Firefox is not for me

After all this time I decided to try out Firefox, an alternative browser to Internet Explorer. And now I decided to leave it aside again. In nutshell, I liked some very nice extensions that could be used with Firefox, like Tabbrowser Preferences (to make pages open by default in tabs), Forecast Fox (to show 4 day forecast and current weather in lower right corner), User Agent Switcher (to actually allow my to view my school's intranet, a stone in IT department's cabbage yard), Sage (to view RSS pages).

But negative overweighs it all - this browser happens to take every once in a while 100% of my computer's processor, which while working on battery means halving of running time. And also, the browser is not as fancy without extensions, so to make it nice one needs to tweak a bit. Microsoft promised to come up with tabbed browsing in IE7, a beta of which comes out in the middle of this year. I'll stick with this solution for now.

Cigar

Hereby I figured out how to use Flickr.com to post images and text into
blog. Once it is set up it works very easily - just send e-mail to specific
address. Nice. A problem I noticed was that the picture sizes offered by
Flickr did not match my layout. I decided to make my text area wider to
allow a bit larger pictures.

Habitat for Humanity

A week ago I joined for 4 hours with a community project called Habitat for Humanity. Clearly I did not get much done during this time, but it was interesting to see, how this kind of thing works.

The idea is that volunteers come and help to build houses for poor, who cannot afford a house themselves. Some companies provide tools and some provide free food for volunteers. But in general, a house is build in just 7 Saturdays. In current case 6 houses were built close to each other, as you can see on the picture. As a result, a house will cost $75K and the new owner eventually has to pay it up - this is not a municipality house. There is clear aim to make these new owners feel responsible for their new property.

But as you may see on the picture, the houses are not of wonderful quality. They have 3 small bedrooms, a kitchen, living room and bathroom. Building materials are basic. I was once again proven, that a house that looks like wooden house is actually coverd with wood-imitated plates. Just like the fancy marble buildings on Emory campus actually have steel frame and 99% of "brick" buildings in Atlanta are actually wooden and have a layer of bricks outside, sometimes only on front facade. And these colonial style homes with columns might have been built just 10 years ago.

I almost cannot take this fakeness any more. But then again I understand that end is more important than means. I'm torn.

The ugliest development in Tallinn

I am just totally surprised. This is impossible. Let this be called the ugliest development in the world, which happens to be in Tallinn. I am talking about Fahle building, a development where a modern (ugly) box is built on a high and beautiful century old (I can be off here) limestone cellulose factory building called Tselluloos. Let curse come to all people who buy flats there.

Just a blog

No, this is not USA. This is London. I only now noticed this fired up man following this woman. By the way, the large door in the mosque is for men only. Women are welcome to use small side-door. It feels really strange, but on the other hand each culture should have right to live as it feels best suitable. But it is not for me.

Yesterday went to see French National Orchestra performing on our campus. I enjoy paying $10 student price, when adults pay $60. And besides th bargain, I enjoyed Scheharazade, Op. 35 of Rimsky-Korsakov, based on the stories of 1001 nights. Amazing music. Next time I try to get a somewhat more central seat, since sitting on the left side of first line makes a good view of soprano violins, but orchestra should be much more than this. In a week Emory Symphony Orchestra will perform, so I make sure to go and see it.