Posts Tagged ‘toilet’

Travelling on Diesel Electric train through ex – USSR (Soviet Union Belarus) from Jirovichi to Ros via Slonim

Saturday, April 23rd, 2016

After spending 6 blessed  days in Jirovichi Sveto Uspenski Manastir (Zhirovichky Monastery) and having the possibility to pray and venerate the multitde of holy relics kept in Jirovichki (holy cloister), eat with the seminary students in Jirovichi spiritual seminary and receive a blessing of Archibishop Gurij and many of the Jirovichi serving father, hieromonks and talk to seminary students, visit the monastery library, viist students classrooms, computer lab  and get impression an impressions on general serminary monastir life, next on today I had the chance to travel for a one more time on an eletric multiple unit (famous in Russia / Belarus / Ukraine) as "elektrichka".

Sviato-Uspenskij-Jirovichki-manastir-bus-station

My  travel started in Jirovichi bus station which is situated nearby the Jirovichi Monastery walls.

Jirovichi is really unique monastery for a pilgrimage as it is the largest Eastern Orthodox Christian monastery and seminary (orthodox spiritual academy school) in Belarus. In Jirovichi is also the most holy considered icon in Belarus which happens to be also the smallest icon of the Non-hand made image of Virgin Mary (Theotokos).

Jirovichi-Dormition-of-Mother-Mary-Eastern_Orthodox-monastery

The miracle making icon of Holy Theotokos is self ingraved on a stone and was given as a sign from heaven to the inhabitants of Belarusia lands at that time because, perhaps many of the Belarusian "savage" like living people (dveriani) were falsely honouring cult hand made stones and trees and by the glorious miracle of God, the pagan inhabitants turned to faith in the True Lord and Savior Jesus Christ being astoned to see such an unique image of the mother of the Lord The Stone icon of the Virgin Mary appeared for a first time in Jirovichi in about year 1460.

The stone Virgin Mary icon was found by shepherds on top of a burning pear tree while wandering in the wood searching for their last sheeps.
Jirovichij (Bojii Mater)
as popular among Belarusians is said to have conducted a multitude of miracles through the years even to this very day.

Jirovichi-holy-icon-of-Mother-Mary-Jirovichka-bojia-mater

The found Stone self-ingraved icon of Jirovichi monastery, the smallest (miracle making) icon of Virgin Mary on earth

Today in Jirovichi monastery the place where the burning pear was is on the entrance of the monastery main Church which is in honour of the Dormition of Virgin Mary.

Jirovichi-bojij-mater-Mother-of-God-Jirovichi-holiest-place-of-Belarus

Jirovichi Bojii Mater

The monastery has 2 corpuses one for seminary students and one for monks. Inside the monastery there are about 20 monks and 10 priests regularly serving various services and holy liturgy daily. The seminary has a beautiful garden and a holy spring (well) right infront of the main Church entrance.

Jirovichka-Bojij-Mater-Virgin-Mary-miracle-making-icon-Jirovichi-monastery-Belarus

Jirovichi Mother of the Son of God Holy Icon

I've catched a bus from the holiest place of Belarus situated in village of Jirovichi (hosts about 1000+- citizens) to Slonim (Vokzal) = Train Station in Russian language. The bus from Jirovichi to Slonim is about 20-30 km and ticket was 8000 BYR (which is very cheap to about 0.40 USD).

Then from Slonim's Train station I've bought a Train ticket to Ros as I needed to go to Krasnoselsk and there was no direct transportation to it. Ros is a nearby poselok to Krasnoselsk (another poselok) nearby the town of Valkowysk , (Volkovoisk), Волковыск is inhabited by about 44000 people as of time of writting. In Russian (poselok is a little bigger than village but not really to be called town usually consists to up to few thousands of people up to 10 000 ppl.

Slonim-city-center-tank

Slonim City Center Tank

Travelling through ex empire of Soviet Union ( USSR ) which was an union in many things to reside the today's European Union is an unique experience as one sees the endeavor of soviet people to build different things that kept running the so called communist regime. 

