During the period 20-24 November this year (2007 for those that have forgotten), in the grand capital of Romania, there will be held the seventeenth (17) edition of The International Film Festival DaKINO.

As in the previous years, there will be competitions of short films on different categories (fiction + animation, documentary), parallel programs with awarded films and last but not least, special moments prepared by the organizers (which have yet to be leaked, despite the question in the prior 3 press releases).

From the almost 400 films (43 countries) which entered the preliminaries, only 93 (from 23 countries) will get to satisfy our sight, hearing and imagination at this edition of the festival. Romania won't be missing this event, going to the preselection with 37 romanian movies, out of which 26 at the short film section and 11 at the documentary category; 17 of which passed the preliminaries.

This year, The Auditorium Complex - MNAR (Bucharest), has the distinct honor of hosting the event, which promises 7 titles from 2007, of which I must note: Beowolf (which will be the first movie shown), Ploy and Atonement (which will be refreshing at the end of the festival).

I was unable to find the ad for this year, but I hope to make you smile with the one from last year, thanks to Youtube.com.

The fourteenth edition of this manifestation, organized by Radio Romania, will be held this year, during the period 21-25 November and will be host in the traditional location: The Central Pavilion of the Romexpo Exhibitions Centre.

Access to the event will be done via tickets, worth 3 RON (~1 dollar), bought near the entrance, which will also be used to enter the Gaudeamus Raffle. The winners of the 3 prizes (a Dacia Logan vehicle offered by Automobile Dacia, a laptop offered by Caro Group and a Radio-CD player capabilities offered by Radio Romania), will be designated by random, Sunday the 25th of November at 12:00.

Pupils, students, pensioners, members of the writers union and teachers will have free access, based on specific documents. The visitors from the above categories will not be able to enter the raffle unless they buy an entry ticket.

The money made out of selling the tickets will be used to finance literary debuts and for translating the work of romanian writers in languages with a wider international usage. The objective of this (as was with the prior edition of the Gaudeamus Fair), is to obtain a Nobel prize for romanian literature.

The visiting hours of the fair are as follows:
Wednesday - Friday, between 11:00 and 20:00.
Saturday, between 10:00 and 20:00.
Sunday, between 10:00 and 16:00.

For other information check the official site

A very nice video made by Martin De Thurah. A dude that makes quite a lot of music videos, some of them being absolutely exquisite. The video I recently saw, made by Thurah, is for a danish pop band called Carpak North, which thanks to the allmighty Youtube, I can share to you:

Looking though some of my old links (and trust me, my old links... are old), I found a place I totally forgot about. And that little place is gonna become our new... A Site A Day...

Most of us come from a time when mIRC was a totally new thing ... It was amazing back then and I think it still is... how many random jerks, idiots and simply stupid people use the internet frequently. I used to have a couple of years back a notepad called "My mIRC funnies" I don't really remember using mIRC that often but DC++ was one of my "favorite" of places to chat. I don't remember any of my funnies to tell you guys, sadly many formats befell my old comp.

Still what has all this ranting to do with the site in question? Some of you, who actually read the titles of my posts, already know it's about a quote database. But what's so special about a quote database that I find it "worthy" enough for the general public ? well... it's mostly a Quote Database of stupid stupid stupid internet users... and some really lame ones. A site that uses user feeds with excerpts from chats... Let me example a few:

tatclass: YOU ALL SUCK DICK
tatclass: er.
tatclass: hi.
andy\code: A common typo.
tatclass: the keys are like right next to each other.

T-Wolf: man, my girlfriend left me for some faggot named robert
RdAwG20: you don't live in Hope mills do you?
T-Wolf: ya, why man?
RdAwG20: lol, just wondering, was her namne alisson?
T-Wolf: you mother fucker

Th3No0b: Im going to be the next hitler
Th3No0b: Im going to kill all the jews and 1 clown
RageAgainsttheAmish: why the clown
Th3No0b: See? no one cares about the jews
RageAgainsttheAmish: lmao

P.S. Yes I have a strange sense of humour...

I'm in a hurry so I'll keep this short...

Tonight we're gonna talk abot a place that think about the little ones. No I'm not talking about babies but about insects. I'm talking about an animation that some french dudes are making... but seeing as how a small search on YouTube found a part of the clip - I'm just gonna let you guys watch it (P.S. it's gonna be a sort of documentary in the end).

