If you happen to be running Mac OS X powered notebook and have recently installed Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac OS because you used to migrate from a Windows PC, you will probably suprrised that your Native Language Dictionary check you used heavily on Windows might be not performing on Mac. This was exactly the case with my wife Svetlana and as she is not a computer expert and I'm the IT support at home I had to solve it somehow.
Luckily Office 2011 for Mac OS X which I have installed earlier comes with plenty of foreign-languages such as Russian, Bulgarian, Czech, French, German, UK English, US English etc. Proofing tools is very handy especially for people like my wife who is natively Belarusian and is in process of learning Bulgarian, thus often in need to check Bulgarian words spelling.
By Default the Check spelling on Office package was set to English, there is a quick way to change this to a certain text without changing the check-spelling default from English, the key shortcut to use is:
I. Press Mac command (key) + A – To select All text in opened document (in our case text was in Bulgarian)
Click Word window menu and:
Choose Tools→Language
and select Bulgarian (or whatever language you need check spelling for.
If you need to change the Language default for all time, again you can do it from Tools
Tools→Language
II. The Language dialog will appear and you'll see a list of languages to choose.
III. Next a Pop-up Dialog will ask you whether you're sure you want to change the default language to the language of choice in my case this was Russian.
That's it check spelling default will be aplpied now to Word normal template, so next time you open a document your default spelling choice will set
It seems we lost our Good high quality Digital Camera somewhere and I was in need urgently to make a good quality photo (my ZTE Phone) has a very bad camera, so I got the idea to use Macbookair's camera as it has better resolution to picture my present a Tank Tort 🙂 hand made by my wife as a present for the Day of the Defender of the Fatherland which is a major feast in Russia, Belarus and many of the ex-Soviet Union members communist countries.
Actually using build in camare in MacBookAir is a handy thing for people mising at the moment a good high quality digital camera as it is thin and light and build in MacBook cam can be used to make Videos and Pictures exactly the same way as an ordinary Tablet Computer is used so commonly nowadays by many:
In other words I needed for the Mac OS X equivalent to Cheese's (Photo and Video) capturer program for Linux.
Luckily for people interested in using their Mac OS notebook as a amateur camera this is easy by using default shipped Mac Application called:
Photo Booth app
To Launch Photo Booth app it just look it up in Finder and double click it:
Clicking the large red button underneath the preview area will take a picture after an optional countdown.
Besides being able to capture Video and Pictures from Mac's camera it could add also some nice effects to taken pictures and videos (supports a basic video editing) features and effects.
The effects you can choose are are: Sepia, Black and White, Glow, Comic Book, Normal, Colored Pencil, Thermal Camera, X-Ray, and Pop Art. There are also effects that change the person in the picture using these effects: Bulge, Dent, Twirl, Squeeze, Mirror, Light Tunnel, Fish Eye, and Stretch. Actually photographic filters of Photo Booth are very similar to Adobe Photoshop.
By default Photo Booth will create picture, howver
Photo Booth saves your photos as JPEG files in a folder named Photo Booth, located in your home folder.
Choose File > Reveal in Finder
to see your picture files.
A much better way to be able to easily see and access all taken Pictures and Videos with Photo Booth is to
openTerminal
and type:
——-
$ cd Pictures $ ln -s Photo\ Booth\ Library/Pictures/ PhotoBoothPics
This will make Link to pictures be easily accessible from your Finder -> Pictures folder
Applying custom photo backgrounds
A very useful feature of Photo Booth is that the user can apply backdrops to provide an effect similar to a green screen. When a backdrop is selected, a message appears telling the user to step away from the camera. Once the background is analyzed, the user steps back in front of the camera and is shown in front of the chosen backdrop.
I'm forced to use Windows on my workbook and I found it really irritating, that I can't easily share files in a DropBox, Google Drive, MS OneDrive, Amazon Storage or other cloud-storage free remote service. etc. I don't want to use DropBox like non self-hosted Data storage because I want to keep my data private and therefore the only and best option for me was to make possible share my Linux harddisk storage dir remotely to the Windows notebook.
