This is the 912^nd post, see? :) And it is about terrorism.

It has just occurred to me that Anonymous, the hacker continuum that has humiliated security and financial companies and even governments, has the structure that would allow a terrorist organization to survive. Look at Al-Qaida: a news article described how the death of Osama bin-Laden has alienated the financial backers of the organization. Well, yes, it makes sense, because Al-Qaida is (and will always be) a corporation. Terror is a means to an end, not the reason for the existence of the group. The point of this top-to-bottom led movement is to gain support; ideological and political would be nice, but money would do even better. When power and money are concerned, people always tend to organize in a hierarchical fashion, thus the US strategy of targeting the leaders rather than the drones. It's funny that these feared terror kings of the East have not thought of going the same way against their enemies corporations, but let's not give them ideas.

Now look at my friends at Anonymous: their purpose, more or less, is to have fun. They don't really have leaders, only more or less involved individuals, doing their part as they see fit. I've previously found similarities between Anonymous and Ghost in the Shell's the Laughing Man, but it goes further than that. There were studies into the reasons why people are happy and motivated and the result was that money is only a motivation for repetitive non creative tasks, while for intelligent creative tasks the motivation comes from a job well done. So here we have a peer-to-peer network of people, motivated by a job well done, the perfect organization model for free happy people.

I know it does show similarities with communism, but the main difference is that communism was supposed to be a closed, self sustaining system, while "anonymism" is like a parallel system, based on hobby, like playing a complex multiplayer online game. You don't earn your money out of it, you earn your freedom, motivation and self-esteem, which are more important for an individual. The problem with this model from a terrorism standpoint is that terror doesn't motivate anyone. You might hate someone to really enjoy doing a great job harming them, but it is a method doomed to fail in the long run. Who has ever heard of flourishing organizations based on hate (except ridiculous super-hero movies)?

Oh, I have many more connections in my head right now, with the software piracy epidemic, for example, and the (futile, in my opinion) attempts of governments to regulate the Internet. The same conflict between corporation (as a larger concept, including churches, governments, Al-Qaida and all large top-down organizations) and the individual is linking all of these. And from all of these, the model of peer-to-peer sharing of time and passion for a common cause seems the only one which preserves individual freedom inside a group. And besides, I've added so many keywords in this post that I am sure some US security group is going to read it, I don't want to give them ideas either. (Hi, guys!) Anyway, I am sure that even CIA agents go home and play an online game from time to time and may even partake in software peer-to-peer piracy and could even feel like individuals from time to time ;)

The Dragon Reborn relapses into the problems of the first book in the Wheel of Time series: there are good or bad characters, light and dark and the only true unknown (and most exciting as well) is Lanfear. The rest of the book is how all the characters level up dramatically to the point that none of them can pretend to cling to their small village roots. Rand is the Dragon, Perrin is a wolf, Mat is the reincarnation of a Manetheren hero, the girls are the most powerful girl power users in centuries, etc. If anything, the losers of this book are Loial and the Aes Sedai with their Warders, as it seems none of their long life, experience and training matter in the face of ta'veren-ness.

That doesn't mean that the book is not interesting, quite the opposite, it is certainly more epic, although in the same way the other two were (I am beginning to see a Pattern, heh heh) as the pressure builds and builds towards an ending that feels rushed. It's like sex after too much foreplay: is that it?

The bottom line is that Robert Jordan's series has captured my imagination, with all its clichés and great prophecies and noble heroes. I did hope for something more complex, but then again, life is not like a book and there are level-downs as well. There is still a chance the next book will be as intelligent as it is flamboyant, though.

I've finished watching the seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager and, even if I enjoyed watching it, I also think it was the series with the most potential lost from all of them.

First of all, the show should have been called Star Trek Condescension. Each Star Trek series before it had some obnoxious characters, like Bones in The Original Series, even if he was saved by the clever interactions with his counterpart, Spock, or like Deanna Troi in Next Generation, intrusive and opinionated about just about everything that did not concern her, or like Kira Neris, who always had some cause to fight in the detriment of all her other colleagues on Deep Space 9. It was OK, it part of the concept. Voyager has broken that rule, making just about everybody as annoying as possible.

