Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Here are some assorted points that will hopefully come together once I am finished writing them.

• My mobile - Sony Ericsson P910 - looks very old and much used.
• I got it second hand as a temporary solution.  I have feeling like it was three month ago or so.
• Via “On this day” section of the sidebar, I am reminded of this post.
• The biggest problem with this mobile was the broken keyboard.  A few month ago, I took it off. Now I use virtual keyboard via touch screen.
• The second biggest problem with this phone that I had, was stylus.  I had only one and I lost it.  For a few month now I’m using just my finger.
• I’ve heard about “temporary being the most permanent”.
• A Polish colleague of mine once noted  that most people in Poland drive  very old cars. “A car of 25 years old is like brand new“, - he said.  He was only half joking.
• I am looking for a new mobile phone to buy. I am not in a hurry.
• Google Android stuff sounds very cool, and it will have a lot of future, and I will have one of those.  But they aren’t available yet.
• iPhone is available.
• So is BlackBerry.
• I am not in a hurry.  By the time I will make my mind and decide to do something about my phone, probably Androids will be all over the place.

Yes, I am very slow sometimes.  But even if I am taken out of equation, like with those cars in Poland, there is one argument, which is very very simple, but is very very hard to overcome - “It works“.

I’ve never particularly liked notebooks. They are clumsy, uncomfortable, hot, slow, weird, and hard to fix or upgrade. And expensive, of course.

But circumstances are changing now in such a way that I’ll need to have a notebook pretty soon. We can’t manage on a single computer nomore, and there is no place to put a second one. Plus I am way too often moving around.

I am not in a hurry yet, but I can’t delay the purchase for another six month. Tha gives me enough to time to study the options and compare the prices.

So far I haven’t done any research what-so-ever. And with this knowledge I am looking for the following:

• IBM ThinkPad T41 notebook (I’ve heard lots of positive comments about this particular line of products, and it supports Linux pretty good too.)
• Fast CPU is not an issue. Even 1 GHz will be enough.
• RAM is good, so I’ll need more. 1 GByte is pretty close to perfect.
• I don’t want an elephant in the bag, but I want something bigger than my mobile, so the ideal size of the screen is 15″.
• Well-supported video card - NVidia MX-series or something similar.
• CD/DVD/DVD-RW is a must.
• USB is a must.
• WiFi card, supported by Fedora Linux 4 or later is a must.
• 10/100 (or maybe even 10/100/1000) Mbit Ethernet adapter is a must.
• Soundcard with line-in (read: Skype) is a must.
• Battery life is not essential - if it can live and work for 2-4 hours, then it’s good enough. Usually, I am pretty close to power lines.

That’s pretty much what I have thought of at this moment. Any suggestions, ideas, or pointers are very welcome.

P.S.: The system will be running Fedora Linux and Fedora Linux only. No dualboots to Windows or anything crazy like that.

P.P.S.: Notebook can even be second-hand, if in good condition.

In you case you forgot, Limassol Grand Carnival is coming to town pretty soon. You can still get prepared though. Jumbo kids’ megashop sells a whole lot of stuff. Even if you don’t need to buy anything, I still recommend that you visit the place and look around. Olga and I were playing for about an hour there today only with the carnival stuff - hats, costumes, make-up, accessories - whatever you need. And it comes pretty cheap too.

We are still thinking what to buy for Maxim though. Pirate and Zorro are currently among the favourites. He’s definetely too young for a cowboy. And he won’t fully appreciate being Formula 1 Champion. Any ideas besides these?

It turned out that there is an excellent fish shop in the same building with Dr.Simos’ office. I don’t know if this is a coincidence or what. Anyway…

Olga and I went in to check it out. The smell was rather strong - as always, but the shop looked clean and even somewhat decorated with plastic fish in the net on the wall and pictures explaining different types of fish. The fish itself also looked pretty fresh and clean.

We did some finger pointing and got explanations of what was what. We bought some tsipura and parabuli. And I was looking at shrimps too, but we decided to leave them until next time.

Just when we were imagining the horrible pictures of cleaning the fish (the skin thingies and the guts too), we noticed that both shop owners were busy doing something. Jez! We couldn’t believe our eyes. They were actually cleaning the fish for us! They had this giant metal table with water tabs and everything needed and they were cleaning our fish. We fell in love with this shop at that instant.

All we had to do was wait for a couple of minutes and pay the money for the fish only. No labour or water charges. Everything was packed into a plastic bags and we were wished a Happy New Year and a bon appetit or something along those lines.

That was pretty cool, considering the service in so many small shops around. I am sure that if we will ever buy fish again (and we will have to anyway) we will buy it in that shop. Too bad I didn’t catch the name of it though.

I’m glad to post this quick update about the shelf with Russian products in Ermes supermarket. I thought they removed the shelf completely, but they just moved it to a really good hiding place. Probably it wasn’t there last time I checked, but it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s back and I can have all tomatos that I want. The new location of the shelf is to the left of the butcher section (if faced away from the meat).