So, I have realised what my 5-year plan is.
1. Buy a new car. A Volvo S40 or V50. Or maybe a Subaru.
2. Settle to a country in Western Europe.
A good plan, right?
April, 2009
12
Apr 09
Save journalism!
This is a popular topic these days. Everybody seems to have an idea about it, except the newspaper managers.
One I hear on a daily basis is “newspapers need to reinvent themselves”. No, they do not. They need to look at what they are not doing anymore, but used to do 2-3-5 years ago. Reporting. Investigating. That’s it. They had it and they lost it. Now investigations are done over the internet and over the phone. Gone are the days when 2 guards were running after us for taking a picture in a forbidden place and all i could hear was my mate shouting that if i lose the camera, we are doomed. Now, these are gone. Easy news are the new “Watergate investigation”.
Don’t save journalism. Let is crush, burn and grow up again.
7
Apr 09
little hill cabin
Yesterday, while I was driving from Cluj to Debrecen, I spotted a little cabin, somehow resembling the one in the picture on the right, in a little hill village. Some windows, a little lawn, a big orchard in the back of the house. There was a banner on the cabin, saying “for rent/for sale”.
I feel bad I did not stop and ask the price. It would have been a nice place to live, i think, at least for the summer. An internet connection, a car for shopping and a lot of quiet time. Maybe a dog. And a visiting bear, sometimes.
After living for 28 years in Bucharest, one of the loudest and crowded cities I have ever known, a lot of quiet is required.
4
Apr 09
CAPSLOCK.ro has good reviews
Blog20.ro was a project i started in October 2007. Wasn’t too successful, because I was focusing on zoso.ro more. In February Bobby Voicu, freshly departed from Yahoo, took over the reins and change it to CAPSLOCK.ro.
I don’t know if it’s because of him (I have a pretty controversial/bad/ugly image in the .ro internet) or because we started writing more and better, but the project received some good reviews from the online people. And with a 500 uniques per day average, it’s a good start.
I remember meeting with Markus Okumus from Swiss Venture for the first time, and the shocked face I left him after I told him how’s the Romanian internet. Now, him and other foreign investors can google-translate CAPSLOCK and find out some things about the internet.
4
Apr 09
Vado HD is a really great camera
So, i bought a Creative Vado HD camcorder a few days ago.
I wasn’t expecting much, because I paid for it under 200€. But the thing is great. Very light, shoots 2 hours of 720p video footage, charges from USB.
Yes, the Sony TG3 i initially wanted had more features (stabilizer, 1080p, changeable storage, face recognition), but it had 2 major flaws: weighted 500g and costs 550€. If the price was not a problem, the idea of carrying a bulgy thing in my coat was not appealing. And it only could record 1 hour of footage.
I am not badmouthing Sony, but sometimes people look for the cheap and light version of a performing product. Enter pocket camcorders, pocket cameras, camera phones and such.
Here is a sample of what the Vado HD can do.