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Google show..or was it a presentation?

Posted by Strainu | Filed under Geeks, School

If you’d rather read this in Romanian, we have some positive and negative feedback for you

On Monday , our faculty had some guests… some of our former colleagues that now work at Google came to tell us how cool it is to work at Google no, actually, they came to talk about the Google FileSystem and about the employment opportunities they had. The presentation was interesting enough, even if someone said it was the same as last year. A bad mark for the ppt itself, the links were outdated. There was also a short presentation about the system engineers that make google.com work 24/7.

Just before I left, some guys from my year started talking about their experience as google interns, and while I don’t agree with add’s opinion that they were “typical nerds”, I have to say they looked lame in their red shirts and Noogler hats.

About working at Google… well, nothing new compared with what you already knew from a Google(!) search: you get 20% of the working time for your own projects, you work with some of the smartest people in the world in some great cities, but… to get there, you have to pass through several phone interviews + at least one on-site interview, and you have to know your algorithms. You don’t want to exaggerate your skills; as one of the guys there put it: “If you say you’re an expert on Python, you might get interviewed by the creator of Python”

New blog – Coder Tricks

Posted by Strainu | Filed under Geeks, My Projects, Personal, School

With the help of some colleagues, I just launched a new blog. It’s called Coder Tricks and it will contain programming tricks that the teachers don’t usually bother to tell you in programming courses. Hope you like it!

If you wish to offer any kind of feedback, you’re more than welcomed to contact us at codertricks@strainu.ro.

Vista

Posted by Strainu | Filed under Gadgets, Geeks

So, let’s talk about the new OS. Yes, I know, I’m late again. People have been talking about it for la past 4 days. But I preferred to wait for a legal version from MSDNAA.

OK, let’s take it one by one:

1. Installation: It takes a little longer than XP, and it’a a lot less clear what the heck it’s doing to my computer. However, one must remember that Vista is almost 4 times larger than XP. So it goes pretty well.
2. First impression: I had Vista Enterprise Edition and my first impression was: Gee, I must have switched the DVD’s…That’s a black XP! Actually, there are some differences, like the start menu and the welcome panel, but the default settings were lacking AERO (even if my hardware allowed it) and the Sidebar. I had to look in the help center (which, btw, is pretty good) to see how I could activate them.
3. Security: There is clearly too damn much “security” in that OS. Every time I clicked on something in the Control Panel, the screen went dark and there was a popup asking: Are you sure you want to [...]? If you have clicked the button, press Yes. Ofcourse I clicked the god damn button! Stop asking me stupid questions! Installing the flash plug-in for IE became an adventure. It actually took 5 minutes, out of which the actual installation was about 5 seconds
4. Looks: Now that’s something that Vista’s good at. AERO has some pretty cool effects (even if I had to dig for them in the help files) and the Sidebar can be pretty useful once you get used to it. The new IE7-like looks for Windows Explorer is also interesting and easy to learn.
5. Hardware: Not so good Vista wasn’t capabable to see my embedded sound card and the XP driver did not work. So I’m stuck in silence , because my MB is too old to hope for a Vista driver. The other harware seemed to be OK, even if I haven’t tried all of the USB gadgets. Another bad point was the fact that Vista alone was eating up 75% of my 512MB memory. I can only dream of actually starting Visual Studio on Vista and still being able to do something on it.
6. Crashes: It’s a Windows, I know, but come on… 2 Explorer crashes in half an hour? XP SP2 had given me hope for more.

So, am I gonna keep it? No, because I can’t do anything useful with it (because of the lack of memory), I don’t like all the security warnings and my XP hasn’t crashed in a very, very, very long time Why change something that’s working?

Superhero

Posted by Strainu | Filed under Cool Webpages, Geeks, Jokes&Fun, Personal

Because I’m on vacation and I don’t really feel like doing my homework, i decided to take any quiz I could find on the internet The funniest was the super-hero quizz. The results?

I am Spider-Man

Spider-Man 70% Hulk 65% Iron Man 65% Green Lantern 55% Superman 50% Robin 47% Catwoman 45% Supergirl 45% The Flash 30% Wonder Woman 25% Batman 25%

I am intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Yeah right!

