Alright, so my final exams  are coming  up, and now im currently elarning the hungarian part, 2 weeks of exams and stress, i will try to post every 2 days a longer post to compensate

thanks for sticking with me

A reader of my blog(Daniel) asked me to present some screenshots of my project, so i decided to make 2 videos, in one showing the documentation, and in the other showing the project itself.

Documentation:

Yes, the video contains narration, my voice is a bit rusted because i was sick when i made the video, and you also have to consider that i’m not a native english speaker.

Presentation of the project:

Behind this “simple” powerpoint presentation lies about 14 hours of extensive work in photoshop to come up with the overall concept.

Feel free to leave your comments

Presentation of the electrnoics project

Yesterday morning at 6:39 AM i was posting that i’m off to present my project to get a degree in electronics/automatisations . The presentations should have started at 7, but they started at 8. In my group we are 20, in each session 5 people went in the room to present their projects.

I got it an umm…9:20 am i think. One of my colleagues pissed off the professors in the commission, after they finished with him they asked: “who wants to be next?”.

I raised my hand and said: “i’ll go next, because i don’t really care, i’m not scared or something, went to too many presentations to be nervous”.

So a professor from the commission sat down in front of me. I asked her:“do you want me to say the story about my project or do you prefer to ask?” She replied: “say what you have to”. So i presented my project and the way it works in a pretty interactive way.

After i finished she asked some questions, and told me to demonstrate how it works. My electronics professor was behind me and i could see on his face that he was as pleased of me as the professor who evaluated me. They said thanks for my presentation and i left the room. I will get the results monday, but i’m sure i got a high grade. Actually grades don’t really matter. Everyone who gets over 5 gets his degree, w/o the grade written on it.

After the presentation:

I came home with my girlfriend to give her my pack of maths formulas, after which i geared up(towel/swimming boxers) and went down to week-end complex(sort of an aqua park), where i met with my friend Norbert. We got into our swimming suits and went for a swim….damn that water was cold as hell, but heck, we swam about 30minutes after which we came out and went to ply basketball.

We played basketball in that heat for about a hour when my girlfriend popped up with a friend of hers telling me to go with them to meet up with their classmates at a local bar. So we got there, she drank coca-cola, i drank URSUS beer, we chat with her colleagues. Some of them were pretty drunk. A chick from her group comes, sits down and says: “wooo, playing darts is fun, i lost 4 times!”, i’m like:“…yeah, your drunk”, she replies:“i drank only 2 beers!”(shows with fingers)”and i’m not drunk, i’m just having a good time!”.

When most of my girlfriend’s colleagues left, we also left, i walked her to the bus station from where i came home, went to sleep(at 9PM) and got up about 20minutes ago,lol)

It’s 6:39 AM, i am already dressed and ready to go to college to present my project. In the jury there will be 4 professors, each specialized in electronics/automatisations. As said in a previous post for my degree i had to make an electronics project. I chose to make an universal infrared signal receiver, which can basically receive signal from any remote. My colleagues promised me that they will bring some remotes so i can make my presentations as good as possible.

I had to put on my suit and tie….man i hate wearing suits, but in these occasions it’s a must. In my group we are 20 people and i’m 15th in alphabetical order, this means that it will start at 7 AM and i will go in at about 11 AM, till then me and the rest of the guys will wait.

There will be no grades. They will give a simbolical grade to show the value of the projects, but on the degree it will say either passed or failed, so basically everyone who gets above 5 will pass, and get his degree.

Anyway, lets hope for the best, and when i get back home i’ll post about how it went down.

Damn…more than 9 days have passed since i last posted. Trust me i would have posted with pleasure but since i got back from the informatics competition i was busy all day working on the project for my degree.

At the competition i was on the 12th position. We had 2 tests before the presentation of the project, ALL of the tests were related to programming: PHP/MYSQL/HTML/CGI, on the first i got 33 points/50, on the second 45 points/100. The first tests point number was doubled: 33×2 = 66 points. My total score after the 2 tests was 45+66=111. If i would have had 120 points i would have gotten to the presentation part.

Since i didn’t get there i worked on my project for nothing. At least the chick from my county who was in the competition in her category got first place!

Everything was great, except the rooms which were pretty messed up, but i can’t complain about the food: 3 meals/day each of them containing meat, and plenty of it.

The competition was held at FSEGA = Some accounting college, which has a brand new modern building, with HI-tech equipments and of course hot-spots. The only problem was that all of them were passworded -> we couldn’t access them.

Here are some pics from the competition:

Last week i did 4 projects:

1) Project for my girlfriend’s degree in Hotel Management

2) Project for a friend’s degree in web design(hell..he doesn’t know anything about web design and he learned it for 4 years,lol)

3) The project for the competition i attended last week-end.

