Month: October 2007

Project 365 : Status update

One year ago I re-started Project 365.  I was supposed to take at least one picture every day and post it to my Flickr photostream.  I have to say that I failed miserably.  365 days later I only have 91 images to show.  In my defense, they weren’t all taken on a single day, but rather scattered over the last year.

Looking at all those images in one place gives me a lot to think about, and shows clearly how I spent the year.  Here are a few highlights:

  • Participated in Maxim’s potty training.
  • Took a lot of walks with Maxim – mostly in the Municipal park and at Molos promenade.
  • Quit my job and gave my own business a try.
  • Had an excellent New Year’s vacation in the mountains.
  • Sent Maxim to the kindergarten.
  • Got deeper into web design and development.
  • Celebrated a lot of dates – birthdays, anniversaries, public holidays, etc.
  • Participated in the first ever Flickr meet-up in Cyprus.
  • Got myself another job (my own business failed miserably).
  • Traveled to Greece for first ever Greek Blogger Camp.
  • Met a whole lot of interesting people.
  • Re-united with some really old friends.
  • Got a pet.

Of course, if I was involved a bit more with the project, there would have been more pictures, showing other important milestones (such as me getting back to the gym, for example).  But I am satisfied even as things are – it appears that I am living an active and exciting life – something not so obvious without looking at those pictures…

The project is not over.  The goal was to get 365 photos, not to survive another year.  I guess, I’ll have to speed up the project a bit, as it will take me another three years to complete it at this rate.

Real estate property types

For the last few month, I’m working very near real estates industry.  The whole thing is pretty confusing even here, in Cyprus, where it’s in its infancy.  One of the small, but important things that I always feel confused about are property types.  What is a condo?  How is a villa different from a bungalow?  And so on and so forth.

Today I said – “Enough”.  I have to figure this stuff out.  Even if I will forget it all a moment later, I still have to run it through my brain.   But where to get the definitions?  Each web site seems to have its own idea of which types are out there and what each of them means.  Then I suddenly remembered about “define:” Google searches.  I don’t use it very often, but it saved me lots of time on several occasions.  Today is just one such occasion.  Here are the links to Google definitions of the most commonly used property types with my short summary notes:

  •  house – that’s as generic as it can get.  House is just about anything from detached to semi-detached, from village house to villa, through bungalow.
  • apartment – this one is also generic. Usually, this is a block of one or more rooms on a single floor of an apartment building.  There are many variations, of course.
  • flat – this is exactly the same as an apartment.  It’s just another word for it, used in some countries.
  • penthouse – this is a kind of apartment, which is usually at the top of the building.  Often, it is an expensive one,  because of the view and some outdoor space on the roof.
  • studio – a kind of a small apartment.  Think of it as a zero bedroom apartment.  Either it has no bedroom, or its kitchen is somehow integrated into a living room. Often, studio is the cheapest option.
  • condo – short of a condominium.  An apartment in the building, where common areas are jointly owned by all apartment owners in that building.
  • maisonette – a type of apartment.  Usually it spans more than one floor.  Often it has its own entrance, rather than a shared entrance with the rest of the apartment building.
  • villa – usually, the most expensive house.  Often outside the city.  It’s common for a villa to have luxury features like private pool and tennis court.
  • bungalow – often a one floor house, with large veranda.
  • cottage – usually a small, one floor house.  Usually outside the city.  Often has style and charm.

The above list can be generalized to just two types – house and apartment.  As you can see, there are only residential property types.  There are, of course, many more commercial ones, like office, shop, storage, etc. And then, there is land, which separates into land and plots.  And then there is probably something else.   But all that I’ll look at sometime later.  For now I need to sink the above list into my memory.

CytaMobile-Vodafone GPRS support

After one of the restarts of my mobile, GRPS stopped working.  I called 132 – CytaMobile-Vodafone support.  They sent me the settings.  I installed the settings, but that didn’t help.  I removed all settings from the phone and installed the new ones again.  No luck.  Another call to support – they send me the settings again.  Same ones.  I replace the existing ones with the new ones.  Still no luck.

Two days later, I can suddenly connect, but only to Cybee WAP page.  Went through all the settings again, but with no luck.  Another call to support:

-  We’ll send you the settings now.

– Please don’t.  I called a few times already and reinstalled the settings many times, but that didn’t help.

– Oh, I see.  OK, I can send you the settings via fax or email – which one do you prefer?

…

What can I do?

Getting better

I am getting myself into another business venture.  The project is interesting both from the financial and creative points of view.  That’s about as much as I can say about it right now, but not to worry – first public preview is expected  before the end of the year.  Anyway, the point is not that.

My business approach is getting better with every try – exactly like it is supposed to be.  This time I was actually surprised by myself.  Not only I did some thinking and planning, but I went all the way, with business plan, budget, and even project time-line.  What’s even more surprising is that I did the initial document in about two hours, and I did in a much more concise way than usual – a single spreadsheet document instead of multiple lengthy texts.

After looking at the resulting document, I had this strong feeling that I’m getting better at it. Hopefully, it won’t be just the document.

And just to wrap it up, I have to say that I’m not the only one getting better.  I really enjoyed my experience with Google Docs.  It’s been about 6 month since I used these applications, and I have to say a lot of good changes went in since then.  The interface got cleaner and simpler, there are major things, like formulas and charts in the Spreadsheet application, and there are minor things like better HTML/GUI/WYSIWYG handling, speed, etc.

Good stuff…

Send SMS to Google Calendar via Twitter

I’ve already wrote about why I love Google Calendar so much.  One of the main features that makes the difference for me is that one of SMS reminders.  As unlikely as it seems, I’m not always behind the computer, but my mobile is always near by.  So reminding me of upcoming things to do via SMS is a winner.

One thing that I was missing though, is the opposite direction of SMS.  Google Calendar has this wonderful feature of adding events to the calendar via SMS, but the they use a shortcut phone number, which is available only in the states.  No way for us, poor souls in Cyprus, to send messages there.

Not to worry though.  Now there is a solution, and an easy one too – Twittercal.  Here is how it works:

  1. Create a Twitter account, if you don’t have one.
  2. Add “gcal” user to the list of those that you follow.
  3. Grant Twittercal access to add events to your Google Calendar.
  4. Now you can send direct messages to gcal with your event information like so: “d gcal Phylosophy test tomorrow at 08:00“.

Of course, these direct messages work as good via instant messenger and Twitter web interface.  I’ve tested the setup and performs beautifully.  This whole thing just made my day.

Bonus tip: if your mobile phone supports SMS templates, you might want to create one with Twitter phone number in destination and “d gcal ” text in the message, so you can edit it and send much faster.