Thursday, December 21, 2006

Hoya and Pentax to merge

Hoya and Pentax to merge: Digital Photography Review
Hoya, a very familiar name in the photographic industry (not least because they supply lens blanks to many manufacaturers) and Pentax have jointly today announced their intention to merge and become Hoya Pentax.

Hoya Pentax

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Ubuntu Satanic Edition

The first version of Ubuntu Satanic Edition, “Evil Edgy”, is available for download from our secure APT repository. This release contains a number of themes to reveal Ubuntu’s darker side.

Ubuntu Satanic ;-)

Top 5 wines at $5.99 (or less) - Slashfood

# Trader Joe's Coastal Cabernet ($4.99)
# Amaicha Torrontes ($4.99)
# Banrock Station Shiraz ($5.99)
# Barefoot California Merlot ($5.99)
# Barefoot California Chardonnay ($5.99)

Wine

Friday, December 8, 2006

openSUSE 10.2 released

A collection of major changes and additions characterizing the current SUSE Linux release.

* Distribution renamed to openSUSE
* Available for i386, x86_64 and PowerPC architectures
* Package groupings are handled differently, 10.2 will use Patterns instead of selections.
* numerous improvements to the package manager stack, including a new update notification applet (opensuse-updater) and a console application called zypper which are both non-ZMD based.
* Linux kernel 2.6.18.2, using only SMP kernels (The kernel-default package contains the standard kernel for both uniprocessor and multiprocessor systems. The kernel comes with SMP support and runs with only minimal overhead on uniprocessor systems. There is no kernel-smp package anymore.)
* glibc 2.5
* X.Org 7.2rc2
* using opensync instead of multisync for much better syncing
* integration of powermanagement features into hal
* support to install multiple gcc versions in parallel
* removal of several unneeded SuSEconfig scripts
* no reboot after CD1, display of slideshow during all media
* autoconf 2.60
* bison 2.3
* gcc 4.1.2 cvs
* gdb 6.5
* make 3.81
* both KDE and GNOME feature improved start menus compared to upstream
* additional CD with non-tier 1 languages
* 2 years lifetime
* openSUSE 10.2 Release Notes

SuSE

Friday, December 1, 2006

Flickr Backup

Flickr Backup is a utility that allows you to download the pictures you have uploaded to Flickr back down to your computer for personal backup or restore.

Flickr backup is an Open Source project that is hosted on SourceForge.net. Feel free to check out our project page. On the project page, you can submit and review bug reports, request features for future releases, view the forums, and much more.

Flickr Backup

The Great Flickr Tools Collection

Flickr is a revolution in photo storage, sharing and organization , making image management an easy, natural and collaborative process. Get comments, notes, and tags on your photos, post to any blog, share and chat live and more! Flickr claims to be the best online image management and photo sharing application.

The Great Flickr Tools Collection

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

2006 VOLLEYBALL WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS JAPAN

Poland pulled off an astonishing comeback from 2-0 down to beat the mighty Russians in five sets Tuesday and advance to the semifinals of the world championships.

The third-ranked Russians fell apart after a devastating display in the first two sets and Poland showed unbelievable tenacity to win an incredible Pool E match 19-25, 19-25, 25-22, 25-20, 15-11 in front of an electric crowd at Sendai City Gymnasium.

Poland stayed unbeaten and Russia dropped to 4-2 and lost any chance of advancing to the semifinals. Serbia Montenegro also is now through to the last four.

PLvsRU3-2

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Search Engines Unite On Unified Sitemaps System

In alphabetical order, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to all support a unified system of submitting web pages through feeds to their crawlers. Called Sitemaps, taking its name from the precursor system that Google launched last year, all three search engines will now support the method.

Search Engines Unite On Unified Sitemaps System

From YouTube to the iPod

For these folks and for anyone else who’s wondered how to archive YouTube video, here’s the answer. Follow this quick step-by-step process for retrieving YouTube content to display on your Mac or iPod.

