To explain the title to non-Finnish speaking it translate something to: “The name won’t worsen the man if the man won’t worsen the name.”.
Another page has turned in my life! I’m now Tarmo Aidantausta and not Tarmo Friman anymore… It’s kind of weird, but then again it feels good at the same time. The reason why I changed my surname is that Aidantausta is a really rare surname and at the moment I’m the only male in our generation. It’s my mothers maiden name and because I’ve been raised by my mother, it just felt natural.
My parents divorced when I was something like three or so and I’ve never really got to know my biological father while I was still bearing his name. I don’t think that there’s really anything wrong with the name Friman but I guess Aidantausta is more the family I belong to. My grandparents and my few aunts are the only proper link in my fathers family I really keep in touch. Not to petty their impact on my life but more to embrace my mothers side of my family. I admire my inheritance also from the Friman family but come on Aidantausta-Friman is really far fetched. Besides it’s way cooler to have a surname which has ever had 36 members (me included)! Aidantausta is also more Finnish because Friman is actually Swedish and means free man. Of course having a Swedish name in Finland is very common since we were indeed once under their dominion.
Anyhow… I know it’s been a while (like two years now) since I’ve written anything and it kind of feels odd to blog again but I suppose I’ll get used to it. Now I had something to say and maybe I’ll have more to say while I’m writing my thesis which is about: “The common programming mistakes which lead to a security hole”. The title is still in draft phase but I suppose most of you get the drift of the subject. I still have almost two months before I have to deliver but I’m in a big hurry so we’ll see how it goes. I hope I have more to write soon…
Oh, yes indeed. The changes are really coming. I’m moving into a single room. Here are some facts about my apartment:
- Size: 29 m²
- Rent: 275 €/month
- Includes water, electricity and internet connection.
- Vertical location: 7th floor (How cool is that
I like my new apartment. Hopefully the move will go smoothly. I’ll rent a car from Jaatinen and my friends are going to help me carrying the things. It’s nice to have friends. 
University stuff
I’m just buried with work I have to do for the university. It’s scary. Thank goodness I got to relax a bit last weekend. Otherwise my head would’ve exploded. That’s not a nice feeling, I gather. Anyhow, basically I have to do courseworks, seminars, papers and all that shit. Then, it’s not even enough. The Project will start soon as well and with it few other modules. So I’m buried with even more work. I’m just going to have to get through until Christmas and see what I’m left with… It’s stressful but I think I’ll manage it. If I can’t I just have to leave something out. It’s so simple.
People
I hope Bogdana will get a new job soon. I think she will, she’s one of those people who gets usually what she wants and she is really talented, brilliant lady.
I hope that Tero’s bike will have bad charm on the idiot who stole it. I detest thieves, you’re all just bunch of sad wankers!
End of stuff
Apparently at least some of my exchange students are having fun. Anyway… I’m off again. Laters.
So, a lot has happened since I last blogged. Here’s a short list:
- I went to Romania to see Bogdana and Dracula. (Love you btw, thanks for everything and I hope I can visit you some day again.)
- I worked until 1.9. when my contract ended. (It’s nice beeing a summer trainee.)
- I tutored few exchange students who came to Jyväskylä around 29.9.(A lot of fun, cheers for Philipp, Jordi, Maria, Yu-Jin and Kyung-Duck, my tutor group.)
- Me quite a bunch of different people while I’ve around the exchange circles.
- Separated from my girlfriend. (Not so fun but this is for best for both of us.)
- Been studying a lot lately. (Took a whole lot of modules and it’s going to be a busy Fall.)
- I turned 23 on 13.9. (Scary stuff. I’m like, old and so on…)
- Got information about a apartment where I’m going to move on 1.11. (It’s my first own apartment. I’m excited!)
That’s a general overview of my life and happenings after my last post. A lot of insignificant stuff was left out but that’s always how it goes.
Hey! I almost forgot that I bought a Nintendo DS Lite in the end of August. It’s amazing! I also got if flashed by my dear friend Pasi who had the needed gadgets to do it. Then I bought a 1Gb MicroSD card, USB2 compliant card reader and SuperCard Lite. Now I have a Nintendo DS Lite PDA! It’s nice and cuddly.
Well, that’s it, so long, until the next time…
I’m been spammed by this Chinese spam bot. It tries to post on my non-existing guestbook by loading /?guestbook&action=write and generating dummy hits on my wordpress blog front page. Today I decided to stop that.
Ingredients
- Apache
- Apache mod_rewrite module
- .htaccess love
Steps
- 1. Create, if you don’t already have, a .htaccess file in your document root (ie. mine is /home/username/public_html/)
- 2. Edit your .htaccess file and add following lines
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^guestbook&action=write$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ / [G]
</IfModule>
Now you are done and that url returns now 410 error code, which means the resource is gone.
