April 30, 2008
Mactop
After putting my paws on a Mini-DVI to VGA adapter today this is the first post edited using my 19" Samsung LCD as a display as well as an external keyboard and mouse. And it feels damn nice. My MacBook just turned into a desktop computer. Yey!
April 28, 2008
Easter trip through Maramures
Will return with details and more photos. The one above was shot by Ioana.
April 25, 2008
Album of the now
Album of the week even.
Portishead - Third.
You can stream the whole album for free on last.fm. Yeeey. I'm in the process of listening to it for the first time and I definitely like what I'm hearing. A lot.
Official release: April 28, 2008. Hmmm, might even order it as a CD.
Update: It seems that I've caught what were the last hours of the full streaming album. All you can listen now are 30 second samples. Too bad.
April 24, 2008
My very own one page site
Ladies and gentleman: clicktrackheart.com. Now with EPIC content!
Read about how I got the domain. And look how amazed I was when I saw one of these sites back in 2003. The link in that post is dead, by the way, it leads to some junk site.
April 21, 2008
Central Europe Rally 2008
Hey, look what we had in Baia Mare. Or around Baia Mare. The Dakar Rally gang racing around... Did anyone knew about it? No. No media attention. Why? Because it was organized by Hungarians, it was held in Maramures (what, that county in the North-West?) and it didn't involve Becali. Fuck this country.
Photo by Tamás Debreczeni (he has a whole set dedicated to the event). I wish I had my own photos but I was denied to take a day off.
April 18, 2008
The real Balea story - Illustrated!
OK, you've read about us in the newspaper, but now, a week after the whole thing happened and past my birthday, it's time to tell the full uncensored story.
Here we go. Hold on, it's going to be a long read.
We (as in Ioana and me) decided to spend our spring holidays at, or around, Balea Lake because we heard and mostly read so much about the spot being a snowboarder / skier mecca and also being the place with the longest lasting snow in Romania. So we reserved ourself a nice and cozy room at a house down in Cartisoara which is the last village on the northern side of the Transfagarasan road and last Thursday we headead for the heart of the country. Dodging radars and fighting shitty weather we reached the place in the evening and after some adventures we managed to find the house. After unpacking most of our stuff and despite being dead tired we thought we'd check out Balea Cascada (the Balea Waterfall) which is the terminal spot on the northern side of the road while it's closed (which basically means almost all the year except the late summer and early autumn months).
So after some 10 kilometers of snaky mountain roads we got up to the opening that hosts the "Balea Cascada" hotel and the lower station of the cable car which takes you up to the lake while the road is closed. We saw the waterfall at some distance ahead and again we decided to check it out right then. The funny thing was that the snow started from the immediate vicinity of the hotel. But when I say started I mean started good. After some hard walking in the deep snow, getting our shoes full of it and seeing the first signs of avalanches we reached a place where we decided we should stop because at one point the waterfall was going under the snow and I didn't really wanted to stand on snow knowing that a wild mountain brook was flowing underneath me. So we took photographs and returned to the car regretting that we haven't taken our boards with us as the path would've been quite rideable. We went back to the village convinced to return the next day all equipped and ready for boarding.
Which we did. At around 11 AM on April 11th, 2008 we were at the lower cable station. Where we received some warnings from a Salvamont (Romanian Mountain Rescue) guy who said not to climb the mountains around the lake because it's very unsafe. This advice was repeated by several people we asked when we arrived to the top, however when we inquired if we could ride down the valley under the cable car's line everyone said the risks were significantly reduced if we'd stay away from the steep bordering slopes. After a few minutes of waiting the 10 people that were necessary for the cable car to get moving gathered and off we went, up the mountain. The cable car ride wasn't really epic because after passing the second pole the line takes you through a wide and steep mountain valley (damn, I don't know the exact term of that natural formation). We saw the avalanche remains that were visible on the left and right side and were amazed by the road which was almost completely covered in snow. The arrival was a surprise for me, because the whole ride was a lot shorter than I remembered / imagined. Note that I passed the Transfagarasan with my parents in our trusty old Dacia many - many years ago. But I have very sketchy memories of that whole trip.
