Bike Shopping Day
Yesterday was one of those days, blog-worthy days. I had planned to go bike shopping with Bogdan several days in advance, so I went to his place and picked him up around 10:45 am. The plan was to have a look at some bike stores and pick out a few bikes, primarily for Myself and Costi.
The first thing we found out soon after setting off was that First Bike doesn't really sell bikes anymore. They had a shop full of ATVs, scooters and motorcycles and only 10-12 bikes forgotten hanging on a wall.
Next we thought we'd try a couple of shops from the bike shop list I found on Bike XCS. A big thanks to Alex and the rest of the guys on the Bike XCS forum for putting together the list.
We went to the AS Sport shop in Pantelimon where Bogdan fell in love with a 9700 RON mountain bike named Fritzz. We got to see a bit of what the cyclist community looks like in several places, including Bebe's shop near Piata Dorobanti, online at www.xbikers.ro. It's a real urban underground culture.
After a bit of lunch we went to see a couple more shops on Ion Mihalache Bvd. To cut the story short(er) we were either finding cheap low-quality bikes or very expensive, very high quality stuff.
After 8 1/2 hours of shopping we ended up buying 2 bikes from Carrefour for around 900 RON each and one bike from the ending stocks of one First Bike store for 500 RON. As I had a true expert with me, we of course did not complete the purchase from Carrefour until Bogdan was completely convinced that everything was OK with the 2 bikes and all the systems on the bikes were tuned to a good level of functionality. Yes, we spent about an hour in the sports section of Carrefour Orhidea tuning the breaks, the suspensions, the gear-shifters, the position of the steering and a few other things I can't even name. While Bogdan was fine-tuning things on one bike I took the other for a spin through the shop.
It's true what they say: once you learn to ride a bike you never forget. It was about 10 years since I had last ridden a bike and I managed to do it through Carrefour without knocking down anything.
After we picked up the last bike from First Bike and Costi came by to get his and ride it home Bogdan dismantled the remaining two bikes and half my car so that I could get the bikes to Comarnic. By the time I managed to pick up the rest of my stuff from the apartment (at rush hour) and actually got to Comarnic it was 11:15 pm.
It took me another hour or so to put my bike back together and get debriefed, so it was about 12:30 am when I took it for its first ride.
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| Christian Nasulea - 24.05.2008 | |
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1/4 century
It feels like it's birthday season. So a big Happy Birthday! to all those celebrating the passing of another year. I'd rather avoid mentioning anyone to avoid forgeting to mention anyone but I just have to give Andrei another big thumbs up for the great party and his folks an even bigger thumbs up for having the courage to give us the house for the weekend.
All these birthdays made me realize that many people I know, myself included, will be turning a quarter century old this year. Best wishes to us!
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| Christian Nasulea - 19.05.2008 | |
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MooCowMusic Band And Its 12 Bar Blues
There's a new application available for the iPhone from MooCowMusic.com. It's called Band and it expands on the concept of the existing Drummer, Pianist and Guitarist applications by enabling you to play any available instrument within the same application. This means you can record and mix increasingly complex songs using many instruments.
The files making up an instrument are fairly simple to make so you should be able to create your own stuff without too much effort. I've already edited the Congas on my iPhone to make them more suitable to my needs.
Beware the application is still in beta which in my case means it crashes when I add too many instruments.
To get an even better idea of the application you can watch this video from the developer's website:
The 12 Bar Blues instrument is as amazing in real life as it is in the video.
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| Christian Nasulea - 17.05.2008 | |
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TV, Radio and Everything Else on iPhone
This changes everything so radically I have to be careful about where I start and where I finish to make myself clear.
Imagine being able to watch live TV on your iPhone. Imagine being able to watch live TV from stations that don't even broadcast online. I probably already lost you.
Here's the story from the start. You have a computer that's connected to the Internet via a high-speed connection and that you keep turned on ALL THE TIME (for whatever reason). You have a TV tuner inside this computer as you use it to watch TV as well from time to time. This same computer just happens to contain all your MP3 collection on a 1 TB hard drive (let's say about 200000 songs) and a number of TV series seasons you like on another 1 TB hard drive.
All you have to do next is install ORB 2.0 on this computer and set up a free account. You then configure it in order to let it know where it can find all your music, your movies, videos, photos and even documents. You tell it how to interact with your TV tuner so that it will be able to broadcast any channel in your cable subscription to you.
If you've done all this it means you can already log on to mycast.orb.com from any computer in the world and access any of the media files you shared on the home computer (music, videos, pictures, documents) or watch any TV channels you have at home. ANYWHERE! ANYTIME!
It gets even better. If you have a jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch you can simply go to the Multimedia category in the Installer app and install ORB Live. ORB Live is a native application that gives you direct access to your ORB account. This means access to any music file, movie, or picture on your home computer and the ability to watch any of the TV channels you have at home. ANYWHERE! ANYTIME!
I'll stop here but not before mentioning that on top of everything ORB also allows you to record or schedule recording from any of the TV and radio channels at home. Recordings are immediately available to you online.
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| Christian Nasulea - 11.05.2008 | |
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CERF 2008
Yesterday I spent 5 hours at the Computer and Electronics Romanian Fair (CERF), the most important technology exhibition in Romania.
