I have just had the most thrilling experience of the last few months.

Three years ago I got myself a silver Ikea halogen balanced-arm lamp. It replaced an old wooden desk lamp that worked great, but was not exactly what I wanted (to be able to read a reference book open in a darkened room next to my displays).

So an Ikea lamp it was; partly because it was cheap. Partly because it was easy to get, it looked ok and it was more or less what I wanted.

Last month the light flickered a few times; I didn’t pay much attention — the power company has most definitely forgotten my neighbourhood as the power supply is erratic at best — especially in the summer months when air conditioning units bring the power stations to their knees. Then a few days ago the lamp went off all of a sudden. I flicked the switch once or twice and it came on again. All was well.

This morning the light was off, as it should; but apparently the switch was still at the on position. You can’t easily tell which position is ‘on’ or ‘off’ if the bulb doesn’t turn on as there is no indicator near the switch; it’s a matter of remembering the actual physical position of the flip switch. It would be very hard to explain how the lamp started fuming and after a few seconds a small flame appeared from the switch compartment near the bulb.

Needless to say, a flaming lamp sitting 20cm away from your face is a thrilling experience, especially when excitement usually means null pointers and segfaults. Thankfully I reacted quickly, pulled the plug on the lamp and the small flame disappeared, the lamp still fuming and filling the air with the horrible smell of burnt plastic/rubber.

I think I learnt my lesson: I will never, ever, ever buy an Ikea electrical appliance in the future. I was extremely lucky this time; being around, being awake, reacting calmly.

I generally like Ikea products. But a cheap bookcase, living room table or desk is one thing. It can fall apart after a few years, flake, break or what-have-you. That’s fine. It cannot, however, ignite all of a sudden.

Τον τελευταίο καιρό συζητείται το ‘άνοιγμα’ των κλειστών επαγγελμάτων. Οι ‘φασαρία’ που έχει προκαλέσει η επαναλαμβανόμενη απεργιακή κινητοποίηση των μεταφορεών, ιδιοκτητών φορτηγών δημοσίας χρήσης και λοιπών επαγγελματιών/επιχειρηματιών του κλάδου μπορεί να έχει, στο μυαλό των περισσοτέρων, ταυτίσει το ‘άνοιγμα’ των κλειστών επαγγελμάτων με αυτήν την κοινωνική/οικονομική ομάδα, όμως τα επαγγέλματα είναι πολλά και ποικίλα και οι κοινωνικές ανάγκες που καλύπτουν εξίσου διαφορετικές.

Ένα από αυτά τα επαγγέλματα είναι οι φαρμακοποιοί. Επέλεξα να γράψω για τους φαρμακοποιούς, αφ’ενός επειδή έχω αρκετούς συγγενείς και φίλους που ιστορικά βρίσκονται στον χώρο και θεωρώ πως γνωρίζω, περισσότερο ίσως από τον μέσο όρο, τις ιδιαιτερότητες του κλάδου, αλλά και επειδή — παρ’ότι συμφωνώ απολύτως με την απελευθέρωση των κλειστών επαγγελμάτων και θεωρώ πως η Ελλάδα έχει ήδη αργήσει πολύ — θαρρώ πως η απελευθέρωση των επαγγελμάτων δεν είναι σε καμία περίπτωση μια μονοσήμαντη διαδικασία, πως το κάθε επάγγελμα έχει τις δικές του ιδιαιτερότητες και η όποια κανονιστική ρύθμιση πραγματώνει την απελευθέρωση του οφείλει να τις λάβει υπόψη της (κάτι που σίγουρα εν διαμέσω κρίσης και πανικού δεν πραγματοποιείται στην Ελλάδα του 2010).

Διάβασα στην Καθημερινή το άρθρο ‘Οι τιμές των φαρμάκων‘ του Στέφανου Μάνου. Σε αυτό παραθέτει την συζήτησή του (και τον παραλογισμό) ενός φοιτητή της Φαρμακευτικής, του οποίου η οικογένεια έχει φαρμακείο και πρόκεται να ‘θιχτεί’ από την απελευθέρωση, ως εισαγωγή σε ένα, ως επι το πλείστον αφελές, κείμενο που αντιπαραθέτει ως παράδειγμα προς μίμηση τα περιθώρια κέρδους των φαρμακείων στην Σουηδία. Και παρ’ότι τα παραδείγματα του κ. Μάνου είναι ενδιαφέροντα και εικάζω πως είναι ειλικρινής και πιστεύει αυτά που γράφει, φαίνεται να αγνοεί τι ακριβώς συνεπάγεται το επαγγέλμα των φαρμακοποιών, η αγορά του φαρμάκου, ο τρόπος που δουλεύουν και τι σημαίνει η απελευθέρωσή του.

