Original post on the romanian blog. Copied on the school blog too.

The last weeks I have been working for a project (soon, a website for it), and in the previous weekend I was in Ankara, attending an international industrial design olympiad - Dreamline - with a friend, trying our best. We got the Jury’s special award, which was a good thing.

Now I succeeded to download some of the photos from ICHC (my former highschool`s)`s website. They can be found here too. If I will get more, I will post here too.

Kappacelu @ Turkish TV. PR work

At a family, trying to survive after getting a cold. BlackNight (my teammate) in my right side

In front of In fata Ahmet Ulusoy - the highschool where we stayed (in it’s dormitory actually)

Before the awarding ceremony

On the stage, happy. Got the medal, waiting for the money:D

Proudly (or not) representing Romania

With a guy from the jury

Again PR work, but in a way I like:D

From Ankara tower, looking for Romania

Back at Fatih University, with the teachers and a former colleague, now student there

Unfortunately, I haven’t been around for a very long time. The reasons are various: 1) I am not used to write in English so much; 2)I don’t have time to translate all my posts on my romanian blog to this one; and 3)I have been working on different projects

One good example would be Jokes for bugs (caterinca.kappakid.net) , which wants to be a collection of all funny stuff in my computer. All in english, so everyone can read. Enjoy, I am waiting for opinions:D

Update: Sorry for the title, I corrected now. 10x BlackNight

Short post:

Every time I have a conversation with someone about various places in the world, I remember to visit the EarthTV website. Even those sequences are also shown on cable TV (which I don’t watch due the lack of spare time), I find it’s much better to watch all of the online.

The “Contionus play” mode there creates for me a couple of minutes when my brain is relaxed. I only wished they would have some webcams also in Romania (if EarthTV is interested, maybe I will do this for them:D)

I’m using for a pretty long time this scripting language, and I am amazed how it makes my life more simple. Basically is a basic-like scripting language, which enables the user to do a lot of things.

So what does it do? It controls the mouse, the keyboard, creates windows, manage files, manage variables (and arrays), even some stuff from networking. It does most of the things a average user wants his/her computer to do. For geeks, a bad feature: Autoit is written in Visual Basic, which is written in C++, which is written in C. Yes, it is slow, indeed.

Despite this, I recommend this scripting language to everyone wants to write small scripts to ease their life, or to anyone willing to learn scripting, and after this, programming. AutoIT is an excellent start for programming, in my opinion.

Download: AutoITscript.com

A couple of days I started writing some documentation with a friend, and he gave me the idea to use something else that the usual Microsoft Word. This way I have the opportunity to test Google Docs application, even I have a Google account since more that one year ago.

Below, I will present the features I saw in this application, and how are they useful.

1. Documents Sharing - it’s not needed anymore to save the document, and send it via e-mail/messenger to anyone I’m working with. Now I share the document, and wait for somebody to complete my paragraphs.

2. Backup (or revisions, as they say) - This one is really cool, in case I leave my document open somewhere public, and someone erases the document, saves and closes it. Google can bring it to a previous state at any time.

3. CTRL-S - I was :O when I saw it really works in Google Docs, and it really does what it should do. I’m used with it, so there will be no difference.

4. When I click a *.doc, *.xls or *.ppt link, it opens in Google Docs instead of saving in my PC. Better for keeping documents in one place, when working from different computers. (I think it’s called portability)

5. It’s more geeky. By using this, you are different than most of the people around you:))

Today the vice principal told us to gather around the entrance of the high school, in order to join an anti drug show in the school nearby (technical high school, sharing the yard with us). I was very curios to attend such an event, since I’ve never seen one.

The organizers were from Argentina, and from the beginning I realized they are not Romanian. The show was too well made (effects, actors, scenario). The source of this event was in Argentina, which was also the 2 main characters location. The idea was: if you start taking drugs, 1. you will feel every time the need to increase the amount/strength; 2. you will lose the ability to socialize, and become introverted and 3. you will become a loser, and in the end, dye.

A tip: they were talking multiple times about the faith in Jesus Christ. I am Christian, but my teachers (well, most of them) are Muslim, and the message should be for all of us, regardless religion/orientation.

Anyway, the idea is excellent, and I hope the drug consumption will decrease, because it does nothing but killing slowly and painfully.

Photos below:

The “high” people; the message on the back says smth like “Born again to live a new hope”

The girl doing drugs - main character

Her boyfriend

Lots of statistics (about 50-60% or the people becoming AIDS positive are underage)

The Argentinian organizer, showing photos of the couple described in the show (died in `92 and `93)

I went today to pick up my mother from somewhere in the city (around the University) and I was badly impressed about that subway station. I think it’s the worst in Bucharest (or at least the worst I’ve seen, since I moved to Bucharest), or for sure in the TOP 3.

Except all the chaos inside, filled up with people selling something, at the entrance there are 4 ways, 2 electrical (once working) stairs, and on the sides, normal stairs. Since the ones in the middle are not working, nobody repairs them, why don’t they remove those stairs, to enlarge the whole pathway? It would be something needed, since that is a high-traffic station.

But since in Romania everything important is made when the election come, or when someone has a lot of money to earn, I don’t expect anything to happen with such places.

Photos below (for the ones interested)

And I gave a really good reason to say it. Yesterday I found out that soot the Cebit 2008 will start. Dates: 5-9 April. I asked my dad to search some travel offers, because I wanted to be there since last year. Even better, today I found out that is not 5-9 April, but March. In 2 weeks.

The travel agency he contacted found a package, about 600+ Eur /person (flight + accommodation in Bremen + every day transfer by bus to Hanover), but this means that with personal money, the costs will reach 200 Eur for 4-5 days. Way too much since I am not earning anything from this event (I am not working in a publication)

Maybe next year:|

The most idiotic thing I’ve heard in the last few months, from the politicians. Sometime in the near future, the NATO summit will be in Bucharest, and as they described in the news, lots of presidents, ministers & co will be here.

So this is a good reason to close the Otopeni(Bucharest’s main) airport for a few days, for making a better impression to everyone. Is Romania really a security threat to anyone?  - I doubt - They said also everything will be redirected to Baneasa (domestic & low cost flights) airport, but I really doubt it will be enough. More than that, I heard that everyone (official) expects to that a lot of flights will be canceled, to the passengers who bought tickets will get the money back.

Now I have a question: usually, when those people go somewhere by plane, they might have some meetings planned. And some hotel reservations. Maybe car rentals. Who is going to refund those money? Too sad:| In my opinion, this is idiocracy at it’s top

Nothing special in the last week. The school started, I moved into a new class, everything all right till now. But since the school is eating 50% of my spare time, I could not do much in the online projects.

One thing to notice: my wireless router - Linksys WRVS4400n -  is not working anymore. I was reading some webpages, when my mom shouted that the Internet is not working anymore. I looked, and it seemed that the router was not receiving anything on the WAN port (no ip address, and cannot connect via PPPOE). I tried to reboot, rewrite the firmware, the settings, but all were useless. Sending back to the service was (or at least I think so) the solution. It seems that the NVram inside it got burned, because of some electricity fluctuations I have at home. In the CNet reviews many users complain about the software and capabilities of the router; I was & am very happy with it. It took about 1 day to configure it 100%, but it worths. It resisted to 50mbps UDP floods, and about 30MB/s LAN traffic, so it is ok.

Coming up with some more news when there will be any:P