romunov’s blog et al

If you’re a bit radical and non-conformist, you probably already use OpenOffice. While the tool is still in development, it has come a long way since the first releases when I first tried it! One of best ways to support the creators is (besides financial stimulation) using their products. In order to use them, you need to know what they do, and how to do it. OpenOffice Calc Tips is one of those sites that goes over the line and gives you the sort of information you need when working with your daily files. I think this can come handy for those joke documents you whip up to very serious stuff (like your thesis).

To keep the homosexuals and Sting on one side, I’d like to point out a site called http://www.europe-aliens.org. I was at a DAISIE conference yesterday, and was listening to the results from various authors from around the EU (and even New Zealand). An interesting page giving you some basic information about (truly) alien species to Europe. This page and its information is a result of three years of work done by about 1700 scientists.

Stephan Gollasch, who had, in my view, the best presentations, especially because he was talking about aquatic invasions, also mentioned e-journal called Aquatic invasions. The journal isn’t indexed to get points for publishing. Too bad. On the bright side, it’s totally free to read!

I became a proud owner of book named Limnology by Robert G. Wetzel. The book is subtitled “Lake and River Ecosystems”, which gives you the rough idea of what limnology is. It’s a science about freshwater and saline inland waters. Here is one of the definitions from the book:

Limnology is the study of the structural and functional interrelationships of organisms of inland waters as they are affected by their dynamic physical, chemical, and biotic environment.

The book was about 80 EUR, but some of the amount was already paid, as I did some promoting for the book store a while ago. The credits were suppose to go to buy a book on oceanography, but the one I wanted is, as far as I know, out of print. Unfortunately, buying used books from vendors was in the near past almost impossible, not only from USA, but also Europe. What are you going to do, when a German company asks you where is Slovenia, and if it’s located in the EU… And we’re two friggin’ borders away (I did manage to find an Italian who didn’t know where Slovenia is, nor which countries border Switzerland).

And I thought it’s time to graduate slowly, as I’m running thin on space in my book stand. This is the last one I could put in comfortably.

See a video on 7/7 London bombings. Video here.

I must admit I’m one of those people who doesn’t regard people from “social sciences” as too beneficial to the current state our environment is facing. It may seem narcissistic, but I think lacking basic fundamental of how things around us work, makes you somewhat backward (think of it sensu redneck).

In that sense, journalists hold a special microhabitat in my heart. It is dedicated only for them, and I nourish it every day, god as my witness. This is very reflecting in some of the web “news” portals out there. A lot of portals are not professional, offering gossip on every corner. Those are citizen journalists, trying to score as many readers as possible. But there are also professionals. I think 24ur.com is just that sort of a portal. 24ur.com has developed over the years, starting off as a small-ish TV station. Slowly but steadily growing its ratings, it can pride itself with some top viewership in the country. That, of course, doesn’t speak for the quality of the program by itself. But I digress.
Some time ago, they started a web portal, offering “news”. I use a sarcastic term in quotes for a reason, where what they pass on as “news”, is perceived in my eyes as utter nonsense with little pertainment (is that even a word, or did I just made something up?) to anything relevant in everyday life. Take for example this page. This is a typical article on bullshit coming from under the pen of journalists employed. To make matters even worse, as you read story after story, you start to notice that all they do is copy and translate Reuters or some other news resource outlet. Little work done by themselves, little creativity and most importantly, little sense of what’s right, what should be reported to the People. They are the opinion makers, and they should know better. Lacking a competent journalistic arsenal will leave us paralyzed for ages to come. Little or no education in natural sciences makes things even worse. But how do you tell a retarded person that he’s retarded?

Listen — ok — read, what Bush had to say about the NIE (national intelligence estimate):

… “He told the Israelis that he can’t control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE’s] conclusions don’t reflect his own views” about Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.

At the beginning of the very same link:

“In our opinion,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, Iran “has apparently continued that program.”

See. Reports express views, not facts. See more details and comments at Think progress.

Users of www.whatreallyhappened.com and its owner are compiling a wiki on 9/11. Hopefully it will be a nice source of information regarding this topic. I have my confidence in Mike that he will moderate nothing but the facts (see his page on how he handles 9/11).

Now that the Holy Church Ltd. has removed its share from T2, one of the providers of our biggest providers of internet, IP telephony and tv, all moral constraints have been lifted on my side. Thus, I’ll be changing phone, internet and tv - tutto completo, to this new provider. If my calculations are correct, I’ll “save” about 20 EUR a month. I of course won’t have 20 EUR more in my pocket, but I’ll be able to allocate those funds to eating drugs with a spoon.

Just to give you the idea of what I’ll be doing. SiOL has been charging about 32 EUR for 1024/256, but T2 offers 4/1 Mbit for 24 EUR.

We are currently paying 13 EUR a month for our local cable network. We get about 40 programs - the standard ones that you get anywhere. You know, the ones that are free. This is in sharp contrast to the number of channels that T2 has to offer.