Random thoughts and news.

How to cure anosmia...

2010-04-28T02:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm officially an one month plus anosmic. I can still feel something from time to time especially when I'm hard blowing my nose, but except from this.. nothing. Funny in a certain way because I used to be highly sensitive to smells around me and also a very demanding gourmand. Now, good steak tastes like wood, good wine tastes the same as bad wine and plus it gives me a runny nose (so does the beer - I'm an yet unable to find the reason why).

Some people say that anosmia is a normal consequence of a long lasting sinusitis and that it is only temporarily but in my case, the first symptoms appeared in the beginning of January and lasted since so I'm beginning to wonder about the this "temporary" character. While my doctor explains me that my nose is still stuffed (I can feel this, okay..) and this is why the smell can't reach the appropriate receptors I read that long lasting sinusitis can cause irreversible damage to the olfactory epithelium which will obviously lead to permanent anosmia.

As for the cure, I'm yet unable to find one for me but here are some that worked for other people:
- antibiotics: if it's an infection causing your nose to swell then antibiotics to help you fight it is the cure. Once the infection is gone, and the swelling (usually follows an infection and tends to linger for long) is gone then your smell will return (hopefully this will be the case for me)
- nasal corticosteroids together with antihistamines: this if the main reason for your nasal swelling is of allergic nature. Both nasal corticosteroids together with antihistamines are meant to help you react less to potential allergens hence decreasing your swelling and allowing the air to correctly reach the olfactory cells. Be aware that this is a long run treatment so you should follow it for about a couple of weeks before its effects will reach their max.
- systemic steroids like prednisone: haven't tried those yet because of their wide range of side effect but they appear to be highly effective.
- time: time is a last resort solution. wait and see... the human body has amazing recovery capabilities.

eLiberatica 2009

2009-03-14T00:32:00.001-07:00

eLiberatica 2009 – The 3rd Edition,
22nd – 23rd of May 2009 (Friday-Saturday), University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania.

One of the biggest events of its kind in Eastern Europe, eLiberatica brings community leaders from around the world to talk about the hottest topics in FLOSS movement, demonstrating the advantages of adopting, using and developing Open Source and Free Software solutions.
Beyond this, the event try to promote these open and free concepts in other fields, covering but not limited to, media, digital civil society and education.

This year, the conference target an audience of around 500 people: IT and FLOSS personalities, young and committed specialists, guests from European Union, Romanian social and business personalities and at least two ministers.

The two days of presentations and debates will focus on Open Source in an Economic Downturn.

The conference will have multiple tracks, special events hosted (Open Agile Romania, Mozilla Event, Open Media Event, and more), surprise guests and lots of practical workshops.

For more information you can check http://eliberatica.ro/2009/ website.

The (java) world is changing... JavaFX is alive an kicking

2009-03-14T00:23:00.000-07:00

A "cool" NetBeans error message

2009-03-09T09:07:00.000-07:00

I made something stupid but my IDE is trying to ign ore it (lol).

I'm playing around with NetBeans and JavaFX lately. I don't yet have a fundamental technical opinion about the framework but I know for sure that me and the guy that wrote the attached error message think alike (great minds, huh ?)

Circuit City goes out of business

2009-01-19T00:52:00.000-08:00

It seems that the economical crisis is starting to leave a mark on the U.S. retailer companies. The second biggest Consumer-electronics retailer chain goes out of business as of 17.01.2008. The official reason for this seems to be their failure to reach an agreement with their creditors.

I'm still hopping (I am definitely not the only one since it seems that almost 34.000 Americans will loose their jobs because of this) than someone will make a good take over offer on the last 9 yards.) In the meantime,
Good bye Circuit City.

Achmed, the dead terrorist. Enjoy.

