Strainu onLine

I haven’t written anything on the blog in a while, so I thought it’s time to brag a little about the latest developments 🙂

I’ve been to eLiberatica to meet people from other open-source communities. It’s been a nice experience, that you can read and see pictures about it here (in Romanian). Things are actually going pretty well with the openSUSE community. I’m going to the openSUSE conference in September, and Alex will probably come too.

On a more personal note, the last 4 months of running are beginning to show, and I’m confident that I’ll be ready to run 8 km at Tusnad Marathon.

The rest of my life isn’t going that well though. I want to post some weekend trips to the site, as well as some new (or rather old) code, but between school and work, I just don’t find the time for it. I’m also looking for some summer holiday ideas, but it seems my friend group has pretty much split apart.

I’m going through a wiki-phase, characterized by the despair of writing for the 20-30 people who participate on ro.wp actively. Therefore, I’ve decided to take a break, read their blogs and see what happens.

Anyway, I haven’t given up on any of these issues yet, so I’ll eventually write those posts and go back to Wikipedia.

Fig. 1: The Add Security window in GNUCash

GNUCash has a very good automatic price retreival utility, based on the Perl Finance::Quote library. Unfortunately, the sites it is using to get the data from don’t have any quotes from the Romanian markets.

Therefore, I decided to write my own modules, and I started with the Bucharest Stock Exchange, since their data was reliable and available in a accessible format.

Here is how you can add this package to your own system:

1. Install Perl. If you’re using Linux, you probably already have it. Write perl -v to find out the version you have. If you’re using Windows, ActivePerl or Strawberry Perl should do the trick.
2. Install Finance::Quote. GNUCash offers an automated program to do that.
   1. Make sure GNUCash is not running.
   2. In Linux, open a root shell and write update-finance-quote. In Windows, go to the start menu and you will find a shortcut to a BAT file called „Install Online Price Retreival”.
3. For now, the script is not yet included in Finance::Quote and must be installed separately.
   1. Download the provided archive and extract it along with the rest of the Perl scripts for Finance::Quote (you will see the download path during the installation). Make sure the Finance folder overwrites the current folder.
   2. In the Finance folder you will find 2 files named Quotes.pm and Quotes.pm.patch. You can apply the patch by using the command patch Quotes.pm Quotes.pm.patch On Windows, just open the Quotes.pm file in Notepad, search for a line that begins with @modules = and add BSERO to the list of modules.
4. Start GNUCash and go the the Tools->Security Editor menu. You will see a window similar to the one on the left side of Fig. 1.
5. Click on the Add button. A new window, just like the one on the right side of Fig. 1 will appear. Let’s say that you want to get the stock price for Banca Românâ pentru Dezvoltare (symbol: BRD). You add the following information in that window:
   1. Full Name: Banca Română pentru Dezvoltare
   2. Symbol: BRD (this is very important, as this is the search criteria)
   3. Type: BSE (or BVB, or whatever you want)
   4. Check the Get Online Quotes checkbox. Three new options will be activated.
   5. 

      Fig.2: Automatic price retreival

      Choose Type of quote source: Unknown

   6. From the drop-down choose bsero.
   7. Click OK twice and you’re ready to test it.
6. Go to the Tools->Price Editor menu. You will see the dialog in Fig. 2. Click the Get Quotes button and you should see a new price appearing. You can notice the source is „Finance::Quote” and the price is the correct one for that date. If you wish, you can check it on the BSE website.

After the bad experiences I had with BTAM, I decided to try my luck with the Asset Management division of the biggest romanian bank, BCR. As with most bank-owned funds, you can buy units from the bank itself.

So I went to one of the big branches, I went in and asked where I could buy some units from their funds. The young lady at the reception pointed me to the manager’s office (which was on another entrance). It seemed that I could only buy units from the manager… whatever. I went to the office where I was met by an old, respectable lady which politely asked me if I had an account at the bank. When I said „no”, she asked for my ID so she could open one, because „fund units can only be paid for by bank transfer”. Considering my past experiences with that bank, I took my ID and left right in that moment.

That could have been the end of it, but based on my experience with BTAM, I decided to write them an email. After about a week, in which the email passed by 4 of their employees (ofcourse, the headers were still there), I received an email from someone apologizing for the problem and inviting me to contact them in order to buy those unit. I suppose that in the banks, an email is not yet considered as a valid mean of contact…

Începând de astăzi, utilizatorii Wikipediei în limba română care utilizează Linux, Windows Vista sau au ultimele actualizări de fonturi de la Microsoft pot vizualiza articolele folosind diacriticele corecte (cu virgulă, nu cu sedilă).

Pentru a realiza acest lucru, mergeți în pagina de preferinţe, tabul Gadgeturi și bifați opțiunea numită „Diacritice corecte”. Trebuie să aveți activat și Javascript.

Scriptul are și unele limitări, cauzate de performanța sistemului. Pentru a reduce durata de încărcare a paginii, nu sunt transformate decât diacriticele din articol, nu și din interfață. De asemenea, sunt ignorate literele din formulare (formularul de editare a paginilor, inclusiv legăturile de sub el şi formularul de căutare), paginile conținând javascript și paginile speciale.

Pentru cuvintele în turcă, care TREBUIE să conţină litera Ş (S cu sedilă), am pus la punct un mecanism de ignorare a acestor cuvinte. Pentru amănunte, vizitați pagina aceasta.

