Each month, on the first Sunday, a group of people meet to exchange books. This month, together with S I managed to attend to.

To some, it might look strange, why can’t we take them from the library or from friends? Because it’s not the same thing. You meat new interesting people and exchange opinions about books. Some love ‘Lolita’ or Garcia Marquez, other don’t bother to finish them. You’ll find new authors or genres to read, make new friends, explore new horizons.

I offered The Brethren by John Grisham and Three Man on the Bummel by Jerome K Jerome, and went home with The Hedonism Handbook by Michael Flocker and a book by Pascal Brukner for S.

Overall, a very entertaining meeting, I’m looking forward to go to next month.

Inspired by the pictures posted on decluttered I’ve reorganized the cables from my desk.

First, I’ve looked for an appropiate pegboard, which I found very cheap at a furniture wood deposit. Then, with help from Sergiu, I’ve made a grid of holes, rows and columns, 4cm apart.

The last part was to attach everything that was ductaped to the back of the desk to pegboard and find a way to mount the pegboard to the desk. For this I used two kinds of zip laces, longer ones for medium – big devices, and shorter ones for cables.

I will add two more devices, an external hard drive (Western Digital MyBook) and a wireless router (AirPort Extreme Base Station) next month.

Here you can see the before and after uncluttered desk pictures.

Caveats to Internet Explorer PNG transparency bug

.png_image {
  background: url('/img/some_image.png') no-repeat;
  z-index:10;
}

* html .png_image {
  background: url('');
  filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(enabled=true, sizingMethod=image, src='/img/some_image.png');
}

If you’re using the above hack to handle Internet Explorer 6 PNG fix, and you’re still seeing some light blue parts, check the following things:

• The name of the class is the same in all the places you’re using it (in the div or img tag where you need the image, the ”* html .png_image” class line and the ”.png_image” class line)
• The above CSS must be included in the HTML body/head using <style> tags. Do NOT include from an external file.
• The path of the image is correct in both CSS definitions.
• If you are trying to apply this hack to an <img> element, try to use a transparent pixel for <img> and set the png image from css. The image from img source is rendered above the image from css source.

P.S. When you’re writing code in textile, escape each paragraph using ”==”.

Legion of the Lost by Jamie Salazar

A story about life (or rather the first 2–3 months) in the French Foreign Legion written by an american guy.

I was curious to read more about the Legion, partly because I like reading action stories and partly because I wanted to see a glimpse of what a friend felt there. My friend joined the Legion 4 or 5 years ago, and unlike our hero from this book, served in Djibouti and other strange places and is still enrolled. I haven’t had the chance to speak with him much, but the other friends told me that he looked changed. His look was cold. Now I can see why.

What I liked about this book is the fact that our hero left a cosy place (his 9 to 5 corporate job) to do something wild. I didn’t like that he didn’t stay to finish what he started, though.

If you like army/war like action books, this is a nice book that would entertain you.

Forced by a small bump I passed with my bicycle last week, today I bought the last item left on the to buy list. From the first rides, I can say that riding this bicycle will be more comfortable than the previous one. That’s good, because I’d like to enjoy as much as I can the last things that can be considered workout.

Though, it has a small annoyance. When I start to pedal, there are some hickups. Probably some loose sprockets inside the rear hub. I’ll take a look one evening to see if I can fix it.

As my sweetheart said, real impressions about Sziget should be written 2 weeks after the festival ended.

Really really nice concerts (The Chemical Brothers, Hooverphonic, Manu Chao, Fanfara Ciocarlia) and really nice people (our Romanian neighbours, Alexandra, Cristi, Simi, Dog and their friends, our French neighbours, group 1 (the hot guys) and group 2 (Francois and friends), the Australian Paula and friends) is what I’ll remember with a smile on my face from this year’s Sziget.

This year I’ve noticed that there are many Romanians attending this festival. They are split in two big groups: cool guys (and girls) and “leave me alone, I’m too busy to talk with you, because I’m from Bucharest/Timisoara and you’re not, and you are not as cool as I am” groups. I’ve met people from both of them.

