HTC Touch HD

"Bad artists copy. Great artists steal."

That's what Pablo Picasso had said some time ago.

Just a few minutes ago, I saw an overview of the new HTC Touch HD's characteristics. Guess what - it has 480x800 touchscreen, with 5 MPx camera. Sounds familiar? Before I continue, I just want to remind you that in the end of the month, Sony-Ericsson will start shipping their new 3G phone - Xperia X1 (480x800 px touchscreen display, 5 MPx camera and so on). Hmm... is this new HTC phone something like an X1 copy?

Bad HTC, bad!


Source: Softpedia

Google Chrome

It's here, it's now, but is it really "wow"? If you ask me - it's NOT! Yesterday was the first day when Google Chrome's BETA was released. I said to myself - OK, it's just a BETA, I won't be testing it, since I've seen many betas with many bugs and since I like Google (along with Adobe - they are my two favorite software companies) I thought that I didn't want to get a bad impression about their software. However for the last 48 hours I've read many news, and about 15% of them had to do something with Google Chrome (and that's quite much - when the iPhone 3G was out, this percentage was only about 10!). All of this just made me so curious, that I just had to see it for myself, moreover I'm very keen on CSS coding and how different browsers interpret CSS (believe me - there still isn't a single web browser that manages to handle strong CSS correctly - IE7 and Firefox 3 have only a few bugs, but still).
So in less than half an hour ago, I downloaded Google Chrome, hoping that the day when CSS won't be a big problem comes NOW, but... I'm disappointed. Google Chrome gives me a bug with a simple line-height value! Can you believe that? A simple line-height argument! Now this is just too much. Sure - it's the fastest JavaScript-interpretation-browser I've seen, but a line-height CSS bug?! You must be kidding me! I know, it's just a beta version and soon there will be lots of updates and so on, but I'm not speaking of something Google might have not noticed while they were developing Chrome... or have they? How come they have missed so basic thing?
My message for Google is: This time you've "outdone" yourselves! I expect something far better for the official release of Chrome.

New blog

For all of you who are from Bulgaria, you may like to chock out my new blog - KO64ETO :). What's different about it is that there I'll be posting more frequently (at least I hope so) and only on speciffic topics (not like here - in this blog I've posted only 14 comments and there are at least 12 different subjects on which I've posted). More about KO64ETO concerns my co-authors - Vasil Vasilev and Asen Stoikov. These great guys will bring much variety to the new blog.
KO64ETO is actually some old project that the tree of us had in mind. It was initially Vasil's idea to make a web site, where he would post information regarding interesting topics in which he is competant. In the beginning they started both with Asen, and after a couple of weeks I joined them. After that I made a new web site with the help of my dear friend Hristo Petrov. The web site was http://ko64eto.host-bg.info/ . However it was just then when all of us - Asen, Vasil and me, stopped posting because of the much work we had to put in order to get ready for all of the exams for applying to universities. Soon all of this will be over and I hope we'll be back posting even more than before.
So, enjoy KO64ETO!

One ordinary school day

Don't get scared and don't think we are crazy - this is something absolutely normal for us to do, while we are in school. Just don't let our headmaster to find out... at least not untill June, when we will have already graduated.

The most beautiful women (are in Bulgaria)

As I was going through some RSS feeds today I came across a very interesting article in http://www.softpedia.com/. The actual name of the article is "Top 10 Cities with the Most Beautiful Women". You can see the real article, published in http://www.mmoabc.com/, over here.
As a Bulgarian I was both astonished and very happy to find out that Varna, the so called sea capital of Bulgaria and also the second largest city in the country, is placed 4th in that ranking. True, Bulgarian girls are very pretty, and now you can see that the whole world agrees with that, since the ranking is based on a survay with many votes.
On the picture illustrating Varna in the mmoabc.com article, you may recognize Miss Maxim Bulgaria 2006 - Vanya. And if my memory serves me right, she was second in the international contest Miss Maxim World 2006, which was in Thailand.
So if you are wondering where to go this summer - the answer is in Varna, where you can find some of the most beautiful women in the world.

