if i only knew...

Now blogging in Hungarian (as well)

When I started blogging in 2001, Hungarian blogs numbered in the low 100s. I did not find a single one that I found interesting, that I would like to connect to, that I wanted to keep up with. Plus, all my Internet friends were foreigners, from across Europe and North America. Plus, all my internet activity has always been in English, websites, message boards, mailing lists, 90% of what I read and participated in was in English. Therefore, it was obvious that I would start blogging in English, and not Hungarian.

Today, the Hungarian blogosphere grew leaps and bounds from what existed back then. There are great thematic blogs, interesting lifeblogs, and lots of stuff to keep up with, link to and comment on. Therefore I decided it's time for me to connect to the home blogosphere and start blogging in Hungarian. I want to keep this English blog as well, and I am even thinking of combining the two, but that requires a redesign, which would take some time and thinking out, so for now, there are 3 blogs here, this English one, the Hungarian one and the Marketing blog (in English).

Must. Find. Time. To. Blog.

Things have been a little hectic around here recently. A quick recap of the last 2 months:

Trip to the US for two weeks in March. Los Angeles was kind of a disappointment, San Diego on the other hand a lovely surprise. I have several pages of notes in my notebook that I hope to transfer here when I find the time.

Trip to Canary Islands in April. An unexpected one-week beach vacation at the lovely island of Tenerife, I had to stand in for someone who had to cancel the trip, and had a great time despite the short notice and the fact that I went without Bence.

While beforehand I thought the trip couldn't have come at a worse time, in the end, I realized it was a godsend. After the US trip I had a few days when I figured that my business is not going anywhere and was quite depressed, fed up, and everything else in between. The one-week holiday cleared my mind completely and since I came back, business is up, things are working out much better and I am much more optimistic than I've been in the last one year. And this fuels creativity and productivity.

Now I just need to find the time to blog all my US notes and finish and launch the 2 new websites I am working on.

Autumn

Where did summer go? For some strange reason, i am not sad about it being over, but actually kind of neutral about it. Autumn will be fun (birthdays, Paris, etc), Winter we'll survive somehow and then it's Spring, which will bring new trips and good weather again.

And Autumn means the annual arrival of my renewed interest in hand making things. Today's find: Slide Lamp.

Quick notes from BlogTalk

My offtopic observations from BlogTalk 2.0, the weblog conference in Vienna:

Put a bunch of bloggers in a room with power outlets and wifi access, and voila, no matter how interesting the talk, they will be instantly multitasking: IM'ing, blogging, working, emailing, and doing whoknowswhatelse.

I was sitting in the fourth row of seats. In the three rows in front of me, each about 12 seats wide, i counted 28 laptops. Many macs, although i think PCs were still the majority.

Give the conference an international angle, invite speakers from different countries and voila, the audience will get to taste the many local versions of Windows. (I saw two speakers, one had Norwegian, the other Spanish Windows.)

And... because everybody's blogging it, there is plenty of material online already to read for those not able to attend. And collaborative notes from the sessions (Wiki). And photos.

Seeing RHCP live is very very cool

On Thursday i went to the best concert of my life so far, Red Hot Chili Peppers live in Wiener Neustadt, Austria. They played at the dirtiest rock festival i have ever been to and i was so grumpy because i paid 85 euros for a two-day ticket to see the Chilis and Metallica, but the place was so depressingly dirty and run-down that we decided not to stay for the second day and pass Metallica. But, then the Chili concert made up for all of that, it was just spectacularly awesome.

The funny thing is, i sort of liked the chilis so far, but they were no way my favourite band or anything. But you *know* that it is the best concert you've ever been to if you even groove out to the songs you've never heard and feel like they are the best songs ever. And in the encore they played Under The Bridge, which was so cool to hear played by them live after hearing it for a zillion times interpreted by our class band in high school. :)

I had a great time. The cool fact is that they are playing in London's Hyde Park on June 25th and i'll accidentally be in London that weekend. Yay. I am not buying tickets, but i assume it will be loud enough to enjoy outside in the grass as well, or not? Any info on that, especially supersecret location info is most welcome in the comments.

