Bike Downhill Uphill
Today we challenged the bad weather and the busy schedules and we tackled a few hills in the surrounding area. We started off with 3 descents on the hill between Provita and Poiana Campina.
This video is from the last descent on the steeper side of the hill when I switched bikes with Bogdan so I could be in a video myself for once. Turn your volume down for this one, It's still got the original sound track, complete with Star Wars-like airspeed sounds.
I've been doing this for a while and this video finally shows what one of our downhill bike rides looks like for those of you who were imagining and wondering.
After a quick break for logistic restructuring Costin and I started a series of descents in and towards Secaria, then Tesila, then Valea Doftanei and finally Sotrile. Hill after hill we really made the best of all the newly redone roads in the area. Also, the brilliant idea to mount the Action Camera on the safety car's windshield wipers helped us get footage with both of us at the same time.
Our last ride was the hardest of all, as night was falling, the road wasn't all downhill, having in fact some pretty challenging uphill parts, and best of all a heavy dense fog engulfed the hills.
You can see more of today's descents in the Vlog on my newly created YouTube profile.
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| Christian Nasulea - 13.09.2008 | |
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Al di Meola in Bucharest
Thursday night I was invited to an Al di Meola concert. It was truly
spectacular. The two guitar plus percussion and harmonica combination
was incredible.
Below is a small excerpt of the
concert featuring the group plus a Romanian guitar student named Alex
who won the chance to perform Mediterranean Sundance on stage together
with the great Al di Meola.
A big thanks to my aunt for reminding me
of the concert and taking me to it.
Thanks to squonk78 for
posting the video on YouTube. The quality isn't that great but it
should be enough to give you an idea and make you want more.
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| Christian Nasulea - 13.09.2008 | |
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How to Get a House for 25 Pounds
I suppose now that I've secured a piece of the action for myself I can let you in on the big investment opportunity of the week.
Brian and Wendy Wilshaw have decided to sell their 5 bedroom house in
Devonshire, the surrounding 11 acre property including lake and the 4
twin bedroom timber lodges through a sort of lottery system. As such,
you can go to www.winadevonpropertywithfishing.co.uk
answer a simple question and buy one of the 46000 tickets to the
competition for 25 GBP. As I'm writing this 41645 tickets have already
been sold so I expect the competition to close soon.
The ROI on this thing is huge. The odds are very favourable compared to
any conventional lottery system with an incredible 1 in 46000 chance.
From an economic point of view it's just a high-risk, high-yield
investment.
So, if you're not going to play yourself keep your fingers crossed for me.
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| Christian Nasulea - 12.09.2008 | |
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The Large Hadron Collider's End of the World
Yesterday morning all you could hear on TV was CERN this, LHC that. The
buzz of the moment definitely is the Large Hadron Collider inaugurated
yesterday at CERN in Geneva.
Besides the really
cool name (I bet many of you would like a Hadron something of your own)
it's a very interesting concept altogether, albeit in a geeky-nerdy
kind of way. To help shed some light on what it actually is and what it
actually does watch these videos published by CERN and a few other
participating institutes.
If
you've followed the press coverage you've most likely picked up on the
rave about the end of the world which would be brought upon us by the
LHC. It seems there's a Nostradamus quatrain about the end of life and
Geneva. It reads something like:
Migrés, migrés
de Genefue trestous,
Saturne d’or en fer se changera,
Le contre Raypoz exterminera tous,
Auant l’aruent le
Ciel signes fera.
which roughly means:
Flee, flee from Geneva all of you,
Saturn
will change from gold to iron,
The counter-positive ray will
exterminate all,
Before it happens the sky will show
signs.
Apocalypse theory experts have decided
this also goes well with the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 thus
concluding the world will end in December 2012 because of the LHC. Go!
Take out a big loan, with your future grand-children as collateral, and
travel the world... while it still exists.
Seriously now...
If you want more
information go to the LHC First
Beam website. If you still want more information consider
adopting your own physicist.
