Temptation of Saint Aqualung // misc.

Forgetfulness, or Why Integration Isn't Always Good

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:04:00 +0300

Moved my jabber server to another physical server, spent week fighting (no that interesting, it's just my lack of python experience) old python 2.3 there to start YIM transport... And forgot my ID at Yahoo!

And of course I forgot the password, too. I just didn't care for more than a year. All my instant messaging is performed thru my jabber account and a bunch of transoprts to other IM networks. I've just set it up once and forgot.

In integrated environments you often forget the details. Write them down, for Heavens sake! Document everything!

Update: restored it. ID was obvious, and having ID I realized I remember password. So always document even obvios things!

People are strange

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:50:00 +0400

They so damn are! Aftraid to enter their name when registering a domain, but post every single bit of thier personal information into their facebook profile. And even place a marker on their home, their office and the place they usuallys stop by to drink a couple of beers in some google maps app.

It's Spring, Baby!

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:12:00 +0400

Today, on the 1st of April, I, Aleksei “rusty_angel” Miheev, declare: the spring is finally here. There are lots of signs around. Those are the most notable:

I saw the first butterfly this year
We turned on air conditioner in our office. And shut the windows, too. It's heaven here now.
I've opened (again) bicycle season with a short 5-something miles ride
I realized how long it's been since I woke up not alone
I quit drinking and eating meat

Once A Freelancer - Always A Freelancer

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:22:00 +0400

Well, yes – I'm back. I've always been here, but there really weren't that much time, so I couldn't sit, organize my thoughts in a way suitable for a blog post and write it. Later I got some time, but lost that habbit of blogging in English.

However, recently this blog was approved to TLA, and now I somehow feel obligated to start writing again. Right, I wouldn't mind getting a few extra bucks.

OK, so what's up? I still work in that web hosting company, I've got some of my projects hosted there, they are mostly local audience-oriented, so I won't mention them here now.

And I got back to freelance, too. It's casus inoperabile, I guess. It's my life, really. Freelance is much more challenging and.. just interesting. There's always something I do for the first time.

For example, recently I was optimizing a slow torrent site (yeah, I stuck to torrents), and I did it well, it's running smoothly for a about month already instead of crashing every night, but I didn't change a single line of code anywhere but /etc/my.cnf. Before that I always searched for weaknesses in scripts and queries (and there always were some), but this time I only tuned mysql. It feels just great! The company that hosts Matt's (he's a really great guy) server just doesn't believe that, so Matt had to ask me to describe what exactly did I do for them.

Also, I had first real-life experience with PostgreSQL recently. I used it a little in past and liked it, but GOD, it's custom aggregates are awesome! And tsearch was a big disappointment: it has everything I was trying to implement by myself for some time already. It's great. just great.

There isn't just work here now. I'm finishing my education this summer, so I'm wokring hard on my diploma project. I hate it. Really. I'm not into those things at all, I'm a system programmer, I have nothing to do arc furnaces. Writing a research paper on those things is painful. But I can't stop half-way, and neigher I can stop three months before the end after six years. So I just do it.

That's all for today. Real stuff would be later. See you, guys.

Friday

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 00:32:00 +0300

No matter, how bad restaurant is, Jack Daniels is always Jack Daniels. Thus, friday evening was damn good

Sick, or One Year and Keep Running

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:24:00 +0300

Well, yes, it's Novemeber, time for me to catch some cold. So I stay at home instead of been in office, take pills, drink a lot of hot tea with lemon (I hate tea with anything but water!!!) and... keep working.

I am trying to set up MySQL authorization/authentication with PAM and NSS. There'll definitely be an article on this, as I couldn't find enough information on this. There is a bunch of HowTo's available, and the task doesn't seem to be too hard, but I have problems with it now. Either those howtos aren't enough up-do-date or pill made me dumb.

I didn't tell you the best part yet. I didn't tell you anything good at all, actually. This site is one year old now! I ordered hosting from BlueHost.com on Nov, 20 last year. Now I have my VPS and I was busy moving the blog here from BlueHost and transferring the domain to GoDaddy, so it could have been unavailable for some time. Also, I missed November, 19 when I promised you to report about the first month of non-freelancing. This article would follow today later.

Right now I am accepting congrats. :)

This year shown me that I can be interesting, that I have things to write about (hope, next year will give more such things), that I can get a PR4 for a new domain, and hit the Reddit's top. There are things to remember, definitely.

Thank you for been with me all this time.

How Many Freelancers Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb?

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:00:00 +0400

I am a huge fan of that “how many somebodys does it take to change a light bulb” stuff. I'm sure, everyone knows this one already, but still it's one of the my favoutive:

Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but it takes a long time, and the light bulb has to really want to change.

I am planning to launch a website with lots of such stuff both in Russian and English. Someday. I've even registered a domain name for that. Unfortunatelly, I rarely have enought free time.

What I want to do now is a little contest.

You may have noticed already that there are now Links section in my sidebar. This should be soon changed. And one of those links could be yours forever absoulutely for free.

Just win my little contest.

See the title of this post? Sure, you do. I still do not have any answer to this question in my collection. That's awful, isn't it?

