bisko.be - Blog

Hibiscus plant under the morning rays

Sun, 21 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Timelapse: Porto by the river

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

A few days ago we had a team meetup in Porto. Finally met a few of my colleagues that I have only seen over Zoom for the last two years.

We spent a couple days at the amazing Porto I/O Riverside co-working space.

The space has an awesome balcony that we generously enjoyed and had quite a few productive discussions when we didn’t get too lost at just staring at the boat traffic in the river

During one of those moments where we were just sitting quietly, admiring the scenery, I managed to catch a pretty lovely timelapse.

Access Denied

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Lavender Sunset

Sat, 03 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Timelapse: A storm rolling over

Sat, 26 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Sunrays on yellow

Sat, 05 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Roses

Sun, 23 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Cloudy with a chance of tulips

Mon, 03 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Throwback to 2013 when I was visiting my grandpa at the village. Found this pretty tulip cut and thrown on the side of the road.

Starry night

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Recently we went on a holiday in the Bulgarian mountains.

One of the nights, the sky was clear enough to give the new iPhone 12 night photo mode a shot.

The initial attempts seemed a bit noisy and didn’t show too much details.

Luckily I shared this photo with my cousin and he mentioned that I might want to try shooting in RAW as it should retain more information that can be tweaked after the shot.

I did so by enabling saving the photos in ProRAW. The resulting photo was similar to the above one, but then I went to edit the photo in the Photos app on iOS, without using any external tools.

After a few tweaks, details started popping up quite well on the dark sky background.

The end result seems quite pleasing!

And a fun fact about the photo – the bright glow in the sky is actually smoke from the hotel chimney, which I only saw while taking photos, not with my eyes. It was soo dark.

I’ll definitely continue experimenting with Night mode photography in the future on clearer and darker skies!

Weirdy the Snowman

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes the snow is just too frozen to make a proper ball for a snowman. In these cases, why not build it, brick by brick or layer by layer, as if it was a Lego structure?

The Grasshopper

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Found this little fellow chilling next to my car on one pretty cold morning.

The “Pencil”

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT

We went to the mountains on a recent trip. It was a nice secluded place. Just a few houses and a restaurant. Next to an abandoned artificial lake/dam.

The mosquitoes and the heat were our arch enemies, but we managed to make due.

Since there wasn’t much to do around, we had to improvise activities. Luckily my son stumbled upon a big rectangular stone and found it really fascinating to carry around. I found it fascinating too.

Each side had a different texture, much like different sandpapers.

We also had a bunch of older branches, which had fallen down from the trees around the place.

After a careful consideration for a few seconds, we started exploring the wonderful world of making sticks more pointy.

One of the sticks came out just like a pencil! Had a perfect size hole to put in a tiny graphite from an actual pencil and it worked!

We drew around on the ground with it and it was amazing.

Snowdrops

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Throwback to 2007.

Graffiti around the world: Burgas, Bulgaria

Tue, 08 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The Psy-Snail

Recently I stumbled upon this photo from a friend of mine. Definitely fits the series!

The new wheel

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

On a recent trip in a mountain village, we found this truck, missing one of its rear wheels.

Our son wasn’t happy that the truck was hurt, so we decided to improvise a wheel for it.

After finding a water bottle cap, we used a little knife magic to remove part of the cap to make it fit the size.

After a quick intervention with the lighter to melt the plastic, we managed to weld it to the axle of the missing wheel.

And it actually works!

Look at it go!

Graffiti around the world: Horses

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Children playground in Sofia, Bulgaria

Timelapse: Evening landing at Toronto Pearson airport

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Evening landing at Toronto Pearson airport – 28th September 2018

The Giraffe

Fri, 08 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

A pretty pattern emerged while playing with Lego Duplo

🌼 & 🐝

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

When travel needs a break from travel

Sat, 14 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

When a kid feels the travel cases need rest.

Graffiti around the world: Dublin

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

A few months back we went to Dublin on a trip and I was surprised with how many good graffiti artists are out there.

Here are a few.

The pumpkin

Sun, 03 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Photo taken at Simple Food Punkt

Timelapse: Taxiing and takeoff from Orlando International Airport

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Shot on iPhone X from the plane window

This was the start of the return trip home, after our amazing Automattic Grand Meetup for 2019 concluded. Good times with awesome people! 🤩

Timelapse: Landing in foggy Frankfurt

Tue, 10 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Shot on iPhone X from the plane window

Frankfurt was one of the stops on the way to our annual Automattic Grand Meetup. This day was pretty foggy and the landing was pretty interesting experience. Flying over a woolen cloud blanket and then just like that, landed on the runway!