The train ticket is really cost low (costed me 14.900 BYR Belarussian Rubles = about 0.80 dollar cents!). The train ticket looked just like an ordinary cash reeipt printed on a cheap paper, however uniquely on the train ticket is written besides the departure and arrival towns also, number of kilometers from town A to town B that you pay for, in my case from Slonim to Rosy this was 088 km. The train itself is a real excitement for anyone who is in love with history and old trains.

Slonim-city-Belarus-train-station

Slonim Belarus, Bus Station with a Kiosk

While waiting the train I dropped by the Caffeteria nearby the Train Station (Vokzal) and get a coffee for 6000 BYR (about 0.25 USD) and 2  kinda of local Belarusian snacks (bulochka) which costed about 3000 BYR each (0.12 USD)! Amazingly I had my coffee and a quick meal for less than a dollar, amazingly cheap isn't it? 🙂

Diesel-Elektrichka-inter-town-village-train-Belarus-DR1A-135
 

The Russian type trains are different from European as the rails distance is higher than in rest of Europe. Actually there was practical reason behind the rails standard differene as the Russian rails standard was invented to be different from European in order to stop Hitler's Nazi Germany to easily transport goods / tanks etc. from and to the Stalin's U.S.S.R.

Because of the different rail distance the inside of the train coupe is also wider separated in two column seats on each of it could sit up to 3 people:

Elektrichka-common-train-between-villages-and-cities-in-Belarus-Russia-and-ex-USSR

The train toilet is also unique to see as it belonged to the perhaps 30-40 years old train:

Even though the toilet doesn't look shiny still it was clean and there was a toilet paper, what intrigued me most was the hole on the ground in front of the toilet seat, the meaning of it was to be a kinda of a natural air-condition 🙂
The toilet flush is really amazing to see too, usually in europe and everywhere I've been including in Arab Emirates (Dubai), the water flush is being triggered on top of toilet paper with hand, well in ex-USSR this is different to to flush the water you have to press a button with your leg. The sink water is also interesting to see usually in Europe sink water is being triggered by pushing on top or by turning a stopcock, here in Russia you have to press down to make water flow. Talking about oddities another oddity for non-Belarusians in Belarus is the home bath locks, usually in europe we're used to have some kind of lock mechanism, locking with a key is most common, here in Belarus in home the lock doors mechanism is simply a button to be pressed up or down. 

In the train there was policeman, the policeman here in Belarus are firm man walking threating all around the train, so no place for bad or misbehaving citizens here in Belarus 🙂

I've safely reached village of Ros in 16:35 (with a delay of about 5 minutes) which is pretty normal for a non-western train, so overall train timing was cool. The train had some signatures with some instructions what is allowed and disallowed in the train, smoking was strictly prohibited and there was huge sum fine / "shtraf". Even though that I've seen a young person to smoke a cigarette (while closing the doors) in between coupes compartment obviously not much caring about the cops standing just a few wagons next 🙂

Before reaching Rosy we've passed on few villages, the villages here in Belarus are very beatiful there is difference in how Belarusians built a lot of their old wooden houses if compared to lets say Bulgaria or Balkans where we build brick solid houses a lot of village houses in Belarus are wooden, here is few pictures to give you an idea on how a typical Belarusian village looks like:

Belarus-ex-USSR-village

Belarus-derevnija-picture-ex-USSR-village

Even though the harsh Soviet atheistic communism regime which tried to force unbelieve in God and kill all kind of religiousness in people after the fall of the (USSR) United Soviet Socialistic Republic Belarusians who used to be historically a very religious people are gradually returning to faith.
An interesting fact worthy to mention is Belarus used to be proclaimed the first officially Atheistic country in the world which "freed itself" from the slavery of faith as the anti-christ communists used to be loving saing. 

Well obviously they were wrong nowadays, in many of villages which doesn't have their own Church in Belarus it is typical practice to bringup the Holy Cross of Christ as in below picture, each year the nearby city / town / Poselok Eastern Orthodox priest comes to pray to God for the blessing of the village and abundance of fruits this typically happens on Eastern or Nativity. In Belarus the Eastern Orthodox population is about 78% with some 15% person of Catholics, so often villages with mixed (Orthodox and Catholic) citizens has both separate crosses like in the picture where Orthodox and Catholics christians go to pray seperately.

