Compelled to post today because of Iran - it's close to where I am from and I have never seen or thought about its people in the way they are showing ourselves these days. These pictures surprise me as I always heard and thought of the majority of Iranians as religious fanatics. I remember various stories circulated about, for example, one our tourist man wearing a short-sleeved shirt in Iran in hot weather being hit by an Iranian with a shove because men should not expose their elbows! Iran has definitely changed during the last decade and you can see how:

Short sleeves, hey?

Free-IQTest.net - IQ Test

My now quite old and worn out Nokia N95 has recently catastrophically got broken... It was a charging connector, which cracked into two pieces. I must say it is an absolute disaster not to have a mobile, but after Nokia N95 it is even a bigger disaster to return to an older phone model. Luckily I still have my old Nokia 6630, and though I can remember how excited I was when I first got it, this phone is nothing when compared to the power of N95. The most painful experience was not to have maps and GPS. It became quite clear to me that I am as dependent on satellites around the earth as on my toothbrush.


Thank god, I have finally received the connector today and have been able to repair the phone! If you have a problem charging N95 and need to change the charging connector here is your guide :

• it can be done very cheaply by yourself just order the connector online at the UK Mobile Store and don't forget to order a T6 screwdriver on the same web-site as they kindly suggest
• get ready: switch on TV and tune in to either Friends or a good "chick-flick", make yourself cup-a-tea, and serve it with biscuits
• locate your body strategically on the sofa
• have a sip of tea and a bite of biscuit
• take off the battery cover from N95, remove the battery, and then remove the back cover of the phone
• remove the SIM card and locate two very small silver screws on the sides of the phone, which you need to unscrew
• have another sip of tea (and don't forget the biscuit or help yourself to a second one depending on your biscuit-consuming speed!)
• back to the phone: locate two more little silver screws on the bottom sides of the phone - unscrew them
• detach the bottom lid, which covers the charging connector and a USB connector
• remove accurately the keyboard
• now the phone will be divided into three parts, two of which are connected to each other
• you may need another sip of tea here as it is quite scary to look at what you've just done to your phone...
• locate two more little screws, which are black, on top of the phone and unscrew them - don't forget to keep your screws in one place where you can see them at all times or otherwise they will disappear
• now you will see at the bottom your charging connector. In my case it was cracked into two pieces. Remove it carefully.
• take your brand new connector and place it the same way as the old one - you may need to carefully push it into its place
• you can now have many sips of tea and one or two biscuits...
• once your connector is in place, you can start putting your phone back into shape: first, screw the top with those black bolts, then the sides, and then the bottom. Don't forget to put your keyboard back into place before screwing the bottom
• when everything is back in place you can try charging it - voila! it should all work!

I hope this can help to those of you in need!

A lot of people have probably at least seen the so-called "clouds" of words (most often tags) across the web. Clouds nicely show the main themes, which are reflected in the collections of bookmarks, blog posts, articles and so forth. If until recently clouds were created on such pages powered by some tricky software now each and everyone of us, mere mortals, can create their very own special cloud on Wordle. The piece of Java allows one to edit a newly created cloud to a limited, but nevertheless fun, extent. Obviously I have generated a cloud of this blog and here it is in all its glory:



The analysis of the cloud helped me to conclude that I have been generally writing about stuff that I initially planned to cover here: web, N95 mobile phone, various nice freeware and what one can find on the Internet. I had, indeed, "found" some "pages" and written about some topics more than the others: books, Firefox, files, something and everything (how definitive!), and Nokmote - on this I've become really fixed as the tempting app is still not available! The huge size of the words "pollutants", "potentially", "affected", "people", "type", and "metals" is due to that one repetitive post about the most horrible places on the Earth.

If the chosen colour doesn't deserve much attention, I would like to say a word or two about fonts. There is an impressive list of fonts provided, from which you can choose your own distinctive (more or less, sorry) style and they are all hilariously named! The font you see here is "Loved by the King". Simply looking at the cloud can be quite an interesting brain entertainment as the words can be merged to form various meaningful phrases or a whole story!

I also created a cloud for my thesis work and with the font called "steelfish" it took a fabulous shape:


What I like here in particular is that some words form somewhat logical relationships: "monthly - low - prices", "companies - size - sample", "positive - high - markets", or "sorted - financial - portfolios".

To summarise: just go there and create!

Ok, I simply must go to bed now (as it's 1:25 am here) but I cannot leave this find unpublished on my blog! Once again I urge you to download new Firefox 3 and then install this awesome add-on: PicLens. If you are on Facebook (or MySpace, or if you regularly visit YouTube, or if you buy stuff from Amazon) it gives you a completely different experience of viewing pictures in 3D like atmosphere straight from all these web-sites! As for me, I am off now to dream of 3D photographs of one cutie on my Friends' list!

The Web is abuzz with the news about Firefox 3, and I have installed it already as well! If the earlier version was better than Internet Explorer, then this one is simply light years more perfect than IE! The time required to load a page - i.e. the main feature that anybody surfing on the net would hope to be as brief as possible - is worlds apart from the time you waste using Microsoft's piece of work. I think everybody who is sane and healthy should simply go and download Firefox 3 and use it, use it, and use it! The speed, with which pages open up is truly and utterly unbelievable.

I keep asking myself how they have achieved this. A loyal IE user, for example, can think of the page-loading speed as a result of the size of all page's elements like pictures, flash codes and etc, and of his/her computer's capability in terms of memory and processor speed (well and some other technical elements), and hence conclude that one is doomed until broadband speed is improved or until one saves some big money for a powerful machine. Firefox proves that it's all rubbish and what matters is how clever the software developers are! And I salute them!

If you want to learn more about 15,000 improvements that have shaken the world you may find it useful to visit this page.
To tell you the truth I didn't know yesterday that it was the first day the new version became available for download, and only today whilst trying to get some pictures for this post I discovered that by downloading my fresh browser on 17th of June I helped to set a Guinness Record! My certificate is below!

By the way, Firefox has already started working on version 3.1...

Making a step away from technology and environment I want to tell the world how strange is that Prince Charles paid £453.15 to the Clothiers Company of Worster this week. This is the actual amount of debt left by King Charles II for the uniforms for his army in 1651. If all of us could "honour" our debts in the same way we would certainly be as rich as the Royal family! This amount's appreciation during the past 360 years makes its real value today worth something around £47,518.07 using the retail price index. (try to measure it yourself with the online calculator on a great site "Measuring Worth"). It is somewhat funny to read that the Prince "was glad he didn't have to pay back any interest" - it should be inflation plus interest to make it a proper repayment, Your Royal Highness! And hold on to your chairs now, because the real value of this debt taking into account retail price index changes and the long-term interest rates (please, note, not the commercial high-street rates) is.... IS 31 billion 972 million 389 thousand 2 hundred and 22 pounds!! The interest only calculation still gives an impressive 291,599,676.87 pounds. It shows how important it is to clear off debts on time...