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Great advice for building your resume/CV

December 26, 2011 Nightwind No comments

Why your tech CV sucks is definitely a great title for an article about building good resumes/CVs. Although some people will see in author Dominic Connor only a frustrated headhunter in the employment industry, to me the article has a slight flavor that reminds me of Roger Ebert’s great book Your Movie Sucks.

Headhunter Dominic Connor forwards all the frustrations a human resources specialist faces when sorting out CVs. Bad spelling and funky colored paper can only scratch the surface. The article goes deeper, towards the significance and relevancy of information, its accuracy and trustworthiness. There’s no need to reiterate what Dominic says, but there is a slight need to dispute and underline some facts.

I already know you want to leave your current job or else we wouldn’t be talking. So why are you listing the defects of your employer? – I’m not so sure about that myself, save for the fact that in all my interviews in the past 4 or 5 years I’ve been asked why I want(did) to quit my current/former job. So putting it in a CV doesn’t seem so far fetched. Whether it’s defects with the employer or something else, it might be worth mentioning (statistically speaking from my point of view) unless told otherwise.

Miscellaneous cv, Dominic Connor, employment, human resources, resume

Bumpy Christmas for planes

December 25, 2011 Nightwind No comments

This years’ Christmas proved to be a bumpy one for aicrafts and airlines:

a Chinese fighter jet dived at an airshow, while the pilot ejected.
a German biplane crashes into a car. Miraculously, nobody got seriously injured.
a Korean Airlines Boeing with almost 400 people on board lands on its tail at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport (NRT). Bumpy ride for passengers but the airport still closed for an hour amid fears of an explosion. Again, nobody got hurt.
in Colombia, a small Cessna flipped over after what appeared to be a fairly normal touchdown. Guess that back wheel simply didn’t want to stay down.

Miscellaneous aircraft, airplane, flying, landing

Copyright: Cut Off the Middleman

December 24, 2011 Nightwind No comments

For years I’ve been preaching the removal of distributors from the distribution chain. Whether it’s books, movies or music, an artist can do better on its own. You’re a writer? Forget the publishing house, publish yourself! Musician? Distribute the music on your own, deal with a music store (Amazon, Apple) or setup your own site but cut out Sony.

A few years ago Red Hot Chili Peppers as well as U2 experimented successfully with self distribution. Now, a meager stand up comedian made a million in a few days by distributing his latest performance as an unprotected video file.

If a mediocre stand up comedian can sell his performance for $5 and make a million in a few days, just think what a Batman movie could bring if after a theatrical run it would be distributed like this. No more HBO, Sony, Paramount or anyone else, just a quick download, $5 instead of $40. I’d pay a movie ticket and then the download.

This proves once and for all that the issue is not that people simply want everything for free, just that the people hate the middleman that leads to triple prices.

Miscellaneous copyright, digital, distribution, middleman, movies, stand-up comedy

Airline news

December 19, 2011 Nightwind No comments

The outrageous CEO of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary strikes back: We don’t want baggage fees, we just don’t want your baggage!
Etihad picks up Air Berlin, nudges Lufthansa out of the way taking 29.2% off the German carrier. Thus, Air Berlin moves East, opening new airways into Abu Dhabi and the orient.
World airline awards 2011 tend to go East as well. Qatar is the best airline, followed by Singapore, Asiana and Cathay Pacific.
Asian airline are doing well: JAL is not only preparing a new website interface, but it is also repaying early parts of its loan.
ANA and Boeing relationship is marred by late deliveries.
BA and Virgin are competing to buy BMI from Lufthansa.
Chile’s LAN and Brazil’s TAM merge to form a supergiant airline: LATAM.

News & Politics airlines, aviation, ryanair

Romanian Internet Providers: upload vs download

December 19, 2011 Nightwind No comments

Getting Internet service in Romania is a difficult task because while there are many companies, there’s no competition. Each company has a slice of a given area and runs its service without much interference from the others. Thus you can reach ridiculous situations where you live across the street from a provider’s point of sale, but you can’t get service from them.

That means, discussing which is the best is a moot point. First reason is the aforementioned: it doesn’t matter which is the best, it only matters who servers your area. Then comes two: even for a given provider, the service quality for a given providers varies greatly even within the same city.

But there is still one thing common to most Romanian ISPs: generous download bandwidth but stingy upload. This stems mainly from the fact that the Romanian language doesn’t use its term for bandwidth for Interned. In fact, in Romanian we just say speed so the difference between bandwidth and speed melts to the point where regular customers can’t tell the difference. continue reading…

Miscellaneous bandwidth, broadband, connection, internet, isp, Romania

The price of sovereignty – Cameron vs European Union

December 12, 2011 Nightwind No comments

With great power comes great responsibility, Voltaire said and it’s a shame that French president Nicolas Sarkozy didn’t think of reminding those words to British Prime Minister David Cameron at Friday’s summit. After what happened in Brussels, the reactions were predictable: the British public were split with a heavy majority backing David Cameron (despite his statement that seems something taken out of a bad sitcom) and his populist decision. Opposite that, the rest of Europe called the United Kingdom a bunch of hypocrites.