4) An other degree project for a friend in Hardware and pc configuration.

So yeah, last week was a pretty fucked up week and its continuing this week also.Yesterday i worked my ass off on the documentation for my electronics project, because we had to give it to the professor today, but it got finished and i gave it to him before the deadline. I still have some minor adjustments to make on the actual project, but it will be 100% completed by friday when i have to present it in front of a 7 man commission.

If everything goes well my project will be stamped with APPROVED label and i get my degree, if not…well lets not think of that option.

Tomorrow i will have an other maths final simulation(3rd), and hopefully i will get a decent grade like on the last 2.(first was 6.60/10 | second was 6.30/10) I blow at maths so these grades are a great achievement for me, although if my private maths professor tells me i can do better. Usually when he tells me that i reply to him: ‘i hate maths, so give me a break will you?”

Anyway, this time i promise a situation like this will never happen again(not posting fro a long period), you will see many improvements on the blog in the next weeks(mostly in posts/day).

In a previous post i told you that i’m first in my county at the informatics competition:

…my informatics professor told me to go to an informatics competition where the best from my county i web development and programming will be there. I participated at the technical section.

After waiting 3 hours to get in i finished the test in 20 minutes, and went for a walk with my girlfriend. I didn’t wait for the results because i was VERY pissed because i had to stay in line for 3 hours.

On friday on my way to electronics class professors started congratulating me. Later i found out that i’m first at the contest and that between 23-25 may i’m going to the national section of the contest. Of course all expenses are supported by them.

Yesterday i had to go and talk to the informatics professor who gave me more details about the competition. As said before it will be held at Cluj between 23-25 may. In order to participate all contestants have to create a project which is no way related to webdesign and development neither to IT&C, but mostly to philosophy.

The topic is TIME - EGO - VALUES which should be a multimedia project.

How the project is evaluated:

- The idea of the project should be in in consonance with the topic of the project.

- Usage only of own materials and resources

- Artistic achievement (the harmony of colors, mix sound-image, animation)

- The way information is structured

- User friendly interface, usability.

- Accurate technique (technical, resolution)

- Presenting the application: written documentation (paper presentation, user guide, bibliography etc), installer

To say it straight this is bullshit. What the hell has philosophy has to do with informatics or IT&C or web development? NOTHING! The topic of the project consists in 3 freakin’ words and the organizers think that people will stay a week and figure out what exactly is required by them.

I talked to my philosophy professor who gave me a weird look and it took him a time to understand that this is an informatics competition and not a philosophy one. He suggested that i make an autobiographical presentation in powerpoint, and i think i will stick to that idea and if i make it to the 3rd phase of the contest then i will present it. If the organizers won’t like it it’s their problem.

This really bugs me…why the hell couldn’t they make up a topic like create a web page or create a poster or i don’t know what, something thats actually IT related. They put a great accent on the content of the project. Anyone can write a random text related to the topic, this will only prove that the contestant has writing abilities and in the future he may be a good writer.

But who knows? Maybe i won’t make it to the 3rd phase and will fall out at first(i doubt it, but if i get pissed enough then i’ll hand in the test the way i got it), at least then il have more time to hang out with some friends from Cluj.

There are some pretty hardcore sponsors and i’m pretty curious about the prizes:

You probably know some of the above shown brands, google those which you don’t know

Now that i got to the end of my post i’m not as mad as before because now i know that you as a reader will feel a bit like i felt when i found out the topic. One thing’s for sure I’ll go to have fun and not to get pissed.

History repeats itself…after 6 years i loose an other tooth because of the same reason -> not caring about it. 6 years ago i had a tooth removed from the back(down part on the right) because i was afraid of the needle, and ran away home, and in 6 months my tooth got pretty messed up and i had to go to surgery to get it removed.

Today almost same thing happened. A surgeon removed a tooth from the back(down part on the left), its exactly the tooth which is vice-versa to the one that was removed 6 years ago. This one got messed up because 3 months ago my dentist(she’s 25 years old…its a dentist anyone would love,lol) opened it up and put temporary filling in it to clean it, and told me to go back in a week. During that week my father died so i couldn’t really go back, so i stalled it. It was pretty annoying that i couldn’t bite on it because it hurt but still stalled it.

2 weeks ago i decided to get all my teeth fixed so i can avoid going to the dentist for a year again,lol. She checked out my teeth, made X-ray and told me what’s up, and told me that the tooth i abandoned has to be removed or it will be gangrened or something like that. So in the past 3 weeks she worked on my other teeth, and today i had to go, because she scheduled me to a dental surgeon to get my tooth removed.

