Posts Tagged ‘Bus’

Flight to Dubai via Istanbul, my Dubai first impressions and how it feels to be in Arab country

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Burj Al Arab and the 360 degree club

On Sunday I had a flight to Dubai – the the United Arab Emirates. The flight's goal is to do some business meetings with potential investors willing to invest in Cadia Holding 's Ofsshore Solutions
I'm employed as IT & Security Specialist and business consultant as well as doing the system administration for the company

The company has already scheduled a business meetings to look for new investors in order to finance the current company offered products and services as well as finance its entrance in the field of biometrics technology for the people to allow people to pay in stores with no need for plastic cards only using a finger partial imprint and a code.

The flight from Sofia to Istanbul was about 1 h and 15 minutes and it went quite smoothly thanks God. It seems Sofia's Airport has changed a lot since my last flight before more than a year and half to Dotmund Germany.
Now Sofia's airport looks way more modern than before, which means Bulgaria is slowly but surely developing it's infrastructure 😉
Sofia Airport long distance view

I used an electronic ticket for the flight which was pre-purchased by Cadia so what, all I had to do on the airport is show a copy of my e-ticket and immediately, they hand me in the fly ticket necessery to check in for the airplane

I should say the flight with Turksih airlines was really enjoyable and the plane we flight with felt much more secure compared to the WizzAir's airus.

It is true the last time I flight with with Wizzair's Airbus it was in January and the weather was quite bad as there was harsh winter with a lot of snow and this might be the reason, why my flight with them felt so shaky.

Anyways before entering the plane I had to go throught the regular security procedures, where I had to remove all kind of metals in bas, pockets etc. and go through a metal scanner, they sa an (anti terourisim) measure, besides that one of the airport security personnel checked me thoroughfully if I dont' bring any kind of objects hidden in m clothes. Generally during the check up with the metal scanner and the check up person I was treated like a criminal …
The Turkish airlines, stewardesses and the service was wonderful and we were given a not too bi but decent lunch (my first time I eat in airplane ;)).

Turkish Airlines Istanbul Airport

The flight as went smoothly and we were in Istanbul about 12:00 at midday, after coming down from the bus we were transferred with a bus from the plane like 1 or 1.5 km to Terminal 2 (the terminal of arrival scheduled).
I travelled with another colleague Krasimir, so we had to check our Tickets in the ticket office and let them issue us the flight ticket based on the e-ticket.
After a quick check of our International travelling passport, so called red passpower we were let to enter the duty free zone full of stores for food, beverages, clothes, parfumes suits cafeterias and everything, tech equipment stores, book stores, turkish ice-cream, duner kebaps and mostly any kind of shops and tings one can think of.

AtaTurk airport Istanbul picture
Ataturk Airport Istanbul

Something that catched my attention was that actually the model of how things are ordered and what they sell, the elevators the materials for building in the airport was very much like how things are in westerm country.
I thought it's a bit sad that everybody, everyone is following a modern design and a specific kind of order of things literally followed after the way things are in the western world. This somehow kills partially the uniqueiness of the country's culture and gives it a taste of the west, where the original culture and traditions the country possess somehow stay in the background.

What made me a bad impression on the airport is the too high prices of food and drinks. I just took one coffee (cappucino) and it costed me the solid sum 5 EUR!!
I was even fooled by the Turkish guy as if converted the coffee price from Turkish currency (Liras), when I calculated the price of the coffee was actually about 4 euro.

I've also spotted that in Turkey they're big nationalists. I've been told by Krasi the airport of Istanbul is called Ataturk and it appears this is the biggest airport in all Turkey. I've noticed in the bookstores we went through many many books even in English talking about the greatness of Turkey's first president Ataturk. There is no doubt that Ataturk has done a lot for internationalizing Turkey, it seems in Turkey they consider Ataturk as a national hero, but in my view it is a bit too much, somehow it looked like Ataturk's great respect in Turkey is comparable to the Chineese's love for Mao Dun ….

We had to spend some 4 hours with Krasi before the time for the second fly comes, so we had 4 hours to take a general look over everything offered in stores on the airport to kill some time

I was quite amazed to see so big variety products and goods on the same place, there was basicly everything one needs except furniture offered ont he airport.
The bookstores English books was reallya lot, where I should say it was quite good that about 40% of the books to be sold, were in English (quite odd especially if I take in consideration that most of the Turkish people I know couldn't speak too good English).

