I'm off for a weekend in Finland tomorrow. There's the biggest open air festival of the year ... preparing to get very wet and get cramps in my neck!!!

See you on Tuesday.

At last I've finished uploading and writing up the Venezuela photos. There are a couple of galleries for each different place I've been to. Check them out in the travel section.

Here's the culprit for me arriving late to work today. A little baby magpie. This cute little fellow was standing near a ex-puddle of water that was just swept clean by one of those monstrous cleaning machines. My feathered friend must have been cursing the man cause I'm quite sure what I heard weren't the usual magpie calls. It was a welcome change seeing the little bird instead of the little brats going to school on my way to work.

Word: serendipity
Meaning: an aptitude for making desireable discoveries by accident (Dictionary.com)
Usage: Social Serendipity from MIT's Reality Mining project.
Synonyms: knowledgeable, scholastic, intellectual

Word: inane
Meaning: 1. lacking sense, significance or ideas 2. empty or void (Dictionary.com)
Usage: Inanity of statements (from this comic here).
Synonyms: empty, daft, absurd

I've gained some blogging momentum and I'm about to start 2 new series. The first series is "Read Today" and it'll contain a number of interesting quotations read on the day. Most probably this will be more a tech type of thing because that's making up most of my reading at present but anyway the tech section needs some ass-kicking so that's a good way to revive it.

The second series is "By E-mail this week". These are basically selected snippets of mail from the huge mass of rubbish I receive. Should be good fun, we'll see how it goes.

Also, I've been catching up with uploading the Venezuela photos. I'm almost finished, so if I keep this updating rate I'll probably be ready soon. Check out the travel section for this.

"sorry for abusing you .. but I know you're very compassionate." [translated]

"... hope you still remember me, if not I'm the guy who gave you the strange ski game"

"i like to see my b/f in action :D from the professional side :D" (thanks for clarifying just in case my imagination started running wild)

Mail Nr. 1: "This leg was missing from our source."
Mail Nr. 2: "446 is what was given by the system and it is correct in the sense that there was no misreading or corruption of data from source to report." (mmmm so explain this to me, if the data is wrong but it's the same as the source it's ok to have the wrong data?)

"This is an automated reply. I am out of office today till Friday" (phew thank go, no nagging for the rest of this week at least)

"i had to borrow a shirt cause I wasn't so honestly dressed" [translated] (i like the honesty relationship with dress)

I've started writing in a new blog recently. The blog is called Geek Bazaar and it contains geeky stuff, gear reviews, humour etc. It's basically a place to share stuff instead of sending links by mail. Some of the writers work in IT security so you'll find some good stuff on that there too.

I was thinking of cross posting my morning post there but I'll link to it instead Expand your Mind Folder

It's been raining for the whole week and now I'm fed up. I want to go in bed curl into a ball and read but I'm stuck at work. I need something to amuse myself so ...

Professor Fontecedro videos on youtube - A great classic of Mai Dire Gol. Cosmico ragazzi! Disgustorama! Disgustomatico!

Journal of Computer Mediated Communication - Some good reading stuff in here.

Check out these free fantastic wallpapers here.

If you guess which one is on my desktop I'll send you a prize.

Update (26/Jun): I will tell you if anybody guesses, and the first one to guess will get the prize. No guesses till now.

Update (27/Jun): Ladies and gentleman we've got a winner!!!! The correct answer was Yellow Mongoose!

My home PC has been giving me endless grief recently and at last I think I managed to find the problem. The machine has been rebooting itself randomly for quite some time at the expense of lost work and frustration. I've tried swapping all the components in the machine but to no avail. The restarts kept occurring without any evident pattern.

Recently the sound of the machine has become unbearable. It was like one of those old noisy butcher fridges running in the room. It was so disturbing that I couldn't watch a movie on high volume without noticing it. At last yesterday I took the plunge and opened the machine again. I realised that when the cover was removed the fans were making much less noise then when the cover was still on, and the computer was not rebooting. This suggested that the problem had something to do with overheating. I had a look at the fans and found around 1/2cm layer of dust covering the CPU fan. This morning I looked up some tips on how to clean the PC interior and found out that dust can indeed cause overheating resulting in reboots and potentially destroy components in the beloved box. Cleaning the machine only involves some common sense and a can of compressed air.

I'm living to work and travel. Work is usual so I'll not go there and travel is turning a bit strange. In the pipeline I've got Finland, Edinburgh and surprise, surprise ... the dot. Yes, the dot again in September, and what's more amazing is that I'm staying there for a whole week. One week in the dot. No this isn't nostalgia, even though I'm glad I'm going for the village feast, but there's something more to it. I'll be acting as a host / tour guide for the whole week so for those of you who can make one plus one you know why :))

On a different note, I've decided to read an M.Sc. at last at the beginning of the next academic year. I've already set my eyes on a course but am still looking for alternative options.

I've just returned back from Budapest last Monday evening and since then I barely had a chance to breath. The long weekend in Budapest was great and even though I've only been away recently I made good use of the break. I went there with a work pal of mine and all turned out fine. We were both in high spirits so the drudgery of work was left home. The highlights of the trip where:

The steam bath and thermal baths

I've already been to several baths before but getting steamed at a very high temperature barely being able to breath, and then jumping in cold water was a first. Sadistic but enjoyable

The food

I must say that I really liked goulash. I tried it on the first night and ate it for the rest of the weekend. Even though the goulash is a beef soup this didn't deter me from having beef steaks as second.

The lovely buildings and the city in general

The are some great sights to see here like the parliament, the castle and loads of other buildings.

The ladies

Yes, I take responsibility of the statement but I reckon that Hungarians might be better looking then the Venezuelans.

Take a quick read at the BBC article but don't stop there READ THE DEBATE. If you find something positive written in the comments then go and buy a lotto ticket, you're gonna win!

...yes it is so bad

Keeping quite busy at the moment (i.e. having a life outside of the internet) and working hard that is. Well tonight I've got a birthday bbq in which i'm taking a very active part, procuring the bbq, preparing the food, dessert and presents ... well you know :). This is what's on the menu:-

meat
chicken thighs
chicken breast + pieces
pork spare ribs
pork chops

Vegetables
kebabs (cherry tomatoes, green/red peppers, crougette, pineapple, onions and mushrooms)
onion kebabs (onions and garlic)
jacket potato
potato salad
corn on the cob

Dessert
birthday cake from superquinn :) (not much preparation for this)
grilled pineapple rounds - tempted to dip them in coconut milk & cinnamon)