There’s a full keyboard with function keys and numeric keypad (toggled by a single click) and there are even a few nice additions – a set of 9 snippet/macro keys, 4 keyboard layouts and a scanning key selection. More than I need anyway

Meet amCharts from Lithuania. I’ve been mostly using their Flash charts, but they also have .Net, Flex and WPF & Silverlight versions. Very easy to use, too There’s a settings file which allows complete customization of all the chart details and there’s the data file in XML or CSV format. That’s it – with a few lines of code your data will be displayed in a very pretty and interactive chart

The best thing is it’s all completely free if you don’t mind the link to their site in the upper left corner If you do, I’m sure they’ll welcome another paying customer. They surely deserve your support for all the work they’re putting into the product.

I can not find the words to express how I felt that night and how much I enjoyed the concert… So, I’ll just point you in the right direction

And there’s plenty to enjoy if you’re an SF fan. Because this is hard science fiction at its best. The concept of `Societies` is an excellently extrapolated vision of the social interactions we’re having on the net today. Same goes for the `Inscape` and the `Manifolds` – the idea that your location and actions in the “real” world are almost of no significance and that it’s all about the “virtual” world, takes some time to get used to.

I don’t like too much action in any novel, and this one has just about the right amount of it (e.g. Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks has a bit too much for my taste and The Player of Games by the same author is spot on), but you won’t even notice it while you’re reading as the world and the story are overwhelming. There are moments when you realize that a common word does not have the same meaning any more, as the circumstances are quite different from the real world and realizing it only pulls you deeper into this imagined world.

Having said all that, it shouldn’t be surprising that I’ve already downloaded the free Ventus novel from the author’s official site and as I haven’t read Sun of Suns either (downloaded from Tor.com last year), I expect to be having great time submerged into the distant future.

I don’t like comparing books and authors, but I remember having the same feeling after closing down  The Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings. The story was too obvious, unchallenging, shallow… I’ve never picked up another Eddings book. I’m not so sure about Sanderson. I’ve downloaded Mistborn from Tor.com last year and I think I’ll give it a try. If it turns out to be as obvious as Elantris, I’m pretty sure Sanderson will follow in Eddings’ footsteps as far as I’m concerned.

I couldn’t have been farther from the truth! Surely enough, he did perform on the balcony, but you should have seen the way he climbed onto it! Running between tables, jumping from the stairs, lying on the floor… He performed at almost every single table, kneeling in front of the ladies and holding their hands singing to them. No one was spared, not even the waitress.

I haven’t seen anything like it. An unforgettable evening. Absolutely hilarious!

Bobi is a year and a half old and has been living in a flat in Belgrade until last Saturday. Now he’s got a big yard all to himself and I think he’s delighted with being able to go to the “park” whenever he wants.

I’ve uploaded a small gallery with pictures from his first few days here and the previous owners supplied a couple of photos from back when he was a puppy.

He’s absolutely adorable Constantly running, chasing balls, apples, nuts, cats or whatever happens to be available. On rare moments when he keeps still, he enjoys being patted, stroked, cuddled and scratched, but even then he’s always ready to jump up and go chasing whatever he’s spotted

Don’t have a dog? What are you waiting for?

The installation went smoothly and it detected all the hardware. However, when I tried to turn the wireless card on (there’s a button right beside the power button), the HDD light flickered a bit and nothing happened. I checked again and after some consultations on the openSUSE Forum, we concluded that the card was successfully detected and installed, but was “simply” turned off…

Checking the log file (/var/log/messages) revealed that the OS did not know what to do when the wireless button was pressed. My first idea was to try to find the correct key code and just link the button to it, but after some unsuccessful attempts I found something better – a kernel module (fsaa1655g) which allows turning the wireless card on and off from the command line

The installation of the module failed the first time i attempted it, but installing kernel sources and updating the kernel to match the source version did the trick and I managed to install the module. That’s when the wireless LED finally agreed to light up for me

So, why do I love Linux after all the trouble? It’s an excellent OS, that’s why

Not this year Looks like they’ve been very busy printing new books to fill their stands. Not necessarily a bad thing, I agree, but that’s not the point. At least not for me. I understand that the fair is their chance to show off their “latest and greatest” and that’s OK, but newly printed books are very easy to find – every bookstore has them and promotes them before, during and after the fair. I thought the whole point was to allow the visitors to see everything you’ve got…

Or maybe it’s only me not understanding what it’s all about and expecting too much.

We’ll see what happens next year. Until then, I suppose I’ll have to find some other place where the forgotten books go for their final reader hunt.

I’ve submitted the application more than 3 and a half years ago! Yes, years – it was on February 17th, 2005. I’ve given up any hope that such a technological advance would ever reach my doorstep. As the dial-up connection was far too slow for my work, no wireless access points anywhere in sight, no cable company interested in providing internet access, I’ve decided to go for a satellite connection. It was faster than the dial-up (up to 2Mbit/s downlink with OpenSky’s SatSurf subscription), but it was a one-way connection and there was the uplink problem. I used the old dial-up for a few months, but finally decided to try a GRPS/EDGE subscription from my mobile phone company. And it worked OK… It had its downsides (satellite round-trip delay, configuration issues both on Windows and Linux and it simply involved a lot of hardware), but it was far better than the alternative.

Now it all feels like a bad dream I had a very long time ago. I’ve also added a wireless router to the mix – all computers can access the internet, nice and easy. I simply love happy endings