on the phone with her, but I am not feeling the usual exhilarating buzz of having this beautiful girl listening to what I have to say but rather anger.

I swore a few times. Not at her, of course, but at cell phone charger vendors and other stupid things like that. It is like I want to talk to her and be with her as much as before but the pain I may live through is saying its word.

All in all I seem to care less, which is good. The more you care, the more you make things into a big deal. It is so much better to be even hearted. To quote Jimi in Red House:

‘Cause if my baby don’t love me no more,
I know her sister will!

How many of my relationships with girls develop like that: mostly inside my head? It would be hard to say but probably a large percentage of them. It is funny, because ultimately the things you think or plan or calculate don’t really matter. If she has decided she wants to sleep with me one day she will. If she has decided she doesn’t want to then there isn’t all that much I can do to change her mind.

I am going to continue not thinking about her and go have fun tonite!

Monday I was weak. Tuesday I was all out sick. Wednesday I was better but I smoked some stuff which hurt my throat (i felt great afterwards though… for a couple of hours) and Thursday I was feeling sick again.
Today I don’t know.

The whole idea of mind over body is not working out.
Maybe I should try harder.

It sucks to be sick. I get this feeling that no-one really cares about you and that the world is a terrible cold place where individuals go about caring for their daily needs and don’t give a fuck about others. I guess the world really is like that but when you are healthy you don’t mind it.
Jianing, instead of being a good doctor and curing me is just saying general things that confuse me. He did not even hear out my lungs — which is kind of important. Fuckin’ guy!

I guess I better concentrate on the garlic, citrus fruits and the Heroes tv show.