Πότε γιορτάζει ο Sascha;

Την Τρίτη το πρώι με πληροφόρησε η Μαίρη ότι γιορτάζω. Το "Sascha" βγαίνει άπο τον "Αλέξανδρο" (μην με ρώτατε πώς, ρώτατε τους Ρώσους, αυτοί το βγάλανε). Εμείς οι Ελβετοί γιορτάζουμε μόνο τα γενέθλια. Άλλα σε μισό δευτερόλεπτο έιχα πιάσει το νόημα: Περίπτωση να φάμε και να πιούμε! Έτσι είχαμε την ιδέα να οργανώσουμε μία μικρή γιορτή.

Επειδή πιθανώς κανείς δεν θα ήξερε ότι γιορτάζω, τους πήρα τηλέφωνο εγώ (να πω την αλήθεια, ο Σπύρος τό'ξερε, άλλα τον πρόλαβα). Με τν περίπου αριθμό τον καλεσμένον κανονήσαμε το μενού. Τους είχα πει να έρθουνε για ούζο και μεζέ. Ούζο έφερα άπο την Λήμνο (ντόπιο, σπιτικό απο τον παππού του Χρίστο). Για το μεζέ καταλήξαμε σε κεφτέδες και πατάτες στο φούρνο, σαλάτα, τσατζίκι, μελιτζάνες τιγανιτές, ελιές, τυρί. Άπο το Super (εδώ φανταστείτε να λέω την λέξη με γαλλική προφορά) φέραμε και κρασί "Λήμνο" και βέλγικες μπύρες.

Την μισή μέρα καθαρίσαμε, μαγειρέψαμε, ετοιμάσαμε. Εάν είμασταν σε καμία Ελβετία θα είχανε έρθει στις 8. Άλλα εδώ φτάσανε στις 9 και τέταρτο οι πρώτοι, ώστε εμείς είχαμε αρκετό χρώνο να τελειώσουμε τις προετοιμασίες μας.

Όταν τελικά φτάσανε, χάρικα πάρα πολύ. Σε πολύ λίγο χρώνο γεμίσαμε το σαλόνι και το μπαλκόνι με καλούς ανθρώπους (όχι και εκατοντάδες βέβαια, περίπου 12). Περάσαμε πολύ καλά, όλοι μιλήσανε μεταξύ τους. Όλοι το ούζο άπο την Λήμνο πίνανε και τελικά οι μπύρες είναι ακόμα εδώ.

HTML and CSS (and Zope) job offer

We're looking for someone to help me with application development. Mainly it's HTML (handcrafted, please!), CSS2 and some Zope integration. So if you are looking for a job and either live in Athens, Greece or would be interested to move here, contact me! Read on for some observations on my candidate search...

Continuing to Search For a Flat

Yesterday and today I started to speed up a bit with the search for a flat. This morning I looked at a small place in Nea Smyrni, just some minutes walk from the office. Nice and quiet, but the place needs a bit of work to make it interesting. Also living alone will be a change. At noon I went with one of my current flatmates to look at a big flat near her university. Nice, roomy place, I would have company, and I would save some money. But I have to investigate about the commute, it's a long way to the office.

Even if I don't take that particular place near my office, there are others to be found there. Nea Smyrni is a nice area after all, lots of trees. I will have to think about my choices: Company and economical vs. closer and on my own. I will let it settle over night and do some looking up for public transport and then some thinking tomorrow.

Athens Weather and News Roundup

Just a few remarks about the weather, disfunctional computer kiosks, the effect of the Athens 2004 Olympics on the city, and the smells of small streets in the Athens suburbs...

Flat Search Officially Over

My search for a flat or room is now officially over. I will be moving in to the new flat of my current flatmatte-grrl. I won't be so close to the center any more (less noise: good, less creative chaos: bad). I'll still have a long way each day to work. But I won't have to change busses any more, since there is a direct connection.

OK, so lets put some more of the good stuff down with this: First of all, flatsearching sucks, so I have my head free of that business. Second, I'll have good company where I live. The new area is still close enough to the center to be able to go out and party without having to move far.