Yesterday I booked the return tickets from Helsinki to Bucharest from Kilroy Travels. It was ~500 euros for both of us. So not that bad. \o/
Now the I just need to pressure/convince Philip to come as well… We’ll see how it goes. I’ve been trying that already few times with no luck yet. Me and Bobby just have to unite our forces.
Well, I was asked to do a suggesting text-box for one field in the UI so that it would be easier to type in the info which apparently is the one they make most of the errors. I did it with some script.aculo.us love. It’s nice that they have pretty good docs.
So basically what you have to do is include
<head>
...
<script src="scriptaculous/lib/prototype.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="scriptaculous/src/scriptaculous.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
...
</head>
Then add
<label for="signum">Signum</label>
<input id="signum" name="item[signum]" type="text" />
<div id="signumhint" class="signumhint"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
// <![CDATA[
new Ajax.Autocompleter("signum","signumhint","AjaxController.php?get=signum", {})
// ]]>
</script>
Then add process the request, this is from my AjaxController.class.php draft
function handleRequest($post, $get) {
if(count($post) <= 0 && count($get) <= 0) {
return null;
}
if($post['item']['signum'] != null) {
$signums = $this->getSignums($post['item']['signum']);
}
$this->makeUnorderedList($signums);
$this->printList($signums);
}
function makeUnorderedList($results) {
$unorderedList = Array();
$unorderedList[] = '<ul>';
foreach($results as $result) {
$unorderedList[] = '<li>'.$result.'</li>';
}
$unorderedList[] = '</ul>';
return $unorderedList;
}
function printList($unorderedListArray) {
foreach($unorderedListArray as $item) {
print $item;
}
}
You also need to edit your css so that the hints div will look nice. It’ll be populated data. In here the hints field css looks like this:
.signumhint {
position: absolute;
font-size: 0.8em;
background-color: white;
left: 8em;
z-index: 100;
}
.signumhint ul {
list-style-type:none;
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.signumhint ul li.selected { background-color: #ffb;}
.signumhint ul li {
list-style-type:none;
display:block;
margin:0;
padding:0;
height:32px;
cursor:pointer;
}
And voila, you’re good to go.
Since I came back from London, I swore I’ll visit Vlad aka Bobby, good one Phil, in Romania. So we’ve, me and Johanna, have been planning this for quite a while now. What it all comes down now is if we Johanna can get her vacation on 4.8.-7.8. and when that’s sure we’ll book the tickets. Hopefully that will cleared either today or tomorrow because I want the tickets as cheap as possible
I’m really looking forward to see Bucharest and Transylvania. I’m really grateful to Bobby that she has invited us there and promised even to plan schedule there. That’s just brilliant. I’ve invited her to Finland in return but I she hasn’t been interested yet. Anyhow, I’ll take her some Gilmore Girls and maybe something else as well… We’ll see.
What I’ve been doing lately? Well, work, visiting Johanna in Jokioinen and that’s about it. Oh yes, and watching soccer as well Which Johanna doesn’t really appreciate. Anyway the near future holds brilliant times because there’s Ruisrock with Tool next sunday and Ilosaarirock a week after that. So my weekends have been booked in advance for quite a while now. I probably have to take next monday off free from work because Tool stops playing at 0.30 at the earliest so I doubt I can get proper sleep if I’ll try to travel to Jyväskylä same evening.
Anyway I’ll put up some pictures soon enough to everyone see. I haven’t even delivered pictures to Ananda from the Oxford trip so I have to do that as well… Cheerio for now.
Whoop-di-fucking-doo!, I didn’t know that getting Oracle database connectivity in PHP 4.3.9 could be this hard to get working. Here are the tricks.
- Find oracle-instantclient-basic-10.2.0.2-1 as RPM.
- Find php-oci8-4.3.9-3 as RPM.
- Install them, restart apache and you’re done.
Sounds easy? Well it’s not. Reason: those packets were hard to find in the first place. Why? Apparently oracle doesn’t want the instant client to be found as rpm. Most of the howtos you’re told to compile PHP from tarball and that’s just not the way you want it to be done. Anyhow I succeeded and now i can use AdoDB to connect oracle database. You know that oci8 is working when you check phpinfo() for oci8 module enabled
I wish… It’s extremely annoying to work in conditions where you have to be in a room a day where the temperature is about 30 degrees Celsius. There’s no fucking sense in this. I want air conditioning! Or at least some sort of cooler. I’M SUFFERING!
Edit: I got a cooler, now it’s not so bad. \o/
UI designing
I’ve started designing the user interface for the Receipt loan system. I’m making it like a webshop of some sort because the nature of the loans can varie a lot. There can be many different kinds of items connected to one loan from magazines to maps. So the nature of webshop like surfing and selecting items should suite the needs quite nicely. When you’ve selected all of your stuff then you just click Loan and the system does the tricks for you.
