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System Administrator Appreciation Day is today!!!

Congratulations to all the system administrators out there.
Go out, enjoy some drinks and just relax.
Let users do some problem solving themselves.

And thanks to the SysAdmins I have worked together with - they all are very helpful and good colleagues. Time to celebrate for me as well, as these days we all are administrators of our workstations, servers and blogs.

For your enjoyment, the old-time classics of the genre:
- The Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH)

Collection of links to remember:

Preocuupations - a weblog by David Smith. Interesting content, found this while looking for info related to IBM Glass Engine.

GridCosm - Gridcosm is a collaborative art project in which artists from around the world contribute images to a compounding series of graphical squares. ...
This process creates an ever expanding tunnel of images, the newest level a direct result of the previous level which is a result of the previous level... and so on.

God's Little Toys - "Confessions of a cut & paste artist" by William Gibson.

IBM Glass Engine is an interesting concept of music exploration.
It allows you to explore the wonderful music of Philip Glass in various artistic planes.

Cataloguing works of Philip Glass is an ongoing project of IBM Glass Engine and it has been out for some time now.

It came to my attention at the ESWC 2005 workshop "Multimedia and the Semantic Web" where it was mentioned by mc schraefel during her keynote presentation.

Project's self-description: The IBM Glass Engine enables deep navigation of the music of Philip Glass. Personal interests, associations, and impulses guide the listener through an expanding selection of over sixty Glass works.

What is so special about Glass Engine?

1) First, it has audio preview cues - quite large fragments of Glass' music that allows to get a feel of every part of his work. There are samples for each track present, it is not just one cue per CD.

2) Second, his work fragments are described based on a number of criteria that you can navigate through, using rulers in the application. There are 'exact' criteria like title of the work and track, work year and track length and 'artistic' criteria such as joy, sorrow or density.

This is what a Semantic Web community calls metadata or information about information [ a music track in our case ]. We can say that the creators of IBM Glass Engine have annotated Philip Glass' music by these criteria.

3) Third, within a single screen the application shows you a complete view of all Philip Glass' work. You get an interesting and exciting experience exploring his music and watching how navigation through one ruler 'realm' affects other rulers that change values according to the piece of music you are currently listening to.

This application may give you a different view how multi-model information can be accessed on a computer - a shift away from a file/folder organisation paradigm. And it allows you to enjoy and explore music during your day.

It might also be a good model for music companies to offer preview before you buy music.

Related:

- Philip Glass on this weblog
- This Is Not a Catalog: Philip Glass’s Works Online on IEEE Xplorer.

The only downside is that this application requires MS Internet Explorer or Apple OS 9, OS X platforms. But it is worthwhile trying out anyway!

By the way - has anyone got it running under Linux and Java VM?
The fact that they say it won't run doesn't mean it is impossible after all.

Main page: Space Shuttle Launch

This page will be updated as the launch process progresses.
Launch is planned at 10:39 EDT / 15:39 BST / 17:39 Latvia time.

14:24 BST - Countdown at T-20 minutes and holding. The countdown clock will stop for 10 minutes and resume at 14:34 BST.

During this countdown hold the crew members verify that they have the right software for the launch and the orbiter's onboard computers are transitioned to a launch configuration. More details on countdown on NASA Countdown 101.

T-20 minutes crew briefing complete.

14:34 BST - Countdown at T-20 and counting.

14:45 BST - Countdown at T-9 and holding for 45 minutes.

14:47 BST - All three Transatlantic Abort Landing (TAL) sites are green on weather. The TAL sites are located at Zaragoza, Spain; Moron, Spain; and Istres, France.

NASA TV now showing WB-57 shuttle chase planes getting ready for takeoff. These jets will carry innovative, on-board video imaging systems, dubbed the WB-57 Ascent Video Experiment, or WAVE project. The system will capture detailed images of how the Space Shuttle behaves as it climbs toward orbit.

14:55 BST - Takeoff of WB-57.

15:24 BST - Shuttle final ecosystem check complete.

Discovery launch is OK to proceed.

15:39 BST - 3..2..1.. Liftoff... of space shuttle Discovery successful !!!
During liftoff it achieves the speed of more than 17'000 mph.

