Do you see the title? Oh my God, that’s like so straight to the point! Well, that’s the only point about it and the following rows won’t hold much information about it so don’t get over excited!

First of all, I finished college. The project I was talking about in my last post got a 10 (that’s a B in the American grading system). The product itself was worth 12 (A) but, quite honestly, the examination was pretty cruel and I failed to answer the following questions:

• What is the difference between a normalized and denormalized table in a database? (I should have known the answer to this question but hey.. no regrets, right?)
• How can you store a PHP object inside a session? (I just couldn’t focus on giving an appropriate answer and was way too vague in the answer)
• Why didn’t I use JSON in order to send and receive the AJAX information? (I think the answer “I was just not very familiar with JSON and did not have enough time to go more into depth with it” was not really alright)

So, let’s put it this way: I am now a multimedia designer (literally, not just skillfully) and I’ll be finishing my bachelor in Web Development sometime next Winter. God damn, that seems so far away! Here’s a video I made out of 2 videos shot by one of my classmates and one of my teachers:

Those being sa(i)d, my life really revolves between going to work, watching the last 2 seasons of Seinfeld and any individual projects. Oh, and learning the regular expressions! I always bump into them so I guess now would be a good time to actually learn them!

On the other hand, the last week has been very entertaining from a metallic point of view as I got the chance to watch Soulfly, Master and Six Feet Under in 2 live performances, in Århus. Yeah, they were expensive but one should never refrain from actions which definitely gives him pleasures unless those pleasures are illegal but that’s a completely different aspect…

I’ll be coming home on the 22nd of July and I do not know what to expect. From any point of view. What’s even funnier is that I still haven’t bought a return ticket but I guess I’ll do it as soon as I get home though. Anyway, Scandinavian Airliens for the wins! I am so sick and tired of having a flight made out of 2 segments!

Can it get any worse? Yes it can! Bring it on, you mofo!

Another Danish month has passed. It would be really hard to tell everything that has happened and to bring excuses for why I didn’t post anything for such a long time. I know one post per month is a small post/month ratio but you’ll just have to understand Here are some interesting that has happened or I did, in no particular order.

Final Exam Project

It is finished! After 10 days of working upon the actual coding and 3 days of writing the report (you can count nights within those days as well), I managed to get it to the point where it was safe to deliver it as a final exam project. Restaurella is a modular, theme-based content management system for restaurant websites which is in constant development. I am a perfectionist and I always have the feeling that anything can be improved.

Among its functions, I can count:

• Administration interface
• Custom Pages
• Navigation Customization
• Theme-Based (the current version is Spartan in these regards and I am currently trying to create a standard template)
• The Restaurant Menu is fully customizable (Menu Categories, Item prices, Item pictures, Categories order change, custom CSS classes, etc.)
• Online Table Reservation
• Newsletter subscriptions and sending
• Photo Gallery
• Events Manager
• etc

Therefore, if you happen to know anyone who owns a restaurant, make sure to give them my contact info   Restaurella is good for everything: developing a new website and using the administration interface for it or integrating it with any current website. After a good revision of the code and some more proper development, I am planning on releasing it as open-source.

Got an Award

It’s not much but it shows me how much I actually helped AIESEC ASB in these 9 months in which I were a member. Gotta say though, I am not a member of AIESEC for any kind of personal development or exchange program but for actually doing something and spending my time doing it.

Conclusion

My final exam is on the 22nd of June and my graduation party will be on the 25th. I’m going to invite 3 guests and it’s such a pity none of my dear ones back home will be able to attend it. Oh, if you are really anxious to find out how my exam will have been like, make sure to follow me on twitter. Chances are I will be too tired to actually post something on the blog right after it.

And for those of you who are in Århus till the end of the month and you listen to metal, Soulfly are coming to Voxhall on the 22nd of June and Six Feet Under are playing in Train on the 29th (along with other 6 death metal bands such as Illdisposed and Master). This doesn’t make life less bitter though, considering I am missing Rammstein, Anathema, Alice in Chains, Metallica and Slayer in Bucharest but it merely makes me feel a little bit better.

P.S. Can anyone suggest a good and preferably under 20$/month reseller hosting? Thanks.

So, yeah (as one of my neighbors would start any phrase).
I’m in the air right now and what do you know, I’ve decided to write my thoughts. You might have been disappointed (or extremely enthusiast) by my lack of posting during the last 4 months but I’m telling you, I have had good reasons
Staying in Romania during these months was pretty odd. I’m not really sure where to start but I’m going to try to separate it on several parts which willingly shall be in the same post (since I’m posting this entire article at a time, I find it stupid to separate them into several articles just for the sake of increasing the number of posts.

