VAT number validation for EU-based companies

The best insights at the inner workings of the today's economy can be achieved through the study of how The Bureaucracy performs simple tasks.

The VAT validation is something that every company of a reasonable size would want to have. However, this feature is not a must-have, but a nice-to-have, and none will buy accounting software just for it. All in all, there is a broad but shallow demand for this feature.

Tags: 
economics

A programme for a touristic trip around Belgium

The idea is simple. First, watch a quality movie about a place and the next day, go there to see it with your own eyes. The point is to find quality movies that get to the feelings and pass the atmosphere of the place.

Here are a few suggestions:

Start by watching In Bruges. It is a dark comedy telling the story of two Irish hitmen enjoying the beauties of Bruges. Upon arriving in town, walk over the Grote Markt and climb The Belfry. I may assure you that it will feel very different after watching the film.

Watch the story on the birth of the so-called "social catolicism" in an industrial city of Aalst at the turn of XIX in Daens.

Finish by the Girl with a Pearl Earring which depicts the life in a medieval dutch town through the imaginary story of one of the best known painting of Johannes Vermeer. Delft has kept its medieval centre largely intact, and you can still discover beautiful landscapes from the film in Delft's surroundings.

For completeness

Antwerp

Any way the wind blows.

Namur

A camera is following-up a killer as he moves around Wallonia to get his job done in Man bites dog.

Leuven

College freshmen drama Ad Fundum happens in the setting of the medieval city of Leuven.

Belgian coast

The sexual life of Belgians shown in Camping Cosmos and filmed in a camping on the belgian beach.

Tags: 
belgium
cinema

The other big obstacle to Ruby's adoption is ActiveRecord

I have been using Ruby for a few months now, doing development of small projects of up to 1000 lines. But I still bite into the naming clashes with ActiveRecord regularily. They appear at random places and it takes a lot of experience to figure out what is happening. Here's an example with the type attribute clash. Of the two code snippets below, the first one does not work (thing.type equals nil, after execution), and the second one works.

thing = Thing.new(:type=> Type.new)

thing = Thing.new
thing.type = Type.new

Another example is having an attribute named transaction.

thing.transaction

Calling .save on a model with such an attribute will produce no output in the logs and leaves the developer in frustration about what happens.

Tags: 
rails
ruby

Как учат космонавтов или "Азбука выживания в космосе"

Попалась в руки мне недавно прикольная книжка, ATV RVD for Dummies. Учебник по стыковке космического корабля ATV к МКС, оформленный в жёлто-чёрном стиле книжек For dummies. Так вот, там между прочим говорится, что у космонавтов есть такой инструмент - прозрачная линейка. Они прикладывают её на экран монитора, вдоль диаметра ATV, и получают дистанцию до ATV в метрах.

Tags: 
space exploration

What are the options for project management software?

Mind maps

Mind maps are unstructured, so if your project is unstructured, use it. It is a safe bet to acknowledge the lack of structure altogether than to invent funny names like Inception, Elaboration, Construction to the project stages that do not exist.

The lack of structure brings in a subtle problem. Someone else looking at your mind map will have a hard time reading it. First, because of the lack of the predetermined structure does not allow to grasp the content through the common knowledge of that structure. Second, because mind maps are only half-language, inadvertently using the noun phrases and dropping the predicates and prepositions, together with the grammatical relationships. You may know that the line between "flies" and "arrow" mean "time", but not necessarily your reader.

So, use Mind Maps to acquire new knowledge, but do not pass them onto others.

See Free Mind.

Gantt charts

Gantt charts are only practical to track the deadlines and to keep various participants accountable in case of a high parallelization of work. It may look to the newbie that the length of the bars in those charts represents the actual amount of effort, but this is largely false, in reality.

Remember that: Gantt charts are the tool of choice to organize the work of multiple parties at the beginning of a project.

See Projity.

А в Минске-то интели орудовали, не иначе.

Интели не гангстеры, это отчаявшиеся люди, патриоты... У них одна задача - расшевелить это болото. Любыми средствами. Дать этому городу хоть какую-нибудь цель, заставить его оторваться от корыта... Они жертвуют собой, понимаете? Они вызывают огонь на себя, пытаются возбудить в городе хоть одну общую для всех эмоцию, пусть хотя бы ненависть...

Tags: 
belarus

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