I didn't wanted to setup some complex environment such asSamba Share Server (which used to be often a common option to share file from Linux server to Windows), neither wanted to bother with installing FTP service and bother with FTP clients, or configuring some other complex stuff such as WebDav – which BTW is an accepted and heavily used solution across corporate clients to access read / write files on a remote Linux servers. Hence, I made a quick researchwhat else besides could be used to easily share files and data from Windows PC / notebook to a home brew or professional hosting Linux server.
It turned out, there are few of softwares that gives a similar possibility for a home lan small network Linux / Windows hybrid network users such, here is few of the many:
SyncThing – Syncthing is an open-source file synchronization client/server application, written in Go, implementing its own, equally free Block Exchange Protocol. The source code's content-management repository is hosted on GitHub
OwnCloud – ownCloud provides universal access to your files via the web, your computer or your mobile devices
Seafile – Seafile is a file hosting software system. Files are stored on a central server and can be synchronized with personal computers and mobile devices via the Seafile client. Files can also be accessed via the server's web interface
I've checked all of them and give a quick try ofSyncthingwhich is really easy to start, just download the binary launch it and configure it under https://Localhost:8385 URL from a browser on the Linux server. Syncthing seemed to be nice and easy to configure solution to be able to Sync files between Server A (Windows) and Server B(Linux) and guess many would enjoy it, if you want to give it a try you can follow this short install syncthing article. However what I didsliked in both SyncThing and OwnCloud and Seafile and all of the other Sync file solutions was, they only supported synchronization via web and didn't seemed to have a Windows Explorer integration and did required the server to run more services, posing another security hole in the system as such third party softwares are not easily to update and maintain.
As well as few others such as ExpandDrive, Netdrive, Dokan SSHFS (mirrored for download here) I should say that I first decided to try copying few dozen of Gigabyte movies, text, books etc. using WinSCP direct connection, but after getting a couple of timeouts I was tired of WinSCP and decided to look for better way to copy to remote Linux SSHFS. However the best solution I found after a bit of extensive turned to be:
Swish is very straight forward to configure compared to all of them you download the .exe which as of time of writting is at version 0.8.0 install on the PC and right inMy Computer you will get a New Device called Swish next to your local and remote drives C:/ D:/ , USBs etc.
As you see in below screenshot two new non-standard buttons will Appear in Windows Explorer that lets you configure SWISH
Next and final step before you have the SSHFS remote Linux filesystem visible on Windows Xp / 7 / 8 / 10 is to fill in remote Linux hostname address (or even better fill in IP to get rid of possible DNS issues), UserName (UserID) and Direcory to mount.
Then you will see the SSHFS moutned:
You will be asked to accept the SSH host-key as it used to be unknown so far
That's it now you will see straight into Windows Explorer the remote Linux SSHFS mounted:
Once setupped a Swish connection to copy files directly to it you can use the Send to Embedded Windows dialog, as in below screenshot
The only 3 problem with SWISH are:
1. It doesn't support Save password, so on every Windows PC reboot when you want to connect to remote Linux SSHFS, you will have to retype remote login user pass. Fron security stand point this is not such a bad thing, but it is a bit irritating to everytime type the password without an option to save permanently. The good thing here is you can use Launch Key Agent as visible in above screenshot and set in Putty Key Agent your remote host SSH key so the passwordless login will work without any authentication at all however, this might open a security hole if your Win PC gets infected by virus, which might delete something on remote mounted SSHFS filesystem so I personally prefer to retype password on every boot.
2. it is a bit slow so if you're planning to Transfer large amounts of Data as hundreds of megabytes, expect a very slow transfer rate, even in a Local 10Mbit Network to transfer 20 – 30 GB of data, it took me about 2-3 hours or so. SWISH is not actively supported and it doesn't have new release since 20th of June 2013, but for the general work I need it is just perfect, as I don't tent to be Synchronizing Dozens of Gigabytes all the time between my notebook PC and the Linux server.
