A căzut Cezarul de pe cal

Știre de prima pagină pe Mediafax (și cu update):
„Prompterul lui Barack Obama s-a spart în mijlocul unui discurs”

Alte evenimente de pe glob:
vreo cîțiva zimbabweni au mai murit de foame
vreo 2-3 au murit într-un atentat în Irak
au trecut 2 luni de cînd israelienii au trimis ultima bombă în Gaza
eu am tras o bășină
în Congo-Brazzaville au mai fost mîncați cîțiva pigmei reducînd populația cu 1%
statul chinez a mai executat o duzină

Populari care nu-mi plac

Citat din CTP:
„V-o puteţi închipui pe d-na Ridzi băşindu-se? Eu nu puteam. Însă miercuri seara, mirosul emanat de d-na ministru m-a izbit prin sticla ecranului.” Indiferent ce scrie în articolul lui, cu un titlu ridicol, aș putea spune că e tipic CTP. Cînd toată presa îi dă cu Ridzi și prinde la public, CTP nu putea rata șansa să se bage.
Și mai sunt multe de la individul ăsta, dar nu le-am pus niciodată semn. În 2004, în campania electorală Năstase versus Băsescu, se apucase de o serie de articole anti-Băsescu. Nu știu cum își găsise fix atunci, și doar în direcția lui Băsescu.

Articolul e aici ca să adun motive pentru care nu-mi plac CTP și tipul de la “În gura presei”. În cercul meu prieteni în general nu prea e loc de simpatie pentru Jiji, citit Libertatea și restul tacîmului. Au însă în majoritate o simpatie pentru cei doi sus-numiți oameni de presă. Eu am o antipatie.

Mandriva, it’s all about packaging

From time to time distributions such as Mandriva, openSUSE, Gentoo get some attention through some features they introduce, Speedboot, control centers, first to include KMS etc. What I believe these guys miss is that the availability of software is the biggest problem some user might face.
1.Debian/Ubuntu and RedHat (and Fedora more or less) get most of the attention from closed source packagers.
2.Point 1 applies to open source packagers that don’t have resources to produce packages for all the Linux fauna. Not all software is like the kernel or Firefox to be omnipresent.
3.Even if the software is not available for the likes of Debian or Fedora, because of their high penetration, the chances to find an article on how to make things work are high.

Mandriva is not going to cut it unless you are in a well established setting, where you are assured to need nothing more than the available packages. I remember switching from Mandriva and SuSE to Debian and notice how it suddenly becomes possible to run all kind of software. I cannot imagine testing all the things I needed with anything else that a Debian or RedHat system.

I would suggest Mandriva to try to move all its technology to Debian-like packaging and make the system 99.9% percent compatible with Debian.
“Mandriva offers you 5 seconds boot time, super-duper control center, x kernel enhancements and the already proven Mandriva technologies combined with the possibility to install any package available for Debian”.
So this is far-fetched, they have RPM knowledge etc. Replace this with Fedora. I just chose Debian because of the primitive (in my view) packaging system that Fedora offers.

I don’t know the disadvantages, but the advantages are obvious: one less target for independent packagers, access to the whole of Debian software and one more step for compatibility between distributions.

Another Russian lyrics challenge: Ты узнаеш ыё by Krasnaya Plesen

I am looking for the lyrics of another Russian song: Ты узнаеш ыё by Krasnaya Plesen, which I believe is a parody of Ты узнаешь её by Korni.
The last.fm page is at http://www.last.fm/music/+noredirect/Красная+плесень/_/Гр.+Корневая+система+-+Ты+узнаеш+ыё

The beer (or other symbolic reward) is of course again insured.

KDE 4 Plasma theme to make panel usable

Here I introduce my first KDE Plasma theme, very humble artistically but, I believe, most usable.
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?action=content&content=106543

What it do?
It do make Plasma panel usable:
-it do make the task buttons clear.
-it do make the foreground, background and attention requesting tasks clear.
-it do make the pager clear and give big button to tray.
-it don’t confuse user with transparency.

After trying out so many overly artistic themes and finding that none of them is usable for me I made this one. It is lacking in artistic expression, but who cares. Now I can finally differentiate between things in on the panel. For the first since adopting KDE 4.

