It happened to everyone: you opened a bunch of sites and you have to go or restart your computer or something like that. You would like to save those tabs for later reference. Well, Internet Explorer does have something built in to take care of this, but it's kind of stupid. A third party software would be far better.

But anyway, you are in a hurry, you want a quick solution and I have two for you:
1. Make sure you have set Warn me when closing multiple tags in Internet Options, then close your browser. It will ask you if you want to close all tabs, click on Show Options, check Open these next time I use Internet Explorer.

2. Go to Internet Options and then just click Use current in the Home page section. It will set all your open sites as home pages.

In Firefox things are far better. Just right click on the tabs bar and bookmark all. It will ask you to save them with a name. Then just go to the Bookmarks menu and reload them.

I remembered today of a song that I liked to listen to called Everything for Free, by K's Choice. Back then (oh, my tired bones) the Internet was not yet as... evolved as these days and you couldn't really get all the discography of an artist in a few minutes, so I only listened to this one song that was also on MTV.

I am putting the video clip here, but really do look into the singer, Sarah Bettens, who also has a solo project beyond K's Choice and has a lot of videos on YouTube. Here are some sites you can visit:

	K's Choice	Sarah Bettens
Official Site	X	X
Myspace Site	X	X
Wikipedia Site	X	X

[youtube:AxY6KrqGnCw]

This song is one of my latest favourites, even if the sound itself is a bit too much like country music, the lyrics are really funny. I wasn't able to find the video for the song, so here is a random video one.



Poe, by her real name Ann Danielewski is the daughter of the Polish director Tad Danielewski and is singing since 1990. Look for her other songs as well, some are really smart and they sound pretty cool.

How to Sleep Better is a BBC programme that tries to solve some of the issues related to sleep. It does NOT show you how to sleep better in a shorter time, it is about fixing the problems that make you sleep badly or less than you want.

The program is very interesting indeed. I was kind of put off when I didn't find it on video.google.com and it is not found freely on the programme's site either, so you should seek it on BitTorrent or DC++.

Anyway, long story ridiculously short, it started from a survey of common sleep problems and then they tried to find solutions. There was a snorer, a couple with a screaming child, a woman too obsessed by work to sleep well, an old man who couldn't sleep well from his youth, a flight attendant that could not sleep well in her own home, but could do it in a hotel and some guy that worked driving night shifts.

Solutions:

The snorer should lose weight to relieve some of the fat on her neck, but she could also try tennis balls hooked on her back (with a bra) to stop her from sleeping on her back. But there was a thing that she put in her mouth that solved it. Apparently, snoring is treatable in 99% of the cases.

The couple with the screaming child should not have had so many children in the first place and they could also have aborted, killed or at least seriously beat them to make the kid shut up. But what they actually did was to first analyse the problem, which was that the child associated sleep with the presence of his parents close by, and then solve it by slowly going further away from the child each night when put to sleep. Eventually the brat learned to sleep by himself and not feel frightened when alone in bed.

The woman that was obsessive about her work and other problems solved it by scheduling her activities each day and sticking to the schedule and also writing down any problem that obsessed her. It seems, at least in her case, to ease the need for her brain to ceaselessly remember and analyse the problem if it was written down.

The old man was so worked up about not being able to sleep that he actually kept himself awake by worrying that he won't be able to sleep. They solved it by forcing him to try to stay awake :)

The flight attendant has a clogged bedroom. Her room looked more like a prison cell than a sanctuary (that's more or less their words) and when they rearranged her room (basically by drawing a line in it and separating a third of the room for storage and the other two thirds for relaxation). That helped her ease up and feel comfortable in her own apartment.

The night shift guy "cheated". He quit his job! :)

There was also interesting information about the drinks that keep us awake (like coffee, tea, fizz drinks) and foods (apparently aged foods like salamis and a bit potatoes) and about how some people are night people and some are day people. Trying to wake and go to sleep early would work wonders on some and terrible on others.

