Daft Punk fans have too much time on their hands

Still... quite impressive!

Geeky Mate

Goodbye... geeky mate...
Goodbye... geeky mate...

Everyday I look around 6 Russell Road
there you were, your head down on your books
and your books down to the floor
Geeky mate goodbye... goodbye...

Now that you are gone I'll never see you here for geeky talk
Wish you knew how much I loved prozund and your cod
Geeky mate goodbye... goodbye...

Geeky geeky geeky geeky (x4)
Matey matey matey matey (x4)
Geeky mate goodbye... goodbye!

We had some quick mice but they died...
I like custard pie!

Geeky geeky geeky geeky (x4)
Matey matey matey matey (x4)
Geeky mate...

I'll never get, I'll never get to drink with you
I'll never get to hear another whiney γκρινια again with you
I'll never get to get to let you know how much I'll miss you now
I'll never get to have another proper friday dinner with ya...

He'll never get, he'll never get, he'll never get to say
hop like a matey gotta going on I wanna see you air-spanking that botttttttoooootom
see get none to the break of dawn askdjskdjaskd with skyping on!

Goodbye...

The circle...

... of Cod, Wine and SouthPark is broken. Cod has left the building and we will miss him dearly.

I'm tired of watching people move on with their life...

"Μα καλά ρε μαλάκα... δε σέβεσαι τον ευατό σου;!"

είπε ο Χ.

Και έχει δίκιο. Ήρθε η ώρα.

Zorba the Greek: Aboriginal Style!

Celebrating the death of Guy Fawkes - English Style!

A little historical background here people. Guy Fawkes was someone who tried to demolish the English parliament at 1606 by usage of explosives (Gunpowder plot). The English found him in time and his plot failed. After arrest, he was sentenced to the ultimate punishment for treason - Hanging, Drawing and Quartering - a punishment that one can remember from the movie Braveheart.

So, on the 5th of November the Guy Fawkes Night occurs here. I don't think it is really worth praising, since it was an act of a religious minority that was being cornered and made to take matters into their own hands but anyway. We were lucky to enjoy the 20min show from C.'s house which is opposite Buttersea Park. We honestly thought it was going to be longer, but... anyway. I managed to take shots and video of it. But changing £5 for seeing this for 20 minutes is the truly English way!

Garland Jeffreys - Hail Hail Rock 'n Roll

An old favourite of mine, enjoy.

London is sleeping...

the state of the phd

is sad... things just don't seem to complete! And I am reaching my "I have to draw a line here" moment on various stuff...

We'll see...

This is what the sixties was all about!

Sweet Smoke - Just a poke.

1 LP, 2 songs. Children of the flowers, experimenting with all sorts of music and dreaming of a better tomorrow... This is one of my favourite records that I heard because of my uncles' arcane and weird LP collection... Enjoy!

Are you using your left or right hemisphere of your brain?

Apparently, depending on how you perceive the movement in the rotating image here will tell you.

I'm seeing it clockwise, which means I'm using the right part of my brain more...

How about you?

At last, something worth praising

Athens gets landmark eco building.

A very big "bravo" to all the people involved in this, let's hope this doesn't stay in the sphere of experimental projects but becomes more and more present in Greek cities.

Well done.

After MIT, now UC Berkeley

... open up their course material and lectures. MIT with Open Courseware and UC Berkeley with YouTube videos of the course lectures. One just needs to subscribe to their video channel and let the hard work begin...

It's actually very nice to see some universities (hint hint) to open up to the public and share the knowledge. This is the exact opposite to my institution's attitude, where everything is treated as a potential money-maker. Sad... really sad.

openSUSE 10.3

No ifs, not buts. Just get it. It's the best openSUSE to date.

The Secret of Monkey Island

is the best adventure game I've played. Only those who have played it will understand, but this is the best walkthrough ever, enjoy!

http://www.majusarts.de/film/monkey/ENG/monkey_eng.html

In Rainbows

At last, the new Radiohead album is here; its name, In Rainbows.