So, the person, who would propose the answer I'd love most, will get a link to his site in my sidebar. Forever and ever and ever.

Long Time Away, or Who Is Vanessa Hudgens?

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:14:00 +0400

Well, not actually away. Just didn't have much time to post. I had to pass two more exams to continue my education at University, and had pretty much work to do (soon to announce that project here, just waiting for my client to register domain name and rent a server), so I was pretty busy with all that. And there are also great changes in my private life (not too inspiring, but I'm trying to be optimistic), so I should confess, it was a hard time.

Anyway, I'm here now with lots of thing to tell you about. Be prepared for plenty of posts here. Here comes a brief summary of what is coming next.

Gone Ubuntu

I've been a die-hard Gentoo geek for 2 something years, but... Yes, you see it. :)

I'd probably never change my distro, but there were several things that made me think of it first and forced me to try a bunch of them later. I've seen FreeBSD in action and was amazed. I ruined my Gentoo system and had to get working system ASAP, so I've chosen the best available distro. The best available, not the best distro. I'm not too satisfied with Ubuntu.

I got CentOS 5.0 DVD and I'll try it in some near future.

Gone subversion

I didn't need any version control system for ages, but finally I've grown out of just everyday backups. I need to track work done, I need to know what exactly and when did I change in my code, I need to put milestones and track bugs. The latter is too much for SVN on it's own, but trac perfectly fits my current requirements. I even think of running trac in my sandbox and giving my clients access to it, but I don't know how to limit access for different users and afraid that tracking tickets could take too much time.

Gone single

Alas. Love ins't enough to stay together. We tried hard, she even kept trying when I gave up, but still there were too much thing we couldn't take over. Odd feeling, you know. You work so hard to be able to rent an apartment that would be a place for two of you, and suddenly you don't need it all and you don't know what to do with all of it.

Anyway, you're great, Annie, and I those 6 months were just wonderful.

Almost get employed

East is East and West is West, and I'm damned for freelance forever and ever, but I found a forum post about that vacancy and decided to try it out. My experience is more than sufficient for that work. I could become tech support engineer at local web hosting company, but they decided to hire a student (yes, I'm student, too, but I've got my last year in University, while he's second or third year one) with smaller experience, smaller ambitions and smaller salary.

I don't blame them, I'd do the same if I were them. And it's not the right job for me. Although I could do a lot for that company, they don't really need that right now, so they did the right thing.

Bud, God! It was in the middle of August, when it was hot like Hell and they do have an air conditioning in their office!

Got to give my code away

It was the first time when I had to stop working on a project to take a more important one and needed to prepare my code for other developer. Interesting experience and definitely I'm going to share it. Later.

Vanessa Hudgens

Who the heck's Vanessa Hudgens?

I love that guy!

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 06:27:00 +0400

Well, quite a pretty lot of posts today.

Roger Glover. I love him, really. As a musician, of course, but even more – as a great guy. He's probably the most charismatic of my favourite musicians (who are numerous, believe me, one day I'll make a list). He's kind, nice, fun, I love him most of all Purple dudes. I'm terribly sad about missing his autograph session a couple years ago in Nizhni Novgorod.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I am:

Listening his records all the night.
Got to his site and found biography there. Hi describes different stages of his life including band and artists he was listening to at those moments. Like that:

Smoke On The Water (1973) becomes one of the biggest hits of the decade. The band starts to disintigrate but manages a final album, Who Do We Think We Are (1973), containing the single Woman From Tokyo (1973). RG and Ian Gillan leave the band, for different reasons, to be replaced by Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale respectively. Buys his first house in Iver, Bucks. In a state of physical and emotional exhaustion, finds himself returning from the last Deep Purple tour to find that Nazareth are high in the charts with his production of the single Broken Down Angel (1973), taken from the album Razamanaz (1973) - the first of three albums they will make together, the next two being Loud'N'Proud (1974) and Rampant (1975). Listening to Stevie Wonder, Taj Mahal, Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gaye, Van Morrison, Traffic, Free. Supremes, John Lennon, Edgar Winter, George Harrison, Walter Carlos, Mountain, Paul Simon, Chicago, etc.

And what is he listening to during 2003–2004?

Listeining to his iPod

Love him

José González and Pleasure From Work

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 04:43:00 +0400

Interesting and challenging work is always a great pleasure for a creative person, but this post is not about it.

Tonight I finally found a suitable solution to reimplement search at TorrentMan.com. I took almost two weeks and was lot of fun, disappointment, coffee and slepless nights, but it was worth all of those.

While testing this new search functionality, I accidentally came across a record by José González, which I haven't heard yet. It's something called Australian Tour EP and I've only heard two songs from eight listed there.

Really exciting, I do love José. He's so... out of here. And out of time. He plays his guitar and his voice and our souls like noone in 2000's plays. I'm not even sure that any 60's psycho or folk band ever could play like that, though there's some bit of Dylan-like melancholy in his songs. His Veneer (2003) was the very first our (mine, and Anjuta's) “record just for two of us”, something that made us feel the same, think the same and be two parts of something bigger... Wonderful feeling.

Have you ever got such pleasant surprises from your work?