3. If you don't use the established mounted connection for a while or your computer goes to sleep mode after recovering your connection to remote Linux HDD if opened in Windows File Explorer will probably be dead and you will have to re-enable it.
For Mac OS X users who want to mount / attach remote directory from a Linux partitions should look in fugu – A Mac OS X SFTP, SCP and SSH Frontend
I'll be glad to hear from people on other good ways to achieve same results as with SWISH but have a better copy speed while using SSHFS.
However console version isn't the best choice for my wife which is not a console ninja, so I had to look and install some oher Graphic Interface program 🙂 As I don't like using AppleStore (I can't even properly register for an Apple Store ID,as I'm required to fill in my credit card …) Hence I looked online on some WinRar dearchiver GUIs and found IZip which is natively a ZIP archiver but also supports .RAR Archives. Though IZIp website give the impression IZip is a great tiny prog, once installing the .DMG downloaded from the website and installing into Applications it turned out IZip is currently crashing on the Mac Book Air with Mac OS X 10.8.5 – Mountain Lion …
If you want a simplistic interface program you would probably want to check out UnrarX though I personally didin't liked that one because it is not properly handing UTF-8 and CP-1251 filenames written in Russian, Bulgarian Cyrillic and probably also Chineese, Viatnamese and other exotic language encodings. After few more minutes of searching I finally got KEKA – The Free Mac OSX file archiver.
Though the program Logo is a little scary, Keka turned to be very nice tiny, easy to install WinRAR GUI interfaced program for Mac OS X and the installation comes to standard download and run of .DMG file and moving it to the Finder Applications.
Once installed, if you turn to have a .rar file association issues (by default in my case) files were opened with VLC. To change the file type association of a certain file on the Mac I've had to press Command (button) + I over the .rar extensioned file, e.g:
Command + I
Click to expand the “Open with” section within that files info screen
From the pull down menu, select the application you want to open this specific file with
If you are working in a large corporation such as (HP or HPE – Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE is the new splitted company brand name for the Software and Servers division of ex-HP) / IBM / Dell or any other company with the size of top fortune companies and you Computer Domain admistrator has forced your work PC to already use Skype for Business instead of the good tested Lync Client along with the goodies and PROS of having the newer Skype for Business (S4B) as usual for old fashened users like me and the avarage employee the New S4B interface will turn into nightmare with all this circled names and more buttons and the annoying Skype Blue Theme.
For anyone who has even basic idea of design and aesthetics, I believe the default Theme of Skype For Business will be evaluated as a serious "interface downgrade" compared to the simple looking Interface and White Skin of Lync Client.
With this said it will be logical for the end user like me to desire to customize a bit default S4B Skin to make it more elegant looking like Lync 2013 client but guess what there is a Surprise if you google around, Skype For Business just like the regular Skype client doesn't have integrated support for Skins / Themes. To make the horror complete, many big corporations are choosing to migrate their Email infrastructure from the classical and well tested Windows Domain with Exchange Server to Microsoft Office 365 (Cloud services), which makes the dependency on M$ products even bigger and in the long run control and spying on people's email and information (people's data security even worsers) as you know how hackable Windows prooved to be over the years.
Well for those who remember the good old times of IRC (Internet Relay Chat) andICQ (I seek you)🙂 and even Jabberwhen chatting emerged and boomed into popularity all the chat clients nomatter whether it was afree software under GPL / BSD license or it was a Proprietary licensed software, there was always alternative on the Interface Outlook of the Chat clients and on practically all popular Chat / Audio / Video communication Standards / Protocols, there used to be some option for the users to use either a different client or to customize the outook of the program.
Well now the big surprise with Skype Protocol which was purchased by Microsoft some years ago back is this terrible already M$ program doesn't have any option for changing the Theme and even basic customization besides the ones provided by default by Microsoft. For my surprise such a trivial and everybody used program like Skype with perhaps already 1.5 or 2 Billion or even more users doesn't have even basic support for customization !!! To make the Skype program use horror story even worser Microsoft does upgrade the Skype client agressively and for the last 3 or 4 years Skype is owned by Microsoft the interface gets changing slightly or even completely with every next release.
