Yaro's Blog

Upgrading Trac

jarek.woznica — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:35:39 +0000

Trac is a great tool but upgrading it may sometimes be tricky. If you are using FreeBSD than the easiest way is to use the portupgrade tool, however if you have multi-project configuration (and fcgi) than take a copy of your trac.fcgi file as it is overwritten by the upgrade tool (and the error output from trac is really very ugly).

After the upgrade you just need to put back these three lines:

import os
os.environ['TRAC_ENV_PARENT_DIR'] = “/path/to/your/projects”
os.environ['PYTHON_EGG_CACHE'] = “/path/to/your/plugins-cache”

Poland - Germany 0:2; no history, but it is not over yet

jarek.woznica — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:31:53 +0000

Two years ago in the last World Cup tournament Poland, on their very first game, lost to Ecuador 2:0. After the match I wrote here that it was a disaster, shame and disappointment. It was very sad to watch our team playing a very bad football. They were disorganised, not focused and not playing together - there basically was no team at all. It was proved in the later two games too.

This time however I think that the story is different - we were watching a totally different team, tahn two years ago.

Although Poland lost to Germany I believe that this time Polish fans do not have to be ashamed of their team. Poland’s team played a very good football, very fast and organised, they were not intimidated by definitely stronger opponent, they had creative ideas and posed a real threat to German team. I think they were just a bit unlucky no to score in yesterday’ match. Even if you did not support any of the two teams - I believe both of them created a very good show to watch.

This all means that Poland’s team will still have a say in this group - after seeing Croatia and Austria playing yesterday I believe that Poland is much stronger team than the other two and they have very real chances to win the two remaining games in the group stage. This would let them to qualify to the next stage.

In my opinion the greatest credits should be given to the new manager, Leo Beenhakker, who transformed the Polish national team, gave the players the confidence, inspired them and put a new spirit in their hearts. He made Poland to qualify to Euro tournament for the first time in history, and I believe he will make them to go even further.

Worldclock

jarek.woznica — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 12:55:13 +0000

My wife has sent me very interesting link to even more interesting worldclock. See it here

The Economist - Audio Edition

jarek.woznica — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 10:49:56 +0000

I have been subscribing The Economist for over two years now. I think it provides quite good overview of international affairs with a minimal bias. However, I find it difficult to read all articles and sections that I am interested in, simply because of lack of time…

Recently, The Economist started providing an audio edition of the magazine and this is something I really needed… At my work I am doing lots of traveling, mostly by car, so reading the magazine while on the road is not an option; now I can listen to all my favorite sections and articles - now I feel I am really using my subscription to nearly its full extent Thank you Economist, perfect idea!

Time tracking

jarek.woznica — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:06:15 +0000

A friend has recommended very cool tool, allowing you to track and record the time you have spent on various tasks. It’s easy, small, provides you with interesting reporting capabilities and is free
Excellent if you want to find out where all your time has gone and improve your time management. You can get it here: slimtimer.com

six years passed..

jarek.woznica — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:30:33 +0000

It has been six years today, since I left Poland and moved to Ireland. It is hard to believe how quickly this time has gone by. Coming to Ireland and living in this country was one of my dreams, which came true. Looking back, I am pretty sure it was a good decision, but thinking about it now I am not sure whether I would be brave enough to make it again. It was a tough decision. Leaving the comfort zone, the family, friends, people and places I know, was not easy at all. Finding myself in this new place, even such a nice place like Ireland, was also very hard at the beginning. But in the same time this move helped me to realise many other plans and other dreams. I can just hope I made most out of this last six years and did not waste that much time. I am very happy where I am now, living in Ireland with my beloved wife and our six months old daughter. I met many good people, and many of them are now my friends. My life, and myself have changed so much since 2001, but I feel it has all changed for a better…

unholy alliance

jarek.woznica — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:05:37 +0000

It took place at Dulbin’s music venue The Point and featured “Children of the Bodom”, “Lamb of God”, “In Flames” and of course “Slayer” with Dave Lombardo, their incredible drummer. Lots of good noise Apart of Slayer I also really enjoyed In Flames. They have good frontman who knows how to make a dialog with the audience.

It has been some time since the last time I was on the heavy metal gig, and I nearly forgot how cool it is. Have to do it again soon. Now I just can’t wait when we go to Poland in a week time and I will play on my drum set again

entry from palm

jarek.woznica — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 10:54:32 +0000

So I got my tungsten t3 palm and now tesing the Internet connection over wifi card Ijust purchased. cool

Polish community in Ireland

jarek.woznica — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 08:04:40 +0000

While browsing my usual website for Polish news Gazeta Wyborcza, just by accident I noticed an ad banner on top of the page - to my surprise it was… Eircom’s advertisement all in Polish, obviously targeted to Polish community in Ireland :). When clicked on the banner, Eircom’s website opened… again, all in Polish Eircom PL. The link to this page is also available from their main website Eircom’s main website

It is amazing how much things have changed since I arrivied here nearly 6 years ago. I have also heard about Polish leaflets available in EBS and Bank of Ireland, and recently saw an electronic information point (I think there is a proper name for this) in Bank of Ireland branch displaying multilingual information, including Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and few more :). Government agencies also have multilingual brochures, online resources etc. (for example Oasis).

I think in relatively small country like Ireland, with population of around 4 million, a community of approximately 200K (no one knows exaclty), a 5%, is a significant buying force, which companies do not want to ignore. There are Polish shops, newspaper, restaruants here, they are all run by Polish people, now Irish companies are opening to imigration communities, definitely seeing opportunities there Interesting developments

survey generator

jarek.woznica — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 00:14:07 +0000

I am working on my master’s reseach dissertation at the moment. Conducting a research forms a part of my thesis. I am doing both, quantitative and qualitative research. Qualitative research is just an in-depth interview, while quantitative involves sending a survey to chosen research population. I’ve decided to use an online survey, as I believe this will give me a chance to get higher respnse rate, and is quicker to get results than sending questionnaires by ordinary mail.
I have purchased a domain to host the online survey on it, as I did not want to use services like surveymonkey. Not because I don’t like it - in fact it is great website and service, but I think having it hosted on my own, dedicated domain, suits just better in my case.
I was looking for some survey generator, which would help me to quickly design the questionnaire. After some search I have found a really fantastic tool: phpsurveyor
I was able to install it in just a few minutes on my freebsd box, and started designing my quiestonnaire immediately via web-based gui. It allows you to do all sorts of things, from simple YES/NO qeustions/answers to more sophisticated array-based, likert-scale or ranking-type questions/answers. It also allows you to put conditions on whether to display a given question based on the asnwer provided in previous one - this one is my favourite In addition, it will send the invitiations to complete the survey (and also reminders), should you have a database (csv based) of people you want to survey.

Have to say - great tool, saved lots of my time