Try to find it, even if the presenter, Robert Winston, is a bit silly looking. He is a smart man even if he does look like one of the Marx Brothers :)

Yes! A message for women everywhere :) Garbage has better songs, but this one is with dedication ;)

New video from Foo Fighters. In case you are wondering why I am posting music videos in my blog, it's so that I can click on the little 'music' label and listen to whatever music I like, wherever I am. So if you want to see all music posted by me, use the labels!

Many a solution on the net propose clearing a html page of images, dropdowns, buttons, checkboxes, radiosbuttons, etc and replacing them with text, then outputing the result as an Excel file. Excel is smart enough to understand the simplest HTML and opens the html as an Excel. The user only has to save the file as an XLS and everything is set.

But what about styles? Apparently, Excel does not work with numerically defined colors, but instead it uses a predefined set of 40 colors and displays any numerically defined color as the closest of these 40. It is a drag to see a beautiful page rendered in Excel in only the coarsest of colors.

But, if you are trying to build an "Excel compatible" page, or if you want to use a separate style for the excel export (btw, Excel doesn't understand stylesheets, so you have to save all style in a <STYLE> tag and NOT use multiple class names in the same class property like "class1 class2". Older Excels might not even do that) then you have to use the colors that Excel uses. Here is a list, as taken from my Office 2003:

Black Negru	Maroon Maro	Dark Olive Oliv inchis	Dark Green Verde inchis	Dark Blue Albastru inchis	Navy Blue Bleumarin	Indigo	80% Gray Gri-80%
#000000	#993300	#333300	#003300	#000040	#000080	#333399	#333333
Gold Red Bordo	Orange Portocaliu	Olive Green Verde Oliv	Green Verde	Teal Blue Albastru Verzui	Blue Albastru	Gray Blue Gri albastrui	50% Gray Gri-50%
#800000	#FF6600	#808000	#008000	#008080	#0000FF	#666699	#808080
Red Rosu	Yellow Orange Galben Portocaliu	Yellow Green Verde galbui	Sea Green Verde marin	Cyan	Light Blue Albastru deschis	Violet Violet	40% Gray Gri-40%
#FF0000	#FF9900	#99CC00	#339966	#33CCCC	#3366FF	#800080	#969696
Fuchsia Ciclam	Gold Auriu	Yellow Galben	Lime Verde aprins	Aqua Turcoaz	Sky Blue Azuriu	Violet Red Mov	25% Gray Gri-25%
#FF00FF	#FFCC00	#FFFF00	#00FF00	#00FFFF	#00CCFF	#993366	#C0C0C0
Pink Roz	Ocre Ocru	Light Yellow Galben pal	Light Green Verde deschis	Light Aqua Turcoaz deschis	Light Blue Bleu pastel	Orchid Lila	White Alb
#FF99CC	#FFCC99	#FFFF99	#CCFFCC	#CCFFFF	#99CCFF	#CC99FF	#FFFFFF

Now this is a Russian band with a male+female vocal. This is by far the best of their songs and they have a nice video clip on it. Enjoy!


Official Slot site (Russian): http://slot.ru
MySpace Slot site (English): http://myspace.com/theslot

Can you imagine 1922? It was 85 years ago. That means that almost certainly all the people that worked on this movie are now dead! But it is still a masterpiece of cinema. They did that with no previous inspiration. After you watch this, you can only ask yourself how come people have 85 years of example and they still screw movies up. So here it is: Nosferatu

Dan Dobos is a Romanian writer and so I find it difficult to bad mouth his work. He also had bad luck with this one, as I'd just found one of the better writers of sci-fi and read a few of his books before trying to (re)read The Abbey.

Bottom line, The Abbey tries to be a Romanian Dune, with some Christian theology thrown about, a planet controlling the resources of the entire human dominion, people with heightened intelligence, instincts, subtle two way dialogs and verbal manipulations, etc. It fails. The characters are inconsistent, obvious, their best attempts at charade are ludicrous, their motivations are inedible, the whole human galactic evolution completely unbelievable. The writing style is also very shallow, made only of dialogue and inner thoughts, with little detail of what is actually going on.

