I liked the idea behind App.Net (or ADN for the initiated) from the start; I’ve happily signed up during the initial funding effort and before it even existed. It is quite like Twitter, although it does have some pretty interesting API advantages that allow clients to do things that are not possible in Twitter such as creating private chat rooms (with Patter.) I found a text by Matt Gemmell, App.Net for conversations, that sums it up nicely:

The interesting part, though, is what you won’t be used to from Twitter. There are no ads, anywhere. Because it’s a paid service, there’s no spam at all; I’ve certainly never seen any. There’s an active and happy developer community, which ADN actually financially rewards. There’s a rich, modern, relentlessly improved API. And again because it’s a paid service, there’s a commensurately (and vanishingly) low number of Bieber fans, teenagers, illiterates, and sociopaths.

But the real difference I notice is in the conversations. On Twitter, the back-and-forth tends to be relatively brief, not only in terms of the 140-character limit, but also the number of replies. There’s a certain fire-and-forget sensibility to Twitter; it’s a noticeboard rather than a chatroom. Then there’s the keyword-spam (woe betide the person who mentions iPads, or MacBooks, or broadband, or just about anything). Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that any malcontent with internet access can create an account (or two, or ten) in seconds. Not a happy mixture.

I’d add that there seems to be less of a popular clique on ADN. Popular users seem to be much more engaging with “regular people” than on Twitter. And there’s the developers… although most of the rush is now behind us, it was fun to follow the developers working on ADN clients. It was a very collaborative effort, with alpha builds floating around and discussions about whether this or that should be done in a certain way.

As for the developers of ADN proper, well, you can try asking ADN CEO and Founder Dalton something to see if he’ll answer you in about 30 seconds. He actually does. 🙂

It all feels like a big community where everyone feels a bit like they own the place as well and want it to thrive. Again I think Matt is on the money on why this is so:

We value what we pay for. We not only pay for things which we deem to be of value, but we also retrospectively assign and justify value based on what we’ve paid. Any consumer is familiar with the simple psychology of cost equating as much to value after the transaction as value does to cost beforehand (likely moreso, from my own experience). At its core, I don’t think that the reason for the noticeably different, warmer, more discursive “feel” of ADN is any more complicated than that.

I personally love the service and I think you should consider it too. There is a free tier account that allows you to follow up to 40 people for free, as long as you’re invited by a current user. If you’re interested, I have a few invites.

Feel free to comment on this post by using this Google+ thread or also by talking to me on, where else, ADN, where I’m @robteix. And of course Twitter isn’t going anywhere and I’m there too.

I have long been a bit of a nomad. What is interesting to me is that I don’t really like change too much. I am a creature of habit and yet, here I am.

Four years ago, I moved to Argentina due to professional reasons. At the time, I had my mind set that I was going to give it a try and come back if it didn’t work out. It was a hard decision too, since my wife and I were pregnant of our daughter. But we took the plunge anyway. We knew we could always come back and as Terry Pratchett wrote in one of his Discworld novels —

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

I am now leaving, returning to my old country. It is mostly due to the economic situation in Argentina. I was able to mostly protect myself by keeping my savings in Brazil as well as transferring as much money as I could from Argentina. But still, I need to make a move. Our daughter is growing up and should start school soon so if we’re going, we should go now.

I officially left my job about a week ago. My wife and daughter left soon after as I stayed to put our affairs in order — selling stuff, closing accounts, the whole thing — and now it’s my time. I am leaving in the morning.

Being here alone made me think about — and fear — the future. Why is change always so difficult?

It isn’t that I have doubts about the decision itself. I know it is the best move for us. But I still fear it.

Will I ever find another job again? Am I too old to do these things? Will my daughter learn to speak the language? Rationally and logically I know the answers to these questions. But the fear of change is there.

What I learned — or at least what I tell myself — is that it’s fine to be afraid. Being afraid just means you are about to do something brave. Or stupid. Starting tomorrow, I find out which.

Adiós, Argentina. See you all on the other side.

Eight years ago I joined a great company in Intel. It has been a great ride but as of a few minutes ago, I have informed my manager that I quitting my job for personal reasons.

A couple of years ago, I relocated to the software development centre in Cordoba, Argentina. It was always meant to be a temporary assignment but it ended up being longer than my family and I ever thought. And as our daughter grows up, it becomes ever more difficult to engage in international relocations, so my wife—who also works at Intel, by the way—and I decided that we needed to act. We set a hard deadline for the move and stuck to it. This is it.