2008-05-14T09:56:00.000-07:00

Official Gmail Blog: The next evolution of labels

2007-12-06T03:09:00.000-08:00

Cool way of presenting some new GMail features: Official Gmail Blog: The next evolution of labels

eLiberatica second edition

2007-11-19T00:10:00.000-08:00

30th - 31st May 2008 (Friday-Saturday), Sofitel Hotel - Bucharest, Romania

Following the huge public success the first edition of eLiberatica gained in 2007, the second edition will continue in the same tradition: to gather community and business leaders around the world to talk about the hottest Open and Free Technologies topics.
eLiberatica has its unique spirit and identity; you will learn and discover new things, meet international IT personalities, business people, high-tech professionals, you will make new friends, new partners, celebrate and truly enjoy a live event.
eLiberatica 2008 is intended to focus on these main concepts:
• Business adoption - how to make/save money and gain profit using Open and Free Technologies;
• Government, administration and public schools - the importance of Open and Free Technologies;
• Professional growth participating in the FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) community;
• Break the code - tips and tricks, things you will not find in IT bocks.
For more information you can check http://eliberatica.ro website.

I quit smoking (for the second time).

2007-11-15T01:11:00.000-08:00

Ten days have passed since my last cigarette… 240 hours… 14440 minutes… but who’s counting (lol). This is my second attempt to quit and it was a lot easier than the first time. I hope this time is for good.

How to quit smoking? In my opinion going “cold turkey” is the best way. All the pills, patches, chewing gum are bulls**t; gradually reducing cigarettes is the same thing. It seems that the human body only needs 4 cigarettes a day to maintain the nicotine addiction, the rest are just an extra “bonus” therefore any number of cigarettes greater than 4 is not quitting.

I have two cigars (don’t ask if they are legal) brought from US and I’m keeping them for the Christmas party and the New Years Eve. Before that NO SMOKING!!!

Microsoft and SPAM

2007-10-23T00:12:00.001-07:00

I’m sooooo angry..

Some time ago (like a couple of years or something) I made the mistake to create an account on the Microsoft web site. Since then .. they absolutely kill me with spam (YES!!! Microsoft sends spam, lots of it). I never subscribed to any of their news letters or promotional offers. I was very careful not to check any potential “damaging” check box like the ones asking you to let them use your e-mail. Despite all this I’m receiving an average number of 5 mails/week. Yes, is not a great number but due to my effort in keeping my e-mail spam free I only receive about one mail /week about different ways of increasing some of my essential body parts. Imagine that Microsoft is 5 times more efficient than the V pill sellers (Yo, people if you are interested in sending spam, you might consider hiring Microsoft)
Ok, enough complaining. I work in software industry, I know the meaning of the “unsubscribe” word. I tried, believe me, but how to unsubscribe from something you never subscribed to ?!? I sent a bunch of e-mails with Unsubscribe in the subject line as advised by the received e-mails – no effect. I tried to log into my account and disable the subscriptions (If, by any chance they became enabled independently of my will). No chance. For 2 months I was unable to access my account. When I finally managed to send a valid password reset request (first 8 requests were completely ignored) and I was (finally) able to enter my account.. Surprise, surprise.. No subscription was active.

Today I tried what seems to be my last hope: I declared all the received Microsoft e-mail as spam :D. Hopefully this will work.

FIA GT Championship season 2007, event 3 – Bucharest

2007-05-21T05:33:00.000-07:00

I definitely need to start a new topic: the Romanian reality. I’m assuming the risk of being accused of quoting copyrighted text but...

Welcome to Romania, where normal things don’t happen very often (all credits for the phrase reserved to Johnny Bravo lol)

For those of you not knowing when this happened :FIA GT Championship season 2007, event 3 – Bucharest.

UFOs seen over Romania...

2007-04-27T02:17:00.000-07:00

It seems that even if 80% of the world population has no clue that Romanian capital city is BUCHAREST and not BUDAPEST and also has no interest in knowing this ... even if most of the foreign tourists coming to Eastern Europe are choosing Bulgaria instead of the romanian seashore (good choice BTW) ... someone is interested in our country: ALIENS. I'm taking this opportunity to great them all and wish them a very pleasant stay here in our wonderful country :))

Unfortunately the news are in romanian but.. the main idea is that some strange lights can be seen lately on the romanian sky.
Enjoy the movie.