Here’s a bonus photo of what was visible from the city during the descent.

The Avocado: Sprouting!

Sat, 03 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

This is our first successful attempt at sprouting an avocado!

Purple Flowers

Fri, 28 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Seen on a trip to Borovets, situated in Rila mountain.

Retro Museum

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMT

The photos were captured in the Retro Museum, situated in Varna, Bulgaria (link from TripAdvisor, as the site of the museum seems to be dead).

During our summer vacation on the Black Sea, we did a quick trip to Varna as we were at a resort close by. There we stumbled upon a very interesting Retro museum.

I was very pleasantly surprised to find almost all the different things that I used when I was young. So many good memories from my childhood came up while visiting.

Definitely a good place to visit when in Varna!

Sea of Daisies

Fri, 31 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Photo taken near Chorul.

Timelapse(s): Trip to Montserrat

Wed, 08 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

On our recent team meetup that we had in Barcelona, we went on a trip to Montserrat mountain. We picked a very cloudy day, but still the clouds were high enough that we managed to see the valley, before it started raining.

Here are two timelapses from that trip:

Cloud magic!

Trip down with the Aeri de Montserrat.

Timelapse: Landing at Barcelona airport

Sat, 04 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

The Grey Cat

Thu, 21 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

We found this fellow somewhere around home! Pretty one and loves treats!

The old tram

Fri, 04 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

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A post shared by Biser Perchinkov (@biskobe)

In the last days of 2018 we went to a secret party with some friends.

The big surprise was where it was held! It was on one of the two oldest working trams in Bulgaria!

It was built almost a century ago and definitely brings you back to those times, even though it was modernized a bit with lights, heating and some music/media to allow tour guides to talk about sights along the way.

I enjoyed it quite a lot as one of the organizers is working in the tram depot and we had a first row ticket to see how the tram driver operates it. We got a crash course on what all the levers do and got to ring the bell! And also Toma got the chance to try to get the tram running, but turns out one needs quite the strength to be able to operate it! Maybe in a few years 😝

Passers by were also enjoying the sight as the retro trams are not an every day occasion here.

Amazing game soundtracks – Stellaris

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT

A while ago I got myself Stellaris and quickly lost some hours in it. Here I’m not going to talk about the game itself. It has already been covered quite a lot in reviews, let’s plays and so on.

Because I can’t explain how awesome it is in words, I’m just going to say – listen to it. Close your eyes, imagine yourself on an adventure in the deep space or somewhere where your mind takes you and enjoy it.

( or if you don’t have Spotify, try YouTube’s search results )

Diving back in memories: Of roses and bees

Sun, 10 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT

A few days ago I was digging through my photo collection and stumbled upon one of my favorite shots.

It’s an interesting story how this photo came to be.

My dad had bought a new digital camera, a Canon PowerShot A610, a few days before that. I was eager to try it, but he didn’t give me a chance to shoot a bit with it, because he was exploring and learning it inside out. After all it was our first “advanced” digital camera.

On the day of the photo my dad and I went out to the store and he took the camera. I asked him to give it to me to carry around and to see if I can shoot something. While discussing if I was capable enough to carry the camera without breaking it, we had walked for 5-6 minutes and we were just passing by a rose bush and I saw some bees flying around it.

By that time I knew that I wanted to take a photo of the lovely rose blossom that you can see above. I took the camera out, powered it on, waited for a bee to land on the blossom and I took the photo.

And there it was. My very first photo with that camera.

Still to this day, that photo remains one of my favorite ones.

Dad things: Baby, you can’t pause an online game!

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT

So… the circle is complete.

Today, while enjoying the last few days of paternity leave, that the awesome Automattic allowed me to take, I decided to dive deep in the land of nostalgia and play some good old StarCraft.

Sounds pretty normal, right? Why, yes, it is! Apart from having the baby in the office with me, so I can look after him while mom is doing other things.

Things were going great, baby was asleep, I found a fun game, started it and in the middle the baby woke up. All good. Comforted him for a bit, but he was fussy, so I left the game and focused on him. There was no way to focus on both the game and the baby at the same time.