Top of the list: Captain Janeway, who was not only acting like the headmistress of a high school, placed there by divine powers to have children under her care and control, but who was also a complete hypocrite, changing her views whenever it suited her, but quoting larger than life "directives" whenever she wanted out of something. For all her talk of saving lives, if the show was reality, she would have killed her crew numerous times and would have insured just about every major force in the quadrant was an enemy of the Federation. And the worse part is that her acting was perfect: from the condescending tone of her voice to the raised eyebrows, from the hand on her hip to the dismissive smile, her body language was more obnoxious than anything she could have said.

Second in command Chakotay, a man of native-American origins, would have no problem breaking any rule when his Maki training would surface, only to justify anything by either invoking his spiritual ancestors or spouting truisms while fully inhaling before each sentence. While Janeway's condescension was authoritative, Chakotay's was always thuggish, but just as strong and annoying as his captain's. Also, he was making mistakes almost every time it didn't involve physical activity. Not the best choice for a second in comand.

Neelix deserves a special place in the annals of obnoxiousness, as a rodent like alien who comes on board as the lover of this pixie like beautiful blonde. After suffering more than a season rude and abusive bouts of jealousy from him, we spend the rest watching him intrude in everybody's personal lives from his self appointed position of "moral officer" and later of "ambassador". Only in the last season a Q is fusing his jaws and lips and removes his vocal cords, a humanitarian move who only lasted till a few minutes later. Blessed be the silence, though.

There are more, from the loud mouthed doctor who is "evolving" from very rude to intrusive and almost destroys the ship twice with all the good intentions to the duo B'elanna Torres and Tom Paris, who act so superior towards anybody not like them that they would have undoubtedly made the alpha couple in a high school drama.

A good thing about the series is the design. All the technology is consistent in aspect and apparent functionality from the start to the end of the series. Considering Voyager was produced during amazing technological advancements in television and computers, it was probably an effort not many noticed. The human component, so easily removable via computers and nanotechnology, was preserved during the entire length of the series, maintaining that theatrical feel and enforcing the idea that the sci-fi in the series was just a prop for some larger ideas. Unfortunately, the ideas was not that large, and were mostly human centric and ridiculously optimistic.

About the plot, the show is about a Federation starship stranded in the Delta Quadrant, seventy thousand light years from Earth. The way people travel is the most inconsistent part of the series, as they are always struggling to get home, while the same aliens are attacking recurrently, even with less advanced technology. How could they "ambush" Voyager, if they were left behind?

The holodeck and the holographic doctor were used extensively as a plot crutch, whenever they were out of ideas. Meetings with the Borg are common, even if the results are mind baffling. One of the most disgusting things in the series is the treatment of Seven of Nine, a Borg that is being coerced back to individuality despite numerous declarations that it wants to return to the Collective. But Janeway knows best and all the list of annoying characters above proceed thereafter to piss on the Borg heritage of Seven and insist on developing her "humanity". If Voyager would be watched by the people described in the show, it would undoubtedly be considered crass human propaganda for the Federation.

And still, for all the reliance on Borgs to move the plot on, the technological side of the equation was repeatedly ignored. Seven is part Borg and will remain so for the rest of the series, including nanoprobes in her blood. Yet she does not attempt to assimilate anyone, including enemies, when it would have been the best way of solving some of the problems. Borg technology is added to Voyager, but most often reluctantly and only temporary. Seven never develops cybernetic tools for herself, even after her implants save the ship several times. Also the Borg Collective is presented as a mindless community of interconnected people, but at the end a Queen of the Borg is revealed, who has total control and presents a target and a persistent enemy.

