Category: All

All posts across the whole website belong to this category. They might also belong to some other categories as well, but this one holds all of them. Hence the descriptive name – All.

Day in brief

What was the court thinking?

I came across this article about a couple discovering that they are actually a half-brother and half-sister.  As devastating  as these news were to them, there is not much for us – people who don’t know them.  We’ve heard the stories before and will most likely hear more in the future.  But there was one bit in that article that caught my attention.

Once he found out about James’s birth about four years later he proceeded with a legal battle to gain access to his son, The Mail on Sunday reported.

The court ruled that James should have no knowledge of his real father or have any access to him.

Really? WTF  was the court thinking?

Morning news and Cyprus technology

While having my morning cup of coffee and going through the Cyprus Mail articles, I caught myself pausing and thinking a few times.  That doesn’t happen that often (thinking, not pausing), so I thought I’d share the bits that halted me.

The first articles was titled “TEPAK goes Wi-Fi“.  WTF is TEPAK?  Not everyone knows, especially in the morning, with the full cup of coffee.  TEPAK is of course Cyprus Unviersity of Technology.  Once again, with proper use of capitals: cyprus University of TECHNOLOGY.  So, they have some Wi-Fi there now.  Good.  Welcome to the 21st century!  No, seriously.  Let’s read a bit of the article.

LIMASSOL’S technology university, TEPAK, yesterday went wireless. The Wi-Fi connection was inaugurated by Limassol mayor Andreas Christou, the president of TEPAK’s administrative committee Elipida Keravnou and the Vice President of the Electricity Authority (EAC) Loizos Papacharalambous.

Wow!  That sounds a bit odd.  Why do they need a whole mayor to inaugurate the launch of a commonplace technology?

On behalf of the EAC Papacharalambous said the network had 40 points of access and covered areas of historic importance in Limassol including Heroes Square, Anexartisisas Street and part of the beach front.

Here it gets a bit funny.  I understand that the university is located in the old part of town and things are tight in there.  But when I think of the students who scattered between the beach front, the Heroes Square, which is famous for all the cabarets and prostitution that goes on there, and Anexartisisas Street, which is a shopping center of sorts.  Anyway, that’s not important.  The important comes later and it actually puts the whole article in to perspective, so it makes sense.

Papacharalambous said all Cytanet users would also have free access through the Cytanet Wireless Zone service by using their own access codes while other users would be able to use the service by using access codes acquired through pre-paid cards, credit cards or by sending an SMS message.

So, all of that is just a publicity stunt for Cytanet – one of the island’s Internet Service Providers.  Now it all makes sense.  It wasn’t about the Cyprus Unviersity of Technology at all.  It was about Cytanet covering part of the old town with a Wi-Fi network. Which they will charge you for.

By now I obviously lost all interest in the article, even if it was almost over.  But the next one I came around puzzled me too.  It was about “Two officers injured directing traffic“.  In particular this bit:

One of the officers, who was hit while on his motorbike, escaped serious injuries after the airbag in his uniform deployed and broke his fall.

Say what?  An airbag in the uniform?  That’s the first time I hear about something like this.  Google search for “police uniform airbag” returned 53,000 results only and nothing looked interesting, not even the pictures.  Anyone can shed some light on this?  Cause I am all out of coffee by now.

Custom background for Google search

The Next Web points out:

Starting this afternoon, and rolling out over the next few days Google is releasing the ability around the US and the world to upload a custom image as the background of your Google.com.

Obviously, there will be a lot of noise about it around the web.  I though have no idea why that is such a big thing.  I rarely ever see the front page of Google at all.  I always enter my search terms into the search or address bar of my browser and it takes me directly to the results page.