Andy's Blog http://blog.andyhot.gr Code till you ... drop Sat, 28 Aug 2010 16:38:53 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 On losing my primary HDD http://blog.andyhot.gr/On-losing-my-primary-HDD/ http://blog.andyhot.gr/On-losing-my-primary-HDD/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 02:33:49 +0000 andyhot http://blog2.andyhot.gr/?p=77 Well, it just happened - i was aware of the 'clicking' sounds for the last few days but i didn't bother to check what it was... it was the hard drive, stupid!
But why? And why now? Well, it turns out the po]]> On losing my primary HDD

Well, it just happened – i was aware of the ‘clicking’ sounds for the last few days but i didn’t bother to check what it was… it was the hard drive, stupid!
But why? And why now? Well, it turns out the power supply fan was not functioning and I guess the high temperature made matters deteriorate fast! BIOS isn’t recognizing the drive and there’s nothing i can do through software means – the HDD containing my home folder was history…
But anyway, my first thoughts were to quickly send the disk for recovery and here are some service i’ve found out (through web search) that can handle such a task here in Athens / Greece:

I didn’t contact any of them but it looks like the price for the recovery can start from 300€ but will most likely end up to 1000-1500€. So, why didn’t i contact any of those? Well, after the first few hours had passed, i had calmed down and had booted to the second HDD’s – that one’s still alive – Windows Server 2003 for the first time in the last 2 years. Then, and while installing those 2 years’ worth of updates, I tried hard to think what i had lost.

So, i’m happy to say that i haven’t lost much! Passwords are recoverable + in laptop’s browser as well. Bookmarks in delicious and in laptop. Important documents & emails in gmail (and laptop). Pictures & videos in laptop & wife’s laptop & windows HDD (hmmm… perhaps that still says something about linux device support : P). Private keys were once copied to windows for use with putty. In fact, i’m currently aware of only the following loses: some uncommitted changes to a few projects and loss of a git repo for a week old project (chesstu.be) for which i at least got the latest code from the deployment server! And that’s all for now… perhaps i’ve lost more and perhaps i’ll find that out soon but still i think i was just lucky, esp. considering i had no “formal” backups
Update: Forgot to mention I’ve definitely lost thousands of 1 0 bullet chess games played on FICS … but those are either reproducible, or just crappy!
]]> http://blog.andyhot.gr/On-losing-my-primary-HDD/feed/ 1 ESC 2010 http://blog.andyhot.gr/ESC-2010/ http://blog.andyhot.gr/ESC-2010/#comments Sat, 29 May 2010 23:32:25 +0000 andyhot http://blog2.andyhot.gr/?p=75 Rooting for Ukraine this year

]]> http://blog.andyhot.gr/ESC-2010/feed/ 0 del.icio.us links for 2010-02-12 http://blog.andyhot.gr/del-icio-us-links-for-2010-02-12/ http://blog.andyhot.gr/del-icio-us-links-for-2010-02-12/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:45:21 +0000 andyhot http://blog2.andyhot.gr/?p=15
  • dijit.Editor Demo
    (tags: del.icio.us links for 2010-02-12

     ]]> http://blog.andyhot.gr/del-icio-us-links-for-2010-02-12/feed/ 1 Partial review of last year – php comeback? http://blog.andyhot.gr/Partial-review-of-last-year-php-comeback/ http://blog.andyhot.gr/Partial-review-of-last-year-php-comeback/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:19:10 +0000 andyhot http://blog2.andyhot.gr/?p=72 In 2009 I did several php projects. The decision to use php was a pragmatic one - very cheap, available everywhere, easy to google for and I had a lot of experience w]]> Partial review of last year – php comeback?

