Today I'm going to tell about the bright events that are coming soon. First of all, tomorrow the Orthodox Easter holidays begin. At yours sincerelly they will last 11 days along with two weekends. Moreover, this year the 22th anniversary of my coming to this nice world (well, sometimes nice) is on the same date as the Easter. Thinking about the best way to spend the free time I made the only good decision, to hit the road towards the Ukrainian city of Lvov (Lviv), where several good buddies of mine live.

The city is traditionally associated (at least in the Eastern part where my home city is) with Ukrainian nationalism and everything related to it such as Rukh (the right-winged party), neo-Nazis and rusophoby, thus the trip there should definitely be described in a story on the site. Especially having in mind that I don't believe in stereotypes. During the recent two years they are passing away one by one. Like once, there was a great surprise for me, when in Iasi I met several Albanian ladies who turned out to be quite nice girls and some of them were really beautiful. So we'll leave the stereotypes to housewives and will try to make out our own objective opinion. At least it will be an alternative for the common mistakes. Which will probably remain mistakes, being though our own ones :)

By the way, there is something more to say about stereotypes. How do you imagine the look of such a city like Pyongyang, the capital of the North Korea? A sad gray view with propaganda banners all along? And the Iranian capital? Mosques and sand? Be sure I used to think the same, until one of my colleagues decided to find some photos from there. Let's now take a look.

Pyongyang

more Pyongyang photos [ 1 2 ]

Tehran

more photos of Tehran [ 1 2 ]

It's strongly recommended to take a look at the tehran24.com site. It was created by several photographers who every day put out their shots there. Streets, people, cars, nature.. Everything what helps to make up an opinion of their country. Great idea.

Looking at such illustrations really makes the one think about the role of the mass media in creation of various streotypes. It's not a secret that with highlighting some facts you're able to not pay attention to others, and it's a very common way to suggest a desired opinion to the audience.

East European Borders

The way to Lvov is not going to be too easy. Despite of Ukrainian's Zakarpatye region being close, it's impossible to cross the border directly there. In the consulate they told me that the border checkpoint Dyakovo situated nearby is open only for official delegations and trucks that transport goods. Being none of the two things I have no chance to get to Homeland through it. So there were two options: travelling through Hungary or almost half of Romania by train and then another train from Chernovtsy in Ukraine. Actually, the Hungarian way is shorter and also would take less time. Having in mind that the country till now is quite an unexplored place I feel very enthusiastic about seeing it. Even the border area I'll go through. The locality is called Nyiregyhaza.

There is also a plan to make a short photo coverage of the trip. It will be short because I still haven't bought a flesh card of size which would satisfy my sometimes maniac photography needs. In Lvov it's going to be easier, because it'll be possible to download photos to a computer every day, but during the travel the limit is 16 shots so far.

Some Patience

Regarding requests some of your sent to me after I published this thing, I want to mention that I categorically haven't forgotten the given promises to tell more about Romanian regions and what jokes characterize people who live there. I already started to gather data, so it will be here one day.

Finally, if I'm already announcing this and that all the evening, I'll tell you about the plans regarding the free software I write. The point is that the new versions of centericq and motor are coming soon after quite a long period of inactivity caused by the life troubles of yours sincerelly. I just cannot help developing my small proggies now, especially after I got my permanent Internet connection at home. Recently here in Romania the Internet through TV cable service is becoming popular. In order to get connected, you need a special modem of the DOCSYS standard, which costs about $90. Cost of the rest of stuff is not significant, and for $11/mo you can have quite an acceptable connection.

Here is a quote from the blog of one of centericq users, who found the program in the Debian Linux distribution.

Those of you keeping score will notice there are co-ordinates to get in touch with me via IM for all the four big networks: ICQ, Yahoo!, MSN and AIM. I owe it all to the new version of centericq[0], available at quality operating systems[1,2] near you. I thought I would commemorate this event, as I often do, with a short poem: There is a program, little known It is so good, is deserves a throne It talks to AIM and to yahoo and many others, its license is Gnu With all my friends I can keep in touch Whichever network -- I can match So let us praise CenterICQ The program for me, the program for you [0]http://konst.org.ua/centericq/ [1]http://www.debian.org/ [2]http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/centericq.html

It does inspire, huh? :) So I ask you for a bit of patience, friends, and you'll be able to use the new version which doesn't require glib in order to compile, with jabber conferencing fixed, configurable log window and possibility to bind custom IP address for outgoing connections.

That's all for today. I wish you great holidays, and during them outings, BBQ parties and interesting travels. Be well and see you.