Sursa programului este disponibilă la diacritice.js.

De când m-am întors din Franţa mă bătea gândul să mai încerc să mai fiu asistent la Calculatoare. Am tot amânat o decizie, nefiind prea hotărât, dar azi m-am decis cât se poate de brusc: nu mai vreau să aud de şcoli şi cercetare decât dacă o să ajung muritor de foame. Mai bine zeci de ore de şedinţe şi formulare şi birocraţie decât umilinţele din şcoli!

Motivul revoltei mele îl constituie maică-mea, profesoară la un liceu din Bucureşti. A venit azi la mine să mă întrebe dacă pot s-o ajut să facă rost de MathType (versiunea profesională de Microsoft Equation Editor). De ce avea nevoie? O anumită editură i-a cerut să îi ajute cu rezolvarea (în 2-3 zile de la apariţie) a subiectelor de bac de anul acesta. Rezolvarea trebuie formatată folosind softul ăla, care costă vreo 97$ la liber şi jumate pentru şcoli.

Eu ca prostul am întrebat cât o plătesc, la care răspunsul a fost: „nimic, dar îmi apare numele acolo şi se consideră activitate de cercetare”. 😐 Carevasăzică, în timp ce editorii se umplu de bani din cărţile astea, profii care le scriu cartea şi le-o şi vând primesc… mulţumiri. Scuipa-v-aş între ochi de jegoşi!

Following all the bad news I’ve heard about RDS in the last years (the quiet doubling of tariffs, the lost invoices, the crappyservice, etc.) I was very annoyed when I found out I had to pay some money for their phone service. The sum was very small, but as I didn’t remember to have used that phone, I was worried that they maight try to overcharge me.

I called their customer service line and demanded to get a detailed invoice within the months with problems. The person at the other end of the line was very kind and professional. She told me that I could get that data by email, took my data and opened a support ticket for me, than gave me the number. She also told me she could not give me an ETA for the response, but it usually goes pretty quick. In fact, in a couple of hours I had received a response and the situation was cleared.

This might seem as normal to foreigners, but for RDS client, such a happy ending is rather rare.

Last Thursday was the launch day for OpenSUSE 11.1. As I told you before, I’m involved in translating this Linux distribution in Romanian, along with Alex and Daiana. This effort was not so well known, so we decided to make a site to make it known.

So, at suseromania.ro you will find news about openSUSE and the Romanian translation team, along with some unusual tutorials and original reviews, plus a forum (in Romanian, of course). Enjoy!

Yesterday arrived the official letter from ANSPDCD, which informed me that the company was fined. Yeey!

There’s been a lot of fuss these last days about the opening of 4 more stations of the Bucharest subway. Unfortunately, the 19-years long, 175 million euros project was just another leftover from the communist era. Will it help the development of the eastern part of the city? Sure, but it will also cause further crowding in the main exchange stations.

What Bucharest needs is a true intermodal transportation network. A first step was the made around 2003, with the opening of the passageway between the Crângaşi metro station and tramway station. There are also hopes for a „train to the plane” (the metro to Otopeni) and „automobiles on trains”. These are all important parts of a true intermodal transport network, but each development is made separately, without thinking about connections.

Add talked about „park and ride” on the newly opened line. What I want to talk about today is the other end of the future M3 line, the exit from Bucharest onto A1. Near Păcii station there is an old bus terminal, from which buses leave to many cities in Muntenia. As you can see from this article (in Romanian), the terminal itself is very clean and comfortable, but the area around it is in ruins and many bus companies prefer to avoid the tolls by using the streets in the zone for departures.

If the City Hall’s transportation department would be serious about intermodal transportation, it would take some measures for cleaning up the area. First of all, it should do daily sweeps with the police and get read of the bus companies leaving from other places. That would free up the traffic in the area, especially because that’s also the place where Iuliu Maniu Bvd. get from 4 lanes to only 2.

Then, it should build a direct passageway from the metro to the bus terminal. This would cut transfer time by 5 to 10 minutes and reducing the risks for the commuters (it’s an adventure to cross the boulevard now). Of course, the subterranean access should be accessible for the disabled.

The unused space of the terminal could be used for a parking. And for the parking ticket, you could get a 1 day ticket on RATB+subway – the classic „park and ride” scheme. And if there still is some leftover space, a small park would do wonders for the area.

Unfortunately, this is just wishful thinking from me. A passage costs much more than a street crossing and the terrain could be disputed by former owners. And most importantly, the politicians must decide that this project is not impeding on their little „affairs”.

Dobitocimea de la Banca Transilvania a descoperit brusc puterea blogurilor. Vă las să apreciaţi 2 mostre de umor ardelenesc şi logică bancară. Restul răgetelor le-am şters din cauza lipsei de logică.

Ce n-au aflat indivizii aceştia (pe lângă cum să ascundă adresele de email) e că degeaba îşi storc creierii să găsească nick-uri inteligente dacă scriu de pe o adresă IP ce le aparţine. Mă ofer să le ţin nişte cursuri gratuite de reţelistică şi bun simţ.

Îi informez pe această cale că mă doare-n $%^& de ce cred ei despre ANSPDCD sau despre mine. Problema e că fiind „foarte ocupat” cu trimiterea de sesizări nu mai am timp să mai fac şi selecţia spamurilor, aşa încât reţeaua 194.145.238.0/24 ia o pauză pe termen nedeterminat de pe blogul ăsta.