    In 2009 I did several php projects. The decision to use php was a pragmatic one – very cheap, available everywhere, easy to google for and I had a lot of experience with it in (its and … mine) early years. I even used to teach it at SPHY.
    So anyway, up till last year, thinking of php would always bring back memories of spaghetti-code (though I hasten to add, the worst spaghetti-like project i’ve had to work on was in Java/jsp and that was back in 2001/2002 – copy/paste was the emperor and reuse was an unknown word). But all those memories have since changed – php 5 can do OOP and apart from a few gotchas, it’s not that much different to Java… and you do get instant productivity gains (due to save-reload workflow)
    After doing a short review of the php web frameworks & libraries, I chose to use Kohana (ver.2) in my projects. Kohana has proven to be a very elegant and clean MVC implementation and its new version (ver.3) now implements HMVC (hierarchical MVC) which is awfully close to what component-based web frameworks are offering but with less magic and thus less complexity
    ( i’ll need another post -or posts- to explain this further)
    Of course, when you’re back to the PHP land, it’s worthwhile to take a look at some of the best (and most used) apps that are written with that, namely wordpress, drupal and joomla (FlatPress is also great if you can’t afford a DB). I took a close look at the source code of wordpress and drupal and their architecture and found both straightforward – code is understandable, authoring plugins and extending default functionality is both easy and fun! And this makes you think… perhaps I can use any of those platforms as a base for my projects. Perhaps YOU should!
    Anyway, i’ll expand my thoughts in the following days. I’ll close with screenshots of 3 greek blogs i was involved with this winter (onlybeauty.gr, ufoerotiseis.gr, grease.gr):
    onlybeauty.gr  
    ufoerotiseis.gr  
    grease.gr
    ]]>     http://blog.andyhot.gr/Partial-review-of-last-year-php-comeback/feed/ 1     A new and wonderful Tapestry 5 blog http://blog.andyhot.gr/a-new-and-wonderful-tapestry-5-blog/ http://blog.andyhot.gr/a-new-and-wonderful-tapestry-5-blog/#comments Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:54:28 +0000 andyhot http://blog2.andyhot.gr/?p=5 Igor Drobiazko (a Tapestry committer) has recently started blogging on Tapestry 5 and his entries are very interesting and informative...]]> A new and wonderful Tapestry 5 blog

    Igor Drobiazko (a Tapestry committer) has recently started blogging on Tapestry 5 and his entries are very interesting and informative… Take a look:

    ]]>     http://blog.andyhot.gr/a-new-and-wonderful-tapestry-5-blog/feed/ 1     Having Fun. PS3′s here http://blog.andyhot.gr/Having-Fun-PS3s-here/ http://blog.andyhot.gr/Having-Fun-PS3s-here/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:33:27 +0000 andyhot http://blog2.andyhot.gr/?p=21 Here's what i'm currently playing:
    • Uncharted - Drake's Fortune Never heard of that, got it by accident, but GREAT! Having Fun. PS3′s here
      Well, that’s just another kick-ass gift from Emi!

      Here’s what i’m currently playing:

      • Uncharted – Drake’s Fortune Never heard of that, got it by accident, but GREAT!
      • Braid cool platform little indie game – had read the dev’s blog (or was it a Gamasutra srticle) some months ago and wanted to try it ever since
      • Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2
      • Killzone 2
      • GT5 Prologue

        • Anything else you’d suggest i should try?

        ]]> http://blog.andyhot.gr/Having-Fun-PS3s-here/feed/ 0 Reading Apache Maven 2 Effective Implementation http://blog.andyhot.gr/Reading-Apache-Maven-2-Effective-Implementation/ http://blog.andyhot.gr/Reading-Apache-Maven-2-Effective-Implementation/#comments Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:11:43 +0000 andyhot http://blog2.andyhot.gr/?p=47 Thanks to Amit Sharma (of Packt Publishing), I recently got a copy of Apache Maven 2 Effective Implementation authored ]]> Reading Apache Maven 2 Effective Implementation

        Thanks to Amit Sharma (of Packt Publishing), I recently got a copy of Apache Maven 2 Effective Implementation authored by Brett Porter and Maria Odea Ching.

        The book has proven to be an interesting read so far (even for an advanced maven user), covering a lot of important (and sometimes little known) plugins. Its best practices chapter along with the real-life advices/tips that are found throughout the book are a must read. On the other hand, I would really have liked to see a chapter or appendix covering maven support in IDEs + I must admit don’t have much of respect for Archiva (that’s based on a few weeks interaction i had with it 3 years ago – perhaps things have improved?) which is covered in detail in the book, along with Continuum.

        Anyway, expect a complete review soon.