I've been waiting 4 years for this!

Now, the catch. There are two editions. The one is the boxed version for £40 (60E)!!!! And the catch is, it contains 2 CDs and Vinyl versions of the album.

When I saw that I was a bit pissed off! I want a physical entity, but this amount is way too much! Did Radiohead sell out?

That was of course until I saw the second option... Radiohead lets fans price new CD. Yep, they request that you pay what you think the music is worth, with a minimum of 46pence (around 80cents)!!!!!!. Unfortunately only 1CD will be available as a download...

I can just hear the cynics... "Yeah... Radiohead have so much money, all of this goes directly to their pockets..." and stuff like that. And this idea has been around in stores such as Magnatune.

WHO THE HELL CARES! When the greatest rock band in the world does something like this, it is the definitive sign of things to come. Signs of social revolution. It has started...

Another proud moment for Greece

Taken from the Telegraph, a ranking of Broadband quality in some European countries



Well, the UK isn't better either...

5 long hard years...

On the 1st of October 2002, I was signing my contract that was essentially the start of my PhD. 5 years later on and I still have not finished what I came to do, which is kind of sad.

5 years of concentration, frustration, disappointment, misery. 5 years saying goodbye to people that were moving on with their lives and me staying behind. All for ...

hmmm....

for...

I forgot what.

85 more days, and then... peace.

Flight of the Conchords

Or, how to be be brilliant through songs







BRILLIANT!

I will start listening to Nine Inch Nails now

Nine Inch Nails tells fans to pirate

This makes them awesomely cool.

Anyone has a CD of theirs I can... borrow?

Greek Elections '07, now at a theater near you

Apparently, New Democracy will be again government and our own right-wing party LAOS will have more than 3.5%... The second party, PASOK, will probably be again opposition. I am not surprised really as their leader, even though had some European vision of modernisation, in the end disappointingly turned to the battered-to-death-but-never-old "vote for us so that the RIGHT are not government" rhetoric. Pathetic...

There is not an election I could care less about, elections in Burma or Ecuador seem more interesting to me. It just seems that Greece and her citizens will never change. We deserve those people, they are a mirror of us. I hate Greece nowdays...

Ok, hate is a strong word... :P

Eurobasket

We lost to Spain...

Laaaaaaame...

The best we can do now is be 3rd...

Zeitgeist by the Smashing Pumpkins

I bought Zeitgeist by the (new) Smashing Pumpkins at the same time with War Stories by Unkle but I was a bit skeptical about blogging about it immediately.

It was mainly the fact that two out of the four original members, James and D' Arcy were not part of the reunion, a fact that alienated many more fans. The truth though is that D'Arcy hasn't been in the public eye since the Pumpkins' reunion and James, well... (as Corgan says) he allegedly didn't even say goodbye to the others when they parted after their last show in 2000.

But enough about this; it's all about the record, Zeitgeist. In the beginning I thought it was a little blunt but after a lot of listening, I have now reached the conclusion that it is really a very strong record. Technically, it was supposed to be a re-introduction of the Pumpkins to the new masses as Billy said in their YouTube channel, SmashingPumpkinsMilitia. This automatically meant that they wouldn't really introduce something new in their material. That was a little bit worrying for me seeing that TheFutureEmbrace, Corgan's solo album, didn't impress me that much. But Zeitgeist is not TheFutureEmbrace, and thank God, it's better than MACHINA!



It rocks... Jimmy proved that he's the best drummer I know in modern rock bands, the new members seem to have integrated extremely well and Billy is in form. Some songs though, luck the power he once commanded. For example, "United States" which is fantastic musically, looses a lot of it's power in its chorus and his performance lets down the song. Still, my personal favourites is "Neverlost" and "7 Shades of Black". I know many people said that they are not relevant as they used to, but WHO CARES? They rock, HARD.