The flight to Dubai was scheduled for 16:45 in the afternoon, so 40 minutes earlier I and Krasi went again through the metal scanner again and thanksfully this time we were not searched for guns and bombs by airport police.
 

Emirates Company Logo

The airplane, we flied with was Boeing 777 – really a beatiful flying machine. We were lucky to travel with two other Bulgarians Nikolay and Gergana, who were flying to Chennai India for some kind of personnel training of some company personnel for the company http://Yazaki.com (an international company producing vehicles components) .

Emirates Boeing 777 nice airplane

Emirates airlines's organization service and convenience was really incredible! Emirates has done a great, job really. I had a lot of fun in the airplane in the flight, as they had every passenger sit with a touch screen display computer with a joystick similar to the ones with playstation.
< img src="https://www.pc-freak.net/images/emirates_passenger_personal_touchscreen_computer_Boening_777.jpg" alt="Emirates Boeng 777 Passenger personal computer touch screen device" />
A Boeng 777 Passenger seat view , the passenger touch screen device mounted on seats back

The little touch screen computer had a number of capabilities the passenger could watch a movie, get information about Dubai play his favourite old fashioned games like Pong, Asteroids, Galaga like, Checss, Arkanoid and like 10 outhers of classic games I know from my childhood.
Besides that the passenger's flight personal computer was equipped was even capable to make satellite phone calls chargable directly from VISA or Mastercard Debit or Credit card. The telephone was embedded with the joystick, so on the back of the control device joystick one has the satellite phone, the phone had the capability to call passengers who are inside the plane. To call another traveller inside the airplane you just need to have the passenger seat number.
As a computer security hobbyist, I've noticed one major problem with the phone calls in between airplane travelling passengers.
By default each sit's phone was sett upped to automatically answer phone calls from other passengers, Which means that if I'm a malicious abuser I can easily just call random people in the airplane and do social engineering pretending to be the plane Commander, stewardess or any other personal from the plane crew 😉
On the other hand calling random people, by getting advantage of how the system "hole", could easily give you the opportunity to make yourself random friends or share contacts with people from around the world 😉

Another handy thing about the onboard touch screen computer, I've noticed is the possibility to listen music from a list of a huge database with music. Also a huge database like (300+) movies ready to be seen was available, as well as some serials and some popular podcasts as well as the device even supported e-mail check and some basic internet functionalities (which unfortunately had to be used only after payment with a debit or credit card :|).

Emirates Passenger personal computer touch screen incredible device
Emirates / Skywards Passenger personal computer touch screen device

In the middle of the 4 hours and 15 minutes flight, we were handed in a good portions of dinner meals, which obviously was properly selected to be suitable to be easily digestable and vitaminous food. Also alcohol arabian Coca-Cola, Coffe and tea was offered.

Before the meals was handed in by the few stewards in the airplane, each passenger was handed with a (hot) towel, to carefully clear his hand or face!

Many of the Arabs used the towels to wipe their face sweat, where europeans tended to clean up their hands (probably shows something about the each about arabian and european habits and culture?).

Dubai side view from the airplane before the landing was really amazing, I've never seen so much light concentrated on one place never ever in my life, landing went pretty smoothly thanks God, though it felt a bit more risky than the landing done by the Turkish airlines, pilots.
Maybe there is difference in the landing because it was done during night time and probably landings in night time a way difficult task for the pilot.

Just like in Istanbul, after going down from the plane, via the plane step-ladder we were transported to the Airport with Buses (I was told by Krasimir that, the bus transportation is used becuase, it's a way cheaper than using the equipment for "hot tie" to connect the plane with the terminal via "tuble".
Also maybe its difficult in terms of parking the airplane as the airplane has to drive like 1.5, 2km and park this is an astonishing amount of petrol plane fuel 😉

Anyways just to sum-up my first flight with Emirates/Skywards it was more than enjoyable and nice, everything from the plane take off through the overall airplane experience to landing felt like a veery well crafted, organized and stricktly managed process. It felt like verything happening is perfectly tuned, again really nice feeling 😉
Interestingly inside th airplaine they had a stewardesses which were either Malaysian or Indonesian. The reason for tat was probably because Arabs are crazy about chineese and the variations of yellow races as I've heard from Baky (an Egyptian) as well as from some few Egyptian colleagues I had.

After we went down from the bus transporting us to Dubai's terminal arrival terminal 3, which I think is the only terminal dedicated for visitors in Dubai, we couldn't freely anter Dubai, but we were supposed to go through a biometric security measure the airport here implemented few years ago an Eye Scan .