What I didn’t like this year was the weather and the fact that almost all the things were more expensive this year. The taste of money is sweet. :(

Evolution of ticket entrance price from 2003 to 2007:

• 2003 Daily 12 Eur, Weekly 75 Eur
• 2004 Daily 15 Eur, Weekly 80 Eur
• 2005 Daily 20 Eur, Weekly 100 Eur
• 2006 Daily 25 Eur, Weekly 120 Eur
• 2007 Daily 30 Eur, Weekly 150 Eur

More pictures from Sziget here: Sziget Festival 2007 Pictures or on Sziget Festival 2007 Budapest group from Flickr.

While dreaming at a new Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 for my home computer, I’ve taken the time to clean up the keyboard I use at my current workplace. Since I’ve used the first MS Natural Keyboards, a couple of years back, I preffered them to normal format keyboards.

It looked so dirty because I didn’t clean it since I have bought it 4 years ago.

One of the conditions for the new company I’ve wanted to work was to let me bring in my keyboard. The other one was to let me use my OS of choice (Slackware at that time, Gentoo now).

Many thanks goes to our colleague from Wroclaw, Hubert, for sending us two new hacky sacks.

We’ve been infected by this virus 2 months ago when the Wroclaw team gifted one hacky sack to Timisoara team through Sergiu. This was the only thing that managed to involve the whole programmers’ room.

It’s magic. When one of us want to play, almost always, everyone will stop working for 15 minutes and will join. It happens 2 times a day, once before lunch and once after. These are the joy moments of the day. That’s why we are waiting for more 4 sacks to arrive from Munich this week.

Long live hacky sacks.

Update: Using a much nicer picture made with Alex’s new camera.

Three books I’ve started to read this week.

The first one, which I already named last Saturday, is Freakonomics, which, I found out these days, I could have borrow it from Daniel. His copy it’s in Timisoara now.

The second one is ‘Agile Web Development with Rails’. Even my site is Django powered, I’m interested in other technologies for web available these days. It’s not to make my resume buzzwords compliant, but see other perspectives of web development. To better learn Rails, I have to think at a toy project that would help me assimilate it faster.

The third book, borrowed from my company’s library is ‘Practice of an Agile Developer’. I’ve decided to ask for this book a couple of months ago, when I’ve seen various quotes from it used by different technology bloggers. If you’re one link in the software developer chain, this is a good book to see a list of things you can improve.

Yesterday I’ve picked up my last set of books. This summer, I’ve ordered a couple of programming books (Rappin’s and Dunn’s WxPython, Thomas’ and DHH‘s Agile Web Development with Rails, Meyer’s CSS The Definitive Guide), some messenger mania books (Culley’s The Immortal Class, Zephyr’s Pedal book + DVD, Hurst’s The Art of Urban Cycling) and a couple of casual reading ones (Bill Bryson, of course, Freakonomics, and one about the French Foreign Legion).

I’ve already finished The Immortal Class and currently I’m enjoying Freakonomics.

The first one, was wrote by a bicycle activist, Travis Culley, about his 9 months experience while he was working as a bicycle messenger in Chicago, with some fragments from his life before that.

He gives some insights on how hard is to commute by bike in Chicago (and United States in general), which, fortunately, doesn’t apply to Europe much. From my experience, cycling in Western Europe (Germany or The Netherlands) is much much better then in the US. Cycling in Eastern Europe is not bad also, Budapest for example, has lots of bike lanes and cyclists.

Also he writes about the messenger’s challenges on day to day life (like trying to dodge security guards from some buildings to gain a couple of minutes and do their jobs faster). Though, I’ve read that some persons don’t consider his book a good reference for messenger’s life I consider it a good read if you want to see a glimpse from cycling courier’s life (as was my idea when I’ve bought this book).

Freakonomics, on the other hand, is a different kind of animal. It explains some situations in life from an economic perspective. Why do teachers cheat and artificially raise their’s students marks in US (and probably other countries)? Because they want to create the appearance that they are great teachers and their students progressed a lot, to gain more money or pass different tests. What they didn’t think is that this can be easily discovered using statistics. I just finished the first chapter, but I recommend it to anyone that wants to have a light fun read.

This was the image that I sent to a random person in Unirii Square on Saturday evening. Luckyly that person was sitting right next to me, and I could see his reaction. It was a forty something years old guy with his wife. Judging by their face expression, they didn’t know much about Bluejacking (sending unsolicited messages over Bluetooth to other Bluetooth-enabled devices like phones, laptops or PDAs).

