When I’ve started working with Git, besides using the quick how-to guides from the official site, I’ve also wanted to read a more detailed book about how this distributed VCS tool should be used in order to benefit from all of its functionalities. One of these books is Pro Git by Scott Chacon, from Apress. [...]
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Since Ubuntu 9.04 appeared back in April, 2009, I’ve started building different scripts that use community supplied patches in order to make the install process of VMware Server as easy as it was supposed to be. Still it seems that many of the users of my scripts misinterpret the help I offered by asking questions [...]
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I have just seen the funniest and geekiest online video ever (via a buddy who sent me the link from the original site). Forget about Intel’s last advertising campaigns. Carefully watch the following one. DISCLAIMER: You must have some basic knowledge about Java, .NET, Microsoft, Linux and open-source. Otherwise you might fail to get the [...]
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Yesterday I have updated the OS on my iPod Touch 2nd generation to the latest release: iOS4. Because I have an “outdated” model I cannot enjoy the most appealing new features: multitasking and custom home wallpapers. While I can live well without the latter, the former would have been tremendously useful. The UI has changed [...]
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A few days ago I have finally finished reading the OpenX Ad Server: Beginner’s Guide book, by Murat Yilmaz, that PACKT publishing sent me for review. The book deals with the aspect of installing and configuring the open-source OpenX Ad Server in order to serve advertisement campaigns on your websites. Being a beginner’s guide, the [...]
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I was faced today with the problem of getting the difference between two JavaScript arrays. After Googling a bit, I haven’t found anything to catch my attention and so I decided to write my own function. It’s not the most efficient way of doing the job and probably not the most elegant either, but it [...]
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I was introduced to Oracle’s TopLink ORM package during my second internship at Oracle. Although the API (because TopLink actually became the reference implementation for the JPA 2.0) seemed a bit overwhelming at first, I’ve managed to get a grasp of it quite fast, allowing me to finish the assigned projects in time. The familiarity [...]
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A considerable amount of my diploma project runs on several virtual machines, due to the lack of multiple physical machines required for the job. Of course, Riker isn’t tailored for production regarding this project, but it was built specifically to allow me to develop the code without restrictions. For a load under 10 users I [...]
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Having to write an article dealing with a part of my diploma project for the Students’ Papers Session in my University, I discovered that some fonts (particularly “ș” and “ț”) were displayed awkward in Writer, the word processing software from OpenOffice.org. By awkward I mean that “ș” and “ț” were using other fonts than “s” [...]
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Booting Ubuntu from an USB stick is both fast and convenient: fast because an USB stick definitely has better R/W speeds than CDs, convenient because you can alter those files for how many times you want without buying several storage mediums (you could use a CD-RW, but that still would be slow). Nowadays USB sticks [...]
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A great man once said: Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;) While it works for him, for us pure mortals this trick doesn’t get the job done. That’s why we have to use backups. Protecting your data is [...]
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My move to HostGator was partly due to the fact that on my old host this blog got hacked. And judging by the impact, I suspect this was a server-side security breach because my DB was intact. Since then I’ve spent some time to secure my WP instance as much as I could given the [...]
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From Sunday, April 25th, this blog is hosted by HostGator.com due to some problems I have had with my hosting provider from Romania. Therefore I am sorry for the hiccups and downtimes you might have experienced that day and until Monday evening EET (UTC-2). From now on the downloads available from my Codebin (codebin.cotescu.com) are [...]


