False Identity

Coffee can be good

blackjw — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:17:09 +0000

As seen on Slashdot:

“Recent studies by Finnish and Swedish researchers have shown that drinking moderate amounts of coffee can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in people.”

That’s a good news, I LOVE coffee!

Resolutions 2009

blackjw — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:49:21 +0000

For this year, I plan to do a lot of things. Reading, writing, and learning will be the main focus. I also want to spend more time with my family. To do so, I have to be way more organized.

I’ll spend less time watching TV by only selecting TV show that I really like. I think that watching TV is time consuming and that most of the time, full of crap. My objective is to not watch TV more than 10 hours a week which is already too much.

I have a bunch of book that I have to read but didn’t have the time. Hopefully, by being organized I will be able to read them. Most of them are computer books.

Writing is something else that I want to work on. For years, I tried over and over to get into blogging but never went very far. My dream is that one day I can write a book.

Also, if I have time, why not learn a new language. I can communicate in French and English already. I’m still hesitating between German and Russian.

To recap, I will spend more time with my family, be more organized, read and write more. So, let see if I will succeed with my new resolutions.

New books

blackjw — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:32:24 +0000

Oh yeah! I’ve just received my new books I ordered from Amazon. I must say that it was fast.

The first book is Learning Python by Mark Lutz. I want to learn Python and this book seems to be good. I was looking for a kind of tutorial ans not necessarily a reference book.

Learning the vi and Vim Editors by Arnold Robbins, Elbert Hannah, and Linda Lamb is the second book I bought. I started using Vim years ago but never went in depth. I just know the basic nothing really advanced.

Nice online tutorial

blackjw — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:52:01 +0000

Try Ruby! is a hands-on tutorial that I tried last night. This is a really nice way to learn about Ruby. After completion of this tutorial I fell in love with the Ruby syntax.

This is a really nice language and I think I will like it way more than Python. I just want to have some fun and be happy while programming.

Now, I just need to find good ideas for practicing my programming skill. It’s been a while since a really program. The very last thing that I was paid for was a project using PHP.

Great Documentations

blackjw — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:55:42 +0000

One of the most important things that a computer scientist needs is definitely the documentations. Indeed, without it, you won’t be able to learn the tool you use unless you have a friend who can teach you but in my opinion, this is not as convenient as a good documentation. The later will be always available.

Documentations can be available on many forms. Books, tutorials, manuals, wikis and more. Some are good and some aren’t. Documentation has to be concise, strait to the point and easy to get access to.

What I like is something that is very up to date. Online books or wikis are my favorite sources of information. In addition, forums and blogs (which is the “community”) are nice to read if you don’t understand the official documentations.

Lately, I chose to learn Python because it provides an excellent and easy to understand documentation easily accessible on its website. You do not have to buy an expensive book to get started. Also, the documentation is really up to date compare to a book.

New Dashboard design

blackjw — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:24:31 +0000

Awesome, “My dashboard” got a new design. This is really impressive, I love it. This design look way more professional.

Learning Python?

blackjw — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:14:59 +0000

My choice about the programming language that I want to learn on spare times for personal purposes will be python. As I said in the previous post, it wasn’t easy to decide.

I mainly choose Python for is abundance of documentation, lots of code available for studying and it is easy to learn.

I programmed a bit in the past using python but it was small scripts. Django is also an other reason why I choose Python over Perl.

BTW, Python 3 aka Python3k is released. It is already install in my computer.

Learning a programming language

blackjw — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:20:59 +0000

It is not easy to choose a programming language, they are so many choices and my time is so limited. I just want to learn something for personal projects.

So far, I narrowed my choices down to Perl and Python but I can’t decide which one I want to spend my precious time on.

A Simple, Lightweight Linux Distribution

blackjw — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:58:27 +0000

I finally found an excellent Linux distribution that fits my needs. This awesome distribution is called Arch Linux. I won’t write a review because there are already good reviews about it on Distrowatch.

So far, it works great on my virtual machine (Virtual Box) and I didn’t really have any particular issue. Every time I encountered a problem, I looked up on the excellent wiki for an answer.

The community around Arch Linux seems really good and friendly according to what I read on the official forum.

My next step will be to shrink my Vista partition on my laptop and install Arch in dual boot. Hopefully, it will be without any issues. I still need windows to run key applications (i.e. Red Alert 3, Lightroom and some more games).

Password manager

blackjw — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:13:03 +0000

This days, it is common to have account for credit cards, online banking, Facebook, emails and so on, but how to manage all those access information without writing them down on a piece of paper next to your computer screen.

Usernames and passwords are required most of the time for securing access. Best practice tells us to choose different passwords between accounts. It is also difficult for a human being to remember every single usersname/password that we have. One solution is to manage them with a secure database.

The software I recently found is a command line interface (CLI) software. It is compatible with the Password Safe initiated by Bruce Schneier (it is now developed by a group of volunteers). Here is feature of pwsafe.

Pure command-line operation if desired (good for remote access over ssh)

or can interact with X11 selection & clipboard.

Portable, endianess-clean, misaligned-access-free C++. Compiles cleanly on linux, *bsd, macos x, solaris.

Compatible with CounterPane‘s PasswordSafe Win32 program versions 2.x and 1.x.

Is it secure? Nothing is 100% secure but I personally think that it is better than writing your password down on a piece of paper or using the same username and password for all of your account.

NOTE: You will notice that I did not explain how to use pwsafe. It will always be like that because I believed that applications come most of the time with good documentations, so there is no point to copy-paste the manual in here. Actually, I love the acronym RTFM.

UPDATE: There is a good article published on CNET about passwords.