chuso.net

Coriolis Effect and drains, again

It's a widely held belief that water falls down the drain turning in the same direction in one hemisphere of the Earth and the opposite direction in the other hemisphere.
I remember, an X-Files episode (which implies that this happened about 15 years ago) where Mulder saw the water falling down the drain turning clockwise and that, Scully, is impossible because we are in the northern hemisphere and water always turns counterclockwise here.
It's also quite famous that episode of The Simpsons in which Bart rides a mess with Australia on account of the water spinning in different directions depending on the hemisphere you are on. It is a premise that is repeated several times on the episode giving it as true, to the regret of those who are hardcore fans of this show and feel sorry about its continued lurching between episodes that defend critical thinking, positivism and rationalism in contrast to other episodes that do just the opposite defending pseudoscience, postmodernism and magical thinking. Fortunately, it seems that the times of magic in The Simpsons are left in the past (excepting those pleasant Halloween specials) and ultimately the rational option is gaining ground. Or maybe it's just what I want to think.
Actually, Bart's attitude during the chapter is quite strict from a scientific point of view, the problem is with the facts observed during Bart's experiments. Lisa transfers to Bart her beliefs about drains. But Bart, instead of accepting it without doubts, adopts a skeptical attitude and is willing to test it and try to nullify it. Since he doesn't find a counterexample in a first trial, he provisionally accepts the hypothesis but goes on doing more experiments in search of a counterexample. And so it ends up causing the conflict with Australia.
During the chapter, Bart confirms in each trial that water turns in the direction predicted by the hypothesis, but would it be the same in the Real World ™ instead of a cartoon world? How many of those who have heard this belief have acted the same way? How many have tested the transmitted hypothesis? Anyway, recently, the same day, two separate and distinct people said quite convinced to me the plausibility of this hypothesis, but I could not just accept it. I could not deny it either without a counterexample. I had to test the hypothesis, do the experiment and then say what I have to say about it with some basis. And this is the result:


My complaint to TED about TEDxValenciaWomen

La pulga snob - Sexista
La pulga snob - Sexista

This Saturday, December 1st, a TEDx event was held in Valencia: TEDxValenciaWomen. Two other TEDx events were held this weekend in Spain: TEDxGalicia and TEDxPonferrada on Friday, but I couldn't pay attention to those two because it was a weekday, I'll wait for the videos to be published.

TED events are a set of conferences where speakers can talk about different topics. Originally these were mostly technological topics, as the name suggests. Later they were opened to some other topics having as objective dissemination and science. Then more topics where allowed and nowadays they cover a lot of issues and their current slogan is "Ideas worth spreading". Although opinions have emerged lately that say TED principles have gradually been corrupted to accommodate other ideas that do not deserve so worth spreading.


The umpteenth moving

Since I first set up this web page, six years ago, I moved its hosting four times. I don't know if this is too much, but it looks so for me.
And the reason for so many movings is that I used poor quality web hostings. I've never worried about having a good web hosting since I maintain this web site as a hobby and it won't be a great disaster if the web is offline for a while, so I never spent any money in hosting. This is why I was tolerant of some bad service, since I was not paying for it. But my patience is not infinite.
The last time I moved, I did it to 000webhost and I had been using it for several years and I was moderately satisfied even with its poor unsatisfactory operation, its common web downtimes, its even more common MySQL downtimes and that, of course, every time there is a problem with the servers, we the free users are the first to suffer it.
So some time ago I decided to move the site to my company servers. But, you know, I became lazy, I procrastinated… but then those nice people at 000webhost, Hostinger, Hosting24 or whatever they are called today decided to push me to do it by shutting down my web page without previous announcement because of an excessive processor usage... Excessive processor usage! A WordPress blog with less than 30 visits per day!
On top of everything else, since my account is suspended, I can't neither get log files to see what happened with that supposed excessive processor usage nor download web files and database.
Luckily, I had a backup of the whole site (excepting last two posts that I was able to recover from Google cache) and finally I moved to which I hope will be the final hosting: TICaaS hosting cluster by Ulteria Comunicaciones. Where, since we have full control over the servers, I hope my problems and limitations will finish.


kdepim-runtime patch for standard IMAP flags in KMail (KDE bug 291332)

This is a situation that I found at work: I use KMail and my co-workers use Thunderbird. We use a shared e-mail account and, when they reply to a message, I can see it as replied, but when I reply to a message from KMail, only KMail can see it as replied.
You can imagine where the problem may be and, after a little research, this is what I found.


The ingredientes of the success

Crepes cas' de Xulián
  • Two litres of water
  • 5 or 6 large spoonfuls of sugar
  • Salt
  • Some lemon juice
  • 9 eggs
  • Half glass of water
  • 1 kg. of flour
  • Fat (to grease the frying pan)

As you put them out of the frying pan, you spread each one with anisette using a small brush and sprinkle with some sugar.


Anyone can make a web page

The title of this post is ambiguous, since it can be interpreted as "making web pages is something easy for everyone" or as "even the most inept is allowed to make a web page".
This ambiguity is intentional, since experience has shown me that both interpretations are correct, in fact often the first implies the second.

'Cause although anyone can make a website, not everyone can make any web page. It is not the same to make a blog on Blogger than to develop the Facebook website.


Why I use Opera

Well, when I was exchanging tweets with @dsubies I said that I am an Opera user and he asked me why I use Opera. Since 140 characters are too few to explain it I said him that I will answer him here. Well, long after that, here is the answer.

At the time I started using the Internet the only serious alternatives were Internet Explorer (I'm sorry, I said serious) and Netscape Navigator. Then I discovered Opera, which included interesting innovations like tabs, pop-ups blocker and a download manager. Approximately at the same time, I started using Linux and one of the more exasperating things were the horrible look, the uncomfortable toolkit, which I think it was some Athena variant (I can't explain this, those who lived with this will understand it) and the instability of Netscape for Linux. A few later, while Netscape slowly died in hands of AOL, Firefox appeared, characterized by its resources voracity and its slowness, increasing my bet for Opera. If you add this to the fact that I used to have old computers, I really needed to use a light and agile browser.


Why DRM sucks

Some time ago I bought an eBook in PDF format. Yes, I paid for it. And it seems that the distributors thought that it would be a great idea if I couldn't open the file with any PDF reader or if I couldn't select, copy or print text from that book, so they protected it with a proprietary plug-in for Adobe Acrobat.

Now I need to read this PDF, so I thought that I would have to install that plug-in, but then I realized that the plug-in is no longer maintained (at least for Linux) and it doesn't work with current Acrobat versions so I can't read the PDF I paid.


Fighting Firefox password reminder

The situation is as follows: a website which, after logging in with a username and a password, allows you to register new users and a Mozilla Firefox user with the option to remember passwords enabled.

The case: the user adds a new account or logs in with an account and then edits this account from another account.

The problem: When the user is adding the new account Firefox will fill the fields with the user and password of the current account. When the user is editing an existing account Firefox will fill the fields with the username and password from the account being edited —which is also in the password reminder— if the user is not editing the account with the intent to change its password will not notice that only the first of the two fields "Password" and "Repeat password" is filled, so when the user tries to save it will display "Passwords don't match" error.


Linux kernel module that allows you to set events on pressed keys

As a probe of the use of kprobes for Extension of Operating Systems I have made a Linux module that allows you to execute a command for every pressed key and see its keycode.

It includes some sample scripts that can be used as the command to be executed on every key pressed, these scripts are:

  • keylogger

    Registers every pressed key in a file.

  • printscr

    If framebuffer is enabled it allows doing a console screenshot using print screen key.