Year: 2006

Routine pediatrician check-up

We took Maxim for his routine pediatrician check-up today. Everything was smooth and nice. He has gained almost half a kilo in the last month (now: 10.4 kg) and has grown almost 2 cm (now: 78 cm). He got his next vaccination too. Yet another one will be given to him on the next visit, in about a month’s time. I hope they help…

Giant move to Flickr

Ok, I hope I am writing this for the last time. At least for the next 10 years or so.

I am doing a huge move of my photo gallery. I got bored with trying out all pieces of software, migrating back and forward, configuring this stuff, adding features, backing up, fixing links, etc, etc, etc.

Flickr wins!

I have decided to move my complete photo collection to Flickr. Yup, you heard me right. No, I am sane and in good mind.

Flickr has everything I need from a photo gallery tool – speed, flexibility, tags, permanent links, ratings, social interactions (comments, bookmarks, groups, ratings, etc), and much more. It integrates nicely with a whole bunch of third-party software. There are many third-party services based on Flickr, such as image editing tools, backup to DVD tools, print and ship tools. And Flickr is standard de facto for photo galleries.

I don’t see any good reason NOT to migrate, so let it be. I’ll keep you posted on my progress. Until the move is completely done and everything is uploaded and tagged properly, I’ll keep the local copy of the gallery. All new additions, however, will go directly to Flickr. I’ll also have some sort of sidebar applet with links to recent and random pictures. Stay tuned.

P.S.: This post pointed me towards this utility for batch uploads – very useful. Easy to use too.

P.P.S.: Years 1995 – 2002 are uploaded and somewhat tagged. The rest is coming soon.

Looking for a notebook

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.