Like 3-2-1, orbiter Discovery has successfully shed its Solid Rocket Boosters and External Tank, and shut down the main engines after reaching space.

Ufff, at last - a safe and successful liftoff!

T+39:30 : The twin Orbital Maneuvering System engines on the tail of Discovery have been fired successfully to propel the shuttle the rest of the way to orbit. The new orbit is 142 by 98 statute miles. The next maneuvering burn is coming up around 4 p.m. EDT to raise the orbit to 191 by 141 miles as the rendezvous continues to reach the station.

See STS-114 mission update thread

The space shuttle Discovery is set for lift-off today, at 10:39 local time (14:39 GMT; 15:39 BST) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That is a little more than an hour from now. Wish them luck!

After the launch they have a 8.5 minute trip up towards the International Space Station.

Related: Space Shuttle Launch Today

Watch Launch Online - on NASA TV page.

Philip Glass creates a surreal experience in his music.

If I had to draw similarity between music and film, Peter Greenaway is a director who shines with surreality of his films.

IMDB: Peter Greenaway

It has been a while since I had seen his films and heard Glass's music.
That's why I am going to immerse into his music now.
[ But I do not have any Greenaway's films here. ]

Recent BoingBoing blog entry titled "Mash-up Friday: Hiphop vs. Philip Glass = Glassbreaks" points to an album [available online in MP3] with HipHop mixed on top of works of Philip Glass.

I wonder how do people like this remix.

While I do like a part of hiphop, this mix just did not impress too much. The hiphop part is dominating too much over wonderful compositions below it. It may also be a bit of an acquired taste as the second time I listened to it, it sounded better.

If there is one thing these pieces reminded me, it is - how wonderful and great the music of Philip Glass is!

They say that GMail is much more useable that many other webmail systems. I can agree that its look & feel is nice, but it has problems, sometimes even characterised by stubborn determination to decide what is better for the users.

1. No actions on the search result set.

Imagine - I have >1000 messages from a mailing list in my inbox.
I need to move these messages to a 'label' and archive them.

The only way I have found I can do this in GMail is - search for all messages from a mailing list and repeat the sequence [ hit 'All' to select all 20 messages on the screen, assign them a label, archive, hit 'Next 20' ] more than 50 times.

It would have been nice if they at least offered to perform a filter on all existing messages. I have created a filter, so I would just run it and be OK. Even MS Outlook allows to do that. But no - you have to do it 20 messages at a time.

2. No shortcut for 'Move to Trash'.

Is it difficult to program? No.
But they just would not do that - you are not meant to delete stuff.
Even if you are absolutely sure you don't need it.

OK, there's the hard way - go to the menu and choose 'Move to Trash'.

But why not provide a shortcut?
Why not allow to perform actions on all matching messages?
I don't know.

3. You can't print draft messages.

This is more of a bug than real annoyance, but it limits your ability to use Gmail to keep to-do lists and other information you will need to update later on.

If you try to print draft messages in Gmail, you'll get an error message like this:

Gmail is temporarily unavailable.
Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. 
We're sorry for the inconvenience.

NASA is targeting Tuesday, July 26 as the earliest possible date to launch the Space Shuttle Discovery on the Return to Flight mission (STS-114). The determination was made during Monday's meeting of the Mission Management Team (MMT) at Kennedy. Engineers are working through a troubleshooting plan to address an issue with a liquid hydrogen low-level fuel sensor circuit.

NASA is still working to launch Discovery by the end of the July window that extends to the 31st.

Related: Space Shuttle Launch Today (which was later postponed)

This day was full of surprises ... and New Yorkers.

Speaking of New Yorkers, it happened twice - by pure accident we met people from NY - Katherine and Jonah - in a robotics art festival ArtBots in Dublin and then by pure accident again we met two more in Galway later this night.

I will tell more about ArtBots in one of next posts.
Just in one word - it was AMAZING!

And yes - the later two were Steve and Elke - our former housemates. They are in Galway now! Not for too long though, so no chance to hang out with them this time. But it was very nice to meet them.

Update: The launch has been postponed.

Reason: an issue with a low-level fuel cutoff sensor onboard the vehicle. The sensor protects an orbiter's main engines by switching them off when the fuel level runs low. Although the tank was fully filled one of the sensors was showing a low level of fuel.

