Saturday, April 29, 2006

Buena Vista back in Romania



I have learnt from a FRIEND of mine - his name is Razvan Pocaznoi - about "Buena Vista Social Club". I was not a fan of latino music before and I cannot say that I am one now , but was fascinated by the original music those guys were producing.
The music created by Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Ruben Gonzales and Omara Portundo has extraordynary scents of exotic fruits and quality tobacco and the rythm graciously hidden inside the tune makes you dance either inside but generally it shuffles somebody's feet in a extraordinary dance.

I went to one of the last concerts of Ibrahim Ferrer held in Bucharest in April 2003 and I can say that the atmosphere was vibrating and the show was terrific.

I hope for the best of today's concert in Timisoara.

Thank you for the music, Buena Vista!

The Deadline

I have recently read a quite interesting book - "The Deadline" by Tom De Marco.
The book is a a fantasy placed in a hypotetical country called Morovia where a software project manager is taught the hard lessons of large scale project management by the other characters all of them having to face the sucessful completion of some almost impossible projects.
The book is kind a "Teach Yourself Project Management in 21 Days" but it differs from that kind of books by the quite appealing story and the well characters. De Marco has good writing style, the characters and the situations he describes in his books can be seen as behavioral patterns inside large enterprises.
As well as some other books De Marco wrote this one can serve as a hands on training on project managemant, people management and risk assesment for the young and unexperienced managers (like myself :) )


The Deadline @ Amazon.com


Peopleware @ Amazon.com


Slack @ Amazon.com


Waltzing With Bears @ Amazon.com

Friday, April 28, 2006

'Niciun' && 'Nicio'

Recently the Romanian Academy made some 'subtle' changes to the way the words are written.
The word 'none' in English has two forms in Romanian 'nici un' for the masculine gender and 'nici o' for feminine.
The forms 'nici un' and 'nici o' are quite natural because thet are additively constructed from a preposition ('nici') and an article('un/o'). The new forms 'niciun/nicio' are looking somehow odd to me as I tend to like the old form.

Orthodox Icons Exhibition

Today I was to a vernisage of an exibition of hand painted orthodox icons in Sighet.
The nuns of the Holy Monastery of Miclauseni came in Sighet with extraordinary beautiful painted icons both on wood or on glass. All o these icons are closely respecting the ancient orthodox painting tradition callerd Erminia and are covered in a thin golden foil. There were paintings representing Jesus, The Holy Virgin, Saint George, Saint Lukas and Saint Matthew, Archangels Gabriel and Michael etc.
Spokemen for the opening of the exibition were Nicolae Iuga PhD, Nutu Rosca PhD and Mother Gabriela one of the painters of those extraordinary icons.

I am sorry that I haven'y made any pictures there but in order to get a glimpse of them I will post a link to some other orthodox icons - held in The Holy Mountain.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Theater in Sighet

UPS/Astral Telecom - the local cable and telephony company have made the effort to bring the Notarra theatre from Bucharest in Sighetu Marmatiei.
They played Valentin Nocolau's "Uzina de placeri SA" and the actors were Virgil Ogasanu, Crenguta Hariton, Dan Bordeianu and Ilie Anda. The director is Alexandru Berceanu and the scenograph Ina Isbasescu.
Although I consider the play not very original (clicheistic I would say) it is really a very good thing that finally a breeze of culture came to Sighet after so many years.
for some more information on the play you van check this link

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Joel's DAL

I have recently read Joel Spolsky's 'Development Abstraction Layer' collumn on his website http://www.joelonsoftware.com. It felt to me like a dejavu. All the things he has written there are both true and of a great and immediate importance for me in my current position of teamleader.

I feel that generally I have to do more for my people because I am facing with the following problems:

1. Lack of resources - almost everyday I loose time and energy to argue for servers/boards/simulators

2. Acces to documentation - documentation is like an old and very precious spellbook and our distant peers are not eager at allto share their vault with us

3. Versioning system - "I hate Clearcase..."

4. Negotiation of deadlines - no negotiation.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Soreen's blog

I was very pleased to discover that Soreen has finally published his blog.
http://skrammer.blogspot.com/

I am quite sorry that I haven't talked to him for a while as we seldom see each other online.

Nice work, man! I am glad to hear news from you!