Itkovian.net

Oh joy. After installing a bunch of sun protection screens on the building windows, they decided to turn the power breaker off. So, during what is probably going to be one of the warmer weeks this year, the entire installation is quite useless. So much for good planning.

All south-facing windows in the building where I work, have been equipped with sun screens. That is, against the outer wall, technicians have installed electrical sun screens. The idea is that by keeping the sun out during the summer (it can get really warm in here) we would somehow be saving energy. Yet the only air-conditioning devices are located in the server rooms. And they lie next to a cool hallway.

So, Ghent University has a new portal site for employees where they can get information regarding their paycheck, vacation, etc. So far, so good. The downside is the way the portal is advertised. First of all, UGent offers access to Windows applications via the Athena portal, where selecting an app in the browser launches e.g., a Citrix client to connect to the Windows server. Now, access to the new portal should go through Athena, so naturally I expected to meet a Windows application. And lo! I saw a Windows application starting. And it was ... the Internet Exploder (IE6).

Disclaimer: I am no designer. But when I take a look at the restyled VRT news site, I start to shudder. This is the initial look:

In the previous post, I mentioned that AFS denies access to your files when you do not have a token. This is still true, but apparently, you are able to launch both at and cron jobs using keytabs. This is a file, residing outside of the AFS realm, containing the password in some processed form (so the password is not available in clear text). Keytabs are created by the system administrator.

People at our department are often running jobs that take multiple days to complete. A good way to keep a job going is to use the screen tool. This allows one to keep running a shell even when not connected to the machine for a while, and to reconnect to that session when you login on the machine once more. Simple, lean and mean.

As pleased as I am with the iWork'08 suite, the new kid on the block, i.e., Numbers, does lack some things I like, or better, that I need. Performance issues aside, Numbers is quite a nitfy tool, provided you let it do the thinking for you. Especially with respect to charts.

Consider the following problem. Given a set of data, containing a few outlying values, create a chart that zooms in on the majority of the data, leaving the outliers off the plot. Cannot do. The Numbers Help has this to say on the matter:

To format the value axis:

1. Select a chart.
   

The Kinepolis website officially sucks. And I'm not just referring to the crappy interface. I admit, I was inattentive. I mistakingly ordered tickets for the Friday Harry Potter show at 17:30 instead of the Sunday one. How could this happen? I'm quite careful when ordering stuff online, because once the button is pushed, you're hanging.

Note to the neighbours. Next time you set loose your cats in your garden - which I have no problem with at all - make sure they have shit before they cross to my garden. Otherwise you might find my boots on your doorstep to clean them. Thank you.

There is a neat competition running at The Daily WTF (yeah, I dislike their new name) where one can present the worst possible implementations of a calculator app.