I’ve wanted to try bluejacking since a couple of years ago, when I’ve read about it on internet, but my previous phone didn’t have bluetooth. Luckyly, my borther gave me his Nokia 6260 which I can use for that (and as a playground for Python on S60 series).

I present you my dear colleague Sergiu Oprean eating his lunch sandwich during our team building rafting trip on Nera.

In spired by this Photoshop tutorial I’ve used Gimp to obtain the selective coloring effect. I was curious how to do this, but didn’t bother to look it up on Google. Until today didn’t know that this effect is called “selective coloring”, come to think.

I have to thank someone special for asking how to do Sepia Effect and leading me to this page.

Following books will arrive on my tiny city, far far away from western civilization and culture, from the mighty Amazon:

• Legion of the Lost by Jaime Salazar
• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

And when the fate will decide that the time is right:

• The Art of Urban Cycling: Lessons from the Street by Robert Hurst
• The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power by Travis Culley

Until now Earth’s Rightful Ruler, Jah, considered that it’s not the case, and decided not to use the two opportunities he had to have the books moved from Munich to Timisoara.

P.S. This post was brought to you by Safari Beta 3 on Windows, which doesn’t have ctrl+backspace for delete words, doubleclick to open new tabs, or / to search in the current page, but strangely opted for a funky css default scheme with quite thick fonts and strange antialias. Later added: also crashes on exit, and doesn’t preserve sessions between browser restarts like Firefox 2.0 and Opera.

P.P.S. This post was saved by vim for Windows from Safari’s idea of “I’ll post what I consider from what you’ve wrote, so I’ll pick just the first sentence”. Safari Beta 3 should be renamed to Safari Release Candidate 1. As others already said, this Apple’s WWDC was not too great, to be gentle.

Bill Bryson – Notes from a Big Country

Or by the alternative title, “I’m a Stranger Here Myself”, is a collections of small stories published by Bill Bryson in an American magazine between 1995 and 1996. The author, born in Iowa, moves back to US after he lived the previous 20 years in Great Britain and he discovers quite a few differences. Some of the stories are parodies to the American system, like the ones about IRS forms or the INS, to the American culture or self-irony.

Bryson’s style is easy to follow even for non-native English speakers. I recommend this book to all those who want to have an easy read and a good laugh.

It was just a matter of time until someone thought to make a complementary site to Nike+.

It has a couple of features that Nike+ site is missing, like adding friends, making groups, powersongs lists, nice flash charts and other useful stuff. This great site is Runner+ ( http://www.runnerplus.com/ ). Here is my profile there.

It’s missing challenges and goals. Probably because you can’t issue challenges or set goals using the unofficial Nike+ API.

Now, the site is invite only. If you are using a Nike+ kit, and want a invite there, drop me a line using the form from my runner+ profile or using my email address that is listed somewhere on this site.

When I started to run, at the end of March, I didn’t think that I could progress so fast. I was way out of shape, didn’t run periodically since summer of 2005, and I’ve gained more then 10kg since. Excuses like I didn’t have a subscription for Politehnica running track, the running track was too far from where I live now, I didn’t have time, it was too cold, etc. were popping up in my mind weekly.

Then I’ve thought to buy a Nike+ iPod kit, a Marware armband and start running. I bought them while I was in Munich and waited a few weeks before I started to use them.

I wanted to go and run at Politehnica running track first, like in 2005 and the years before, but in one evening I took a walk to the Botanic Park and ran my first 3k. I was eager to see what features the Nike+ website offers, how can I see my progress and so on. After I had a couple of ~ 3km runs, I’ve tried to improve my endurance. My first 6k ran was really hard. I barely could walk home after that. Following runs weren’t as hard as that one, the barrier was crossed.

Slowly, I’ve progressed and today I had my second 10k. Now that my goal for this summer was reached for the second time I’ll try to improve things here and there. I’d like to run a couple of HIIT(High intensity interval trainings), then come back to long runs and try a 15k and later a semi marathon (21.09km). Also I’d try to run a bit more often, to alternate 7–10k runs with 3–5k runs in the days between them. Currently, I’m running Monday, Wednesday, Friday and sometimes on Sundays. Have to mention that I’m no Speedy Gonzales, rather a faster snail.

What kept me motivated were the goals and challenges from the Nike+ site and other Nike+ runners that posted their results in their blogs. Many thanks to Dan Radu Moldovan for the inspiration (he usually runs faster and longer distances).