If everything goes well, Space Shuttle Discovery will be launched today.
Discovery is due to lift off from Kennedy Space Center at 1551 EDT (2051 BST; 1951 GMT).

This will be the first since February 2003, when Space Shuttle Columbia with seven astronauts was destroyed upon re-entry. Let's hope that this mission is a success and that astronauts return home safe.

More info:
- NASA: Return to flight page
- BBC: Space Shuttle - return to flight

You may witness the launch and its preparations on the NASA Television Online.

Events and precautions around JK Rowling's latest Harry Potter book "Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince" are close to draconic. It makes sense to protect it and there is a lot of attention towards release of the book. But make some more steps in the same direction and you would have armed guards licensed to shoot everyone who gets the book before the right time.

New 'Harry Potter' book was leaked in British Columbia, Canada when a superstore sold by mistake 15 of the new books.

What follows is a bit hard to swallow in a free and democratic society - a B.C. court has ordered people who bought the book to return it immediately AND forbids anyone from discussing the elements contained in the book that they legitimately bought in a store.
See details in this CBC article.

Michael Geist writes about this:

"While that is understandable, the remainder of the court order is a bit harder to take. People have legitimately purchased the book, yet now face violation of a court order if they fail to return it immediately, discuss it, or do anything else with the book. While a court might look skeptically on an attempt to bring an action against a purchaser who fails to return the book, why the court would grant such a broad order that reaches down to the underlying purchasers suggests that this could turn into a real horror story."

It might also be interesting to read comments on Michael Geist's blog.

BBC News has a story 'Keeping Harry under lock and key' about measures aimed to prevent leaks of Harry Potter book. Apparently court orders similar to this are a regular practice in the US:

"Publisher Bloomsbury has also taken out a "John Doe" injunction - a legal order against an as yet unnamed defendant, routinely used in the US - to stop anyone disclosing information about its contents."

P.S. While the publisher tries to keep the book under the lock, all the efforts and now this leak just make the book more popular and raises public and media attention to a new level. (We've got NEWS!) I wonder if the leak is a deliberate act of viral marketing.

via boingboing and slashdot

Galway Film Fleadh starts tonight.
Good news for those of us who love good cinema.

Unfortunately upon looking at its official site I have to start with some critique.

The site is one of those very nicely designed (Flash, etc.), but unuseable sites. The most important to me is the schedule of when and what films are shown.

First problem: you can't see a full, readable schedule with all films for a given day or a whole festival. Instead you have a nice, little "frame" which you have to scroll through to see what's on a given day.

Second problem: needless to say, you can not normally print a full list of films from the nice little thingie mentioned in #1.

Third problem: lack of unique URLs - while browsing the site you see the same web address in the browser all the time. This means you don't have an address for a schedule of any given day or a page for a particular film. And you can not send a link to a friend saying "Look! This is a really good film I'd like to go to".

Creators of this site might learn from a website of a similar international film festival - Arsenals.
Here are some nice links:
- Full schedule of "Arsenāls 2004"
- List of movies - can be interesting to see what's there
- "Life is a miracle" - a single film view.
you can press 'When and Where' to get a schedule highlighting when the movie will be shown. ; some film pages feature movie fragments.

Also nice:
- ability to personalize the site (My Arsenals) and create your own viewing schedule
- ability to rate films and see how others rated them

We could go further and wish for an RSS feed with movie show times, but I guess that's too much to ask for now.

Yet, although it might sound strange (isn't RSS for blogs only?!), RSS can also be used to present information about event time/place information. The benefit is that the information is presented in a computer-readable form and anyone can reuse this information and create a better service.

Latvia: Riga International Airport (RIX) has won a best airport award in its group. The first ACI Europe Best Airport Awards were announced at 15 th ACI EUROPE Annual Congress in Munich (22-24 June).

The winner of the 1-5 million passenger category was Riga International Airport (RIX). The judges felt this airport is a great example of a new EU Member State which has truly grasped the opportunities of Community membership. The judges singled it out for excellent route development, upgrades to infrastructure and innovative forward planning.

Source:
Excellence in airport operations: 1st ACI EUROPE Best Airport Awards (29/06/05) (PDF)

Yeee, It's my namesday today!