I also saw them play in the BBC live in the Leeds & Reading Festival. They were pretty good, Jimmy was amazingly cool considering his drumming but Billy missed some guitar solos. All in all, I wanted to be there too!

They were also supposed to go to Athens too, but given the fires their show was canceled. But as Ginger says in Billy's blog, they enjoyed the Parthenon and some even went to Delphi and they were really impressed! The photo of Billy in the Ancient Agora is priceless ;). I hope to see them live one day, they are one of my favourite bands that I wasn't able to see live, not even in 1997 when they came to Athens and I was preparing to give an exam on Thermodynamics... Lame...

I WANT TO SEE THEM LIVE!

Να μας ζήσει!

Μόλις πληροφορήθηκα την γέννηση της νεας μου ξαδερφούλας, Ξανθίππης.

Να μας ζήσει η μικρούλα μας! :)

An interesting article on the 10 years of GNOME

Which kind of outlines the mentality behind the creation of the project in comparison to KDE.

Είστε ΚΑΡΑΓΚΙΟΖΗΔΕΣ, κύριοι!

Και όσο το συντομότερο το ομολογήσετε, ίσως και να σώσετε μια στάλα αξιοπρέπειας!

Διαστάσεις λαμβάνει η δράση ασυνείδητων γύρω από το βοήθημα των πυροπαθών

Προθεσμία μίας εβδομάδας για επιστροφή των 3.000 ευρώ από «εκ παραδρομής» πυροπαθείς

Τρεισήμισι χρόνια φυλάκισης σε τρία άτομα για παράνομη είσπραξη των 3.000 ευρώ

Εν ολίγοις, ΠΡΩΤΑ ΤΟΥΣ ΤΑ ΔΙΝΕΤΕ σαν περίπατο στο πάρκο, ΜΕΤΑ ΕΡΕΥΝΕΙΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΠΡΟEIΔΟΠΟΙΕΙΤΕ, και έπειτα ΦΥΛΑΚΙΖΕΤΕ.

ΕΙΣΤΕ ΚΑΡΑΓΚΙΟΖΗΔΕΣ, γιατί θα έπρεπε να έχετε μάθει πόσο κάφρος είναι ο νεο-έλληνας (είστε και εσείς από αυτόυς με ψευδαισθήσεις μεγαλείων παλαιών και ξεχασμένων).

ΕΙΣΤΕ ΤΟΣΟ ΚΑΡΑΓΚΙΟΖΗΔΕΣ που με τις μαλακίες σας, τελειώσαν τα λεφτά και οι πυρόπληκτοι δεν μπορούν να πάρουν τη βοήθεια που δικαιούνται!

ΑΛΛΑ ΕΙΣΤΕ ΑΚΟΜΑ ΠΕΡΙΣΣΟΤΕΡΟ ΚΑΡΑΓΚΙΟΖΗΔΕΣ γιατί θα πείτε και προεκλογικά πως τους βοηθήσατε όπως έπρεπε.

ΑΛΛΑ ΔΕ ΦΤΑΙΤΕ ΕΣΕΙΣ, γιατί κατά πάσα πιθανότητα θα ξαναβγείτε να συνεχίσετε και να ενισχύσετε τη σαπίλα που σε συνεργασία με το ΠΑΣΟΚ δημιουργήσατε.

ΕΜΕΙΣ ΟΛΟΙ ΤΑ ΖΩΑ ΦΤΑΙΜΕ.

5th day of fires in Greece...

... that have claimed 61 lives.

A friend has made this website

http://www.greeceinflames.org/

to provide information on the size of the catastrophe, how to help and generally raise awareness.

Please spread the website if you would like to help.

One photo, one thousand words

The saddest day in the saddest summer for Greece

41 people lost their lives in the worst ever summer fires with a very strong indication that many are intentionally created

video

The eternal question remains, who does this and for what? And why the fuck isn't this burned land a forbidden construction zone for 2000 years?

