ICEIS 2008: Blogging from Barcelona (Friday Morning)

The hotel finally got the wireless system rebooted, so I am finally back up. I found quite unusual to open the ICEIS 2008 conference with a panel form by the four invited speakers: Moira Norrie (Global Information System Group, ETH), Jorge Cardoso (SAP), Jean-Marie Favre (UFR, IMA), Ricardo Baeza-Yates (Yahoo! Research Barcelona). Each of them did a short introduction of their invited talks, and just three questions were asked. Since the conference started at 11am, after the panel, lunch break :D

Jun 13, 2008 · 1 min · 81 words · Xavier Llorà

Crash course on threading in Python

Are you familiar with threading in Java and looking for a crash course in Python? If the answer is yes, I just found an article written by Peyton McCullough that may help you. The “Basic Threading in Python” article can take you from no clue to writing your threaded Python code in a few minutes. See the example below, extracted from his article, to see if that rings a bell :D...

Jun 9, 2008 · 1 min · 97 words · Xavier Llorà

Journal d'Hirondelle

Walking the streets of Barcelona—oops didn’t I mention I am on vacation?—I run into a bookstore near las Ramblas. Meandering around the narrow stacks, I found the newly released Catalan translation of Amélie Nothomb’s “Jornal d’Hirondelle” (Diary de l’oreneta/Diary of the swallow). The first book I read from her was “Méthaphysique des tubes”, and she got me at the first line. I need to speed up with Ulam’s autobiography—extremely addictive—so I can move on to this one....

Jun 6, 2008 · 1 min · 77 words · Xavier Llorà

The next generation of data bases

Yesterday I was reading an interview to Brian Aker (MySQL director of technology) I found via Slashdot when something caught my attention. On the second side of this which may actually be more exciting is the issue of–instead of the structured data world of the relational database but the semi–the semi-structured world. You look at what is being done today with CouchDB, you look at Amazon ScaleDB, to a lesser extent but to a similar extent you–not ScaleDB, SimpleDB–to a lesser extent or a similar extent Tokyo Cabinet, those databases are really kind of fascinating because those databases are redefining really how we access data and how we are going to be searching and using data....

Jun 5, 2008 · 3 min · 433 words · Xavier Llorà

iPhone and your Wordpress

A while back I wrote about a Wordpress theme specially designed for you iPhone. Yesterday, a colleague make aware of another one. This one is called WPhone Admin Plugin and below you can find its description in their own terms. WPhone allows you to use a custom admin interface while interacting with your WordPress install via your phone. It contains two versions of the mobile admin interface: an iPhone / iPod Touch specific interface with full Javascript and animation support a lightweight, simple version designed for all other phone types (no Javascript or anything else required) WPhone, while stable, is a work in progress....

Jun 4, 2008 · 1 min · 138 words · Xavier Llorà