NOTE: This is NOT the entire teaser. On the site you can find a longer version with some really funny bits.
And here are some nice little images from the site (had to printscreen them :\ and don't forget ... click for larger versions)

My attention has been drawn recently to another service offered by Google named Google Calendar.

The interface itself is that of a simple calendar but what makes it surpass some of the other similar services out there is the high number of settings and customization possible. You can invite friends or guests to see your calendar and Google even gives you the opportunity to share it with other people and even comment on the events planned.

Ok,ok, but what about the SMS thing I just wrote about in the title? Well, amongst the notification options (like pop-up and email) you can choose an SMS reminder. First you need to go to settings and validate your phone number. You just choose your country and write down your phone number and you will immediately receive an SMS with the verification code provided by Google. You just enter that and everything is set.

Some people even suggested using the SMS reminder as a way to send free SMS to people. Yes, the service is completely free, including the SMS' you receive. Good job Google!

Fortune Magazine has published a top 100 of the best companies to work for in 2007. Guess who's no. 1. GOOGLE, yes, Google, the search engine. Apparently it's heaven on earth. You have gourmet restaurants where food is free, free gym with free personal trainers, free medical care. Did I mention it's all FREE!?
You can bring your pet to work, you can wear your slippers or even your sleeping outfit, no one cares. Everybody is happy.
Here's a short movie about it, posted on YouTube.

Right after Google in the top comes a company called Genentech. Why it's great to work there? I'll tell you. People can take a six-week payed vacation if they've been working there for at least 6 years. Yes, that's right, they pay you for a month and half of vacation.

If you want to check out who else is in that top, click this link.

We all are pranksters. Common let's face it, each and everyone of us played a prank at least once in their life time. Some of us do it twice... others even 10 times... Maybe you ain't a general prankster, but maybe you know one. A real prankster, one that knows how to pull a prank... like the prank in my second post... Operation relliM a real prank... one that takes planing into account...

Still... What if you have a prank that involves let's say... 10 people... or 20... or 50... but what happens when you have a prank that involves 300 people ?! Ain't that simply mind bending ? Well these dudes do this... "they cause scenes". I'm just gonna present how it all started... well part of it at least (excerpt from the official FAQ):

"In August of 2001, I went out to a West Village bar with my college buddies Brandon Arnold and Jon Karpinos. On a whim we decided to pull a prank where I would pose as musician Ben Folds. Three hours later, "Ben Folds" was drinking on the house surrounded by women and his "two big fans" were thrown out of the bar for "stealing Ben Folds' wallet". I had always been a prankster, but this experience enlightened me as to how far a prank could be taken. As an actor new to the city, I discovered I could create my own theatre rather than waiting around for someone to give me stage time. I got tired of telling the story to friends, so I typed it up and put it on the web. Improv Everywhere was born. "

And as a simple P.S. these dudes also have some nice YouTube Videos

First of all I'd like to take say I'm sorry for not being so active the last couple of days. But between personal project and my net failing every 2 minutes... I just got fed up and said "@#$! *&"... And time passed and passed and who start pulling my sleeve, "Dude... A Site A Day is becoming A Site A Week?" ... good 'ol Fallen... thanks dude... if it weren't for you I surely would have forgotten to put some heart into this place... and It's weekend to boot! I'm a bastard for forgetting.

To compensate for my little lack of appreciation for what I have started/created, here is a something special:

The Brain Port. A technology that uses the tongue to show images and will some day make blind vision see even better than people who can see. For the time being it's kinda blurry... Confused? take a look at this CBS NEWS VIDEO:

Yes boys and girls, we're back! And for the second time this season, a site courtesy of FallenAngel... Let's give him a big round of applause :the crowd goes wild: ... Well tonight's contenstant is:

It appears that last weekend, in Boston, a couple of game developers (15 + 1 sound dude and 1 artist dude)... got together and made in just one weekend (36 hours to be precise) ... 8 games ! one of which... is... 3D ! (but with no download at the moment of speaking).
God I wish something like that would happen in my town... might be actually cool... well in the mean time... I have to finish that Game Development book I was reading... so I'll just leave you guys with some screens from two of my faves, "Shift" and "Squish": (click the thumbnails for larger versions)

We all know that the award winning browser: Mozzila FireFox not too long ago, launched FireFox 2. This arose in a lot of controversy among users. Simply because most FireFox 1.5 extensions and themes... where NOT compatible with FireFox 2. I myself experienced this, from my 5 major extensions 2 didn't work... Don't know about the rest, I think I didn't even bother installing the rest when I saw those didn't work. That is why I, as a FireFox fan started using FireFox2 later than other users. Maybe I'm not the only one...