Ironically, initially I wanted to run at Politehnica running track (near my former Faculty building) but now I prefer the Botanic park and I’m looking for longer routes. Also, I’ve picked up running to lose some weight, but in 6 weeks, I didn’t lost a gram :).

Other thing that was improved during this period, beside my physical condition, were the programming skills. I’ve developed a Django view to read my stats from Nike+ site and fill up some local models so I can show others my running progress.

The Brethren by John Grisham

A novel about three judges from a minimum security prison that are using extortion to get money from older homosexuals. They post ads in a gay magazine to fish for victims. Unfortunately, they pick CIA‘s candidate for the next presidential elections.

In theory, it should be a law-related novel, but the only link to law are the 3 judges and their lawyer. To me it looks like a normal mystery novel.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

A non fiction book about writing. Not as grammar or style oriented as Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (which I got for my birthday, BTW :) ), it talks about general stuff rather then details.

In a couple of lines:

• about his life (how he got to the first published book, Carrie, who inspired him, about his not so easy life before becoming successful )
• about writing (he wrote short stories that sent them to various magazines during his high school and university period)
• about his accident (happened in the same period when he was writing this book)
• a second draft example ( 2nd draft = 1st draft – 10%)
• a list of good books to read (Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods is there too)
• a good writer must read a lot and write a lot

I recommend this book to anyone who’s interested in writing, as a career or hobby.

Munich Blade Night takes place every Monday evening from 6–7-8–9, starting from Wredestrasse . Usually lots of people attend this skate. The maximum number of people reached in 2001, 37000. 2006’s average was 11000 (they blamed it on the European Soccer/Football Worldcup).

Also, as seen in the picture, Munich has a slalom scene too. They meet in the Olympia Park, near the tower. I was impressed by their skills.

At last, my teeth are free again, (without braces that is). This means I can eat everything I want (peanuts, chewing gum, coco nuts, carrots, cabbage, apples) and many more, I don’t have to worry about what kind of food is appropriate to eat while having lunch or dinner out.

I wore it since 15th of October 2003. That’s 1238 days which translates to approx 3 years 4 months and 23 days. (Is it coincidence that is older then my blog/domain?) Initially, I thought that I have to wore it for one year. Then, after a year and a half there were some complications and I had to have a molar pulled out, and another molar moved a couple of mm to the front teeth. This part extended the time I had to wear it with more then one year.

Do I see any improvements, yes, some. My upper teeth are straighter, but I don’t see any improvements to my profile or to my lower teeth. Perhaps there are any, but not so visible with the naked eye. It is true that meanwhile I gained more then 10kg, and my profile looks kind of different.

Would I recommend to wear braces to anyone who needs it? Yes, but not more then 2 years. Although you get use to them after the first 3 months.

Later edit: the duration of the treatment was longer than the initial estimated period because of the molar complication (which is related to another doctor, not my orthodontist).

I got this puzzle for my birthday a couple of years ago. I started to make it then but after I matched around a quarter it grown too large for my home desk, so I had to pack it back. In November I took it to S’s place and gave it another try. Unfortunately, she had to pack it for the Christmas general clean up. This Sunday we started to make it for the third time. I strongly hope that was the last time when I started it.

Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K Jerome

A sequel to Three in a Boat (which I haven’t read yet, but I found this from the foreword). It is about three guys (Jerome, Harris and George that make a short trip through Germany. They use only two bicycles, a tandem and a normal one. The book is not so much about bicycles or travel, but a parody on English and German social system from the 19th century end.

My favorite part is that were explains how his Uncle Podger was a methodical man. Always made lists when he had to pack, and always lost them, just before he needed them. :)

Inspired from serpentineroad I baked some pancakes. The spark was in a thread about Pancake Day, a holiday celebrated on 20th of February in the Anglo-Saxon countries (but not limited to). It is the last day before the Easter Lent when you can eat anything you want. Technicaly speaking, now we should be fasting, but this didn’t stop me to fill them with Nutella.

