Peterbe.com

Today I formally launch a new website: http://smurl.name

Smurl lets you generate aliases for looong URLs that you might want to paste into your emails (emails are often width-size limited) or SMS. Imagine sending this SMS to a friend:

Hi mate. Pls check out my new flat on the net: 
http://www.foxtons.co.uk/search?md5=908a5a01192
c89ed37d7a3ed7edbcdb1&currency=UKP&search_form
=map&search_type=SS&inst_ref=ir_myfr000056608&
submit_type=search

which could with a Smurl name be shortened to:

Hi mate. Pls check out my new flat on the net:
http://smurl.name/9c

The bad news is that this hasn't been done before. The most famous "competitor" is probably tinyurl.com and my hope isn't to become the worlds dominant short-url-forwarder. No, the purpose of building this is the underlying technology which is now released as Open Source which is called Smurler. This is a Zope product that anybody can install and then use how they like it with their own domain name or other settings. At work we might soon need something like this and since many of our commercial sites use Zope it will be a breeze to install and benefit from the Smurl functionality for various other applications.

With the default set of sample characters used for the Smurl names there are 1024 different 2-character Smurls, 32,768 different 3-character Smurls and 1,048,576 different 4-character Smurls which will last my quite long on that domain name alone.

There isn't much fluff to it yet. The smurl.name site has only one special user function and that is that it remembers all previous Smurls you have created. The next thing I might add is some basic statistics for the overall use. If you have any other ideas, let me know.

My colleague Jan discovers a nasty bug on Amazon.co.uk that I believe anybody can reproduce. It's actually a real showstopper that prevents a shopper from ordering the things they want to order.

The problem is that on the View Shopping Basket page, only 10 items are shown per page. The 11th and 12th and so on, those items can't be changed (such as removed). So what do you do if you've decided not to buy that 11th book? Since you can only see the first 10 on the View Shopping Basket page, you might think that if you can delete the top couple of items, thus shrinking your list to say 8 items. What happens then is that you get a blank View Shopping Basket :) The total price is correct but apparently your shopping basket is empty. (see screenshot) It also appears, that the only way to see your shopping basket list again is to add some more items so that you have more than 10 items in the basket. And remember, what happens when you have more than 10 items in the basket? Correct, you can't reach the 11th which you originally wanted to remove. D'oh! Amazon.

I was working on a little application that is similar to tinyurl.com (where any URL gets a unique random id that can be used to redirect with long clumsy URL strings) and came up with this little algorithm that I wanted to share with the world for some feedback.

There are two loops, one nested inside one big loop that goes on for infinity. The inner loop creates a list of possible combinations from a sample of letters and numbers eg (abc, acb, bac, bca, cab, cba). For each such found combinations it does a check to see if this has been saved before and if not it exists the loop like this:

if not hasattr(self, combination):
    return combination

If you're American and plan to move to England, you do right in have a read through of this list. It's a ridiculously long list of cockney slang words but rather straight foward English common words.

I've heard most of them but some I don't dare to use because as a foreigner they'd just sound silly. Now I've learnt what Spend a penny and Porridge means at least.

As an update to my previously mentioned 3D sidewalk paintings I give you these new fascinating pics of 3D sidewalk drawings that must not be missed. Enjoy!

This amazing hacker builds a camera (with its own custom built shutter) setup to photograph flying insects in his garden. I notice that he's got a Nikon camera with a 200mm lens and double flashlights.

To be honest I didn't read all of the text but by taking a step back and being just impressed with his willpower you get more impressed with his effort rather than the photos he produces. Yes, the sample photos are truely amazing.

I wonder if this has ever been done before? Taking pictures of sitting insects is one thing, but insects in flight I for one have never seen before.

Keep up the good work Frans!

There's lots of small pieces of knowledge in our company. Not the kind of knowledge that requires thinking but stuff like,

• where's the black stapler
• how to add a domain to the xyz-server apache config
• who to call to sort out the airconditioner

Most of this core "knowledge" we have tried to store in a relatively structured Wiki (we use zwiki) which has been a really good start. It's good because whenever I need to refresh my memory on some IP address or how to install a printer I can go to our company wiki and search for it there.

The problem is that it's such a choir to maintain the wiki. It takes several seconds to go there, log in and (biggest bore) to find the most appropriate places to write anything new or where to update something old. I know I sound disgustingly lazy, but when you have to do it many times per day you want the software to help you rather than being an obstacle. I'm now instead looking for a different solution: a blog!

Now I'm back from a weeks holiday on the island of Djerba which is a tiny island just "south-east" of Tunisia. Djerba is part of Tunisia and there's even a bridge across to the mainland.

It was Johan, Anna, Julika and me for a week. We relaxed, swam, tanned, ate, rode dromedaries and enjoyed the warming sun day and night. The highlight of the trip was the Sahara dessert excursion where we travelled by bus all the way out to the mighty Sahara dessert just in time to see a big glowing sun set in the mist over the dunes. We also, on that trip, stayed the night out there in the dessert and slept under the stars without distracting backlight from any city. Wow!

The hotel we stayed at was called El Andalouse which I can wholeheartedly recommend. Not expensive either and all people who worked there were really nice. They had a wonderful swimming pool and they didn't mind if we brought food to eat by the poolside.

I've got loads of photos that I'll upload as soon as I get a chance. Watch this space!

Brynhildur kindly points out that the English Semco website can be found on http://semco.locaweb.com.br/ingles/

Not a terribly good website but it works and I can read some more about the company I didn't already know. Since it's a bloody Flash site I can't link to individual pages I'd want you to visit, but when you go there be sure to find the "The SEMCO Management Model" which describes in simple and quick terms what this is all about.

There's also an interesting Timeline animation showing what they were up to in different years. Since I read the "Seven-day Weekend" a lot has changed in terms of their business offering. Nothing of what they do seems mainstream or at least they do well in rephrasing themselfs so that it doesn't sound mainstreamed.

PS. If you want to know why I'm blathering about this corporate website, read my review of The Seven-day Weekend

My latest CD I bought in a real shop was Ocatavarium by Dream Theater. It's fantastic! If you like crystal clear heavy metal with an impeccable musical production, then this is for you. Unlike the previous album, Train of Thought, this one is much lighter and even more accessible for non-death metal lovers. Some of the tunes remind me a bit about Muse's latest album Absolution but that's ok.

My favorite song is still Panic Attack but the second half of the song Octavarium is just absolutely marvelous! If you appreciate genuinely good music that will last for years to come, get this album too.