Personally, I found more interesting to see what British Foreign Secretary William Hague had to say. His statement, debatable as it is, makes more sense and sounds more mature that the spoiled brat-like statement of David Cameron. But the question we must ask is, were the British right to snub the new treaty? To that end, let’s ask some more detailed questions.
continue reading…

News & Politics david cameron, european union, politics, sovereignty

How stupid can an Evangelist be?

December 12, 2011 Nightwind 1 comment

Before reading this, look here at what this idiot writes. According to him, Firefox is slow and buggy because of the web pages developers make, not because the people who develop Firefox made a piss poor job. So let’s put it out in the open. That’s retarded. Why?

the purpose of a web browser is to allow people to browse the web. Therefore the browser must be built so that it is able to load what the web is offering, not the web must be built to suit the capabilities of the browser. The idea that the web developers must adapt to the browser regardless of what the technology has to offer belongs to Microsoft and they failed miserably despite their monopoly in consumer OS
when it comes to Javascript, the developers don’t control the memory management. Javascript is not C, where the developer must be careful to allocate and deallocate memory. Garbage collection is handled by the javascript engine within the browser. Safari, Chrome, Opera, Konqueror, even Internet Explorer, they all handle jQuery without any issues. Firefox on the other hand dies if it has to handle AJAX requests for a while. Why the others can do a good job in making a good Javascript engine while Firefox fails?
the solution is simple. The Firefox Javascript interpreter should be able to handle AJAX. AJAX has been here for many years, there’s no reason why a modern browser would choke on Javascript. Internet Explorer used to suck at it too, but now it sped up past Firefox from most points of view.

Shame on brain-dead evangelists.

Coding evangelist, firefox, google chrome, javascript, web development

The attack of the eco-PC

November 30, 2011 Nightwind 2 comments

The Eco-PC is slowly becoming an new IT buzz. After all, we live in an eco-conscious world where the environment matters (or at least the new generation of eco-geeks think they have a better chance of getting laid if they claim that). Therefore, we need computing that’s friendly to the environment.

We already have LED TFT’s that don’t go much over 100W in consumption, but our desktop PCs still hit well over 450W and laptop chargers don’t shy in excess of 120W. Sure, netbooks and ultraportable laptops go for half of that, but you do have to cut on various luxuries.

The ARM architecture and its string of Cortex CPUs that we find in most smartphones and some netbooks is very eco-friendly. nVidia’s version, the Tegra and Tegra 2, integrate everything finally offering us the “computer-on-a-chip”. That’s nice, but the issue is that the only operating systems on the ARM are proprietary, boxed-in systems that don’t offer the functionality that Windows or Linux offer.

Is there hope? Sure, if we take a look at Evo’s two solutions (first and second). Average consumption of 14W, Intel Atom? Sure, that’s enough for a home media server. Hook it up to a couple of solar cells and you have something that will cost you a big nothing in terms of environmental impact or electricity bill!

But wait, there’s more! A $25 computer-on-a-chip dubbed Raspberry Pie is also available. Although only an ARM ~~Cortex~~ (edit: actually ARM11), the tiny tiny computer puts many other systems to shame boasting 1080p HD video decoding (the Eco-PC from Evo can also do that, but the video resolution is not supported).

The future looks bright for the resource-friendly eco-pc’s.

Tech & Reviews arm cortex, eco-pc, evo ecopc, raspberry pie, technology

Star Wars: The Old Republic – first experience

November 29, 2011 Nightwind No comments

It is hard when dealing with a well-known franchise. People have high expectations (especially plot-wise), there’s always something to nitpick on, especially when comparing to movies/books or previous cult games. Star Trek Online and Lord of the Rings online both have their appeal (the latter more than the former), but the first misses the mark with too much focus on space combat and the second dabbles in a linear storyline that while appealing to the fans, it lacks polish.

World of Warcraft manage to overcome this by simply ignoring the issue. There’s no real story to follow in WOW, but leaves the making of the world in the hands of the players, by giving them the means to live the game in a complex way. Its system (or lack thereof) proved successful and became a legendary success to the point where it sent its creation into ubiquity. ATL + Z is a standard of hiding an interface (much like what Windows did for CTRL + C/CTRL + V), an in-game public transit system, instances and many others, have spilled from WOW.
continue reading…

Miscellaneous fantasy, games, rpg, sci-fi, star wars, the old republic, warcraft, world of warcraft

NYPD responds to critics against Anthony Bologna

November 20, 2011 Nightwind No comments

Following the recent disclosure of videos showing a duo of brave NYPD officers (led by now famous Anthony Bologna) pepper-spraying peaceful protesters of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the NYPD initially remained silent after announcing an internal investigation (coincidentally or not, the police also sprayed students sitting down at UC Davis).

Today, the NYPD came forward to deny any wrongdoing. In short, this is what they said.

“
We stand by the actions of our brave officer who was forced to defend himself against a group of lunatic girls caught in a police net. The brave Anthony Bologna was fighting for his life as he was under attack by teenagers armed with bad grammar. Although it may not be apparent to everyone how bad grammar can be a life-threatening weapon, all you need to do is look at Hitler. We cannot accept that the lives of our police officers are put to the risk by foul-mouthed Gag-loving sparkly teenagers.”