Bottom line, for a technological person as myself, I was almost attracted more to the Borg model than the Federation one. While the words "democracy", "freedom" and "openness" were spouted at every occasion, true freedom of thought was only tolerated on Voyager when the captain agreed. The Borg at least used the individual as a conduit for the general thought. The morality lessons in the series were simplistic and antiquated. Voyager, with the idea of a ship stranded somewhere, with problems that needed solutions with limited resources and lots of ingenuity, could have been a series to open minds. Instead, it force fed US concepts from the 60's.

I have to admit, the quality has increased dramatically in both writing and storyline in this second part of the Wheel of Time series. Robert Jordan's The Great Hunt follows our heroes in their quest to heal Mat, deliver the Horn of Valere and escape the endless machinations of the Aes Sedai.

I was saying in the review of the first book, The Eye of the World, that the story was ridiculously black and white, reminiscent of Lord of the Rings. The Great Hunt features good and evil Aes Sedai, sympathetic Darkfriends, political Cairhienians that see every action (or lack thereof) as a move in The Great Game of lords and not less than three new major threats, not counting the Black Aes Sedai, as well as parallel worlds, resurrected heroes and epic battles. So there is a good range of shades of grey, washing away the simplicity with which the series started. The characters gain volume, developing in their own unique ways.

There are some issues, though. Rand is exhibiting wonderful skill and ability exactly when needed, being pretty much clueless most of the time. Women again appear rather one sided: proud, intelligent, manipulative and always in some way of authority over men. The "The wheel spins as the wheel wills" quote is used way too much and the blatant logical hole ignored: if it does, then no one needs to get involved in anything, especially the Aes Sedai. Nynaeve find a new strength and acts more like a Wisdom and less like a scared little girl.

So I am caught up in this. Too interested to start reading the tech book I was planning and too much work at the office to really feel the need to. Let's see how the next book in the series will be.

Check out this article. I haven't even read it yet, but the image they present is saying it all. Even someone such as myself, a firm believer in national sovereignty and the right to follow whatever twisted philosophy one chooses as long as it doesn't affect others, can't remain indifferent to it. What you see above and below North Korea are China and South Korea. You can tell North Korea apart, because it is the dark patch.

It all started with this site that got stuck in the Google Chrome's DNS cache so that any changes to the Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts file were ignored. I didn't want to close all Chrome windows (since the DNS cache is application wide in Chrome), so I googled for an answer. And here it was, a simple url that, typed in the Chrome address bar, would allow me to clear the cache: chrome://net-internals#dns.

But there are a lot more cool things there: testing of failed sites, a log of browser network events, control over open connections and so much more. That got me curious on other cool chrome:// URLs and I found some links listing a lot of them.

I don't have the time to parse all these cool hidden Chrome URLs and review them in this blog entry, so I will just list some links and let you explore the goodness:
Google Chrome’s Full List of Special about: Pages
12 Most Useful Google Chrome Browser chrome:// Commands
About and Chrome URLs

Update: The Chrome url containing all others can be found at chrome://about/.

The Eye of the World is the first book in the series called The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan. Written in 1983, it is very similar to Lord of the Rings. It features a complex world of nations and races with their own languages and cool sounding names, a battle of good light versus evil dark that is so ridiculously polarized that at first I thought I couldn't finish the book, a party of different people in which the main character is a poor country sheppard boy, a quest that has the goal of saving the world via a long trek of personal transformation.

Actually, if I think about it, it seems almost entirely inspired by Lord of the Rings, with none of the innovations that appeared since playing any effect except maybe The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, when describing the Blight. Something that is clearly different in the book is the role of women.

While Tolkien had them placed high on a pedestal, queens and princesses that were supposed to inspire men but not be touched, Jordan presents them as important members of the party, with Moraine, the "wizard", holding most of the authority. Actually, it goes further than that, giving all women characters an almost indomitable ability to influence men. Only one female in the entire book is evil, and that for a very brief period of time, and none of them are weak in any way. It doesn't even matter much that The One Power has two sides, one female and one male, and that the male is tainted by The Dark One. Even if they would have magical power, men are doomed to be ruled by women in The Eye of the World and probably the rest of the books.