I got 3 shots and by that i didn’t feel anything(thank God). The surgeon was a very cool guy, like 28 years old, while the anesthetics took effect we chat about different stuffs, after which he started working on my tooth. He tried to remove it, but the top got broken off so he had to cut my tooth in 2 (he separated the roots) so the tooth can be removed. He was pretty pissed because it was hard to get it out, but eventually after 45 minutes of hard work my tooth got removed! YAY!

About 5 hours have passed since he removed my tooth and i still feel like the left side of my face isn’t mine(i don’t feel it), but hopefully by tomorrow everything will get back to normal

Today was a long long day, had lots of work and didn’t have time to make up my mind about what to write today, so in the last minute i decided to present you the Websites and Web Services that i use everyday for quite a while now.

1) DigitalPoint Forums

I check the Buy, Sell or Trade section every morning before i go to work or to school. This is the most important place where i get customers. Thanks to my high itrader rating for a while now customers contact me directly, but a bit extra work is welcome any time, especially if i get paid. I’m mostly interested in the Templates and Services section, but i check the other sections also, because you never know when you find something that your interested in. I signed up at DP forums in December 2006 and i can say that it’s one of the best things that happened to me

2) Statcounter and Google Analytics

I’m using both Statcounter and Google Analytics in the same time on all of my websites and i can say that i’m very satisfied with the results. It’s a great combo, because statcounter displays the stats in real-time, while Google Analytics can provide very detailed statistics every 24 hours. I’m using the free version of statcounter, i don’t really care that my logs are full because i’m interested in the current visits/hits in real time. I’ve heard lots of good opinions about Woopra, but i don’t think i’m ready to give up statcounter+ G analytics for it.

3) Paypal

Paypal is the most commonly used online payment processor worldwide. You can’t compare other services like Moneybookers or Alertpay to it. If i would have to use a moneybookers or alertpay account and not Paypal i would most probably go out of business due to the small number of users who use the above mentioned services. The number of Paypal users is huge, and thanks to this all my income goes first in my paypal account. Some times i consider that the fee is a bit huge, but i have to accept it and be thankful that such a great service exists.

4) Gmail

I couldn’t imagine my life without it. I switched to Gmail about 3 years ago, because i got annoyed by yahoo because lots and lots of emails didn’t arrive and i have absolutely no regrets. At home, at work, and at school i have the google toolbar installed which notifies me of new emails, so you can imagine that i check my gmail account about 10-20 times a day to make sure i stay updated on tech news and reply to emails.

5) Torrentz

Torrentz.com is the best torrent search engine! I know which are quality torrents and which aren’t and this way i know for sure that i don’t download crappy quality movies or music. Because i live in damn Romania many movie premieres and music CD releases are very very delayed and because of this i get pissed off and don’t wait for the premiere but download it from torrents.

6) Titrari

The best movies need the best subtitles. Titrari.ro is a romanian subtitle website, from where i download great quality subtitles done by people who actually know how to translate, and make correct translations. My all-time best subtitle writer is veverita_bc. I have great respect for his work.

7) Youtube and Metacafe

Youtube and Metacafe are the greatest video-sharing websites around. I mostly use youtube to watch funny videos and music video clips. As i noticed metacafe has higher quality videos, meaning that you won’t find all sort of BS nonsense videos there. Since metacafe introduced its payments system(you get paid for the views of your video IF the video was made by you) you can watch lots of cool home-made interactive videos.

My blog

How could i leave my blog out of the list? As you can notice I really care about it, and invested lots of time, money and work in it(see the design, the quality of the posts, its features). Its like a baby to me which i will never give up(i got a $3700 offer for it which i refused) meaning that i won’t sell it. Its a private blog combined with tech news and webdesign tips. Stay tuned, more features are about to come .

Holy cow! One week has passed since i last posted on my blog. Its not that i didn’t want to, its because i couldn’t due to lack of time. I really would have posted but had to keep my mind clear and without nerves because i had a pretty messed up week.

Now i will present you what i went trough this week and what ate up my time:

On monday i had my physics exam. This is my last year in school so it was pretty hard, from 3 tasks i managed to finish one completely and the half of an other one. The thing is that i got 6/10 grade(here the grades vary from 1 to 10, and 5 is passing grade) so i was pretty thrilled when i found out that i got 6.

Tuesday was a pretty easy day for me, because i didn’t have any exams, but i had to work on my degree project from electronics. To get a degree in electronics and automatisations we have to make a project.

My project is to build a infrared receiver which will start a buzzer and light a LED when it gets Infrared signals from any infrared sender, meaning that it isn’t binded to one type of Infrared signal and encoding -> you can start it with any remote.

Wednesday was literary hell for me. I had 2 exams and a test. Having 2 exams was sort of my fault, because i skipped the hungarian exam last week, because the professor pissed me off. To get to the point i had the hungarian exam and the maths exam along with a test from geography. I didn’t learn anything from hungarian just to show the professor that he’s a jackass. He gave us(4 of us skipped it) a very very hard exam, but i’m sure i’ll get a passing grade(5).

