Wednesday, March 29

cooking mushrooms


mushrooms, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

It's like this:

You place the mushrooms on a hot cooking plate, and add salt, some chopped garlic, a bit of butter and some cheese and let it boil.

This is the result :)

Tuesday, March 28

full of rust


full of rust, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

short diving movie

here is one of the movies I took while diving. I didn't have any storage/publishing possibilities at that time.

enjoy :)

Monday, March 27

me


me, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

no comment

sexy? nah! just frozen


frozen, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

this picture was taken on the catamran during the surface interval between dives;

I had just doffed my wetsuit and was half frozen (and ofcourse too lazy to get something warmer).

I think I need to get something to read for future surface intervals.

deck of the zen


Zenobia's Deck, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

underwater color distorsion


underwater color distorsion, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

plant on the anchor line


plant on the anchor line, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

Saturday, March 25

... going towards the anchor line

looking down ...


looking down ..., originally uploaded by utnapistim.

window edge covered in plants on the bow side of the wreck

anemonae


anemonae, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

looking down


looking down the deck, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

the weck lies on the stern side now and the deck makes for an almost vertical wall ...

when you go above it, looking down makes for a good perspective.

divers allert network flag


DAN flag, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

DAN flag on our diving boat today

rusty


broken with rust, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

this is on the edge of Zenobia's deck, on the bow (now upwards) side of the wreck.

After thirty years underwater it's breaking with rust.

waiting on the bow side


on the bow side of the Zen, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

... they were waiting for me to finish my descent; I stopped three metres or so above them and snapped a picture.

plants on the zen


water plants on the zen, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

Friday, March 24

propeller of a dive boat


propeller of a dive boat, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

in front of the office, last evening

I took this last night while waiting for the bus.

It was darkening outside and I had to set the white ballance manually as everything appeared reddish in the fading light.

Alltogether a good result;

Thursday, March 23

fireworm


fireworm, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

They say touching one of these is a ... paralizing experience; One can find them all over the rocky shore areas in Cyprus;

I took this picture last summer, while snorkeling with some friends at Cape Greko, near Agia Napa.

Bogdan Radulescu says:
Linux is like a wigwam: no Windows, no Gates, Apache inside...


In other news, I just got a call from P.; Apparently I'm doing the Zen this Saturday.

g! g! g! g! g! g!
Can't wait :)


Also, I'm thinking of getting a car.


... and that's it.
utnapistim on the net again

Wednesday, March 22

Why I Hate Frameworks

I found this while browsing reddit.

Form the article:
Now that I'm the proud owner of my own general-purpose tool-building factory factory factory, I'm satisfied to know that it complies with the GPTBFFF 0.97 RC2 draft specification for tool-building factory factory factories.

Luckily, 70% of the workers in the Tool-Oriented Metafactory Union are certified against this version of the spec.

On the horizon is a competing standard, though: a very compelling metafactory technolgy called the UXCTBFFF (Universal Trans-Continental Tool Building FFF), which promises to unify the factory factory factory industry to comply with guidelines of countries that use both metric and standard tools.

My understanding is that there will be a service pack to my GPTBFFF 0.97 RC2 to bring it into nearly 95% compliance with the UXCTBFFF standard, just by creating an abstraction layer through its user interface.

Sweet!!

Tuesday, March 21

... life is beautiful ...

... life is beautiful ... (a website by Bogdan Boranda :) ).

doing drugs


drugs, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

hey, i'm doing drugs!

errr ...

I meant ... vitamines ... I meant ... I'm under treatment.

I guess I won't make it into the next century :(

Monday, March 20

alleyway on the Limassol seafront


alleyway, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

kitty again


kitty, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

it's alive! it's alive!

Hey, they fixed my blog.

I mean ... it's been out of service for a while and it's up again :)


but ...

that's not what i wanted to write about at the moment ...

what I wanted to write about was ... a state of no expectations. It is one of those 'as you seek it you don't have it' states of mind ... and it's also one allowing for pure, complete joy.

You see, I kept thinking about something that makes me sad usually ... except now I ... don't do it with the outlook of reaching some goal ...

... and thus I can fully enjoy what is there ... for tonight.


... but tonight is enough for tonight ...


hello friends,
utnapistim.

kitty


kitty, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

we call her "Ciopartzica" ... I guess it's impossible to translate in english ...

Friday, March 17

tale of the radioactive boy scout

well ... who said you have to be a country to perform nuclear tests? Apparently you can simply be David Hahn.

He started small (you know ... reading chemistry books, building trinitrocliceryn in his basement and so on and so forth), then decided he'd create his own neutron gun and nuclear reactor core, isolated with duct tape no-less.

Also, it only took him five years to irradiate his whole neighbourhood.

Seesh!


The whole story can be found here.

Thursday, March 16

another picture of the full moon

full moon



It's one of the shots I took yesterday; I had many more, but as with night-shots, most are fuzzy or suffer from color distortions ...

I'm stil learning I guess.

a moment in time


a moment in time, originally uploaded by utnapistim.

I took this picture while going home yesterday.

It was full moon and I had been planning for a long time to learn the night-shooting settings on my camera.

In the end it was more like manual settings shooting, but anyway ...