The evil Shai'tan is a dark entity with burning eyes and eternal rage, imprisoned yet powerful, corrupting everything he touches, while the power that opposes him is white pure light that heals, purifies and avenges. The only shred of ambiguity comes in the shape of The Children of the Light, a warrior sect dedicated to fight evil, but that are nothing more than pompous gang members that define evil as anything they don't like.

All and all the book was pleasant enough and, being December, I plan on reading at least the next book in the series before I start with a technical one. However, it doesn't come close to most of the books I've read recently. The simple design and clear inspiration is probably the reason why they want to adapt the story to television, now that the likes of Game of Thrones have shown the model successful. If the quality of the books does not improve in time, it may be so that it would be more effective to wait for the films instead of reading the book. Then again, I will make up my mind after I've read more. I have hope.

Long time since I've posted a song. I heard this one at a lunch with a friend and then I dug up this rare video of the last performance of Shakespeare's Sister before they split up. Enjoy!



Here is the original video of the song:

Coma has finally released a new song. It's completely free to listen and share. Here is the SoundCloud link for it: Un semn. You can also listen to it here.
Coma - Un semn [2011] by COMA-band-official

I wish it weren't such a light piece or that Dan Costea would have added some of his trademark screams in the background at least. I can't but think of Linkin Park, starting with great, powerful songs and continuing with whining in their next album. But being the first piece out, it may be a teaser for what it is to come.

Update:
There is a video for the song, and here it is:

This book touches a very uncomfortable subject for me: the mindless, visceral hive mind of the crowd. There is nothing more horrible, I find, that being powerless in front of a mob of people united by only their stupidity and fear. Lord of the Flies is the archetypal book about this subject. It tells the story of a bunch of British kids stranded on a small island without any adult supervision. They create a parody of human society which ultimately fails horribly towards the end.

The book is short, but to the point. Sections of it are almost unbearable to read, not because it features monsters or supernatural creatures, but because you feel deep inside that it is the truth, that these things happen and that they do because of something deep inside each of us.

The only failing of the book, I feel, is that Jack and Roger are portrayed as classical psychopaths and it is clear from the beginning that one cannot empathise with them. A slightly longer story that would have made the effort to make these characters slightly likeable would have had an even deeper impact. In that case, I fear, the book would have become completely unbearable. People need their illusions about the society around them; shattering them completely would not do.

This book is a must read for any student of human psychology and one of the best books to reference at parties to make you look smarter than you are :-) I've actually read the book because I was doing that too much, but had only seen the movie. I wonder if I should get other works from William Golding, since I liked this one so much.

I was looking for autobiographies, since I liked quite a few of them lately and I felt like more, and so I got two. One is interesting because it is finally in print after 100 years since the author's death. I am talking about the first volume of Mark Twain's biography. However, I really could not make myself read it: the language was so pompous and the content so lame that I felt pain trying to.

Not so the second book, which seemed even more unlikely for me to like it: THE PLEASURES OF STATISTICS: The Autobiography of Frederick Mosteller, but which I did. It started with a few projects that Fred Mosteller participated in, explaining the day to day concerns and situations of a statistician while working on them. I thought at first that the book is going to be all like this, so after about a third I was about to abandon the read. You see, it was all very interesting from a professional statistician's point of view, but I wanted the more personal viewpoint of the man. And so I got it. Suddenly the book changed pace and went with the early life and education of Mosteller. The end of the book again covered some cases of work, but this time with a personal touch that explained the motivation behind the acts. And finally, the editor's epilogue, written from testimonies of friends and colleagues.

In this review, a Theodore M. Porter argues that the autobiography was flawed, as it covered little of his family life and couldn't reconcile the different viewpoints that appeared in the book, like the scientific and personal. But I disagree. The autobiography was unfinished and I guess the editor did the best he could with what he had, but it couldn't have been a lot different from what Mosteller himself intended. You start with the actual work: statistics, explained in layman's terms, then you continue with the actual man, explaining the origins and education, then you get back to statistics, but examining the work from the personal viewpoint of the man described. Yes, he could have written about his family more, but it wouldn't have been about statistics. The little he does write about his wife is about how supportive she was throughout his career. And yes, the tone of the book is a bit clinical, but this is how the writer actually thought like; he was a scientist in the true sense of the word and I liked this book exactly because it made me understand how such a man thinks and feels.

