Smartwombat Blog

The shape of things to come.

This is the post that I really wanted to write for some time now. This is the last post on this blog ever.

As everything that has a start, has to come to an end too. The smartwombat blog came to its end today. It served its purpose well. It has been good friend. For more than 4 years. I started it while I was living in the UK and continued when I moved back to Hungary. I wanted this blog to be my online notebook and collect all things that interest me, so I can come back to them later and try them.

But as time goes there are so many things are changing. I am getting serious and older and I seriously would like to create something cool and great. About a year ago I started to write a tool called QiiNinja. It is a launcher that I created out of frustration with the overcrowded start menu on my computer. This little hack became a big project and I keep improving it and adding new features to it.

QiiNinja also took me one step closer to one of my dreams. One day I would like to start my own company. A place, where cool people would create cool products.

All dreams has to start somewhere. With a small step. This first step is for me to close down this blog today and the next one is to start something fresh. The first step to make my dream come true called: Little Big Tomatoes. I see you there... Good Bye!

The shape of thins to come is from the Battlestar Galactica Season 1 soundtrack. It is a beautiful track.

The one where nothing important happened...

Just 4 days to go and the vacation begins. Saturday we are leaving for Miami... this should be fun!

Miami

Quote of the day

I am not posting these kind of things here normally, but I liked it, so much that I needed to...

Marianne Williamson - Our Deepest Fear is that We Are Powerful Beyond Measure

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

from elise's collection of favorite quotes

Good People

Good People

Jack Johnson

You win
It's your show, now
So what's it gunna be
'Cause people
Will tune in
How many train wrecks do we need to see?
Before we lose touch of
We thought this was low
It's bad gettin worse so

[Chorus:]
Where'd all the good people go?
I've been changing channels
I don't see them on the TV shows
Where'd all the good people go?
We got heaps and heaps of what we sow

Full lyrics.

Countries I visited in Europe

create your personalized map of europe.
I thought I visited most of the countries in Europe so far, but the facts are different.
I just need to start travel around Europe I guess.

Meet my new PC

Meet my new PC, it is a 20 inch iMac. I used "PC" instead of "iMac" or "Apple Computer" intentionally, because I do not wish to switch to the new OS. I am happy with Windows XP and looking forward for Vista. The reason why I picked iMac as my next PC, because I need a fast, quiet, high end PC what looks nice on my desk... I picked this one over a Dell, because for me iMac provided more value for money. 

The amount noise (lack of actually), the very nice display and that this machine is very compact are the killer features for me, but I would not purchase this machine if it could not run XP. Fortunately Bootcamp and Parallels are here to help me and I am currently evaluating which one to use for the future, but I might will end up using them both.

Regarding OSX, as geek of course I am interested to learn more about it, but after using it for a couple of days, I do not see anything earth shattering. It is a nice OS - Ooops I almost write overhyped, but I do not want thousands of Apple zealots to start spamming the comments of this article :) - it seems to be very polished. iLife is very nice and gadgets too. But I could not found anything what would make me switch from Windows. Apple for me is no more than a hardware vendor and all the nice design, the OS are for differentiate from the competitors. In this regards I give thumbs up for Apple and I am sure that there will be an Apple logo on my next laptop....

The proper way of doing it! II.

Friend from the past

I received this message from this site, just minutes before. It is good to know that someone still reads this, other than spambots and me:

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

American Diaries III

After checking out Washing DC, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Dutch Country I got pretty tired and decided to finish with the tourist stuff and do nothing, go nowhere just lie down and watch TV, eat junk food and just go out mainly to the beach. Shame on me. I felt a little guilty about this, but I accepted the fact that this country is way to big for me to use the usual approach of checking out everything. Instead I will come back and continue visiting cities and being tourist some other time…

With this problem settled I turned my attention to shops and started visiting them as I was paid for this. I found some of them really cool, especially book stores, where I spent hours with going through tons of books and music. Some of the best music I found are the Blind Boys of Alabama, Nickel Creek and Motown remixed.

I was not really into Gospel, Country or Motown before but after listening these I think I will spend some time and money to get to know more about them. I also found this book called "On Writing" by Stephen King. I wanted to buy this one a long time ago, the book itself is half autobiography and half about how to write books.
 

Contest is over

I was just about to upload my presentation to onenotepowertoycontest.com, but I received this reply from the site

   Thank you for your interest, the contest is closed as of 11:59:59pm on 08/15/2005.

It is 8:11 PM 08/15/2005 right, I did work loads on this poweroy and I am a little bit disappointed right now, or I did seriously misread something.

American Diaries II.

As you know I am coming from a small country called Hungary and although it is a very small country, we are proud of everything related to our homeland, but one of the few things we are super-proud of is our education system and that we are really smart and educated people in general. On the other hand it is a well known "fact" that american people are not so well educated and not so smart in general. One of the often cited example is that they are often confusing Budapest with Bucharest (capital of Romania) when they are asked to tell the capital of Hungary. Doh! Even a toddler would knew this one...
Anyway. We were going out the other night for a pub crawl and arrived to a bar where the doorman asked for our IDs to check if we are over 21 and he can let us in. Unfortunately I did not have an ID with me as I do not like to carry around my passport when I am going out. I tried to explain him that I am not local and I do not like to keep my passport with me and I am coming from another country from Europe (did not bother to tell him the name as he would not know it anyway). Then he tried to tell me some German words - he told me they were German words. Then I had to explain him that there is another country in Europe called Hungary and I am actually coming from there and we are speaking a whole different language as well. Then he asked me a question what was really surpising to me. He asked me to name the ruler of Hungary during the Thirty Years War in 1600s. Things started to turn to surreal as I had no idea what he was talking about nor who was the ruler of Hungary during the Thirty Years War in the 1600s, as you know I am from Hungary and we are almost as proud of our knowledge of History as our Geographical knowledge. At least we did not mix up Washington with Wyoming. So, after confessing that I have no idea, who is this person he is asking about, he let me to go on my way and enjoy my beer. Later, one of my friend went for drinks and met this guy, who told him that now he remembers who was the ruler of Hungary during the Thirty Years War and that the person called Gabor Bethlen. What should I say. I went to him and I told him that I am really impressed and mentioned that he is redefined my views on education and super-proudness. I intentionally forget to mention that my High School was named after Gabor Bethlen, just to keep my shock manageable. Respect!

Disclaimer: Please, note that English grammar and language is not something I am super-proud of, as it is not my first language, and I suck with grammar anyway. ;-)

American Diaries I.

After 9.5 hours long flight from Budapest we finally arrived to New York JFK. The immigration was quick and painless and got all the luggage back pretty quick. We spent the first couple of days wandering in New York (Manhattan to be precise) and went to the beach on Long Island. Here is some of the likes and dislikes so far.

Likes:

• Starbucks - I like Starbucks a lot.
• Cable TV - the cable TV is light years away from what we have here in Hungary.
• People - I am very impressed by the people here. They are helpfull and really nice.  
• Laundry - This is the place where you go and wash and dry your stuff all by yourself, amazing invention, no messing with your washing machine, in one hour you will get back your dirty clothes clean and dry. I want one of these...  
• Traffic - Easier traffic code and better roads than at home.
• New Yok - Central park is cool.

Dislikes:

• New York - I dislike big cities in general and this one is fairly big. 
• Cable TV, watching TV in general - come one, you must be joking, the amount of ads just zeroes the joy of watching TV. As the movie comes near to its end, it is interrupted almost in every one minute, I fall asleep...  

So it seems that I have much more good experience than bad and all in all this country is really cool. I am looking forward to see Washington and some of the smaller towns.