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.

Internet users in Cyprus

Blogoscoped reports that Google has expanded their Public Data Onebox functionality and now you can see the Internet penetration rate for population of any country. All you need to do is search for “internet users in cyprus” (or use your favourite country). Currently, it reports Cyprus having 38% of the population connected to the Internet. And that sounds just about right.

The country with the highest Internet penetration rate that I know of is Netherlands. Google reports it having 86.8% of population connected. Which also sounds just about right.

Statistics and perceptions

While catching up with recent Cyprus Mail articles, I came across the one about involvement of foreigners in serious crimes in Cyprus. Quote:

FOREIGNERS are involved in 40 per cent of all serious crimes, and 30 per cent of road deaths in Cyprus, the House Human Rights Committee head yesterday.

Being both a foreigner and a local (after almost 14 years here), I know how a lot of Cypriots are concerned with crimes being related to foreigners. A quote like the above would be music to their ears. However, on the other hand, that quote could be easily turned inside out. For example, like so:

CYPRIOTS are involved in 60 per cent (or a majority) of all serious crimes, and 70 per cent (an absolute majority) of road deaths in Cyprus […]

This now would be music to the ears of many foreigners who think that Cypriots are too crooked with all cabaret, real estate, and gambling activity going on, and who are also extremely incosiderate and undereducated while driving on public roads.

Now, which one sounds worse?

Gambling is an old problem

A recent arrest in Cyprus proves that gambling is an old problem, as Cyprus Mail reports:

FORTY TWO women aged between 75 and 85, including a 95-year-old from Limassol, were shocked on Sunday when police raided their card game and confiscated their €100 in betting money.

Also, I have to disagree with a woman quoted in the same article:

The only thing police achieve by doing such raids is to ridicule women of a certain age

Not at all, no. I think police only ridicule themselves, not the women of a certain age.

Cyprus Mail – the new on-line face of the local newspapers

I’ve noticed that @cyprusmail Twitter account became much more active recently. Today I followed one of the posted links to read the news article, and was surprised by the new newspaper’s web site. It is still in beta, but it’s already pretty good!

Finally, there is someone who knows what he (she?) is doing. Based on Drupal CMS, utilizing Amazon S3 service, integrating with Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook, featuring proper RSS feed, slick feedback form, and even placeholders for stuff blogs – that’s quite an achievement!

I definitely welcome the new face (and body) of the Cyprus Mail and wish them great success and to keep up the good job. Now their content is finally matched by its presentation and surrounding functionality.

Cyprus Linux User Group meeting

As you might have heard, there was yet another Cyprus Linux User Group meeting yesterday. It was, as usual, aligned to the recent Ubuntu and upcoming Fedora releases. This time the even took place in the new University of Cyprus campus, in Nicosia. There were slightly more people than the last time, but I was hoping for even more.

There were three presentations and one workshop. Theo did a traditional Ubuntu Linux presentation in Greek. Alexandros presented, also in Greek, about Linux in Cyprus education – a very interesting one, too bad my Greek is so poor. And then I did a presentation in English about what Linux has to offer to students and why they should get involved. Here are the slides from my talk (Linux for Students and Linux for Students). After the presentations, Constantinos did a workshop about Compiz and Elisa media library. Both looked quite impressive.

After the event a few of us went to the tavern for some really awesome meze and beer. Altogether – good fun.

P.S.: If you missed the event, keep an eye on Ubuntu Cyprus web site and forums for announcements of the next one. Hope to see you there.