My wife and daughter will be flying to Brazil in two weeks and I should follow some short time later, once I’m done closing everything behind. We’ll be relocating to Curitiba, where my wife and I first met 13 years ago, so it’s fitting.

So this is it. Good bye, Intel, it’s been fun and I wish you all the best.

I appreciate beautiful, readable code. And if someone were to ask me for an example of beautiful code, I’ve always had the answer ready: the linked list implementation in the Linux kernel.

The code is gorgeous in its simplicity, clarity, and amazing flexibility. If there’s ever a museum for code, this belongs there. It is a masterpiece of the craft.

I was just telling a friend about it while we talked about beautiful code and he found this piece that I share here: Linux Kernel Linked List Explained.

The recently approved C++11 standard brings a lot of welcome changes to C++ that modernize the language a little bit. Among the many changes, we find that containers have received some special love.

Initialization

C++ was long behind modern languages when it came to initializing containers. While you could do

[cpp]int a[] = {1, 2, 3};[/cpp]

for simple arrays, things tended to get more verbose for more complex containers:

[cpp]
vector v;
v.push_back(“One”);
v.push_back(“Two”);
v.push_back(“Three”);
[/cpp]

C++11 has introduced an easier, simpler way to initialize this:

[cpp]
vector v = {“One”, “Two”, “Three”};
[/cpp]

The effects of the changes are even better for things like maps, which could get cumbersome quickly:

[cpp]
map<string, vector > m;
vector v1;
v1.push_back(“A”);
v1.push_back(“B”);
v1.push_back(“C”);

vector v2;
v2.push_back(“A”);
v2.push_back(“B”);
v2.push_back(“C”);

m[“One”] = v1;
m[“Two”] = v2;
[/cpp]

This can now be expressed as:

[cpp]
map<string, vector> m = One,

                             {"Two", {"Z", "Y", "X"}}};

[/cpp]

Much simpler and in line with most modern languages. As an aside, there’s another change in C++11 that would be easy to miss in the code above. The declaration

[cpp]map<string, vector> m;[/cpp]

was illegal until now due to >> always being evaluated to the right-shift operator; a space would always be required, like

[cpp]map<string, vector > m[/cpp]

No longer the case.

Iterating

Iterating through containers was also inconvenient. Iterating the simple vector v above:

[cpp]
for (vector::iterator i = v.begin();

 i != v.end(); i++)
cout << i << endl;[/cpp]

Modern languages have long had some foreach equivalent that allowed us easier ways to iterate through these structures without having to explicitly worry about iterators types. C++11 is finally catching up:

[cpp]
for (string s : v)

cout << s << endl;

[/cpp]

As well, C++11 brings in a new keyword, auto, that will evaluate to a type in compile-type. So instead of

[cpp]
for (map<string, vector >::iterator i = m.begin();

 i != m.end(); i++) {

[/cpp]

we can now write

[cpp]
for (auto i = m.begin(); i != m.end(); i++) {
[/cpp]

and auto will evaluate to map<string, vector>::iterator.

Combining these changes, we move from the horrendous

[cpp]
for (map<string, vector >::iterator i = m.begin();

 i != m.end(); i++)
for (vector<string>::iterator j = i->second.begin();
     j != i->second.end(); j++)
    cout << i->first << ': ' << *j << endl;

[/cpp]

to the much simpler

[cpp]
for (auto i : m)

for (auto j : i.second)
    cout << i.first << ': ' << j << endl;

[/cpp]

Not bad.

C++11 support varies a lot from compiler to compiler, but all of the changes above are already supported in the latest versions of GCC, LLVM, and MSVC compilers.

Have you ever wondered how FORs impact your code? How they are limiting your design and more important how they are transforming your code into an amount of lines without any human meaning?

How can you not want to read an article that starts like that? I had to steal the intro from the original. Seriously, I have used FOR since I learned BASIC back in the day. I never thought about how it was limiting my design. I. Must. Learn. How.

The article I am referring to is, Avoiding FORs – Anti-If Campaign. Eager learner I, I could not not read it.

After the resplendent intro, Avoiding FOR goes on to show “how to transform a simple example of a for […], to something more readable and well designed.”