Classical in a castle

Yesterday we went to a really cool classical concert in Vienna. (Sidenote: the last time i went to a classical concert was at least 5 years ago, Giora Feidman in the Budapest Synagogue). This time it was a special open air concert in the Schloss Schonbrunn in Vienna, a magically beautiful backdrop for a concert stage. Bobby McFerrin conducted the Wiener Philharmoniker orchestra, they played popular pieces like Strauss (we are in Vienna after all...) and Bolero. It was great fun.Also, a big thanks to the organizers for the perfect sound, and the well-done logistics of moving the 90 000 people out of the castle park without any problems.

I missed the day...

Interesting cultural trivia:
"Rules of courtship are quite different these days (and much less strict), but long ago women who were hoping to marry had to wait for their beaus to propose. They were not "allowed" to pop the question themselves, except on one day: on a leap year (February 29th) -- also known as Sadie Hawkins Day -- which occurs every four years."

I can't believe i missed the day this year. Why haven't i read this two days earlier? ;)

Open letter to blog spammers

Dear spammers.

You may think that because this blog has a commenting feature and a Google PageRank of 5, you have found the perfect advertising venue and will boost your moneymaking websites' pagerank by posting irrelevant comments and leaving your URLs here.

FYI, here is a list of anti-spam measures that are currently implemented on this blog:

1. I have a plugin to weed out spam comments that not only enables me to delete them, but to add your URL to a blacklist that is shared with the weblogging community, actively distributed to enable others to protect their blogs from your comments as well. I am using this plugin very actively and I will not leave your comment up no matter how nice your message sounds.

2. I upgraded the CMS i use to manage this blog so now URLs are not posted as is, but through a redirect which will prevent your URLs from receiving a Pagerank boost via my blog.

3. There are a few other spam prevention features that i won't go into more detail about, suffice it to say that you are wasting your time, or your robot's time by trying to fool me into believing you're a regular visitor who left a positive comment on my blog.

Please leave me alone, and go build a few legitimate affiliate pages or use valid SEO techniques instead of trying to outsmart others (which you won't). There are better - and more effective - ways to make money on the net. Trust me about that. :)

Thank you. (on behalf of the blogging community)

3am coding session ... fun!

Holy cow, i haven't done this for ages.... it's 2.42am and i just forced myself to close all my HTML and CSS and whatever editor windows and go to bed. :) (Of course i am posting here before actually completing that task...)

I remember when i built my very first website (which was just recently cruelly deleted - without any warning - by Geocities, :(:( ), i did this for endless days in a row. The only computer we had back then was in my parents' bedroom, so i was coding the site there in the blueish glow of the computer when at random points of the night my Mum would wake up and try to get me to go to bed at last. Ah, the nostalgia!

This was 1995 ... and here i am, 9 years later doing it again... Good night!

I finished college today!

Today is a big day: i had my final exam and now officially finished college and have a degree in international marketing and total quality management. Yay!

No more exams, no more papers to hand in, no more annoying school administration stuff, no more traveling one hour each way to the end of the world for the most pointless and boring lecture in the world.

Instead, looking for a job, going to interviews and stuff like that. But first, a little rest, catching up with all my business plans and goals and projects that i didn't have enough time to work on while studying. I am sooooooooooooooooo looking forward to doing what I THINK i need, and not school dictating what i should be doing. Cheers to my new life!

Off to Paris

I will be in Paris from today until next Sunday, so no entries in the next 10 days! I will of course be geek enough to not survive ten days without going in an internet cafe to check email but i am not geek enough to post to the blog from there. Or who knows. We'll see.

Expect new lomo (and holga) photos when i come back, my Lomo was repaired by the lomodoctor at the Vienna Lomo headquarters, and i bought a new scanner, so i am well stocked to shoot and share.

See you then!

