July sky in Tallinn

Dell, Carter, hurricane and portraits

Life is moving on and it is somehow very busy. Classes demand write-ups and there are all evening classes, company presentations, networking/wine drinking events, parties at school, community projects etc. Might go in more details some day.

But more about subject. Today mister Dell visited Atlanta and found some time to come to Emory campus. So he answered some questions of ours. He is decent and serious guy - no bullshit. He told more or less common stuff, so no special quotes this time.

Last week on Wednesday President (Jimmy) Carter held his annual town hall meeting in Emory, answering questions of students. His well known Carter Center in Atlanta is affiliated with Emory university, so that's the reason. Jimmy is a nice guy, and most of his stories come down to environment, peace and reducing world poverty. Highlight of the night was his answer to question "What would you change in US foreign policy?". His answer "Our current president Bush". This country is extremely polarized at the moment.

Today new hurricane called Jeanne arrived to Atlanta. Nothing much notable, but just endless heavy rain. Can be compared to nice summer rain in Tallinn. Waiting for next one, called Lisa.

And here is my answer to photo competition in foto.diip.ee. As a lazy guy I did not go out to shoot new stuff, so I just dug up couple of shots from My Pictures. Any comments?

Napster service review

I tried this new Napster service, which works under Windows Media Player 10. It is pretty impressive, as I mentioned in my earlier post, because one can listen to large library of music for $10 a month.

Some critics. Altough I told the software to remember my password, it just happend to pop up login box in some strange situations. I really don't want to enter password every time I want to listen to a song. Also, navigation could be faster in some situations, but of course my computer (P3, 800MHz, 256MB) is not the fastest around these days.

I also did not like that it was too much US based, in its library (Billboard and internal activity TOP). But of course, currently it is used only in US.

One funny note. I decided not to start paying them because of these few problems. Strangely enough, I can still play the songs that I downloaded during trial period, though these were supposed to have kind of time limit related to subscription. Will see, maybe they simplified a system and check for update only end of each month? If not, then this Microsoft digital rights management system has some bug built in. In this case I should subscribe for one month and download myself a nice library of songs.

Hurricanes

Already third hurricane coming this season, this time called Ivan (Who is naming these children? They are not like comets that come back regularly). You can also see the current forecast here. Atlanta is in North-Western part of Georgia, so we are luckily/unfortunately relatively far away from big waters. Most probably this hurricane will bring again couple of rainy days with some stronger winds some time in the second part of this week. During other times we have just nice summer with very little rain. So enjoying this.

Update: Rain has been here since tonight and are getting stronger and stronger. Non-stop. And we have tornado warnigns. Fun, ain't it?

This reminds me a professor, with whom I had class on Monday evening. In the beginning of class he was seriously looking at hurricane forecast map and said: "Here is where hurricane is predicted to come inland. And right here is my summer cottage". He said he brought away all valuable stuff and verified existence of insurance. Such is life here.

Delfi

Delfi.ee was down for couple of days, at least I could not access it from Atlanta. I was about to miss a fact that British women get more satisfaction from cleaning than from sex. These must be tough women.

Second year students (on balcony) welcoming new first year students. Last year I was down there. A very nice tradition indeed, especially when you have now idea of what is happening. Food and beer to come. 

Game

Played a game on Monday. It was called Life and it differed from Monopoly game in a way that it had a specific route from Start to Finish. Key takeaway from this game: you can only be successful, if you have car, life and fire insurance, education, family, and investment in stocks. This will change MY life. This picture consists of Kerstin, Ilva and Sudipto. Me behind camera, imagine.

Recent days I invested in a new 80GB 5400rmp (relatively fast) hard drive, which also meant installing computer from ground up. My old 20GB drive serves now as an external drive that I can use for easy file transfers between computers. If only my computer had fast USB 2.0 port ... Before I was seriously considering buying a 40GB MP3 player to serve my storage needs, but this would have cost more, and given my less space. Taking into account that I don't listen to music on street, it would not have added enough value. So now I have enough space for pictures and music. Only question - how to back it up?

My dearest lady started blogging - check it out at tuncis.blogspot.com.

Also, I posted finally Ligo/Jaanipäev pictures and Salaca river boating pictures on the web. It was awsome in Latvia this summer.

Movies

Back from movies. Haven't been to too many somehow, because theatre is far away and almost inaccessible without car. And guess I have not cared too much either. Anyway, today joined Sudipto and Kerstin to see Collateral with Tom Cruise in it. Was pretty good with sudden stop in the end. And it was somehow very silent movie, with slow jazz-music background and only sudden gun-shots. Worth seeing.

This first movie started 7.30. After this we found ourselves in general lobby area with all door going to different movies (tickets are checked before this area). Happens so that people are not sent to some random behind the scenes passage to outside with no toilet to visit. Instead exit is where entrance is. And so being there me and Kerstin thought of seeing another movie, e.g. Bourne Supremacy. Must say it was funny to see Sudipto from India worry, that it is not right to see another movie for same money. But trained Eastern Europeans don't care. So Bourne Supremacy was good action movie, though I got pretty tired by the end. I liked that it featured cities like Goa, Berlin and Moscow instead of usual stuff from NYC and LA. Still can't remember, if I have seen Bourne Identity, the first in this double movie. Probably I have, but cannot swear. Whatever.

Killed this kind of bug yesterday. It is a bit bigger in real life (like 4cm from foot to head). This bastard was just hopping around in my room and I decided it is my home not his/her.

When Eva visited me in December last year, she was unhappy not to see crickets and roaches of this size. Well, seems winters are cold enough here to kill these nice bugs.

This picture is a poor quality digital mastering from a year ago. Taken in my room with flash and I cleaned the unsuitable floor from background. 

Windows Media Player 10

This new version of Microsoft media player was released and I must say it is wonderful. I'd say its main feature is a search function. I can just type anything in a search box and Media Player creates a playlist where all songs that have a this text in song name, artist, or genre are collected in a playlist. And this happens instantaneously. Before I figured this was only reason why slow program iTunes might have been worth using. Not anymore.

I can say that WMP 10 is at least as fast as previous version and is more advanced. And compared to iTunes, WMP includes a choice of online music stores, e.g. Napster allows access to 700,000 songs for $10 a month. I will soon try this option. This is about half of a price of one CD, so instead of buying 6 CD-s a year you could listen to these CDs and many more all the time. Well, of course alternative music and Estonian local artists will now show up in Napster store, so I'd still need to buy these occasionally.

Download is here: WMP 10.

And this pictures is from Aa beach, so greetings to all crossword-lovers in Estonia.

Some moments from Ligo/Jaanipäev/midsummer. Summer was actually still very nice in our nordic climate.