From YouTube to the iPod - O'Reilly Mac DevCenter Blog

Thursday, November 9, 2006

Studio Poland at KUSF 90.3


KUSF 90.3

I am moderator of the one of Polish groups on Yahoo Groups called SFPolskis. We have been invited to talk in polish show "Studio Poland" on KUSF station in San Francisco last Saturday. That was my first time in radio.

Governator: The sequel

The Governator will be back for a full term. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ex-silver screen action hero crushed Democrat Phil Angelides in a campaign that was a cakewalk from the start.

Governator

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Sense of humor test

And Abraham awoke in the middle of the night and said to his only son, Isaac, "I have had a dream where the voice of the Lord sayeth that I must sacrifice my only son, so put your pants on." And Isaac trembled and said, "So what did you say? I mean when He brought this whole thing up?"

"What am I going to say?" Abraham said. "I'm standing there at two A.M. I'm in my underwear with the Creator of the Universe. Should I argue?"

"Well, did he say why he wants me sacrificed?" Isaac asked his father.

But Abraham said, "The faithful do not question. Now let's go because I have a heavy day tomorrow."

And Sarah who heard Abraham's plan grew vexed and said, "How doth thou know it was the Lord and not, say, thy friend who loveth practical jokes, for the Lord hateth practical jokes and whosoever shall pull one shall be delivered into the hands of his enemies whether they pay the delivery charge or not." And Abraham answered, "Because I know it was the Lord. It was a deep, resonant voice, well modulated, and nobody in the desert can get a rumble in it like that."

And Sarah said, "And thou art willing to carry out this senseless act?" But Abraham told her, "Frankly yes, for to question the Lord's word is one of the worst things a person can do, particularly with the economy in the state it's in."

And so he took Isaac to a certain place and prepared to sacrifice him but at the last minute the Lord stayed Abraham's hand and said, "How could thou doest such a thing?"

And Abraham said, "But thou said ---"

"Never mind what I said," the Lord spake. "Doth thou listen to every crazy idea that comes thy way?" And Abraham grew ashamed. "Er - not really … no."

"I jokingly suggest thou sacrifice Isaac and thou immediately runs out to do it."

And Abraham fell to his knees, "See, I never know when you're kidding."

And the Lord thundered, "No sense of humor. I can't believe it."

"But doth this not prove I love thee, that I was willing to donate mine only son on thy whim?"

And the Lord said, "It proves that some men will follow any order no matter how asinine as long as it comes from a resonant, well-modulated voice."

And with that, the Lord bid Abraham get some rest and check with him tomorrow.

(Woody Allen. Without Feathers Pp. 26-7)

Thursday, September 21, 2006

California sues carmakers over global warming

Reuters article: California sued six of the world's largest automakers over global warming on Wednesday, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have caused billions of dollars in damages.

The lawsuit is the first of its kind to seek to hold manufacturers liable for the damages caused by their vehicles' emissions, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said.

It comes less than a month after California lawmakers adopted the nation's first global warming law mandating a cut in greenhouse gas emissions.

California has also targeted the auto industry with first-in-the-nation rules adopted in 2004 requiring carmakers to force cuts in tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks.

Batteries That Recharge Through USB

USBCELL batteries are simply batteries that recharge from any USB port. They require no separate recharging devices, cradles or cables and can be used exactly like a normal battery. The design itself is rather like a typical memory stick with its flip top lid.

USBCell

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Septoplasty

Septoplasty
I got nose surgery yesterday. It supposed to fix my crooked septums. Now I have to move slowly to avoid bleeding and wear this funny nose pack.