Alegeri europene – din nou cu bîta în baltă

Au fost alegeri și s-a votat cu picioarele. Cel puțin pentru Vadim și Becali, Elena Băsescu.
La viitoarele alegeri vom trimite în parlamentul european restul vedetelor românești, în funcție de cum apar la televizor, în Libertatea și restul tabloidelor.
Sunt convins am avea foarte mulți adepți și pentru: Monica Columbeanu, Mircea Badea, Andreea Marin și prietena ei*, oricine a făcut o casetă porno, spune prostii la televizor sau pur și simplu arată bine.

Faptul e confirmat de succesul campaniei de imagine al actualului ministru de turism*.

Mai e și o hoardă care-i este fidelă pe viață lui Iliescu, dar cred că moșul găsește prea mică miza pentru a candida la europene.

O analiză scurtă care se potrivește la toate alegerile din România: http://www.starlog.ro/2008/12/04/greu-de-ignorat/

*Nu-mi amintesc toate numele pe moment, mă aștept ca cititorii să-și de seama despre cine e vorba.

Twitter 2 – Nautilus File Manager

How on Earth does it choose when show the “Address Bar” and when not? How does it choose to show (and enable) the “Browse folder” action (Ctrl+Shift+O)?. Damn.

Nautilus kinda blows.

Morning in Hagenberg, spring

One day and a month after the unforgetable spring morning, here comes the story:

This is the only picture I have from my birthday party (1). That’s Eszter being punished to stay in the corner, for reasons I don’t remember. I hope she won’t protest to this picture being here.
The party ended at 6, at 6:30 I was still not able to fall asleep. Some past-time activity was needed.
14° 30′ 44″E, 48° 22′ 08″N (2)

This is Cheburashka (middle). The friends from ISI gave it to me as a birthday present. It’s a nicely built city bycicle with 3*7 gears a mirror and other goodies. A step in the right direction (Kawasaki Ninja 500).
14° 30′ 43″E, 48° 22′ 06″N

The yellow Arbeiten&Wohnen building. It hosts ISI offices, photo shooting sessions, some inhabitants.
14° 30′ 44″E, 48° 22′ 09″N

Cafe Monika, with a Ford Mondeo on the left and a Fiat Punto on the right. The car-like thing behind the Punto may be an Opel Corsa. 14° 14° 31′ 05″E, 48° 22′ 01″N

Others, unlike us, were not worthy of their alcohol, so they left it on the street near Unimark.
14° 31′ 13″E, 48° 21′ 57″N

The way down to pregarten, full of green.
14° 31′ 16″E, 48° 21′ 55″N

100 meters down from the previous picture, and 2 years since the last time I didn’t manage to land on my feet.
Don’t know why, but at some point I left the sidewalk, not very wise after drinking alcohol. I planned to jump back on the sidewalk, but I met the edge of the sidewalk before actually lifting the front wheel. This gave a long, slow fall, with strugles to avoid
Produced only road rashes: the right wrist (really deep, looked like touching the joint), right shoulder (superficial but many square centimeters, lucky the pulover took a big part of it), right knee (lucky blue jeans). Long hair protected my head from even slightest abrasion.
14° 31′ 17″E, 48° 21′ 55″N

Lilac starting to flower. One of my favourite flowers, encouraged me to continue .
14° 31′ 19″E, 48° 21′ 54″N

Intersection with a small road. I did a big jump over the sidewalk edge (no jump was actually necessary). Upon landing I fell like a rock, probably my worst fall ever, almost perfectly vertical.
Touched head hard enough to be worried, handlebar between my ribs. The left elbow took most of the impact, and thinking back, I’m surprised it didn’t require any medical care.
14° 31′ 29″E, 48° 21′ 45″N

Right after the fall. Only mental pictures.
I should probably stop for a few seconds.
Maybe I should go home.
Maybe I should even see a doctor, at least for the head. Probably the alcohol prevent me from feeling the real intensity of pain.
Yes, a head radiography would be good.
Let’s go home, change clothes and go to hospital.

Sea-buckthorn (cătină) like shrubs, but with yellow nice flowers. I don’t know what they are, I’ll look again.
No coordinates, near the fall anyway.

Lilac in blossom, near the first fall.
14° 31′ 17″E, 48° 21′ 55″N

Green green grass of Hagenberg.

Right – the firefigthers station. Some crappy german car (Audi) under that lovely flowered cherry.
14° 31′ 09″E, 48° 22′ 01″N

Flowering lilac, horse-chestnuts in flower and the church. The Hagenberg castle at the right, but not visible.
14° 30′ 59″E, 48° 22′ 00″N

Another horse-chestnut tree.

