Το φιτρί αγόρι (colourful life)

Beautiful, isn’t it? This marvellous image that identifies the evolution of the human kind. Glass, ice, metal and 0,3 litters of chemicals with bubbles. Cost… 3 Euro . What?!?!?!

Last saturday night we decided to go to the cinema in the famous (and only?) shopping mall in Athens: The Mall. As always we were a bit late but hungry so we stop in Ruby’s Tuesday for some food. Starting with a coke can for 3 Euro, then like a dozen of shrimps for 13 Euro and chicken steak served like a hamburger for 12 Euro. Last night we had dinner (2 people) for 19 Euro including coke and beer and we couldn’t finish! (Ladokola rlz).

After the overpriced dinner (and service), we went to the cinema. More surprises were awaiting us.

The cinema in The Mall:

• 9 Euro per ticket (ouch!).
• At the beginning of the film the assistant decided to move places, so we lost the start of the film.
• Of course the credits with light and without volume for a while, so if you like to see the credits at the end. Nothing for you.
• A guy put his feet in front of Stella. In the back of the seat just in front of her. What the…?!?!
• Some people people laughing, playing with the mobile phone and commenting the film.

To this you add that the film was the new X Files one, not very good. In this moment I was asking myself why I went to the cinema. At home I can enjoy more and watch “all the film” or even pause it if is really needed.

And to finish the night: 22 Euro for 1-1,5 litters of something they called sangría: sweet wine with some traces of fruit. At least it wasn’t the well known “Sangría Don Simón“.

Moral of the story:

• Be careful where you go, Athens can be quite expensive.
• Some times we swear about politicians not doing anything to fix this high prices situation, but we should look at ourselves because  we are paying these prices and therefore accepting them.

Today is my first day in a small internet travel agency in Greece. I left my job in a big ISP saving the world and some manager’s arses. Small company, quiet environment, small PC, and everything is done with windows and Microsoft tools.

Visual Studio, as always, impressed me with new tools that help a lot. But as always too, I could see the the not so good way it has to organize the code. Even I got scared when I saw the code for the automatic templates generated for asp web pages. Nothing is perfect.

Also I started to suffer the first windows problmes. In this case “I couldn’t open a .chm file”. So if you see in your windows a message like the one in the pic when you open a .chm file. Just modiy or create the following registry keys:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\HTMLHelp\1.x\HHRestrictions]
“MaxAllowedZone”=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\HTMLHelp\1.x\ItssRestrictions]
“MaxAllowedZone”=dword:00000001

All credits for this go to Ken.

So I hope I found a good place to work, and not another ISP chaos place.

After long Friday and Saturday finishing some java and xhtml jobs, Sunday was the perfect day to take things easy and spend the day with friends. We (Sascha and me) decided to go to Markopoulo, Panos base camp, and try to relax.

Panos was repairing his iBook. The harddrive of that beautiful piece of technology broke, and he got a new one. But disassembling a laptop is not easy: lots of screws around, manuals, drafts and of course the uncertainty of “will it work? or I’ll break it?”. So that was the reason we decided to give him some company and support.

But panos is very capable of doing that job. What will we do meanwhile? Well, I wanted to learn about Zope, and he works with Zope: perfect combination (no, not a “secret combination“). So Sascha prepared a tutorial on how to install Zope, and some examples. Also he introduced me to Darcs (code management system), and we were playing a bit with that and the local area.

Also I introduced him to Git (another code management system). But I’m not so expert on git, and also Git installation on Mac OS requieres patience and be able to stand MacPorts installing everything on your system (even if you had it). Anyway, you should check this video about Git with Linus Torvalds talking in Google. It’s about git, but it can be about any distributed source control system.

We did a stop for lunch, and perhaps because the planet was bored (it happens from time to time), an earthquake happened. I didn’t feel it, perhaps the two pizzas we ordered left me a bit numb (I fixed that with a fresh frape).

After the iBook surgery was complete, we went to the nearest beach (Markopoulo has no sea, but it’s near) on “Porto Rafti” for a quick and fresh swim. The water was a bit cold, but at 6 in the afternoon, there was no one there We were talking about how would be life doing the same job we do, but doing it in a small island in the Aegean sea. A VPN to the main office, no traffic jams, living near the beach, good food and cheap coffees.

Nice things to note from today.

• Zope seems a powerful web application server for python. I have to give it some time.
• Darcs also seems good. I’ll continue my experiments with Git, but now I know that I can work with Sascha really easily using Darcs.
• MacPorts behaves in a silly way when he wants to install software that it’s in your system. (The next step is to compile the Darwin kernel in order to install bash).
• I do not feel earthquakes when I’m sleepy.
• Love to have a swim late in the afternoon.