So while rocking the baby in my hands, talking sweet to him and trying to calm him down, I glanced at the monitor and saw several messages from the game creator saying:

“Why join a game if you’re going to leave?”

Sent over and over again.

At first I started replying that I had a baby on my hands, and I had to take care of him, but then I was hit with flashbacks to my earlier years when I raised my voice in angst to tell my mom that I can’t pause an online game.

Oh my god, mom, you can’t pause an online game!!!!1!1!1!!1!

At that moment I realized that I have to give up online games for a while.

Oh well… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

At least now I can focus on going over the ever growing backlog of single player games. The Witcher 3 won’t finish by itself!

Graffiti around the world – Montréal

Tue, 06 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

A few weeks back I was at a team meetup in Montréal and while walking along the streets I enjoyed the grafitti culture there quite a lot. I loved how colorful and/or playful they are compared to other places I’ve been in the past.

Some of my favorite:

Not sure if I’m right, but playing a lot of StarCraft in the past always make me think that those creatures are hydralisks

Fear of dogs

Fri, 31 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT

When I was kid, probably around 5-6 years old, a neighbors dog bit me while playing with it. It wasn’t very serious, just a scratch, but to my child mind it was an awful experience.

After the incident I developed a huge fear of dogs. I ran away from them and hid home or in a neighbor’s yard. If it was a friend’s dog. I’d stay alert and run to another room or somewhere where the dog couldn’t reach me if the dog moved even the slightest.

While growing up I stayed away from dogs, but as time passed, I started warming up to them. The first dog that I didn’t run away from screaming was my cousins’ dog – a Rough Collie named Clara.

Clara in all her glory 🙂

She was just the best dog. Her owners trained her really well and she was a very calm dog, that is if you don’t count thunderstorms. She was deathly afraid of thunders and had to be held tightly and the doors had to be closed or she’d run away and try to hide somewhere far away from the storm.

Spending summers at my village and having her visit from time to time really helped reducing the fear of dogs and general anxiety around dogs.

Here in Bulgaria many stray dogs are still roaming at large and can pose a threat from time to time as the packs can easily reach 5-10+ dogs. That has always scared me and made me anxious walking out in the dark when I would hear the occassional barks behind me.

In time I managed to learn that dogs aren’t that scary and I managed to distinguish aggressive dogs from friendly dogs who are looking to play.

Last weekend I made myself proud.

For the past few months we noticed a stray dog walking around the villa house. At first I was pretty afraid of having a random dog circling around us. After a few visits I noticed the dog wasn’t that scary 🙂 It would come around, look at us and then go away.

Took me a bit of courage but in the end I managed to gather all of it, bought some canned food and stood outside with the food in a plastic container, calling the dog to come by and have a good meal.

It’s funny that the dog seemed more afraid of me than I was of it. After a few calls and me taking a step back it came to the improvised cup and started eating.

Victory! 🙂

It was also fun to watch it in the car mirrors as it ran along with us while we were leaving the villa.

Radi’s mother even named him Bear.

– The cup is mine now!

Ice skating

Mon, 30 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT

It’s been almost a month since the event, but I will never forget it 🙂

On the last day last year, my cousin suggested that we visit an ice rink. I have never been to one and I was deathly afraid of breaking all my bodily extensions.

Luckily I had some experience in roller-blading when I was a kid and that helped my self-esteem quite a lot. I knew that it would be something like it. Of course I wasn’t quite prepared to what happened when I put on my skates and stepped on the ice – It was so slippery!

My fear quickly disappeared and I managed to skate without having to hold the rail. All my old roller-blading experience came back and I was able to stand freely on the ice.

It was an immensely fun experience and I would definitely go to the ice rink again! 🙂

As a bonus I managed to capture a “first-person” view of my cousin falling on the ice:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BOrgVw6j8O3/?taken-by=biskobe

How to get a permanent EORI number electronically, or why paper will never die.

Fri, 06 Jan 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Important note – this article is current as of 2017 🙂 There are several updates to the process in the comments, so check those out too.

Update from comment 1

I also got an email from another person who recently went through this process (September 2020), but I’m still waiting for information from them about what the process looks like now.

If you still feel like reading what the process was like in 2017, you can read the whole article.

If not – jump straight to the comments to see what has changed and what new headaches people are running into.