Belarus-ex-USSR-village-Cross

Why Russophobes hates Putin – How situation changed in Russia during Vladimir Putin presidency

Thursday, April 3rd, 2014

why-Russophobes-hates-putin-how-situation-changed-in-Russia-during-putin-reign

POSITIVE RESULTS  FOR RUSSIA DURING REIGN OF VLADIMIR PUTIN

  • For last 12 years of government Putin increated Russia's budget 22 times.
  • Increated warfare spendings 30 times.
  • Increated GDP 12 times (by GDP Russia moved from 36th to 6th place in the World).
  • Increated Russian golden reserves 48 times.
  • Returned back 256 oil, petrol and other natural resources sources / mine-yards (under non-Russian government curretnly are only 3 of
  • Russia's source for natural resources.
  • Nationalized 65% of oil industry and 95% of gas industry.
  • For a 5th consequential year 2nd / 3rd place in export of grain (just for a comparison USA is currently ranked 4th largest weed exporter). The avarage sallary of national institution employed increased 18.5 times.
  • Avarage pension increased 14 times.
  • Reduce of population decreased from 1.5 million per year in year 1999 to 21 000 in 2011, i.e. 71 times.
  • Prohibited deputies in Government to have bank accounts in foreign banks.Prevented American attack against Syria.
  • Put an end to war in Chechnya.


From January y. 2000 to present times Russian ruble rate changed from 28 Rubles per dollar to 29 Rubles per dollar – i.e. severe inflation in Russia ended.Present day Russia is a normal European country not that poor country where approimate pension was 20 dollars and where masters was the financial pyramids and the International Monatery Fund

In 1992 Eltsin cancelled completely export duty of oil products.
In 23 January E. Primakov government forced again oil taxes.
In export price of 9.5 dollars per barrel custom taxes were 2.5 euro per tone and in price 12,5 dollars per barrel 5 euro / tone.Such a minor increase in taxes produced 14 billion rubles in already empty Russian budget.

In August 1999 Eltsin assigned Putin for prime minister.
In just a month later the export taxes Putin increased duty taxes to 7.5 euro/tone and in 8 december to 15 euro/tone. Till then incomes from oil taxes has been steadily increasing and nowadays exporters calculate in national budget half of incomes origin from oil prices and export taxes.
From January to November 2007 Russian customs influxed in national budget 2.57 trillion Rubles.
Oil export takes has drastically raised incomes of citizens.This had major impact on construction business.All Russia nowadays is in reality enormous "construction yard", to illustrate from January to September 2007 375 009 homes were built occupying 34 million square meters.
Cement factories cannot satisfy local market requirements and Russia is forced to import cement from China.
Increased incomes of population led to increase in estates search, this increased apartment prices and as a consequence increased incomes from building activies.
Result is in consutriction business are invested enormous amounts of capital and a real construction boom is observed.
Another consequence of increased income was increase in demand for automobiles. Just for 2006 the quantity of demanded automobiles in Russia increased with 45% and reached 32 billion dollars with a count of sold new cars numbering 2 million. By indicator of sold new cars Russia orders on 5th place after in Europe taking place right after Germany, Great Britain, Italy and France.

Currently are being build a couple of new automobile plants, and existing ones increase production volume.
All this is consequence of increase in demand and therefore from increase in citizens income.

rn>For 10 years budets expenditure for social politics (pensions and social help) increased with 30%.

Before Putin pensions were under existence-minimum with appr. 25% and in 90th pensions were not paid at all.
Now pensions are 50% above existence-minimum and is constantly increasing.
In 2000 approximate sallary in Russia was 2223 Rubles (appr. 80 dollars).
Now approximate sallary in Russia 19174 rubles (apprx. 660 dollars).
Purchase of domestic goods for 10 years increased 10 times. Number of own automobilse increased 3 times.
Putin nationalized YUKOS, without 'making nervous' emering Russian busness in a market manner – with bankruptcy and auction. All this happened lawful, following laws adopted by democratic parliament.
The president doesn't have the right to use other  means. Formal occasion for arest of Hodorkovski were taxation frauds of YUKOS. In such machinations are involved practically all large private companies and this is the reason why nobody believes that excuse. It is unbelievable. However Putin simply defended Russia's interests.