How to make a (illegal?) buck

Posted by Strainu | Filed under Cool Webpages, Geeks, Society

I was trying to check my account on an well-known global website specialised in freelance software developement. (Un)fortunately, when I wrote the address in Firefox, I wrote .ro instead of .com. Surprise! The domain is registered by a Ploieşti, România-based company, is active and it offers pretty much the same services as its US counterpart.

After my unfortunate experience with Piatadesoft.ro, I became extremely careful with Romanian software sites, so the first thing I did was to check for the owner’s data. All I could find was a contact form, but no offline contact method. There are no projects on that website just yet, and my sincere hope is that there will never by any. If you read this, I strongly advise you NOT to use their services if they ever become active.

Blogs roundup

Posted by Strainu | Filed under Cool Webpages, Gadgets, Geeks, School

Well, since Andressa seems to have a good time in Poland and she doesn’t bother with the blog any more, we all have to find alternate sources of fun Here are my nominations:

• Entering the IT industry from Tudor Damian – some common sense pieces of advice for the future IT professionals
• Bash tricks: comparing floating point numbers by Petre – an somewhat old post about BASH. Interesting because that’s one of the problems in my homework for the Operating Systems course
• Yahoo! fights messenger spam by evolve – fact or just messenger trouble? We’ll see…
• Metro etiquette by Just me – an excellent idea! There is a good reason for the yellow footsteps on the Bucharest metro’s escalators. Ever wondered what’s that reason?

Pub on blogs

Posted by Strainu | Filed under Geeks, Web stuff

Razvan Varabiescu has the excellent idea of a publicity system for the romanian blogs. I strongly support this idea, as it would probably allow to pay for the hosting (and maybe the domains) for my blogs and my website. He wants to gather 300 blogs, so if you’re a blogger and you haven’t signed up yet, hurry up

Problem solving flowsheet

Posted by Strainu | Filed under Geeks, Jokes&Fun

Great work Tudy! It actually works, I tryed it myself

Google roundup

Posted by Strainu | Filed under Cool Webpages, Geeks

It seems Google is on a “launching spree” again. In the last two weeks thare have been at least 4 launches that interest me directly.

1. Google Analytics got public

Yupeeeee!!! If it’s impressive enough, I might just give up trafic.ro.

EDIT: Andressa might be right: for the average blogger, with no technical knoledge, this might be a bit too complicated.

I’m happy to tell you that we’ve just removed the wait to receive a Google Analytics account. Now anyone with a website can instantly create one for free by simply by visiting google.com/analytics or by clicking on the “Analytics” tab within AdWords. After you create an account, we suggest reading the Installation Guide to get it set up quickly and correctly.

When we founded Urchin we actually had an ad-based business model where we were able to give the product away for free. It didn’t last and we eventually went with a paid model. But when our company was acquired in April 2005 we worked with Google to determine a way to give it away for free again, this time with no ads. By doing this, we’re able to give all websites — large and small — the tools you need to better serve your customers, make more money, and improve the web experience for everyone.

Regardless of how you use Google Analytics, what’s important to me is that you’re using it at all. In other words, the more you take action based on web analytics data, the better the Internet becomes. That’s the underlying philosophy our team shares.

2. Google Desktop 4 now available in Romanian

Maybe this time I’ll keep it more than a couple of days…

Starting today, Google Desktop 4 is coming out of beta in 26 languages (including Romanian!); a Japanese version is now available in beta too. It’s easier than ever to search and personalize your computer no matter what language you speak. In version 4, we’ve aimed to improve Desktop’s performance and have added a few features you’ve asked for:

• Easier to add international gadgets – Use the new Add/Remove gadgets interface to easily find gadgets in other languages; choose the language you want in the top right corner
• Configurable Taskbar “gadgets” button – Just click the arrow to the right of the Google Desktop “gadgets” button, and hover over “Taskbar Button” to change the display – with text, or without, or remove it altogether
• Change the Sidebar font size - Cick the “Options” button located at the top of the Sidebar, and hover over “Font Size” to change the setting

3. Google Webmaster Central