Even more than the structure of the book and the insight in the mind of a conscientious and brilliant scientist what I liked most is the peek at the world in the middle of the 20th century and how strikingly different it was from what we see today. The concerns of a teacher towards the best method to get his students to understand and like the subject, the way people were getting together to solve problems and worked for years on a book or bunch of science papers, the way academia was also supportive, not only political, and most of all, to see how people can be both brilliant and empathic, both clinical in science and warm in person.

I wouldn't recommend this book to everyone. I had a hard time reading it to the end and paying attention to every bit. Nor should one study it like a school manual, because as far as I see, the book is about a man's soul and you only have to understand and feel that. Whether it is because of my autobiography fad or because I resonated with the man or for some other reason, the bottom line is that I enjoyed reading the book. Maybe you will too.

Finally I have found the chess game viewer I wanted in order to publish my own PGN games in the blog! The name is Chess Tempo PGN Viewer and it is well written, fast, supports annotations and variations and is very configurable. Most of all, it is all Javascript (sorry for the occasional Java prompts. I almost caved in and did what I swore I wouldn't ever do: have Java applets in my blog).

Please tell me if you have issues with the new chess viewer.

Luckily for me, some chess videos are for beginners like me. Here is one from OnlineChessLessons, describing a simple, clear opening called The Stonewall Attack. After watching the video I played a game with my trusted Nokia phone and managed to create a game starting with this opening. I then analysed it using chess engines Houdini and Rybka and annotated it manually. Check it out, including the variations.

Video first:

Make sure you also follow the article attached to the video.

And now my game:
[Event "29/10/2011 1:08:49 pm"]
[Date "29/10/2011"]
[White "Siderite"]
[Black "Nokia Easy5"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "D05"]
[Opening "Colle"]
[Variation "5.c3 Nc6 6.Nbd2 Bd6 7.O-O O-O"]
[TimeControl "600"]
[Termination "normal"]
[PlyCount "59"]
[WhiteType "human"]
[BlackType "computer"]


