Newest addition
The newest addition in my collection of Pentax lenses :
SMC P-FA 35mm F2.0 AL
Sharp and bright great for indoors.
Took it for a walk the other day…
Sigma 17-70 F2.8-4.5 DC Macro
My Sigma 17-70 is here !
Here is a sample photo but you can browse more at Flickr !
This is a nice piece of glass and its macro is amazing.
Zoom is fine too with a nice bokeh and portraits come out fine.
One of its best at that price range !
Pentax K100D
Yes its mine !
My first DSLR is here and I am so excited.
I have already 500 clicks with it but only a bunch that can stand a critical eye.
Still learning the controls and stuff.
Soon to be pair with his friends :
Sigma 17-70 F2.8-4.5 DC Macro
and Pentax FA 50mm F1.4
Cant wait till there are here !
Untill then the kit lense seems a nice “waiting” lense to play with !
Gran Paradiso Alpha 2
Gran Paradiso Alpha 2, an early developer milestone aimed at testers and web application developers, has been released. This is the second milestone released from the Gecko 1.9 branch.
There are no significant user interface changes. Core layout and rendering changes include support for the Web Applications 1.0 API for changing stylesheets, ACID2 test compliance, and improvements in the
Cairo graphics layer.
More information and download locations can be found at Mozilla !
After using it for a few days it seems a bit faster and lighter. It starts faster and it still cant load Yahoo Mail Beta.
Most extensions are broken but thanks to Nightly Tester Tools, some work nicely now.
Forecastfox still cant display weather icons though …
WordPress 2.1 “Ella”
I just updated to WordPress 2.1 “Ella” from my aging 2.0 wp version.
Site is running fine with a new K2 theme called True Blue with a custom header I just made.
I hope the new Akismet plugin does a good job since it seems that comment/trackback spam is on the rise.
New archives page too !
Enjoy.
Snap Preview Live !
Matt, after a waterfall of 400+ comments at his post at wordpress.com, enabled for all of us Snap Preview Anywhere.
What is Snap Preview Anywhere? Snap Preview Anywhere enables anyone visiting your site to get a glimpse of what other sites you’re linking to, without having to leave your site. By rolling over any link, the user gets a visual preview of the site without having to go there, thus eliminating wasted “trips” to linked sites.
EDIT :
Well I finally turned it off ! It was a bit annoying after a while !
Boston’s Cardinal blogs with wordpress !
It seems people of the church can have a little web fun with wordpress, too !
BOSTON (Reuters) – Looking to marry the Roman Catholic Church’s 2,000-year-history with the modern world’s technological bent, Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley on Thursday became the first U.S. cardinal to launch a blog.
O’Malley, 62, who wears the plain brown habit and rope belt of his Capuchin order, said he had timed the launch to coincide with a trip to Rome.
“While this is a new venture for me, and for the Archdiocese, I am eager to take advantage of the latest technology and mode of communication to share with Catholics of the Archdiocese my experiences as I return to Rome,” O’Malley wrote on his Web log, at http://www.cardinalseansblog.org.
WordPress.com
Well the nice folks at WordPress.com were kind enough to send me a golden ticket to the brand new blogging system.
I dont think I will this blog to it since it lacks many of the precious features like plugins, import posts, and being able to customise your theme.
Well its new, and I would like to play with it, give some feedback back to the team and get little previews of wordpress 1.6.
I am sure in 6 months this will compete with the big players like blogger or typepad.
We will see.
Oh by the way…my spare invite is here to take it…
But you have to prove worthy…
Boy, I am mean or what ?
Shame on me !
SonyEricsson K750i
Loyal to my appointment with Sony Ericsson I went out and bought its new jewel with a 2 Megapixel digital camera with macro and autofocus !. So no more “snapshot-like” photos.
You can do miracles with this gadget taking under considaration that its just a mobile phone.
The one I got had a Vodafone branding, but after a visit at Davinci my phone got its original menu and other features like being able to use “any” mp3 as a ringtone ! No DRM anymore !
Along with my phone I got a 1 gb Sandisk memory stick duo pro, so I can use my phone as a mp3 player !
So I guess now you could be jealous again !
Yahoo 360º
So Yahoo! did it and by following its rivals, the big Microsoft and Google it revealed a new service called Yahoo 360º.
Its a nice try but it will not change anything for those who want to get their hands dirty like us WordPress users !
But, well its nice to play for a little while and have some fun !