So we got up. After recovering from the height dizziness the first objectives we checked out were of course the Ice Church and the Ice Hotel. In this order. The Ice Church was free to visit and was quite impressive with it's crucifix plus the depiction of the Last Supper both carved out of ice whereas for the Ice Hotel a girl appeared out of nowhere and informed us that the visiting fee was 6 RON. I was reluctant to pay, being the cheap bastard that I am, but Ioana whipped out the money and in we went. It was well worth it, as it was something you don't see everyday. A whole hotel with a lobby filled with tables and rooms with beds all carved out of ice. I took a ton of photos and we truly enjoyed our brief stay at this unique facility. Ioana got out first your's truly being too absorbed by the photos he was taking. When I got out she was talking with the guy who apparently took care of the place. A few seconds (under a minute I think) after I stepped outside we heard a loud thud and twisting our heads we realized what made it: half of the ice arcade that formed the entrance collapsed. Too close for comfort. In the meantime, while we were visiting the hotel, a helicopter landed near the Balea chalet so it was time for some more photos.
Next we wandered around quite aimlessly taking photos and getting scared by the avalanches which were breaking off the top of the mountain. We also admired the bravery of a few which climbed up on one of the slopes. Climbing a smaller hill confirmed our suspicions: the snow was watery and close to impossible to ride. After returning to the Paltinu cabin we were approached by two German guys who inquired if we're going down by the cable car. Actually they were recruiting us since they needed the minimum amount of 10 persons for the cable car to move. We told them we are thinking about it, but we were quite inclined to go down by board. After they left we ate 2 sandwiches and then decided we'll hit it. When we reached the cable car's upper station we saw the two guys already started down the mountain by foot. So we launched ourselves too.
The first part of the descent was quite enjoyable and adventurous. We mostly followed the road but there were moments when we had to unbind our boards and walk for a few meters only to gear up and launch ourselves again. I remember putting myself over a parapet and then having a steep and speedy descent on a slope right underneath the road. Ioana followed close all the time. After this steep descent there was a rather flat part, or if it wasn't flat, the watery snow made it seem like it was flat because I was barely moving on the board. I remember seeing two earlier avalanche "tongues" almost reaching what was the road in the summer and thinking about photographing myself in front of the first one only to discover that the second one was bigger and thinking about going a few meters more and planning to stop and wait for Ioana to catch up to me and snap the photo. I don't exactly remember when I took off my board but I know that these thoughts came to a sudden halt when I heard Ioana shouting from behind. And there was another sound too...
As I turned around and looked up the mountain there was the horror. A massive avalanche broke off from the top where the first "tongue" was. And worse, it was heading straight for Ioana. I shouted for her to hurry and then I saw her stumble with the snowboard. I shouted at her to leave the board which she did and then started running in my general direction. I approached some large rocks and had half of a thought about ducking behind them if the avalanche reached there. It didn't. However it formed into the biggest one I saw around there and when it reached the road and went well past it with a load roaring sound, it became really massive. It stopped just a few short meters short of Ioana's board. She was panting fast and looking at me. I was looking at her and then said I'll go to retrieve the board. She insisted she'll go. I insisted that I'll go and I won. She somehow had the inspiration to snap 3 photos while I was returning with her board. We waited for a few minutes to recover from the shock and then headed forward down the mountain. We were of course checking the slopes like crazy. Never binded the boards to our feet again... We used them a few times as sleds, but that was the end of our boarding season this year.
Even before reaching the waterfall's general area we decided we'll go round on the road not risking the steep descent on the left (very close to the left slope) even if we saw the German guys heading in that general direction earlier. Looking back, going around on the road wasn't the best idea. It turned out as a bad one. That's because the road was mostly snowed in so I had to break a path and because it's carved hard into the mountain and there were towering rocks above our heads almost all the time. Seeing fresh fallen rocks, the remains of rock slides and hearing the sound of falling boulders didn't really raise my confidence either. Right around the waterfall when we took the Transfagarasan we've met another two German guys who were going up the mountain by snowmobile and they've warned us that the road is very long. I thought it can't be worse but it turned out at least as bad as the avalanche scare. At one point I had a panic attack and I thought I'll call Mountain Rescue to come and pick us up. Somehow I got up and continued... We stopped a few times under several concrete avalanche controls. And after much stride we somehow reached the hotel where we parked our car hours earlier. I don't think I was ever so relieved in my whole life.
