After my trip in Germany was over, I made myself a present: a compact camera, a Nikon P300. Then, by taking a picture in low light of some books, I noticed that in our small library there’s a special book. This book is called Berlin Alexanderplatz and was written by Alfred Döblin. After this coincidence occurred, I decided that Berlin deserves an article in my journal. Why? Because Alexanderplatz is one of the nicest places in Berlin and before I left the city, I went back to Charlie Checkpoint, somewhere near Alexanderplatz to buy some souvenirs.

Berlin is called the City of Stones and the City of Smoke by Jason Lutes in two of his comic books. I will use the same names to describe the Berlin I saw and I liked and somehow, disliked.

The City of Stones

This is the bright face of Berlin, the one that can make you think that this big city can change your life once and for all. The truth is that it can change your perspective of seeing things.

From the impressive Fernsehturm, the TV tower, down to architecture of each church and cathedral, Berlin has lots of things to offer to its visitors. There are lots of museums, but I didn’t have the chance to visit them because of the short time I stayed in the city. All those museums looked great from outside; I still wonder what amazing things they were hiding inside. I can go on and describe everything I saw, but that wouldn’t be much fun.

The City of Smoke

What I didn’t like about Berlin is maybe the american influence. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against americans, I’m against their influence in some parts of the world. What I wanted to see in Berlin was people coming from multiple parts of the world and get along with each other. But, I didn’t like the fact that all those people were embracing the american culture, instead of joining the german culture which in fact has more to offer that the other one.

Walking down the streets of Berlin I was amazed to notice muslims, jews, black people and going to Alexanderplatz there was very few people speaking German. I was listening to people speaking French, Italian, Spanish and lots of people speaking English. I was thinking… how many Romanians are living in Berlin?

I also took some pictures along the way, which are in fact two collections posted on PicPlz: Berlin and German Countryside. For those pictures I used just a cellphone, a Sony Ericsson K800i — I think I pushed it to its limits. That’s the reason why I wanted to buy myself a real camera when I went back home.

May 4, 2011 at 23:33  ·  Reciprocal Affection  ·  5 replies

Sourcefabric organized a book sprint near Berlin, where an international team wrote a book in just five days. The book is actually a manual for getting started creating templates and using Newscoop at its full power. Newscoop is a content management system (CMS) specialized for news sites, magazines and mass media publications. Of course, my theme “The Journalist” is already ported to this new CMS.

The Book

Newscoop 3 Cookbook can already be order from Lulu and will be available for free on FLOSS Manuals. I wrote a full section describing the best practices for designing websites. Here I talked about templates grids, golden ratio, typography, article and comments design for Newscoop. I also wrote a few other sections regarding Facebook, HTML 5 and best practices for SEO.

I designed all the diagrams used in the book. I used a black and white style on a math paper. I tried to simply and clarify every step showed on each diagram. It’s not an easy process as it seems. You have to conceptualize the whole process and then create each step displayed in the diagram. Of course, the team helped me where I got stucked and in the end, I manage to finished them all.

The Team and the place

Each member from the team was from a different country. New Zeeland, USA, Romania, Belarus, Serbia, Columbia and Germany were the countries that we originate from. We stayed at Schloss Neuhausen where a few black cats entertained us and blossoming trees put some light on our faces. I’m not sure if it’s important, but I got the biggest room and I enjoyed each moment spent here.

April 27, 2011 at 20:27  ·  Meaningful Labor  ·  0 replies

The problem here is that the arrow doesn’t point the center of the icon highlighted on Dock. It only appears on Exposé mode of the Dock, when you click and hold an icon in the Dock. The UI glitch was introduced in 10.6.5 update of Snow Leopard and I reported it on my Twitter account in November last year.

After 10.6.6 update of Mac OS X, I looked to see if this was fixed, but for my surprise, it wasn’t. How come a company that emphasis the design of its products as a feature, doesn’t care for small details like this? I looked to see if this bug was reported on any Apple related blog and I didn’t find any related stories. How come nobody noticed it and report it to Apple?

I thought Mr. Gruber will be the first person to report this, but lately he’s more preoccupied with what Google or Microsoft does. Also, I wonder if this bug will still be present on the next version of Mac OS X named Lion.

January 13, 2011 at 22:23  ·  Coffee in the Morning  ·  4 replies

In the picture above you can see what we call Romanian Airmen Heroes Memorial, located in the Aviators’ Square, on Aviators’ Boulevard, Bucharest.

This photograph should have been posted five days ago, but somehow I manage to forgot about this draft. Yes, I started writing a new draft for my birthday which, guess what, was also postponed. Now let me explain. Great Union Day is the national holiday of Romania and it’s celebrated on December 1st. My birthday was five days before this event, enough time to lose track of the things I have to do and care about.

December 5, 2010 at 05:00  ·  Les Fleurs du mal  ·  0 replies

Autumn has the power to bring people back together, to bring nature closer to humans hearts. It feels like crying inside and laughing outside — and in the same time, enjoy everything in between.

November has definitely something special, that electrical feeling that makes everything stand up by itself, no matter if it’s just a sign posted on a wall.

Even buildings don’t remain indifferent when this month makes its appearance. It’s like watching that drama film that you saw tens of times in the past. But now you’re feeling like you are watching the same movie again like it’s the first time and you’re seeing those peculiar details, here and there, in almost every scene. November is marvelous.

November 10, 2010 at 12:56  ·  Les Fleurs du mal  ·  0 replies