Kostas Antonakoglou

Almost a month here in Barcelona (in 4 days to be precise!)…Anyway, I will be quick. In a previous post there is an picture of a fire extinguisher called “UNIX”. On this post, let me show you my new find!Yes, another fire extinguisher…I think someone is doing this to me on purpose!
Yeah, it says “FIREFOX”…it’s cooler than Unix as it’s open source…but I like them both (?). Anyway. If I find a third one, I’ll let you all know. A friend of mine told me that I should find matchboxes with names like “Apple” or “MS” etc (yes this illustrates an obvious point). I don’t want to find anything of these, they just come to me! Hahaha…

Today I didn’t have many things to do (“You have to do the laundry” sais the little angel on my right shoulder, “Yeah…Whatever” says the little devil on my left) so I checked out what Google has to offer me (as a Fedora user) now that I am at the mercy of the internet. I checked out Picasa, Google Reader, Google Desktop and amora (not a google app). I am sure you are familiar with the 3 first ones. But the last one may not ring you any bell…If you own a Nokia cellphone actually, you should know it (and yes, I allow you to check the link before you finish reading this post ). I own a Nokia N82, and amora offers me the means to controll my computer via my mobile’s keyboard (mostly for presentations though).

To install amora I also had to install Python for S60 first (for N82 I found this one and works fine). It’s so cool! I tried it with OOo Impress and works great!   I can’t wait to use it!

To install any google application on fedora you have to follow this guide : first configure the rpm key and then configure yum .

By the way I couldn’t launch picasa because I have to intsall the 32-bit openssl package! damn…Not in the mood to fix it

Google Reader works fine (also Google Reader notifier) . ActualIy, I was using the RSS plugin for Evolution, which is not bad, but now I don’t have to wait for all the feeds to get updated to read my mail properly.

Google Desktop? I don’t think I will ever use it as Firefox is open as long as my notebook is switched on.

edit : amora is simply hosted inside google-code (I didn’t make that clear enough). It was implemented by Adenilson Cavalcanti a developer from “Instituto Nokia de Tecnologia” (Nokia Institute of Technology – Brazil).(thanks to Ademar)

Not much to say about it…I saw it here at FIB (Facultat de Informatica de Barcelona) at the UPC. OK! It’s a faculty of Informatics…not so unexpected maybe!!! I hope they will upgrade to Linux! hahaha

(Imagine a scene with a trapped person inside the building using the fire extinguisher (yes the UNIX one) to brake a window(s)…quite cool picture eh? hahaha)

It has been 13 days I am  here in Barcelona and I have already attended the sessions of the orientation week at the UPC. Well, Barcelona…It ‘s really an amazing city. I can’t wait to meet and get to know better with even more people at the university (or even not only there) .The weather the first 9 days has been more than great. Now, autumn tries to make us notice its presence with some rain every now and then.

I have met lots of people from Italy, people from France, even greek and cypriot students…great guys all of them. I believe I will also make more contact with locals soon. I try to improve my castellano, but now I also see the need to learn català ( I will take courses actually)! I believe it will be most confusing, but I am sure that castellano will be sufficient enough for the school. I will also apply for classes of català at the university. I have 3 courses in english and 2 in català. I have attended one lesson for each course, I must admit that when the professor is talking in català I understand very few words, so I have to pay attention to the blackboard and the slides.

The quality and quantity of the infrastructure here at the UPC is more than I could imagine. It’s a paradise.

And now…for something that I am really happy about. I am officially a member of FC Barcelona and I have acquired 3 tickets for matches with Atletico Madrid, Mallorca and Villareal !!!

Anyway my photoset is here (it will be updated from time to time) :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/constanton/sets/72157622385493308/