Not a Photoshop effect, but a natural leaf

It's not a Photoshop special effect, it's just a natural leaf, picture taken with my Canon cam.

Obesity may be caused by a common virus

A study done by the romanian scientist Magdalena Pasarica claims that a common virus responsible for flu or eye infection, is also involved in some obesity cases. The study was presented at the
American Chemical Society from Boston.

According to the study coordinated by the scientist from Pennington Biomedical Research Center the virus determine the adult cells from the human body to transform into adipose cells.

There are now more studies undergoing for the making of a vaccine for this adenovirus-36 (Ad-36).

So according to this study, you may caught obesity the same as a common cold.

I have a feeling that soon people will rush to the blood testing centers that check for the presence of this virus.

Source: www.hotnews.ro

Carnivorous plant flower

My Venus Dionaea finally bloomed. After I decided to let the flower, unlike everyone said, it does not look weaker. At least not yet and I hope it will not be weak soon. The flowers don't last for long, 2-3 days. I tried to manually polenize and hopefully it will make good seeds.

bullet for my valentine lyrics

I don't like most of Bullet for My Valentine's lyrics, as their thematic is connected to some twisted mind's criminal urges and often speak of revenge, hate, betrial, rage and I can't really connect to that. But this song's lyrics I do like, because it's about loss and sadness, and even though there's some childish way here and there of expressing these, it's still pretty good, and the music goes with them:

Ten years ago, I got a call that nearly killed me
Repeat yourself, my hands are shaking
When I was told, my friend was gone I felt so guilty
A thousand questions left unanswered

I'll bleed if you want me to!
I'll serenade before I do
I'll bleed if you want me, to!

On and on although you're gone, candles burn without a flame on
Our final call to you, I know you're listening
How could you leave us that way?
Where did you go? (ten years today!)

Ten years ago, I stood beside the wood that held you
I must sit down, my legs are shaking
We let you go, with gifts of plectrums for your journey
And melodies to help you on your way

I'll bleed if you want me to!
I'll serenade before I do
I'll bleed if you want me, to!

On and on although you're gone, candles burn without a flame on
Our final call to you, I know you're listening
How could you leave us that way?
Where did you go? (ten years today!)

Wh-oh-ah!
Wh-oh-ah!
Wh-oh-ah!

I'll bleed, if you want me to (I'll bleed if you want me to!)
I'll bleed if you want me, to!

On and on although you're gone, candles burn without a flame on
Our final call to you, I know you're listening
How could you leave us that way?
Where did you go? (ten years today!)
Where did you go? (ten years today!)
Where did you go?

How could you leave us that way?
Where did you go? (ten years today!)

The song's called "Ten Years Today" ...well, in my case there are 7...

Limewire

I was searching for a p2p file sharing client some time ago, but gave up when I saw that most of them don't have a guarantee for no adware, spyware or bundled software, plus the thing I needed some platform independent soft, as I don't like constantly changing them , one for my laptop, than runs Fedora, one for my desktop, with Windows, and my dad's Mac...So I finally got limewire, it's written in java, so it's ok in respect to this point, it works anywhere there's a JVM. I've already tried it and I must say it's really great to have a download preview, it really helps in avoiding getting something named as the thing you're looking for, but being in fact a completely different thing, usually adult movies or just some other pointless crap. There's a nice searching filter implementation too, and some more features I haven't got to know yet, as it's still fresh for me. Well, all good and such, I just hope the legal issues related to copyright won't bring it down, cause it's pretty nice. And what's up with limewire.com.au ?

Instructions for sudoku

I recently started playing this asian game that spread across the whole world in the last years and I understood why: it's catchy and simple to learn, the rules are very easy to follow and it's a logical and attention game. I've played it on paper, but there are electronic versions too, there are many sites on the net that offer boards for all skills, from beginner to expert, bref, it's quite available to try. The instructions for playing Sudoku are : "Fill in the grid so that every row, every column, and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9. " The grid is 9x9, so all digits appear only one time on every row, column and in every box of 3x3 (the grid is partitioned into 9 such boxes). Starting from this rule, one can build an exclusion logic algorithm, based on the digits offered in the initial grid and fill it entirely. Look at the following grid, for example: if we check the 3 top boxes, we see that the top center and the top right ones already have a 6, so the free cells from the first row : cannot contain the 6 they lack in the 2 boxes I've mentioned. The only cell that is in this top row and can hold a 6 that follows the rules is this one, marked in red:
Not every cell can be deducted this straight forward, sometimes a choice must be made, when all the simpler cells are completed. Let's say 2 digits are the candidates for one particular cell, we choose one of them and remember it, then continue deducting just as shown above. If we reach a contradiction, and we are absolute positive no mistake has been made, then the choice we made was wrong and the other digit is the one corresponding to the cell we considered. Well, enough is enough, just wanted to share some tips in playing Sudoku, maybe it'll fill somebody else's hours in a plane or a train too :)