Among the more notable things I'd count:
The dual notebook backpack from Kata. It seems I'm far from being the only person carrying two laptops at once every now and again.
The multipoint bluetooth hands-free unit from Jabra. It allows you to use two phones at once and has a really stylish design.
The dual WAN wireless router from Draytek. This little toy is one easy to configure, lightweight box that packs everything needed for load balancing and failsafe dual-wan configurations, and it's got 802.11n wireless support.
iRobot, the automated carpet cleaner. Just like in the movies it's got a home dock that sits in a corner and it just goes about it's business cleaning your mess according to the parameters you program into it.
A really astonishing range of KVMs and extenders from Aten available in Romania through our friends at MikroAtlas. There's a lot more to it than what they have on the site.
And last but certainly not least....
The PC Note Taker, bluetooth sensor that clips on to the top of your clipboard and a pen. You then write on your clipboard like you do with any normal pen and the output miraculously appears on the computer screen as well. Must have!
Note: The attached picture is of the USB version of the Note Taker, not the wireless bluetooth version.
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| Christian Nasulea - 10.05.2008 | |
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Guns, Gunfire and the Gun Range
Today I took my first gun class. I shot a compressed air pistol.
I figured after archery it would only be natural to try shooting other potentially lethal man-made instruments of destruction, perhaps something invented after the Egyptian pyramids were built, hence the pistol.
It wasn't too bad. I only managed to get about 80% of the shots on the target the first few rounds but I got to 100% by the end. Anyway, it turns out this is another one of those brain intensive sports. No muscle cramps at the end, just dizziness. It really takes the focus off anything else clouding your mind.
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| Christian Nasulea - 09.05.2008 | |
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Easter - May 1st Holiday
As most of you are probably aware, Easter was conveniently celebrated on a Sunday this year. All jokes aside the fact that Easter was so close to the 1st of May gave many people the chance to easily take a full week off from work. I obviously followed in with the crowds, spending Easter weekend, Monday and Tuesday at home in the mountains and then moving on to the seaside for the rest of the week.
The general seaside idea, for me, was to experience the typical May 1st pilgrimage to Vama Veche (which I had never done before). I ended up doing a whole lot more as I roamed the Black Sea shores from north of Navodari to Albena in Bulgaria. I spent the first couple of days in Constanta. I then moved on to Eforie Sud to try to shoot some arrows in the official warm-up of the national archery championship (heavy rains, thunder and lightning took care of that idea).
Friday night till Sunday afternoon we stayed in Vama Veche, with a brief Saturday afternoon visit of Bulgaria's northern seashores, more specifically Albena and Balcik.
Vama Veche was very interesting from an anthropological - cultural point of view. There's something very "different" about watching a concert from a broken down barracks / tent sitting on a crippled table with three guys sleeping dead drunk in the mud at your feet.
I have to make a special note about Balcik, where we visited the gardens of queen Mary's summer residence. The place is definitely worth 2-3 hours of one's time for a quick visit.
In all it was a very interesting week, with enough happening to provide material for an entire novel. Picture-wise you'll have to content yourselves with me after my May 1st afternoon swim in Mamaia.
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| Christian Nasulea - 06.05.2008 | |
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Misheard Lyrics
I found a very cool, new source of YouTube humour. The enclosed video is a subtitled version of CCR's Have You Ever Seen the Rain. The only problem is that the subtitles aren't exactly what the songwriter originally intended for the audience to understand. Add that to the funny visual support for the misinterpreted words and you could get a few hours of fun.
A few more fairly good examples are here:
Nightwish - Wishmaster
System of a Down - BYOB
or you can just search YouTube for "misheard lyrics".
Thank you, Mladen, for sending me the first link.
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| Christian Nasulea - 26.04.2008 | |
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Holland, Denmark, Germany and Thereabout
No, I haven't misteriouly disappeared through a tear in the very fabric of time.
I've been on a little trip through Europe. I left last Wednesday and came back this Wednesday. I have loads of stories to tell about all the adventures of the trip but they will have to wait. I haven't recovered lost sleep yet and work does tend to pile up on your desk if you're not there for a full week.
Anyway, keep an eye on the blog. I'm hoping to be able to fill in the gaps with some of the stories I gathered on the road.
LATER EDIT: I've run the numbers on the trip. The entire journey was aproximately 5905 km, of which I drove roughly 2792 km.
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| Christian Nasulea - 25.04.2008 | |
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Spring Weekend
This weekend I broke off from the noise and troubles of the big city life and went to Gura Diham, a mere 30 minute drive away from our house in Comarnic. It was a great weekend for hiking with perfect weather.
The accomodation at Gura Diham was extraordinary. I already knew the food was good but I was really amazed by the rooms which were better than many hotel rooms I've seen, never mind other mountain challets.
On Saturday afternoon we hiked from Gura Diham to Poiana Izvoarelor (English: clearing with springs), then to Diham and back again to Gura Diham. It was 6 hours in all (with plenty of breaks) and extraordinary scenery. It's a great trail for any beginner hiker. Hiking boots are still compulsory, though (what, with all the springs, water, mud and all).
The picture is a view of Vf. Omu from Cabana Diham.
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| Christian Nasulea - 14.04.2008 | |
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