Vacation

I have been and still am on vacation, unplugged, hanging out at the lakeside, this is the reason for the lack of updates on the blog for the last two weeks. I am moving to Canada next Thursday, so the remaining days after the vacation will be busy packing, saying goodbye, and stressing out, which again means i probably won't be spending time on the blog. I will be back when i am in Canada, the latest.

Vienna weekend

Useless pieces of trivia, because i can't post pics from here, and i am bored right now.

I am in Vienna for the weekend and the weather is just Crazy, with a capital C. It changes every 5 minutes, from a snow storm to becautiful sunshine, and it's freezing cold. It's April, but it certainly doesn't look like it.

The notebook broke this week, which means that i could only watch half of the Osbournes DVD i rented, which is exactly the excuse i needed to order it from amazon. So i did. I can't wait for it to arrive.

There are now free public internet terminals throughout the city, which is very cool. It's run by the city of Vienna, so no mindless browsing allowed, just the city services, many many useful infos, like current cinema schedules, restaurants in the vicinity of the terminal (very cool), transportation schedules, etc, and email + sms. And internet shopping at ebay, amazon and a few more. So i could have ordered the above DVD standing on a street in Vienna. :) It's a very cool service anyway.

Bought a new Beetle

I bought this little new Beetle toy car to make photos for Parking Spots. It's already dark outside, so the first photos will be taken tomorrow, i can't wait!

This is my third new Beetle. I have a tiny blue one, about 1 inch long; a 1:18 scale model by bburago (yellow); and now this 1:43 model by bburago (blue). Now i only need a real one. *sigh*

The move to Movable Type

Voila! The migration from Blogger to MT went much easier than i expected. This was my first ever time installing cgi and working with mysql (although i did install apache and php and mysql on my linux machine a few years ago - but haven't touched it since then), but the MT documentation covered everything i had to do, and the MT support forums provided answers to my questions before i asked them.

So now, welcome to the new environment. I am still figuring things out, most notably: how to move my previous template to movable type. It will be a few days until i can get it to work - if i can, that is. So until then, here is the generic MT template that i tweaked to add my links and photos. It's just a temporary solution until i can get a decent new design together.

As a side effect of the move, all the comments that were left before the move are gone. That is because i used a third party comment system and MT couldn't import those with the entries. So now it's up to you to leave the first comment ever (hah!) on this second generation incarnation of my blog. First person to comment gets an ecard from me. :)

To Do:
- assign categories to all previous entries (done from today backwards till August 30th, 14 months' worth of entries left to do)
- figure out how to include the categories in this template
- whip up the new design
- put together a better About me page

Looks like some of you

Looks like some of you are already on my new web host, while on the other hand I, on the old continent, still only see the old host's pages. This means that some of the stuff (especially the archives) here won't work until the DNS serves in my area start working with my new host. I ask you for just a little bit of patience until this happens, and things will be back to normal. Hopefully.
Of course, when the serves start working, i will be moving this blog from blogger to movable type, so that will be another pain... But let's hope everything goes smoothly...

UPDATE: I can now see the new pages, so i can get my hands dirty in movable type CGI. I think i fixed everything on this blog for now, if something doesn't work - please leave a comment and let me know! Thanks!

I am moving to another

I am moving to another webhost, so the site may be unavailable for some time between now and the next update. I hope it goes smooth though...

Ugh.... i just realized that

Ugh.... i just realized that the archive page on this blog has been broken since the last redesign... sorry... i fixed it now.

I still hate blog quizzes,

I still hate blog quizzes, but this one was made by the girl whose CSS design i use on this blog, and the result i got is soooooooo true :) :

Take the ICQuiz!

I never realized this blog

I never realized this blog had already had it's first birthday and the second one is actually near already... The very first entry is dated June 06, 2001. Wow... Today i finally revamped the archives, so no more old design anywhere on the site! :) Next up: uploading more photos (top right corner).