Original article from 2017

TL;DR; and the concrete steps are at the end of the post 🙂

Around Christmas I stumbled upon a pretty good deal – a Transcend 480 GB SSD for $86 – score! The problem: it was from Amazon.com, which meant it would get held up at customs.

Price and greed won out, and I ordered it on December 28th, and by January 3rd it was already in Sofia. Shipped with DHL, all great. The DHL staff explained that they needed a power of attorney, a description of the goods in Bulgarian, and the coveted EORI number.

The first two are trivial. A visit to a notary and one line of free text.

The EORI number, however, was a whole different story.

As anyone who has dealt with customs knows, there are two kinds of EORI numbers – permanent and temporary. The temporary one is issued on the spot and is valid for one specific shipment. If you need it for future parcels, you have to get a new one every time.

From acquaintances I had heard that the permanent EORI number is issued for free through the customs online system. DHL, on the other hand, wanted a certain sum for getting one. I have faith in electronic systems (how naive of me) and decided to save a little money.

On the afternoon of the 3rd I sat down and started wondering how this works and how exactly to “register” an EORI number.

The customs electronic portal (ecustoms.bg) is useless if you access it directly. Why? Because it wants you to be already registered in it. I’ll repeat – to access it, you need to be already registered in it. How you’re supposed to register if you’re not registered remains a mystery to me. The other, smaller drama is that it requires an e-signature to be accessed at all.

So far so good (not). I opened Google and started casting spells to figure out how to submit the coveted application. A few searches later I landed on the following page: http://ecustoms.bg/eportal/public/Controler?control=UpdateForm&doc\_def\_id=24&row\_id=1&param\_selector=4

So far so good, I read through the text, barely spot the hidden link on “here”, click and… nothing. The link sends me to a non-working system – https://ecustoms.bg:18443/eportal/servlet/Controler?control=ReaderForm&doc\_def\_id=3&row\_id=5

For a while I mutter assorted incantations and hope this isn’t one of those online systems that only work 9-to-5 on business days, but I don’t give up and keep going.

More Google spells, and after several failed attempts, by some enormous coincidence I land on: https://eori.customs.bg:8443/. Cue surprise, gasps, celebration, etc.

I quickly plug in the e-signature and feverishly start exploring the interface, which consists of a total of 4 buttons, two of which are Exit and one Refresh. The last button was something like “Registration”, but since it disappears after you’ve made a registration once, I can’t tell you exactly what it said.

Click, and a form pops up with several different kinds of fields and some codes on them. I filled in the ones I understood, but the others were terra incognita. Some were in bold, some weren’t, but it wasn’t clear which were mandatory and which weren’t.

Back to Google. Spells – nothing. In the end I decided to search for specific phrases from the fields and by some fluke I managed to find http://ecustoms.bg/eportal/public/DocumentViewer?row_id=265, which turned out to be the ordinance establishing the EORI-BG registration. How nice. Instead of a few popups with a short description of each field, you have to dig through ordinances and laws to fill out one form. C’est la vie, or in Bulgarian terms – that’s how it is here.

One ordinance won’t stop me. I skim it and reach the bottom, where I see several sample forms used for the paper version of the application. I finish filling in my form, save, sign with the e-signature and start hoping.

Start of the process around 6 PM, finished at 9:43 PM. For one online application.

It would have been faster if I had gone to one of the customs offices in Sofia and done it on the spot, except that this EORI number is issued according to your permanent address, and I’m still registered in Montana. Yes, but there’s no customs office in Montana. The closest one is in Lom, about 40 km from Montana. I’m in Sofia. If you submit the application on paper, you have to go there twice, which I really didn’t like. It’s snowing outside, it can only be done on a working day, and all the other delights of the state administration.

Up to this point I still believe in electronic systems and I’m glad I won’t have to travel to the other end of Bulgaria for something so minor (and save some money, right, since that’s where it all started).

Two days pass, it’s already Thursday, and there’s no movement on the application. I’m starting to have some doubts. I called the customs Service Desk, where the employee very politely told me the deadline is up to 5 working days and if it’s not done after that, to call again. Fine, I’ll wait.

During the day I read up on these coveted online EORI applications and what experiences people have shared, and it’s the same for everyone – if you’re lucky, you’re lucky, if not, you wait. Someone mentioned that they asked at the regional customs office and were told that no such application had been received. This is where my faith in the electronic system starts to wobble threateningly.