Wednesday, September 6, 2006

Canon EOS 400D

Almost exactly three years since Canon changed the digital SLR market forever (with the $1,000 EOS 300D) they announced the third generation of their affordable entry level series, the EOS 400D (Digital Rebel XTi). This new camera follows the design of the EOS 350D, being very compact and relatively lightweight but not compromising on manual controls or in-use performance. The headline changes are another two megapixel step up (to ten megapixels), the nine-point AF sensor from the EOS 30D, a new dust removal system which includes anti-static surface coatings, low-pass filter vibration and software based dust removal pattern removal. Less important but just as noticeable are the removal of the status LCD, replaced instead by a camera settings screen on the now larger 2.5" LCD monitor and the eye proximity sensor just below the viewfinder to turn this off when composing your shot.

EOS 400D

Tuesday, September 5, 2006

Corel Snapfire

Corel has decided to give away some of its software as free and instantly downloadable. The software package available is Corel Snapfire, a photo organizing tool that shares, edits, prints, and creates slide shows and montages.

Snapfire

Thursday, August 17, 2006

WTC movie

Sad, dramatic, depressing but also full of hope. Let's hope people are good. Do not go if you are not happy, I felt depressed after this movie

WTC

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Backup / Restore XP Activation

Backup / Restore XP Activation
When you activate Windows XP, Microsoft stores the data in the Windows Product Activation database files wpa.dbl and Wpa.bak in the folder %systemroot%\system32. If you change the motherboard or make significant hardware changes, XP will require you to reactive. But if you plan to reinstall XP on the same hardware, you can back up the activation status and then restore it after you reinstall and avoid the activation process. You can backup the Windows Product Activation database files to diskette.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Preloadr

Using Preloadr is absolutely free and does not require any registration. You will be redirected to log into your account at Flickr.com and then sent back to this platform where you can access all your images and upload new photos. Before sending the images to Flickr, you can modify them with several tools like cropping, sharpening, color correction and much more. Once you've optimized your photo you can specify details about the image and set tags, as you're used to do at Flickr. If you're a Flickr Pro user, you can edit an existing image and replace the current copy with the new version.

Preloadr

Friday, July 14, 2006

Apple Computer Nike + iPod Sport Kit

Nike iPod Sport Kit and compatible Nike ("Nike Plus") shoes are now in stores. Consisting of a small, red and white wireless 802.11 2.4 GHz sensor/transmitter and an all-white iPod nano receiver, the Sport Kit tracks a runner's performance and sends data to the nano for recording and synchronization with iTunes. In order for the kit to work, the sensor must be inserted into a pocket within the shoe.
Nike+IPod

Fujifilm Finepix F20, up to ISO 2000

Digital Photography Review announced new FinePix F20. It carries the same 6.3 megapixel SuperCCD chip found in the F30 providing it with impressive an high sensitivity of up to ISO 2000 at full resolution.

F20

Thursday, July 6, 2006

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Monday, June 26, 2006

Marta and Rafal Housewarming Party

Best wishes for Marta and Rafal in their new home!

Parapetowka / housewarming party

Sunday Valley Ball in Santa Cruz

It was great time. We have good weather and fantastic crowd. Despite of small French-Italian conflict game was great :-) Since they played in the same team referee did not give any red cards cause it was advantage for opposite team ;-) Besides that we got peaceful people from Germany, Switzerland, Romania, Croatia, Poland, England, USA ;-)


SC7

Monday, June 19, 2006

Rammstein - Rosenrot

I have been listening to new Rammstein for last two days. It's fantastic. Some ot the songs are heaviest ever. Lyrics as usual are very surprising. So far songs I most like are "Rosenrot" and "Spring" (it gives me creeps). Yeu can read more on Wikipedia page.

RosenRot

Monday, June 12, 2006

Went gray after Poland lost to Equador




Went gray after Poland lost to Equador




Thursday, June 8, 2006

10 Ugliest World Cup Footballers

Not all professional footballers are blessed with the photogenic looks of David Beckham, Thierry Henry or… um, half the Italian squad. So, for your entertainment, Top 10 Ugliest World Cup players… Notable mention, #5, Grzegorz Rasiak ;-)

Ronaldinho

Tuesday, June 6, 2006

The 16th Annual San Francisco Accordion Festival

The 16th Annual San Francisco Accordion Festival and San Francisco's Main Squeeze Pageant a free event celebrating National Accordion Awareness Month as well as highlighting San Francisco's official musical instrument, was held on Sunday, June 4, 2006 in the Del Monte Square at the Cannery at Fisherman's Wharf. This free event went from Noon-6:00 p.m., features a wide variety of accordion-based bands.

