ultimate spiderman
Claudiu | 31 Octombrie 2005 | 82831.77 | | 4 ComentariiUneori cred ca Dumnezeu isi face timp si mai citeste din cand in cand si blog-ul meu. Altfel nu pot sa imi explic cum azi am gasit la chioscuri numarul trei din editia in romaneste a revistei Ultimate Spiderman, de la Marvel. Asta dupa ce doar ieri ma plangeam ca nu a mai aparut de aproape un an, dupa ce primele doua numerea au sosit la interval de o luna. Ce pot sa spun? Multumesc, si astept si un comment la blog 
in romaneste
Claudiu | 30 Octombrie 2005 | 82829.04 | | ComenteazăAm decis ca de acum inainte sa imi tin blog-ul in romaneste. Asta din cauza ca nu stapanesc sufficient de bine engleza incat sa imi tin un blog prin caresa ma pot exprima asa cum doresc. Simt ca nu pot sa transmit correct starea de fapt folosind alta limba decat romana. Ideea de a scriie in enlgleza a fost de a avea un numar cat mai mare de vizitatori (si astfel a mari hiturile la Google AdSense). A fost o miscare proasta, deoarece un blog prost scris in engleza imi aduce mai putini vizitatori decat un blog mai putin prost, dar scris in romana. Asa ca de acum, pentru o libertate totala a gandurilor, acest blog va apare numai in romaneste. Din comoditate si pentru o maxima compatibilizare, nu voi folosi diacritice, sper ca asta sa nu deranjeze prea mult. Coma, se pare ca ai castigat, uite, sper ca acuma esti multumit… Nu ma voi apuca acum sa traduc restul posturilor in romana, ele vor ramane asa cum sunt, cel putin pentru viitorul apropiat.
Azi am fost pentru prima data pe un teren de tenis cu mingea in mana. Am jucat la dublu cu Stefi impotriva lui Hori si a Omului, si bineinteles ca echipa in care am fost eu a pierdut. Insa m-am descurcat, problema a fost ca loveam mingea cu toata puterea, dupa cum era obisnuit de la campionatele stradale Ineuane de badminton, insa spre deosebire de fluturas, al carui impuls trebuie comunicat total din racheta, la tenis, mingea fiind elastica, din paleta trebuie dat in primul rand directia, si abia apoi un mic procent din viitorul impuls, restul si-l ia ea, mingea. Cel putin asta am invatat eu la prima lectie de tenis, azi. In rest, soarele suparator (desi afara e frig), mi-a parut rau ca nu mi-am dus cu mine sapca lui Kimi Raikkonen, pe care o am de la mare… insa e acasa la Ineu, sper sa nu uit data viitoare. In rest, muschii dor toti, nu am mai facut atata miscare de la orele de sport de acum 2 ani, asta e, sunt un sedentar…
Am reusit sa mai citesc cateva numere din Adventures of Superman. Povestea devine tot mai complicata si faptul ca nu am si numerele precedente ma face sa o inteleg mai greu. Oricum, pe coperta ultimului numar, 645, sta scris mare: “Infinite Crisis is Here!” si iar se termina in coada de peste, de parca ar fi o telenovela. Desenele sunt superbe, exact asa cum imi inchipuiam, desi motorul grafic nu e cel folosit in seria animata (cea mai recenta), insa asta nu e un lucru rau.
Apropo de Superman, nu am mai vazut ultimul numar, 10, din SuperEroi. Sper sa nu fi disparut si astia, dupa ce au reaparut acum o luna dupa o perioada de 3 luni de pauza… Asta e, clienti putini, aparitii haotice, dar macar sa fie. Ca The Amazing Spider-Man numarul 3 nu a mai aparut in veci, iar in US sunt deja pe la numarul cateva sute… Despre Carusel, cu alta ocazie…
the dilema
Claudiu | 28 Octombrie 2005 | 82823.58 | | ComenteazăYesterday I was to the main clinic for my analysis to be done, for my new and first job. I thought I have to wait and wait for my turn, the stuff was going pretty fast and in almost no time blood was extracted from my veins and I was radiated with X-Ray during lungs test… I’m sure that if I will do 100 visits to Cernavoda, I would not be radiated as bad as yesterday…
Well, I got a new edition of Adventures of Superman. I’m starting to realize what Infinity Crisis means… It’s a way of DC Comics of erasing all their mistakes and brings continuity to the whole comics… Neat, but let us remember the Star Trek never had to do such a thing.