Today, Friday, I decided it would be a good idea to check whether I might be one of the victims of the electronic system. I call the customs office in Lom. A polite employee told me to call the department responsible for this. She gave me a local number for Lom without the area code, and after a few silly questions about what this number she was dictating was, I managed to understand that it was actually a different phone I should call. We smiled at each other over the phone about the situation, and I called the number she gave me.

There, another polite gentleman picked up and, after I asked my question, told me they process applications when they arrive, nothing had arrived on their end, and he’d check what was going on and why it hadn’t been received. I should call back in 10 minutes or so. I’m glad that at least everybody along the chain was human about it, without that communist-era snapping and haughty talk. I started waiting, and in less than 5 minutes I got a notification of a new email with the subject: “Information about your EORI registration!” YAY! I got it!

I sent it to DHL and now all that’s left is for the parcel to be released and for me to receive it. Yay! (again)

By way of conclusion (or TL;DR;), here’s a more condensed guide on how to get a permanent EORI number online:

Get an e-signature, if you don’t have one.
Go to: https://eori.customs.bg:8443/.
Download http://ecustoms.bg/eportal/public/DocumentViewer?row_id=265 to see how to fill in the fields. The information you need is on the last few pages.
Submit the application and be sure to sign it. You should see a row with the following value in the Action column: EORI-REG-SIGN.
Wait a day, or if you’re feeling lucky, call the regional customs office you submitted the application to and tactfully ask whether they’ve received it, because the electronic system was giving you some errors. Don’t mention that you’re in a hurry.
After a short while you’ll receive the coveted EORI number.

A few notes:

The electronic signature has to be in your name, since a lot of data (names, personal ID number, email) is pulled from the signature when filling in the form. That is, it can’t be done with a friend’s signature.
The system is quite odd to work with and at times is quite willful.
Submit and sign the form after carefully checking all the fields.
It worked successfully on Chrome on a Mac with an Infonotary signature.
A note added from Petya’s comment below:

When I try to sign with the electronic signature, a file download (stampitls) starts. After a two-day fight with the Customs HelpDesk they sent me an instruction, with which I managed to sign.
And one more thing – if your address is in Sofia and you decide to get an EORI number with an e-signature, when choosing the customs office pick ТМУ Столична – it takes about an hour, whereas if you pick Sofia Airport – it can take up to 5 working days

The Electronic Commerce Act and commercial messages (… the unsolicited ones…)

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Today I once again got my fill of “According to the Electronic Commerce Act, Art. 6 (1) this commercial message may be unsolicited” followed by 5 pages of barf full of all sorts of nonsense, with no formatting, no clearly separated sections, etc.

Since I got sick of reading this kind of nonsense, I dug into the Electronic Commerce Act to see what this infamous Article 6 actually says, and here is what I read:

Art. 6. (1) A service provider who sends unsolicited commercial messages by email without the recipient’s prior consent is obliged to ensure that the commercial message is clearly and unambiguously recognizable as unsolicited from the moment it arrives at the recipient.

(2) (Amended – SG, No. 105 of 2006, in force from 24.12.2006) The Consumer Protection Commission maintains an electronic register of the email addresses of legal entities that do not wish to receive unsolicited commercial messages, in accordance with a procedure set out by an ordinance of the Council of Ministers.

(3) Sending unsolicited commercial messages to email addresses entered in the register under paragraph 2 is prohibited.

So far so good, everything is clear, I agree. There’s no point in arguing about the legal provisions, I’ll put up with it or just block them, blah blah, and I keep reading on to paragraph 4 and what do I see:

(4) Sending unsolicited commercial messages to consumers without their prior consent is prohibited.

Wait.. What? According to this, they first have to send me a little email asking whether I agree to receive all this barf or not, but they don’t do that. They just declare that according to Art. 6 (1) this commercial message may be unsolicited by me and then pour the whole barf into the same email. Nowhere do they ask whether I agree or not – straight from the door to the feet.

I wonder how legal this practice is – sending spam without my explicit consent?

Phonetics and xorg

Sat, 15 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT

In one of the latest xorg versions, which appeared around January-February this year, some changes have crept into the phonetic layout, made by someone who clearly never thought about the average user and wanted to turn phonetic into BDS. The changes consist of introducing the upper and lower quotation marks instead of <>, a paragraph sign instead of &, and a euro sign instead of ^.