So if anyone wants an invite to the brand new Yahoo! service (how Googlish !) please leave a comment.
My page at Yahoo 360º can be found here : Yahoo 360º
Special thanks goes to two fellow WordPress users Patricia and Thomas who were kind enought to invite me.
Renovation
As you might have noticed, this Diary now runs on a brand new WordPress 1.5 “Strayhorn” installation.
The themes feature is a bit different and awkward till you get the hold of it.
I am still trying but I will manage. I think.
I decided to get rid of the old “green” theme and get something less messy and busy.
This simple design is a neat one and the original one was created by Vinnie Garcia.
Not all pages are working but I will probably work on it during the weekend.
In other news, its been a week now that I am on a broadband connection!
Its a BIG change for me since after being Online for almost 8 years, I can actually enjoy the Internet.
So, back to work now.
Got a ton of linkage to sort out.
Uglyness
Well it seems my host is doing some server upgrading rendering this site unusable or at least, ugly.
I have no access to my files through ftp so I am helpless.
Please be patient or just ignore the nasty error messages you may get.
I apologize for the uglyness.
I hope it gets back to normal soon.
Maybe its an opportunity to make a redisign although I was waiting for the WordPress 1.5 release to do that.
Anyway, come back soon and it will be prettier I promise !
A diary of kyramas now on WAP !
Well, not having anything else worthmentioning to post, I thought I should blog about a couple of changes in the “diary”.
First of all a new stylesheet is effective. You can change the way the diary looks by clicking one of the three (for now) themes on the right sidebar.
The new one is called blue. I hope you like it.
The photo on the header is from this year’s summer vacation.
Next big addition is that you can read posts and comments for a WAP enabled device.
I tested it from my K700i and it works great.
You can also post comments via wap !!! Now isnt that cool ?
The link is here :WAP Diary
Finally I have added on the sidebar a small box with 2 GoogleAds…so if you have nothing better to click… 
Gmail switch
After getting invited in Gmail i messed arround with it a couple of days and decided to make it my primary e-mail.
Its simple, fast, LARGE, and cool (maybe not so mush as it was when it launched…).
So I sent 2 info e-mails to all my contacts, 100 e-mail addresses each (thats the gmail limit per message) to let my friends and colleagues know I switched.
I used to use Yahoo and Hotmail as my main e-mails as well as my provider’s and my host’s so it was a mess.
So after sending the 200 notices I began to import (redirect) the old messages from Yahoo and Hotmail.
Detailed instructions can be found here.
You will need Eudora, Hotmail Popper, Yahoo Pops and a can of soda.
500 messages later Gmail reported that I am using 2% of my 1000 mb limit…
After that you need to label all this mess, archive them all and you are done.
The catch was that e-mails in Greek language where a hit and miss situation even if I tried all the encoding options of Firefox 0.9.
But this is a known issue as it is reported in Features, Fixes, & Feedback by the Gmail devs.
Oh by the way…I have 2 Gmail invites left…
Just leave a smart commnent…
Oops…both invites are gone….
SonyEricsson K700i
My new cell phone !!!
Some of the features : Camera, Video, Radio, Mp3s, phone…yes, you can call someone too !
Really, sometimes I can’t resist the urge to go and buy the latest and greatest a company has to offer.
Yes I am a consuming pig. And I like it a lot !
So now you can only be jealous.
Yahoo Mail – 100 mb !!!
Today I logged in as usual in my Yahoo e-mail and I was greeted by this message :
Great news – Yahoo! Mail is new and improved!
Thanks for being a loyal Yahoo! Mail user. To ensure that Yahoo! Mail continues to be the easiest, most enjoyable way for you to stay in touch, we’ve made several great improvements to your service! In addition to all the features you currently enjoy, we’ve made these upgrades:
Streamlined interface
Makes using your mail even easier
100MB of email storage
Keep more of the things that are important to you – without worrying about bumping up against your storage limit.
Message size up to 10MB
Send monster-sized files – photos, presentations, whatever!
So thanks again for choosing Yahoo! Mail to keep in touch, and we hope you enjoy the additional services now at your fingertips. For more information, please visit our Help page.Here is a screenshot of the new layout : New Yahoo
Now I am a little less sad for not having a gmail account..
EDIT : Thanks to Vlad Bailescu who was kind enough to invite me,
I am a gmail user too…Thanks Vlad !
Yet another update
Well, here I am again, posting about my weblog and not posting in my weblog !