Although I admire the attempt, the basic ideas and the fact that he got published in a country where people rarely buy books and if they do they don't buy Romanian authors, this series is a failure. Better luck next time.

Enough said, I started reading anything this guy wrote. I've found Fallen Dragon, a single book this time, but filled with ideas that obviously grew into the Commonwealth Saga. With this earlier novel I did find Hamilton's Achilles heal, the one thing that bothered me in his books more than the slight over detailing of everything: the characters have no freedom.

Let me expand on that. When you write something, you have the characters in your head, fighting and shouting to let them free to do what they want. If you do that before they are fully matured, they break havoc with your writing, even considering you have the skill. However, when you force them to do your bidding like slaves, you also damage your story, because they lose credibility and consistency.

In this book more than others, the characters were forced to do something that they should never have done. A soldier looses his squad to a bunch of idealistic galactic eco terrorists, but eventually joins their ranks. That is just not possible. I was wriggling in bed, waiting for the moment the hero would remove his mask and kill that brain damaged bitch. He did no such thing, just letting his mates die for no reason. Thinking back, the same happened with Judas Unchained, when all characters willingly marched against an alien that was clearly lacking any resources and just trying to escape in a wild wild west kind of quest "let's all personally go and kill the bad guy".

Back to Fallen Dragon, it is an interesting story, with some moral teachings as well as a delicate temporal paradox, but it's not comparable with Hamilton's latest books.

After finishing the Commonwealth Saga, by the same author, I started reading the next series: The Void Trilogy. As in the aforementioned saga, the story does not end in any way at the end of the first book, you have to read all three books to reach the end, which effectively makes this another huge monolithic story, not a series or saga.

Set in an even more technological advanced future, but in the same Commonwealth universe, it depicts the interactions between a powerful pseudo-religious void worshipers, ANA (a quantum artificial intelligence where people download when the are tired of living and the next evolutionary phase of the SI) and its competing factions, the different alien races and the void, which is a dark impregnable sphere in the middle of the galaxy that only some psychic humans seem to penetrate.

The style is the same, the writing as almost flawless as before. I do think that P.F. Hamilton is one of the greatest sci-fi writers I've read, up there with Tolkien and Herbert.

I have seen the movie on TV a while ago, but didn't catch the start, so I never knew what the name was. Finally, someone in a Romanian book club found the translated print here and reminded me of it and told me that it was based on a book. I've decided to read it in its native language, a bit scared that I would understand nothing of it, but the French is pretty easy to understand. Maybe because the author is Belgian :)

The story of Fear and Trembling is about a Belgian girl, born in Japan (just like the author), employed in a big Japanese corporation as a translator. Due to her inability to understand the local customs and the irrational feelings of her employers, she is demoted time after time until she ends up replacing toilet paper in the water closets.

The book itself is not meant as a comedy. The main character sees everything with a stoic detachment, analysing both her feelings and the feelings of others, trying to make sense of a world that she can't seem to fit in. It made me understand more than ever the illusory nature of reality. Both her and the Japanese were occupying the same space and time, were observing the same events, but their realities were completely different. That clash of incongruous realities is the core of this small novel.

A bit too French for my taste, not in the language, but in the endless repetitions of metaphoric interpretations of the same event, that overwording of inner thoughts that makes French writing sound pompous. However, I did enjoy the book, I recommend it to anyone wanting a light and distracting reading.

I wanted it to sound like Fruit of the Loom, for the connoisseurs in gaming :), but failed miserably. This blog post is about the exotic (and shamelessly expensive) fruits one can found in market stores.

The first one is the Lychee fruit. It is small, has a rough skin that has to be removed and a big seed inside. It leaves little else, but the flesh is very tasty, with a taste like that of a grape, but less sour and stingy. No wonder it is called the Chinese grape. I recommend it, at least try it once.

