You can be happy too! You can start by: Connecting; Being Active; Taking Notice; Keep Learning; GIVING!
Here's an interesting video on this matter from TED: Nic Marks: The Happy Planet Index

Another year is ending but another one is beginning. Sometimes time doesn't seem to be on our side and we just can't cheat the bastard!
Nonetheless life is full of surprises plus the surprises we add our own, I think it's something worth living.
Tonight I saw a documentary that made me sad and happy at the same time. We live on a beautiful and abundant planet, but boy, do we have some work to do as a specie! Diversity is great and all but poverty and disease are not! I think we could feel rich and healthy without the poor and sick people. I has just looking out the window and for about 20 years almost nothing changed. Nothing to show live improvements. But hey, I've a phone which I talk to. That's what I call progress.
So when you got the time, I recommend you to watch Life In A Day. It's available for free on youtube and you can watch it here: [link]

Happy New Year everyone!

*Cristian

A while ago I bought a Logitech mouse M235 which had a damn noisy middle button.
But now I had a bit of time on my hands so I fixed it!
Here's a HOWTO video I published on youtube to show you how I did it: [link]
Maybe this helps other people to fix their noisy mouse!

just finished watching an old favorite movie of mine, eXistenZ... dunno how many of you have seen it but for those who didn't, I really recommend it to you!
yes, The Matrix was fantastic, but eXistenZ was... creative!
and the question still remains: are we still in the game?

WhAt dO yOU ThinK?

Today had a promising start... woke up, eat breakfast and before I started working I wanted to clean up my tool: Wired Apple Keyboard and micro$hit Mouse.
After cleaning the mouse I've noticed the cable splitting up right near the mouse exit. I've opened the mouse and inserted the cable a bit inside. Well, I thought, this should fix it!
And it did, both the keyboard and the mouse... "fixed" them for good. After the keyboard was all cleaned up, I've attached the mouse to one of the keyboard's USB and I was ready to start working. Easier said than done... Just when I was about to open up my pinned apps from the taskbar, I've noticed that I couldn't Left Click them... everything I was trying to click was Right Clicking instead... that's weird, right!? I've disconnected the mouse from the keyboard and surgery time again... now I've fixed it for sure!
Reconnecting the mouse to the keyboard I've started working... everything was working fine for about 5 mins... when all of a sudden my keyboard started going wild, pressing buttons on it's own like crazy... it's like it was haunted, but there's no poltergeist here... he's long gone! And then all the buttons start failing one by one.
Of course the micro$hit mouse was to blame (or was it me?), but what's done, it done... half the buttons on the keyboard were dead and my warranty expired 3 months ago... wonderful. Lucky me... now I had to buy a new keyboard and a new mouse... isn't that great!?
So now I'm the happy owner of a new Apple keyboard which looks the same as my old one, except for the Caps Lock LED which is more of a yellow than green, and a brand new Logitech mouse which makes a hell of a lot of noise on middle click... gonna return that tomorrow for sure!
Browsing through the electronics store, I was surprised to see lots of shitty quality keyboard like Microshit and Logitech, in the same price range as the Apple Keyboard. How the hell can you sell such shitty quality products at such steep prices!? Is this world gone insane!?
A friend of mine owns a 7 year old Logitech Keyboard and Mouse which both work perfectly and have such a quality feel that newer generation PC accessories seem to have lost.
It seems either the scarcity of the natural resources feels closer and closer to the end consumer or big companies lost their values.
What do you think?

Finally made it! Damn it's been a long time... but finally it's here!
Where and what exactly? My new Windows 7 Theme: Simplify!

Hope you like it!

... download coming in 2 days max... it's not coming out alone so I just need to make the final touches!
Stay tuned!

Progress is going really slow since I'm packed with my work projects but the theme will be done this summer!
I'm talking about Simplicity, which will be a dark bordered minimalistic theme with pixel perfect details and also usable for every user!
A few days ago I've finished the taskbar and system tray... next stop: the Start Menu.
I will post screenshots as the theme develops even further.

So stay sharp... updates are coming!

Now this was quite a ride... but now it's finally come to an end!
I'm talking of course about the Tabs Toolbar problem.

Using Windows7 Styles with 1px left/right window frames made the Tabs Toolbar (top window frame) to go blank when hovering over certain elements and when browsing certain websites.
The problem could not be fixed in the win7 Styles because they had not problem to be fixed in the first place.

Full story and Download here: [link]

I just wanna say "Screw You!" to the kind Firefox developers which so politely DIDN'T help me on this one and who don't give a hoot about themers and skinners or even addons developers.
If anyone feels offended, well... that's ok... I don't feel bad, but you should!
Show more support for the people using ur software... just because it's free, it doesn't mean it has to suck!
Same goes out for Opera devs as well... power users know what I'm talking about!