Dubai Airport Arrival in United Arab Emirates - Airport Terminal 3

The organization on the airport and the information that we were supposed to have the eye scan in order to enter Anyways after some questioning near few of the airport desks and offices, we found or way to the device place where the eye scans took place.

The eye scan process is quick and not that scary as it sounds, they ask you sit on a chair cover left eye, then cover right eye and open the eye widely to make a picture of the iris, then based on some algorthim for interpreting the data and through a complex IT develoepd system a check is done against a database of well known criminals and if no match is found you're given a seal which lets you in Dubai.

The only concern, I have is once they took your eyescan they have this information stored so basicly they have your biometric data and if the information is stolen or send to third parties you can never know, but that's how it goes you know it's life, if you don't do the eye scan you can't go in.
You don't have the option to just choose if you want to have the eye scan or not … My company boss tried to cheat them and walk through inside Dubai without ahe eye scan as he said he went through the eye scan so man times, but still he was obliged to go through the eye scan in order to be let in the city.

After the eye scan on the airport, we had to line up on a long line with arriving people waiting for being let in Dubai, show the copy of the visa with the eye scan seal to airport police officer. He checks the seal the visa, the international passport and then one is asked to stay in front of another camera snd they take a picture of him, once again a security measure …
This is just crazy, I understand that security is important but the measures implemented today on airports are inhuman and even abusive, not to mention they break any privacy one can have in today's world … I'm even scared to think about how a security check on an airport will look like 20 years from now.
Anyways after all the aforementioend checks we were FINALLY allowed to enter Dubai, what first striked me was the size of the buildings, its the first time in my life I've seen a buildings of this amazing size, just incredible!
Also all the buildings are all in color lights and are flashing like spaceships, probably requirement to make sure no airplane tries to land over some of the buildings at night time 😉

Roland, a part time tech consultant for Cadia Holding and a colleague, took us up from the airport and drove us to the hire apartment in Jumeirah Beach, Rimal 6 – ap. number 53, where we're currently settled.

Jumeirah Beach Residence Rimal
Jumeira Beach Rimal buildings

I'm very thankful Roland was there otherwise if we were supposed o pick up a taxi, they would have charged us at least 80, 90 EUR! for bringing us to the apartment.
The prices of transportation here and in general prices are a killing onse. I guess this is pretty normal especially if you consider the countless amount of money invested in Dubai.
Honestly Dubai looks like a paradise on earth, everything is amazingly well organized, as well the technology involved everywhere is on a perfect and a better level than almost everything, I've seen in Holland, Germany and probably almost every other of the Western Europe countries.

Something strange that took my attention here was that in every big mall or big store, they have a special prayer room, which are suited for pracicing muslims to do they're 5 times daily prayers 😉
Here in Dubai I was shocked to see many of the native arabic ladies to be completely wrapped up inside mostly black dresses, where the man were often dressed in a complete dress without a zipper called thobes as well as a sort of a hat like long veil very similar to our orthodox christian priest monks viels.

Dubai man with Thobes in order smiling ;) Dubai man with Thobes lined in order smiling

The veil like dresshing the man wears has a ring on top of the head which has some kind of muslim symbolism probably I'm not aware of. An interesting thing, I've found out here is that this veil for the hat has colors, if it's red this means it's Saudi Arabia a white one means usually the man is from Dubai and the nearby regions o something like that.

When we went out of the airport here the temperature difference was killing it was like 35 Celsium degrees at 21:00 o'clock night time!!

I'm actually lucky to come here in Autumn, temperatures on Autumn are acceptable at night it's like 20-25C and in day usually 35-40C.

The private apartment, where we're accommodated is amazing, it's big like a place, it has everything a flat TV, wireless internet, 2 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms etc.
To enter the buillding one needs to use his special ID card which is secured by a bar code, which has to be tagged on a bar code reader on the building entrance door.
Dubai itself seems more international at times, even than Western europe, you can see everything in Both English and Araabic, so you can understand basicly everything. Everyone speaks from the lowest employee to the office workers an acceptable English and thus communication is not a constraint like in Holland, where many people speak English which is too much influenced by German and german lingual structure.

I'm very thankful to God for blessing me to come to this nice place, now I'm laing over a nice coach and blogging.
By so far, I've seen two of the biggest Dubai Malls and some general architecture, all is collosal in size and reall amazingly built. I've heard from people quality of buildings is not that good as everything is being built in too short time and with cheap materials and by Indian labours who earn like 5 dollars a day. I'm not sure though how truthful is this as I think the quality of the apartment, we're accommodated is great.