Latvian namesdays are a celebration similar to birthdays - one more day and one more reason to have a celebration.

There is an official calendar of names associated with each day and when it is your day, you celebrate. And your friends usually know your name, hence they will know when its your namesday. Yes, there is even a day for those who are not mentioned in the list (call that exception handling)!

It's a good feeling - something makes this day special. And I believe that USA will have some fireworks on this occasion, tonight.

Now, do you have some nice anime pictures to link to from comments?
(as is my birthday tradition to post a nice manga-esque picture here on the blog)

If are interested why the EU software patent issue is important or what you can do to help - follow this link and find out more:

More info about EU software patents

Patent Absurdity - Richard Stallman - ZDNet UK - June 20, 2005

If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted.

This article details the absurdity of widely interpretable software patents. Not only great literature masterpieces would not have been written - imagine if hyperlinks, the foundation of the World Wide Web, were patented. Would we have the web as we know it now?

Irish developers sound patents warning - Ciara O'Brien - June 26, 2005

Organisations IrishDev and KDE.ie, who say they represent more than 20 percent of software developers in Ireland between them, claim that the proposed software patents will stifle competition and innovation in the software industry.

Irish tech group lobbies EU on patents - Business World - June 23, 2005

A group of Irish tech sector representatives has travelled to Brussels to lobby the EU to introduce effective patent protection for software.

The group will meet with Irish MEPs to put forward their case ahead of a crucial vote in the European Parliament on July 6th.

If we look at the Latvian websphere, there is little action regarding the software patents. The software industry association (LIKTA) and electronic media portals (apollo.lv, TVNet, delfi.lv) are not showing any signs of activity. Not for, not against. Ignorant.

Yet there are some people taking action - you can read reports on Aigarius weblog. He is in Brussels and using last moments before the vote to meet with Latvian (and not only Latvian) members of the European Parliament:

I woke up at 5.00 local time without any alarm clocks! That is one hell of an accomplishment.

[...]

At first I was simply walking around and telling everyone how we would like to fix the directive using the "Buzek-Rocard compromise" amendments. After the lunch, Erik came up to me and asked to also collect MEP signatures on these amendments to table them. At first I went to Lansbergis from Lithuania and spend almost an hour convincing him to sign. In the end he was convinced and did the signing.

After that success I called the assistant of Andrejevs and asked if his MEP would have a few minutes to meet and sign the amendments. The assistant replied that Andrejevs liked the amendments and will sign them as soon as he gets back to the office. This one was easy

After that a call came from assistant of Girts Valdis Kristovskis saying that he will meet me at 17.00. I was very glad about getting the previose two signatures, but a bit discuraged by yesterdays talk with Krasts, who is in the same party as Kristovskis. To my surprise Kristovskis didn't mind that his party mate didn't agree with us - after 5-10 minutes of explanations, Kristovskis was ready to sign the amendments. That signature came as a pleasant surprise

All Latvian members of EPP followed Dombrovskis and Piiks and signed the amendments - I consider that a great success, especially as I didn't even have to ask them for that

When I saw this picture in BoingBoing (link), I could not believe my eyes - it looks so unreal and yet it seems to be true. See the full article on Japan Times Online.

The train is painted in a manga-like colors and its retractable cat ears make even more resemblance to a cute creature out of an anime or a manga book. Japan is probably the only place in the world where trains could _really_ look like that.

East Japan Railway Co. on Friday unveiled a new shinkansen in the town of Rifu, Miyagi Prefecture, that will run at a speed of 360 kph, which may make it the world's fastest train.

The train is equipped with a new air-brake system that deploys in the event of an earthquake or other emergency. The retractable cat ear-shaped spoilers that can protrude from the roof are expected to help slow the train more quickly than conventional brakes.

The test runs between Sendai and Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture, will be conducted at a maximum speed of 405 kph.

I joined the Web Demo Against Software Patents and replaced front page with a big yellow disclaimer.

These are the last days when you may do something to stop unlimited software patents.

One thing you may do is contact (write, e-mail or call) your country's Members of European Parliament and tell them about your concerns:

Members of European Parliament - from Ireland (2004-2009)

Members of European Parliament - from Latvia (2004-2009)