The Mosaic of Science and Culture project

Three years ago the European Union gave start to the Mosaic of Science and Culture project by financing it. It is a project under the Comenius subprogram, part of the Socrates program for the EU. It's a project that aims at letting students from different countries work together while learning about the greatest scientiffic discoverers and get to know each other's habbits and culture. There are six countries that took part in the project. These countries are Bulgaria, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Norway and Spain. There had been a meeting in every one of them starting with a teachers' meating in Spain and a big meating in Norway in 2006. After that it was Portugal and Poland in 2007, and this year the meatings have been in Italy and Bulgaria. The last meeting took place in the city of Shumen last week.
You can see the project's web site here: http://www.mosaicofscience.info/ . There you can find much information about the activities during the meatings and information about the different countries that took part in the project.
I am one of the participants in the project. I was one of Bulgarias representatives in the meating in Norway and I took great part in the preparation for the meating in Bulgaria. I'm also the web master of the project's site.
I've uploaded some pictures from the last meating. You can see them right here:

12.04.2008

Another one for Bulgaria

A few days ago I participated in the regional level of the information technology olympiad. I participated with a web site that I and a friend of mine - Hristo Petrov - made together. You can see it right here: http://www.ko64eto.host-bg.info/ (Note: it's in Bulgarian, however, you can still see the design itself). A great web site - I'm sure you'll agree. We've worked hard to make a real best-view-in-any-resolution and not just some small rectangle, that can't fill even the half of your screen if you're monitor resolution is greater than 1024x768. The web site is light, intuitive and doesn't make you bother about anything while you are browsing it.
This article isn't realy to tell you how great my web site was, but to inform you about what happened at the IT Olympiad. Lets start with the fact that there were only 5 web sites to participate. If you ask me - they all deserved 75 out of 100 points or even more (in other words - they deserved to go to the national level) but one single web site, that not only had an awful design, but was made out of 41 PHP files and over 9000 line of code, according to the words of the girl who made it. You can see this particular site here: http://www.gsm.souvl.com/ (Note: it's also in Bulgarian. If you know Bulgarian you may find it helpful to know that the administrator's username and password and both "1", however, the booys that hacked the web sited didn't need that much information). At the end of the contest the jury had to score all of the participants. The first thing I have to complain to is that no actual score had been givven to any of the participants. We were either told "You're going to the national", or "Sorry, try next year". The second thing I complain about is that only 4 web sites had "scored" enough. The third thing is that one of them was the GSM services web site made by that moron Merlin.
After we were told who's going to the national, the jury (actually there were only half of the jury - the other half, including the chairman, had beed gone) hasted into leaving us, giving us no other information. Somehow I managed to get to them and asked them of curiosity what was my score and how come I had less than 75. They answered me that my web site had no speciffically set purpouse (the subject was leisure time, and for one thing I agree - it really isn't speciffic) and that was what cost me so many points, otherwise everything else (coding, functionallity, navigation, design and so on) was perfect. However I didn't get a speciffic answer what my score was.
When I got back home I read all over the rules again and saw that speciffically set idea is scored with only 5 points, and applicability of the web site was scored with 5 more. OK - this makes 90 points. Or does it? After all of that I've figured that the scores were measured by the equation 100 points overall minus 10 points for no speciffic subject and applicability minus corruption is less than 75. That's why I had less than 75, although Merlin had more.
The worst thing is that this is something normal in Bulgaria. And my attitude towards it is that this whole country SUCKS!

Homepage rearange by Google

Don't haste forward to going to http://www.google.com/ since you may not notice any change. Actually untill now Google has made modifications only to the Japanese version of their homepage. There isn't much information about it (at least not in English) but what I've read states that this is an innovation, which is quite well accepted by the Japanese (I guess that I'll also accept it well). Soon the version for all languages will look the same way. That is there will be tabs under the search form, as follows: "Featured," including Gmail, YouTube, News, Maps and Transit, "Various search," that hosts links to Image Search, Blog Search, Books and Google Desktop, "Useful tool," with Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader and Google Toolbar and, finally, "More enjoyable," and YouTube once again, Picasa, Blogger and Google Earth.

