Blog

2012-04-23 - Python 3.2.3 has been released

and Slackware package is here

Have fun!

2012-04-21 - I can be proud of ...

2012-04-01 - Lou Reed and Metallica: The View (Directed by Darren Aronofsky)

This surprised me a lot. I am ashamed that I do not know anything about Lou Reed but I like what I hear. It's really hard to say where Metallica ends and Lou begins so I consider it as a very good tandem. You may not like it but you must hear it. Highly recommended.

2012-03-30 - Why I chose Slackware

I am often asked why I chose Slackware as my primary operating system. I never thought about it before, I just used it and I am happy with it. So here I'll try to explain why Slackware is better than anything else for me. Maybe it'll help you to make a choice.

So, Slackware is simple. May it sounds crazy for beginners but it's true. Of course Slackware comes with attitude and assumes you're smart, but if you try a bit you'll know it.

For example, Slackware packages are big. To install python3 there is 1 package (compare it with ~20 Debian packages). There are no package dependencies. Yep, it's great. I wanna know what is in my system and I do not need wine if I'm installing lmms or I do not need cvs if installing git. There is no such problem in Slackware. And finally - every package comes with SlackBuild - bash script with which the package was built from the source code. Feel free to modify it with flags you need or upgrade the version and build your own package. This is the easiest way to build a package I ever seen!

The second reason I love Slackware is stability. I’m not a kind of guy who like to figure out how to make the system work. I do not like fixing bugs after the system is installed. I do not like to google for workarounds of the broken parts of software. All I want is to install the system and start to work and Slackware gives me it. It is the most stable system I ever tried including commercially supported. Another pros is that you do not need internet connection to start working. All software I need comes from the box.

The third reason is "vanilla" packages. Slackware doesn't patch upstream packages to change logos, menus, wallpapers, developing configurators etc. It is very useful if you want to participate in open source development. You do not have custom code but the upstream code. Also you may find all the sources on you DVD disk with Slackware installation.

And the last reason (I realized it last, it's not the last by priority) - is Slackware community. All these people starting from Pat Volkerding, core Slackware team and ending with the random guys from linuxquestions.org are very professional and confident people in community I ever met. Moreover they are very kind and fun, it's real pleasure to communicate with them.

So if you're choosing your OS, give Slackware a chance, it's really great.

Have fun!

2012-03-13 - Adele - Someone Like You

2012-03-01 - Got to keep running

Stormbringer coming!

My new piece of code is out: Stormbringer is lightweighted email client written with python. Personally I use it on daily basis. So if you received email from me - 99% it was written with Stormbringer (yep, my cellphone doesnt support python yet:-))

The benefits are:

• First of all it has a unique email parser based on regular expressions. It does not use any email libraries but just standart python library.
• Secondary it has a simple, text-based gui. I was really inspired by mutt when I worked on it, so there are no HTML messages with yellow background and big red letters. Just plain text. Its enough to get the information you need.
• And the third one - I tried to make it customizable. You may choose background color, font family and size, icons, keyboard shortcuts and other stuff. Feel free to change a couple of text files to make it possible
• And finally, this client uses files to store emails. So backup procedure is pretty simple - just copy needed folder.

Have fun!

2012-02-29 - Maslenitsa

2012-02-21 - Making things is easy

Today I wanna share with you my thoughts on some pleasures of life. I do not talk about things like tasty food, listening good music or having fun with friends. I'm talking about making. Making things.

I'm sure you already know this sweet feeling when you accomplish a big work and you may see the result of applied time and forces. This is your creation. You put a lot of yourself in it, and now it contains some part of you. It may be anything - home-made bread, raised flower, a table for the kitchen and many other things.

Does it really important? I think so. Making is a kind of self expression - it allows to show other people and yourself a part of you soul through your creation. It expresses your feelings, your talent, your mind and freedom with the music you've made, house you've built, dinner you cooked. There are no such things as bad creations if it comes from your heart.

Another thing to realize is that not the possession of a thing gives you this pleasure, but the process of creation. You have nothing you may use and after a while you have something that you built almost from nothing. You made it the way you wanted it to be. The way it should be.

I think that is one of the main reasons I enjoy programming. Firstly you have nothing but the computer and a programming language. Computer itself is just a box. It can not do anything without software. But it have a bricks you may make something special. All you need is tool to build the bricks together in the right sequence. Yep, programming language gives you this tool. All you need to do now is to work for the best. You will solve problems, you will be tired, you will break something and rebuild it. But it's all nothing compared with the feeling you seeing your creature is growing, developing and becoming the thing. It brings so much fun.

Enjoy your life!

Have fun!

2012-02-10 - Machine Head - Darkness Within Live @ Wembley Arena, London 2011

Absolutely great!