 

 

Putin_russia_speech_and-the-russian-flag-a-primer-for-honest-politic


The proof for that is transmission of actives of YUKOS to national corporation "Rosneft". It would have been more righteous if this actives were just confiscated … but there are laws and Putin had just stick to them. After all the President can't go out of framework of his jurisdiction.
It can be just added that after Khodorkovsky  was injailed, collectivity (incomes)of taxes of ex-actives of YUKOS increased 80 TIMES!
In y. 2004 Putin finally removed law "Agreement for Separation of Production  (Separation Agreement)". This law was annexed during Eltsin's regime, in order to benefit Oligarchs (Khodorkovsky, Gusinsky, Beresovsky etc.) in order to make possible Russian oil reserves to be possessed by Western (American and British) oil corporations.
By the power of this law Russian oil and natural fields went into international jurisdiction, and therefore the money from Russian oil doesn't entered budget of Russia but influxed in Western companies.
Money from oil drills went mainly into Dutch "Shell" for covering of corporation expenses. Only after something remained from that they sold it to Russia. In 2006 Putin declared following in that connection "And now we don't get anything from them and if they increase their profit we will not receive it even in 10 years from now."
In fact to this moment Russia didn't get any money from their own oil.
After the law was removed in 2004, revenues in budeg increased from 3 to 4 times.
After cancellation of contracts for oil fields "Sakhalin-1" and "Sakhalin-2" Russia's loans to American company calculated to 700 million dollars, for that time this was too much. The whole Anglo-Saxon world pricked against Putin because of a simple reason: "UK planned to assure its oil reserves for years to come in expense of Russia – only Germany and France who didn't have a direct interest in that process kept neutral …
In 1992 – 1995 the head aparatus of Russia formed its view based on foreign advisors. All legislation from 1990's was hence written by them. In Russian country administration was working 10 000 foreign coaches.  George Soros was financing writting of student history books where the Battle for Stalingrad was mentioned in only 2 pages and about the meeting between Elbe and Soviet and American soldiers (Elbe Day) in 10 pages.

 

Russian_Army_meeting_American_Army-Elba-day


: In that mournful times on pupils notebook you can see portrainst of 4 American presidents of USA.
Until this very day there are left relics from that anti-Russian propaganda but hopefully with time Putin will throw away american propaganda from education system.
But why Putin cannot immediately dismiss all this hostile to Russia clerks? The reason is simple: Constitution of Russia written under dictation of Western coaches, does not allow quick changse into it.
Nowadays the President is just one of many clerks with resticted power. Yes truly president power is a bit bigger than other clerks, but country head can't influence everything. The president can't even define his ministers, even though by law this is part of his jurisdiction.

Overfulfilment of budet in times of Putin govern allowed craetion of country Stabilization fund. Nowdays is collected huge golden-currency reserve and practically Russia doesn't have external debt.

War in Kavkaz is over, separatists were destroyed. All famous terrorist leaders were liquidated physically.
Even Zelimkhan_Yandarbiyev was killed in Qatar, Basaev and Umarov were also destoyed. Putin promised "to drawn them if necessary even in their own toilet dish" and he fulfilled his promise. Of course, separatism is not completely destroyed, such conflicts cannot be quickly solved, but nowadays situation in Kakvaz is the best possible. If Chechnya's elite feels the power of Moscow and benefits of being a surrender – then separatism will fade away. This is exactly what happens. The attempts of western spy centrals to supply terrorists are still leading to separate terr. acts but this is the maximum – there will be no war anymore.
 
For 10 years Putin increased political influence of Russia in world and lifted its image. Today Russia follows its own interests, and not Western ones.
It is not coincidence that Putin was recognized as the most influential world politic of 2013. He prevented Russia's devastation led country out of catastrophe caused by Gorbachov and Eltsin. That's the rason why Western Medias abhor him and compare him with devil.
Everyone interested in political life in Russia seems, that the battle against corruption took unforeseen measures.
At least 2-3 times weekly on TV are shown arrests  of clergy and policeman and news inform about sentences against government employees.
Lets not forget Crimea, here is how it was given to Ukraine.