Fun thing i play:

Fun thing i play:

I purchased a monthly pass

I purchased a monthly pass to a very funky fitness centre today and participated in my first workout too!!! And it felt soooooo good! YAY! New year, new me. (yeah right... :) )

I passed the resit of

I passed the resit of the controlling exam so this was officially the LAST class that i had to take where i had to use a calculator. YAY!!!!

Next exam is January 7th, so i have time to relax and enjoy the holidays. I am finishing making christmas presents (handmade books) tonight, so i don't have time to write any more right now.

So i failed the controlling

So i failed the controlling final. :( I have to retake it next Wednesday, which is very very annoying because i already have an exam that day at 5pm, so i will have to study for both at the same time. I still have lots of lots of stuff that i have to hand in this week, so the blog will be quite lonely this week too, but next Wednesday everything is finally over and i will be able to actually go christmas shopping (yikes), and do more fun stuff, like go skating...

A Starbucks clone coffee place opened in Budapest and they have mochas and frapuccinos (called something else of course). The place is called "Stardust" and i picked up their brochure that says "Stardust wants to plant the seed of coffee culture in Budapest" which is quite upsetting because actually Budapest has a centuries old coffee culture, and what Stardust brings to it is coffee unculture or something... but I am gonna try it tomorrow, and a detailed report will follow! :)

I am gonna knit Julia

I am gonna knit Julia Roberts' sweater! :)

So many things to do,

So many things to do, so little time... which explains why this blog has been so lonely in the last 2 weeks. I am extremely busy with school, so the next weeks will most likely be likewise quiet. :(

On a more cheerful note:
Bence and I decided to finish all our christmas shopping and crafting soon. We HATE the frenxy before the holidays (who doesn't) and were extremely stressed and annoyed by it in the last years so we want to avoid it this time. Now... knowing what a procrastinator i am, and he is... but at least it's a good plan! :)

OK, i know i said

OK, i know i said i find these annoying, but i just found another cutie. :)

Take the 100 Acre Personality Quiz!

I still can't believe it,

I still can't believe it, yesterday i was finally able to sign up for not one, but TWO of the1000 Journals. And it looks like i will be contributing to at least one other through nervousness. I kept hitting refresh last night at about 10 minute intervals and i catched the first one where i m #5 and the other one he was posting too... when i went to the site there were 9 slots open, but by the time i clicked the sign up link someone sneaked in before me, so i am #2, but still. What fun! Of course it took again only 2 minutes for the journal to fill up completely, i am wondering how many people keep refreshing the site and trying all day long like i was yesterday...

I signed up with LiveJournal

I signed up with LiveJournal today. It's just such a great community, i didn't want to miss out. :) Now i have to figure out how to keep both a blog and post on LJ without going insane or feeling schizophrenic (sp?). :) Anyway check me out there too.

And if you have a trick on the above mentioned issue (blog & journal), let me know (comment or email).

Latest amazon purchase: Northwest Coast

Latest amazon purchase:
Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form - Bill Holm
Because i am fascinated by BC Indian art and want to learn more about it
Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 - Thomas L. Friedman
Because i read some of Lexus and The Olive Tree and it's an interesting read and i want to see what he thinks of the current geopolitical situ
Art of Calligraphy - David Harris
Because i am learning calligraphy and this has very nice alphabets
Hootie and the Blowfish's Summer Camp With Trucks - DVD
Because i just got a DVD player, and because i love Hootie and the Blowfish and because Cracked Rear View, the CD which this DVD is about is in my top 3 favourite CDs ever.

I am sooooo bad. The first time i have a little extra money after the summer slump and i blow half of it at amazon. :)

Yay, the new layout!!!! If

Yay, the new layout!!!! If you have problems seeing it (in this case you see a page with white background and black text like in the old days of the net...), or if someting looks weird, let me know! The template is from the CSS Colouring Book, tweaked to perfection in colours by me. :)

I finally found the template

I finally found the template i am going to use on this blog, but i still have to tweak it to perfection.

Lazy Saturday morning today... checking email, sipping coffee, hanging out. Coolness. :)