Each room is equipped with a Clima, so the temperature inside is steady 22- 24C degrees. The body shock when you go out hence is really severe as usually there is like 10 or 15C degrees difference in temmperature.
Climas are, good but they create too much noise at night it's a bit noisy, but maybe with time one can get used to it.
The cars I saw here in Dubai are amazing, all the cards are really really expensive maybe the cheapeast car in Dubai worths no less than 10 000 o 20 000 EUR.
Euro, Dollars and the official UAE currency dirham are accepted everywhere in shopping malls and food stores and this is really nice.
The taxi drivers charge normal prices here, I was out with Jure and we took taxi few times and each time for like 5-7 km distance, the taxi charged approximately 30 AED per drive.
Random Taxi in Dubai

The Taxis are all luxurious cars with a (airconditioners) climas, it seems they have a metro already operating here as well as comperativfe cheap transportation with buses, but I'm not sure if something could be really cheap here 😉
Everywhere I went here I can notice something really beautiful in terms of either mostly modern design with arabic elemnts or technology. The elevators here are really quick. To go to the last stage of the 36 stages building here in Dubai it tooks the elevator no more than 1 minute 😉
The food here in Dubai seems decent, though its not that good like naturally grownned products or a chicken or cow who was rised in a private farm.
Anyways the food here in United Arab Emirates seems to be way better than the food in Holland and Germany, where it is a bit like plastic.
I don't know if its because of the Sun excessive warmth, God's grace to me or what but I should mark, here in Dubai and maybe in rest of UAE one feels warmer than in Western Europe.

People don't smile too much here especially the people who work on the lower levels of job, clear indicator that they don't earn good money.
I like that they don't smile too much as this reminds me in Bulgaria, where you can see sour faces a way more often than a smiled one.
Here people look a bit less soury than in Bulgaria.

I will be in Dubai 6 more days, so I'll have a clearer picture in my head about the place after some few days. Nevertheless from what I've seen so far, I'm really very amazed and very thankful to God to leeting me see all this new interesting things and culture.
I should take the time to find and take a look in the more traditional places here. Pitily globalization is seriously destroing the local people culture here, and you can't feel the real culture besides the arabic kind of dress, the mosques , prayer rooms and some entwisted muslim architecture with the modernistic buildings.
It will be very nice to see some real camels, elephants or some typically arabic kind of things 😉

Summing it up, the overall atmosphere here, the organzation of thingsm the business climate and infrastructure is something we europeans should learn from.

30 years anniversary of the first mass produced portable computer COMPAQ Grid Compass 1011

Thursday, July 19th, 2012

Grid Notebook Big screen logo

Today it is considered the modern laptop (portable computers) are turning 30 years old. The notebook grandparent is a COMPAQGRiD Compass 1011 – a “mobile computer” with a electroluminescent display (ELD) screen supporting resolution of 320×240 pixels. The screen allowed the user to use the computer console in a text resolution of 80×24 chars. This portable high-tech gadget was equipped with magnesium alloy case, an Inten 8086 CPU (XT processor) at 8Mhz (like my old desktop pravetz pc 😉 ), 340 kilobyte (internal non-removable magnetic bubble memory and even a 1,200 bit/s modem!

COMPAQ Grid Compass considered first laptop / notebook on earthy 30 anniversary of the portable computer

The machine was uniquely compatible for its time as one could easily attach devices such as floppy 5.25 inch drives and external (10 Meg) hard disk via IEEE-488 I/O compatible protocol called GPiB (General Purpose instrumental Bus).

First mass prdocued portable computer laptop grid COMPAQ 11011 back side input peripherals

The laptop had also unique small weight of only 5 kg and a rechargable batteries with a power unit (like modern laptops) connectable to a normal (110/220 V) room plug.

First notebook in World ever the COMPAQ grid Compass 1101,br />
The machine was bundled with an own specificly written OS GRiD-OS. GRID-OS could only run a specialized software so this made the application available a bit limited.
Shortly after market introduction because of the incompitablity of GRID-OS, grid was shipped with MS-DOS v. 2.0.
This primitive laptop computer was developed for serve mainly the needs of business users and military purposes (NASA, U.S. military) etc.

GRID was even used on Space Shuttles during 1980 – 1990s.
The price of the machine in April 1982 when GriD Compass was introduced was the shockingly high – $8150 dollars.