In 1992 on signature of Treaty of Belovesh for dissolution of USSR Ukrainian representative Leonid Kravchuk noticed that Boris Eltsin is "in play with Vodka" and is delaying signature, he urged him with words: –

"Borya if you like take Crimea, please just  sign the contract!".

Drunk Eltsin nobly waved hand:

"What for I need Crimea? Here it is your present!"

And signed and by one scratch he "killed" efforts of Prince Grigory Potemkin, Catherina the Great, heros of Sevastopol in 1856, heroes defenders of Sevastopol in 1941 …

Few days ago Putin removed consequences of this "joke with history" – and people of Crimea sung and danced on squares, returning to their motherland.
 

Here is Why Russophobes hates Putin!

 

 

Source Materials from http://rublogers.ru
Translated by: Georgi Georgiev
This translation is copyrighted and copying can only be done with explicit allowance of author Author or link to original translation
http://rublogers.ru/

 

Quick shortcut to lock your Linux computer desktop (Few words on Linux screensavers)

Thursday, November 20th, 2014

quick-way-to-lock-desktop-linux-howto-key
Locking the PC while going for a coffee break, Lunch or toilet is longly used to secure physically your PC display from spying eyes or prevent you from  someone to install a spying software or leak private data from PC HDD to an USB drive.
People who are coming from the wonderful MS Windows OS   are certainly used to quick shortcut key combination to lock PC screen with:
 

Windows key + L

 

So how to do Lock Screen on Linux?

On Linux locking your Screen the Quick Shortcut is:
 

CTRL + ALT + L.


Locking the screen is done (depending on the Linux distribution) by using by either using historically famous XScreenSaver if non-gnome / KDE graphical environemnt is used or if in Linux Gnome GUI with  gnome-screensaver and on KDE desktop manager with kscreenlocker.

 

Exact command executed on CTRL + ALT + L keypress on GNOME is:
 

gnome-screensaver-command -l


On KDE to manually lock screen command is:

kscreenlocker

Nomatter whether with GNOME or KDE its worthy mention that xscreensaver is more Screensaver rich than kscreenlocker and gnome-screensaver as it includes about 200 different Screensavers making screen nice to watch when you come back from a lunch.

For people with Windows key keyboard who are too used to using Windows XP / 7 lockreen WIN + L key shortcut to make Windows (key) + L keys combination work on Linux with GNOME desktop:
 

System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts

Make Win + L keys combination work on Linux with KDE desktop
 

  1.  "System Settings" (KDE menu).
  2. Choose "Keyboard & mouse" (on "General" tab).
  3. Choose "Global Keyboard Shortcuts" on the left.
  4. Choose "Run Command Interface" from "KDE component" dropdown list.
  5. Choose "Lock session".
  6. Select "Custom".
  7. Click on "None" (button changes to "Input…").
  8. Compose your desired sequence by pressing appropriate buttons on your keyboard.
  9. Click "Apply".

 


For other desktop environments like Window Maker you can use xmodmap command to bind Win + L keys

SL Animated console train for your Linux – useless commans to cheer you up when you mistype ls

Tuesday, February 18th, 2014

sl-cool-program-to-cheer-you-up-when-you-make-a-mistake-on-linux-console

Some time ago I blogged about how to make your sysadmin more enjoyable with figlet and toilet console ASCII art text generators
Besides toilet and figlet another cool entertainment proggie is cowsay. On my home Linux router I use cowsay together with a tiny shell script to generate me a random Cow Ascii Art fun picture each time I login to my Linux. cowrand is set to run for my user through ~/.bashrc.

cowsay print cheerful pictures on your linux console / terminal login how to

In the spirit of ascii art fun arts today I've stumbled on another cool  and uselesss few kilobytes program called "SL". SL is very simple all it does is it cheers up you by displaying a an animated train going through the screen once you type by mistake "sl" instead of ls (list command).
To enjoy it on debian based distributions install it with apt:

# apt-get install --yes sl

SL 's name is a playful joke itself as well it stands for Steam Locomotive.