Main Squeeze

Monday, June 5, 2006

The Diet Plan and The Three Habits

Quite interesting article on dieting on Jeremy's Zawodny blog.

SUSE 10.0/10.1 KDE Repository Changes

SuSE
The Supplimentary repositories have changed. The following will help you to get the latest KDE 3.5.3 and future versions as well as all latest KDE apps.

Friday, June 2, 2006

The Mosquito Mega-Catch

The Mosquito Mega-Catch is able to kill up to 1,200 mosquitos in one night, reducing mosquito populations over an entire acre. Summer's here, and what better way to enjoy it than without these suckers?

No More Mosquitos!

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Berry Creek Falls Trail

On Memorial Day we went to BigBasin for a hike. This trail was estimated for 6 hours. We did it in less than 5:30. I must admit that my feet were quite sore that evening but I was carrying my photo gear and tripod :-)

Berry Creek Waterfalls

Friday, May 26, 2006

Network card stopped working after upgrade from OpenSuSE 10.0 to 10.1

Last night I decided to update my desktop machine to SuSE 10.1. Update process crashed once during uninstallation of packages but second run was successful. Almost, when I checked in the morning it could not get updates from internet. It looks like there are problems with NIC card. I rebooted and I did not have network device. Weird, cause it has been working for months without problems.
Bug
My machine is Shuttle SN95G5 with nForce3 chipset and Marvell 8001 Gigabit Ethernet adapter. After upgrade it tries to load sk98lin module (SysKonnect???) and it fails with following message: "Csk98lin: Could not read VPD data. sk98lin: probe of ... failed with error -5"

Picasa for Linux

Picasa is a free software download from Google. Now available for Linux!

So, how does it work? Picasa for Linux runs the current Windows version of Picasa using a carefully tested version of Wine, an open-source implementation of the Windows application-programming interface (API). Wine runs on top of the X Window System and Linux or Unix. But it’s not a Windows emulator; instead, it provides a Windows API middleware layer that enables Windows programs to run on Linux without the slowing effects of OS emulation or a virtual machine.

Picasa Linux

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Ania & Greg’s Wedding

Ania & Greg's Wedding

Last saturday I went to Sonoma for a weeding of my friends, Ania and Greg. Wether was great so reception was held in nice rented house in Glen Ellen next to Benzinger Winery.

Monday, May 22, 2006

OpenLaszlo

OpenLaszlo is an open source platform for creating zero-install web applications with the user interface capabilities of desktop client software.

OpenLaszlo programs are written in XML and JavaScript and transparently compiled to Flash and soon DHTML. The OpenLaszlo APIs provide animation, layout, data binding, server communication, and declarative UI. An OpenLaszlo application can be as short as a single source file, or factored into multiple files that define reusable classes and libraries.
OpenLaszlo

Friday, May 19, 2006

TortoiseSVN

TortoiseSVN
TortoiseSVN is a really easy-to-use version control / source control client under a GPL license!

Features of TortoiseSVN/Subversion:

  • Windows Shell (Explorer) integration. Can be used without any IDE.

  • Icon overlays show immediately which files/folders need to be uploaded (committed) to the database.

  • Easy to use dialogs for version control operations.

  • The UI is available in different languages.

  • Global revision numbers. You can get old versions of your project and not just single files.

  • Atomic transactions. Interrupted operations don't affect the repository at all.
  • Wednesday, May 17, 2006

    Senate Extension of U.S. Visa Waiver Program to Poland

    Poland
    Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) today joined Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) in announcing the Senate’s unanimous passage of their amendment that would extend the U.S. Visa Waiver program to Poland. The provision was accepted today as part of the immigration legislation pending on the Senate floor.