The machine hardware design is quite elegant as you can see on below pic:

 COMPAQ grid laptop 1101 bubbles internal memory

As a computer history geek, I’ve researched further on GRID Compass and found a nice 1:30 hour video telling in detailed presentation retelling the history.

Shortly after COMPAQ’s Grid Compass 1011’s introduction, many other companies started producing similar sized computers; one example for this was the Epson HX-20 notebook. 30 years later, probably around 70% of citizens on the globe owns a laptop or some kind of portable computer device (smartphone, tablet, ultra-book etc.).

Most of computer users owning a desktop nowdays, owns a laptop too for mobility reasons. Interestengly even 30 years later the laptop as we know it is still in a shape (form) very similar to its original predecessor. Today the notebook sales are starting to be overshadowed by tablets and ultra-books (for second quarter laptop sales raised 5% but if compared with 2011, the sales rise is lesser 1.8% – according to data provided by Digital Research agency). There are estimations done by (Forrester Research) pointing until the end of year 2015, sales of notebook substitute portable devices will exceed the overall sales of notebooks. It is manifested today the market dynamics are changing in favour of tabets and the so called next generation laptopsULTRA-BOOKS. It is a mass hype and a marketing lie that Ultra-Books are somehow different from laptops. The difference between a classical laptop and Ultra-Books is the thinner size, less weight and often longer battery use time. Actually Ultra-Books are copying the design concept of Mac MacBook Air trying to resell under a lound name.
Even if in future Ipads, Android tablets, Ultra-Books or whatever kind of mambo-jambo portable devices flood the market, laptops will still be heavily used in future by programmers, office workers, company employees and any person who is in need to do a lot of regular text editting, email use and work with corporative apps. Hence we will see a COMPAC Grid Compass 1011 notebook likes to be dominant until end of the decade.

My First hitch-hiking experience – travel notes on a hitch hiker trip from Dobrich to Pomorie Monastery

Monday, July 2nd, 2012

My first hitch hiking experience travel notes of a hitch hiker Dobrich Varna Pomorie Monastery

I've been 28 years old and for good or bad never travelled hitch hiking. Today however with a friend of mine Kimba thx God I lived to experience what it is like to stay on the road "begging" people to take you on their way to somewhere.

I always wanted to hitch-hike as a youngster but my restrictive controlling parents was too vigilant not to let me have my personal freedom and try hitch hiking. Now as I've grown "old" I have the freedom to do it and I'm glad I could. For sure it is better to do something you always wanted later than never 🙂

We took the "STOP" from a place few meters away from the "scratching sign" indicating the end of Dobrich city area – located about 4 / 5 km from Dobrich center. To come to the well known hitch-hiker's place (which my friend Kimba) knew pretty well since he travelled probably more than 20 times hitch-hiking.

To reach the hitch-hiker place we walked about 1 hour which in the early morning (07:50 to 09:00) came to be quite refreshing.
About 09:00 we started doing the well know hitch hiker gesture to beg traveller to take us 🙂

It felt quite unconfortable and a bit like begging to be on the road waiting for somebody to pick you up on the other hand it felt very challenging as it seemed to be a good "exercice" to raise up self-confidence. We were lucky and we didn't met any drivers to mock us with gestures or car beep. Besides that we only had to wait less than 20 minutes (probably 18 mins) until a car stop and ask her for our direction.
The driver seemed had to travel close to Aksakovo (a small village like town 1 km far from beginning of Varna and just few km away from the city center).

He pick us up and as we go he happened to be a familiar person which I've seen many times in the (International College Albena) where I previously studied.
The guy happened to be a merried for the librarian of the college. We had a nice chat in his car about Bulgaria before in communism and now and who is doing what (which I guess is quite normal) for hitch-hikers. As he drived a very funny scene appeared as we saw a donkey leading a cart full of wood running on the road. Now you might wonder what would be funny of a rural donkey with a cart full of wood, well the cart didn't have any person leading it. It seemed the donkey run away scared by a truck or a noise so the person leading the cart either fall somewhere on the road or the donkey had untight itself and took the direction to its home place 🙂

… Our hitch-hiking plan was to travel from Dobrich to Varna (if possible or the closest village or suburb), then we aimed to take a bus from Varna or somewhere nearby to the city center and from the city center to Travel to the so called (Asparuh's bridge / (Asparuhovia Most) – which is a common hitch-hike waiting and pick-up destination).