To get some more ASCII art fun, try telnetting to  towel.blinkenlights.nl – There is a synthesised ASCII Art text version video of Star Wars – Episode IV

# telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

watch all star_wars episode 1 in ascii art video

If you know other cool ASCII art animation scripts / ASCII art games or anything related to ASCII art for Linux / Windows, please drop me a comment.
 

Trip to Geographical Center of Europe Polotsk Belarus

Tuesday, May 7th, 2013

I spend 3 days from last week with my beloved girlfriend Svetlana in Polotsk Belarus. Since I'm here in Belarus for only 21 days, I'm trying to see as much as possible from what is remarkable from this beautiful green country. Polotsk is famous with;
 

  • Polotsk (Полоцк) is old Orthodox Christian Spiritual center and oldest city of Belarus (founded y. 862)
     
  • It is famous for being home city of Saint Efrosinia Polotskaya
     
  •  Polotsk  is Geographical Center of Europe
     
  • Saint Ephrosinia Church (12th century) – where Cross of st. Efrosinia is kept
     
  • Museum of Book-printing – one of the best in Europe
     
  • "The Stone of Boris" – monument of old Slavonic culture

    stone of Boris monument Polatsk Belarus
     

  • Spaso Efrosinievsky Nuns Monastery (Convent) – (established y. 1582) – monastery islocated 15 minutes from Central Train Station

It is interesting that probably the greatest Belarusian enlightener enlightener Frantsysk Skorina was born in Polatsk, Skorina is among most important people of Belarus of all time. It was in Polotsk also when first Belarusian "printer" was used.

I went to Polotsk with absoultely no idea what to expect. To reach there we travelled on a Belarusian train in a sleeping coupe. Mentioning train I should say train station in Minsk is very well organized and looks very European, the only inconvenient thing from other Western countries trains is you have to call Train Station and reserve ticket in advance. If you don't do so there is a high risk there are no free tickets.

Вокзал Vokzal Central Train Station Minsk Belarus

Central Railway Station Minsk, Belarus

Minsk Central Train Station Vokzal Minsk / Вокзал Минск

Minsk inside Central Train station (Copyright Wikipedia)

The train we were in was old probably 25 or 30 years old, but inside all was clean and well maintained, the train windows had curtains and in between coupe corridors there was even carpet. The train toilet seemed a bit ancient and was a bit dirty, but I guess this is normal as even in developed countries like Holland train toilets are bit dirty. Smoking inside the train just like in Bulgaria nowadays was prohibited. Overall train travel was from 11:53 to 08:20 The train is quite slow if compared to Western European but, was confortable and most importantly warm. Going down from train in Polotsk, I noticed even though the train station was little it was generally well organized. We left our laggage in a Luggage Keeping Room (very cheap for 1 day it costs about 1 euro or less!).

Polotsk is a famous tourist destinations for people from Russia and Ukraine, so finding and booking a Hotel in advance was a bit of a struggle. Thanksfully Svetlana managed to book in advance a Hotel Parus. Hotel cost was cheap too about 12 EURO per night for person. Parus hotel was destinated quite good, with rooms having a sightview to Dvina River
After leaving our luggage in Train Station, we went for an eat and find out prices in cafeterias are very low too. We eat quickly in tiny cafeteria – Mini Cafe and for Coffee Tea and a small snacks we pay only about 1.5 euro!
As Polotsk is small with inhabitants of only 80 000 ppl and is a famous spiritual center for centuries – the city "feels" very calm and relaxed. It is very easy to orientate too, the central part of the city is located in less than 10 minutes walk from Central Train Station. Next to train station is the Central Bus Station. The central part has few old monuments and just 3 minutes after crossing the central part (on the right)you reach the part with 3 of city landmarks;

