Without further ado, The Sounds! with their song "Seven Days a Week". Of course I chose this one because the blond looks cute :)



Links: Official site, MySpace site, Wikipedia entry, YouTube search.

No, I am not talking about Dark Water, either. I am talking about water. Penn and Teller went to a rally of some sort and asked people to ban dihydrogen monoxide; water, that is...



So, if you are reading this, dear environmentalists and conspiracy theorists... don't listen to everything that sounds good, because most of it is not, even if it seems to enter the same agenda as yours...

A while ago I wrote this entry about an innovation in sound technology that will probably change the way we think of sound.

Today I am presenting a video technology I witnessed at the mall! Yes, the mall, that dreaded place of overpriced junk and overdressed bimbos. Overpriced, too! :) Anyway, I was watching this Pepsi commercial on a big TV like device, where a can of Pepsi was rotating showing its full cylindrical glory. Only that it felt out of focus. My eyes were kind of sore watching it. Immediately the image changed to a ball that came towards the screen and then... went through the screen!

It worked from almost every angle, without being a holographic thing in the middle of the air, but more of an optical illusion. Thinking of the faithful thousands of people reading this blog every day, I remembered the little link on the side of the device: www.x3d.com, with their device called MultiView.

The image is not as clear as one would want. It's like continuously vibrating or something like that, but the optical illusion is great! I saw people passing by the device and trying to put their hand through the "flying" objects.

Here are a few links from Wikipedia about the subject:
Volumetric Display
Autostereoscopic

Update: I've heard that Fado has now been closed. It was nice while it lasted. Too bad I didn't have the chance to go again a few times before it went away.

Today we went with my parents at a Portuguese restaurant called Fado. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the cuteness of the place and the service was not bad. The food was bravely innovative, too, and tasty. Actually, it was more on my own taste than most of the restaurants I've been to, including Chinese. Well, I like Chinese more, but I can't cook Chinese, that's what I meant :-P

Anyway, if you happen to search for an intimate restaurant in Bucharest, with interesting food and a waiter that knows suspiciously much about the food, up to the point where he recommends you what is better than your original idea, then Fado is the place for you.

This is a link, in Romanian, with more details: Restaurant Fado

At first I thought it wasn't Linkin Park singing. The sound is a bit different, at least in this song. But I like it. I hope this new album of theirs, Minutes to Midnight, will be as good as their first.

I know, the third entry in my blog about Basescu doesn't say much about my IQ or style, yet now I know what I felt I needed to say, but didn't realise what it was. It is the similarity between the case of Traian Basescu and Ariel Constantinof.

It is amazing still that these two similar stories happened in the same time. Indeed, Basescu is like a high school student who is suspended from the school on the basis of his behaviour, without anyone really knowing if it is "kosher" to do so. Do the high school owners have the right to expel Basescu or is this a financially motivated blunder? Both of them are big mouthed smart asses, without being really malevolent, yet being rather naive. Just as Basescu, Ariel gets a lot of sympathy from bloggers and radio hosts (radio bloggers?) everywhere, but without any true support. On each of the blog pages that describe his ordeal there are hundreds of people that offer their moral support, but really not much else. Just as Ariel, Basescu gets only a bunch of people to at least voice their anger to the school directors.

Can the case of Ariel Constantinoff serve as a simulation of what will happen to the country in a few months? I don't know, but I really like Ariel more than Basescu. And at least he has parents, the chance to go to another school. For crying out loud, he's a kid! Teachers, leave the kids alone! But who will find enough sympathy in their hearts for an old, bald, shunned ex president who didn't yet catch on with reality?

That's it! No more Basescu for a while on this blog ;)

I just remembered this song and, since I haven't been posting music lately on the blog, I put it on. The clip is made by fans of both Lou Reed's song and of the movie Trainspotting, also a favourite of mine, which featured A Perfect Day in the soundtrack. Enjoy!

...which is the Romanian word for "The people". Something a little archaic, like in the old days, when the people were either being oppressed, discontent or revolting. Usually, one uses the word in describing folks living in the country or a people as a whole, but then they are always specifying the country.

