Month: July 2004

A bunch of bookmarklets

This site has an excellent collection of bookmarklets that help one overcome annoyances of some sites. This are simple and convenient tools that you can use when you get to one of those ugly sites. For example, you can quickly switch to black text over white background, disable marquee or blinking text, or make the textarea larger. You can even see passwords that are typed into password field as clear text.

All of these bookmarklets are advertised to work in both Netscape 7 and Mozilla. Most of them also work in MS Internet Explorer and Opera. Some even are applicable to Netscape 4. They are easy to save and use – simply drag and drop them to your bookmarks folder and then click while watching an annoying website.

Museum of Soviet Calculators

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If you enjoyed yesterday’s link to the museum of calculators I’ve got something else for you. MOSCOW – Museum Of Soviet Calculators On the Web.

Now you can see what was going behind the iron certain if you were on the other side at the time. You can compare the technologies and the progress made during the Cold War. You can learn the history of the modern computers. You can simply enjoy the clumzy, heavy, slow machines of the past.

Wag the Dog

Watched “Wag the Dog” on DVD. It is an excellent movie that merges so peacefully to the recent memory of “Fahrenheit 9/11“. Both films have a lot of common ideas, one of which is that mass media plays an enourmous role in what we think and beleive in. This is more true of America I guess, which is a country will very developed mass media (networks and staff like that).

There is a whole bunch of excellent acting in this film. Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro are brilliant. Woody Harrelson had a short and silent role, but he was great too. Few other people added to the quality of the film.

The difficult thing to say about this film is what genre it is. IMDB rates it as comedy, but it is not exactly a comedy. It has a little bit of everything. I would put it into what IMDB usually classifies as an independent movie.

See it if you have a chance. 8 out of 10.

Another fog attack

Fog attack

Wheather forecast for today announced that very high temperatures are expected. So hight that it has only been 3 times that hot during the last 100 years. In Nicosia it will reach 41 Celsium in the shadow, if I remember correctly.

Such heat make humidity go nuts. While working night shifts, I get to see some really crazy fog things in the early morning. Today, there was a spectacular fog attack which first covered all of the city as far as I could see. Then it got split in the middle by the breeze. The part that was above the city died out, but the part that was above the sea started to retreat creating a wall of humidity that was modified every second by a breeze and the lights of the rising sun.

I took few pictures from my office window, but the perfomance was going around the building, so I went to the roof and took few more shots. All pictures are available here.

Vintage Calculators Web Museum

Yup, that’s right – there is a Vintage Calculators Web Museum. It is an excellent site about the birth and development of all sorts of calculators. Their timeline boasts coverage from year 1600 till year 1980. You will find a whole bunch of pictures, links to other resources, references to books, frequently asked questions (and answers) and much more.

If you ever wanted to know anything about a calculator, this is site is an excellent starting point. Now, what was that “2+2=?” question? :)