But it's cool... We don't need more fire-fighting airplanes, even though every summer we get fires; instead, let's get more military airplanes!

Alcohol...

Hangover go away... I've been feeling so bad... I woke up at six and I came in college.

In Highstreet Kensington, at least 5 different spots with throw-up, Japanese tourists taking photos (even ganguro girls! I thought they only lived in Shibuya! That's not right in the morning...), runners at Hyde park, minimal traffic... in other words, London at 9am on a Saturday morning...

That is the price you pay I suppose for having fun on the previous night...

Ένα τραγούδι, μια ανάμνηση

Είναι ίσως αστείο αλλά οι κατά καιρούς "έρωτές" μου, έχουν συνδεθεί με το τραγούδι που άκουγα όταν τις σκεφτόμουν... Μάλλον δεν είναι περίεργο το ότι τα τραγούδια αυτά δεν είναι και τα πλέον ευχάριστα...

Ν. : Liquid - One love family
15 χρονών, στις πρώτες εξόδους και σε εκείνη την αξέχαστη Καθαρή Δευτέρα...

K. : Νίκος Παπάζογλου - Αύγουστος
στο λύκειο, στις βόλτες μέσα και έξω από το σχολείο, μέσα στις κασσέτες με συλλογές που φτιάχναμε...

Σ. : Smashing Pumpkins - In the arms of sleep
βράδυα στην γκαρσονιέρα με ακουστικά...

Α. : Γιάννης Κότσιρας - Τυφλές ελπίδες
βόλτες στο Λονδίνο, μέσα στην αναγκαία μετακίνηση προς το κολέγιο...

Προφανώς, όταν ακούω το εκάστοτε τραγούδι, το μόνο που μπορώ να σκεφτώ είναι η αντίστοιχη κοπέλα, άσχετα με το πόσο υπάρχει ή όχι στηη ζωή μου.

Η αλήθεια είναι πως, στο μυαλό μου, πάντα κάποιο τραγούδι συνδέεται με κάποια φορτισμένη συναισθηματική κατάσταση, κάτι σαν μουσικό ημερολόγιο της ζωής μου...

Η παραπάνω λίστα είναι μάλλον λίγο μικρή. Μικρή, αλλά σημαντική με έναν ιδιαίτερο τρόπο.

Minesweeper: The Movie

For all of us who have played the omnipresent Minesweeper. Enjoy!

My brand new workstation at home

or, where I will author my PhD...



And to those that will quickly ask: "but where is the main unit" I have the answer: "it's where the laptop is, dummy!"

A highlght is the 19'' widescreen, which, even though it's not as cool as my sensei's two-21'' wide Eizo screen arrangement, it should be enough to do the work.

Now back to it...

Corporate Games and Monopoly Tactics: Microsoft and China

A very informative article in techrepublic gives an insight on how Microsoft came to dominate the Chinese market by using its sheer financial strength to crush a possible Linux "revolution".

How much does one pay in the U.K./Greece/U.S.A. for Windows + Office? Around $200+.

In "communist" China? $3...

War Stories by U.N.K.L.E.

Simply amazing. Not as experimental as the previous two albums, but a really good listen!

Have a look at the first single's video clip, Burn my Shadow

openSUSE build service... AWESOME!

I have started to understand how I can make my own packages for openSUSE (which, incidentally is excellent!).

I have now my own little space at the service here

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/kzarog/

and the first package to compile:

KBib, an excellent bibliography manager for KDE. I have made packages for i586 and x86_64 for openSUSE 10.1 / 10.2.

Enjoy!

Eixa foularei sto mana!

Για αυτούς που δεν είναι στην Ελλάδα :P

Hans Reiser: A truly sad story

Hans Reiser, the creator of one of the most advanced filesystems, ReiserFS is accused of murdering his wife.

It is a truly sad story that can only be found in movies. More in Wired Magazine.

United 300

Excellent!

An architect's take on contemporary futuristic (or not) design.

