First, I have been kicked out of university. As bluntly as it sounds. I have failed 2 courses for the 2nd time. Why have I failed? this is for another post. The problem is complex and it seems that there is not even a single staff member who sees it from my perspective. I knew the rules. I have nothing against them. I didn’t even plead to be given another chance. I only asked if it possible to return in the 2nd semester to study. I was denied.

Second, for the past 2 months or so I have stayed at home searching for a job (not so seriously…) and have done some things that I wanted to do for a long time. In the past 6 years I have been leaving in different apartments that I shared with different people. Usually I’m the more responsible kind of guy for cleaning and tidiness. This is the way I am. I’m doing things so I can live the way I want. Of course my flat mates benefit from it also but I have never asked anything in return. a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g. I’m doing thing for the sake of giving. I’m a last of my kind… I know. The only thing I wish to be given in return is something which people may seem very small and unimportant but for me it is a huge thing. I don’t need it many times a day. Every now and then would suffice. the thing is that I’d like to hear the words “Thanks You!”. Nothing more. These two words can make me a happy man. Even “Thanks” would be enough to make me smile.

Let’s start a “Pass it forward” game. Start to say “Thank You!” more often.

I start:

Thank you for reading this!

As a regular thing now, each night I tend to look at the photos I took in South America. There are almost 8000 of them. Some are tests photos I took while trying to learn my newly bought Canon DSLR and thus useless, some just weren’t good at all and just a bit were gems. I’d they, out of a 100 photos I took 1 was good. That’s a ratio any photographer won’t accept but I was happy with.

My (panorama) photo this time takes us back to the high Andes of Bolivia.

Many of you probably heard of the Salar de Uyuni. The salt flats of Uyuni. That is also the unofficial name of the 4 days tour I took to this magical place. As beautiful as the salt flats will be, they are only one part of the long high altitude journey which includes many more places. The one I was amazed the most of was a place called “Laguna Colorada”. The Red Lake.

The Red Lake is situated at 4278m above sea level and is part of the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve in the Potosí Department of Bolivia. The lake’s water color comes from red sediments and pigmentation of some algae and contrasts nicely with the white borax islands.

The lake is packed with James’s Flamingo which also breed there, and they are the subject in the panorama below.

Enjoy!

Panorama of Flamingos:

http://seadragon.com/view/i0p

Btw, the panorama was made with Seadragon…

GeoCities was founded on 1994 and offered a free web space for everyone. I had the pleasure to host my first web pages (literally) with them. I admit that I can’t recall what content I have put there but certainly it was a not-so-complex html code and a few pictures. I had internet access since 1993. Back then, internet usage was ‘restrictive’ in today means and was made up of pictures and text text and pictures which were brought up by a whooping speed of 2400 baud! There were no flashy ads, no videos and Internet (and) Explorer were two words with no apparent connection.

In 1999 Yahoo! payed $3.57 billion in stock and took control over GeoCities. Later on this year, GeoCities was the 3rd most visited site in the World Wide Web (inferior only to AOL and Yahoo!). Users had found GeoCities as a convenient place to share information. Some users had only checked out their skills in design with many web pages left alone in the dark.

In recent years people stated that GeoCities was mainly a web site graveyard but it surely had some great info. This has led few organization to try archive GeoCities before it dies. Two of them are Archive.org and Reocities.

RIP GeoCities.

As you all know, the next generation of Microsoft’s OS know as Windows 7 has reached RTM.

I was one of many lucky beta testers who had the oppertunity to check and report bugs within the last 7 months. Overall, the beta program was really rewarding. I enjoyed the live sessions where MS staff were answering questions and were guiding us on specific issues.

As a thanks you gift, each beta tester got Windows 7 Ultimate for free! (Woo hoo!!) I was even more lucky to recieve a boxed copy rather then a downloaded version. It means i have to wait for the 22nd of October for it to be publicly available. I’m waiting…..

I would like to thank Paul, Wendy and the others for a great time and for the gift.

Well, this is the first post. Technically, there should be one, so there it is!