Καθώς ανέβαζα ένα συμπιεσμένο αρχείο με φωτογραφιες για να κάνω την δουλειά μου γρήγορα, η gallery έφαγε ένα κόλλημα και στην επόμενη ανανέωση τα είχε παίξει! Storage Error στην μάπα!
Περιτό να ‘πω ότι έκλασα μέντες για μια στιγμή αλλα ευτυχώς το μήνυμα είναι σχετικά γνωστό οπότε η λύση ήταν έυκολη (αν και μιας και δεν δουλέβει απ’ευθείας πάλι είχα φοβίες)
Αυτά παθαίνεις όταν δεν έχεις κάνει Backup…
I made a huge upgrade on the way the gallery is working. Specifically I just installed gallery which is a much better piece of software than a simple plugin can be (although I must say that the plugin served me quite faithfully until now). The best part is that it supports videos as well while the organization (using keywords and albums) is vastly superior.
So I’ve spent the last two days configuring and uploading stuff on the gallery but I still have a long way to go to finish with it. I also installed the WPG2 wordpress plugin to allow me to integrate the gallery to my site but unfortunately it may be a bit more challenging than I expected, seeing as the theme I’m using is quite heavily modified compared to the basic one.
Nevertheless, progress is being made, and you can find the initial gallery here
Right now I’m still trying to find out why Firefox refuses to play mp4 and avi files. On the mp4 files it just asks for the quicktime plugin and on the avi file it gives out a no video error (even though Konqueror does not seem to have any problem playing it). It can play flv files quite easily but my problem is converting those mp4 files to flvs in the first place. mencoder seems to eat out the sound and I have no idea how to use ffmpeg (nor the time to learn).
I would however appreciate anyone who can try to see the videos on the gallery and tell me what works for him and what doesn’t.
In my humble opinion, the flash ones are the best since they have the best interface and play everywhere. However the conversion tools of Dreamhost and YouTube seems to drop the quality quite a lot compared to the original version.
Now that I mentioned Dreamhost. I just cannot be happy enough that I made this choice of provider. The automated tools have made my life SO much easier and the Bandwidth and Storage limits provided are just amazing. I literally installed Gallery2 within 20 minutes, fully configured.
Anyway, enough talk for now. Time to get back to configuring.
I’ve decided for the moment to use the HemingwayEx theme by Nalin Makar
I’m still in the progress of bringing it up to date and ironing the bugs but I’ve got to sleep. In the meantime, all comments welcome.
I just updated my wordpress site and I just fucked all my theme setting up. Not only that but by mistake I refreshed the upgrade screen in dreamhost and I seem to have overwritten the backup directory.
FUCK FUCK FUCK!
🙁
Oh well, time to change theme I guess. Ignore any glitches until I get things up to date
Update: Phew. I managed to restore everything. However this small encounter had made me look at other themes out there. Maybe it is indeed time for a change. I’ve grown bored of the small middle columnt anyway. So much space wasted.
New video of me playing with fire in Frankfurt
[coolplayer]http://www.dbzer0.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=82&.mp4[/coolplayer]
This is after I went for a PingPong match with Cyrus and Alan (yes I won again 😛 ) and as night fell, I saw some fires close to me, so I went there and found a group of Czechs. They were more than happy to let me play with them since, after all, they were making money out of it.
When Cyrus gives me the pictures from his camera, I’ll upload them as well.
So I’m back from the 7th Keep It True festival where I went with my new friend, Arnoc and two of his friends, Alisa (or is that with a “c”?) and Eugene (I hope that is the correct spelling).
We were supposed to meet in front of a supermarket on Saturday morning, so when I got off the Train, there was a girl in front of me that looked like part-goth, part-metalhead (patched jean shirt and stuff) and I thought it peculiar that she got off at the same stop as me, and going the same direction as me, and going to the same supermarket as me, and shit! she’s waiting for someone as well! So, in order not to make things any more awkward, I went to her and the guy she was talking with and asked them if they were waiting for Arnoc. Not surprisingly, they were.