As we were left in Aksakovo by the driver, we were lucky to have a close bus stop near us. We went to the bus stop and we only had to wait about 8 minutes until the next bus driving to Varna city center arrived. We pick up a bus number 207 and travelled 'safely' to the city center (on the price of 1 lv per ticket). So our overall travelling for both of us instead of 10 lv (5 lv per person bus tick) costed only 2 lv 🙂 Along with the low price for travelling the hitch-hiking was also very healthy as we had a long walk to the place to depart from and after that had a small walk to pick up the bus to Varna. We made a mistake to not go out of the 207 bus near Varna city center Cathedral but two stops earlier, so we also had a small 15 minutes walking to the Cathedral. As we were not sure which bus we need to take to go to Asparuhov's bridge, we asked few people on the city center. We were told we need to pick bus number 2 or 17 (IIRC).

Eventually as we're waiting near the bus station where the bus-es leading to Asparuhovo stopped, we came to meet a taxi driver driving people to Asparuhovo on the price of a bus ticket (1 lv). In 5 minutes time, again obviously by God's might intervention the driver was able to collect 2 more people so he offered that we all immediately travel. The taxi-st left us on a place a bit after Asparuhovo's bridge which was the common place for hitch-hikers. We had to climb a little hill like place and walk a bit on the highway on (the car damage and wreck area). Very near us was a police car waiting to catch violators of speed limits. I didn't know about this very moment that Hitch-Hiking in Bulgaria is considered illegal!, happily I found this sad fact not by the police man but from Kliment (Kimba). The policeman did not stop us as we found a way to walk through a place which is bit far from them. Kimba choose a place and we started doing the hitch-hiker "PLEASE STOP AND TAKE US" gesture once again (actually the as Kimba was a professional in hitch-hiking he was mostly doing the hitch-hike sign.

There we had to wait about 40 minutes or so until, a good man with a small bus carrying some paper palettes stop and took us.
Thanks God he had to travel to Jambol to deliver the palettes so his travel route passed by near Bourgas (and respectively Pomorie). We had a an intimaditing chat with the person by which I found out he seem to be having many money issues and a lot of debts (just like many of the people in BG nowdays). Unfortunately he shared that just like a lot of us the common people in Bulgaria he is underpaid and often even though he works extra in Saturdays and Sundays it is almost impossible for him to pay his rent, food and family expenss …..

As the conversation progressed, he asked us where are we going if we're going to find a work and I told him we're going to be guests and pilgrims to Pomorie Monastery and in the mean time help the monks if there is work to be done….

It was a pleasure for me to meet such an honest bulgarian middle aged man, which also was good enough to pick us up. The time passed quite quickly as we shared some of common living joys and griefs. The bus quickly approached pomorie so we left us and we split. As I was thankful to the guy and felt pity for his bad life misfortunes and I wished in my mind that God bless, help him and return him for the good deed he done to pick us up.

We were now only 2 km from Pomorie entrance so to the monastery we had to walk only about 4 or 5 more kilometers. On the gas (oil) station, where we were left a fun story happaned as the computers counting the gasoline stopped working. People who filled the car tanks with Gasoline had to wait until someone comes and fixes the computer, neither nobody can purchase anything from the station (a snacks, a coffee, even a bottle of water) was impossible to buy. We stayed on this little station (Petrol) located just 2 km from Pomorie for 20 or 25 minutes and in this time this people who couldn't pay for the gasoline had to just hang up there loosing their time waiting for someone to fix the BUGGED PC ,,,

This scene has once again confirmed my theory that computerization is not always necessery a good think and the over-computerization of everything as the trend is nowdays could create a lot of time lags in many places and often create a great havoc if systems somehow reject working as planned ….

Anyways to be sure which way to walk to Pomorie Monastery we had to consult few local people. Nicely the road leading to Pomoriiski Manastir was easy we just had to walk straight and then turn right. Actually the monastery bell tower is visible on the way so it is not likely that anyone walking straight will not notice the tower which is taller than other one or two stage housed highed buildings.

We came to the monastery and by Gods grace as we asked previously the abbot for a blessing to come to the monastery, they were expecting us.
Immediately one of the persons serving in the monastery gave us a room. I asked for the abbot and we found him in his Abbot place and gave us a blessing. That's the over of my first and hopefully not last great hitch-hiking adventere. The moral from my trip is:
 

To sum it up, if you never tried stopping on a highway give it a try! 🙂

  • hitch-hiking is a great must experience in a life-time thing;
  • Obviously we were lucky and it is always a great think to travel with an Abbot blessing
  • Hitch-hiking in Bulgaria is illegal, so there is thrill in doing it 🙂
  • hitch-hiking could be a very healthy initiative
  • Hitch-hiking is a great raise up and experience new random people self-confidence exercise 🙂

SWITCH OFF your Mobile Phone and TV at night to save energy!!!