Or... in other words: P.'s blog! :)

Enjoy turricanoid!

London Casualties...

Automatic Baby - One

I knew of its existance for a while but have never seen it.

This is the the song that REM/2 + U2/2 performed as Automatic Baby

Starcraft 2 : IT WAS ABOUT TIME!

The best strategy game I've played will at last have a sequel.

Good times...

The Lives of Others

Go watch. It's really good.

James

Following the multiple requests from various people, I give you bad quality James (W880i camera be damned!)

Come Home (beginning)



You can hear the (greek) commentary :P and ulirg's shouts.



Getting Away With It (all messed up)



Of course, if you're greek in London you'd probably been there also :P



You can find a review for that night here. It was a night with great music and great company. I had much needed fun!



(W880i CAMERA BE DAMNED!)

3/4

And there he was, leaving our office with a PhD.

We four started at the same time, and now the 3 of us are left.

Good luck to you my friend, may you always find things as you wanted to your future endeavors.

We'll miss you, but we are glad you're gone. Take care.

Friday night...

... and I am still at College.

A great life I'm leading huh?

War is stirring at Moooooordor...

Dell will provide computers with Linux preinstalled.

It finally happened...

Write-up status: some say it exists somewhere...

Is it true? PhD students have talked about it for ages; yet, if it comes it comes after so long that it really seems... ages later!

Is this going to be the greatest test laid upon me? Am I going to make it? Will I be worthy? Will I have enough data? Will I ever see Pink Floyd live?

Only time will tell, my friends... Only time...

Amazingly addictive!

There is good dance/pop music after all!

The perfect Thanasis Papakonstantinou listening experience in 9 simple steps

This is the how-to-enjoy-Thanasis'-music to the maximum. Carefully follow the following steps.

1. Eat as much as you can in your house, with beautiful food cooked by your portuguese flatmate's visiting girlfriend (THANK YOU AGAIN). Have someone there eating like 3 people (you know who you are). Leave your flat. On the way to the second step, almost have a fight on the upper deck of the bus (you know what you did). Proceed to the next step.

2. Go to Infrared's house on a Saturday night. Discuss Mac vs. PCs, mock Greek "superiority", taint Physicists (as a self-respecting engineer; we were two, they were two), enjoy great food made by Sophia (THANK YOU AGAIN) and generally have fun with some very nice company. Now proceed to the next step.

3. While at Infrared's place, unveil the obscure Chilean drink brought to the UK with the sweat(?!) of physicists researching useless stuff. Drink the obscure Chilean drink in a shots-style fashion. Now proceed to the next step.

4. Go to BBB (which I nicknamed Beta Beta Beta, due to the fact that ALL Greeks go there nowdays) to meet your other friends. But be there at 00.20am so that entrance is denied. Wait in the rain for the friends to come out. Stay with friends for 10 minutes and then take the bus back home (no incidents this time). Now proceed to the next step.

5. Discuss about women with flatmate. Flatmate has to go. Now proceed to the next step.

6. Sleep (kind-of) with a water-providing hose next to you ( 6 pints --- that's 3408 ml or 3,408lt for the "europeans" --- and counting...) until approximately 7am. Enter Thanasis.

7. Listen exhausted --- and surrendered --- to the following albums IN THIS PARTICULAR ORDER (volume setting: 12/40)

Αγρύπνια (Vigil --- kind-of appropriate!) , 2002



Βραχνός Προφήτης (Hoarse Prophet --- Already a classic masterpiece of greek music), 2000



Διάφανος (Transparent --- the newest, but very good) 2006



Optional listening for the brave-hearted: Η βροχή από κάτω (The rain from beneath), 2006



The fact that the albums have to be heard in alphabetic order is not a coincidence. Proceed to next step.

8. Try to fixed the bloody router to connect to the internet from 9.30am till now. By the way, Netgear routers; not that good.