Now with latest Skype versions since a 1.5 year or so the agressiveness of the program even increased further as it wants you to automatically upgrade, every time you run Skype. With this in mind and the fact, I have to spend about 8 to 10 years on the PC with Skype for Business switched on on my notebook with no option to use Lync for communication because of the Domain Exchange forcing the changes to all of the users within our EMEA.
So after some serious digging on the Internet, the only work around to change the Skype For Business Theme available by a couple of sources is to Revert Back the Skype User Interface to Lync 2013 Client by changing a value to the Windows registry and get back the good old elegant Lync interface instead of S4B.
The Windows registry value that needs to be changed is:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Lync] "CanSharePptInCollab"=dword:00000001 "CanAppShareInCollab"=dword:00000001 "CanShareOneNoteInCollab"=dword:00000001 "EnableSkypeUI"=hex:01,00,00,00
The value has to be changed to:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Lync] "CanSharePptInCollab"=dword:00000001 "CanAppShareInCollab"=dword:00000001 "CanShareOneNoteInCollab"=dword:00000001 "EnableSkypeUI"=hex:00,00,00,00
The value "EnableSkypeUI"=hex:01,00,00,00 – instructs so Skype for Business UI is used: "EnableSkypeUI"=hex:00,00,00,00 – instructs S4B to revert back to Old Lync interface
To modify about registry setting you will either have to manually run regedit from Start -> Run -> cmd.exe or use Windows button + R and type inside run box:
Because the Domain administrator has forced a policy to automatically offer Change of Lync Interface to Skype for Business on every notebook boot to disable EnableSkypeUI registry value and make Skype appear in the good old Lync UI, I've created also a tiny Batch script lync_ui.bat with following content:
cd \ cd \Users\georgi\scripts regedit /s skype.reg exit
Note that both skype.reg and lync_ui.bat should be existing in my case in C:\Users\georgi\scipts , change this path to whatever your username is and create scripts folder in your User Home dir. If unsure about the home directory name you can check it from command prompt with:
C:\Users\georgi> echo %HOMEPATH% \Users\georgi
To make the lync_ui.bat (script invoking skype.reg) be executed on every PC boot, you need to add it to:
Start -> All Programs -> StartUp
Well this is it now you will have back the Lync UI, Enjoy! 🙂
I really love sysstat and as a console maniac I tend to install it on every server however by default there is some <b>sysstat</b> tuning once installed to make it work, for those unfamiliar with <i>sysstat</i> I warmly recommend to check, it here is in short the package description:<br /><br />
server:~# apt-cache show sysstat|grep -i desc -A 15 Description: system performance tools for Linux The sysstat package contains the following system performance tools: – sar: collects and reports system activity information; – iostat: reports CPU utilization and disk I/O statistics; – mpstat: reports global and per-processor statistics; – pidstat: reports statistics for Linux tasks (processes); – sadf: displays data collected by sar in various formats; – nfsiostat: reports I/O statistics for network filesystems; – cifsiostat: reports I/O statistics for CIFS filesystems. . The statistics reported by sar deal with I/O transfer rates, paging activity, process-related activities, interrupts, network activity, memory and swap space utilization, CPU utilization, kernel activities and TTY statistics, among others. Both UP and SMP machines are fully supported. Homepage: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.godard/
If you happen to install sysstat on a Debian / Ubuntu server with:
server:~# apt-get install –yes sysstat
, and you try to get some statistics with sar command but you get some ugly error output from:
server:~# sar Cannot open /var/log/sysstat/sa20: No such file or directory
And you wonder how to resolve it and to be able to have the server log in text databases periodically the nice sar stats load avarages – %idle, %iowait, %system, %nice, %user, then to FIX that Cannot open /var/log/sysstat/sa20: No such file or directory