Also, the second episode of South Park’s second part of season 9 is out, and I really like it. I liked Cartman being so serious about that future device, and another I’m-so-damn-stupid plot with Butters… Nice, really nice, I’m glad that the guys out there are making new episodes.
I had Ubuntu installed at someone, and now I discovered that it’s creating problems. Display is going nuts sometimes, I find it hard to manage the system with a ghost root, and so on… I think I will replace it with Slack, as I did at Horatio, a few weeks ago.
Talking about Linux, I was once again forced to remove my Slack installation, due to my small HDD… Until I get a new HDD, I’ll stick to bloody XP, since I need it for school. And I think I will focus to Debian, since it has such a huge repository and the best package manager. Slackware is very good, but for daily needs, I really need a good package manager. And I’m not an OS scientist, nor a server, so… Debian seems to be the answer. I need three things for this: internet by cable, the Debian DVDs and a bigger HDD. Until then… I’ll just have a Linux brake…
revolution os
Claudiu | 25 Octombrie 2005 | 82815.39 | | ComenteazăThis weekend I was a home, since Bia was celebrating her birthday. So, that’s why no activity on the blog. Like always, a lot of fun, but this time only a few guests. During weekend, Radu brought me the Revolution OS movie, about the free software movement and open source, a very nice documentary with interview of guys like Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds, between others.
Yesterday I found out that Minix3 was released, so I’ve downloaded and try it out. Looks small, it really is small, and at a first look seems like a small floppy Linux, at least the file system looks similar. But it’s much more, since it doesn’t have a monolithical kernel. Well, I’ll wait to see how it will develop, since Minix it’s just in it’s in infant stage. But I thing it has a bright future in the server’s world.
The Wine producers announce that in the next week or so, the first beta of their product will be released, after a very long of alpha stage. This is great news, and it’s another brick in the wall in the open-source community. If we have better Linux and better wine, which will need Vista?… Oh, btw, I am curious how wine behave on vista systems, I thing this will be the challenge in the near future…
cernavoda
Claudiu | 19 Octombrie 2005 | 82799.01 | | ComenteazăI never write about my visit to the Cernavoda Power Plant I took this year, and I think I should. It was maybe the most interesting place I ever visit, and I should talk about this a little.
The idea to visit the Cernavoda Power Plant came to me when I and my girlfriend were planning a trip to the seaside. I said to myself: Cernavoda is in the way, why not trying to visit? In all my four years as a student at Physics Faculty, no visit was organized by anyone, and I really wanted to visit Cernavoda. So, I went to the Internet, by the webpage was down for maintenance. Then, I said that they must have telephones, so I called 931, the general information here, and they gave me the long waited phone number. I found out that I have to make some kind of memo in which I write who am I and why do I want a visit there. Done. After two or three days, I got a phone call from Mr. Draghici, an employee from Cernavoda who, since then, was my connection to the Power Plant permanently. We establish together the visit period, and objective. That was group I and group II. I especially wanted to see group II, since it is not running yet, so I can see all the inside of a reactor.
The visit took place on a Wednesday. We got to Cernavoda by car, me, Bia, Cristina (my cousin) and his boyfriend. From the gate, we were taken inside, in a building, and watch a movie for about half an hour, about the Power Plant. The movie was kind of old and low-quality, but this was the worst thing here. Everything that followed was just excellent. We had two very nice ladies that guide us and gave us A LOT of promotional materials (books, bags, CD with pictures, posters, etc), we felt like Atomic Santa was around.
First visit, the Main Control Room. Very impressive. Then, the turbine. Very big, very loud. We all were absolutely amazed. There were three security filters, one metal detector and some radioactive checks during the visit. The doors, the walls, they all looked like the lab from Half-Life. That was out visit at group I. Again, a perfect organization, very nice guiding, everything was hot stuff. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to make any kind of picture, but the promotional material had this covered.
After a short meal (in Cernavoda Campus!) we went to group II. If group I was spectacular, group II was absolutely amazing. Being not in use, we went inside the reactor building, and saw everything! Every level, every piece of device, the Calandria itself, control bars, radioactive dump pool, everything. It was simply amazing. Here we have an engineer for guidance, who answered all our questions.
Sadly, in the end, we have to leave. But we all remained impressed by what we saw at Cernavoda. It’s a place where security is above everything. The personal were very well trained and behave very nice. If something’s going well in this country, the Power Plant sure is. And for you, atomic haters out there, don’t worry, it will not be an accident in Cernavoda. It’s impossible.