Source: Softpedia

Adobe Digital Editions

Have you ever tried to find an e-book on your PC? If you have then you are most likely to agree that even if you have nested all your .PDF files in a variety of folders you still have trouble finding the one you need.
Adobe Digital Editions is just the thing you need. Not only it stores all your e-books but also offers a great search option and categorization. There are several bookshelves that offer basic categorization for your .PDFs plus you can add your own ones.
Didital Editions also supports bookmarking helping you navigate easier throughout what you read.
When I tried Digital Editions there was only a single thing I didn't like - a bit slow scrolling with the mouse wheel. However you can always use the Page Up/Down key on your keyboard.

Links:
http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/E-Book/Adobe-Digital-Editions.shtml
http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/Adobe-Digital-Editions-Review-58474.shtml

Apple notebooks with Blue-ray?

Rumor has it that Apple wants Blu-ray on its MacBook Pros since it's the winning format, yet there's this problem that Blue-ray eats all your battery life.
Blue-ray playback on a laptop turns out to be a huge concern because the laser used is a very high-powered one. On the other hand decoding all that data (25 GB per layer!) requires a lot of CPU work, which means a lot of battery power. Analysys point out that the first generation of Blu-ray-equipped laptops can't get more than halfway through a regular-length movie before juice runs out completely.

Source: Softpedia

Blue-Ray and HD-DVD

During the last few years we witnessed the development of the two High Definition formats and the war between them. Now it seems that everything is settled up, but hey, "it aint over, 'till it's over!" :P.
You can find a variety of different articles about Blue-Ray, HD-DVD and the High Definition Format war. Here I'll try to summarize the main things about all three of them.
Lets start by noting what HD-DVD has to offer. It may have smaller capacity (15 GB per layer) but it's much chepaer. Also the technology for the production of HD-DVDs is also cheaper and technology for ordinary DVD can easily be upgraded in order to produce HD-DVDs.
On the other hand we have Blue-Ray. It's better - much better. It not only has a bigger capacity (25 GB per layer, which is 167% of the HD-DVD capacity) but it's thinner. This gives producers the opportunity to make multi-layered BDs (the last thing I heared about multi-layered BDs was that there were going to be 10-layered ones). We should also not ignore the fact that BDs have a harder coat developed by TDK - it is said that it can stand even screwdrivers!
So BDs are definitely better, but HD-DVDs are cheaper. What do we do now? Everyone prefers what's better, but sometimes makes compromises with the quality because of financial issues. According to me - that's the key to the problem - people SOMETIMES MAKE (not always and not never) compromises. So we do need both formats.
Have you beed recently to the market for DVDs? Which ones do you usually buy - the cheaper or the better ones? I usually buy the cheaper ones but sometimes I need better quality and give about twice as much money in order to really preserve some data on an optical disk for more than a couple of months. We can also compare buying single- ot dual-layer DVDs with buying HD-DVDs and BDs. I guess that in 10 years I'll be doing almost the same. The difference will be that I'll be usually buying HD-DVDs and sometimes BDs depending on if I need better quality, more capacity or I want to save some money.
However some people think that only one of the formats should stay and the other has to go. The funniest thing was that in the beginning of the format war people said that in the end, the customers will be the ones that suffer. I never trusted this but if only one of the formats stays - it really will be customers suffering.

The University of Google

A few days ago I saw an interesting post in the blog of a friend of mine - Dimitar Milanov. You can see what he wrote about the "Google University" right here (Note: his blog is in Bulgarian).
Since that "Google University" stuff is interesting I thought that I may add something too.
First you should probably read this article.
According to Prof Brabazon students do their homework as follows:
1. Log on to Google/Wikipedia.
2. Type a few words the engine should search for.
3. Copy the first thing you see.
And these three steps make students dumb.
According to me students did not get dumb because of doing this, but they did this because they were dumb. Prof Brabazon blames Google and Wikipedia for her students being lazy and dull. That's insane! Sure, these technologies make many things easier, but so do all other technologies. You can blame television and radio as well for making people watch and listen to the news instead of reading them. But there is actually no harm in all of this.

"Too many students don't use their own brains enough. We need to bring back the important values of research and analysis."

