holiday pics

Being slightly more clued up on these newfangled technologies, Shahin already has a facebook account and has discovered the joys of microblogging (twitting, for the youngsters amongst us). Me, I'm stuck in time, still editing text files with emacs. Here are some of the pictures she has published:

• Bangkok
  
• Hanoi
• Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island
  
• Cat Bs Island and Halong Bay 2
  

Hope these links work for y'all.

Afrobasket: Good start!

Well it seems we cleared everyone out of our path, including our main rivals Nigeria. However, the game was very tight, and if we do meet them again in the finals, the result may be very different...

Angola x Nigeria. (C) fiba.com.

One negative note for the afrobasket though. As it was with Angola, its extremely difficult to know what is going on. There are no TV stations in the UK showing any games at all (or even the highlights!), the website provides scarce information (would it be so hard to have web-highlights - if webcasting whole games is too hard?) and to top it all, when you type "Afrobasket 2009", Google Ajax's cleverness converts it to "Eurobasket 2009". You gotta be a real fan, basically. I know Fiba in general is not that great, but when I look at NBA's website I cannot help but wonder how hard it would be to provide all that content with Open Source and Free Software (drupal comes to mind).

Manu Chao: Helno est mort

NP: Helno est mort

Au clair de la lune mon ami Helno
prete moi ta plume
pour t'ecrire un mot
ta chandelle est morte je n'ai plus de feu
ouvre moi ta porte pour l'amour de dieu.

Au clair de la lune mon ami Helno
prete moi ta plume
pour t'ecrire un mot.

Helno est mort une fois encore il est sorti après minuit
helno est mort helno est mort 100.000 remords

helno est mort une fois de trop il est partie au paradis
helno est mort helno est mort 100.000 remords

Au clair de la lune mon ami Helno
prete moi ta plume
pour t'ecrire un mot
ta chandelle est morte je n'ai plus de feu
ouvre moi ta porte pour l'amour de dieu.

helno est mort une fois de trop dans les journaux
ya sa photo
helno est mort helno est mort 100.000 remords

helno est mort une fois de trop dans les bistros il a pécho
helno est mort helno est mort 100.000 remords

Au clair de la lune mon ami Helno
prete moi ta plume
pour t'ecrire un mot
ta chandelle est morte je n'ai plus de feu
ouvre moi ta porte pour l'amour de dieu.

helno est mort une fois de trop dans les journaux
ya sa photo
helno est mort helno est mort 100.000 remords

helno est mort une fois de trop dans les bistros il a pécho
helno est mort helno est mort 100.000 remords

helno est mort une fois encore il est sortie après minuit
helno est mort helno est mort 100.000 remords

helno est mort une fois de trop il est partie au paradis
helno est mort helno est mort 100.000 remords

Don't wanna lose nobody don't wanna lose nobody
don't wanna lose nobody...

Using boost svn with cmake

This post was created in the interest of saving someone else's sanity. If for some absolutely insane reason you decide to use boost's trunk from your shinny new cmakefile - and thus have a need to negotiate your way through FindBoost - all you need to do is:

• Make sure you created a symlink for the include directory. By default boost puts its includes under boost-X.YY (e.g. boost-1.39). Just ln -s boost-1_39/boost boost and away you go. Not sure how things work on Win32, but if you need to symlink remember: junction.exe is your friend.
  
• Set BOOST_ROOT and only BOOST_ROOT. When things fail to work you may be lured into thinking that artifacts such as Boost_LIBRARY_DIRS or Boost_INCLUDE_DIRS or others of such ilk (BOOST_LIBRARY_DIRS, BOST_LIBRARYDIRS, etc.) may actually help you. How wrong you are. All you need is to get BOOST_ROOT right. To do so, simply point it to the top level directory where you installed boost. For instance, I've placed boost under ~/local. Your BOOST_ROOT is set correctly when ${BOOST_ROOT}/include/boost and ${BOOST_ROOT}/lib exist.

So the final work of art looks like so (pray notice the capitalization!!):

set(BOOST_ROOT /home/marco/local)
find_package(Boost 1.36 REQUIRED COMPONENTS system thread serialization filesystem)
...
include_directories(${INCLUDE_DIR} ${Boost_INCLUDE_DIRS})
link_directories(${Boost_LIBRARY_DIRS})
...
target_link_libraries(${YOUR_BINARY} ${Boost_LIBRARIES})

That simple. Of course, one must not forget to change this before giving this to anyone else - you should be checking the regular directories where boost gets installed.

Bratislava

Central square in Bratislava, Slovakia. A rather quiet city.

Santos FC beats Al-Ahly!

A most unexpected result, particuarly after the trashing Santos had on the first leg (3-0). Somehow, the Santos FC boys managed to pick themselves up and show their skills to Angola's new national coach. Hopefully Manuel Jose was suitably impressed with the talents from Girabola, considering the blunders he's already made in the few days ahead of the team...

Santos FC - Al-Ahly. Source: CAF.

Recent Books

Some of the books I went through (or will go through), in no particular order:

• Flashman and the Mountain of Light: Like every other book of the Flashman series - of which I have now read four - it's unbelievably un-PC, and incredibly funny. The cover says it best, really: "farcically outrageous and disgracefully entertaining". Flashman is probably one of my best finds, and this particular book is the best yet. I'm beginning to think that it narrates British colonization a lot more accurately than any real history book. Amongst all the fun and madness, it has some gems of prose. It also seems the author spent a lot of time doing historical analysis, since the detail is amazing. If, like me, you are from a minority group, you will undoubtedly find the book rather offensive; ignore it and keep going, if you can.
• Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina: I had this on my list for a bit but forgot all about it. My interest was rekindled by Chavez, who decided to offer a copy of it to Obama. Cannot recommend this book enough, really. If you want to understand Latin America, and particularly the latest shifts to the left, this is a good starting point. Towering work. Read it in the original Spanish, but there is, of course, an English translation.
  
• High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars: Mandatory read. This book was not at all what I expected - I was looking for a geeky read to lift my spirits. Instead its a gruesome account of the difficulties of startups in the silicon valley. Its really, really good. The language is not as polished as say Galleano's (how can you beat gems such as "People were in prison so that prices could be free"?); in fact, some parts are rather dry, such as the final chapters on market analysis. But this is still incredible stuff. Compelling reading. Should be mandatory for all computer science students (high-school and university).
• Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus: Via Galleano, bumped into this. Ordered the English version (which is quite ironic, since the original is in Portuguese; totally forgot that Miguel had offered to buy me books in Portuguese, if required). Seems very promising.
• Empires of Oil: Corporate Oil in Barbarian Worlds: Couldn't quite finish this one. Although it had rave reviews, and started interestingly enough, it proved to be too dry a reading. It seems to waffle a lot without providing any real insight. I may attempt it again - got half-way through it this time - but not for a good while. Seems a bit pro-oil, but there's nothing wrong with that if the argument is well constructed.
• This is Not a Drill: Just Another Glorious Day in the Oilfield: Quite unlike the previous one, this is a compelling read. Always wanted to know what exactly oil workers get up to in the middle of nowhere, and this book explained it in great detail. Basically, the boys have a great laugh, while trying not to get killed and working their socks off. Fantastic humour - if somewhat dark.
• Traders, Guns and Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives: Absolute classic. Must read if you really want to understand the finantial markets.