Thursday, June 7th, 2012

TURN OFF YOUR MOBILE PHONE AT NIGHT to SAVE ENERGY and MONEY

We’re constantly being said to reduce energy consupmtion, they sell us new bulbs to save energy, new TVs with energy saving. The newer the computer equipment microwaves or whatever home electrical equipment we buy the more it is said to be saving energy.

So far so good it is true we can reduce energy consumption by producing gadgets which consume less. However there are also another approach to the “green problem” which we never are said about.

It is rather simply instead of saving energy on technology base, we can save energy on physical base. One simple thing to do to save energy with no need to spend money on latest advacement gadgets is to simply make it the old school way.

a -= Learn to switch off your lamps and home equipment whenever its not necessery

If you’re about to go to sleep, you can simply switch off the mobile and use a mechanical clock to wake you up on the morning, this way you have 3 benefits.

1; Less energy will be discharged by the mobile in the time you’re not awake, so you don’t need to charge so frequently the battery and therefore you will draw less energy from the Electrical network hence saving energy.

2; You will not be radiated with a bit less radiation produced by the Mobile phone in order to stay connected to the GSM local located cell.

Though the good this does will not be dramatical it for sure will be better for your health than if the mobile is switched on the whole night.

3; You will not be awakened in morning by some crazy person who just decided to call you early in the morning.
Often this morning unexpected and desired phone calls make you jump off the bed rapidly and hence giving a large dose of stress to your organizm.

-=- Of course switching off the mobile has some disadvantages if you can receive a crucial phone calls during all time of day or night you can’t afford to simply switch off the mobile, this is however not true for most people who work in an OFF-ICE.People working in offices can simply wake up at a scheduled time, get a shower do their morning hygiene and jump to a car or bus to the office so the need for having the mobile switched ON at night is not really needed.

Of course thinking in the same direction, it is logical that switching off the computer earlier when not needed, the wireless home router or the TV is another place from where a huge energy savings can be achieved.

If large amount of people re-learn their energy in-efficient habits to be more energy cautios a HUGE amounts of energy can be saved. This of course can have a positive impact on the monthly energy bills and hence can save you money in monthly expenses.

The TV is surely another big energy draining source, many people have the habit to sleep with a Television switched on. Besides this has a negative impact on the conscious since vast amounts of information are being stored and processed by the conscious and unconscious mind, also the lights emitted from the TV screen prevents the persons body to not have a pieceful rest.

Its rather stupid that companies are constantly ranting on how they improve their products to be energy friendly but they don’t invest even a penny to educate the masses that energy saving does not only depend on how good the technology is produced to save energy but also on how much the people are educated how to use the technology with energy saving in mind.Probably there are plenty of other ways a households can change their habits to save energy. I’ll be glad to hear some other suggestions ,,,

Thanks to God I’m in Arnhem the Netherlands! :)

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

I had 3 days trip with bus with my girl classmate (Ina). We traveled using the union-ivkoni bus lines. As a wholebeing on the road with bus for 3 days in order to reach some destination is pretty killing. We started the historicaltravel from Kavarna to Sofia and then at 2 o’clock we catched the bus Sofia -> Utrecht. There was big delays in the Serbianand the Hungarian borders. On all the other boarders we and our luggage weren’t checked. We had a bunch of stops on a oil stations.And I have to note everything in the oil stations in europe is pretty expensive. For example one sanwdich costs somwehere aroundalmost 4EU!. I and Ina came at Utrecht at around 6 o’clock and went to the Utrecht’s train station where we took two tickets to Arnhem.At 7 we were at Arnhem and went to the bus station. Originally we expected that there are gonna be welcoming students there and HAN university buses traveling from there to Vivare and the other accommodation places, unfortunately this was not the case. We were absolutely alone at an unknown country again I prayed to God in Jesus name to help me find a way to fix this mess. I went to search for Mobile SIM card, at the end after 20 minutes of walk I asked a police officer near the train station and he told me about a bookstore where I can find mobile SIM cards. I took two of them one for Ina and one for me. I took the T-Mobile mobile. I heard that the prices of conversations between the Bulgarian GSM operator Globul and T-Mobile are cheaper so I decided to give it a try. We called Koko (A College Colleague, who is gonna study HRQM just like me and is going to continue as a 3rd year student in Arnhem Business School, he came instantly in 20 minutes or so with another Bulgarian guy who already studied a year in Arnhem (Drago). Drago didn’t helped much with the traveling bags. But Kaloyan helped a lot. Today I feel the grace of God so real. I pray that he keep me and guide me in the same way in the future too. Another thing to note is that the living room that Vivare selected for me or should I say God make it be for me is just perfect. It has a toilet (!big plus!, a terrace, аsink, a nice bed, A Buro, a lamp and a chair. The room number is with ID K. 111. I think 111 stays for the Holy Trinity (The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit) to Whom is and be the Glory the worship and power now and Forever and Ever, Amen!) I forgot to mention that I blocked my mobile telephone while trying to make the T-mobile SIM card work with my Motorola C115, luckily God has thought for this too. It seems Koko has one Mobile apartus he didn’t need right now so he gave it on a good will to me. Again what I can say Our Lord is an awesome God. Now I’m pretty tired and I’m going to bed. I have to mention Arnhem is excitingly charmful city and I really like it, also I’m impressed by the Dutch guys with which I had any work until now.Well for final I can only say: ” I screamed to the Lord and he heard my prayer and delivered me from evil”! Glory to you Lord of Hosts! Amen !END—–