It takes this unreadable piece of code — that I now recognize as unreadable:

[java]
public class Department {

private List resources = new ArrayList();

public void addResource(Resource resource) {
    this.resources.add(resource);
}

public void printSlips() {

    for (Resource resource : resources) {
        if(resource.lastContract().deadline().after(new Date())) {

            System.out.println(resource.name());
            System.out.println(resource.salary());
        }
    }
}

}[/java]

My eyes hurt already. Thankfully the author transforms the aberration above into this clean, much more readable snippet:

[java]public class ResourceOrderedCollection {

    private Collection<Resource> resources = new ArrayList<Resource>();



public ResourceOrderedCollection() {
    super();
}

public ResourceOrderedCollection(Collection<Resource> resources) {
    this.resources = resources;
}

public void add(Resource resource) {
    this.resources.add(resource);
}

public void forEachDo(Block block) {
    Iterator<Resource> iterator = resources.iterator();

    while(iterator.hasNext()) {
        block.evaluate(iterator.next());
    }

}

public ResourceOrderedCollection select(Predicate predicate) {

    ResourceOrderedCollection resourceOrderedCollection = new ResourceOrderedCollection();

    Iterator<Resource> iterator = resources.iterator();

    while(iterator.hasNext()) {
        Resource resource = iterator.next();
        if(predicate.is(resource)) {
            resourceOrderedCollection.add(resource);
        }
    }

    return resourceOrderedCollection;
}

}

public class Department {

private List<Resource> resources = new ArrayList<Resource>();

public void addResource(Resource resource) {
    this.resources.add(resource);
}

public void printSlips() {
    new ResourceOrderedCollection(this.resources).select(new InForcePredicate()).forEachDo(new PrintSlip());
}

}[/java]

Wait, what? Is this an Onion article?

Snarky Mode Off.

I understand what the author wanted to do, but really, the example used is so off the left field that it’s not even funny.

My Macbook Pro has two disks, an HDD and an SSD, each of 240GB or so. With the details of Apple’s Fusion Drive coming out I decided to do what any reasonable geek would do to their production computer: I’ve decided to implement my own untested, highly experimental and barely understood Fusion Drive.

One of the things that initially put me off doing this was that according to the 3,471,918 tutorials that have popped up in the last 10 minutes would cause me to lose my Mountain Lion recovery partition because these partitions are not supported in a Fusion drive. Turns out this is not exactly true.

Fusion Drive is just a marketing term for a what essentially is a CoreStorage logical volume spanning an SSD and an HDD. And although you cannot have the recovery partition inside a CS logical volume, it doesn’t mean you can’t have both a recovery partition and a Fusion Drive at the same time. It’s all in the diskutil man page, by the way:

Create a CoreStorage logical volume group. The disks specified will become the (initial) set of physical volumes; more than one may be specified. You can specify partitions (which will be re-typed to be Apple_CoreStorage) or whole-disks (which will be partitioned as GPT and will contain an Apple_CoreStorage partition). The resulting LVG UUID can then be used with createVolume below. All existing data on the drive(s) will be lost. Ownership of the affected disk is required.

What matters is what’s in bold above: we’re not limited to using whole disks. So here’s what I did.

I rebooted my system and held the option key so I could select my recovery partition as the start up disk. Once the OSX recovery started up, I launched a terminal to do the dirty work.

diskutil list

From this I noted two things: (a) the main SSD partition (the one holding my OSX and that sited by my recovery partition) and (b) the disk name of my HDD. They were respectively disk0s2 and disk1 in my case, but they’ll very likely be different for you. Then the magic begins.

diskutil cs create "Fusion Drive" disk0s2 disk1

(For crying out loud, you need to change disk0s2 and disk1 for whatever makes sense on your system!)

That created the coreStorage logical volume. Then I listed it all again to note what the new logical volume UUID was.

diskutil list

The UUID is a long number identifier like F47AC10B-58CC-4372-A567-0E02B2C3D479. You’ll need that one next to actually create the volume where you’ll be installing your system.

diskutil coreStorage createVolume F47AC10B-58CC-4372-A567-0E02B2C3D479 jhfs+ "Macbook FD" 100%

The command above will create a volume named “Macbook FD” using 100% of the logical volume we had created earlier.

I then restored my Time Machine backup and that’s it.

Update: Note that after this process, the Recovery partition will still be present and things that require it (such as Find My Mac) will work fine. Some people correctly pointed out, however, that you can no longer boot from the recovery partition by using the menu from holding ⌥ (option) during boot. I’m not sure why that is, but fear not, it will still boot normally from pressing ⌘R (command + R).

I have a little confession to make: our family is going through a rough patch. Both my wife and I are having problems. No, not between us. And both are experiencing very different sorts of problems. But the happening-at-the-same-time complicates the one-supports-the-other thing.

And to compound to that, I have been sick.

As I sat in the waiting room at the hospital the other day, waiting for some exams, I felt like this is one of the worst times of my life. I feel tired, unmotivated, unappreciated, and generally unhappy. And fucking hopeless. That’s the worst part, I suppose.