What I had expected

I had expected nothing and I have expected it all. I did my best to live my moments here as pleasant as I could but I do have several things I would do in a different way. Hmm, maybe that sounds a little too rough. What I really mean is there are some things which I would have done but time did not permit it. Come on, tell me how an asshole I am for saying what I just said: I did have 4 months at my disposal but 4 months are not an eternity.

The Internship

This was the reason I came back to Bucharest. Going back home for the internship was something which I simply had to do as there was no way of sustaining myself financially in Aarhus. I had my internship at Eau de Web and this internship might have been (more than a tad) lifechanging. The expectations I have had in regards to the internship were not fulfilled and I am more than happy for this outcome: I simply realized web programming is not something I should completely focus on. I also want to give huge thanks (and hugs) to all the people at the company for the way they treated me and their cooperation. I know I can sometimes(often..) be a very-hard-to-cope-with person but they adopted me fast and I am glad to say I have made some very good friends over there. Whenever I will get the chance, I will most definitely pay them a visit after their work schedule to grab a beer/juice and have a talk.

The Love Life

I am even more in love than I was when I arrived and the only thing that makes me sad is that I had to leave. It’s such a pity I did not have more time to spend with my girlfriend and this is one of those moments when I regret over-sleeping instead of waking up at the right time and meeting her.

My Friends

I have made some acquaintances and have lost some friends but let’s face it, if one loses a friend, that was not a friend in the first place so he didn’t lose anything. As a genious once said, shit happens and there is nothing we can do about it.

Miscellaneous

I saw a lot of movies at the cinema (Please, for Christ’s sake, don’t make me list them all…) but the last one was the one that left a mark on me: Alice in Wonderland. The mark it left was not due to the movie itself but to the place I saw the movie: the Samsung IMAX in a Romanian Mall. Having a 25 metres by 18 metres screen, it was the best 3D experience I have ever had at a movie. There was a downside however since it can’t all be perfect: the subtitle was 2D and although I don’t need subtitles in order to watch a movie, once you have them on the screen, your eyes are used to move and read. No, you can’t read a 2D subtitle with the 3D glasses if that’s what you are asking. My eyes still hurt after this experience…
Oh, did I mention I have to wear glasses? Yeah, I went to an eye doctor and it seems I have to get myself a pair of lenses/glasses with the following attributes: -0.5 for one eye and -0.75 for the other. Therefore, if you see me on the street, wave to me and I ignore you, try yelling.. you might be more successfull

Pool

I played a lot of pool. And when I say a lot, I actually mean A HELL OF A LOT! In Victorian terms, that’s equal to a number close to 200 games in 4 months. My best score was on the week before now when my friend started the game, didn’t pot any ball, it was my turn and I potted all my 8 balls in the same series of shots, making this my best achievement so far. Wish I had a place to play some good pool in Aarhus (yeah, the price is also important).

Epilogue

That’s about it. I’ll probably just post this article as soon as I get home and now I’ll finish my battery playing some Dirt2 or something. I forgot to put my headphones in the hand luggage and I can’t watch CSI: NY Things are worse though: I forgot both my toothbrushes back home (the one I have at my home and the one at my girlfriend’s place). Guess I’ll buy one more and make this a premiere: having 3 toothbrushes and yellow teeth at the same time. Hurray!

It is with great sadness that I announce the passing away of the beautiful and interesting personalities most of my friends have had.

No, really now, I don’t want to turn this post into an obituary but it really is painful to notice how some of my friends (d)evolved during the past 2 years. What really is disturbing is that those who should have changed did not change and those who were supposed to stay the same have changed and are now beyond any recognition. OK, I exaggerated, you can still recognize them but you will be baffled while doing that.

I’m not giving names, you guys know who you are. Girls too.

Since I got my ERASMUS scholarship by coming to Romania for my internship, I decided to make a good use of the money and buy myself a better laptop than my old one (Benq S32EB). My main idea was to buy a laptop which would have a Class 1 video card but still have the price below 1000Euros. After a huge amount of filtering through all the Romanian electronic shops, I decided that my only solution would be to buy a Gateway laptop which is only sold in Romania by Depozitul de Calculatoare. My relationship with them started on the wrong foot, without any of my fault.