        ]]>         http://blog.andyhot.gr/Reading-Apache-Maven-2-Effective-Implementation/feed/ 0         del.icio.us links for 2009-11-09 http://blog.andyhot.gr/del-icio-us-links-for-2009-11-09/ http://blog.andyhot.gr/del-icio-us-links-for-2009-11-09/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:04:56 +0000 andyhot http://blog2.andyhot.gr/?p=14
      • kerkness's kohana-for-wordpress at master - GitHub
        del.icio.us links for 2009-11-09

        ]]>         http://blog.andyhot.gr/del-icio-us-links-for-2009-11-09/feed/ 0 Streaming Schedule of ApacheCon Hadoop, HTTP Server, and Lucene Track http://blog.andyhot.gr/Streaming-Schedule-of-ApacheCon-Hadoop-HTTP-Server-and-Lucene-Track/ http://blog.andyhot.gr/Streaming-Schedule-of-ApacheCon-Hadoop-HTTP-Server-and-Lucene-Track/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:26:48 +0000 andyhot http://blog2.andyhot.gr/?p=84 Streaming Schedule of ApacheCon Hadoop, HTTP Server, and Lucene Track
        Starting in less than 24 hours and for the next 4 days there’s ApacheCon. Don’t miss the live streaming from http://streaming.linux-magazin.de/en/program-apachecon-us-2009.htm . Here’s the schedule (times in UTC):

        Wednesday, 04 November 2009: Hadoop Track
          17:00 Opening Plenary & State of the Feather
       William A. Rowe, Jr. & Jim Jagielski

  17:30 Apache Pioneer's Panel
       Moderated by Brian Behlendorf

  19:00 Introduction to Apache Hadoop
       Owen O'Malley

  19:30 2009 State of the Elephant
       Christophe Bisciglia

  21:30 Becoming a Pig Developer
       Alan Gates

  22:30 Apache Hadoop in the Cloud
       Tom White

  00:00 Practical HBase
       Michael Stack

  01:00 Apache Hive: SQL and Data warehousing on Apache Hadoop
       Ashish Thusoo
        Thursday, 05 November 2009: HTTP Track

          17:00 Munging URLs with mod_rewrite
       Rich Bowen

  18:00 Hardening Enterprise Apache Installations Against Attacks
       Sander Temme

  19:30 Keynote: Standing Out in the Crowd
       Kirrily Robert

  22:00 Scalable Internet Architectures
       Theo Schlossnagle

  00:30 Recent Developments in SSL and Browsers
       Rick Andrews

  01:30 Lightning Talks!
        Friday, 06 November 2009: Lucene Track

          17:00 Implementing an Information Retrieval Framework for an
       Organizational Repository, Sithu D Sudarsan

  18:00 Apache Mahout - Going from raw data to information
       Isabel Drost

  19:15 MIME Magic with Apache Tika
       Jukka Zitting

  20:15 Keynote: How Open Source Developers Can (Still!) Save The World
       Brian Behlendorf

  22:00 Building Intelligent Search Applications with the Lucene
       Ecosystem, Ted Dunning

  23:00 Realtime Search
       Jason Rutherglen

        So, Apache friends, enjoy!

        ]]>         http://blog.andyhot.gr/Streaming-Schedule-of-ApacheCon-Hadoop-HTTP-Server-and-Lucene-Track/feed/ 0         Maven and slow dependencies report http://blog.andyhot.gr/maven-and-slow-dependencies-report/ http://blog.andyhot.gr/maven-and-slow-dependencies-report/#comments Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:41:53 +0000 andyhot http://blog2.andyhot.gr/?p=38 If the dependencies report takes too long to finish, it could be due to maven trying to determine (and generate a report of) which repository contains which artifact... and the network and/or repos being slow or unre]]> Maven and slow dependencies report

        If the dependencies report takes too long to finish, it could be due to maven trying to determine (and generate a report of) which repository contains which artifact… and the network and/or repos being slow or unreachable.

        In any case, here’s how you can short-circuit that process:

        mvn -Ddependency.locations.enabled=false site
        ]]>         http://blog.andyhot.gr/maven-and-slow-dependencies-report/feed/ 2