Blurry fonts on Firefox 18

Firefox is the browser which behavior I like most, but it’s seriously becoming a pain to use, version after version. I’ve just upgraded my Firefox to the ridiculous version number 18, and on some specific sites the fonts look terribly blurry. Seriously, they hurt my eyes. It’s specially noticeable on Google sites, like Gmail, Blogger, YouTube, Groups and Docs – and the font in Docs looks particularly bad.

I’ve run through some fixes from previous versions (though I never had this problem before), like this, this and this. Nothing seems to work. I’m using both Windows XP and Windows 7 to perform all these tests. At first, I thought it would be a problem of GPU rendering overriding ClearType settings, but the fonts are also blurry on Linux!

There’s a thread at Mozilla’s board with some people complaining about this since v17, where the solution was to disable hardware acceleration – what I did already, to fix other rendering problems at that time. On v18, however, no one could find a fix yet, it looks like they really messed it up. So if you have this problem, go make some noise at that thread!

Congratulations to Mozilla for dropping the ball again, with its moronic and Chrome-wannabe release cycling which is introducing more and more bugs. If I wanted Chrome, I would have downloaded Chrome.

Linus Torvalds is my hero

I’m a big fan of Linus Torvalds, not only for what he did with Linux, but also for his figure, particularly his lack of tenderness. His thoughts about C++ are legendary already, and that impressed me to the point that today I’m writing mostly ANSI C code.

Now, during a talk at Aalto University in Finland, he voiced about the lack of support Nvidia has given Linux, and his zero-diplomacy balls have striked loudly again. For my personal delight, I must admit, since I had a problem with a Nvidia video card driver on my Ubuntu just a couple months ago, to which I simply shrugged after days of pain.

Listen to the man:


And Nvidia, fuck you!

Dennis Ritchie is dead

Known and remembered only by true programmers, the creator of the C programming language, Dennis Ritchie, has passed away, at the age of 70.

As a great fan of the C language myself, I'm deeply saddened by the news. C language shaped pretty much everything we have today in terms of programming, and almost everything we have today was written in C, and C is still the most widely used language. And C was released in 1973 – 38 years ago. So think about the importance of this man.

Rest in peace, Dennis. Your legacy will be eternal.

Smells Like Teen Spirit for orchestra

I started having formal music training when I was a child, and although I didn’t have any classes for years, I still like to study music when I have time, specially orchestration and related disciplines. Writing music for orchestra is not an easy task and it requires not only a lot of study, but also a lot of practice.

Today is the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s Nevermind album. At the time it was released I was just a kid, and it made me to play a lot of guitar. So after 20 years I decided to make a tribute to Smells Like Teen Spirit and write a full orchestra arrangement to this song, mixing the original voice track over it – this voice track can be easily found on YouTube.

It took me about a month to write, render and mix the whole thing, and so far I’m pretty satisfied with the results. It gave that 4-chord music a whole new dimension. And here it is: Smells Like Teen Spirit for orchestra.

About this blog

Hello, dear reader.

There are times when you just want to say something, or maybe share something which seemed interesting at that moment, or maybe just voice your opinion about a particular event.

Well, that’s why I’ve just created this blog. I have no idea about what I’m gonna write down here, there’s nothing specific, just writing away. And as a first post, I just wanted to register the idea of this lack of ideas, and at the same time, the high amount of them.

So be it.