Now we continue slacking off while Panos installs Tiger in his iBook. I guess it’s time to return I still have to clean the dishes from yesterday and prepare dinner (Well, breaking news, we will have dinner here). Tomorrow more boring office job not doing much, just a bit here and there and waiting for the typical “We have to fix this for today” at 5:30 in the afternoon.

These days have been a bit long without much sleep. At least yesterday I could enjoy the company of the International Pizza (group of friends from everywhere). We watched La Grande Bouffe. A strange film about four guys who decide to meet in a house to finish their lives eating and drinking themselves till death.

I had fun with the film. For some people some scenes can be a bit offensive, but it’s nothing disgusting, although it has some spicy scenes. The actors played really well, thus you get into the film from the very beginning and you enjoy it.

As a International Pizza meeting, we had dinner. I couldn’t make something for dinner because I arrived late at home and I didn’t have much to cook (sorry guys). But there is always a good place to order nice food

It feel pitty for the dinner. I wanted to prepare some omelettes and perhaps some fried rice, but these days I’m out of time. The film day I returned home at 8pm, but by team workmate received new specs at 9pm and stayed until 2am (joking: I guess he tried to beat my record of 2:30am). So next day was also quite long and I felt guilty (for leaving him alone) and angry (with the people who sent new specs at 9pm and expected results that day).

Now my anger is gone (but Wordpress it’s helping to get it back un-publishing my posts randomly), the dishes are clean (pic), and the house is clean a ready for another movie

Edit: more info about the event in Sascha’s lounge: here.

If you have seen the news or you are right now in Greece. Yes, it’s cold.

This weekend has been one of the coldest I my life in Greece. This time it was snowing (not like my last post) a lot. I started to feel the cold and the first snow flakes on Saturday when I was leaving for Markopoulo to spend the night with some () friends. We arrived and the wind was really cold. The weather was “shouting” snow!

Hours later it started. In the beginning it didn’t stay, but after all the night snowing we woke up with a white landscape and thinking on staying there (Panos, I love your place, but I have to go to work ). We moved with a car to the nearest Proastiakos station, and after some time waiting in the car (to avoid to die frozen) we were on the way to Athens.

I didn’t expect what you can see on the pictures. But when I got to the top of the bridge to with the elevator, the image was that (bad quality picture, I know). I couldn’t believe it. Snow everywhere. And not a bit… enough to organize a nice snow battle.

The return trip to home was a bit difficult. Without the right shoes I was walking using small steps to avoid to eat snow But even with that weather, there is always someone who believes that his/her 4WD car can do miracles and drive over 20cm of snow without chains (or similar device for ice/snow) or even good wheels. So a crazy driver almost killed me. I saw the reflection of a yellow light in the snow, and I thought: In this street that goes down the hill… I’m almost sliding, therefore a 1 ton car should be like a huge sledge. Of course, the car just slid down the “hill”. I had time to jump between two cars and see the car following the way of the road (even its wheels were saying otherwise).

At least I’m alive. It’s cold. It’s late, and tomorrow nobody will go to the office. I’ll be the only stupid there because I live 1 minute from my place.

Have a nice freezing week

My Macbook is still cold after walking through Athens streets, but I can say that I had a nice and relaxing afternoon. Today I met betabug. Another computer guy (or should I say geek) from abroad living, working and enjoying Greece. The afternoon started in “Megaro Mousikis” when the sun was almost set (see the picture above :P). We went to a cafeteria hidden in the park near the metro station. It was an unexpected place, new for me, and I enjoyed the place and the conversation. About life, work, food, computers, games, programming.

It was really relaxing just be there in the middle of a really green area, having a chocolate and sharing the time with a new friend.After that we went down Sofias Avenue to drink something in Kolonaki. We seated outside, because inside was full and noisy, but outside was a bit cold. Not cold enough to stop us to open a computer, connect to the internet and write an entry in betabug’s blog.

To finish the afternoon, nothing like starting the evening with a nice meal in a place which name I don’t remember. It is in the area of Exarhia. You should ask him, because the food was really nice and the ambient was quiet enough to enjoy the food. The conversation: about computer things. And as always when you talk with a Mac user here (in Greece): Rainbow. Or how to suck money from Apple users, destroy Apple’s brand in Greece and not be sued and even rewared by Apple for that. About rewared, I don’t know really, but Apple haven’t moved a finger to fix the situation here.

Now at home, with the heating switched on, I’m thinking in preparing a new coffee I got this morning in the supermarket. It’s with vanilla flavour, hmmmm!!!