gilly messenger

A client for the MSN network, pretty used at some point, but it seems the project is not so much alive and kicking. The kit is still available for download on several lcoations (I got it from here: GillyMessenger and there's some old documentation from the GM's developer here: http://forums.fanatic.net.nz/lofiversion/index.php/t10152.html . I played with it a bit the last few days, but I think I'm gonna stick to YM on the long run. I'll see, maybe there's something to Gilly that could appeal to me more, some feature I'd like but I can't think of right now...

Amazon AWS: php automated scripts using XML

I wanted to build some search engine friendly minisite with amazon XML feeds. Basically you choose a keyword and get results, eventually you get links to other keywords, all works recursively and so on. First of all, after I logged in into my amazon associates account I couldn't find anything good. I remember that when I was using mediaplazza feeds or peakclick feeds, everything was easy due to good and straight documentation. I couldn't find anything like this on amazon. I searched 3rd parties and found these which are pretty helpful: http://www.chipdir.nl/amazon/ and http://smallplanetonline.com/aws.php. They come with sources but anyway, instead of using those I preffered to write everything from scratch. I just look into how a query to http://xml.amazon.com/onca/xml3? should look like and then I played with the parameters and parsed everything using xml_parser function and with help of the examples from http://de.php.net/manual/en/function.xml-parser-create.php.
I just wish amazon could offer some good documentation and eventually some kind of simulator for the queries. But maybe they do but I was just too ignorant to see or they know where to hide it well. I got so pissed searching and I started to feel like I was waisting time and decided to do my own code.

gamescopyworld

I bought the Heroes of Might and Magic expansion today, and being eager to try it, I forgot I left my cds at my parents' , 100 km away. what to do? No friends to borrow the game installer from , I only had my serial, but it was kinda useless on its own, until my bf told me about www.gamecopyworld.com, where I could get the game , and it looks like a legal thing, not some
piracy site. I mean, if I hadn't had my serial, no way could I get it from them, so don't bother looking for such an alternative ;) But anyway, it came handy for me in this situation, I'm glad he told me about it. Well, cya, going to play my new Hammers of Fate!

jumpstyle radio

I was really bored yesterday and called a friend to hang out with and even tho I don't usually fancy the kind of music she listens to, this time it was something different, as she brought some wacky jumpstyle mp3s of Jeckyll & Hyde, DJ Mystery and some others I cant remember and we danced til we dropped :) It was fun, really, she showed me that indescriptile special way of dancing on this kind of music. Now I'm considering having this at my birthday party next week, til then, I'll look for
some jumpstyle radios too see if it was just the moody yesterday's fault for me liking it :P
Later edit: I found two radios that play jumpstyle : http://www.fearfm.be and http://www.jumpstation.be , both from Belgium, hehe, coincidence or not.

Ventrilo Mix

I finally decided to install Ventrilo for my Wow guild runs, but some people recommended teamspeak too, so I thought I'd get them all into one, so I went for this Ventrilo Mix, which in its version 5 has Ventrilo 2.1, Ventrilo 2.2, Ventrilo 2.3 and TeamSpeak 2 all in one install. On its download page ( I found it here : http://www.techhaven.org/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_details/gid,18/Itemid,39 ) it mentiones uninstalling previous versions of vent before putting this up, but it wasn't my case. It also says that it can remember server configs from vent, sounds cool, but again, not my case yet.

Mars Temperature

Although Mars is the next planet from the Sun - Terra is the third in our solar system, Mars is the fourth -, it's nothing like our home Earth. Its common temperatures range in the -30 degrees Celsius, it's very dry, with only traces of water present, with very little oxygen in the atmosphere (there is more than 90% carbon dioxide and about 0,13% oxygen) there are very unfriendly conditions for human life. Even so, in a very optimistic perspective, humans could transform it in a second home, but I think the effort that would be required would be much more than the one needed to preserve Earth in a life sustaining state. Let's say that Mars's temperature is the least of rhe problems, what could we do about the low concentration of oxigen? Colonize the planet with plants an transport the water needed for them to grow? At -30 degrees?...Maybe some lichens? And the water we'd need? Hmm, it really makes me wonder. For now, it seems like humanity is in the scouting stage, but maybe if the nations could really cooperate...That's the hardest part, I think. We haven't earned that much form history, and the international conflicts are still there, and as long as humans are divided, they cannot conquer the skies...