Paste Carbonara

Ingrediente:

250 g paste, 200 g Kaizer, 2 oua, 1/2 cana de cascaval ras, 3 linguri unt, ulei, busuioc

Preparare:

Se pune apa la fiert cu putina sare si ulei. Cand apa clocoteste se pun pastele. Concomitent intr-o tigaie cu putin ulei sau unt se prajesc cubulete de 1/2 cm de kaizer. Cand sunt rumene (dar nu tari sau arse) se scot pe un servet de hartie sa se scurga de grasime. Se bat ouale si se amesteca cu cascavalul ca sa fie o pasta ceva mai moale decit smantana. Cand pastele sunt gata, se strecoara dar nu se clatestesc. Cratita in care au fost pastele se lasa pe aragaz, eventual la foc foarte mic si se pune 1 lingura de unt ca sa o tapeteze.

Pastele, inca calde, se pun in cratita si se amesteca cu restul de unt in asa fel incat sa fie “acoperite”. Se adauga ouale si kaizerul si se mai amesteca putin. Cand oul este aproape inchegat se adauga busuiocul tatait marunt.

Pofta buna!

Pt aluat:

• 1kg faina
• o lingura rasa de sare
• 2×7g drojdie uscata
• o lingura de zahar
• 650ml apa calduta

Se face un munte (vulcan) de faina, se pune in varf sarea zaharul si drojdia, si se incepe sa se amestece pana se face o coca (un ghem de aluat). Se lasa 15 minute la dospit. Se imparte ghemul in 8–10 bucati, care apoi se intind pana ajung de dimensiune medie.

Topping:

• Mozzarela
• Cascaval
• Sunca (sau muschiulet)
• Masline
• Porumb

O pizza se coace cam 10 minute, la cuptor (de aragaz).

Inspirata din reteta de pizza a lui Jamie Oliver.

Ingrediente:

• orez cu bob lung [1 cana]
  se fierbe pana e moale bobul dupa care se clateste in 5 ape
• 3 aredei rosii/albi
  se taie rondele
• 3–4 morcovi mari
  se dau prin razatoare
• o cutie de ciuperci
  se taie marunt (exista si cutii de ciuperci gata taiate :P )
• 2 oua (nu ale tale)
  se bat
• sos de soia

Modus preparandi:

Legumele se calesc in putin ulei la foc mare, amstecandu-se permanent Dupa ce legumele s-au inmuiat, se adauga orezul (stors de apa) si se mai tin pe foc 3–5 minute. Se amesteca in continuare.
Cand sant aproape gata, se adauga ouale si se mai calesc pana se intaresc (ouale). Si acum se amesteca, sa nu ai ou intr-un singur loc. La sfarsit se amesteca cu sos de soia dupa gust.

Here is how you can setup mplayer to use Central European encoding for subtitles (instead of default UTF-8):

Go to mplayer directory and edit the config file, located in mplayer subdirectory of mplayer (that will be \mplayer\mplayer\config), After the “font” line add: “subfont-encoding=iso-8859–2”. While you are still there, you can add ‘fs=yes’ to always have full screen when dropping a movie over mplayer’s icon.

Here is my mplayer config file:

vo=directx
double=yes
font=c:/windows/fonts/arial.ttf
subfont-encoding=iso-8859-2
autosync=100
framedrop=yes
quiet=yes
fs=yes

P.S. In theory, you can achieve this by replacing arial.ttf with arial-ce.ttf, just that I couldn’t managed to find arial-ce.ttf free on Internet. And it looks like arial.ttf already has the CE fonts (aka iso-8859–2) packed into it.

• Nike+iPod kit
• Marware Sportsuit Relay for iPod nano
• new ipod (nano or video or both :D) (settled on 8G Nano, for now)
• USB 2.0 External Harddisk – 100 Eur (replaced by a 4G USB stick)
• new bicycle
• messenger bag (preferably timbuk2) (75 Eur)
• Jamie Oliver in Italy cookbook

Things I’d like to do in 2007:

• Go on holiday with Snej to Prague (most likely)
• Go to Sziget for a couple of days (pretty doable)
• Visit London and attend 3 city skates: Wednesday Night Skate, Friday Night Skate and Sunday Stroll (not so likely to happen, because more important things need the money I’d use for London)

These are different then the New Year’s Resolutions, since those are goals, and these are countable items. I hope I can cross them until Autumn 2007. :)

Following serpentineroad’s (and Bridget Jones’) model here are mine:

• Get fitter
• Skate more
• Use the bicycle more
• Be more positive (in attitude and behavior)