What has this to do with "A Site A Day" ?... Well... EVERYTHING. There's this dude, Bill... who made a list of a lot (a lot !!!) of the FireFox 2 compatible extensions. The site in question even has a nice little ranking system to show the ones that are being downloaded the most. In one of my future posts I'm gonna make a list of my favorite extensions.

P.S. The picture on the right is not, the logo of the site. Unfortunately the site has no logo...

Ever wonder how words relate? Does the word "nurse" have anything to do with "nursing home"?... well that's basically what this little site proposes, a way to see how different words relate. Let me example this, by searching for the word "comedy": (click images for larger versions)

And here we are with yet another episode of:

Here is another design group. Much like funnel, only for these guys I'm actually gonna present one of their ... applications. It is called Visual Acoustics. It let's you, the user to make music using only your mouse. I don't quite know how to explain most of the things there. So just read this front page excerpt:

"Brushes are painted acros the screen, each consisting of an instrument and accomnapnying visual. The position of the mouse on screen determines which instrumental note the brush paints onto the screen."

Late Late Late again... no excuses this time so I'll just continue with our schedule:

Ralph Heimans is... somewhat of an artist and I for one actually liked his work. What's so special about him? He uses late 16th and early 17th techniques combined with modern techniques resulting in a very pleasant to look out style.
He's painting portfolio even has some important names:

Portrait of HRH Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, 2006, oil on canvas, The Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark

“…fascinating, enigmatic…Ralph Heimans's portrait of Mary is a study in ambiguity, a symphony of shadows.”

John McDonald, Chief Art Critic
Sydney Morning Herald

Now I'll just leave you with some more of his work (just click an image for a larger version:

And finally on time... "A Site A Day" #5:

OOOK boys and girls, are you ready for something truly horrible ? How about... some insects... how about mechanized insects? how about a sort of cyborg insect... half insect half machine... well that's basically what Insect Lab does. They customize insects with watch parts and sa they say "each specimen is individually designed and hand- assembled, each is one of a kind and unique". So it might even be worth calling them for one :)



I'm just gonna leave you with some more pictures: (click them for larger versions)

Hey there happy bloggers... Welcome to my 4th edition of "A site A day". I know I'm again late but I had some minor errors with photobucket...

Today will be presenting a very interesting idea, that will certainly appeal to people who are into graphics but not only. Draw Ball is basically a gallery... but it's a limited gallery... meaning that it's a ball and you draw on it... and over older ones... Might sound weird but it's fun... I had "RED" drawn on it... a simply horrible drawing but still it was mine and it felt nice... Not much else to say about it. The picture to the left is in the gallery and it's one of my favorites. Just visit the site and I promise you'll find something you like. Cheers!

Enso.
Courtesy of FallenAngel, I am sharing with you, a new aplication. It's simple, robust and I'm just gonna let Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal do most of the talking for me...



But because I realized not everybody will or can sit through this movie to load or simply won't watch the movie. For this reason I took it into my own hands to talk a bit about Enso.

Enso is a little tool,

GASP! Look at the time!
"I'm late, I'm late,
For a very important date!
Oh me, Oh my,
I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!"

Yes dear folks, I'm one day late with my "A site A day", I'm sorry had some comp problems... but they're fixed now. And on to our 3rd "A site A day":

A guy called Paul Neave, age 27... one day thought of creating a site. And that site evolved into something amazing. It has a few games, a planetarium thingie (a star box - interestingly made I might add), some cool flash fiddlings and my personal fave: A link to Neave.tv ... what's neave.tv you ask? well I'll just let the author answer that one:

Neave.tv is "creativity in a telly stylee" — a selection of top quality, creative, weird and wonderful videos I've found on the web, presented in a TV-style (continuously streaming video in your full browser window) and powered by Blip.tv, Google Video and YouTube.
It tries to challenge the concept of video over the web. Why have video stuck inside a tiny box inside a webpage with a scrub-bar, a five star rating and a comments section? Computers can do so much more than that. It's a TV experience; it's not about finding content, it's about watching it. There's deliberately no commercials nor boring videos where you need to skip to the good part — just sit and watch. That's the idea anyway.

