30 dic 2013

¿Por qué los polvorones y mantecados contienen E-320?

Pregunta abierta a fabricantes y distribuidores de polvorones y mantecados y especialistas de alimentación


Hasta ayer no sabía nada sobre el antioxidante E-320, pero al leer los ingredientes de los polvorones y mantecados, y en la tónica de revisar los ingredientes de los alimentos para vigilar la alimentación en nuestra familia, me he encontrado con este ingrediente que desconocía.

Según las referencias consultadas E-320 es un antioxidante sintético utilizado en la industria industria petrolífera empleado para conservar grasas y cuyo consumo debería evitarse por la posibilidad de la aparición de los siguientes efectos adversos:

  • Hiperactividad
  • Asma
  • Urticaria
  • Insomnio
  • Aumento del colesterol en la sangre
  • Problemas de metabolismo en el hígado
  • Adormecimiento
  • Tumores cancerígenos

Aunque en Europa y USA esté permitido su uso, en Japón está prohibido.

Por lo cual me gustaría saber:

  • ¿Para qué hace falta añadir este ingrediente? ¿No es la manteca de cerdo y el azúcar suficiente para conservar estos alimentos?
  • ¿Qué alternativas existen a E-320 para el caso de polvorones y mantecados?
  • ¿Por qué no se están usando estas alternativas?

Gracias.

Atentamente,
un ciudadano a pie que le gustaría disfrutar de los dulces navideños sin preocupaciones


Referencias (todas consultadas el día 30/12/2013):

Por internet pueden encontrarse fácilmente otras referencias.

27 dic 2013

Make Java applets work with chromium-browser on Ubuntu

The problem

On some Ubuntu versions, notably Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and some newer ones, Chromium >= 30 may not execute Java applets. In some browser versions, it will crash the browser process.

Run your own test:


The result should be something like this:



The problem is a name clash with a Java library: libnet.so.

This does not happen with all Chromium versions. In recent versions, all the provided libraries can't be linked statically into one single executable as before. (The resulting binary would be too big.) Hence the libs directory.

The solution

Of course, you can use Mozilla Firefox or some other browser which allows the use of Java applets. For me, the Google Chrome browser also works correctly.

So if you still want to use Chromium, go on.

Let's change all libnet occurrences with some other unused library name.

Here we go:

sudo su
apt-get install bbe
cp -a /usr/lib/chromium-browser /usr/lib/chromium-browser.bak
cd /usr/lib/chromium-browser
for f in `rgrep -l libnet .`
do
  bbe -e 's/libnet/libxet/' $f > $f.new
  mv -f $f.new $f
done
mv libs/libnet.so libs/libxet.so
mv libs/libnet_with_v8.so libs/libxet_with_v8.so
chmod +x chromium-browser

Before running the test again make sure all chromium-browser processes have stopped and kill them if necessary:
ps aux | grep chromium-browser
killall chromium-browser

Now run the applet test again and see if it works.

Take into account that the next package update may overwrite these changes.

Conclusion

Although a bit hackish, if you have to use Java applets in daily work like me and you really want to use Chromium, here you have a solution.

3 dic 2013

Buildout errors with gocept.recipe.env

The syntom

I get a really very strange error when running buildout.

While:
  Installing nginx.
  Getting option config:PS1.
Error: The option name in substitution, ${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)},
has invalid characters.
One strange behavior is that it does not occur every time. I still haven't discovered exactly when this error occurs. But the most strange and surprising fact is that it corrupts the buildout control file .installed.cfg, making it unusable for later buildout runs.

The problem

After digging a while I have discovered that my buildout (incepted by co-workers) is using the gocept.recipe.env 1.0 to get a environment variable (USER), and the error is related to the PS1 environment variable. It includes a dollar sign ($) and or this recipe or buildout (2.1.0) is not escaping it properly.

The solution

I opted to separate my part into two and to use collective.recipe.environment instead.

[mypart]
recipe = gocept.recipe.env
key = value
...

is converted to:

[enviroment]
recipe = collective.recipe.environment

[mypart]
USER = ${environment:USER}
key = value
...

I hope that this solution will be less erroneous / more solid.