Buynov

I received the newsletter from Sourceforge today and found several interesting things there. First, I found out that 2007 Community Choice Awards are over – you can see the winners and the nominees here. I took a look, as well as in Top 25 Projects and found interesting stuff – some of it I will mention below:

• Launchy - indisputable hit for me. A tool that allows you to start applications without searching through the Start menu of Windows and shortcuts on your desktop. Install the application, launch it and click Alt-Space. Then write a few letters from the name of the application you want to start, and Launchy will let you choose it from a list without having to search for it. And this is not all – you can open a path in Explorer or even write a mathematical expression, Launchy will calculate it for you! Simple but genious :).
• Stylebase for Eclipse - I did not have time to try it, but it looks promising. As it is said on the site:
  

  Stylebase is a reuse repository for architectural models and design patterns and it assists in applying quality-driven architecture design into software engineering.

• Several applications for administration and monitoring of networks:
  • Zenoss Core – application, which uses Python and Zope. I know a few people, that won’t need anything else ;). For the others, here’s a brief information from the official site:
    

    Zenoss Core is an open source IT monitoring product that delivers the functionality to effectively manage the configuration, health, performance of networks, servers and applications through a single, integrated software package.

  • Hobbit Monitor – software for monitoring of servers and networks. More information is available on the official site.
  • Webmin – web based interface for remote administration of Unix systems. For me, it sounds quite promising. A demo is supposed to be available here, but it was not working when I tried it.

If you did not look through the other projects on Sourceforge yet, I advise you to do it – there are quite good ones there. Some people have too much spare time ;). I can dedicate a separate post to the things I use from Sourceforge.

I saw “Space Station 3D“ in Mtel IMAX yesterday. I have to admit that I liked it quite a lot. Almost as much as I liked “Into the Deep”, even a bit more. Scenes were really good (especially those showing the Earth from a distance), and as a bonus, there were two really cool 3D effects:

• when sand and small rocks broke the camera lens
• when one of the astronauts hit the lens with an orange

So, if you have some spare time you can go and see it. I don’t believe you would be sorry afterwards.

It was about time my name to appear in the news:

• http://www.insurance.bg/news/?cat=news&cat_id=1&sn_id=51691
• http://4press.idg.bg/?call=USE~press;&action=item&id=1533

Several years ago, I was riding on the public transport, on my way to work. Two teenagers, white bulgarian boys, were sitting close to me. On a bus stop, their coeval came on board – they obviously knew each other. The new guy came closer and said:

- Ooo, negroes!

I laught my a** out. O tempora, o mores ;).

I promised Vassil next post to be about him, and I keep my word.

Not that I have too much to say, but to remember me with good, as it is said. Besides, we must respect our few readers – he is probably the first to get an RSS feed from my site.