Arnoc arrived, and after getting some supplies (aka beer, alcohol-free) we were on our way. I must say that his friends were very good. Even though they barely knew me, they were very friendly
Arnoc must feel very unfortunate that even though he was the only one who wanted to drink beer, he was the designated driver, even though the rest of us stayed sober. No one else could drive 😉
We arrived at the festival 2 hours or so later after driving through some very interesting landscapes and taking care not to ride over any frogs (no seriously, we saw a sign). You could easily tell when you’ve reached the festival since there was a full parking lot, where the predominant figure was a black clad, long haired male. For some reason, patched jeans were quite common as well. It seems to be like a metal-cred thing. Your jean overcoat says who and how tough you are 😛
So we parked and soon were on our way to see the inside. And I found an excuse to use my mobile’s video camera as well
[youtube]QTzm6W3vkuA[/youtube]
Yes, that is me talking in the background. Please do not comment on my accent. And yes, that is the soundtrack from Conan the Barbarian playing in the background of the festival. That’s how True they are keeping it. The girl in the end of the vid is Alisa.
The festival was housed in a basketball court and half the field was shops while the rest was reserved for people to watch the bands.
[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXCWzHycPvo [/coolplayer]
There were quite a number of shops selling merchandise but I was a bit disappointed that only a few were selling anything other than albums and t-shirts. I was looking forward to cool stuff. I was also a bit surprised on how many people were still buying vinyls (or buying at all). Some of the prices on the “rare” items were insane.
We did some shopping (I got a hat chain) and on the process I met a Greek (clad in a Greek flag for some reason) that came all the way from Athens for the festival. Talk about having money to throw away…
Half an hour later we went back to the car to leave the stuff and drink some more (warm now) beer and I took the chance to take more pics.
Then we moved back to watch Twisted Tower (I hope I remember the name right).
Arnoc and Alisa were next to me on the front line but according to them, the band’s lineup was inexplicably changed so the band live pretty much sucked.
Of course, I said hello to the camera every time one of the video crew filming the festival turned to the crowd.
Even though, the other’s weren’t impressed by the new lineup, they did find something interesting to headbang to.
[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu4F-soLTSw[/coolplayer]
For me, on the other hand, they reminded too much of Helloween in the Keeper days, although the others say that this is just because the singer was crap and couldn’t reach the high notes.
When the band finished, unfortunately the food queue was huge, so we ended up eating chips and ice creams to hold us until we left. 
We returned just in time to see Piledriver which was what Eugene was waiting for. My first impression of the band was “Oh, not another band in masks” (Although Arnoc later told me that they were one of the first to do so.) my second impression was “Here’s a band where everyone is fat”. No seriously. It’s like they did it on purpose. The worst part is that the singer was waring leather straps instead of a shirt which just multiplied the effect of “spillage”…ugh
After that, nobody was really interested in seeing other bands, so we agreed to head out. We made a brief stop at McDonalds (the first time I’ve been there in years) where I got an expensive salad. Then I fell asleep in the car and finally reached Frankfurt at about 9pm.
All in all this trip got a bit more expensive than I expected (50 euros) but the experience was great. Next time I’ll be more prepared however (which just means I’ll listen to at least a few of the bands playing so that I can enjoy some part of the festival.)
Arnoc and crew were an excellent company. Even though they could speak in two different languages I could not understand, they were considerate enough to speak in english now and then.
And yes, this is just sweet talk because I know Arnoc is going to be reading this post (to steal my videos) and I want to be able to use…err…join him in the next festival he’s going 😛
Grow a beard you wuss!
Reading the comments on this story, I saw several people demonizing atheism, on the basis that people who declared themselves atheists – like many communist leaders – did so many atrocities. As examples of this, they usually mention Mao, Stalin and Hitler among others.
I will ignore the obvious error of Hitler being atheist, since Fascism and Nazism were not only movements with Religious roots but had also strong backing by the Church, even after their failure.
