Year: 2005

1. Google. Check.

My jaw is officially on the floor and I don’t have even slightest idea when I will be Adrenalin-sober again to pick it up…

For the last five or so years, there were only three companies that everyone I knew wanted to work at.

Ok, maybe not everyone, but most of the IT people. And maybe not all of them wanted to join Microsoft. But you get the idea. These are not only the tree most successful computer companies, but three corporations that realize the Geek Power.

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in those parts that I communicated with, it was considered impossible to get a job at either one of these companies unless you lived in the USA and was exceptionally bright. Until very recently that is. Just a few years ago the new trend appeared, that suggested it was possible to get hired while living in another country. You still had to be exceptionally smart and you had to be willing to relocate.

On numerous occasions I was hearing the jokes, semi-jokes, and serious discussions on how cool it would be to work for one of these companies. All of these discussions though were ending with a deep sad sigh and words expressing the absolute impossibility of something like that happening in reality.

Now, the roll the drums, please…

I have received an email today from Google’s recruiter, asking if I am interested in working for Google. Me! For Google! Danz! That was the sound of my jaw hitting the floor. Hard. I checked the message back and forward and I am 99% sure it is not SPAM, mass mailing, or a joke. Neither it is a job offer yet. But I am still stunned.

Needless to say I have a lot to think about, but I am not at all in a condition to do so. I’ll have to take some time. A day or two. I’ll let you know if I’m OK and back to the normal life.

Cyprus Scout beta announce

I have been thinking a lot about my blog and ways to improve it. I was talking with some of you guys. And some of you were talking to me. I’ve got a few ideas in the process and I am going to try one of the big ones now.

While the site started mainly for myself (and it still is), it becomes more and more difficult to ignore the rest of you. And when I think about the rest of you, I get really confused as to what brings you back every time to read my blog. Some of you come here for the personal stuff. Some of you seek technical help. Some of you respect my opinion on the movies. Some of you are parents. Some of you like photography. Some of you are looking for more information about Cyprus. Some of you just like the way I write. That last one is probably the smallest group though which doesn’t even include me. Anyway, all these looks like a lot of sides to a single site. So, I decided to try a little separation.

There is plenty of choice. What should I move away? There are plenty of photoblogs on the web. Yet another one will just get lost among them. Movie review blogs are numerous aswell. As are technical blogs. As are parenting. As are personal. But there is a definite lack of Cyprus blogs. So I decided to try it out.

Cyprus Scout is a blog about Cyprus. There won’t be any politics. There won’t be any real estates. There won’t be any crap that half a million spammers are trying to promote. There will events coverage. There will be discussions about culture, history, and traditions. There might even be some humor.

I am also planning to expand it beyond personal. At the moment I am the only writer, photographer, and editor in chief for that site. But I will get more people to contribute. I even already know a few who will. It’s just that they don’t. Yet.

Anyway, the site is currently in beta. It needs a lot of work. And it undergoes a lot. It can break or misbehave. But I wanted to let you all know that it is there and that you can start using it. Register, comment, suggest, submit drafts, correct. In a week or so when the dust will settle, I will make an announcement for the wider audience – Cyprus forums, other blogs, and a couple of portals. Until them – report bugs and help me out.

The real America

Joe Rogan has an entertaining description of the real America – experiences he had while on a road trip for a new season of “Fear Factor“.

Like a stretch of West Virginia we went through, where every other building is a church or a strip club.

And I’m BARELY exaggerating here. I’m talking 4 or 5 strip clubs and 3 or 4 churches in a 2-mile area, and not much else. I guess the theme there is just keep ‘em on their knees, no matter how you go about it.

There were 20 people, 10 of them were wearing camouflage, 6 of them had NASCAR t-shirts on, and none of them had a full set of teeth.

Bloglines feature a few updates

The other day I noticed a few updates, but not all of them. Bloglines announced all the recent changes in this news article and it turns out that I noticed only the small subset.

The biggest and most welcome change – keyboard navigation. Now, instead of scrolling feeds with a lot of items and switching between feeds while moving the mouse all over the screen, one can use keyboard shortcuts. ‘j‘ and ‘s‘ are my two favourites. By pressing ‘j‘ it is no possible to jump to the next item in the feed. No scrolling. No mouse. Simply go there. By pressing ‘s‘ it is trivial to go to the next feed with unread items. Again, no mouse involved. Just these two keyboard shortcuts speed up reading a lot. And I needed the whole two seconds to get used to them. Amazing!

Continue reading Bloglines feature a few updates