You need to:
server:~# vim /etc/default/sysstat
By Default value you will find out sysstat stats it is disabled, e.g.:
ENABLED="false"
Switch the value to "true"
ENABLED="true"
Then restart sysstat init script with:
server:~# /etc/init.d/sysstat restart
However for those who prefer to do things from menu Ncurses interfaces and are not familiar with Vi Improved, the easiest way is to run dpkg reconfigure of the sysstat:
server:~# dpkg –reconfigure
root@server:/# sar Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (pcfreak) 15.02.2016 _x86_64_ (2 CPU)
0,00,01 CPU %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 0,15,01 all 24,32 0,54 3,10 0,62 0,00 71,42 1,15,01 all 18,69 0,53 2,10 0,48 0,00 78,20 10,05,01 all 22,13 0,54 2,81 0,51 0,00 74,01 10,15,01 all 17,14 0,53 2,44 0,40 0,00 79,49 10,25,01 all 24,03 0,63 2,93 0,45 0,00 71,97 10,35,01 all 18,88 0,54 2,44 1,08 0,00 77,07 10,45,01 all 25,60 0,54 3,33 0,74 0,00 69,79 10,55,01 all 36,78 0,78 4,44 0,89 0,00 57,10 16,05,01 all 27,10 0,54 3,43 1,14 0,00 67,79
Well that's it now sysstat error resolved, text reporting stats data works again, Hooray! 🙂
If you don't much care about logging in logs from which domain / hostnames requests to webserver originate and you want to boost up the Apache Webserver performance a bit especially on a heavy loaded Websites, where no need for stuff like Webalizer, Awstats etc. , e.g. you're using GoogleAnalytics to already track requests (beware as sometimes GoogleAnalytics could be missing requests to your webserver, so having some kind of LogAnalyzer software on server is always a plus). But anyways accepting that many of us already trust GoogleAnalytitcs.
Then a great tuning option to use in default domain configuration or in multiple VirtualHosts config is:
HostnameLookups off
If you want to make the HostnameLookups off as a default behaviour to all your virtualhosts on Debian / Ubuntu / CentOS / SuSE / RHEL distro virtualhosts add either to default config /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default (on Deb based Linuxes) or (on RPM based ones), add directive to /etc/httpd/httpd.conf
For self-hosted websites (if run your own small hosting) or for a home situated webservers with up to 20-50 websites it is also a useful optimization tip to include in /etc/hosts file all the IPs of sites with respective domain names following the normal syntax of /etc/hosts, e.g. in my own /etc/hosts, I have stuff like:
pcfreak:~$ cat /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain 127.0.1.1 pcfreak.www.pc-freak.net pcfreak mail.www.pc-freak.net 192.168.0.14 new-pcfreak 219.22.88.70 fw 212.36.0.70 ftp.bg.debian.org 212.211.132.32 security.debian.org 83.228.93.76 pcfreak.biz www.pc-freak.net www.pc-freak.net # for wordpress plugins 216.58.209.3 gstatic.com 91.225.248.129 www.linkedin.com 74.50.119.198 www.blogtopsites.com 94.31.29.40 static.addtoany.com 216.58.209.202 fonts.googleapis.com 216.58.209.14 www.google-analytics.com 216.58.209.14 feeds.feedburner.com 93.184.220.241 wprp.zemanta.com 199.30.80.32 stumbleupon.com 156.154.168.17 stumbleupon.com 2.18.89.251 platform.linkedin.com # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts # … etc. put IPs and hostnames following above syntax
As you see from above commented section for wordpress plugins, I've included some common websites used by WordPress enabled plugins to prevent my own hosting server to query DNS server every time. The normal way the Linux / Unix works is it first checks in /etc/hosts and only if the hostname is not defined there then it queries the DNS caching server in my case this is a local DJBDNS cache server, however defining the hosts in /etc/hosts saves a lot of milisecons on every request and often if multiple hosts are defined could save (decrease site opening for end users) with seconds.
It is my great joy to share with my dear readers, that Archibishop Saint Seraphim Sobolev (1881-1950), Archibishop of Bogochar has been canonized officially by the Russian Orthodox Church on yesterday 3rd of 2016 in their plenary meeting held at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow.