The funny thing is that the GPS was working in my pocket all this time. So it recorded the whole trip... Once I'll re-install the necessary software to my PC and find the improvised transfer cable I'll download the track and amaze myself again.
Not much to say as a conclusion other that we've decided right there, seconds after the whole thing came down that slope, that we're "slope monkeys" and we should stay off the wild mountains during the winter. One death scare was enough. Or was it the adventure of a lifetime. I don't know. What I know is that I don't want to repeat that experience.
The next day we visited the beautiful and safe Sibiu and on our way home we made a detour to Sighisoara. And that was our spring holiday.
(Last two rows of photos - including the 3 infamous "right after" shots - by Ioana.)
The sad, the bare and the muddy
It's so hard to believe that a winter that started at the begining of November and lasted until the end of March actually ended. But we'll have to learn to live with the thought of no set activity during the weekends. Again, thinking about buying a (basic) bike...
April 17, 2008
29
No. This isn't entry number 29. Neither is the 29th day. Not even 29 months.
It's 29 years. Since I'm on this planet.
Yey. Happy birthday to me!
Update: The Mac-Forums made sure I get their wishes. Btw, it's kind of depressing to get the same greeting from tens of vBulletin based forums the only thing changing being the forum's name and occasionally the username.
Yet another update: Illustrative image added.
April 16, 2008
RIP Kurt Vonnegut
I just found out via the eReader newsletter (which I still receive although I don't exactly know why, since I definitely don't have time to read fiction anymore) that Kurt Vonnegut passed away last April. Rather sad news. What can I say other than rest in peace and thanks for all those smile filled evenings that I've had reading Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions. So it goes...
April 15, 2008
Getting friskier
friskySubscription++;
myPayPalBalance--;
Even if my PayPal account is in minor pain, I'm looking forward for a summer filled with great music. Mmm, already thinking about those afternoon trips to Bodi Lake. Last year's experience confirms that a chilly swimming session after a steamy workday completely restores one's faith in life.
Also, thinking about switching my trusty Kenwood car CD player that performed so well in the Dacia and lately in the C3 with one that can handle USB sticks. Maybe even Ioana's iPod. If I'm tired of one thing, that's writing CDs with mixes that I'll listen to at most a few times (except those real gems) and then forget all about them letting the CDs they're written on take up precious space in the car. I'm thinking about another Kenwood because it's a brand I trust - besides the CD player I had a pair of headphones whose plastic broke several times (SuperGlue to the rescue!), lost their fake leather cushion protections but the speakers still perform flawlessly. Anyway, I'm already well equipped with a catalog. I just need the cash.
Our 15 minutes of (in)fame
Romanian knowledge is a must. Full of incorrect info and made up quotes, but, well, we're in the newspaper. Joy! Here's a screenshot of the article for eternity.
Update: The three photos Ioana took right after the event: one - I'm recovering her snowboard (it's the photo that illustrates this entry), two - the lower part of the avalanche and three - where it all came from. All three photos worth to be checked out in their original size. You'll need a Flickr account for that.
April 14, 2008
Nikon D60 User's Manual PDF
The User's Manual and the Quick Start Guide, both in English.
Because I found the two PDFs after lots of digging I thought I'll make the whole process much easier for other Googlers. Waiting for the cease and desist e-mails from Nikon's lawyers...
Back. Alive.
Actually I'm back since yesterday night but I was waaay too tired to post an update. And now I'm at work, basically burried in stuff to do. If you're really interested you should keep an eye on my Flickr photostream as that's the most likely place to first receive updates.
April 8, 2008
Champagne please
Entry number 500. FIVE HUNDRED. Whoohoo, hurray me!
Kitsched! - The worthless yekkings of János Rusiczki - Getting on your nerves since December 2002...
I would like to thank my family, my dogs & cats... You know.
PS. This milestone entry brings with it the oh-so-dreaded comment form captcha which everyone hates but which I was forced to install to save myself from wading through hundreds of spam comments daily. I was fearing the idea of some real feedback getting accidentally categorized as spam. With this plugin installed I'm hoping to return to the spam silence I've been in for 3 years. Oh, and please excuse that I just dropped in the captcha. I'll tune and style it later on.
Online routable map of Romania
Triple wow!