Muellerheim at right, FH at left (3), another crappy German car a bit further away, unnamed forest in the background (say, “Hagenberg forest” or “Softwarepark forest”).

Cheburashka resting. I don’t really explain myself why I even took care to lock the bike.

No pictures zone.
At home, I changed clothes, took the medical insurrance paper and some money for the bus.
Maybe I won’t be able to get to hospital alone. Maybe it would be easier to get a radiography if I came with the ambulance.
Yeah, let’s just call the ambulance, this way I’ll make it for sure.
Phone 1 to 112, I talk some simple German, but when the conversation became hard enough I asked for English but the guy closed.
Phone 2, this guy believes me, I tell him I’ll be at the bus station in 5 minutes.

In 10 minutes a police car aproaches and I think maybe they are connected to me. I had to pretend I scratch my elbow such that they see the wound, now they believe me. Some phone call and we go.
Both speak good English.

The folowing part has very few pictures, given the situation it was appropriate and respectful to stop.

In the police car, a black with orange minivan, I believe a Volkswagen Touran. They asked for my phone number, so I took the chance to also take a picture.
They took me to some first help station in Pregarten.

In the ambulance, Volkswagen Transporter (T5 I believe). Nicely equiped.
Again, both ambulance workers spoke very good English.

No pictures again.
At the Akademische Lehrkrankenhaus, I do radiographies for the 3 possibly injured areas, a tetanos vaccine, some antiseptic spray. Nothing broken, no blood clot. Everyone is very nice. When asked if I need an ambulance to home, I decided not to profit too much of them.
Again, all assistants speak at least usable English, wow!!!.

AKH Linz, the hospital, after finishing all the anaylises. Light brown, covered with glass, shiny, with nice personel and some bureacracy at the front gate when receiving patients.
14° 18′ 22″E, 48° 18′ 13″N

Linz Hauptbanhof, the Linz train station, waiting for bus 310 to go home. The station is new and shiny, with excelent accesibility for disabled people, the most modern train station I been in. I was waiting for the bus home.
That’s the biggest pigeon I have ever seen (this is before going to London).
14° 17′ 30″E, 48° 17′ 31″N

Wenzelskirche in Wartberg ob der Aist, the church that I always see from bus 310, on the other side of the B124 road. This is was my target in that beatiful April morning, and to date I still haven’t been there. Maybe on Saturday. I’ll publish pictures.
This church always made me curious with it’s simple, out of time look. For sure there’s some mistery in there.
The other church, Pfarrkirche, is easily visible from many places in Hagenberg.
14° 30′ 25″E, 48° 21′ 08″N

(1)But I have to admit the marketing devil attracted me to put a nice picture with a girl at the beginning of the article.
(2)Coordinates copied from Marble using OpenStreetMap, I don’t really care about perfect accuracy.
(3)Muellerheim is the dormitory in Softwarepark where we live. FH is Fachhochschule Hagenberg, an Austrian type of university of applied sciences, some kind of Romanian Politehnica.

Twitter-like

I got my first change to KDE accepted, so I should celebrate.

Since a few days ago, my favourite Romanian movie:

It’s a nice blend of comedy, mentality critique and many parts are natural enough in capturing aspects of the Romanian society. The only Romanian movie I know to deserve the atribute of “commercial”. (California Dreamin’ (Nesfîrşit))

Tomorrow I’ll finish and post the bicycle saga, since I had many requests .

The seconds aspect of title is related to the impressive range of possibilities and ideas that the web seems to offer.
All the social networking, Wikipedia, Youtube, diverse communities (Lyrics translate and last.fm + endless forums, a genre already established, come to mind). Altough information overload and the thought of digitizing too much don’t sound very well to me, the sheer range of ideas makes me want to take part in this thing too.

Fatal Bazooka – J’aime trop ton boule

You don’t need to understand French to realise the parody.
Because of limited contemporan culture though, I directly recognize only:
Street respect – Sean Paul – the sound;
Call on me – Eric Pridz – the gimnastics costume dance
Satisfaction – Beny Benassi – the hard tools.

Actually I only saw Satisfaction for the first time a few days ago. I’ve been missing a lot from this century’s artistic expression .
Enjoy:

(actually after the first 30 seconds there’s nothing new too see, but enjoy it anyway).