These days, right after the Parliament decided to suspend president Basescu, the Romanian Internet went wild. "Poporul" that, "Poporul" this. Blogs everywhere, hailing the great hero of "the people", victim to the vicious plots of traitors and communists and economic interests and so on and so on.

I am not even commenting on the decision to suspend Basescu, although I never liked the guy, but I can and will comment on the reaction of so many people, fellow bloggers, journalists and opinion leaders, all caught in the demagogic and cynical trap of the "hero".

For example, I read that Basescu (single-handedly, no doubt) brought Romania in the EU. Wrong! Most of the job was done by the PSD before, and it would have been inevitable, anyway, since the EU wanted our market. He is also responsible for the transition from the ROL (the leu, the old Romanian coin) to the RON. I might argue that the transition itself is dumb and useless since we will be switching to the Euro in 5 years, but hey... what did the president of the country in order to influence in any way the switch to the RON? Again, he is a great guy, but he did this terrible mistake of putting Tariceanu as prime minister. Did he have any other choice?! He won the elections (barely, I might add) on the back of a coalition of parties, the democrats and the liberals. Being a democrat himself, he had to put a liberal prime minister, whether he wanted or not! What else did he do, this hero of the people, except telling Bill Gates that piracy was a positive thing for Romanians? (which is true, BTW) Publicly fighting with your prime minister is NOT a good thing.

The greatest thing Basescu ever did was impersonate fantastically well a man who fights corruption. But did he? Corruption scandals are everywhere around him, involving him, suggesting political blackmail by use of the Secret Services. Are they based on anything? I don't know, but I do know that the little corruption, the one that I have to face, as a normal person, did not diminish. Quite the opposite! The current government policy seems to be take from the small and give to the big.

But returning to the people, who are these people that like Basescu? The ones that are either sympathizers of the democratic party or not having any political sympathy (as all other parties are now against him). Who are these wonderful people who will fight for the symbol of their freedom and fight against evil (no, not Bush), against the political will of all the parties and the people that support them and against all the TV attacks against the president? Who are these great minds who can think for themselves and make a decision and stick by it? They are not the "popor", that's for sure!

So for you, all these people of the press and Internet blogging bravado, I suggest you speak of yourselves, leaving "the people" alone, since you are not their representatives (as Basescu is not). Leave the illusion of greatness to the dictator-hearted people. Lead by example, not by association. Because you are not of the people, you are a little better.

Well, it sounds better in Romanian, since just a few days ago it was Easter.

Anyway, it seems that the dark force that rules Romania has finally shown its ugly head and took vengeance on president Basescu. You see, some say the country is ruled by corrupt politicians, while others blame economic interest groups. But it's all a scam to hide the real rulers of Romania: the boutique traders!

It all started quite a long while ago, when Basescu was only the mayor of Bucharest. Back then he decided to demolish boutiques that provided cheap and accessible nourishment and drinks to the population and to kill as many dogs as possible. Their plan was long and elaborate, but the boutique people got through all of this without even being noticed. They and their dogs, saved from certain death by their covert operations. Finally, the day has come! Basescu was allowed to go as high as he did only to have a bigger fall in the end.

You might consider this post another tasteless joke from my part, but you will see... some day... when Basescu has lost all his political support, nobody loves him, his beautiful Presidential residence taken from him, feeling defeated, buried in despair... the dogs will get him. Oh, yeah, they will get him. They never forget!

I've wanted to write about this for a long time now. It started with the entry about the ridiculous and diabolical street sweeper machines that make lakes of water at every intersection while "cleaning the streets and fixing the dust". As an added bonus, now entire forests outside Bucharest are being torn down to make way for housing projects. I wonder where the dust is coming from, hmm...
Anyway, I want this entry to be as complete as possible in order to tell anyone considering buying a bicycle to ride in Bucharest what exactly they are getting into.