It's a good start

Wednesday, March 15

When Bad Management Leads To Good News

"Scott Adams' Dilbert books are among the best-selling business volumes not because they're parody, but because they're real. And bad management is still rife in Silicon Valley, said Saffo: 'You would not willingly work for Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison picks his wives out of the Oracle HR department. Adobe Acrobat exists because John Warnock is a lame manager and he didn't want to kill it. The first time Scott McNealy saw 'Oak' [which became Java], he wanted to kill it. The developers took the project off campus, and the next time McNealy saw it, he said, 'I'm so glad I thought of this.' '"


(from Optimize Magazine > Business Blog > When Bad Management Leads To Good News > January 2005)

Monday, March 13

I finally dived again

For the last three months I've been planning to go diving every week; Ofcourse, being as lazy as I am (among other things I am proud of), I either kept putting it off, or started making the plans way to late, every time.


Well ... not this weekend (granted, I was a bit desperate at this point).


Saturday I woke at 6AM (paradoxically well-rested and fresh), played HL deathmatch for two hours, then arranged for a diving trip to Paphos with CyDive again;

I got there, got kitted up and took a boat to the valley dive site.

We were a party of three: me (probably the only diving guy out there nuts enough to want to dive at the time), the dive leader (to whom I still have to send some pictures) and a new instructor trainee who had to be taken to the site so he would know it in the future.

The water entry was ... rough: after not diving for three months, I was a bit shakey and after a back-roll the water gave a true shock to my system (15.5 degrees Celsius :(); I also got some air trapped in my BC and had trouble descending, so that was a bit more effort; at some point, close to one minute into the dive, I found myself breathing hard, tired and on the edge of a panic attack.

Then, I figured it out and solved it by the book (the "stop-breathe-think-act" thingy, I only needed to stop and breathe for the anxiety to ebb away).

From that point, it was more or less, smooth; I realized though that I had forgotten my torch on the boat so I didn't get to play with it much.


Anyway, it was a good dive
(Water temp: 15.5 Celsius
Average depth: 18.5 metres
Maximum depth: 25.7 metres
Time in: 14:08
Time out: 14:48
Pressure in: 200 bar
Pressure out: 50 bar
Safety stop: 3 minutes @ 5.5 metres
Visibility: 6 metres
)


Anyway, after the dive I got home (and slept on the way like a pro), got the skates out and went on the sea-front with B;

Then I went home again and went bowling with some of the new guys. It was a damn-full day!

I got home around one (I think), and went to sleep, brick-style.


As a comparision, on Sunday I did nothing; Nothing at all! (I mean ... I made a salad, and set up my telnet server on SUSE for F and L to use, but those took 30 minutes taken together!)

I also played some half-life, and wasted time like a pro.


... and that's that!

utnapistim, currently at work.

Friday, March 10

no coffee and a busy weekend

here I am, on a weekend afternoon drinking decaf and blogging away ...


What happened?


Nothing.


I felt adventurous a few days ago and started comming to office on skates; it's shaky, it's fun and I get a brain-massage over some areas on the road, and the movement in the mornings and evenings keeps me alert all day and I find myself not needing so much coffee over the day;


Regarding the weekend ... it's like this:
Si is leaving for the States in a week or so, and tonight she's throwing a farewell party;

tomorrow morning I'll ...
I have actually no idea what I'll do, but I might go diving in Paphos; As usual, it depends on the weather, what I drink tonight and the planetary alignment to the constelation of Taurus or something.

For the evening again, I have no definite plans (like Dalai Llama's 'good traveler') but skates are a definite maybe ... so to speak.


... and then, there is sunday: depending on the weather, what the monster-pet eats tonight and the planetary alignment to the Voices in my head, I might do the Zen again.

I'll be waiting from a call from P.


We might get together to play some cards also. That remains to be seen.


That's about it for now ... I'll get back to my 'why-doesn't-the-server-send-it's-notifications' problem.


See ya around people,
utnapistim online

Saturday, March 4

imagination

In the course of life at some point one imagines oneself to be incomplete; finds himself (or herself - to be politically correct) to be ... lacking.

The need to compensate for that imagined incompleteness is called a compulsion.

My blog is not your average dictionary, but I think it's a prety accurate definition.


Anyway!


I went skating again today (with B) and I got some thinking done ... (yeah ... happens every once in a while).


Apparently the source of my ... 'troubled mind' is my habbit (by now) to search for fulfillment in the appreciation of others.

poor others!
How do they take the pressure?


Now, you've read enough of my ramblings, go and enjoy your weekend!

It's the carnaval afterall.



Compulsionately yours,
utnapistim.

Thursday, March 2

random update

I'm tired.

Yesterday I stayed late in office ('til half pash nine) and then went home on skates (that sort-of gave me a high from the effort).

Today ... I had to come early (like 0900-early) because Y and M are visiting from the promissed land and we have some KT session starting at nine.

The good part in all this is I was woken up by the alarm (for once) dirrectly from REM sleep and got to remember my dream (and a good dream it was - colorful it was too).

I wonder how often I dream stuf like that and end up not remembering it at all :\.

Anyway ... I better finish my coffee about now.

this morning,
utnapistim on the net

Wednesday, March 1

Bday

Happy B-day Tea!

Happy B-day to all my lady-friends.

Namas'te
utnapistim