    Google Releases AJAX Framework

    Google
    Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don't speak browser quirks as a second language. Writing dynamic web applications today is a tedious and error-prone process; you spend 90% of your time working around subtle incompatabilities between web browsers and platforms, and JavaScript's lack of modularity makes sharing, testing, and reusing AJAX components difficult and fragile.

    GWT lets you avoid many of these headaches while offering your users the same dynamic, standards-compliant experience. You write your front end in the Java programming language, and the GWT compiler converts your Java classes to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.

    Tuesday, May 16, 2006

    Canon vs Nikon DSLR for beginners

    CanonNikon
    Recently two people asked me about my advice on buying their first DSLR. I am Canon user for last 15 years and practically I have no experience with Nikon cameras. I think that at the entry level difference are probably not significant.

    Later I found blog article dealing with this subject: Considering an entry level camera

    Monday, May 15, 2006

    Wednesday, May 10, 2006

    Ubuntu Center

    Ubuntu Center is a web based interface for accessing all kinds of information that's being stored on your computer running Ubuntu Breezy, Kubuntu, XUbuntu, or even nUbuntu box. Ubuntu Center accomplishes all of this by integrating PHP software licensed under the GPL license in one giant package suitable for use on a Ubuntu computer. This release adds tons of new features and bug fixes and is suitable for everyday use.


    Ubuntu Center

    Tuesday, May 9, 2006

    SecureDVD

    SecureDVD is a live DVD collection featuring the 10 Best Security Live CD Distros.

    SecureDVD Linux Live

    Warner Bros. to sell movies via BitTorrent

    Warner Bros.'s video unit on Tuesday unveiled plans to sell movies and television shows to BitTorrent Inc. for legal downloads from the Web site that was once blamed for aiding the swapping of illegally copied films and programs.

    WB BitTorrent

    Spring is finally here

    Last weekend was quite busy for me I went to Capitola with friends who were showing me how to fly professional kites then on sunday with 4 other friends we climbed on Mission Peak in Fremont. Frankly I did not expect that it would be so high. Weather was perfect.

    Kites in Capitola
    Mission Peak

    Friday, May 5, 2006

    Malibu Grand Prix - my first team outing at new workplace

    It looks like I am too tall to ride this miniature F1 replicas but I still I think I looked quite funny in this car ;-)

    Malibu Grand Prix

    Electric Car Faster Than A Ferrari or Porsche

    Ian Wright has a car that blows away a Ferrari 360 Spider and a Porsche Carrera GT in drag races, and whose 0-to-60 acceleration time ranks it among the fastest production autos in the world. In fact, it's second only to the French-made Bugatti Veyron, a 1,000-horsepower, 16-cylinder beast that hits 60 mph half a second faster and goes for $1.25 million.

    X1

    Thursday, May 4, 2006

    Top 10 sci-fi films

    No. 1 appears to be my favorite :-)

    Blade Runner

    The Five Most Common Lies in Business

    Paul LaFontaine left Bertelsmann Music Group in March 1997 to advise other businesspeople about radical honesty. He has lots of work to do. "There are as many lies in business as there are people in business," he says. Here are his nominees for the five most common lies.

    FastCompany

    Wednesday, May 3, 2006

    Get Legal - Get OpenOffice.org

    After years of unofficially tolerating piracy as a means of securing market share, Microsoft is now going on the offensive to make sure copies of it's software are legitimate.


    Get legal. Get OpenOffice.org

    Thursday, April 27, 2006

    Mozilla Thunderbird fails to launch…

    I uninstalled both Firefox and Thunderbird. Then found location where you can download latest versions. SuSE maintains rpms of current releases of Firefox and Thunderbird at this address:


    ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/projects/mozilla/firefox/1.5.0.2/
    ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/projects/mozilla/thunderbird/1.5.0.2


    Get Firefox!Get Thunderbird!