Step I. Buying the bicycle

Now, being a girl or a slim guy and not having the desire to make bike stunts in the foreseeable future, you might be considering buying a bicycle from a hypermarket chain like Cora. Don't do it!! The bikes there are of bad quality to begin with, but considering the people at a hypermarket don't know anything about bicycles, you will also get a bike that is put together by marketeers.

Let me give you an example: the bike is twice as cheap as anything you saw in a bike shop, it also has a lot of accessories like wheel covers, water bottle support, ringer, bike support leg. Isn't that a good deal? No! The spikes of the wheels are bad Chinese quality, in short time your wheels will turn in an figure 8 like movement; the water support is nothing but a glorified wire, sooner or later you will deform it and it will scratch you or your clothes; The ringer works, but is placed in the middle of the bike horns, so you can't reach it; the wheel covers are cheap plastic and they will always fall on the wheel making loud noises and slowing your bike; the bike support leg will at first not hold your bike, since it is really bad, then it will get its mechanism jammed and you won't be able to expand it.

Still want to buy it from Cora? So where do you buy a bike from? I personally despise franchises. That's why I would not recommend First Bike or any other shop like it. However, not having bought anything from them, I can't express an opinion. I bought both my bikes from Magelan and I am rather satisfied with the bikes and the service, even if I had to pay a little extra. What is nice about Magelan is that they are a full time bike shop. They fix bikes all day long as well as sell them. They taught me about how to maintain my bike, they centered the bike wheels (this being a very important process if you don't want your wheels to deform or the bike to require more effort to ride), etc. They also presented me with bikes of 1000-4000 euros :) Luckily, you won't have to buy anything more expensive than 400 euros.

The things you want in a bike are: wheel covers (see the diabolical street sweepers above), firm brakes, an anti-theft device and a good saddle. Anything else is rather useless. You will need a bicycle pump, but I would recommend the foot pumps that are sold in car shops, not the arm muscle devices the people at Magelan sell as pumps.

Step II. Transporting the bicycle

What do you mean, transport the bike? It should transport you, right? Wrong!. The bicycle will transport you only on the road. Then you have to move it upstairs to your flat or to your office. Sometimes, like when you go shopping, you need to lock your bike and tie it to something. You will soon notice that moving your bike with an elevator is not an easy task, especially if you are tall like me and you bought a big bike. There are also old hags that insist on you cleaning the elevator after you dirty it with your bike wheels. There are blocks without elevators. The first rule about this: don't tie your bike downstairs, hoping it won't get stolen. It will!
If you have the misfortune to live in a block without elevators or with a too small one, you will have to climb the stairs with it. For example I have to do this at the office, but lucky me, it's only at the fourth floor.

Step III. Riding the bike

Oh, this part is going to be long. Take some popcorn and read carefully.
At first you will ride the bike on the sidewalk. It makes sense, since you want to be safe when you make rookie mistakes and you lose your balance. You don't want a big truck to hit you when you stop suddenly and can't keep straight. So, if you are allowed to move on the sidewalk and it's safe, you could always use the sidewalk, right? Wrong!

In a normal situation, where the city hall really thought about you, the citizen, and took measures to keep you happy, you would be OK using the sidewalk. There would be no holes, there would be easy access from the sidewalk to the street, no cars parked on the sidewalk, no cars running on the sidewalk. In Bucharest no one even considers bikes. There are holes in the sidewalk, since you have feet to go around, in or out of holes; sometimes there is a lower sidewalk edge for things like bikes, wheelchairs and child perambulators, but sometimes it is a bit too high for comfort or there is none; when there is, cars are parked in front of them and, at the street crossings, people stop on them, without even moving out of the way when they see you sitting on a bike next to them. That is, if you can move on the sidewalk at all, since cars try to beat the traffic by moving on the sidewalk or they just park there, blocking the way. Not to mention the weird thingies that one meets on the sidewalk: people!