Recent changes :
Moved my Photoblog (well more of a gallery actually) from MT to Photostack.
Its great software in PHP, tableless and fast ! It will do until I manage to find a simple way of doing it in WP !
Changed the alternate stylesheet to a narrower and simpler one. (Thanks ALA for the styleswitcher code !
Cleaned up some code.
In other WP news it seems that Dave Shea at Mezzoblue is on the process of converting to WordPress
Here is an excerpt :
The site is still running Movable Type and I’ve even upgraded to 3.0. During the redesign process (well before the MT fallout [large page load, may crash browser]) I began a conversion to WordPress. It’s way easier to say “me too” after the fact, but the more I use open source the more I want to use open source. (Not to mention the convenience of having the lead developer on my iChat list)…
Read the rest here !
WordPress 1.2 “Mingus” release !
Yes. They lied to us !
They said mid next week and its already out !
Its a “Mingus” release so lets start swinging that bass !!!
Upgrade went fine and as fast as an eyeblink !
Congratulations to all the team behind WP 1.2.
Keep it up !
The spirit !
WordPress 1.2 RC2
New WordPress 1.2 RC2…
I wonder if TB and PB work…
Lets see !
EDIT : its sends Trackbacks but it doesnt ping…
In other news here is a more objective look in the blogwars…
As I was browsing my last posts I came to a sad understanding.
Most of my posts are about how I moved from Movable type to WordPress and most of my time is consumed in tweaking the templates.
It wasnt like that all the time.
But one can write when he feels like it, not because he must.
Nice excuse I hear you say. And you are probably right.
Changing CMS filled up a void that otherwise it would have urged me to speakout some thoughts of mine.
Thoughts of emptiness and misery.
But now, having a new “toy” to play with…”all my troubles seem so far away…”
Well ok its not that bad.
But I was thinking how easy one can get carried away and become “the medium”, the tool, as Shelley wrote.
Hardware and software are supposed to serve man not the other way arround.
But in the dark ages we walk now, collective fanatism is so high, you cant resist…
You have to suppport the blue or the gray.
You live through supporting one or the other.
Its because you have no personality.
No beliefs that are yours.
Its because you have lost your way.
Its time now to do some serious thinking…
Its about time (..or Just in time !)
Well after a couple of days I converted to WordPress and here and behold :
Movable Type 3.0 (my old platform) becomes a paid service !
You can still get a free version but with many limitations !
So it seems a lot of fellow bloggers will walk the wordpress path…
So as Mena says ‘Its about time…’
I couldnt think of a more appropriate title.
Its about time we move.
Its worth the pain.
EDIT :
Even if Six Apart update had reconsider some of the terms of pricing for MT 3.0 there is another convert : Dive into Mark (Pilgrim)
The party has begun !
Converted !
Movable Type or WordPress ?
here is the question…
EDIT :
As you can probably see I converted to wordpress
The reasons for that were really simple :
Fast php with no rebuilting !
Open source
Liked the default font ! 
Eric A. Meyer has converted too !
So here we are…
I am still lost here but I will manage eventually.
I always do.
One way or another…
Album
So I got me a new photoblog.
You can visit Kyramas Album my Flickr page and see all the nice pictures I have taken with my Canon Ixus 400 digital camera !
In other news…you can see on the side bar on the right the last 2 photos I have posted at my photoblog.
This was made by using MTotherblog by David Raynes.
Also now my pages are valid XHTML 1.0 – CSS and tested on WinXP SP1 with Opera 7.50, Firefox 0.8, and IE6 (bliah !)
Readers on Macs with Safari or other recent browsers should also have no problem at least according to the Browsercam.
So I am almost done with setting up my new diary…
So I guess I have no excuse now.
You will be hearing from me…
That is sure.
Moved
OK boys and girls ! Here it is !
The brand new Diary of Kyramas running on a Movable Type installation !
I really hope you like it !
MT is a great management system !
With so many options I am a bit lost here !
But I am sure I will get the hang of it soon !
So I converted my already “tableless” CSS layout to a MT CSS layout.
Still no tables except from the calendar…which is useless in my opinion…
But its a MT thing…so I kept it
Pretty rough cos I was used to the Blogger system but this is awesome !!
The catch is that after importing my post from the old blog, comments were lost in the process…
Too bad but i have to live with it !
So after countless hours of tinkering….here it is !
My next project is the Portfolio section which means I need to built a web album…
It seems all people are using tables to do that….
I am looking for a CSS solution…
We will see …
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