To fix these atrocities, add the following lines to ~/.bashrc:

xmodmap -e “keycode 16 = 7 ampersand 7 ampersand”

xmodmap -e “keycode 12 = 3 numbersign 3 numbersign”

xmodmap -e “keycode 15 = 6 asciicircum 6 asciicircum”

xmodmap -e “keycode 20 = minus underscore minus underscore”

xmodmap -e “keycode 59 = comma less comma less”

xmodmap -e “keycode 60 = period greater period greater”

Then log out and log back in to the system, and you should have your old symbol layout back.

P.S. There is one more change: instead of capital ь (small yer, Latin x), ѝ (i with a grave accent) has been put there, which I think is useful, so I haven’t reverted it in the changes above.

Removing iPhone passcode lock

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday I had a few drinks and decided to put a passcode on my iPhone, just in case no one tries to crawl through it (stupid paranoia)… So I went on and put the passcode, typed it twice in the settings, set it to what I believed was the number I was typing and then locked the phone (power/sleep button). Then I tried to unlock it and it seemed that I managed to type a number twice without it being the number I wanted. So for the rest of the night I tried to figure out what was the number, but still no luck.

Now on a soberer head I found a way to remove the passcode lock (along with all other passwords on the phone though).

So the steps are as follow:

Go to the phone’s file system (linux is easy – check http://marcansoft.com/blog/2009/10/iphone-syncing-on-linux-part-2/ on accessing ipod file system – same goes for iPhone and iPod touch).
Then head to /private/var/Keychains
Move the file named keychain-2.db to other location, e.g. /
Then head to /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/
Move the file named com.apple.springboard.plist to other location, e.g. /
Then you have to kill springboard ( killall SpringBoard if you are in through SSH) or just reboot the phone.

Voila, that’s all.

The side effect of this exercise is that you would loose all your passwords for mail accounts, exchange accounts and the order of icons on the springboard, but still you wouldn’t have to reflash the phone 🙂

Last drops of battery…

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Today I suffered a little blackout in my neighborhood in the evening and decided that it’s time to put my Acer 5935g’s battery to the test. I plugged out the power cord and continued my movie night with Dexter S02.

So here is the final result of my little battery test:

1:30 hours – movies
35 minutes browsing

This adds to total 2:05 hours of guaranteed battery life (at least) and i still have a near half an hour battery reserve to finish up some texts I am working on.

Actually this is the first time I get very near the battery time defined by specs supplied by the maker. I’m glad I chose Acer 🙂

The system I tested the battery is:

Acer 5935g (stock battery)
Windows Vista SP2 64bit
GeForce 130M active (not the onboard intel 4500)
Razer Copperhead mouse
60% brightness all the time
Skype running in the background
WiFi on, connected to network
KMplayer playing DivX (with lots of seeking (can’t watch movie from start to end without seeking 🙂 )

Coming up is a test in Linux with the same activities. Though I first need to install and configure it, but it will be sometime when I have free time on my hands.

Canon camera E16 error fix

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This is just a repost of my Canon camera E16 error post in English.

The story started yesterday, when my dad wrote me that his camera (Canon A610) screwed up and the only thing that it does is takes the lens out, takes it back in and then dies with

“Error E16“

I searched around the web and everywhere people said that the problem is of unknown origin and it’s not uncommon. The resolution they proposed was to send the camera to an authorized Canon service for a replacement.

So far so good. Send the camera away … but here is the problem – my warranty ended an year ago, so I was unlucky.

So I had no answer to the problem… until my dad came up with something which should work on all “asia-tech” (as you may have seen in Armageddon (1998)) – HIT IT HARD WITH THE 5$ WRENCH!

It turns out that hard shake or some firm slap of the camera fixes the problem most of the time, but this hides some risks – if you get the error, you are most likely to get it again some time in the future, so i suggest you send it to the Canon service for a replacement.

So remember HIT or SHAKE hard before you give up – it may save your camera (for at least a little while).

As a side effect of the E16 error the only mode that works is the Video mode, which, in my opinion, is funny – check it out: Canon A610 E16 Error video mode.
As you can see the frame is cropped in half and has funky colors.