Last week i had 4 private maths classes, with a good friend of my parents, 4 classes meaning 8 hours of extensive maths. It seems that the hard work showed useful because i got 7 for my maths exam. When i found out my grade yesterday this was what i said: “holy shit, ima get wasted today”.

On thursday i had electronics classes and worked a lot to improve my infrared receiver so it could be showed off on friday(which didn’t happen due to lack of time).After the electronics class my informatics professor told me to go to a web development competition where the best from my county i web development and programming will be there. I participated at the web development section.

After waiting 3 hours to get in i finished the test in 20 minutes, and went for a walk with my girlfriend. I didn’t wait for the results because i was VERY pissed because i had to stay in line for 3 hours.

On friday on my way to electronics class professors started congratulating me. Later i found out that i’m first at the contest and that between 23-25 may i’m going to the national section of the contest. Of course all expenses are supported by them.

Yesterday marked the end of all the stress, for 4 hours i worked on the file for my project(we have to have a 25 page file which should contain info about it). I managed to finish 12 pages, and now i have 2 weeks to finish the rest 13.

Now i have 2 weeks of “vacation” in which i can prepare for the finals and get it over with once and for all.

In the first part of this post i mentioned that i had to keep my mind clear. By this i meant that i didn’t work at all, i didn’t check my emails, the only thing that i did was approve comments here on my blog. I didn’t learn much here at home, i recapitulated the lessons and that’s it. I spent most of my time with my girlfriend and watching prison break.

Yesterday i finished watching episode 13 from season 3. The next episode will be due in september(just like heroes) so till then bye bye prison break. I have to say, this is the best TV series i ever saw, next to Heroes and The invisible man. I don’t regret spending almost 24 hours totally this week to watch all the episodes, because it was worth it. It was way better than a crap action movie where everyone gets out of trouble and the main character never suffers.

So that was it…now you know why i didn’t post for a whole week. Once again i apologize and i promise i will make it up to you next week.

Here in Romania labor day is held on 1st May(which was yesterday). There’s a tradition over here that almost everyone goes out in the nature(mostly outside the forests) to make a grill with the family and to make mici( mici is a traditional Romanian dish, a kind of grilled minced-meat rolls made from beef (usually mixed with mutton and pork meat).

I wouldn’t want to break the tradition would i? So we decided to go near the zoo(there’s a big spot filled with grass where we usually go every year to grill, and lots and lots of other people also go).

On wednesday me and my girlfriend went to the local hypermarket and bought the necessary food:

- 2x 2 litre Pepsi twist

- 2,5 litre Skoll beer

- 1KG meat for mici

- 4 sausages

- 2,5 kilograms of bread

- mustard

- a big cucumber, 1KG tomatoes

- 250 grams of cheese(how could this miss from camp fire?)

Total price: 21$

in addition to what we bought my girlfriend brought 2kg’s of potatoes and some other condiments and stuff. Norbert brought the grill, the axe and some other tools required to setup the fire. The irony was that neither of us remembered to bring matches to light the fire, so i had to go over to a “neighbour” who setup his grill close to us and ask for some matches.

We had a hard time starting the fire, because all the paper we got was commercial colored paper, and it took a time till it started burning. After we got the fire started everything went pretty smoothly. me and norbert brought some dry branches and wood and made a pretty good fire.

We got there at 11PM and we got the food done at 3 PM. Its a great feeling to do everything by hand and work your ass off to get everything done. Its hard but in the end its worth it, even the food tastes better. I don’t like to go out grilling with a grill that uses coal, and all you need to do is spice up the coal, put some fuel on it and in a matter of 30minutes you got everything ready and your ready to eat. We went there to spend all our day in the nature, not to go there and come home in 2 hours.

The food was great, we were pretty overwhelmed by it, also almost all the beer got drank by me, because both Norbert and my girlfriend preferred to drink pepsi.

Here are some pictures from yesterday:

After we ate we gathered all the trash and threw it away in the nearby trashcan, we arranged the remaining food to be in one place and we laid down, we even used the umbrella because the sun was shining so bright(good thing i brought my sunglasses).

At 5 PM we went to the zoo, which was full so we sort of checked out the animals in an express way. I still can’t believe the 600KG bull stuck his head out so people can cuddle him.

From the zoo on our way home we stopped at a restaurant looking place where we ate some desert, from where we went home. On our way home one side of the sky was filled with clouds, the other was bright blue, somewhere most probably it rained somewhere because a cool rainbow was formed.

We were lucky that it was good weather, because today it rained a lot and it was an ugly weather. The most important thing is that we went, we had fun and didn’t encounter any problems, oh and most importantly we took pictures!