No taste if having a cold...

2007-04-27T01:54:00.000-07:00

Ever experienced a severe cold or flu, when you can barely bread trough your nose? If yes then you definitely realized that the food you eat during that period seems absolutely tasteless, even if is your favorite food now you suddenly don’t like it anymore.
Eating is a multi-modal process (involving all the senses). Any comments concerning food being just about taste are misguided. What you are missing during your sneeze days is not the taste is the flavor of food.
Taste is one of the six senses (some say we have more), the others being touch, sound, sight, smell and proprioception, (the sense of "ourselves"). The sense of taste can then be broken down into five basic categories. All of which happen in the mouth and nowhere else. These categories are salt, sweet, sour, bitter and Umami (the most recently identified taste named by Ikeda in Japan in 1908). There is a current theory that fat is actually a taste but I’m not aware of this becoming official.
The flavor, unlike taste is registered in the olfactory epithelium situated between the eyes at the front of the brain. It contains hundreds of receptors that register aroma molecules contained in everything that we eat and smell.
There is a simple but effective and enjoyable way of demonstrating what most of us don't realize; Smell and taste-are registered in different parts of the head. Have ready some table salt and biscuits, fruit or in fact, anything easy to eat. Squeeze your nostrils tightly enough to prevent breathing thorough them (don’t overreact ). Take a good bite of biscuit or fruit and start chomping, making sure that the nostrils remain clenched. You will notice that it is impossible to perceive the flavor or aroma of the food being eaten. Now, with nostrils still squeezed and food still in the mouth, lick some salt or sugar. Although it was impossible to detect the flavor of the food that was being eaten with clenched nostrils, the taste of the salt/sugar is unhindered. Finally, let go of your nostrils and notice the flavor of the food come rushing into your head.
Those being said … if you are a true gourmand beware of cold :)

Weigh loss for computer programmers :)

2007-04-23T04:20:00.000-07:00

Okay. I’m fat (I finally admitted) and I don’t like this. I’m also working in IT (computer programming) and I don’t like this either (but this is a different story).
Now, besides the fact that sitting at the desk up to 10 hours a day makes you fat (there are exceptions, I agree, so don’t jump arguing) what is the link between computer programming and weight loss / diet? And here comes the answer:
The Diet Problem !!! .. a little bit of history:
The diet problem is one of the first optimization problems to be studied back in the 1930's and 40's. It was first motivated by the Army's desire to meet the nutritional requirements of the field GI's while minimizing the cost (obviously). One of the early researchers to study this problem was George Stigler. He made an educated guess of the optimal solution to linear program using a heuristic method. His guess for the cost of an optimal diet was $39.93 per year (1939 prices). In the fall of 1947, Jack Laderman of the Mathematical Tables Project of the National Bureau of Standards undertook solving Stigler's model with the new simplex method. It was the first "large scale" computation in optimization. The linear program consisted of nine equations in 77 unknowns. It took nine clerks using hand-operated desk calculators 120 man days to solve for the optimal solution of $39.69. Stigler's guess for the optimal solution was off by only 24 cents per year.
Curios about the subject.. try to build your own diet

Get Paid For Driving IT Research

2007-04-20T23:14:00.000-07:00

I received an e-mail today remembering me to activate my account at TechSay.. so I did it. I thought it should bring forward this subject since there are lots of people out there surfing and interested in earning money from that. Tech Say pays you to complete online surveys (most of them IT related) and during the last 3 minutes I earned the extraordinary amount of 2.5 UDS (lol). If only software development were payed as much in Romania.

From TechSay:
"Influence the direction of IT research and get paid for taking brief online surveys for IT professionals and IT purchasing decision-makers. Become a member of our global IT and technology panel. Express and share your opinions about IT and business topics relevant to you, in a highly secure and private environment."