– Historical Museum of Book Printing
– Saint Sophia Cathedral
– Bogoyavlensky sybor (Epiphany Cathedral Church)

saint Sophia Cathedral Polatsk Belarus

Saint Sophia Cathedral Polatsk

Polock River Dvina view

River view to Saint Sophia Cathedral Polatsk

polotsk-bogoyavlenski-sobor-Epiphany-cathedral-Polotsk

Cathedral of Epiphany Polotsk, Belarus

Svetlana planned, we stay 1 day in Polotsk and then travel to one of the other old cities of Belarus Grodno and then to Vitebsk, however we were so tired and Polotsk was so beautiful that we decided stay in Polotsk for one more day. On first day in Polotsk near the hotel there was a small Inn (Damyan) offering menu with traditional Belarusian kitchen food. We ate two nights there and in general  the prices there were normal for a tourist city – a dinner for 2 costs 15 / 20 euro. The inn decoration was with traditional tools and objects used in old times Belarusian living style. Unsurprisingly many of the tools were very similar to ones in Bulgaria so I felt pretty much like in our traditional  Bulgarian taverns ( Mehana ).

On Second day we catch bus number 4 (IRC) to reach to Spaso Efrosinievsky Monastery – named so in honor of st. Efrosinia of Polotsk. It is my first I visit Belarusian / (Russian) Monastery and honestly I was amazed how well all in monastery is organized.

Spaso Efrosinievski manastir Polotsk Belarus main Church building

Starting from Buildings Church buildings and even Nuns and Priests I met I can say Belarusian Spiritual Life is on supreme level. The Monastery had 3 Church buildings, where on the picture you see two of the Church buildings. The architecture of main Church was very much in Byzantine Eastern Style and the Church architecture differs from the usual Russian styled Churches, I've seen in Minsk and Polotsk. The Church architecture very much reminded me of our homeland Churches in Bulgaria.
The main Church building keeps thousand of Christian saints and st. Martyrs Holy Relics. Just to name a few – relics of St. martyr Georgi, st. Seraphim Sarovski, st. Longin (the keeper of the Lord's tomb), st. mrtr Panteleimon, st Nicolas, st Spiridon …
On the left near the alter walls are kept the Holy incorruptable body of saint Efrosinia Polatskaya, The holy incorruptible body of the saint is 10 centuries old!

saint Efrosinia Polatskaya Orthodox Christian icon

In Church photography was prohibited so unfortunately I couldn't take picture of st. Efrosinia's Holy Body. On the left and right corner of the Church near the outer doors there are a number of saints Holy relics to venerate. On the right near the Church Alter, there was a shrine containing a holy relics piece of approximately 100 of the greatest Christian saints!!!
The blessing one gets by visiting the monastery is great, being in the Church and near the Holy relics makes one feel the Pure Joy of Grace of the Holy Spirit flowing.
I and Svetlana stay for half of the evening service and then took to our hotel in Polotsk receiving the blessing of multtude of saints. On the next day, took our baggage and on our way to Train Station, we saw an old house used currently as Kids Museum. I've been in a kids museum already and I know though it is made for Children the joy to be there is not different even for adults as in each of us lives a kid. Below are few pictures from the Kids Museum 🙂

Kids-Museum-Polotsk-Belarusian-architect-Church-in-building

Inside Kids museum (Church inside building 🙂 )

old-Belarusian-things-traditional-Belarusian-instrument

Old Belarusian Musical Instrument (top in Yellow)

kids-museum-Polotsk-Georgi-and-Svetlana

Weighting tools Kids museum (Me and Svetlana)

On 3rd day of our stay in Polotsk, we catch a bus back to Minsk. The bus was a small mini-bus very similar to ones we have in Bulgaria. Just like with almost everything in Belarus it was necessary to reserve and buy our bus tickets in advance (on previous day).
In General we had great time in Polotsk. It is cheap there are things to see and it is small and everything is nearby you. If you happen be in Belarus visit Polotsk for a day or 2 its worthy.

Create ASCII Art Text banners in GNU / Linux console and terminal with figlet and toilet

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

Create fun and colorful text ASCII art banner logos on Linux (figlet and toilet)

As an old school hobbyist, I'm a kind of ASCII art freak. Free Software is just great for this text / console maniacs like me, who spend their youth years in a DOS (Disk Opearting System) command prompt.
For long time, I'm researching the cool programs which has to do somehow with ASCII Art, in that relation I decided to write few ones of figlet and toilettwo nice programs capable of generating ASCII art text beautiful banners based on a typed in text string. Obviously toilet developer Sam Hocevar had a great sense of humor 🙂

To play with figlet and toilet install them, according to (rpm or deb based package manager on distro) with yum / apt-get.

yum -y install toilet figlet
....

apt-get --yes install toilet figlet
....