The Mangosteen. Now that's a fruit. Big as a small apple, it has a similar hard skin to remove and a similar taste as the Lychee, with the added advantage that it has more flesh. I would venture to say that this is the most tasty fruit I'd ever tried, even if a little too sweet. There is a funny story here, too. When I was a child I used to keep newspaper bits of the "did you know?" column (back in the days when newspapers has a science and information section). One of them said that the Mango is the king of the fruits, the very best in taste, but hard to transport because it rots easily. I was disappointed when I first tasted mango. It wasn't even tasty. But apparently, the author of the article made a confusion between the Mango and the Mangosteen. 20 years later, the article is vindicated ;)

The Carambola. A yellow star shaped fruit that can be bitten into, has the taste of a Quince fruit and a bit of its texture, but a bit finer. I would prefer it to quince, even if I don't particularly enjoy apple/pear tasting fruits.

The Kiwano, or horned melon. This is an odd fruit. It can be cut in quarters and eaten like a melon, has a greenish yellow color and taste like a combination of cucumber and banana. It is an interesting experience :)

I have tried another fruit, one that looks like a plum shaped (but smaller) orange. And it is :) It is like an orange pill. If it weren't for the price, I would use it to make arranciata. The name is kumquat and it can be hybridised with lime to fruit limequats. There are a lot of citrus fruits in the world, not only the orange, lemon and grapefruit!

For other exotic (for me) fruits, check out Part 2.

I've been to a small village near Sibiu, home of my parents in law, called Sarata. First major trip outside Bucharest by car, we managed to reach Sibiu, Ocna Sibiului, Sighisoara, Basna, Balea Lac, Paltinis and to travel the entire area back and forth.

We have become intimately familiar with dust and washing the car, but it was almost worth it, if it wasn't for the permanent noise (yes, I went there for the silence) and I got people (and their atomic children) shouting, screaming (and that without actually fighting, simply communicating), phones ringing (and I thought it was bad they didn't have a phone) and roosters making all kind of noises (man, I hate that rooster!). On top of everything, I've spent around two nights fighting the excessive warmth and another two fighting an intense case of indigestion.

But you won't be interested in that :) Anyway, let me review some of the touristic impressions I had.

Firstly, Sibiu. Because of the "European capital of culture" thing, Sibiu is now transformed. Not that it's not a city like any other, but it is now completely crowded by cars, parking spaces, tourists, etc.

The same impression I got from Sighisoara, where I was expecting a medieval town with cute little taverns and interesting castles, yet I found a city in reconstruction, filled with cafes and "Authentic Souvenir" shops filled with things of incredibly bad taste.

Ocna Sibiului is a small tourist place with salty and iodised waters. I'd expected a place full of old people coming to treat their illnesses, but I did not expect the level of mismanagement of the place. Imagine a few holes in the ground filled with naturally salty water, but not cleaned, with a few old wooden stairs that looked ready to crumble at every step. We had to pay to enter, the prices inside were huge and in order to find a place to change your clothes you had to find a bush somewhere. I had fun in the water, as I could leisurely fall asleep in a water that seemed to easily sustain people of ... lesser gravitational pull as myself.

Basna seemed nice, but we didn't stay long. An expensive hotel is placed there, with pools and everything, and then there are the mountains right there, ready to be hiked.

Balea Lac, just a short trip, even nicer place than Basna, but really commercialized, souvenirs and stuff. The hotel being just a normal mountain hotel.

Paltinis is just like Balea, but villas and hotels are sprouting there like mushrooms.

Some very nice villages and locations are found by travelling between the major place of tourism. We've found a 702 years old evangelic church in Valea Viilor, a small village near Copsa Mica, with an old woman greeting us with Guten Tag, and then by Buna Ziua, even if we were in Romania. The wife loved the architecture and I loved the cool air. Also a nice place was in Cisnadioara.

What was a little off putting was that we were guiding ourselves by a map made in 2000 and after reaching Valea Viilor, for example, we tried taking a road on the map and a villager said "Oh, that road? It isn't functional for more than 20 years now". Also, getting out from a temperature of 19C in one of 30C was not "cool", either, so we preferred watching the beauty of nature from inside the car. Not having to smell the nature was a plus for me, as well.

Sorry for a lack of pictures, but I don't have a camera :) I will remedy this for sure, but it's not a priority right now.