Category: English

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Dindy Is Now Free

After over a year of selling Dindy, without much success, I finally made it free. In that year 366 people downloaded Dindy, 105 (28%) kept it on their device, 74 cancelled their order (to get the refund) and 187 paid for it and later on uninstalled it without getting their money back.

Dindy’s rating in the market is 4.26/5, which is pretty good. I hope it will keep this rating now that it’s free. Well, first it has to be downloaded :) I want to see what will come out of it. If it will be popular, I’ll add the option to donate money.

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Leaving IBM

I’ve decided to leave IBM. After 2 years in Diligent Technologies and over 2.5 years as an IBMer following Diligent’s acquisition, and considering I wasn’t pursuing an IBM career that will last many years to come, it was definitely time for me to go.

I’ll be an IBMer until January 31st, 2011. In Diligent-IBM I worked with many great and smart people. As part of my work on ProtecTIER, Diligent-IBM’s award winning Virtual Tape Library product, I learned a lot about high-performance, high-availability systems programming in Linux. My main contributions were to the cluster version of the product and most recently to ProtecTIER’s OpenStorage (OST) implementation. I believe ProtecTIER is a great product that can bring tremendous value to customers and I’m proud to have been part of its development.

My next step is a joint project with a good friend. A garage start-up of sorts. I can’t say much about it, only that while it’s not the greatest idea in the whole wide world, I think it can be a successful venture. I expect to be unemployed for about a year :)

Wish me luck.

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My Home WiFi Is No Longer Free

Ever since I had a wireless router I’ve been sharing my WiFi network with anyone who could find it. It had a web-only restriction, but that’s just because I didn’t want anyone using file sharing and using up all the bandwidth. Yesterday, however, I password protected and encrypted my home WiFi network.

The reason is the latest unveiling of Firesheep, a tool for HTTP session hijacking that works over open WiFi networks. The only protection against Firesheep is using secure HTTP (https://) with every website, but I don’t think I’m that meticulous to remember this all the time. And yes, I know about the extensions that help with that.

On the other hand, it’s probably a better idea to start using https everywhere just to be on the safe side.

p.s.

Sorry, neighbors.

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In NYC

I’ve been in NYC for a couple of days now but didn’t have time to update. I’m basically hanging out with two good friends. Before I left Tucson, a colleague of ours took me and my boss bicycle riding in the desert among the cacti, which I really enjoyed. I also fell off my bicycle and left some skin in the desert :)

In NYC I went with one of my friends to a Broadway musical called American Idiot, which is based on Green Day’s music. The show was a lot of fun. Other than that we’re just walking around the more and the less toured streets of NYC (Times Square, East Village, Little Italy, …) The sun is shining this weekend (in November!) and it’s a great urban experience.

Today I’m going to Central Park to walk around and tonight we’ll go to a comedy club I visited on my trip last year, The Comedy Cellar. I’m looking forward to it… last year I enjoyed it a lot.

I don’t have many pictures and videos from this trip, so I’ll just post everything together at the end of it.

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In Tucson, Arizona

I arrived to Tucson, Arizona today after over 16 hours of flight (with an additional few hours of waiting, trains, trams and taxis.) My hotel “room” is bigger than my apartment. I went straight to the nearby Target store to get my usual cereal and yogurt. Then, at around 4pm and after eating, I was ready to go to bed. So I did the only logical thing – I went to do my workout in the hotel’s gym – 11km (or 7 miles) in one hour. Nothing like doing your morning workout to let your body know it needs to wake up.

Now I’m waiting for my boss, who’s also here, to go to dinner with him. Unfortunately I won’t be here over the weekend so I won’t be able to hike in the nearby Saguaro National park or even check out the hotel’s pool (my only chance was today, but I missed it.) The jacuzzi is still an option, though :)

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Switzerland – Day 10

(This is a delayed post for October 30)

Before we left Vals on the 4-hour drive back to the Geneva area, we walked around the streets of Vals, with its typical old Swiss houses, one more time. On the way to Geneva we stopped in Berne, a city with an amazingly beautiful and well-preserved old center and also a few bears right in the middle of the city – a big attraction for visitors.

Later in the evening we had a very delicious homemade dinner and walked the streets of Nyon, which is located on Lake Geneva’s shores. These were the last hours of our trip in Switzerland.

Until next time :)

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Switzerland – Day 9

We decided to stay one more day in Vals and went on a hike in one of the local trails, this time almost 800 meters up to Leisalp. We didn’t get all the way to the top of the trail, but we were pretty close. On the way we encountered a playful dogs and some goats resting on a rock hanging over the beautiful valley, and on the way back we encountered hungry goats who went after our food. All this made the hike, which was already a good one on a sunny day, even better.

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Switzerland – Day 8

Today was both about hiking and relaxing. We drove to Laax and started with a scenic hike around Laax, of which you can see pictures below. Later we drove to the nearby town of Vals and went into its famous spa, which has a heated pool that is facing the Swiss alps. It’s quite a site to see when you’re laying back in the hot water.

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Switzerland – Day 7

(This is a delayed post for October 27)

We hiked for nearly 7 hours today. Starting from Grindelwald at 1034 meters we walked up to First, which is at 2168 meters. A height difference of more than a kilometer (!), which means the hike was very steep. The more we went up the trail, the more we could see the beauty that is the Eiger glacier. The glacier is huge and on a clear day you can go up the cable car and see why it’s called “sea of ice” and “wall of ice.” We decided not to stick around in Grindelwald for better weather conditions just to maybe get a chance to see the glacier and continued towards our next destination – Laax and Vals.

We stopped at a hotel in a small town because we were both extremely tired. Hopefully none of the roads on our way are closed, like 2 days ago when we had to detour for several hours.

Notes:

  • In the pictures below the glacier is the white blue-ish colored, snow-covered stuff in the mountains’ saddles.
  • There are many pictures of the glacier. It was too hard to pick the best.