I ordered the Gateway P-7805u FX online and then left to work. While on my way there, I got a phone call from them telling me that the laptop I had ordered was not in stock anymore. I asked the operator to e-mail me any other P-78 series Gateway laptops they have on stock so that I can decide upon one of them. She sent me an e-mail which contained links to the P-7807u FX model and the P-7809u FX, telling me that they have them on stock and they can ship it to me immediately. After realizing that the P-7809u is not worth the price, I replied with an e-mail saying that I would go with the first choice they offered me. The reply I got was crushing: “We do not have the item on stock”. This was 30 minutes after they had made me that offer. Fair enough, I said, maybe someone bought them all in 30 minutes. I sent another e-mail asking for the more expensive model and there was no answer.

Half an hour later, they called me telling me that there was a slight error and that they told me the item was not on stock because it was reserved for me. You do the math, I can’t divide by zero.

Next day, my laptop came through the courier. I was expecting the box to be bigger but anyway, it was ok. The first thing that shocked me was that inside the box there was only the laptop, the battery and the 2 chargers (European model and American). Hmm, no manuals, no anything? (Not that I need any). The second thing that shocked me were the fingerprints present on the screen. I immediately thought the laptop was already used but when I turned it on, I did get the first Windows screen you get when you get a new laptop. That being said, the whereabouts of those fingerprints will always be unknown.

The laptop behaved pretty nicely in Windows Vista but I decided to install Windows 7 because.. well, because I hate Vista and I love 7. Good enough reason, I know.

I tested the computer with the Windows Experience Index and got an overall grade of 5.8 (maximum of 7.9) because of the hdd but I was amazed by the grade I got in the 3D and game section: 6.7 ! It seems like that GF 9800M GTS does it job nicely. I also tested it on several extremely demanding games while on extremely high quality and it never even thought about not giving a good reply. I did have some problems with 1080p HD videos but I think it must have been because of the player I was using. I have to dig more into this issue.

What’s odd is that the laptop froze twice while in the browser but it didn’t show any sign of freezing into those well demanding games. This is another issue I have to look into

Overall, I am extremely satisfied by my laptop so far. I do need to buy a car now so I can carry it everywhere I like. Those 4.1 kgs it weights are a little bit too much for my back to handle. Oh, I also have to buy a new backpack, for sure.

Here is the configuration and a random pic of the laptop which I found online since I’m too lazy to take a picture of it.

17”(WXGA), Core2 Duo P8600 2.4GHz, NVIDIA GF 9800M GTS (1GB DEDICATED), 4GB DDR3, 320GB 7200RPM, SATA, DVD+/ -RW, Gigabit LAN, WIR, 1.3 MP Camera, eSATA, HDMI, DVI-D, 9CELL

As you can’t change the type of variable straight when working inside a Django template and you can only do it to the variables going TO the template, I found a stupid work around it.

Say you have variable a = ‘2′ and b = 2 and you want to compare them. The way I did it was adding the same value to both variables, thus changing the string variable into an integer by adding a filter. Might not be the best solution in the world but it worked.

Not working:
{% ifequal a b %}
HTML stuff 'round here
{% endifequal%}

Working:
{% ifequal a|add:"0" b|add:"0" %}
HTML stuff 'round here
{% endifequal %}

It does look a little bit silly but it might do the trick if you’re too lazy to change your views/models.

Salutare!

Datorită faptului că toți cei din lista mea de Yahoo! Messenger au primit un e-mail de la mine ce conținea un link și subiectul “Buna! Ce-i cu pozele astea? :-O” și am primit și reply-uri, am decis să scriu acest articol și să explic cum stă situația:

Am primit un e-mail la fel ca și voi ceilalți. Mi-am dat seama instant că expeditorul nu avea nici o treabă cu e-mailul primit și am recunoscut un tip de virus (asemănător spam-ului zilnic pe care îl primesc de la câțiva indivizi din lista de messenger). Având în vedere faptul că eram conectat la rețeaua Yahoo! cu ajutorul Trillian-ului și că folosesc un browser bunicel din punct de vedere al securității (Firefox), am considerat că ar fi interesant să dau click pe acel link, încercând să aflu metoda folosită de spammeri pentru a trimite e-mailurile respective.

Dând click pe link, Firefox-ul mi-a spus că pentru a vizualiza pagina respectivă, era nevoie de instalarea unui plugin pe care l-am refuzat. În seara aceea, am plecat către Constanța iar în seara următoare, verificându-mi contul de e-mail, am observat o sumedenie de reply-uri de la persoane aflate în lista mea de contacte care mă întrebau ce este cu e-mailul respectiv.

Recunosc că greșeala mea a fost curiozitatea de a accesa acel link și naivitatea de a crede că Firefox-ul își face datoria în a mă proteja. Îmi cer scuze pentru deranjul produs de acele e-mailuri și vă rog, nu le accesați !!!

În speranța că veți înțelege,
Victor