I also have been distancing myself from friends lately. Ostensibly to avoid distractions in a time where I am having to give all and a bit more to a project I do not believe in. Truth be told, I just don’t feel like small talk but I also don’t want bring others down to my Dark Hole of Misery. And so I’m trying to keep some distance.

I feel lost. I look at my friends and how they all seem to have it all figured out already. I’m still trying to figure out who the fuck I am. I was so sure when I was younger. I was so fucking good at what I did. Now? I just don’t know anymore. I feel unhappy.

I know some people who will be So. Fucking. Happy. reading the paragraph above. This one’s for free for you guys.

But not all is bad news. I actually got some good news last night. I can’t tell the details although I know some of you know exactly what this is about. Anyway, I now have a set date for it and it’s in under six months from now.

I’m actually confident that this will make it all better somehow. Just have to wait.

Sorry for the downer, but I felt like writing something.

A couple of days ago, I was listening to one of my favourite podcasts, The Frequency, when one of the hosts, Dan Benjamin, thought of a cool domain name, ohitson.com and checked to see if it was available. Turns out it was and he said he was registering right there and then. Now, two things: (a) I was listening to a recorded podcast, not live; and (b) I thought to myself, damn it! it is a cool domain name.

The next day, I launched Hover and checked the domain name and to my surprise it was available. I simply thought either Dan had given up on it or, most likely, I had misunderstood the domain name he was talking about and fortunately that had made me thing of this cool domain name. I even checked Google to make sure “Oh, it’s on” was really written like that 😛

Obviously I went ahead and registered the name. After that, I listed to that day’s The Frequency and heard Dan tell Haddie something to the effect of “oh, I forgot to register that domain yesterday!” That’s when I thought, oh-oh, maybe I had heard the correct domain name.

As it turns out, I was just listening to today’s episode and guess what? Dan mentions that someone registered it due to his mention on the show (which is technically true.)

But I am a nice guy. I offered to transfer the domain to Dan for free just a few minutes ago. Not sure he’ll see my posts to app.net or Twitter. If not, I’ll try again a few times. I really don’t have any intention to keep this domain name as long as he still wants it. Sounds unfair.

Update 7 Nov 2012: can you believe he actually accepted my offer? What a douche! Just kidding, it was the Fair Thing to Do™ and I’m happy to say the domain has been transferred to His Benjaminship already.

Last night, as I tried getting my three year-old to sleep so I could play my brand-new copy of NHL 13, I had an epiphany of sorts. It dawned on me how much videogames influenced my real-life pleasures. And the story actually started a long time ago.

The story begins in a rather pleasant Saturday afternoon in late 1993. We went into a shoddy building, walked up the stairs to the first floor and found this rather unassuming office at the end of the hall. We skimmed over a thick catalog of game titles and started picking a few we wanted to try. They were cheap, pirated games. After selecting the titles, the guy there noted them down and asked us to wait. In the back, two guys got some floppy disks and started copying the games for us with VGAcopy. Nice!

Of the games we bought, only one I can still remember: NHL Hockey. To that day, I had only a general idea of what hockey was: Soccer on the ice. We picked it simply because the clerk there told us it was good.

We went home that day and probably tried some of the other, now-forgotten games, but then we installed NHL Hockey from the floppies to MS-DOS. We were both hooked instantly! The game had an arena atmosphere that later version never quite managed to reproduce. We did not know the many rules of hockey, we learned as we played. I remember vividly as my friend pumped up the volume on the PC when the game would play an 8-bit version of “We will rock you” while two cartoon hands clapped on the virtual jumbotron.

We played that game throughout that night and into Sunday. It was fast. It was fun. We were hooked. NHL 96 was the first game I ever legally bought. And I’ve bought almost every version since then.

Back to how it influenced my real-life, playing the game got me into Hockey as a sport. A Brazilian hooked on Hockey? Not supposed to happen, but one likes what one likes. It also indirectly started my love affair with Canada, but that’s a different story. Following Hockey was not easy until I found a radio that streamed games and later the League started offering live vide streaming for which I have been gladly paying an exorbitant amount of money for half a decade or so. I’ve experienced a similar effect thanks to the Madden and NBA Live series, but NHL Hockey will always be a special case for me.

I realized that thru hockey I’ve made friends, some of whom are real good friends. And all of this started because a couple of decades ago we got some pirated games in a Saturday afternoon.

Want to make a comment or suggestion? Do you feel like you need to correct me for not fitting the Standard Brazilian Specification? Feel free to talk to (or scream at) me, I’m @robteix on App.net and also on Twitter.