Saint Seraphim Sobolev, has long time has been considered a saint by many Bulgarians and Russians in Bulgaria, for his countless spiritual intercessions for those who venerate him and ask for his prayer and spiritual guidance. St. Seraphim Sobolev crypt in the Russian Orthodox Chruch in Sofia Bulgaria in honor of Saint Nicolas.
Even my joy is greater his Eminence Metropolitan Ioan (John) of Varna and Veliki Preslav, who happens also the Bishop of my birth place Dobrich, Bulgaria was present On the official canonization. Also it is not a coincidence that our Metropolitan Ioan was present at the canonization, since he happens to be a spiritual child of a direct disciple of st. Seraphim Sobolev.
Some other notable bishop presents at the canonization Church service was, His Grace Bishop Arseny of Znepolsk, Vicar of the Plovdiv Metropoliate, and Archimandrite Feoktist (Dimitrov), representative of the Bulgarian Patriarch to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. The overall count of Bishops, Archibishops and Metropolitans who took participation in the canonization was approximately 320, almost all the bishops of Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).
The news that holy Seraphim Sobolev is considered for canonization has been sweeping the Bulgarian Church space for a long time. A nice priest lady has made even a notable movie, about the saint pointing the general turning points of his difficult life, last year and the movie was presented in the Russian Cultural Center in Sofia Bulgaria, below is the movie (unfortunately in Bulgaria and Russian), hopefully soon someone to translate it also to English:
full of a lot of sorrow and uncertainties, because of the harsh Soviet time in which the saint was serving the Church. In order to caninize a saint, the process is quite long and usually in Russian Church it takes pretty longer sometimes from 20 to 50 years, however with St. Seraphim Soboev, already 66 years already passed since his peaceful passing to Christ on 26th February 1950. The head of the local Russian Church council was his Eminence Patriarch Kiril Bishop of Moscow and all Russia.
The members of the Council unanimously voted for the glorification of Archbishop Seraphim, who has been venerated for many years in Bulgaria and Russia. Metropolitan Ilarion then read the Act of the Holy Council of Bishops announcing the canonization of Archbishop Seraphim among the host of saints. The Council members then sang the exaltation to the newly-glorified saint. His Holiness Patriarch Kirill then gave Metropolitan Ioann an icon of St Seraphim painted at St Petersburg Theological Academy as a gift to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
The full canonization title given to st. Seraphim Sobolev (archibishop Bogocharski) from Sofia (The Wonder worker).
So who is Archibishop Seraphim Sobolev?
St. Nicolas Borisovich Sobolev is born on 1st of December 1881 in Russia, province of Rezan in the Russian Empire. After completion of seminary in 1904, he entered Saint Peterburg spiritual academy, which he completed in 1908 y. with the honour of candidate of Theological studies. At that time he has been ordained for hieromonk. After a short pastoral service in a school in Jitomir, in 1909 fr. Seraphim become a helpng overseer in Kalujsk spiritual school in 1911 and was inspector in the seminary of Kostroma, in 1912 he become a rector of the spiritual seminary in Voronej.
While in Vironej he had experience the terrors of Red (Soviet) Revolution. In autumn of 1919 archimandrite Seraphim went to Ekaterinodar and from then transferred to Crimea. There in 14.10.1920, he was ordained in bishop Lubenski. The ordaining was God's plan for him and also happened perhaps, because of the need of bihops, because of mass inprisonment of bishops and archibishops by the red beasts of the communist party.
