Καθαρός αέρας

Δύο μέρες είναι τώρα που μπήκε ο καινούριος νόμος σε λειτουργία. Δύο μέρες έχουν περάσει που δεν καπνίζουν πια στο γραφείο μας. Η ποιότητα ζωής αναβαθμίζεται. Αυτό ισχύει για μένα που πάντα με ενοχλούσε ο καπνός, αλλά ισχύει και για τους καπνιστές και ας μην θέλουν να το πιστέψουν.

Εδώ και κάποιο καιρό αρχίζει να με ενοχλεί να βλέπω ανθρώπους που έχουν σημασία για μένα να καπνίζουν. Ίσως να με ενοχλεί γιατί έχοντας εμπειρία από άλλους πολύ κοντινούς ανθρώπους και τον εαυτό μου, βλέπω τη ζημιά που κάνουν στον εαυτό τους. Με ενοχλεί όμως και η έλλειψη σκέψεις στο όλο πράγμα. Ο καπνιστής στην ουσία είναι εξαρτημένος από τις καπνοβιομηχανίες. Το έργω με την "ελευθερία" και τα άλογα που τρέχουν στην άγρια δύση δεν έπαιξε ποτέ.

Όλο αυτό όμως έχουν μπει στην άκρη. Απλά μπορώ να αναπνέω καθαρό αέρα στην δουλειά. Οι σκέψεις τρέχουν πιο άνετα, πιο ελεύθερα.

Petralona Subway Train Station Out of Service

On my way to work this morning I took a different route, which had me pass by the Petralona (Πετράλωνα) station of the (ΗΣΑΠ) line 1 of the Athens Metro system. As you can see, one of the tracks is being completely reconstructed. It also looks like that will still take some time to finish. I like the area around the station. It has a very laid back, relaxed mood. There are some cafes and shops, but all in a quiet way. It's a nice way to get to work.

That station is currently out of service, the line is under reconstruction (see the announcement, which gives only the start date of the works). Trains pass the station, but they don't stop there. There are also some longish delays on the line.

If you need to get to Petralona, there are at least 2 options: Either get off at Tavros station, take the special bus 012 (which starts a short walk away from the station, as usual without signs in which direction you have to walk). Or you can take the Metro to Syggrou-Fix, walk a very short walk (up Δράκου/Drakou street, till Βεϊκού/Veikou street) and take the Trolley Nr. 15.

Update September 2009: The station is back in service in the direction to Kifisia. When you come from direction Kifisia and want to get out at Petralona, get off at Tavros instead and take the waiting train back to Petralona.

Garage Summer Towel

Going for a swim? My employer, the famous Graphics Garage usually sends out a bunch of funny / cool / interesting t-shirts to customers at the start of summer. This is a little business gift to let everybody remember that we're off for usually 2 weeks when all the rest of Greece is off too.

Well, this year the ideas ran into a different direction: We're sending out beach towels, complete with our "bolt" logo. Packaged in a nice little bag that you can sling on like a primitive backpack. Click on "continue reading" to see the towel itself...

Off the Net Again

For a very long time, the Internet connection at my home was working just so very fine. We're talking years now. Last week it decided to stop doing that. All the usual incantations of shutting down and restarting the router and other devices wouldn't help. I went and checked (and changed) cables... nothing.

So, off to do the boring deed of calling the provider (Vivodi), ah the joys of talking to the call center. Predictably they told me to do the same thing (the off/on game), check the cables, reset the router. Nothing. Then they asked me for my mobile number, as they would check things and call me back. Which they didn't. I kept on calling them day by day.

Today they told me, that there is a broken cable, a few meters from the telephone exchange (or however that is called) on the way to my house. Yeah, right, and that's why it's only our appartment that has the problem. Anyway, they have given a trouble ticket to OTE, which "owns" the last mile. I tell the guy in the call center: "So it's a matter of weeks now" and he responds "no no, just a few days". Yeah, right. Wish me luck, it being summer and all and digging in the streets being an ugly business when it's hot and when all the workers are on vacation. Assuming the story can actually be believed. Good for me that I have the means to get a connection over my mobile phone to post about it.

Authenticating Multiple Subdomains with CookieCrumbler

When Zope 2 devs want to provide users with an HTML login form, the tool to use is Shane Hathaway's CookieCrumbler product. On one of our sites, I wanted users to be able to authenticate with one login form to multiple subdomains: www.example.com, download.example.com, mail.example.com. Which, by the HTTP cookie specification is possible (it's not possible to have a cookie work on example.org and www.example.org - there have to be 2 dots in the domain). The CookieCrumbler code didn't allow for this, so I hacked a little patch together...

Summer is here

Took a boat yesterday night to flee the heat of Athens. Arrived this morning at 7 on Naxos, after only a brief sleep on the crowded ship.
Had a good nap and now am at a nice little beach for the first swim.
The sea is a bit cold and it's windy, But who cares, this is a fair change from the heat of the city.
Won't have so many chances for swimming during the week. Strange as it might sound, I am here to work. Like back in spring I brought the laptop to hack some code in a relaxed environment.

How to enable identd / auth on Mac OS X 10.4

IRC on the shell is fun... but some IRC servers require to get an auth response from your machine. Since I'm on a 3G connection right now and I wanted to IRC on Mac OS X... which doesn't run identd by default, I had a non-fun problem.

Now there are people saying that you need to install some software on Mac OS X to get identd (the "auth" service) running. At least for 10.4 this is not true, everything is still there in the system. Of course Apple is progressively trying to cripple the Unix base of the system, e.g. by replacing simple config files with weird xml setups. But still it's possible to get things going with built in tools.

So what did I do (apart from searching the f* web)?

Pastitsio Nudelauflauf

Den Gemüse- und Hackfleischauflauf Moussakas kennt man als typisch griechisches Gericht. Etwas weniger bekannt ist der Nudelauflauf Pastitsio. Auch hier ist Tomatensauce, Hackfleisch und Bechamel dabei.
Das hier im Bild ist aus der Taverne "Stelios" am Strand von Orko auf Naxos. Wunderbar gekocht von der Mutter des Hauses, das Ideale Powerfutter nach dem Schwimmen.

Quiet Evenings on Naxos

I've closed one week of working "out of the office" here on Naxos now. There were spouts of really good productivity, some slumps and some medium productivity times. Overall I'd say it was a week with above average output. I blame the quiet surroundings.

Here on Naxos all the stress of the city, all the running and reaching, worrying and trying seem to be far, far off. I can concentrate on work and on the view outside the window - which is nicer than in the city too, obviously (even though the new office is a huge step forward). On around Thursday some city business had reached me, but appart from that I had it all left behind and no worries.

Another part is that I gain two hours every day: Time that I would spend each day going and coming from work. Now I spend a part of it working longer and a part of it having time for myself. In the evenings I take walks or sometimes manage to get a ride to the beach. The beach is far away, I'm in the center of the island, far off from the tourist places.

The picture is from one of the evening walks. An olive grove, under the moon of the early evening. The heart longs to stay there, linger on, forget everything and let time pass as it does for these ages old trees. Their work is growing food, slowly and quietly since ancient times.