At the end, we all like to express our thanks to Mr. Draghici, who was and excellent contact person and if weren’t for his amiability, we probably never saw what we saw. Also, all our thanks for the five guides we had (two ladies and Group I, another two ladies and an engineer at Group II), who acted very nice during our entire visit.
This short review can’t catch all the stuff I wanted to tell, but I want to be clear when I say it was very nice and interesting visit. And outstandingly well organized by the people there.
comics day
Claudiu | 19 Octombrie 2005 | 82799.01 | | ComenteazăA lot of tings happened in the last two days. First, Calin returned from the US and bring me the some comics: Adventures of Superman #642, The Amazing Spider-Man #523 and Batman: Gotham Knights #68, (plus an edition of The New York Times)., the main superheroes! Hot stuff!. Then yesterday, with the help of Horatio, I win a Connex pre-pay card (for mobile phones) at a radio show. Today I received the prize, but I realized that my phone is locked on the Orange network, so id doesn’t work, yet. And also today, when looking for some change on a book store, I saw the Hawking’s “Black Holes, Baby Universes and other Essays”, so I had to buy it, since I was looking for it in the past 5 or 6 years. So, a lot of quality acquisitions these days.
Also, my webpage has now a stable section full of pictures (almost 200, including pictures from the Cernavoda Power Plant!). The photo album was made by using AlbumShaper, an excellent tool, much, much better than ‘famous’ JAlbum, which by the way, I hate. I tried using JAlbum in the first place, but the interface was awful and then some errors hit me in the face when trying to build the album. So, I give it up. The problem with AlbumShaper is that it isn’t so well known, so it was very limited themes set. But, maybe in time, this will be fixed.
Maaan, those Adventures of Superman really kick asses! I always loved DC way of doing comics (hey, just figure it out: DC: Doing Comics, LOL…). Spider-Man isn’t bad either, but it is to shiny, to bright. Superman is printed much more like ‘old fashion pencil comics’, I really like that. Now that’s one good reason to live in US…
slackware 10.2
Claudiu | 15 Octombrie 2005 | 82788.09 | | ComenteazăAs I promised, he’re a kind of short review for Slackaware 10.2. I got it from www.linuxcd.ro, very nice service, low prices, nice. So, first, I install the 2.6 kernel, curious to see how he moves. But, I didn’t read the README file, so I had no modules for sound and network. So, back to the drawing board, I’ve reinstalled everything, from scratch. The install process took relativly a short time (and it was a nice old-fashioned text-based one, like we used to) and ni problems appeared. Well, here we are, in the new shiny KDE 3.4. I had to install manually the alsa driver, like in the 10.1 edition, but this was no problem with alsaconf. Also, the scroll for the mouse. Being an USB one, I haven’t managed to fix it, but with some posts on slackware.com.ro forum, everything should go well (the system is not mine, so it will take some time to get to the system and apply the fixes).
A problem occured when trying to config the network. The system had two netcards, one onboard and one not, and the net just didn’t start until I deactivate the onboard one from the BIOS.
A major change was the long waited Firefox and Thunderbird packages, but we don’t have anymore Netscape or GNOME. But in the readme, Pat suggested some ‘oficial’ projects for slackware’s gnome, so no lost.
In short, an usual Slackware distribution, no major surprises, and the last one with 2.4 kernel built-in. Version 11 is said to have the 2.6 kernel fully suported. Until then, happy coding and all the best to Pat!
for tran or not?
Claudiu | 15 Octombrie 2005 | 82788.09 | | ComenteazăI never understand why almost all the teacher from my University talk (and not only talk) abou Fortran and why anyone would use Fortran in 2005. Fast? Don’t think so, C is the leader here, Windows and Linux are both written in C. And if you really need speed, you just use ASM. Today I kind of realized the reason. History. Fortran is one of the first programming language and maybe the firts scientifical one. So a lot of libraries and programs were written in Fortran. The effort to re-compile those dinosaures into C was considered to be to big, so let’s continue teaching Fortran to younger generation (for example, Gaussian software is written in Fortran77, instead of being ported to C or at least Fortran95). A very convenient way for the teacher, but just another language for students. Fortran is not a modern language, does not have such a large comunnity like C, so I think it has no future. It’s just a (linear) combination of Pascal and C, from my point of view, even if Fortran existed before those two. Fortran, like Pascal or Basic, is used just by their fans, for historical reasons. True modern languages, like C, Python, Java, must replace them.