1.d4 e6 2.e3 d5 3.Bd3 Bd6 4.f4 Nf6 5.Nd2 O-O 6.Ngf3 c5 7.c3 Nc6 8.O-O c4 9.Bc2 Ng4
{At this point, the engines suggest Bxh7, a classic sacrifice.}
10.Qe2
{However, I moved the queen to defend e3.}
( 10.Bxh7+ Kxh7 11.Ng5+ Kg8 12.Qxg4
{This variation wins the h7 pawn, but moves away from the spirit of the original game.}
12...Qf6 13.e4 ) 10...f5
{At this point, engines suggest Ne5, followed by knight exchange from black.}
11.h3
{I chose to shoo the knight away, but weakening g3, where the knight would love to come later.}
( 11.Ne5 Ngxe5 12.dxe5 Be7 13.b4 ) 11...Nf6 12.Ne5 Qa5 13.g4 fxg4 14.hxg4 Qb6
{engines would want me to attack the knight on f6 before moving the rook out.}
15.Rf2 ( 15.g5 Bxe5 16.dxe5 Ne8 17.Kg2 g6 18.b3
{Engines decide to try a queen side attack as well, in order to weaken the black pawn chain. I was not interested in that.}
) 15...h6
{engines suggest attacking the rook and with Ng6, which is a natural attacking move and a lovely outpost.}
16.Rh2 ( 16.Ng6 Rf7 17.g5 Nh7 18.Qh5 Ne7 19.Nxe7+ Rxe7 20.gxh6 Nf8 21.Rg2 Qc7 22.Qg5
{However at this point the game moves into queen side attacks and a slower attacking pace.}
) 16...Ne7 17.g5 hxg5 18.fxg5 Bxe5 19.dxe5 Nd7
{engines suggest now a beautiful move: Rh8, followed by a munching of black pieces or/and mate. Make sure you check out the variation.}
20.Nf3 ( 20.Rh8+ Kf7 ( 20...Kxh8
{Taking the rook leads to a quick mate.}
21.Qh5+ Kg8 22.Bh7+ Kh8 23.Bg6+ Kg8 24.Qh7# ) 21.Qh5+ g6 22.Bxg6+ Nxg6 23.Qh7+ Ke8 24.Qxg6+ Kd8 25.Rxf8+ Nxf8 26.Qf6+ Ke8 27.Nf3
{Try this variation on a chess engine to see it to the end. White is only one pawn up, but it is a passed one. The king is safe as well.}
) 20...Rb8 21.g6 Nf5 22.Rh3 Nh6 23.Kh1
{I felt like the pin on e3 was annoying and stopping me from using the black bishop. The engines recommend moving Qh2 instead, which is much better.}
( 23.Qh2 Nc5 24.Ng5 Ne4 25.Bxe4 dxe4 26.Nh7 Qc7 ( 26...Rd8
{If you wanted to know why black did not move the rook when attacked by the knight, follow this variation through.}
27.Rxh6 Rd1+ 28.Kg2 Qd8 29.Nf6+ Kf8 30.Rh8+ Ke7 31.Qh4 Rd2+ 32.Bxd2 b6 33.a4 Qxd2+ 34.Kh1 Qe1+ 35.Rxe1 Bb7 36.Rxb8 Bc8 37.Rxc8
gxf6 38.Qh7# ) 27.Nxf8 Qd8 28.Rxh6 Qg5+ 29.Kf2 Qxh6 30.Qxh6 gxh6 31.Nh7
{At this point white is a knight up, but what a boring continuation.}
) 23...Nf5 24.Qh2 Ng3+
{Engines suggest I move the king and concentrating on the attack, but I took the knight with the rook.}
25.Rxg3 ( 25.Kg1 Qxe3+ 26.Bxe3 Ne2+ 27.Kg2 Nf4+ 28.Bxf4 Rf5 29.Rh8# ) 25...Re8 26.Qh7+ Kf8 27.e4
{At this point, a mate in 8 is found.}
27...Qc7
{But with this move, mate will happen in 4.}
28.Bg5 Nf6 29.exf6 Rd8 30.Qh8# 1-0


Enjoy!

P.S. I am currently looking for a method of displaying the game as I want it on the blog: dynamic, with annotation and variation support, preferably something that is not Java and optimally something that reads the PGN from a span and replaces it with a nice looking chess interface. Right now, the usual game engine fails for some reason I need to analyse.

I've had a horrible week. It all started with a good Scrum sprint (or so I thought) followed by a period of quiet in which I could concentrate on my own ideas. And one of my ideas was to optimize the structure of the solution we work on, containing 48 projects, in order to save space and compilation time. In my eyes, I was a hero, considering that for a company with tens to hundreds of devs, even a one second increase in speed would be important. So, I set up doing that.

Of course, the sprint was not as good as I had imagined. A single stored procedure led to not less than four bugs in production, with me being to blame for them all. People lost more time working on reproducing the bugs, deploying the fix, code reviewing, etc. At long last I thought I was done with it and I could show everyone how great the solution looked now (on my computer) and atone for my sins.

So from a solution that spanned from 700Mb clean and 4Gb after compilation, I managed to get it to a maximum of 1.4Gb. In fact, it was so small I could put it all in a Ram disk, leading to enormous speeds. In comparison, a normal drive goes to about 30MB per second, an SSD drive (without encryption) goes to about 250MB/s, while my RamDisk was running at a whooping 3.6GB/s. That sped up the compilation and parsing of files. Moreover, I had discovered that MsBuild has this /m parameter that makes it use more processors. A compilation would go to about 40 seconds, down from two minutes and a half. Great! Alas, it was not to be so easy.

