Το φιτρί αγόρι (colourful life)

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.

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