Posted on by Michel · 3 Comments

CSS Naked Day, 2007 Edition!

To promote Webstandards, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and semantic (X)HTML – this year again CSS Naked Day!

More information: two words by Dustin at his blog, at webstandards.org, and, of course, at the official webpage of the participants :) The list of participating websites is over 900 and growing (see also technorati).

My blog is first-time participator (for obvious reasons – in April 2006 optimiced.com didn’t yet exits;-), which means from midnight EET (East European Time, or GMT + 2h) all CSS styles in it will be disabled for a minimum of 24 hours — and if you wonder, why the design of the website looks so bare – this is the reason:)))

Well, Optimiced is not so beautiful at the moment, but a good cause requires some sacrifice, and I’m willing to do it:)

Posted on by Michel

Happy April Fool’s Day… laughter heals:-)

I read a long article today on the benefits of laugh, with lots of sicentific data on how it may improve your health, etc.

But what caught my attention more was a research, made on 2 million people accross the whole planet, with the aim to assess around 40’000 jokes.

The results of two nations caught my eye – Belguim and Scotland.

Best joke in Belgium was acknowledged the following:

“Why ducks are web-footed? To extinguish fires with them. And why elephants have flat feet? To step over the ducks on fire.”

Hmm?… And in Scotland joke number one was:

“I want to die peacefully in my sleep in the train, like my grand-father did, and not screaming in horror, like his passengers.”

This one was a good one! I had to read the joke twice before I’ve got it… :-D

Happy April Fool’s Day to everyone! (Today is not a suitable day for anything serious, and with all my coughing and sneezing this weekend, what more is left to me than to keep my bed, to read, write and (occasionaly) draw a little;)

Posted on by Michel · 4 Comments

Roomba vs TV?

I saw a funny post about a robot which cleans your house and laughed a lot (found via antonia.del.bg).

But I got a little be annoyed that the author of the comic strip maybe thinks that watching TV is the thing which’ll make his life easier and more efficient. You save time… to be in front of the TV set? Hmm…

Here’s my version (redrawn quickly with Macromedia Fireworks):

My variant of the Roomba save-time feature

(Because I’m lucky, the author has published the picture under CC and I can make changes to it, by mentioning him as the original author:-)

And I have gave up television totally a few years ago. We do not have a TV at home, and do not plan to have any in the future.

You can gain so much free time by getting rid of it!

Time used for drawing for your own pleasure, for example:)))

PS This is not a joke:)

Update (2009/03/20): The original comic strip has a new address:-)

Posted on by Michel

WordPress 2.1.2… finally on my blog as well:-)

…or, in other words, the latest and greatest WordPress (namely, version 2.1.2), now works on my website as well:-)

All plugins are OK – the few I use include LightBox 0.6.4beta, Google Sitemap 3.0b6, WP-Shortstat 1.12a.

WordPress powers optimiced.com from January 1st, 2007. I like a lot WP from the moment I started to use it.

The first version I’ve installed was 2.0.5, and then WP 2.0.6 was out, then 2.0.7, 2.0.9, 2.1 “Ella”, 2.1.1… and only then I decided that it’s time to upgrade. I did.

But on the next day, after I have successfully made backup of the database and of the files and upgraded to 2.1.1, a serious possible security problem was discovered in 2.1.1 and news was spread we should upgrade as soon as possible to 2.1.2.

Well, I got lazy.

I used 2.1.1 for a few weeks and only tonight have decided that the right moment has come, and after a new series of backups and strict adherence to the instructions, I am already with 2.1.2 up and running :-) Same applies to the Bulgarian version, of course.

After my brilliant upgrades I celebrated with a cup of healthy tea and one beer from the fridge:)

After that I read some blogs (designers’ & developers’ blogs mostly)…

…and now I am sleepy as hell, so good night! More to come soon;-)

Posted on by Michel · 4 Comments

London, UK, or why I didn’t write for one month

London, UK - Big Ben at nightSome may wonder why suddenly I stopped writing in my blog.

Some may even wonder if I am alive or not:-)

Well, to make the long story short, I’ll explain in brief here the reason for my silence and what happened since February 21st:

I had to fly to London, UK (via Milano) on February 26th, and I came back to Sofia on March 6th. It was a trip related to my work, so I hadn’t much free time in London for sightseeing – actually, my only free time there was in the early morning, while walking to the office of GreenNet, late in the evenings, while walking back to the cheap hotel I stayed at (near King’s Cross), and also one free week-end…

After my return, work and some problems caught up on me almost 24/7, so I hadn’t no free time for blogging or anything else (let me just say that only yesterday me and my wife saw for the first time some of the photos and videos from my trip… and some more are yet to be seen)…

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Posted on by Michel

The End of Winter (which never came)

Winter, by Joshua BryantSo winter never came to Bulgaria this winter… and now it’s almost gone.

No, the photo above is not mine, and it is not from some park in the city I live in… It’s just a thumbnail of a very nice winter paysage by Joshua Bryant (click thumbnail to see in its original size on Joshua’s flickr account). I almost envy him that he had had such a winter – snow and all…

I look now outside of the window. Everything is bathed in sunlight, it is almost 20 degrees Celsius outside, no snow, no wind, and the trees will start to blossom soon, I guess. Lots of days in January, February, even in December, were like this one. I’m a cyclist and the whole winter I was able to ride without problems, without freezing, without the usual battle with snow and ice on the roads… So I should be happy. Or should I?…

It is strange, not natural, somehow. Usually, during winter in Sofia, there are lots of cold days, with snow, fog, freezing wind, temperatures dropping way below zero degrees C… and now?

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Posted on by Michel · 2 Comments

The End of the ‘No’ Week

:-)I drink my Jacobs Cronat Gold coffee now (mmmmh…), with honey and cream, and think how beautiful Life is:)

My experiment is over – the week without coffee, black and green tea, beer, wine, chocolate and other things, which contain caffeine, tanine and alcohol:)

And here come the long-awaited results from this experiment:

  1. I survived;-)
  2. I feel good:-)
  3. Everything is much tastier to me now:-)

I may repeat the experiment, one day. But now…

…I plan to have some crispy potato chips tonight (or fried potatos), together with some nice, cold beer, mmmmh;-)