9. Finally post the guide that will change the listening to Thanasis' music forever at 11.00am.

I would like to thank all the people who made this guide possible; all the friends with which we spent all day and almost all night yesterday; the Valley of Tempi webpage; Chile and its great exported alcohol-related products; the korean music-playing exported products and of course Thanasis for his wonderful music.

DISCLAIMER: No macs, ipods, itunes where used during this guide. Also, no animals were harmed; well except for the bus incident... HA!

300

It is definitely going to be AMAZING.

Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs

After a conversion I had with Infrared on the culture of Mac owners, I think it is only appropriate...



(Taken from Wiggler.gr)

Kelis? Oh my God!

I started liking her songs!

Am I going to get past this?

ps. Infrared... I know...

Vista... the WOW! effect?

So, another news-flash for the ones hiding behind a rock or something; Windows Vista is out. 5 Years in the making, $3bn development cost, the biggest operating system advertising campaign since Windows 95, supposedly the safest Windows ever (I hate how they always claim this just to be ridiculed very soon) and kewl new graphics...

Riiiiight. Why am I not impressed? Is it the fact that the most cutting edge feature, the Aero graphics system, has been around in Macs and Linux for a long time? Is it because only 15% of the world's computers can run this Aero system?Is it the fact that if you don't have the "approved" hardware, Vista will downgrade the quality of Bluray and HD-DVD of the movies you legally buy? Is it because everyone has to validate their copy with Microsoft and if they change something hardware-wise they would have to validate again? Is it because Microsoft will force this very expensive upgrade ($100 for the useless version up to $400 for the best) to everyone so that it remains the huge company it is? Or is it maybe because --- except for gaming --- has probably nothing to give to the Windows XP user? Actually, there are some interesting legal and liberty issues, as raised by the BBC.

Here's Bill selling his new brainchild in one of his many efforts to make this very hyped product a "must-have".



I've recently removed Ubuntu from my laptop and only have Windows XP. I could get the update from my college for free but I won't. I will keep my Ubuntu-style Windows XP for now, until and if I buy a new PC.

Imperial College, happy 100th birthday!

So... what started as an effort by Prince Albert to create a centre of excellence that would rival MIT made it to its first 100 years.

Founded in 1907 by merging many institutes in the (very very expensive) area of South Kensington, it has been standing well. Thus far it has accumulated 20 Nobel prizes, the Times cited this year as the 9th best school overall and 4th in engineering world-wide, 1st in engineering in Europe and 10th in science world-wide. (Thanks Infrared)

Today, well... rather yesterday, the celebration has began with some free cake, a 1907-style-and-price lunch and finally a nice presentation by its Rector.

So, apparently Imperial College London is great! So they say... To be fair it's great to be part of this institution. Many amazing people were here and many more will come. I am sure I will miss it when and if I left...

Wish you were here...

Τι να πω... ότι και να πω είναι λίγο. Να σε παίρνουν οι κολλητοί σου από Ελλάδα και να μην μπορείς να είσαι εκεί να πιες κάτι μαζί τους...

Και για τι; Για ένα διδακτορικό. Σιγά τα αυγά...

Ο καιρός γαρ εγγύς όμως.

Και το δωμάτιο με την "παρέα" θα έρθει και αυτό. Λίγη υπομονή και όλα θα γίνουν.

Σύντομα... θα γυρίσει ο τροχός.

Ancient Greek Worship in Greece

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6283907.stm

Can't we all just be friends?...

And let people worship whatever they want?...

And not be too worried about how many sheep we loose from our flock?...

And better to have a look at our own mess so that we don't loose any sheep?...

Songbird

Oh, and I've translated most of the greek version of Songbird.

I think it's a great effort being open-source and all and it is really a clever idea, to "play the web".

Have a try and let me know if the translation is good. Works on Windows, Linux and MacOS. It is still in beta but no excuses for not downloading people!

EDIT: See what Songbird can do

I'm back!

And more determined than ever to finish the bloody PhD.

今からがんばります！