There are three "banes of the biker" when moving on the sidewalk: lover pairs, old people and women with children. So, if you see an elderly couple that seem still in love walking with their nephew, at least go around them on the guy's side. Why are they banes? Lovers like to hold hands, while in the same time keep apart from each other, then suddenly get back together and split again. They are completely clueless, unaware of the world around them and totally unpredictable. Old people are equally unpredictable due to strange and unspeakable pains, aches and mental conditions. They can stop suddenly, zig-zag, turn around unexpectedly and, most of all, get completely freaked out when you pass by them (even at a few meters away). Women with children are firstly women, then they have children. I rest my case.

So, after a while you get annoyed with all this, you decide to move it to the next level: the street. Since the circulation rules regarding bikes are pretty clear, there shouldn't be a problem. Cars will leave the "ecartament" empty, not park there, they will move one meter away from you when they pass by you, the drivers will be civil and respect your legal status of vehicle. Rrrright!

Street "biker banes": women driving new cars, taxi cab drivers and men driving junk cars. Women with new cars usually cheated through their driving licence exam and the car is not even theirs. Someone probably bought it for them. Women in general have a strong sense of law and order, therefore they will expect you to obey every circulation rule they know of and, when faced with real life situations that are not in the bloody book, they panic, freeze, etc. Simplest way to solve this is to always consider the possibility they actually want to hit you and take precautions against it. Taxi cab drivers own the streets. They are afraid of nothing and no one, except other taxi cab drivers. And women in new cars. And men in junk cars. For example, a cab driver will always move on the tramway line and honk at you, explaining in vernacular why he has the right to be there and you don't. But it is understandable... they rarely take Latin. Anyway, the men in junk cars are careless. They know they can buy a car the next day just like the one they are driving. It will be junk, but whatever you hit or hits you, they have to pay more. What could happen in the worst case scenario? Die? They already lost everything. And worse of all, they have a junk car, which is humiliating. They try to cover this shame with loud music, usually bad music, which makes them not only dumb, but also deaf.

When you learn to avoid the banes you still have to fight the street sweepers, to learn to move quickly when the light goes green, as drivers will magically ignore you being there when they turn right and you want to go forward. And most of all, you will have to fight the "good" ideas of the city hall.

Example: they built this bike track (weee!) around the Alexandru Cuza park (formerly known as the I.O.R. park). It is a half a meter wide strip, marked with yellow, right in the middle of the sidewalk, with beautiful images of bikes drawn on it and occasionally some arrows to point out the direction. So, anyone wanting to circle the park in one direction, like a hamster in a wheel, can use this. Of course, last time I saw it, there was a cripple guy walking with dignity on it. At least he respected the direction pointed by the little arrows.

The city hall also plans to build bike lanes. A commendable effort if they didn't do in the same time things that nullify it completely. And I mean the street side garbage bins. These are the bins that drivers can throw stuff in. Of course, they are right on the side of the street, the place where the horns of your bike are supposed to be when you pass through there. Not to mention the remote possibility that any Romanian driver would want to throw things in the bins rather that directly on the street, in which case they would most likely not look behind before putting their hand out. Can you spell "open fracture"?

OK, OK, I don't want to scare you out of it. It's just that there are a lot of morons out there. You need to pay more attention, else you will get hurt. Once you understand that the world is a dark evil place that wants to cause you pain, you will be alright!

Step IV. Taking care of your bike

Your bike needs to have the wheels firmly inflated. A car has the wheel pressure at about 2.4 atmospheres. Your bike will require 3.0-3.2. That means regular pumping or, the lazy man's alternative, fill them up with air at any gas or vulcanization station. Also, if you have a flat tire, all you have to do is pay a guy at the nearest vulcanization 1-2 euros and he will take the wheel out, check the tire, fix it, put it back on. Some would be kind enough to refuse, just go to the next.

After you used it for a while, you need to take it to be checked. Not too often, like once or twice a year (recommended default value). Go to Magelan, no matter where you bought the bike from, and ask them to check it for you. They will do everything there is to be done. The service is really cheap, too.

That was a short chapter.