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| Christian Nasulea - 11.09.2008 | |
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iPhone Firmware 2.0.2
A good couple of months after it was first available I've finally worked out the means and motive to upgrade the firmware on my iPhone to 2.x, more specifically to the current 2.0.2 version.
There were many things to work out even after all the preliminary research. The deed was eventually done by using WinPWN 2.5 Beta in expert mode with a manual download of the firmware. Even after the process was complete there were a few thrills resulting from simple things, such as email, not working. The issue was later resolved with a simple terminal command via SSH.
I'm delighted to have access to the Apple App Store, Cydia and Installer 4 all at the same time but I am disappointed by many other things.
Among the disappointments:
Touchpad Pro, which I bought a couple of months ago, is not available for FW 2.x yet, with no news on when it might. I found a relatively acceptable replacement in Mocha VNC, which I am yet to properly put through the ropes.
Funiculus, the extraordinarily accurate guitar tuner, will not be available for FW 2.x. However, its creators have produced a fairly inexpensive version with many more functions available through the App Store. I bought it.
MooCowMusic Band is now only available for a cost.
Apollo IM is not available. IM+ proves to be a lesser substitute.
Fring, the native iPhone Skype client is not available.
ORB is not available.
Well, there's a lot more to say but I'll leave it at that for now.
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| Christian Nasulea - 03.09.2008 | |
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Dynamic DNS Elegance
I'd been busting my brains with Alex for a few days now, trying to
figure out how to provide him with a stable domain/subdomain for use on
his server project despite his completely IP-unstable Internet
connection.
Sure, there are plenty of dynamic DNS solutions that could do a pretty
good job, but we had to be gentle so as not to break his main website
and we needed something that worked very reliably.
We didn't expect to come up with such a classy solution. The biggest find was the firmware from dd-wrt.com
which packs a big bag of tricks and works on a ton of equipment. I'm
not going to go into more technical details. As always you can ask me
if you're interested. Also, check out the entry on Alex's blog, he's done a great job on his project so far.
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| Christian Nasulea - 02.09.2008 | |
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Most Watched Video...
I've taken a slightly bigger interest in YouTube lately, what with all the crazy extreme sports and such. As I was creating my own personal account, connected to Google, to use for uploading videos I stumbled accross this simple piece of information: What do you think is the most watched video on YouTube ever?... Ever, EVER!
That's right, the award goes to Avril Lavigne, whom I don't mind but wouldn't ever have guessed to be the "best-streaming" artist on YouTube.
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| Christian Nasulea - 30.08.2008 | |
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Busted Knee
This is more of a note to my future self.
I'd like to stress the fact that combining (1) an ascent from Balea Lac to Capra followed by a fairly rapid descent, (2) rollerblading down the Transfagarasan in less than optimal weather, road and safety conditions, (3) a 1800 m altitude climb on foot over a very short period of time and (4) little to no sleep will most likely result in some sort of bodily damage. In my case a busted knee and a world of pain.
Sadly, the human body is not made of adamantium. Looking forward to my own recovery...
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| Christian Nasulea - 26.08.2008 | |
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Balea Lac Quick Dive
As I was making the final preparations for our weekend escape across the Fagaras mountains I began thinking about our top of the mountain intermediate destination, Balea Lac, semantically.
I thought "Balea Lac" (EN: lake), so there's water, so there might be room for some water sports, so let's pack some gear. This is how I found myself on top of the mountain prepared to do the deed in the video below.
You can see what the depths of the lake look like. Not much in terms of plant life and no discernible animal life, a fair amount of trash though.
As I was making a swim for it one of the people from the chalet came outside to let me know that the lake is in a protected area and that I'm liable to pay a fine for swimming in a protected wildlife reserve. However, I'm told that he actually came outside and just sat there for more than a minute, astonished at the fact that there actually was somebody snorkeling in the freezing waters of the lake.
The words "unde te trezesti, bai nene!" were his official reaction. I eventually got away without any fine or any other kind of trouble. The astonishment (awe) factor probably helped.
The background music is Debussy's Claire de la Lune.
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| Christian Nasulea - 25.08.2008 | |
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