My mini aquarium

…and its inhabitants…

Macropodus Opercularis

Trichogaster Trichopterus

Trichogaster Chuna

Otocinclus Affinis

If you want to hide all the power cords that grow plentifully from the rear of your computer, table-top beer brewery and other vital gadgets… just bind the power surge protector to the table leg with a piece of duct tape.

I’ve brought this little guy home yesterday, as a final accord to habitate my tank. Pretty young (two to three months, just a one and a half cm long) Otocinclus was nervously swimming all across the front glass of the tank all evening so I started to think he won’t survive the move but today he looks like he has accustomed to the new home.

Unfortunately, it was the last specie in the pet shop. Otos are keen on swarming. In their natural habitat they are swimming in the small groups of five to ten thousands fishes. True! Look at that video! So I need two more Otocincluses to save the little one from dying of loneliness (they can, I read it on the interwebs).

NB: Photo isn’t mine, just the one spread wide on the internet. I will photograph my Otocincluses when manage to get two more. They are looking much more happier in swarm.

I have always liked the idea of mycroblogging fro writing down my own chanks of thoughts and copy-pasting quotes from the interwebs on a plethora of completely different topics.

It’s natural. However the modern life makes people to specialize on some pretty specific subjects, their out of office circle of interests is much wider. Separate twitter-like services allow to save all that mind-pasta without cluttering the main blog or personal website.

Twitter/Plurk/Jaiku and so on are good but they are the social networks by their nature. Also, they have too much limitations such as 160 chars maximum, their native web-interfaces are too complicated and overloaded with the social features.

TXT.IO by Thomas Marban from Linz, Austria (the same guy who have made popurls.com) is what the doctor prescribed. Its web interface is very clean, it works very fast thanks to Google App Engine cloud hosting solution and whistles-free interface. Also:

• you don’t need to remember another one login/pass combo if you have Google account
• you can store any url as long as you want because there’s no (un)reasonable limits on post length
• you can use formating in you posts
• you can post your TXT.IO records almost everywhere because you have a full text RSS feed

Here is my txt.io: http://txt.io/666

For those who might find it useful.

…there are some clever men still left on this planet:
“Stop giving us aid, say Africans” by Daniel Hannan at Telegraph.co.uk.

What I like most of the Four Thirds system is its one and only real adventage over the APS-C DSLR cameras – a little shorter minimum focusing distance. 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 kit lens of my Olympus E-410 focusing easily as close as at 25 centimeters. Pretty nice for a cheap as in ‘bundled’ walk-around lens.

…is running pretty smooth, actually.

I have installed yesterdays MS Windows 7 Release Candidate (Build 7100) on my MSI Wind U90 8.9″ atom based 512 Megs of RAM netbook. Surprizingly, it runs very good. Just a very little bit slower than Ubuntu. Startup time from turning netbook on till all the icons on the desktop show up is about 50 – 55 seconds (comparing 40 seconds for the latest Ubuntu). GUI with the simplified Windows 7 Basic theme is responsive a
nd smooth. Basic Aero features are working but slowing down the whole system a bit.

Installation is fast and simple. All the MSI Wind’s hardware working fine right out of the box without any additional drivers installation, even the built-in camera which I have failed to set up in Ubuntu. Windows 7 Ultimate – the only option during the beta test – ate seven Gigs of my HDD space. There are a lot of bundled software most of the people hardly ever need, so I think it could be cleaned up for a half a Gig easily.

Overall, Windows 7 is pretty fast, comfortable and netbook ready operating system. RC Build 7100 is quite stable so you sure can give it a try on your secondary PC.

Today, due to the cold, windy weather, I decided to wear my brand-new cute (and expensive) jacket that has a faux-fur hood. As I walked down the street, numerous PETA members attacked me with red liquid. I’m a Vegan and an animal-rights activist. FML

Well, a least it’s quite naturally: to sprinkle a fake fur wearer with a fake blood. All the world is fake.

Now, I have no problem with adderall and other such drugs if the person taking them actually has a problem (ADD, ADHD, etc), but it REALLY infuriates me when students take drugs like this just to get ahead. It’s cheating and it’s not fair to those who don’t have access to the drugs, or don’t want to take the drugs. We have to work twice as hard just to stay at the same level.

by some anonymous commenter at this Boing Boing post.

Another one case of the brilliant liberal logic: If I can’t (or don’t want to) improve myself I should pull down anyone who are not so retarded as me to my own loosy level so I can feel myself ok and normal and keep my self-confidence safe from those who are better than me.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of taking amphetamines off prescription. But I’ll try to give provigil (modafinil) a try when I’ll find a way to buy it (it haven’t passed all the regulations here yet so not available in the drugstores). Or, if I fail, I’ll go for the phenotropil – modern and very effective nootropic that helped me a lot several years ago, though, it’s not cheap at all.