Prof Tara Brabazon

It's not anyone else's fault but theirs that they do not use their brain! But how come they entered any university in the first place if they are so stupid?

"I ban my students from using Google, Wikipedia and other websites like that. I give them a reading list to work from and expect them to cite a good number of them in any work they produce."

Prof Tara Brabazon

This is no way to make someone learn how to make researches! You can not ban someone from using Google, Wikipedia etc. ! That's just the wrong method. Something right may just be that you tell the person: "Make a report on .... by using 5-10 articles you find via Google and nothing else. And any nonsense I see in your work will lower your mark!". That way student will really learn HOW to use information sources in order to get only good information.

Limiting yourself to just a number of books may be as stupid as using only Google's first result.

Meet Kolyo the cat

Yesterday I was reviewing some pictures from around New Year and hit some movie of my grandmother's cat. As you know cats are usually very lazy, but this cat is probably the laziest in the world. Not only that, but he has some very strange habits. On the video you can see him sleeping on his back :). As he wakes up it looks like if he is saying "Huh? Did I miss something? Oh.. it's just some camera. Oh well, good night again..."
See for yourself.

Manowar in Kavarna

Great news everyone! A couple of days ago I read an online article that Manowar are coming once again in Bulgaria. In fact it's not only them - its a three-day metal festival at Kaliakra Stadium in Kavarna. The first day of the fest (when Manowar will be playing) would be 5th July. After that its Europe on the 6th and Judas Priest on the 7th.
Last time Manowar came to Bulgaria they really rocked, or should I say "Manowar killed!" :P. They even performed the national anthem. (Note: Bulgarian users can dowload it from here.)
For more information about the festival you may check:
http://www.last.fm/event/438103
http://www.kaliakrarockfest.com/
I still haven't decided if I'll go, because a three-day ticket will cost about 45 euro, which is a bit high price for me. I haven't got any information yet about a single-day ticket, but I hope there will be such and they'll be a bit more affordable. So I just may go to see at least Manowar.

Frosty

The first thing I saw when I woke up today was that everything around me was covered with frost. Everything outside that is. All the trees were so white and crystalline I just couldn't hold myself back and decided that I should take some pictures. Even with a fever and high temperature I went outside and took both macro and landscape photographs with my camera. Now I share with you three of the best ones.

All that whiteness looks very pretty. It invokes many positive thought about the snow and the winter. Just a few days ago I was very sceptic about the cold weather and the slippery ice. But now I actually enjoy all of it. It's so beautiful, so clean that I'd like to see it at least several more days.

However, it'll be best if this rime melts as soon as possible because it's quite harmful for most trees and make cause them not to blossom in the spring. I hope this won't happen. After all we've enjoyed these picturesque scenery - lets hope we'll have some more when the spring comes up.

Horo a.k.a. Bulgarian folklore dance

The horo is the Bulgarian folklore dance. Actually, there are many types of horo in Bulgaria. The most popular ones are Paidushko horo, Daichovo horo and Rachenitsa. What makes them special and differs them from most other dances is their rhythm. Horo dances are not like the usual two four, three four or even four four time dances. They are composed in any of the so called uneven times - five eight time (Paidushko horo), seven eight time (Rachenitsa) or nine eight time (Daichovo horo).
Some people find it hard to follow along with the uneven timing of the horo dances. In fact there is nothing much to it. You just need to know how exactly these uneven timings came to be.
Horo dances are adorned with little jumps here and there. That is when you need one extra eighth in the time.

Test Post

Hello everybody!
This is my first blog yet and my first post in it, so I decided it would be best if do not start directly with some serious stuff, but have a test post just to see how things work around here.
I hope I will enjoy blogger.com and it will give me the chance to make my blog my best site ever (Note: if you'd like to see some web sites I've made you could pay a visit to http://www.gpopov.ubb.cc/, http://www.jbmo.eu/ and http://www.magadanskiuchen.data.bg/ - the last one can be oppened from Bulgarian users only - sorry, but it's the hosting company's fault).
It was great having you read all this. I hope soon I'll write some more and you'll pay the same attention which you paid to this particular one :).
Have a nice day!