So without further ranting... the links: Neave.com and Neave.tv

My second "A Site A Day" is ... pam pa di dum !!!

A unique idea of representing dimensions closely united to the popular string theory that's been going around lately.

The Dimensions. To better understand each dimension I'm gonna start with the first one. Which in this example, is dimension 0.

Dimension 0 -> A Point. A point has no size, no dimension. It's an imaginary idea that indicates a position in a system.

Dimension 1 -> A second point could indicate a second position. A line could be used to indicate the first dimension.

Dimension 2 -> If we put a new point and draw a new line that branches out of the first line, we create a split. A split would be a representation of the second dimension.

Dimension 3 -> The third dimension would be the easiest to explain, but let's take a different approach. Imagine the map, the world map. If you want to get from the left side to the right side you have to walk all the way the entire map. But now imagine folding the map so as the left side coincides with the right. That would make it a tube like representation where you could easily go from the far left side of the map to the far right side. So in order to help imagining our future dimensions, let's think of this one as if it were a fold.

Dimension 4 -> Many people have speculated that the 4th dimension is time. That is fairly easy to understand, right now I am writing this and in 10 hours I'll probably be sleeping. So we can think that any given moment in time is... a point, a point that indicates a position in our system, time. But time as a dimension needs to be defined by two points. And those two points are defined by a line.

Dimension 5 -> Now let's think about time a bit in the 4th dimension. The line in the 4th dimension represented the natural flow of events from point A in time to point B in time. Now let's think of a point C in time where events happened differently. The new point C would be a branch of our A-B timeline. That branch would be a split that represents the 5th Dimension.

Dimension 6 -> Let's take our previous split and think about it a bit. Let's say we would want to go from point B to point C. That would normally mean going back to A and then going to point C. But folding our split makes it possible to instantly jump from point B to point C.

Dimension 7 -> Let's imagine time again. From the beginning of the universe to it's end. Now let's imagine every possible timeline from the beginning to the end. That would be a point in the 7th dimension. But let's imagine a different beginning for our Universe. One where the basic principles like the speed of light and gravity are different. That would be a new point that defines a line representing, the 7th Dimension.

Dimension 8 -> Let's look at Dimension 7 again. We define the line from point A to point B. As you Might already suspect, we're gonna create a new point C, that is in fact a whole new, different universe. Let's make point C be a branch of our A-B line. That branch is the split that represents Dimension 8.

Dimension 9 -> Now. Let's say we want to get from point B to point C. We could fold the split and that would effectively represent Dimension 9.

Dimension 10 -> And Finally. Let's think of every possible beginning of the universe and for each of those, let's imagine every possible timeline. That point is Dimension 10.

Why no Dimension 11? Simply because. We've just ended all possible possibilities of existence, from our universe to any random one.

Note: In the animation that can be viewed here. Dimensions seven through nine I think are flawed. I used my own understanding of the concept to try and correct them.

Nintendo just announced that the Wii sold 3.19 million units worldwide in 2006, just short of the promised 4 million units. 1.25 million were sold in North America, 1.14 in Japan and 800,000 in Europe. Nintendo also revealed some Virtual Console stats; 1.5 million games were bought and downloaded, where 1.4 million consoles are hooked up to the Internet. They’re still on track to ship 6 million before the end of March 2006. This, combined with the success of the DS, contributed to record profits in 2006 for Nintendo.

I came up with an idea... "A site A day" basically these are reviews about sites I found or find interesting...

And to inaugurate this new "label", here is my first addition:

One of the best site designs I ever saw... love the background music positively superb graphics and definitely an intricate layout... with all the gears, the sprockets and every little detail put in place.
Old School Fans are gonna be thrilled by this great flash. Kinda reminds me of the old Fallout games...

How would you feel if one day you return from a vacation and you find that your dorm room is... the wrong side up ?

Take a look at this interesting little video where a couple of students with (a wee bit) too much time on their hands tried the impossible and defied gravity!

The bed, the desk, the shelves, the books even all the stuff in the closet... are all... up-side-down... well take a look at some funky photos and in the end a nice little movie where the dude finds out what happened... enjoy

P.S. they have a site tehe.

and Congratulations !

I'm delighted that you could make it... getting here wasn't easy... I know... In fact I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize...

To begin with, for you to be here now... trillions of drifting atoms had, somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It's an arangement so specialized and particular... that it has never been tried before and will only exist... this once.

For the next many years, I hope ... these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally under appreciated state known as existence.