There are no native tool packages for Slackware, so Slackaware Linux users need to compile figlet from source code – available on figlet's home page figlet.org

Once figlet and toilet are installed, here is few sample use cases;
 

hipo@noah:~/Desktop$ figlet hello world!             

figlet ascii art banner hello world
 

hipo@noah:~/Desktop$ figlet -f script Merrcy Christmas

figlet merry christmas text in ascii art with script font linux

Plenty of figlet font examples are available on Figlet's website example section – very cool stuff btw 🙂 To take a quick look on all fonts available for toilet – ascii art banner creation. Type in your console tty or terminal; for i in $(dpkg -L toilet-fonts|grep -i /usr/share/figlet); do toilet -f $(echo $i|sed -e "s#.tlf##g" -e "s#/usr/share/figlet/##g") test; done

On below picture, I made a screenshot of my gnome terminal with most fonts installed by toilet-fonts (fonts package).

ascii art banner create generate program linux figlet toilet with fonts on debian linux screenshot pic - how to create ascii banners linux

There are about 150 fonts, most of which needs to be downloaded and installed manually. A quick search online led me to a fonts collection of 263 figlet ascii art fonts – you can download a mirror of the file figletfonts40.zip here. To aid up toilet and  with those 263 extra fonts (on Debian) do; wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/figletfonts40.zip cd /usr/share/figlets unzip figletfonts40.zip Note: you have to have installed unzip in advance, unzip is not in default install, so if you don't have it fetch it with; apt-get install --yes unzip toilet and figlet are partially compatible, between each other so most fonts should work okay on both.

figlet supports, also simple formatting of ASCII art banner, here is few examples with formatting; a.) format to center  

$ figlet -c bla bla

figlet centered ascii art text bla bla screenshot

b.) format to left


figlet ascii art banner left formatted text debian gnu linux

c. right formatting


figlet ascii art banner right formatted ascii art text debian linux generator

d. format to terminal width By default text that figlet generates is to suit for 80 rows terminals, normally on higher resolution in gnome-terminal and other Linux environments, terminals are not dimensioned 80×25, thus it is useful for longer sentences text to display text in accordance to terminal size;

figlet ascii art banner sentence phrase to terminal width banner debian gnu linux

The cool thing and advantage of toilet over figlet is toilet can print out ASCII art banners in colors – very very cool stuff; To quickly test all filters issue; for i in $(toilet -F list|awk '{ print $1 }'|grep -v Available|sed -e 's#"##g'); do toilet -F $i pC-fREAK; done Change text pC-fREAK with whatever you like;

> using toilet to create funny ascii-art banners linux pc-freak logo pictures

Very nice use of toilet or figlet, can be if it is placed to produce some nice message in ASCII banner on each user login. Other nice fun applications  is together with cowsay.

apt-cache show cowsay|grep -i description -A 5 Description: A configurable talking cow Cowsay (or cowthink) will turn text into happy ASCII cows, with speech (or thought) balloons. If you don't like cows, ASCII art is available to replace it with some other creatures (Tux, the BSD daemon, dragons, and a plethora of animals, from a turkey to an elephant in a snake).

In case interested in using cowsay on system logins, I suggest you check out my tiny cowrand script which uses cowsay and shows random cow ASCII art picture on each user login.

Also a good use if you're Christian is to combine, some nice Holy Scriptures  verse in text ascii with  some encouraging daily bible phrase from verse or fortune.

Apart from fun, common use of ASCII art slogans is in e-mail or blog comments ASCII art signatures, also they are certainly good for creating unusual (text) advertisements and even can be used to save printer ink:) cause text generated in ASCII art logo is not massive like most text fonts are 🙂 Last but not least  ASCII art banners are useful in generation of ASCII slogans as an art; after all ASCII art is one of innovative arts of 21st century 🙂