With the blessing of his spiritual elder bishop Seraphim has left Russia. From this day on his life is a life of an emigrant. For a while he has taught Theology in the spiritual school of Constantionople's patriarchy on the Island of Chalkidiki. In 1921 he was assigned as a bishop of the Christian temple in the Russian Church in honour of Saint Nicolas the Wonderworker in Sofia which was made as a monument of The Bulgarian Liberation – the Russian-Turkish Liebaration war. Same year with a decree of patriarch Tikhon, who now is also canonized – st. Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow and all Russia he was assigned to govern the Russian parishes in Bulgaria with the archibishop title Bogucharski. Until 1944, bishop Seraphim who in 1934, became archibishop was under the jurisdiction of Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia (ROCOR) from 1934. In 1945 he has joined back to the Russian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchy. In 1948 archibishop Seraphim took participation in the All-Orthodox gathering in Moscow. St. Seraphim Sobolev was a fervent fighter for holy and true orthodoxy and a great enemy of the movement of Ecumenism movement (a movement aiming to unite all Orthodox and then all Churches under the government of a protestant like body called World Council of Churches). All his life just like Jesus Christ, st. Seraphim Sobolev has lived without possessing on own house. He paid for his one room apartment from his small money priest sallary which at that time was hardly enough to pay his rent and for some food. He lived all his life renting an apartment with his own money, (something which was absolutely unthinkable), for a bishop of all Russian eparchies of Bulgaria at that times. Even during lifetime, he helped and turned a lot of people from the sinful ways leading to death, had a lot of spiritual children after him, he established a small nun monastery Kniajevo nearby Sofia. He also was one a fervent fighter against the cult of Dynovism (Danovism), started by anti-christian posing christian, Peter Dynov. St. Seraphim Sobolev was a fervent defender of Orthodoxy, freely showing up the delusions of Roman-Catholicism, Protestantism, Pentecostals, Baptism, Adventism and was strongly against the popular at that time united prayers between Orthodox and non-orthodox christian teachings. He is also an author of Theological literature who in details makes a comparison between Anglican Protestant Christianity and the Eastern Orthodoxy.
St Seraphim, denounced on a multiple occasions, the movement of ecumenism as being anti-christian and not in the spirit of the one Holy Eastern Orthodox Church, thus all his life and all his spiritual children were strongly trying to hold the Church teachings, was supporters of the celebration of Church feasts under the Julian calender, and was against the untroduction of the Gregorian Calendar – so called new Style calender in the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
It has to be said that it is a bit of paradox that the canonization of st. Seraphim Sobolev was made by the Russian Church, as the Russian Orthodox Church, along with Romanian and Serbian and many other Orthodox Churches continues to be an active member in the Ecumenical Movement. Because of St. Seraphim Sobolev even to these days, there are a lot of Christians who continue to follow the old Julian Calendar feasts style, the so cold Old Calendarists.
The most notable work of st. Seraphim Sobolev in my humble opinion is the creation of Acathist of the Greatest Bulgarian Saint, Saint John of Rila.
Perhaps as a fervent fighter to keep the true teaching of the Holy Orthodox Church and his incessant labor for the true Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, God give him a blessed departure from earthly life to the saviour of mankind the Lord Jesus Christ on the Church feast day of Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy.
For the 66 years since his passing to Christ, each day on the grave of st. Seraphim Sobolev has been served a special service for co-memoration of the deceased and for forgiveness of his sins called in orthodox terminology Panihida, and the remembemrance of all the brothers and sisters in Christ who has departed from life.
The grave of Saint Seraphim Sobolev is situated in a small chapel (crypt) located in the center of Sofia, Bulgaria, Russian Orthodox Church, St. Nicolas. Even to this day people go daily on a big queues to ask the saint for help in hardships in life. The accepted way that people turn for prayer intercession is by writting their beseeches, needs, problems on a piece of paper and then dropping the small letter in a box called (Iashtik) Russian. I myself have been there and prayed and a lot of the things, I've asked the saint for my personal life and well being already come true. I know also of other people who by the prayers of the saint has been saved from a impossible to escape situations and a lot of people received spiritual confort and peace as well as spiritual healing when turning to the saint. Saint Seraphim Sobolev, pray the Lord Jesus Christ for us the sinful Bulgarians and all the suffering people around the world, for the refugees, for the sick for the hungry for the homeless and for all nations that we turn to repentance and come back to the way of salvation you Lord Jesus has shown to the nations.