How to install Samsung ML-2010 (ML-2010P) Mono Laser Printer on Xubuntu GNU/Linux

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

I had to make one old Samsung ML-2010P Laser Printer work on Xubuntu Linux . I've had some issues in installing it, I couldn't fine any step by step tutorial online, on how the printer can be made work fine on Linux. Therefore I took the time to experiment and see if I could make it work. Since the printer is old, not much people are interested any more in making the printer operational on Linux, hence I couldn't find too much relevant posts and sites on the net, anyways thanks God after a bit of pondering I finally succeeded to make the Samsung ML-2010P printer to print on Linux.This are the exact steps one has to follow to make this old bunch of hardware to play nice on Linux:

1. use lsusb to list the printer model

root@linux:~# lsusb |grep -i samsung
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04e8:326c Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd ML-2010P Mono Laser Printer

You see the printer reports as Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd ML-2010P Mono Laser Printer

2. Install cups printing service required packages

root@linux:~# apt-get install cups cups-bsd cups-client cups-common
root@linux:~# apt-get install cups-driver-gutenprint ghostscript-cups
root@linux:~# apt-get install python-cups python-cupshelpers

3. Install foomatic packages

root@linux:~# apt-get install foomatic-db foomatic-db-engine foomatic-db-gutenprint
root@linux:~# apt-get install foomatic-filters python-foomatic

4. Install hpijs hplip printconfand other packages necesssery for proper printer operation

root@linux:~# apt-get install hpijs hplip hplip-data ijsgutenprint
root@linux:~# apt-get install min12xxw openprinting-pdds printconf foo2zjs

P.S. Some of the packages I list might already have been installed as a dependency to another package, as I'm writting this article few days after I've succeeded installing the printer, I don't remember the exact install order.

5. Install splix (SPL Driver for Unix)

Here is a quote taken from Spix's project website:

"SpliX is a set of CUPS printer drivers for SPL (Samsung Printer Language) printers.
If you have a such printer, you need to download and use SpliX. Moreover you will find documentation about this proprietary language.
"

root@linux:~# apt-get install splix

For more information on splix, check on Splix SPL driver for UNIX website http://splix.ap2c.org/

You can check on the projects website the Samsung ML 2010 Printer is marked as Working
Next step is to configure the Printer

6. Go to Cups interface on localhost in browser and Add the Samsung printer.

Use Firefox, SeaMonkey or any browser of choice to configure CUPS:

Type in the browser:

http://localhost:631

Next a password prompt will appear asking for a user/pass. The user/pass you have to use is the same as the password of the user account you're logged on with.

UNIX Linux Administration CUPS Printer adding Samsung ML 2010 ML-2010P Xubuntu

Click on the Add Printer button and choose to add the Samsung ML-2010.

Then restart the CUP Service (cupsd) to make it load the new settings:

root@linux:~# /etc/init.d/cups restart

Now give the printer a try in printing some page in SeaMonkey, Chrome or Firefox (the quickest way is through pressing CTRL + P )

Following this steps, I've managed to run the printer on Xubuntu Linux, though the same steps if followed should most probably make the Samsnung ML 2010 play nice with other Linux distributions with a little or no adjustments.
I'll be glad to hear if someone succeeded in making the printer work on other distributions, if so please drop me a comment.
That's all folks! Enjoy printing 😉