--- ## External Downloads Saved Locally - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQGdaOgQt9M\](media/canon-camera-e16-error-fix-Canon A610 E16 error video.mkv)

iPhone 3.0

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Wooooow…. I’m as happy as a little kid 😉

I’ve finally upgraded to the latest version of iPhone OS, namely the long-awaited version 3.0.
At first glance it’s a big toy, until you figure out the new (useful, of course) things in the new firmware. Here are some that I personally find useful:

Spotlight (the first screen (zeroth, if you count Home as the first) – it’s a real joy. You type 3 letters and you’ve called whoever you needed or started the song you wanted. In the settings you can make it available on a double press of the Home button.
Landscape (the screen with its legs spread sideways) – there’s just nothing like it 🙂 . SMS, e-mail, notes – everything in landscape … AAAAAAAAAA (joyful screams)
Copy&Paste&Undo&… (the thing that was missing until now) – the copy and paste functionality is very cleverly designed (you can see it in the reviews). So far I’ve found 2 bugs. The first time you copy a picture + text, it copies only the picture. The other bug: if you’ve selected something to copy in Safari, and you close it and open it again right away, you first see the selected area and only then does whatever else load.
A more detailed Call Log (phone logger) – Phone.app now shows more detailed information about calls made with a given number – for example the call duration, when it took place, and the call status.
The option to turn off the SMS Reminder under Settings -> General -> Messages -> Repeat Alert – salvation from the startling vibro-sounds from the phone when you forget to open an SMS you’ve already read from the home screen.
Improvements in iPod – Shake to Shuffle (you shake the phone sideways and it switches to a random song) – handy, but you have to shake it pretty hard. (note to self: test it on the minibus and in the city bus); In podcasts there’s a THIS-BIG button to jump 30 seconds back in the podcast being played. Next to it is the 1x (2x, 1/2x) button, if you want to speed up or slow down the podcast you’re listening to. (it sounds very funny, especially if you listen to something fast enough); You can also browse podcasts online and then download them to your phone.
SPEED – I was startled … the phone works at least 60% faster than with 2.2.1. Apps open at the speed of light. They close that way too. It no longer even cuts out the sound while I open or close another application or the iPod itself.

I can’t think of any others right now, but I promise to add to the list once I discover new useful things in the new firmware.

IE daily

Sat, 30 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

If at some point, out of nowhere, the borders of some element get ‘broken up’ in IE6,7, try putting a background on the element, and there’s a good chance that’ll do the trick.

Will it Lens?

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Пичовете в Google са яко изтрещяли 🙂
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/will-it-lens.html

Aunt Vatsa … or Traveling with Old Folks

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Friday 1:30 PM … the last minutes at work. I sign the leaving order, say my last words and head to Central Station. I get on the tram and carefully start calculating my time and fighting my greedy self over whether to stop by McDonald’s to grab something or not… I manage to beat it, because by rough estimates I might not make it to the station by 3:15, when I had a meeting with bate Irzhi.

Naturally, my rough estimates weren’t accurate at all … I got there almost 40 minutes early … At that moment my greedy self (which from here on, for short, I’ll call Piggy) started nagging me: “You could have stopped and grabbed something to eat, you know!”. After a few curses at Piggy’s address I walked into the station and stood there dumbstruck… “Damn! I’ve never seen so many people at this station!!!”. It was more packed than … I don’t know what… it was a crush 🙂 . I saw there was no room on the benches, so I went back outside and sat on the steps under the clock. I texted Ivan that it was a madhouse, and got instructions to buy the tickets right away :).

I went back inside and straight to the small ticket counters… I got through extremely fast. Naturally, because there were only 2-3 people ahead of me, while the other counters were some kind of madhouse. I got the tickets, with seats of course, and waited outside again. Ivan showed up around 3:40, because public transport, along with the taxis, are evil people 🙂 and we waited at the board for them to post where our train would be assembled. We sit, we wait, we sit, we wait … it hits :50… still no information.. by this point we’re in “Oh, damn it” mode, together with the whole rest of the station.

At some point the loudspeaker system (or whatever it’s called) starts announcing which train is where, and we watch the entire station rush toward the platforms…

After some quick pushing, shoving and stepping on toes, which would make American football players click their tongues, we make it to the platform and start looking for our seats. Car 12 here, car 12 there…. hop, we walk the whole train and reach the car. We squeeze in quickly, since it’s 3:58 PM and we expect the train to leave any moment, and inside…. ah, inside… Inside you had to be either a microbe to squeeze through or some kind of superman to shove aside the people frantically jostling in the corridors. Good thing our seats were in the 2nd compartment, and not somewhere in the middle, because there was a real chance of a scene from “Bloodsport X”.