First of all, the steps I was considering were simple:

• Take all projects and make them have a single output folder. That would decrease the size of the solution since there would be no copies of the .dll files, Then the sheer speed of the compilation would have to increase, since there would be less copying and less compilation.
• More importantly, I was considering making a symlink to a RAM drive and using it instead of the destination folder.
• Another step I was considering was making all references to the dll files in the output folder, not to the projects, allowing for projects to be opened independently.

At first I was amazed the solution decreased in size so much and I just placed the entirety of it into a RAM drive. This fixed some of the issues with Visual Studio, because when I was selecting a file through a symlink to add as a reference, it would resolve to the target folder instead of the name of the symlink. And it was't easy either. Imagine removing all project references and replacing them with dll references for 48 projects. It took forever.

Finally I had the glorious compilation. Speed, power, size, no warnings either (since I also worked on that) and a few bug fixes thrown in there for good measure. I was a god! Then the problems appeared.

Problem 1: I had finished the previous sprint with a buggy stored procedure committed to production. Clients were losing money and complaining. That put a serious dent in my pride, especially since there were multiple problems coming from both less attention to how I wrote the code to downright lack of knowledge of the flow of the application. For the last part I am not really the only one to blame, but it was my responsibility.

Problem 2: The application was throwing some errors about the target framework of a dll. It was enough to make me understand a major flaw in my design: there were .Net 3.5 and .Net 4.0 assemblies in the solution and placing them all in the same output folder would break some build scripts. Even worse, the 8 web projects in the solution needed to have their output in the bin folder, so that IIS would find them. Fixed it only to see the size of the solution rise back to 3Gb.

Problem 3: Visual Studio would not be so smart as to understand that if a project is loaded, going to the declaration of a member in the compiled assembly means I want to see the actual source, not the IL code. Well, sometime it worked, but sometimes it didn't. As a result I restored the project references instead of the assembly references.

Problem 4: the MsBuild /m flag would do wonders on my machine, but it would not do much on the build server. Nor would it do its magic on slower, less multiprocessor computers than my own.

Problem 5: Facing a flood of problems coming from me, my colleagues lost faith and decided to not even try the modifications that removed the compilation warnings from the solution.

Conclusion: The build went marginally faster, but not enough to justify a whole week of work on it. The size decreased by 25%, making it feasible to put it all in a RAM Drive, so that was great, to the detriment of working memory. I still have to see if that is a good or a bad thing. The multiprocessor hacks didn't do much, the warnings are still there and even some of my bug fixes were problematic because someone else also worked on them and didn't tell anyone. All in a week's work.

Things I have learned from all this: Baby steps. When I feel enthusiasm, I must take it as a sign of trouble. I must be dispassionate as an ice cube and think things through. If I am working on a branch, integrate the trunk into it every day, so as to not make it harder to do at the end. When doing something, do it from start to finish, no matter what horrors I see while doing it. Move away from Sodom and not look back at it. Someone else will fix that, maybe, you just do your task well. When finishing something, commit it into the source control so it can easily be reverted through a single atomic operation.

It is difficult to me to adjust to something that involves this amount of planning and focus. I feel as if the chaotic development years of my youth were somewhat better, even if at the time I felt that it was stupid and focus and planning was needed. As a good Romanian, I am neurotic enough to see the worst side of everything, master at complaining about it, but incapable of actually doing something. Yeah... this was a bad week.

No news from my personal or work fields. However, I've found two interesting news just today and I wanted to share them.

First, the development of a camera to capture pictures that you can focus later. Although I have heard of solid metal lenses that would be less than 1$ to make and would achieve the same effect, the only actually functioning system I've heard of so far is the Lytro Living Picture camera. Here is an Ars Technica article on it and here is a YouTube video demo.

The second news is more IT related. It involves the cryptographic standards for XML, as defined by W3C. They failed! Here is an article about how they were cracked by using a vulnerability in the Cipher Block Chaining and here is a link to their press release.