IRL Geek

Τελείωσε επιτυχώς και το φετινό WordCamp! Φέτος ήταν αρκετά αλλαγμένο σε σχέση με το περσινό.

Ας κάνω λοιπόν μια γρήγορη λίστα με το τί μου άρεσε, τι με άφησε αδιάφορο και τι δεν μου άρεσε.

Τι μου άρεσε:

• Η ευρύχωρη αίθουσα. Μετά το περσινό στρίμωγμα ήταν λογικό οι διοργανωτές να ψάξουν κατι μεγαλύτερο. Και το βρήκαν
• Οι παρουσιάσεις της Ζαχαρένιας, του Βασίλη, του Γεράσιμου, του Δημήτρη και του Θάνου
• Τα μικρά δωράκια που έκαναν και φέτος την εμφάνιση τους!
• Ο άφθονος καφές που υπήρχε στο break
• To networking που φυσικά επακολουθεί μετά απο κάθε event

Τωρα θα γίνω λίγο δυσάρεστος, θα πω τα πράγματα που με αφήσαν αδιάφορο

• Η παρουσίαση του Γιώργου, κυρίως για το HTML5 (την ένιωσα τελείως εκτός κλίματος)
• Η παρουσίαση του Φώτη (σορυ σειρά, αλλα με έχασες κάπου) και του Αποστόλη (μου φάνηκε αρκετά generic)
• Η παρουσίαση του Γιώργου ξανά για το WordPress στα Windows (μου φάνηκε αρκετά παρόμοια με την περσινή)

Και τέλος θα γίνω πιο δυσάρεστος, τι δεν μου άρεσε

• Η μικρή προσέλευση του κόσμου. Μετά την περσινή επιτυχία, περίμενα περισσότερο κόσμο, τελικώς ήρθαν νομίζω ακριβώς ίδιος αριθμός με πέρυσι. Ο λόγος πιστεύω ήταν η τοποθεσία του ξενοδοχείου που φιλοξενήθηκε το event (εκτος πόλης), το Λιμάνι Αλλιώς και το OpenCoffee που έγιναν ΤΑΥΤΟΧΡΟΝΑ.

H τελική γεύση που μου άφησε το event ηταν πολύ θετική τελικά και ελπίζω σε κάτι μεγαλύτερο πλέον. Το community των “open events” δειχνει να δυναμώνει σε αυτή την πόλη και ελπίζω σε καλύτερες μέρες!

According to Murphy’s Law, your Hotel Management Software will crash on the most busy day of the year.  Apparently it was not a crash which was easy to fix with some 1000 reboots of the server. Anyway, the crash was an error followed by a warning, followed by an error, followed by a warning…

As I browsed through the Error logs of the system (I am not  a techincian on the hotel, therefore I can only investigate, not solve problem) I found that there was an activity log that was “full” and had to be backed up. The activity log apparently was used to monitor EVERY SINGLE CLICK in the system. The information held in the log was like this:

[username][date][time][workstation][activity][database query][explenatory text of what the query meant]

This shouldn’t be a problem, and it is rather logical keeping logs for some time, the problem here was that the log was NEVER reset! It kept records from 2006! This resulted in an enormous log of useless information (legally the hotel is not obliged to keep this kind of log) which was gathered over the years. The result was a file with size of 50GB! Occupying the whole hard disk where it was stored!

How much is this? The database containing the clients’ data (the usefull ones) was just 2 GB (also there there is the reastaurant charges, EVERYTHING that moved in the hotel from 2006). In comparison: A bit more of the WHOLE Wikipedia’s Database as of March of 2009!

After the initial shock, I contacted the technician responsible (who of course was on vacation) and asked him why there was so much logging. His answer was another shock:

“I have no idea. We bought the source code and rebranded the software. Frankly, we do not have examined the full behavior of the program.”

The solution was simple: “We have to delete the log file” – No shit, Sherlock.

Here’s my solution to them:

• Keep a log within a reasonable amount of time (e.g. a year) Most of the employees found there had either retired or left the hotel
• Keep the usefull data, like who logged in from where, and edits of the database. Keeping a record from just viewing the client’s profile is idiotic.
• Clear the log if it exceeds some disk space.
• Test run your f#*%ing code.

Most of the news websites are written from retards. Seriously, if  journalists don’t know what the hell they are writing about, they write pretty much bullshit (actually this thing is so common, it should be considered an axiom). Latest example: the Anonymous with a name. Let’s see how little the journalists are informed on the matter.

The Eponymoys Anonymous

The report says: “His name was found at an Anon Manifesto, circling the globe. Alex Tapanaris seems to have written 2 documents about the structure and the beliefs of the Anonymous. His name was found on a PDF file used to transfer the documents. He has lost his sleep due to the fear of being arrested and the phonecalls of journalists. [...] His website www.alextapanaris.com has vanished from the web [...] ”

Let’s bash that point by point:

• “His name was found at an Anon Manifesto, circling the globe.” - Anon manifesto? Where was that and why does a Google search shows no trace of it??? (except the Greek sites that reproduced the article from the newspaper?)
• “Alex Tapanaris seems to have written 2 documents about the structure and the beliefs of the Anonymous.” – Structure like what? m00t is the God, mods are fags, and Beliefs, like “You are Anonymous.You are Legion.You do not forgive.You do not forget.And You do not matter.And you are an idiot if you believe the 5 sentences directly above this one.“
• “His name was found on a PDF file used to transfer the documents.” – lol PDF
• “He has lost his sleep due to the fear of being arrested and the phonecalls of journalists.” – Arrested for what? About posting memes like Advice dog and Milhouse? Or viewing gore pictures and posting his penis? Did he took part on a raid? I thought that Anon is safe behind over 9000 proxies. Be serious dude, you are exposing yourself too much.

Advice Dog - possible felony

• “His website www.alextapanaris.com has vanished from the web” – Well it doesn’t seem to be a DDoS attack, most probable is that he shut his own website down.

This is all a publicity stunt from Alex himself. He declared himself  ”hacker” and an Anon. This is a great insult to the Anon community if he had any clue. I bet that thousands of searches with his name were made during the publication of his story, and lots of them lead to some of his work as a designer. Well played Alex.

Also a journalist that respects his profession would have AT LEAST made a research to about the Anonymous before publishing a story like that. Hell, even a 3-second viewing of the E.D. page would have shown what Anonymous is, and Alex isn’t.

Alex Tapanaris right after the 10.000 Google Searches

Some of us that work two jobs (yeah really), have the benefit/curse of working with multiple PC’s and having to overlap the work hours. This presents the need of working from a “useful” or “important” PC in the company.

Here’s a few tips on how I cope with the issue.

Read more…

During the September I started working in a non-IT job with very low requirements. It is slow, no thought needed job. Just to be polite and some sharpness. It is a hotel job, I consider it temporary, but I cannot say for sure.

My other job is a Web Developer/Designer (more developing than designing though). Which is a very mind consuming job. The daily tasks vary from slicing to custom PHP code, from offering prices to clients for their requested projects to offering coffee to them.

Read more…