2012-01-31 - ...and the new day is breaking through

Hello everybody!

I've got very exciting news for you. As you understood from my previous post I am tired a little to make things which are not fun enough. I know it's my job what I paid for but I needed to have a break from such things like Financial Services, Banking and Enterprise. There are no playing element for this which I think is very important. Without playing games life becomes dull, boring and too serious.

I think you already know my two main passions in life: programming and music. The last years programming became more important part but without music my life became a little bit more serious that I wanted it to be. So I took a pause and thought: what can I do with it to bring more fun in my programming life? I need to add more music in it.

I compiled audacity and played with it a little. I was suprised that I still remember how to play guitar and what reverberation effect means. But if I want to add drums I need to install Hydrogen or LMMS. I tried to find DAW for Linux which I might like but I could not. All of theese programs have advantages but I could not choose one that I will love. So there is an answer how to merge my programming skills and passion to music. I can write DAW which I will use to produce the music.

Surely I chose python to develop this software. First of all I didn't see any DAWs written with python (this is the plus, right?) and the second one - I really hate compiling. But native python does not fully support cross-platform audio processing. I tried to play with ossaudiodev and WinAPI but it's terrible. So I needed to choose the library for audio processing and GUI. Since I'm a long time KDE fan Qt is my choice. I contacted Aaron Seigo about python-qt bindings and he recommended PyQt for that. That was the starting point.

So today I want to announce Sunrise DAW - cross-platform software to provide the environment for producing music. Now it's just a very young project. It can record sound, play recording sound and apply effects like delay and changing volume. But I'm very exciting about it and I get so much fun developing it so I hope soon it will be one more great music production software.

To run Sunrise on your machine you need python, Qt and PyQt installed. Sunrise works with both python2 and py3k.

BTW you may see the screenshot below:


As always I'll be appreciate any help.

Have fun!

2012-01-20 - Why does enterprise software suck... and always will

For the last 3 years I develop enterprise software as my primary job. It’s boring and uncool and there is no special pleasure you get while solving programming problems. I was wondering why it is so and what can I do to make it more exciting. Unfortunately the only answer I’ve got is pretty easy: there is nothing you can do about it.

Enterprise software is made not for people but for organizations without faces, characters and voices. There will not be happy users of your software. All the decisions are made by the super important big boss department who just don’t care about how people will use it. Only they want is to product the checklist you need to complete to satisfy them. Cause they need to satisfy another department.

You say “stop, what about creative part of software development? I’ve got great ideas which people would love. This will make our product better. I’m ready to develop this features by myself”. Ok, that’s great! You need to fill Form1 that lets you to fill Form2 that lets you to fill Form3 that you may present to the junior secretary of the junior secretary of the secretary department. If it is approved you may to fill another 4 or 5 Forms to present it to another person. You’ve done all this stuff? You’re crazy! Forget it, we’ve got the checklist.

I ask myself: Do I use this kind of software I develop? Do my friends use this software? Does anyone I really care about use it? And the last one: does it make the world a better place? No, no, no and … no.

Ask this questions to the programmer who develops so called “social” software. They do it not for departments but for actual people. People may feel, may say a word about desirable features, bugs or just simple “thank you for that”. This situation is so different. Users of this software actually want to use it. They are really happy.

Why do we love facebook, mozilla, winamp, vlc, twitter, emacs etc? Because we’re actually using it. First of all it was made for us and only after that to satisfy enterprises. Life will be the same if some giant of the enterprise software will go away. Companies will easily replace it with another product. No one really loved it and cared about it. But if your favorite browser/player/editor disappears someday how it will affect you? I think you’ll be at list sad a little.

So as brilliant Jamie Zawinski said some time ago: “If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.”

2012-01-19 - The graph Jack built

Today I am going to announce a new project of mine called CGL5. CGL5 is HTML5 graph library was build to let you embed any graphs in your webpage. Just like this one:

Any feedback or any type of help are welcome. Have fun!

2011-12-28 - Happy holidays!

2011-12-07 - New blog framework

Hi everybody!

Today I'm going to present a new blog framework that I developed a couple of days ago. It's quite different from the last one was used. First of all it's written with the python which I like more and more lately. It doesn't require database to store data. All data is stored in plain files which are much more comfortable to work with.

The second - it doesn't have admin panel. To publish a blog record you just need to send the email to the secret address. All emails will be parsed and published as a blog records. You may use different keywords to stop the spam.

The third improvement is RSS publisher. I hadn't enough time to develop it earlier, but now it's completed and ready for using. Please visit this link to subscribe.

All other things you may see - a fresh and nice new design, page navigation was replaced by the "more" link and there are no comments, what is bad but will be fixed soon.

Best wishes, Alex

2011-12-01 - Hard working day

2011-11-23 - The Humans Are Dead

Brilliant!