Finally we settled in and waited for the train to leave. After about 2 minutes some old folks with reserved seats in our compartment show up and quickly chase away the ‘intruders’ (even though we knew them, but … fate). Unfortunately the 2 annoying old ladies from Berkovitsa stayed … everyone settled in and we started waiting for the train to leave.

Naturally, during this time I recognize one of the old men, who used to live next door to us until a few years ago. He, on the other hand, doesn’t recognize me… apparently dementia is having its say 😀

I’ll skip most of the details because there are so many that they’re hard to remember, but I’ll mention one that completely cracked me up:

…
– Man, he drinks coffee at Aunt Vatsa’s every morning!
– Aunt Vatsa?
– Yeah, the cups supposedly say Aunt Vatsa, and then it turns out it’s lavAzza
…

And so on for a full 4 hours of old-folks humor, which at times “rips your diaphragm and you get off at Septemvri (station) to have a new one grafted in”.

In the end we arrived in Montana about an hour late, but still an hour that passed quickly 🙂 On that note – if you’re traveling in a compartment full of old people and there are at least 2 grandpas, don’t feel sorry, the party is guaranteed 😀

Here?

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday was a strange day…

In the morning, even with a slightly late start, I got to work on time. Apparently the traffic jam was working in my favor. The day itself went on normally until around 1 p.m., when Tsvetan sent me a link to some DreamHost promotion for their 11th birthday.
I opened it and started reading.. with every row of the hosting specs table, my eyes got bigger and greedier (I was even drooling a bit :D ).
It quickly became clear that this was the thing and I was going to buy it, BUT a problem popped up - how to pay. I have a card with online payments enabled, but no money on it, while Tsvetan has money but no online payments - we hit a rock… or rather straight-up granite.

Next step - he sends me money through ePay.bg and I pay. Everything fine, right up to the moment it turns out that I have the status of some kind of dummy there and my daily limit for receiving is… 50 leva. I quickly start looking for how to become a ‘known’ user and I’m shocked by what I find:

How to move up to a higher level

To move up to level “2” - “known customer”, you need to have a bank card registered in your user profile, with which you must pay at least 5 utility bills for electricity, water, phone, heating, etc. through the system (paying for a prepaid service does not count as paying a utility bill).

Come on, seriously! At least 5 utility bills… what is this nonsense. Like I own a house I’d be paying those bills for. Utter nonsense. If they had asked for a photo of an ID card or something like that, fine… but this is too much, especially if you need to transfer a certain amount of money right now, this very moment.

I can already feel the promotion slipping out of our little hands like a soapy glass. In this situation we fall back on the most extreme option - he’ll deposit money in Varna directly into my account at Postbank and we hope it works out. I give him my IBAN, and he heads off to deposit it. He calls me after 25-30-40 minutes: “I made the transfer, they said the changes will show up in online banking within 2 hours.” Naturally, hearing “2 hours” I was shocked at how this whole thing was going down to the wire, and I waited 15 loooong minutes, logged into e-postbank and, with EYES THIS BIG and my jaw on the floor, saw that the money had arrived.

Feverishly I open the link Tsvetan had sent me a bit earlier to the cart in Google Checkout, fill in my details, click Check out and done… At that moment millions of question marks were bursting in my head - how come there are no account verifications here, like with Moneybookers or PayPal, no demands for withdrawing small amounts or any such nonsense, you just fill in your info, click pay and that’s it…

After that I fired off a text to him saying I had paid, grabbed my luggage and headed to the Central Station to go home to Montana. There I met up with a few ‘fellow travelers’, we bought tickets and got on the train. We set off, but I couldn’t wait another 3 hours to find out whether the payment had really gone through, so I called Tsvetan, who confirmed everything was fine. That took a weight off my heart and I breathed out.

Four things follow from this day:

ePay are miserable cheapskates, along with PayPal and Moneybookers.
Postbank keeps reinforcing my opinion that they are the right choice.
Google, as usual, rock my world with their simple procedures.
I’m loving Dreamhost! (only the uploading there sucks really badly, but more on that later)

P.S. Damn it, I now owe Tsvetan 90 bucks :-D