Last night I worked fine. It would have been one of those working nights, but if I risk it, it will probably be a bitch to get up the morning – at time, at least! Specially becauseI haven’t been getting any decent sleep lately. I’ve got this stupid cough which keeps waking me constantly. The heat doesn’t help either.
Tonight was the worse…

08:00
I’m tired, but I’m here… It’s a quiet (apart from the planes), fresh and sunny morning!
Pandora’s playing SOAD’s Aerials to wake me up

09:30
I’m waiting for a db dump.
Never has anyone waited so anxiously to get a dump!

10:30
“- Sir, your dump has arrived!”
“- Shut up!”

10:40
Loaded the dump to my MySQL.
Next: study the structure.

14:00
The idea is to build a directory for EACH “document” in the db, following this structure:


X/ //number of the document
X/dublin_core.xml //containing all the metadata
X/contents //pointing to the license and the document
X/license.txt
X/document


Started some Perl scripting to get the values needed to build the XML.

18:00
The script is coming to life.
Still missing a few fields but I got the hang of it.

18:30
Got the rest of the fields.
Time to go.

Last friday and today were spent over the permissions around dspace.
This morning I introduced a couple more people to DSpace, and hopefully they will become the first real pilot wave to test this. Eng.º Marcelino is showing an enormous interest on the project and pulling his people onto it. This was what was needed for a good kick start.

Oh, and I suck at “public” speach!

17:31
Just finished some tests on the permissions of the items: the subject was to see how they would respond to the permission change of the collection.
Apparently they do NOT get any feedback from the changes on the collections. This means that there are 2 ways of re-authorize items:
- erase and add them again;
- export them, clean the items from dspace, and import them back in.
The best option is, of course, the last one.

Time to go home.

Being sick of the “failed” return on with the unrar-free command, I seeked something else.
Found this.


$ cp makefile.unix Makefile
$ make
$ sudo cp unrar /usr/bin/


Now unrar e $filename et voila.

PS:. I could supposedly apt-get unrar-nonfree, but I can’t find no installation candidate.

08:00
Thursday, the prospect of the weekend starts to settle in… but it’s also masters day, so focus!

Tiago told me yesterday about Graphviz. After a brief talk, my opinion was that this was probably better than GD to do what I need. Let’s check it out.

Ontem não me apeteceu trabalhar, nem fazer nada de útil, absolutamente nada. Como tal instalei o Hitman: Contracts e tive a assassinar sistematicamente umas centenas de “pessoas”. Muitas armas, cutelos, ganchos do talho, garrotes, etc. Um mimo!

Hoje estão cá os ministros para um grande conselho… não me tentem!

08:00
The day is calm and cool.
Let’s get to the matters at hand.

10:30
Imports & Exports are issued using dsrun,
and look like this:


dsrun org.dspace.app.itemimport.ItemImport \
-a -e rgamito@lnec.pt \
-c 123456789/2 \
-s docs \
-m mapfile



dsrun org.dspace.app.itemexport.ItemExport \
--type=COLLECTION \
--id=123456789/2 \
--dest=docs \
--number=1


14:00
Just recieved a call from Marcelino pressing me about the “document hiding” matter.
Right after I finish what I’m doing.

15:43
I couldn’t get the import to work ’cause I was missing something: for each file there is the need for a dublin_core.xml, with a specified format, wich contains the metadata I want to add. All I need now is the dump from the db they said they would send me… where is it?

17:00
The “hidding stuff” issues also seem to be resolved, though will still need some testing…

09:20
It’s my 100th day here. Hurray!
It’s FUCKING hot in here… there is no point in having the window open… it’s hot out outside too! Water, I need water!!!

The new stage of Dspace started yesterday. Two meetings today with two of the pilots (which represent the universe of testers – besides me – who spent more than, say, ZERO seconds in Dspace) to catch the problems and for a quick chat.

In about an hour and a half I’m having another meeting for my masters.

10:40
One meeting is over. I’m to investigate how to batch import a few thousand documents into Dspace, both from another db and from the fs.

10:45
Shit, man! It’s raining… it’s hot and it’s raining! Are we getting tropical or what!?

12:30
Huuhhuuuuuuu… Another meeting over. The next step for me is to connect my prototypes with PHP and GD to draw my workflows in the page, and time-navigate through any given history, as well as have a visual representation of what’s going on during the execution of a determinate instance of a workflow!
Guess I’ll be – very – busy on the next couple of weeks!!!

Time to lunch.

14:00
YAM… Yet Another Meeting…

15:20
It’s over… I’m going to be giving an introduction on “how to start submiting stuff to Dspace” to a couple of people here… cuz it’s so hard… NOT!
(ok, I’m just being bad… there really are some user UNfriendly details about Dspace – some of which I’m to change, the others I’m just to show how to deal with)

Fui na última sexta-feira a évora com o Faria, Tiago e Sílvia para assistirmos às apresentações dos trabalhos de final de curso da malta, inclusivé do Tiago.
A minha opinião sobre o que vi variou desde o muito bom até ao mau.
Voltámos para LX ainda na sexta e acabámos por ir trincar uns croquetes à casa do Tiago (maravilha de croquetes ).
Como sou uma besta esqueci-me dos óculos de sol na casa do Bilou… agora mamas sol na pinha nos próximos tempos que te lixas!

Évora estava um bafo quente descomunal… já não tinha presente o quanto custa andar na rua em Évora nesta época do ano…

O fim de semana foi passado em casa na totalidade a (tentar ou efectivamente) trabalhar para o mestrado.

15:30
Masters Day.
Things have been going kind of OK.
I’m sleepy, it’s hot, I’ve got no AC. Life sucks!

Acabei, na terça feira passada, de ler o Eldest (de Christopher Paolini). Este livro é a continuação de Eragon e o segundo volume da trilogia “Inheritance“. Tenho que dizer que achei o primeiro volume muito bom, o que me deixou deveras curioso em relação ao segundo. Agora só posso dizer: “Que brutalidade!”
Eldest foi sem a menor sombra de dúvida o melhor livro de fantasia que eu alguma vez li, bem como a leitura mais imersiva que tive. Não vou justificar, porque provavelmente não seria compreendido, mas se os livros do Tolkien vos agarraram, então leiam este. Simplesmente delicioso…

Praticamente todo o livro foi lido ao som de uma música – sim, apenas uma – e que na minha opinião encaixa 100% no ritmo e emoção do livro. E não, não enjoei a música, porque simplesmente servia de pano de fundo.
A música é March of Mephisto do album The Black Halo de Kamelot.

Data a reter: 7 de Setembro – publicação do 3º volume.