ForTheScience.org

Why Gaia?

Stefano Borini — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 19:41:57 +0000

Choosing the name of my new blog was a problem I worked on for some time. I wanted to stay within my domain, forthescience.org, and I wanted the blog to be mostly about simple living, outdoor activities, beekeeping, and so on, while maintaining a scientific approach to the presentation of these topics. I therefore needed [...]

The insane clauses of a university’s contract for a researcher position

Stefano Borini — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 18:30:29 +0000

Despite having left academia for good, and for all the best reasons, all my circle of friends and professional contacts is mostly in academia. Some time ago a friend forwarded me the following contract for a researcher position in a university of a non-European country. It should not come as a surprise that, in some [...]

What happened to ForTheScience?

Stefano Borini — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 11:03:40 +0000

There have been quite some changes in the past 24 hours, and a few more will follow: I changed the theme to Garland. I kept the green theme because I like it and it’s the traditional color of the chemistry degree in my native city. The theme is not perfect, and I am tweaking it [...]

Git stash size in the command line prompt

Stefano Borini — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:42:08 +0000

Too often I get confused with git when it comes to stashes. I tend to stash often, as I jump from a task to another or from a branch to another, but it already happened I forgot I stashed something. The stash grows and I don’t remember what each patch contains. Fortunately, I never really [...]

Can’t add widgets in Qt Designer? Don’t use Unity

Stefano Borini — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:53:05 +0000

I got around a problem in Qt designer that didn’t allow me to drop any widget. When I tried, I obtained the barred circle mouse pointer, instead of the plus. When dropped, the drop operation did not complete, and the receiving widget remained empty. Apparently, it’s due to some form of collision between designer and [...]

A good lesson in python and unicode

Stefano Borini — Sun, 05 May 2013 18:44:56 +0000

Ever wanted to understand more about unicode in python? This talk is a good explanation on how to deal with it properly

The modem dialup handshake analyzed

Stefano Borini — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 09:58:27 +0000

Those of you old enough to get internet connection with an empty can of beans connected to a string will probably remembered a coal-powered tool of the time, the modem. Its shrieks filled the beginning of an evening of bad GIFs, short web pages with <blink> tags, and plenty of telnet and IRC sessions. The [...]

Lack of usability in Gnome/Ubuntu

Stefano Borini — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 16:32:59 +0000

Maybe I should file a bug report on this, but it’s a nice example of lack of usability due to colliding needs: the need for a scrollbar in the terminal, and the need for window resizing. As you can see, the popup scrollbar always follows the mouse pointer, making it impossible to get the resize [...]

Telepresence robot: giving wheels to an iPad

Stefano Borini — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:17:43 +0000

I really love this thing. It is a telepresence robot with a stabilizer (similar to a Segway) which mounts an iPad as a “face”. I have no use for it, yet I’d really love to have one. Now imagine having a full exoskeleton version…

iSight stops working? Check google talk plugin.

Stefano Borini — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 21:54:22 +0000

Occasionally, my iSight stopped working, even in the middle of a Skype video session, with the camera in full control of Skype. Any effort to re-enable the camera failed with a “Camera in use by another application” message. I could not wrap my head around the issue, until I investigated a bit and I think [...]