Step V. Miscellaneous

So you know where to buy it from, what you want on it, how to ride it, what to look out for and how to take care of your bike. What else is there?

Well, first of all, sweat. When on the bike one doesn't usually sweat as the air circulation quickly evaporates the humidity and cools the body. However, stopping is a bitch. All the heat builds up quickly in your system, now used to have external ventilation, and you start to sweat. So, when you get to the office, don't rest, don't catch your breath, take your bike up as soon as possible, go to the bathroom, remove your t-shirt, wash. Use a special towel that you brought with you or that you designated as body towel. You will have a lot of perspiration on your spine and on your chest. Your face will probably be very sweaty, too. Take your time. Your body needs to cool off, so you might need to splash water on you repeatedly.
If you do this, you will need no change clothes and you will be fresh and reasonably not stinky for your colleagues. You will rinse your mouth with water, but don't drink any until you get out of the bathroom and you are reasonably cooled down.

Also, special attention to buses. It is easy to go by them, as they stop often. But they also release those human thingies, sometimes before the bus station, sometimes they start from the station and they stop because they see some guy running after the bus or someone forgot something and they want to get off. Sometimes bus drivers do it on purpose.

The same thing goes for every car stationed at the stop light. The only accident I had with my bike was when a complete idiot opened the car door at the stop without checking if anything is coming. I slammed right into that door. The scary thing is that I also got out of a car at the red light and I realised I didn't even consider checking for a bike. So it happens to everyone. Go slowly by the cars at the stop!

The last thing: etiquette. If you are a girl, not necessarily a stunning image of womanly perfection, you will get honked, whistled at, disrespected, teased. The only ones that will not do that are the women, which, as stated previously, will silently come from behind and kill you in inept panic. Don't get mad, don't get even, just learn to let it go, ignore everything that doesn't have anything to do with you getting to your destination. If you are a guy, you will be challenged at every step of the way. Or is that at every wheel turn? Anyway, drivers will try to bully you, block your way, honk you out of composure. Same advice goes to guys as well: ignore anything that is not about to be in your way or hit you.

What you need to understand is that, in normal Bucharest morning traffic, you are faster than any car there. People that spent their entire economies and still paying huge rates at the bank to have their new car will see you pass right by them, not paying for the car, for the gas or caring about the traffic! There is a lot of frustration there, don't give it a chance to bubble up towards you.

No matter the genre, you will have to either wait for someone to pass on a street crossing and provide you with "cover" or you will have to descend from your bike and walk next to it on the crossing. This is the only rule that one would reason out of, since it it more advantageous for drivers to let you pass on your bike (since you will cross faster) than on foot. Yet 99% of them will ignore you wanting to cross the street while on your bike. It's a pride thing. Bow to the king.

If you got this far, then you probably should get a bike, it means you are committed :) It's not as bad as I portrayed it, either, but pretty close. Danger comes not from what you expect, but from the unexpected. You also expect less when you are not paying attention or are thinking of something else. I don't recommend music listening when you ride the bike, but I do recommend sun glasses and (didn't try it, yet, but soon) a face mask/air filter.

 Now, you might ask yourself what has the girl in the image with making your own girlfriend. Look closer, it's not a girl (and not a nigth elf either) it's a computer generated image, made from scratch.

Update 2020 - most of the links here are dead, the things they referred to long forgotten. So much for "once you put it on the Internet it never disappears".

Having reached the 200^th entry, I really wanted to write something cool, something interesting, something that sticks (and it ain't shit).

I thought of blogging Kartoo, a very nice - albeit slow - visual search engine that shows not only relevant links, but also the context items that link different pages.

But Kartoo is not personal enough, so I switched to YouTube, thought about blogging (yet another) female vocalist nu-metal with goth overtones band like the Italian band Exilia. Or something else, like the Turkish band maNga, or the Spanish Dead Stoned or Demiurgo. But this is a blog, not a video/music site.

Then I thought about programming; there must be something in the three projects I am working on worth blogging about, or at least something important like Don't use the .NET Random class when concerned about security. But then again, the blog is full of (I hope) interesting programming hints.

