Month: October 2006

Painful experience

I have browsed through more than 1,000 online Cyprus resources during the last 72 hours. It was a painful experience, but the work that should have been done. I’ve seen everything from 1990-s web desing complete with animated email envelopes to stock photography images of women with headsets applied to dozens of sites. I’ve read plenty of “hot news” from 2001 and faceless mission statements.

I have also managed to convince a few other people to participate and share the pain. They have done (and still are doing) an excellent job of going through all the rubbish, looking for rare jewels.

All this effort is being done for one of the projects, which is about to be unleashed. I’ve shown it to few beta testers and so far there was positive feedback. Few minor issues were fixed and few interface improvements were implemented.

It’s almost ready…

1000 fixes and 1 new feature from Google Reader team

OK, that was probably a bit less than a 1000, but still a lot. Google Reader team has been working hard fixing broken and misbehaving stuff. They’ve just pushed out a new bugfix release.

They’ve also added one one new feature, but it was the one, I guess, mostly requested. At least I was hoping for it rather sooner than later – folders assignment for newly subscribed feeds. It was way too annoying to go to feed management, locating the new feed, and assigning folders to it every time I subscribed to one. Now, though, it’s perfect. There is a standard folder menu together with successful subscription message.

Nicely done, guys! Keep it up!

One hour

Tic-tac-tic-tac… Where is that one hour?

This is just a quick reminder to check your watch. Today is the last Sunday of October, which means we are going one hour back in time. It was 4:00am and then it went back to 3:00am. The winter time is here.

Guest of the year: CVN-69

CVN-69

Cyprus has become a nuclear nation for the last few days. But don’t get too worried just yet. There aren no known nuclear terrorists around here, no nuclear weapons, and we aren’t building any nuclear power stations.

We have a guest. The Guest, I better say. Here are a few quotes from the Wikipedia page to get you introduced:

USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVAN-69/CVN-69), nicknamed “Ike”, is the second of 10 Nimitz-class supercarriers in the United States Navy.

She was laid down as hull number 599 on 15 August 1970 at Newport News shipyard at a cost of $679 million, launched 11 October 1975 after christening by Mamie Doud-Eisenhower, and commissioned 18 October 1977

stayed on station off the coast of Iran for over 8 months, and was at sea for a total of 254 days

At one point, she spent 152 days (or 5 ½ months) at sea without a port call, a new record.

The ship is not that far from the coast. She is best viewed from Molos promenade. If you want to make pictures, make sure to check time (sun) and weather (mist, sun). I’ve made two attempts today, but both not very successful. I’ll try to make some more pictures tomorrow. All images will be posted to this Flickr set.

For the last couple of days I wasn reading a lot about this beauty. It is one piece of technology, I’ll tell you that. If I were to describe it in one word – “magnificent” is my choice. Truly. Any characteristic I checked about it – from the number of carried aircfats and the crew size to nuclear reactors and strategic potential – makes me go WOW! If you’re not amazed by the technology, try the money side of the story. Building costs, maintenance costs, repairs – you’ll have to count all zeros carefully.

Beautiful, beautiful gadget.

P.S.: This post is a part of a group blogging effort.