Month: April 2005

knoda – KDE’s front-end to databases

knoda is one of those cool looking and functionally promising projects. If you are still looking for graphical interface for database management, then try it out.

Its driver concept allows a uniform connection to different database servers (Dbase/Xbase, MS Access/Mdbtools, Mysql , Postgresql , SQLite or ODBC).

Did you notice that MS Access was mentioned? Well, here is a little more for you to know:

New test version knoda 0.7.4-test1 released. With its latest release knoda introduces a driver for MS Access databases (mdb files). Knoda is the first KDE based database frontend reading MS Access databases natively and so it is getting closer to its goal to be a full replacement for MS Access. The driver is based on Mdbtools.

Quote of the day

Microsoft .WAV RIFF files.
These appear to be very similar to IFF files, but not the same. They are the native sound file format of Windows. (Obviously, Windows was of such incredible importance to the computer industry that it just had to have its own sound file format.) Normally .wav files have all formatting information in their headers, and so do not need any format options specified for an input file. If any are, they will override the file header, and you will be warned to this effect. You had better know what you are doing! Output format options will cause a format conversion, and the .wav will written appropriately. SoX currently can read PCM, ULAW, ALAW, MS ADPCM, and IMA (or DVI) ADPCM. It can write all of these formats including (NEW!) the ADPCM encoding.

Robots (2005) Some people might get scared away from parenthood by the dramatic decrease of number of movies that I watch recently. To keep them calm and demonstrate that it is actually possible to find some time for a movie or two, both Olga and I watched “Robots” today.

Directed by: Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha
Genres: Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
Cast: Halle Berry, Lucille Bliss, Terry Bradshaw, Jim Broadbent, Mel Brooks, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey, Jennifer Coolidge, Dylan Denton, Will Denton, Marshall Efron, Damien Fahey, Lowell Ganz, Paul Giamatti, Dan Hedaya
IMDB raintg: 6.4
My rating: 8.0 [rate 8.0]

Continue reading Robots

Yet another reorganization of photos

After some more thinking and consideration, I decided to reorganize my photos yet again. Having several hierachies based on date under one tree (/photos/2005/04/… and /photos/Projects/POTD/2005/04/…) is way too confusing. It makes finding things too hard. Also, having photoblog without RSS feed an annotations (except for EXIF comments) doesn’t seem right. And because I am such a control and centralization freak, I decided to do it too.

Anyway, I will restructure my POTD folders in the following way: folder named /photos/Projects/POTD/2005/04/15/ will now be named /phots/2005/2005-04-15_POTD/). In other words, POTD folders will be mixed together with the normal albums.

But you won’t have to look for them too hard no further. I will be posting selected images to this blog. The image will be thumbnailed to 400 pixels or whatever fits my current theme. I will also be posting the link to the album where the image can be seen in bigger and/or original size along with other images from the same day. All POTD images will be categorized as, well, POTD. Additional categories will be assigned as appropriate. No EXIF data will be posted. Those curios enough can get images from the album and scan those for EXIF. Maybe I will change this later if I find a better solution.

I have started to move things around, so you might have minor problems for a couple of days or so. After that, locating and navigating images will be a bliss.

Update: While fixing POTD, I decided to reorganize the normal albums aswell. I have created a separate category for them too. I’ve went back and fixed all POTDs and normal albums from the beginning of 2005. I’ll do the rest shortly.

Russian soup

Browsing through the threads of LiveJournal, I came across this post. Quoting:

Russian soup

Russians refresh themselves with this cold soup made of ice-cold kvass (weird national drink most closely compared to non-alcoholic beer), sausage, cucumbers, onions, boiled eggs and sour cream – just imagine this horrendous concoction!!…

And guess what they call this “soup” . … They call it “Ohkroshka”… pretty difficult to articulate, huh?

And now get ready for a translation. “Ohkroshka” means “Oh baby”!

It made me think.

Firstly, of course, the unthinkable humor of it. I’ve been eating “Ohkroshka” since I don’t remember when. My grandma usually cooked it. Among other things, my grandma possesses two definite talents – cooking and playing with words. I find it interesting that, while she practically harassed every other Russian word on the planet, she never touched “Ohkroshka”.

Secondly, I found it interesting how narrow-audienced this post is. Originally meant for the English-speaking people, the true fun of it opens only for those who knows well the Russian cuisine AND English language.

And, thirdly, of course, how blogging in general and LiveJournal in particular help to rediscover familiar things and open my eyes on stuff I long thought I knew.