Here I will sidetrack a little to say this: Even if you compare Stalin’s and Mao’s to religious leaders like (this time correctly) Hitler, Mussolini, King Justinian and even Bush, you will see that were the first did what they did for the benefit of their country (albeit at a high cost of human lives within the same country they were benefiting) with tangible results (USSR become a superpower and China is on the same track right now), the later did their atrocities for no other specific reason than to follow demented (religious) ideals and/or satisfy their own (or, as in the case of Bush, the people that move their strings) lust for power.
But of course they base their whole argument on the opinions that have been spoon fed to them (Communism demonization) and hope the emotional baggage is enough to make a point.
Back on topic now. These people seem to ignore that with this kind of argument (“atheism is bad because Stalin was bad”) they open a whole new avenue of attack against religion.
I usually do not open this subject because I have come to realize that you should not attack an idea itself based on the actions that self-labeled “upholders” of that idea take. When I make an argument about a religion. I do not begin by enumerating all the bad things leaders of that religion has taken. All proponents will do to defend against this, is to just say that they (the religious leaders) were never true believers but liars instead.
However when that said proponent is the first to accuse atheism (of all things) of being one of the causes for, say, Stalin’s atrocities, I cannot help but wonder on how hypocritical that is coming from the mouth of a religious person.
Crusades, Inquisition, War, Fascism, Genocides, Destroyed woman rights ,Destroyed Human rights, Racism, War, Perpetuation of Epidemics, Anti-Knowledge, Terrorism, Abuse, Hatred and War-fucking-WAR!
These are the fruits of religion, if we take as examples the religious leaders of history.
Trust me Christian, you do not want to open this can of worms.
And just think, for every bad representative of atheism you can think of, it has hundreds of good examples. Scientists like Einstein, Philosophers like Marx, Spiritualists like Buddha and much more. Tell me how many good things religion has done? (And don’t bring examples like Mother Teresa or I will laugh bitterly)
Furthermore, just because a person is an atheist, it does not have anything to do with the way he acts in life. Unlike religion which tries to set moral guidelines (and such good guidelines they are), being an atheist is just that, the absence of belief in one or more supernatural beings and nothing more. It is not a religion as some would try to convince you (There is not Church of Atheism and no two atheists believe the same thing) and as such, it does not have a moral guideline that comes packaged.
However, as funny as it seems, as a rule, atheists tend to be quite more altruistic (or “good”) than most religious people, any way you look at it. The only immoral thing about an atheist is that he doesn’t follow the demented morality of other religions. He will not beat his wife because she was raped, he will not become a builder because he happened to be born as one and he will not sacrifice a human because “his god requires it”.
To paraphrase: Every religious person is immoral to the eyes of every other religion. An Atheist is just immoral for one more religion than everyone else.
If nothing else, he may actually take the best ideas from every religion and if after adequate criticism they stand up to his morality and further his way of life, he will absorb them, discarding any theological garbage.
I ask you, would a devout religious person do the same?
EDIT: Fixed Mother Teresa and Beating links
I have finally taken the first step to fight my chronic procrastination. I’ve already compiled a short list and collected two points. Even this small blogpost will be an extra point (hence the reason I write it).
I really hope I’ll be able to keep it up cause there is already too much time lost in my life.
Ha! I am the undefeated champion of the small table tennis matches we played today with Cyrus, Scott and Alan. Oh how the wanted me to lose 😛
Here’s a video of the last ownage of Cyrus for everyone interested seeing me play like a monkey.
[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMAH2Sy6OPg[/coolplayer]
I’m obviously the guy in the black.
Ένα μόνο θα πώ.
απλά δείτε το…
Εγώ σκατοπορώθηκα. Είδα και το trailer του Pirates of the Carribean 3 και σκατoπορώθηκα ακόμη περισσότερο.
ΥΣ: Ουρίστε και ένα ωραίο λινκ για ένα τύπο που έκανε σύγκριση τις εικόνες απο το κόμιξ με τις εικόνες απο την ταινία για να δεί κατά πόσο έμειναν πιστοί στην αρχική ιδέα.