Until next time,
Ady

God bless you Gil Dobrica

2007-04-17T23:32:00.001-07:00

Gil Dobrica died yesterday 17.Apr.2007

Gil Dobrica - Romanian singer, highly successful in the 70's, playing both his own songs (rhythm & blues, jazz) and covers from Ray Charles (Gil was considered to be the Romanian Ray Charles) and other singers of the same musical area.
This song (a cover of John Denver's 1971 single 'Take Me Home, Country Roads') is a calling for those far away to come home:

'Come home
Come with me to hit the road
Our sweet home is waiting for us:
The green grass, the paths
Mountains and valleys
Wind mills
Quick rivers, passes,
They're all expecting us
We are waited
By our mother, by our father
By old friends, brothers and sisters...'

The artist passed away on 17th of April 2007, at the age of 61. God bless you Gil.

eLiberatica: one month away

2007-04-16T05:41:00.000-07:00

eLiberatica is only a month away and I’m pretty excited. Besides meting some of the most important personalities in OS/FS (Rasmus Lerdorf, Monty Widenius, Brian Behlendorf, Zak Greant) and hopefully having the chance to chat a little bit with all of them (Hey guys, I know you’ll be quite busy during the event but don’t forget the party after) I feel is a great opportunity for me as individual as well as for us, “Romanian geeks”.

I’m looking forward to meet all the people involved in the event and promise myself to shot some pictures that I’ll publish here.

‘Till then, cheers,
Ady

Holding hands

2007-04-08T04:28:00.001-07:00

Happy Easter !!!

Best love song ever...

2007-03-27T23:10:00.000-07:00

The original version is also quite okay but this one... will break any heart as frozen as it can be. Enjoy

About ROMANIA

2007-03-27T03:33:00.000-07:00

from youTube.

How will the world be without Romania. Quite an interesting point of view and quite a commented movie on youTube. What do you know.. Romania is after all an important country.

Enjoy !!!

About Java Programming

2007-02-23T03:03:00.000-08:00

Since my life is quite “usual” :) lately and since 90% of my time (while I'm awake) is related with my job and since my job is related with java programming I decided to open a new (technical :D ) blog. About Java Programming (and not only). Maybe I’ll find more time to fill it with what I hope is useful info.

Blog rebirth

2007-01-15T23:27:00.000-08:00

I’ve always thought about taking blogging more serious but never managed to do it. Mostly because of the extreme lack of time and partly because my life :D is far from being interesting lately.
It seems, although, that since eLiberatica appeared things tend to change slightly and my blog is for the first time in its life on eleventh place on google. So.. I kind of try to make a commitment to myself to update it at least weekley.

Till next time.
Ady

Scam O Rama

2006-09-30T00:35:00.000-07:00

I will add this site Scam O Rama to my links since is one of the best I saw until now. In case you get suspect messages from guys willing to give you enormous amount of money, do yourself a favor and search scamorama first. It will help you a lot (take this for example : ) Scam O Rama:: Skipper Wang Qin

Best regards,
Ady

Adrian FLOREA - Ady's blog

2006-09-25T05:45:00.000-07:00

Adrian FLOREA - Ady's blog

I just came back...

2006-09-05T05:57:00.000-07:00

... from U.S. two days ago. Still sleepy as hell but I’ll get back on tracks in few days :). Unlike usual, this time the air company was not AirFrance but KLM. Although they seem to be together is some kind of alliance (SkyTeam) their services were way below those of AirFrance and I’m a little bit disappointed (no free drinks …) but at least every flight was on time and the managed not to loose my luggage so… after all it was a good option.

Romanian FLOSS

2006-09-02T04:57:00.000-07:00

www.rosi.ro
www.eliberatica.ro

... and these are saying everything :)

Why not...

2006-08-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

It seems that is a growing habit for everyone to blog about everything... now is my turn :)