First of all I had no idea such a thing existed. Then after the great discovery I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the site / service which is very good. Now I have a great reference until Google will move their ass and include a detailed map of Romania. But I'm sure that even past that point this site will survive at least as an alternative.
Instant mental bookmark.
April 7, 2008
The end of the local winter season
Webcam image of the the base of the Roata slopes at Cavnic captured a few minutes ago:
Depressing.
It looks that I was right when I titled the Flickr set containing pictures from last week's Saturday snowboarding session as "Winter season's end (2008)". It was a beautiful day with full on sunshine. Actually the sun was shining so brightly that I was concerned about the bald spot on the top of my head getting burnt. I've also had one of this winter's best backcountry runs just a few short meters from the "official" Roata slope. Mmm, sweet powder. It felt great...
Unfortunately the rains that kept falling during most of last week proved to be a real nemesis of the remaining snow. I checked the webcam this Saturday too. It was pouring. The cable transport was off. There was noone. Sad.
Anyway, I said the end of the local winter season because starting with Thursday we're hitting Balea Lake for a grand season end. Keeping my fingers crossed for some good weather.
Monday morning LCD menace
How do you know it's going to be a great week?
The first thing your boss says to you just as you enter the company's door is: "you have a new LCD just unpack it and replace your faulty one". And then you discover that your LCD has no issues actually, all the problems you observed were caused by your stupid leg hitting the VGA connector on your computer.
Erm, yeah, I know I shouldn't tell anyone I work with computers. Although it's a known fact that I'm no hardware wiz. On the contrary.
PS. This entry's title wanted to be "Monday morning monitor menace" (Mmmm) but then I remembered that as opposed to Romanian, in English "monitor" is not really used to signify "display".
April 6, 2008
Spam fight reloaded
Got so much stuff to blog about but my energy level is painfully low...
Just wanted to note that I was getting tired of all the spam comment notifications that were landing in my mailbox so I installed MT-Akismet. For the time being, the comments will remain moderated but if the plug-in performs well, I'll open them again.
I'll be back after some well earned sleep.
Update: Perfect timing.
April 4, 2008
Moving again - Completed
Tadaaa! Hailing from TotalChoice where everything is nice and zippy fast. Just as I expected.
Fully satisfied, thank you.
On a side note: is it me or DNS propagation has gotten significantly faster over time? I remember waiting for days just a few short years ago, whereas Gmail says that I received the welcome e-mail six hours ago - right after which I updated the nameserver entries. Unfortunately I haven't noted the exact time when the site became accessible on this new host but I know that I fiddled a lot with downloading and uploading the files so I'm guessing that it propagated in around, or under, 3 hours. Very nice.
Update: Of course Internet Explorer still takes me to the old host. And this happens on the same machine. Even if ping and tracert both show the new host's IP address. Even after I issued 'ipconfig /flushdns'. How retarded is this?
Moving again - Update
A follow up to my last entry: I made the payment over at TotalChoice and I changed the nameservers to point to the new host. The DNS propagation waiting game begins... Funnily now that I'm in the process of moving the whole thing started working a lot quicker than it did yesterday. It might have something to do with the fact that it's the middle of the night over in the US or because Murphy's laws are valid in webhosting too.
Moving again
I'm on a blogging frenzy! But I'm fed up with Movable Type's sluggishness...
And I know without any shadow of doubt that the culprit is not MT, but Dreamhost and their hosting which is anything but dreamy. Nightmarish maybe, but not dreamy. So I have decided to move back to TotalChoice Hosting as soon as they sort out a PayPal payment issue I just reported after being unable to apply.
If this blog becomes inaccessible during the following days it means that I'm changing nameservers and I'm on my way out of this crap. At least with this site.
Firefox 3
... is incredibly fast.
It looks like the thousand dollar "investment" in this Intel Core 2 Duo rig last February wasn't in vain after all. I can finally browse around without strange second long hangs during which my CPU would strangely whistle to me from the case. I can feel the speed baby.
Can't wait for the final release and for my favorite (AdBlock, S3Fox) and work critical (Firebug) extensions to become compatible with it so I can install it on my Mac (the machine on which I'm doing all the work at home) and over at work too.