Introducing the RewriteRule Witch

Are you fluent with Apaches RewriteRules for Zope virtual hosting with VirtualHostMonster? Do you have to dig that stuff out of the documentation each time you use it? Save a little bit of guesswork with a spell from the "Rewrite Rule Witch"...

Virtual hosting with Zope usually involves setting up Apache "in front" of Zope, putting a Virtual Host Monster into your Zope Root and configuring some RewriteRules in your httpd.conf. Since I don't do this every day (like most zopistas, I guess), every time I have to dig up my knowledge of rewrite rules again from almost scratch. Now I wrote a little script to help me with the most frequent cases of those RewriteRules. You can try out the Rewrite Rule Witch online.

Still testing!

Please note that there might still be bugs and mistakes in there. I'm happy to receive feedback about this thing. Especially interesting would be to try out some of the configurations you have and see if the result is what you actually use. I cover only the most basic variants, but likely the ones used for 95% of Zope setups. I do not yet cover rewriting "/manage" URLs to https (next project!)

Bookfair Under the Acropolis

A few days ago we visited a book fair under the Acropolis. It was already dark, both the old stones up the hill and the book stalls were lit up (see pic). Some things that left an impression on me:

• Lots of stalls, almost 300, lined up in the middle of the street, you walked up the one side and again down the other. There are a lot of small book publishers in Greece.
• A book typically cost 10 Euro. At least most of the ones we bought. Except one which was 25, a bit bigger, lots of pictures.
• We bought a book for me to read, supposedly the language is easy to understand. I did not start yet (still on my re-re-reread of "Neuromancer").
• A lot of people came to see the book fair. Metro trains were full, crowds before the stalls, people were looking at and browsing through books.
• We looked at some big photo books from Unesco, very nice, but at 130 Euro (cash) or 145 Euro (installments), you think twice.
• One of the first stalls had Greek authors in translation. I should have bought some to give away. To my defense: It was a case of "we will pass by here again on the way back".

UPDATE: The big books are from Unesco, not Unicef

Denial Of Service Attack on Athens

Yesterday evening I was at home, snug and dry, when I noticed it started to rain. And it started to really rain, to pour down, thunder and lightning. I was feeling so good to be inside, warm and dry. Then for some undisclosed personal reason I had to go out on a mission. Part of this mission was going to be to get a taxi and go someplace. Mission impossible. Instead I decided to take all this as a personal experience and journalistic expedition. What else can you do when you get drenched in water to the bone...

Wer hätte gedacht, dass es in Athen einen Radweg gibt?

Das schöne an Athen ist, dass man immer wieder neues entdeckt: So zum Beispiel beim Besuch im Stadtteil Zografou. Dort habe ich nochmals einen Blick auf meine neue Unterkunft geworfen, um zu schauen, was ich an Möbeln und weiterem Wohngerümpel noch brauche[1]. Und was entdecke ich auf dem Rückweg? Einen Radweg. Ohne Scherz, die Gemeinde Zografou hat scheints sowas eingerichtet. Nicht, dass ich glaube, dass auch nur ein Einwohner des Grossraumes Athen wüsste, um was es sich da handelt. Immerhin waren keine Autos drauf geparkt, was schonmal ein Wunder ist.

Introduction to some Zope security settings

Say you have made your own disk based python product in Zope. Now we want to secure some of your methods. We have two classes of users, let's call them "Client" and "Supervisor". We have two sample methods, which we want to secure for who is allowed to view them. Let's call these methods "display_sprockets" and "display_sprocket_orders". Obviously mere Clients can't be allowed to see orders, only Supervisors should. We could click our way through ZMI, but we want this to be as smooth as possible when installing our product. So let's look at a sample setup...

Move, move,... moved! (partied too)

Yesterday was moving day. I did not go to work, but instead spent the morning packing things up. Then with the help of the gf (m4d gr33tz to you!), a couple of current and now ex-flatmates and Chris from work we moved everything downstairs. Four stairs of downstairs, especially for the big bookcase, which was plain hell. Chris took the heavy load on him, while Haralambos helped around the corners. More thanks to all of them. Read on for more on the move and a party...