What else is there? Ranting about bycicle lanes the city hall is building on the sidewalk and on which old people are happy to walk (slowly) without losing themselves;
interesting conceptual games like BoomShine, Straight Dice or Stickman Fight and how they can be improved;
the BBC Baghdad Navigator, to show you the distribution and timeline of Baghdad bombings;
the Lilium song for the anime Elfen Lied;
the Coma article on Wikipedia (I didn't write it);
coming improvements in the Sift3 algorithm;
InuYasha manga reaching chapter 500;
the new Google/Kartoo/Wikipedia searches for any selected text in the blog;
how I am reading Il Nome de la Rosa and The Name of the Rose in the same time, trying to grasp more of the Italian language;
Gwoemul, a very nice South Korean film...

No, there is too much to choose and I can't decide. I think I will skip entry 200 entirely.

Reading this article on digg, I began searching the web for this very cool religion called Pastafarianism and I feel that it relates to me in a very spiritual way. In other words, it makes me laugh my ass off!

As you can read in the Wikipedia article, the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world (or is it the other way around?) in order to prove to idiots that you either think or you believe. There is no middle ground. Thinking requires trusting your observations, emitting theories and then validating them by using observed data. Believing doesn't require anything, therefore being easier to do, and can (and most of the time will) deny your ability to observe, your capacity to reason or to grasp reality and look down on your desire to understand anything that is believed.

Well, seriously now. One cannot believe the world was created by the Spaghetti Monster... Or maybe one can, as long as they accept the obvious fact that the Spaghetti Monster was created by the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

In the Romanian jargon there is an insult: slave. It appeared ten years or so ago and it stuck. It probably came from Gypsy talk, probably holding more meaning to them, since they were liberated from slavery and into the worst social problem Romania has. But at least the cool ones are not slaves anymore, even if they recreate daily the hated cliche of the typical Gypsy Roma and are stuck in the mentality that work is somehow a shameful act.

But the word is also used by Romanians. You might see young people that have a little business or a scheme to get money quickly use it to refer to the people that are employed somewhere and go to work every day. And they are somehow right, since a lot of the rich people in Romania, business owners, top managers, land owners, etc. are uneducated folks. Instead of going to school, they chose to fight, risk, learn in the school of life. And it shows. They have a lot of money and no manners. They have a lot of opportunities, but don't really use them. They are no longer rude people with no money, they have money now, but are stuck into being the same people they started with. Kind of like the joke where the anus wanted to be the manager of the body.

How about the slave, then? The guy that goes to school, goes through all the (mechanical) motions of learning, passing exams, getting a job, living a "normal" life? Well, we are mostly wasting our time. The money we get are what we need to live, maybe even enough to get a car or, if one is lucky, an apartment. People like us spend their entire lives surviving and dreaming about what we would do if we had more money. Meanwhile, we lose 8 hours a day working, 3 preparing and going to work, 7 sleeping, 1 or 2 eating and are left with 4-5 hours in which to do "what we like". If that isn't slavery, I don't know what is, but in all that time we make the system work.

Slimy manager types that themselves work for uneducated bullies that somehow got into fortune work in the system as well. Poor 'unslavy' thieves occasionally steal something, thus making policemen work all day and accept bribes. Businesses run into the political framework maintained by corrupt politicians who themselves obey the laws of economics, which are heavily influenced by the people from other countries, who themselves are only cogs in this great machine we call humanity. And of course, all those good managers that work for great people and all the Gypsies that go to school and work and all those politicians who actually want to make a difference, too.

This is no freedom, we are all slaves. We allow ourselves to be blinded by a value system, be it invented by us or just stolen from someone else, and we live by it. We all choose our swords and then we let ourselves die by them. True freedom is inside, not outside, it's in the dreams, not in their realisation. I might even venture on saying that it's in the quantity of the dreams, not their quality, because that is what enslaves us, dreaming of a single thing, being desperate to achieve it and then to hold on to it.