My head is slow these days

Some people call it writer’s block. I just call it being slow. I know that I have a bunch of posts queued in my head. I just can’t find and edit them properly for the web. The good thing though is that I browse the web a lot and bookmark a lot of stuff, so you still have my daily Delicious bookmarks to enjoy. Right?

By the way, here is another point of view on writer’s block (Scott Adams, author of Dilbert).

One feature I miss in mobile communications

In the last five years mobile phones became much cheaper and much more feature rich. They do everything from call and contact mamangement to web browsing and photography. There is still one feature that I would really like to see implemented.

When someone calls me, I see the originating phone number. If the number is in my address book, then I also see the name of the person and possibly his/her picture. If the number is not in my address book, I get no information about the caller what-so-ever.

It would be nice to get both the name and the picture from the caller, if he’s not in my addressbook. There are a few ways to implement this, I guess. Either use the phone profile or have a centralized directory as a telecom service. With centralized directory land phones can be also associated with names and pictures. This way I will always know is calling me and I won’t have to keep five billion contacts in my addressbook.

Can I have it before Christmas? Next year? Please?

Where do you want to go today?

Don’t close this window just yet – this post has nothing to do with Microsoft. On the contrary even…

For a few years now I am nursing the idea of working for a humanitarian or environmental organization. I haven’t yet researched the subject, but just try to imagine how good or bad that would be for me personally. So far, I can imagine all the good things, except maybe for the salary.

Lately I was trying to figure out what organization would I choose to work for if I had the free choice. Would it be Greenpeace? Green cross? Red Cross? UNHCR? DHA? There are so many choices that it’s really hard to pick one. All of them seem to have good intentions and all of them have a list of good deeds under their belts.

If you were the one to choose, which organization would you choose and why?

In case you know only Greenpeace, here are a few lists for you:

Finally, I’m done

The other day I mentioned that I am watching “Oz“. Well, I sure did. I have watched the last episode today.

I am very surprised as to how addicting it was. I have seen a total of 56 episodes (each one is about 1 hour long) from all 6 seasons that I got my hands on. And it took me less than two weeks to go through all of them.

As usual with series, the quality suffers towards the end. The first 4 seasons or so were the best of all. But the degradation wasn’t as bad as it may sound. It’s just the intencity was gone. Actually, it was gone from most episodes, but not all. Some had it at maximum level. Like that one with Cyril’s execution, which I had to pause about five times so that I wouldn’t burst into tears. So dramatic…

Overall, not only it was entertaining to watch, but very educational and thought provoking. I’ve learned a lot about prison life and confirmed my suspecion that I don’t ever ever want to go into one of these places. I am alo thinking a lot of about many subjects brought up in the episodes – crime and punishment, law and ethics, family, friendship, survival of the fittest, love, and stuff like that.

I’m also planning to get the complete series on DVD. I will watch some of the episodes again. And I also have a few people interested in watching the whole thing.

Bluetooth vs. Infrared

Most of the modern cell phones are equipped with both “Bluetooth” and “Infrared”. “Bluetooth” is extremely popular these days. But “Infrared” also has its use. The other day I was reminded of this.

My brother and I were in the car on the highway between Paphos and Limassol. I was driving at about 140 km/h. My brother was occupied copying ringtones from my SonyEricsson P800 onto his SonyEricsson P910. “Bluetooth” connection wasn’t working at all. When I slowed down to about 80 km/h it managed to connect, but was very slow and unstable. “Infrared” on the other hand, worked like a charm.

I suspect that this was because “Bluetooth” is a point-to-multipoint connection. Basically, it is like a small radio transmitter. It sends waves to about 10 meters around it. Because the car was moving so fast, it was getting out of the 10 meters radius pretty fast. “Infrared” on the other hand is a point-to-point connection. As long as it can “see” the other end, the connection will work perfectly.