Well the interface is totally shite! a dock in the left side of the screen... what the hell were they thinking? it really counter productive... there were many many other things that gave me a damn headache. For example the damn idiots wanted to copy the OSX model and place File Edit View Help etc (the menu bar) in the application bar or how it's called which displays the Menu Bar for all apps in the same place... it's ok for maximized windows but not for regular windows which are stack on top of each other. Really a bad idea.
Don't get me started on the desktop performance... after installing my ati radeon HD3870 video card, the desktop performance was even worse even though the driver was installed correctly... again made me feel like I was testing ubuntu 8, 7, 6, etc... and had many video corruption problems like title bar disappearing on all windows, the top application bar just went crazy filled up with colored lines etc.
Mkv files played like shite as well no mater what player I used: SMplayer, VLC, the defaul Movie Player(which is the most retarded video player since the stone age... no settings what so ever!).
Playing Mp3 is really easy using Bansee but damn this software starts slow!
Finally I've managed to install WinE and seem that Photoshop CS5 portable works pretty well.
There's nothing much you can do with Ubuntu, at least not for me... as I'm an extensive user of Microshit Office 2010, specially OneNote, Word, Excel and PowerPoint... LibreOffice (ex Open Office) really can't replace M$ Office, at least not yet!
Besides Photoshop, couldn't manage to make any other Adobe products to work... that's too bad since I use most of them.
Of course you can tweet, post facebook messages and all that social networking crap in Ubuntu since you have a browser installed.
So after playing with Ubuntu for about 4 hours doing all kind of things, there wasn't much to keep me there so I've booted into good ol' Win7.
Was a joy to see the Win7 Welcome screen again... you know that saying: You can't appreciate something until you loose it... I didn't actually lost Win7 but I was damn glad to boot it again!
The Linux world should really think more about Experience Design... until something really radical changes in the way the Linux platform is going towards it will never have a chance to be the main OS for most users and fragmentation, the same problem of Android, isn't helping as well.
If you have experienced Ubuntu or would like to recommend other Linux environments, ur welcome to leave a comment!
Btw, I've also tested out Linux Mint, which seems the best linux distro out there... was a real fan of PCLinux in the past and I had many hopes regarding this distro, but it seem as years past by, the cheaper and outdated it looks. That's too bad.

You really must see this documentary called: Pyramids of Waste aka The Lightbulb Conspiracy

Youtube link: [link]

I just want to say: Damn sons of bitches! We really are tools, you know... mindless tools or as another way some one put it: monkeys with gadgets!

Just Watch the video: [link]

Make you wonder about your own happiness, doesn't it?
More about Action for Happiness: [link]

This short video (actually Derek) says it all: [link]

Does this happen to you often?
If I think about it, it happens to me much more often than I would of though.

how come people, special users of deviantArt are not coming over to artician.com?
I'm surprised because artician is basically a revamped devianArt and it's really easy to import art from your deviantArt account... can't get any simpler than that!

so what turns you off about artician.com?
what do you feel is missing?

Ask yourselves: do we really need nuclear power? And if yes, is this the right nuclear power to harness?
I think we should turn off our nuclear power plants and turn on some green power plants. Just in my country alone (Romania) there's enough hydroelectric power to fuel all Europe.
So why aren't we doing this? Or something else... something smarter. I cant really believe that using our current technology we can't create better batteries to store the electric energy.
And if we want some serious power... let's study nuclear fusion more and ways to store it as well... cause that's going to be massive... really massive!
Of course I haven't forgot about burning fossil fuel... it would be about time for us to stop "drill baby, drill"!
I know I'm dreaming of an utopia which seems out of this world but maybe... just maybe we as humans will learn to actually live and let others live too!

This is something you must see and spread around: [link]

It's well done documentary about the propaganda machine thought the world!
Makes you think twice before buying your next iCrap, doesn't it!?

What do you think? Do we deserve to inhabit this planet as a dominant specie?
Remember that the planet can live without us but we cant live without it!

come on... come on... this is just plain ridiculous! people are starving all over the world... others have no access to drinking water and these people (can I call them animals? yes I can), these animals throw money out of the window and for what? for lame, stupid, mindless mobile game? well for the gaming company... still... are you people kidding me?

Is this the society you want to live in? I know corporations are not charity organizations but come one! those corporations are run by people... sorry, animals... don't these people give a damn about others?

I know the corporation should be law (at least the dumb american law) serve its investor's interest but we have to do something about this... all out technical advances and scientific researches for this? for people playing a mindless mobile game??

people really need a reality check!! but I guess these people just like "Winning!" to paraphrase Charlie Sheen!

aDiatomea: Digitally Engineered Living Systems

aDiatomea is an artificial life system that uses various methods and notions of a-life research. The basic principle of aDiatomea is that every aspect of it is entirely mathematically generated and thus it is not created purposefully as an art piece but as a complex system that takes a life of its own. These artificial organisms are based on actual unicellular organisms known as Diatoms. These beautiful microscopic creatures are constructed using the superformula, an equation that can reproduce organic forms. Granular sound is injected in these organisms, acting as their life-force, while they interact with each other and their environment. This film shows a recording of 36 seconds of evolution, pushing the boundaries of complex computer calculations.

More information here: [link]

Yesterday I was browsing around the web to checkout if any major advances were being made on font rendering on Windows and found gdipp.
It's a small software that installs as s windows services and gives you a pretty good smoothness on your fonts in Windows. Works both on 32 and 64 bit Windows and uses FreeType as a rendering engine, the same engine that Linux distros use.
So it's a really close match to the smoothness of Linux and Mac fonts.
I was surprised to see the project highly active and they say that the next version will be a major improvement.

The project's home page can be found here: [link]
and here: [link] you can download the version that fits you better.