ifish

Coming from the same i-Dog and i-Cat series, i-Fish is the first option now
for those who like aquatic animals more. Another cute and can-do-without product for teens to wish for, another marketing smart move...well, it's the world we live in today and maybe it's not that bad after all. Better to buy a dancing, flashing dolphin-fish metis than a g un, or drugs, right? From what I've read, the I-fish isn't that cravy for the owner's attentions a the I-Dog is, which suits me perfectly, as I dislike the relations in which is unclear who's owning who. If I have a I-thing, I'd like it to be a little independent and be able to cope with me not being there all the time :)
Back to the flashy thing, I must admit I like the way it looks, and from the movies of it swimming around and flashing its lights to the music it "hears", I can say I'd like to receive one for my birthday next week. (Hint, hint) I know it's a bit pricey for what it does - around $40 -, as it's not even a music player, all it does is, as I said before, moves around, flips its tail while lighting the spots on its skin, all to the sound of music.
One thing I don't like about the I-Fish is its color, I'd prefer a black one, I wonder if they make it in any other color than white or chrome? Hopefully.

Air Pollution

The Earth is changing permanently, it has always been changing, but no matter the reasons we, humans, must be really stupid not to see that the way it's changing now it's not for our benefit. The skeptics may argue it's not entirely our fault for the way things are going, that the pollution it's not the main cause, and the human factor isn't decisive for the future of our planet, but after all, it's pretty simple: do something about it or die. The human race can't live in a too unpredictable environment, although its success as a race has been determined by its adaptability too, so I think it's obvious that something must be done. And, as a matter of fact, if we are responsible for the climate changing, through pollution, it would be easier - so to say - to reduce it and find alternative ways of living without damaging the complex system that it's our home, than interfering with a natural process that we didn't cause and we are way to limited in technology to handle. So, I hope it's clear that denial isn't the right reaction to this problem we face. And if there are some people thinking that they'd never face those horrible predictions in their lifetime anyway, I must point that this isn't about the future only, it's a health problem, a money problem, even a life and death problem for those jeopardized by the floods, the increasing number of hurricanes, cyclones and all kind of storms, droughts and other natural phenomena that are intensified or created indirectly by human actions. In short, we are affecting planet Earth and it bounces back at us. It's not good for us now, it won't be in the future. We can stop it by reducing pollution - it's the most immediate way for us, as simple citizens, to avoid a grim outcome of our civilization development.
What to do? Petition the government to take measures, save as much fuel as you can by walking instead of driving (if it's a 2 miles distance, I'm sure you can do that) or by buying a smaller car, with a not-so powerful engine - not all people live at a ranch! there are hundreds of car models for different purposes, use every one of them as designed! What else? recycle, turn off the light when nobody's in that room, use the AC rationally (this will contribute to avoid the power cuts under heavy usage too), use green energy if possible - consider installing some solar panels for your home, they're not only Earth friendly, they make energy cheaper too! Etc., etc.
All I want to happen in the near future is, after all, for people to start caring. Not just a bunch of Greenpeace people, but all! The air pollution affects everybody, and all the future generations will suffer if we do nothing. Acknowledge this, before it's too late!

Carnivorous Plant Venus Dionaea

About 2 months ago I bought a carnivorous plant. I was dreaming to have one since I was a kid, but I never thought I could actually find one. They don't seem to grow here in Europe and I was also thinking they require some conditions I could never offer. I have finally found this and bought myself one. It was not looking pretty well when I brought it home. First I tried to give it a dead fly, eventually one of the trap accepted it. But unfortunately the next day the trap reopened and the fly was not digested. I then researched and found out that you need to give it alive insects or at least try to move them a little with a tiny stick after you feed the plant so everything looks natural. The plant is quite smart and if you give it a dead insect it will not start the digestion because naturally it captures only alive insects and they move a lot after the trap is closed, confirming to the plant it was a moving insects and efforts for digesting are worth starting.
I have read on the Internet it likes plenty of water, so I gave it. It grows very well now, and in two months it got 2-3 x bigger and it also started to blossom. I've heard you should not let the flower grow, but since the plant looks very strong, I decided to let her grow the plant, eventually to make seeds.
In this period I also gave it many flies and a grasshopper. Some traps didn't reopen after digestion, while others opened and no longer accepted more insects. Very few reopened and accepted another meal.


I am now waiting for the flower to blossom and I really hope the plant won't get weaker after this. I'll keep you posted on how things will evolve. There seem to be one or two more little plants near the root but I don't want to separate them, at least not yet.