03.24.08
Bye, bye MSN
Some days ago I lost my connection to the MSN network where I often logged in to chat. Suddenly I was unable to logon to the MSN network. Pidgin was only logging onto GTalk and MSN was down. I gave up! For now, GTalk it is…
I’ve just noticed that Microsoft censors MSN conversations (nothing surprising from Microsoft but I just didn’t have any report on it)… Ok, so why not dump MSN once and for all? I don’t think there’s a reason not too… Those who are in my contact list and want to contact me can do it through my email or if they want to chat just connect to GTalk, it’s definitely not hard and at least they are using an open protocol.
So it is done… MSN is officially down for me and GTalk is my only chatting server. My username is pocmatos for those interested.
In the meantime, I also decided to dump Hi5. Another system on which I had an account and where only once in my lifetime was useful. Dumped! No more Hi5 account, no more requests from people I barely know or from people I know and I don’t like. No more spam comments or stuff like that…
03.12.08
RIP, I will not forget you!
Everything that has a beginning… Has an end!
– Matrix
He passed out yesterday.
Although I knew this would happen one day I never thought it could happen so soon. He came out in the morning with me and he didn’t feel quite well so we went home earlier and the final blow happened at home. I am deeply sad. He has been with me, day in, day out for 5 years now. He had not been very healthy lately… For the past months I started feeling the time was coming but why now?
He gave me joys, worries, laughs and he was in fact my door to the outer world. He read my final degree work, my master thesis, my 9 month PhD report and he helped me out with thousands of lines of code. He even deserved some acknowledgemens in my Master thesis. He was and he will always be unique. Goodbye Euler, my mate, my friend, my laptop. Rest In Peace!
Now, I need a new one… and I get two options. Either I buy one or I get one of the research Macbooks lying around the lab until I decide myself. I’ve been flirting with the new Vaio SZ71VN/X. I already found out it is in stock in the nearest Sony Center. What should I do? Hopefully an answer will come up soon.
03.04.08
Why a blog is perfect for a researchers homepage…
After thinking a little bit about this by the end of last year, I came to the conclusion that the best homepage a researcher can have is… a blog.
Obviously, it is not a blog that is constantly updated with his life details or his love stories, but still… a blog. Generally researchers want a simple, effortless way to have a well-designed homepage so that he is able to show off his publications, links, contacts, blog roll, and even maybe (for those more daring researchers) photos.
A blog has all of these features, allowing the researcher to easily install, configure and customize it. It allows it to publish posts each time a paper is released or a conference from its research area comes up. It allows also the readers to subscribe to his feed to receive this information. Everything is organized and usually the blog provides a nice interface. More daring researchers might publish small articles about their topics of interest and publish photos of their conferences. Blogs provide all of these readily available either from the base install or in the form of plugins…
The researchers I personally know, either have a terrible homepage, updated once a year with an ugly photo on it, or they have scripts to generate the homepage along with the publication list but their freedom is certainly limited by the fact that adding something to the page means rerunning the scripts, reimplementing bits if needed, and redeploying the pages once again taking time that could be devoted to research or coffee drinking.
By following this exact line of thought I have started to convert my current webpage to a blog-based one. Soon a link will be created from the root address to the blog and it will become official. I think it is an improvement. This blog will continue to exist. Posts on that page will be solely about my research papers, conferences or contact changes. Only of interest for those close to me or to my research subject.
