Entries from July 2008 ↓

I’ve decided to dig a bit into Erlang.

The setup has been painless. I first installed Macports (look here for a step by step guide). With this installed, to install Erlang is a single command:

sudo port install erlang

Then I looked up the recommended development environment. What a surprise: a lot of people suggest Emacs. And so I followed the instructions of lisp Guru extraordinaire Bill Clementson on how to setup Emacs to develop in Erlang. I won’t repeat what he has explained perfectly in the post linked above.

Now since yesterday I am going through “Programming Erlang” with a development Erlang node embedded in my Emacs session and I am enjoying it very much.

My mind wanders freely on the power and the ease Erlang will give me to develop massive, concurrent, real-time, next generation services.

Recently I tried to give some other Python editors/IDEs a chance. I tried pydev for a while and found it good enough, but not perfect.

Truth is I have been using emacs for a long time for development. And I found myself quite comfortable to develop Python code with it. With a proper shell on the side, be it ipython or pycrust I thought my setup was good enough. And in all honesty it was good enough. Oh and I have to say I am one of those maniacs that use the brilliant, almighty, slightly blaspheme viper. The vi mode for Emacs. Ah the power!

Then recently I read this article and I realized that there might be things I was missing out. ECB, rope, ropemacs. What a beautiful discovery. So armed with a bit of patience I gave it my best shot and I managed to get it all working.

The article above is pretty explanatory but in addition to the things noted there I also added ECB and viper-mode. I had to tweak rope so that it was able to auto-complete the Python code of the Google app engine. To do that I had to add the root folder of the Google app engine code to the pythonpath property in the .ropeproject/config.py of my project.

The result is neat, very neat. Don’t believe me? Marvel at this beauty!

The thing you can’t see in this screen-shot is that this setup has total auto-completion for the full Python library; re-factoring ability, instant inline documentation and much more. I have to say I am excited .

Life is like a mirror, if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting. – Jim Morrison

So tonight I had a very interesting conversation with Chiara about many things. At one point the “law of the mirror” came up and I think it’s so deep and true that I feel like sharing it.

I’ve been reading a wonderful book that has a chapter on it. The book is Officina Alkemica from Salvatore Brizzi (recommended for my Italian friends, because yes, it is in Italian).

So what is this law of the mirror?

Let me quote the book on this:

Reality is our mirror. We only see what we are. Everything we like and admire  reflects some aspects of ourselves that we have already digested and thus give us good sensations.

On the contrary, everything that is intolerable and that we can’t stand is reflecting those areas of our personality that we cannot accept yet and that we refuse.

Truth is there’s nothing ugly in the world and nothing ugly in ourselves. Everything is perfect the way it is… even if we’re not able to see it yet.

And this apparent simple concept has far reaching implications. The more I think about it, the more I agree. The point – not very new but a hard battle for us all – is to get rid of our judgmental mind. Judgment clouds us, it accounts for the very essence of the deformed lenses we use to look at the world. Get rid of judgment, quiet the all-babbling mind and reality will shine in front of you.

Oh well. And how to stop judging and how to achieve a quiet mind? There are many ways. It is definitely not easy but it is definitely a worthy endeavor. Perfect topic for a future post.

Right. Given the fact that July 31st I’ll have to hand in my company laptop I’ve decided to invest a fair chunk of my last salary to buy a new one. One powerful enough to stand heavy coding sessions and running multiple virtual machines at the same time. One beautiful in design and with a solid OS … alright I bought macbook pro.

For the vast crowds of geeky friends reading this here are the specs:

MacBook Pro 15-inch Glossy WS
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM – 2x2GB
200GB Serial ATA @ 7200 rpm
SuperDrive 8x DL
US Keyboard

Oh and I couldn’t resist, I also upgraded my iPod touch to version 2.0 of the software so that I can start downloading all the amazing apps that are coming out at the iTunes App Store.

Time has passed since last time I wrote a blog post. I kept a blog for a few years, few years ago. I almost forgot I did actually. If I find the motivation I might get around reimporting all that old stuff at one point.But I warn you my old blog was in Italian, so maybe it’s better if it stays where it is. For now.

But things have changed a lot since then.

This is a new beginning.

This blog will record a few broad themes as perceived from my current reality-tunnel (the use of this last word might already hint at the fact that I am a big fan of RAW):

• Notes on my sabbatical (which will officially start August 1st 2008).
• Technology, software development. Very detailed, very in depth, focused on web development but eclectic and curious in nature.
• My future entrepreneurial efforts to start my own business, service, company.
• Philosophical gems I’ve been collecting and validating through my own experience to live a happy and full life, presented in total humbleness. No pressure to force anyone to agree with me.

So why the title “be present now” for this new blog?

As a reminder to myself.

For me it is a rather astounding coincidence that almost every book I stumbled upon in the past year or so – but maybe even earlier – had a hint to this very simple mantra: “be present now”. Well it may be that I am especially drawn to self help, philosophical books but the fact remains. And it slowly grew on me.

It is only possible to experience life fully when one is present to oneself, completely conscious and focused on the reality, this very moment. When I am lost following a river of thoughts, in a river of twirling emotions, oblivious of the moment, life slips by. I’ll have a lot more to tell on this later. If you ever convince me that this is interesting.

So is this enough for a first post? Do you have any questions? Ha, I don’t really expect an answer. But then again who am I writing to, if not an imagined audience? Alright, I’ll stop now.

Godspeed.