Category: Cyprus

I live in Cyprus for many years now. It is a beautiful little island in Mediterranean Sea. It features warm weather for most of the year, sea, very kind and hospital people, plenty of jobs in IT industry, good food and plenty of alcohol, stable currency, and more. It’s really a nice place to live if you can handle small towns and villages. It’s also a great place to raise the kids.

Not much happens here. It is a quiet and simple place. Yet, when something happens or when I write about it, I post it to Cyprus category.

Sabaton in TePee rock bar, Limassol

Swedish power-metal band Sabaton is performing at TePee rock bar, Limassol, Cyprus on Saturday, August 28th, 2010. Doors open at 20:00 and tickets are 25 EUR, which is not too much for a foreign Grammy-nominated band, but is a bit too much for the horrible sound they have in TeePee. Hopefully they will have someone competent at least try to configure the system.

As per Wikipedia:

The band’s main lyrical theme is that of historical wars. This can be heard on the albums Primo Victoria and Attero Dominatus where all of the songs, except the final tracks, take inspiration from a historical battle or war, such as the song “Counterstrike”, which refers to the Six-Day War. Lyrical content drawn from World War II is most prevalent, and includes songs about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, resistance movements in occupied Poland and Norway, the Battle of Berlin, the Winter War in Finland, and battles on the land, sea, and air. As of their later albums, the band has started to incorporate some elements of progressive metal.

Also check their YouTube channel for some videos.

Via Cyprus Events.

Sideshow – Cyprus web design company

For years I’ve been complaining about the web design situation in Cyprus. Most web design companies here suck. And most of the websites that they do suck even more. Once in a while, though, I’d mention this or that website that was standing out. Finally, I can mention a web design company that stands out and that makes websites that stand out too – Sideshow.

Yes, like every other company, they have their problems (front page of their website doesn’t validate clean) and they don’t do everything the way I would have done it (they are using Vimeo for videos, not YouTube), but I am still impressed with their work. They use Drupal CMS extensively. They truly know what social media is about, with Facebook and Twitter integrations and team tweets, their own blog, RSS feeds, and more. Their design work is fresh and modern. And their portfolio is shining. Remember, when I was praising the new Cyprus Mail website? That’s the company who did it. They even print their business cards with Moo, what more can I say?

I’m so glad I found them. I have people left and right asking me where to go for a new website, and until now I have been very reluctant to refer them to any of the webdesign companies I know. But now I have a proper reference. And even though I haven’t worked with them personally, I think I am in the position to judge their work. And as I said, I am impressed. Respect!

P.S.: no, this is not a paid ad. I truly am glad and impressed.

P.P.S.: if you are a web designer or web developer in Cyprus, they are hiring. If there is one web company to work for in Cyprus, that’s this one.

Submarine cables world map

Here comes an excellent map of world’s submarine cables. If you live on an island, like myself, using this map you can see where from you get your Internet. Zooming in shows the landing stations and which cables connect where. Also, clicking on the cable provides the details of the cable length and bandwidth.

P.S.: I have no idea how accurate or trustworthy this map is, but it sure looks legit.

Sabaton – Midway

Sabaton is coming to Cyprus at the end of the month. They will be performing in TePee rock bar, Limassol on August 28th. I’ve scheduled a reminder post for early that week. Here is a video for now.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsjGnBPjYDs]

My office window

The latest theme for Flickr blog is called “my office window“. There are some nice photos, as always, but what’s more interesting is that it is quite an engaging subject. Pretty much everyone who ever worked somewhere can participate, share photos, and discuss.

For me personally, the last few years weren’t very lucky in terms of a good office window view. I currently work in the premises which are on a busy Omonia avenue, which runs between the new port of Limassol and the highway. Not too much to see. My previous office was even worse – it had no windows at all. The office before that had some windows, but the view wasn’t any good. And so and so forth. But I don’t feel bad about that. Because for six years or so I had the best office window ever. It was during my time in PrimeTel, where I had a sea view window. I especially enjoyed it when I was working night shifts. I had to see a sun rise several times a week! And also PrimeTel’s office being next to the new port of Limassol, there were always ships to provide some focus and highlight to the view, not just sun and water, which I guess would have become boring pretty soon. Here is one of the many pictures I took during those mornings.

What about you guys? What’s you office window like? Do you have one? What’s the view like? What was the best (or worst) office window you ever head? Got any pictures to see?