Archive for the ‘Fun’ Category

6 days 16 hours

Saturday, January 28th, 2012

… is the record for battery up-time for my phone. Yes, it is no big deal if I compare it to other GSM telephones, but from a Samsung Galaxy S, I think it can be considered quite the achievement. How was this achieved? Well, I simply adjusted the phone to my needs, which are: around 10-15 minutes of phone conversation daily, a total of 10-20 minutes of gaming, the usual wake-up alarm and some occasional surfing on the net.
Samsung Galaxy S
Good, but how does one “adjust” the phone to these needs? One step is to turn off the GPS and Wi-Fi. This first step extended the battery life from 8 hours to almost 2 days. The big magic, however, happens if one can “convince” the phone to run on good old GSM mode only. The problem is, simply setting the Network Mode to “GSM only” will not work: it will still keep mobile internet connections alive (At least it still works in Vodafone network in Romania).

The next step is to head to the Android Market and search for a good tool that turns off all 3G/EDGE/GPRS functionality. After some searching and selecting, I found the perfect little app: it is called “APN Switch”. It is basically a widget consisting of a single button: to turn off the extra features above GSM. Whenever I need to surf on the net, I just push the button, and voila, I have mobile internet again. If I am done, I just push the button again, and it’s off 😀 . Great little app, I think it is worth to try it!

[#2]

The Minute of the Day

Friday, November 11th, 2011

11.11.11.11.11

[30]

The “Leaning Tower of Pizza”

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

When people work in the weekends:
Leaning Tower of Pizza

[27]

A View from the Top

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

Last week the Hungarian days were held here in Cluj-Napoca and with this occasion, people were allowed to visit in organized groups the tower of St. Michael’s church. I have been living in Cluj for 8 years now and have never been up there. This was an opportunity that I could not miss, so as we were going shopping we payed a quick visit to the tower (hence the low quality of the photos: they were taken again using my phone).
St. MIchael's Church
The entrance to the tower is from the north-eastern side of it. After entering on must climb a set of stone steps until reaching the base and then a long walk awaits on a set of separate staircases. These staircases are made of wood and they seem to be quite old: I can now understand why they do not let people up generally to visit the tower. Even in these circumstances we were told, that as we are climbing we must make sure, that no more than 3 persons are climbing in one stair-section at a time.

As we were climbing up we could admire a lot of old artifacts just laying in the dust. I made some photos of them, but because of the quality of the picture, they do not seem that spectacular 🙁 . The staircases lead up right to the bells, where we had to go through all the metallic structures to reach the door leading to the small terrace at around the middle of the tower (we could not go any higher). That height, however, was quite enough. The view from the tower is breathtaking. One can see a lot from the city there and of course it provides a wonderful opportunity to make some nice pictures (If only my camera had been there…)

After satisfying my lust of taking pictures (well what I could make actually with my phone…) we were told we need to go down and do not get scared if they bells start ringing… This last part was interesting: between the terrace and the staircase leading down the bells were hanging a few centimeters above my head… they’d better NOT start ringing at the same moment I am below them… In the end I quickly rushed to the staircase and headed down. I was lucky the bells started ringing just a few seconds later… I made it 🙂 . Anyway, I was told they ring for a short period of time every 10 minutes: basically if you are up, it is hard to miss one episode…

To end my post: here are the pictures I have taken. Enjoy!

[25]

Some great elements

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

While at work I require from time to time to just block out the outside world and find a way to get into my Flow. The best thing that helps me get to a certain stage of concentration is music. And if you have read my posts before, you have guessed: it is trance music.
Today I had such a need for solving one of my problems, so I started up youtube (cause I don’t keep music on my PC at work) to find something to listen to. It is actually an already aging piece from Armin van Buuren, that I like very much. I noticed, that it had a VERY low number of views… this had to be changed. So what could I do? Well… the answer was really simple: post it. So… I did:

P.S. The screens with the BMW-s helped a lot in the choice. I guess the whole video has some great elements, that influenced me in the choice 🙂 .

[21].