Τα φαρμακεια σημερα

Με το υπάρχον σύστημα, τα φαρμακεία είναι περιορισμένα ως προς τον τόπο στον οποίο μπορούν να ανοίξουν, βάσει του πληθυσμού του κάθε τόπου αλλά και βάσει της παλαιότητος του φαρμακείου — αυτός πρακτικά είναι ένας τρόπος να εξυπηρετηθούν οι παλαιοί φαρμακοποιοί που σήμερα μπορούν να μεταφέρουν το φαρμακείο τους πρακτικά όπου θέλουν ανά πάσα στιγμή μετά από κάποια χρόνια λειτουργίας. Με αυτόν τον τρόπο πριν ‘πουλήσουν’ την άδειά τους (με σημαντικό κέρδος) μεταφέρουν το φαρμακείο σε ένα πολύ καλό σημείο και το πουλούν ακριβότερα. Αυτή η νομοθετική ρύθμιση καθιστά το φαρμακείο ‘κλειστό’ επάγγελμα, δηλαδή επιβάλλει την ‘αγορά’ μιας υπάρχουσας άδειας από έναν νέο φαρμακοποιό που επιθυμεί να ανοίξει φαρμακείο, καθώς νέες άδειες δεν εκδίδονται (παρά μόνον υπό προϋποθέσεις: βλ. γεωγραφικοί, πληθυσμιακοί περιορισμοί κλπ). Φυσικά κάτι τέτοιο είναι άδικο και καθιστά την απόκτηση άδειας δύσκολη υπόθεση για όσους δεν έχουν τα μεγάλα ποσά που εδώ και χρόνια απαιτούνται για την αγορά τους.
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I’ve mentioned blender before; it’s one of the open source projects that I’ve followed for years, a project that I love and one that’s has consistently impressed me since I spent a weekend learning the basics of its operation in 2002. At Cosmical Technology, we’ve been using blender for quite a while; some of the GEO|ADS graphics (e.g. the globe with the atmosphere originally used in the GEO|ADS service page), some of the AthensBook graphics and other creative work that we’ve been doing over the years are based on, or are themselves blender renders; we’ve used it for glass surfaces, cloth simulation (the ‘covered up’ icon we used in various presentations and this blog post from 2009) and many other features that were relatively recently added and take blender to a whole new level.

This open source project has been a staple of our ‘design’ arsenal for a while, and while it is by no means (yet) a competitor to the mid to high level commercial products that cost thousands of euros and people use exclusively for films and video games, it should definitely be in their radars as it’s going to be giving them a run for their money sooner than they expect.

Version 2.6 will bring an overhauled core, make most of the application scriptable/automated — in the process allowing for sophisticated add-ons (and hopefully a great community), improve performance (in some areas by a factor of 4-5x), and will introduce a rethinked UI that seems extremely promising. I’ve been goofing around with the 2.5 alpha builds ever since they appeared and while they were extremely unstable they were a great introduction to the new way of working with the application. Recently 2.54 (beta) came out and this is a build that seems to be usable for most of our work. One of the areas that blender 2.5x has I’ve dabbled a bit in the past few weeks is sculpting, a feature that was only found in specialised commercial software packages just a couple of years ago and one that’s still a hot topic.

In the process of acclimatising with sculpting in blender 2.54 I created a — trivially simple — 5 minute (wannabe) moon-like surface on a subdivided cube. The face count on this graphic was in the millions and blender performed admirably. There are still several catches (e.g. performance improves significantly if you start with a subdivided surface), and I’m sure that the final 2.6 will — once again — surprise everyone with how much better it is than the beta, but I’m extremely impressed by the work the blender developers have done.

In a few short years and with some additional work on a few key areas where blender is currently lacking (the built-in renderer and integration with external ones comes to mind), I’m sure that blender will become the choice of more and more professional 3d artists for their work, let alone amateurs like myself.

In 2004 ‘web feeds’ were becoming extremely popular in the tech community. People were keen to label ‘web pages’ as old, obsolete, clumsy and resource ‘heavy’. It was the time of ‘Web 2.0′, the time when web ‘surfers’ were gradually getting rid of Internet Explorer 6, when Ajax was starting to make its appearance on more and more web applications.

Suddenly everyone started expecting feeds. Everywhere. Feeds for everything any site had in store: calendar/event information, news, media, archives, categories, tags, software updates etc. Feeds were demanded (and almost exclusively found) in loosely defined quasi-machine readable formats, like RSS and Atom: immature syndication formats ‘abused’, tasked to provide functionality not originally envisioned by their authors. Functionality that people ‘wanted now’, that was tangible, contrary to the elusive dream of a Semantic Web, an abstract notion that perhaps only Tim Berners-Lee might try to explain. From a tech-only convenience, feeds became mainstream.

Feeds gradually became the ‘de facto’ medium through which millions of people around the world found and consumed information — a use well beyond their original purpose (syndication and notification of new or updated content, not consumption of said content). Many companies touted RSS support in their products and services in 2005. Among them, Apple, when Steve Jobs, in his typical used-car salesman fashion, touted Safari’s support for RSS. The incorporation of RSS in desktop applications and the browser never worked for most of us; web aggregators and feed readers soon became the dominant medium through which feeds were accessed. Among all feed readers, Google Reader, rapidly became the most popular; part of the daily routine for the vast majority of people and the main source of their text media consumption.
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