April 3, 2008
All WAS well in Spamland
Just a few weeks ago I was bragging about how spamless my blog was. Seriously, MT-Keystrokes kept everything miraculously clean, in the 3 years since I installed it I received a total of maybe 5 spam comment notification e-mails. These were the results of uber-hardcore spammers who actually took the time to copy paste their spam comments into the text area and then press the 'Post' button instead of doing what thousands of other "Average Joe" spammers do, setting up some bot to spam away or worse, having hundreds of zombie PCs do the dirty work instead of them.
I'm saying that all was well because I had to delete my old plug-ins when I installed the new version of Movable Type that now powers the blog and so, unfortunately MT-Keystrokes had to go as well. And I'm sad to report that only today my blog received around 10 spam comments and even if I saw in MT's activity log that many comments were denied because they were coming from open proxies and even if I've been diligently reporting the ones that got through as spam I'm still not content with the situation. Not by far.
So I'm off to hunt down some efficient anti-spam plug-ins.
Desktop news aggregators > web based news aggregators
I noticed that lately I started preferring desktop feed readers to web based ones.
First I discovered that FeedDemon is nowadays free. Then I discovered that NetNewsWire is also free nowadays. Then I discovered that since they're owned by the same company they're able to synchronize via NewsGator which provides NewsGator Online - a basic web based aggregator. What else would I need? I quickly imported all my Bloglines (the first web based service I used way back) feeds into FeedDemon and later merged them with the OPML exported from Google Reader (the one I've been using until recently) in NetNewsWire and BAM! Here I am, in geek heaven. Truth to be told, NetNewsWire crashed several times because I was rushing to organize my feeds while they were still downloading but after I managed to fit each one into the folder it belonged to now everything is OK.
So excuse me while I'm pounding away on the space bar catching up with all my favorite blogs, reads, comics and photos. See you all later.
The automotive pleasures of life
Hey, I have to share this.
I just LOVE driving up to my parents house in Baia Sprie after work. I like being alone in the car with my music and my thoughts. I just hope I won't smash into something or someone as a result of being too absorbed. But I generally like driving. A LOT. And I'm not having these driving sessions just for the sake of driving, I usually do the 2 by 10 kilometers to pick up something I received by mail. As I still list my Baia Sprie address although I live in Baia Mare since 2004...
Of course I also have the "pick up Ioana after work by car" driving session each day. But that's not half as fun because I have to cross a really cramped town at around 6 PM. Unfortunately the stress that results from taking care that wreckless idiots won't hit our beloved little car takes away the joy of it.
Next week is looking good from this driving point of view as we're going on a short holiday to Balea and that means crossing half of the country by car. And back. Hmmm, I'm off to write some mix CDs and praise my friskyRadio subscription.
Construction site timelapse
My video. Let me show you it. OK, lolcat language over. :-)
First of all I hope my boss won't spank me for revealing sensitive company stuff. As all you see above is happening behind a high fence.
And now for some technical info: the movie was created with JPGAvi (an unregistered version of this software, actually) and it is made up of 899 frames which translate into an equal number of images captured by a Mobotix M22M surveillance camera from one of our own construction sites. The images were captured at one minute intervals from 6:00 AM to 8:59 PM on March 27, 2008 - the day that began as winter and ended as spring. 15 hours x 60 frames / hour = 900 frames. My only credit besides assembling the video is that it was me who set up the camera's operating system to save these snapshots to one of my own FTP accounts.
Well, that's about it. I really like how the clip turned out. Enjoy!
OOXML is now an ISO standard
Bad news of the day. Actually bad news of the yesterday when I found the link on Techmeme, but I couldn't write about it as my blog has been experiencing technical difficulties.
You might remember that I touched the issue a while back after the first round of voting, heavily disappointed by Romania's stand regarding the issue but it seems that ASRO (The Romanian Standardization Association) haven't changed their mind from one round to another. They voted pro again. Well, that's it, we have to face it: these people "represent" us as a country. And I said nothing about the shady sides of the whole thing...
The story is rather complicated and has many facets but if you became interested a truly comprehensive article is available at ars aranea. At least read the last section "What have we learned?", even if we know now that the last paragraph was wishful thinking.
Hello world 4.1
After some adventures which included almost 24 hours of my individual post pages being offline I managed to upgrade my blog's engine to Movable Type 4.1. Judging from what I saw from the admin up until now it really is great. Let's see how it works in the longer run...
Update: Some template tweaking was needed before being able to publish the entry.