Here are few of my favourite music compositions for (do I have to emphasize, free?) download.
Johann Pachelbel - Canon - ca 1680, simply amazing!
Vladimir Cosma - Le Professionnel - 1981, amazing music score for an amazing movie.
Inlantic - Character and Inlantic - Landmass - instrumental math-rock; anyone by any chance having the full album? It’s just impossible to get (order or download) it anywhere!…
Enjoy!
This is a simple tutorial on how to create panoramas in Photoshop (in my case version 7, but applies to any Photoshop from version 6 up).
As the May already started, here are few pix of our kitten from April ‘08, in all its sweetness, sleepiness, and playfulness… Enjoy!
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I got quite a bit shocked moment ago, when while browsing masters-of-photography.com I found the following photo, taken by Czech photographer Josef Koudelka in 1968, on Wenceslav Square in Prague:
The shock came from the fact that in February 2005 I took a similar photo, only at the opposite end of the Wenceslav Square(!):
Did anything like this ever happen to you?!
Maybe some places simply have some kind of atmosphere that just calls for specific kind of a photography? I guess so, because at that moment it was simply natural for me to take that pic, I didn’t even think about it.
Continuing my “saga” of shooting on film, I can’t help but wonder, when will the digital photography reach the level that the “on-film photography” achieved?.
My father-in-law borrowed me his good ol’ Minolta SR-T 303b from 1976… Fully manual (both exposure and focus), wonderful SLR camera. Fortunately for me, it has exposure meter, otherwise I’d be totally lost with the exposure settings.
Here’s the camera, with a wonderful 80-205mm f4.5 macro lens:
It took me like 15 pix to take to get it a bit into hand, not to forget to check something, but the feeling of it is just amazing. The camera is pretty robust (users call the camera “tank” - it sure feels like it can survive anything; how many of todays DSLR’s you think will work still in 30 years?), but fits in hand real nice, and the feeling when shooting is just lovely.
Before the “slide show”, one complaint - how is it possible that just few years ago you could get film for camera literally anywhere, and these days, all you can get is ISO 100 (rarely 200) color film, and no way you can get your hands on black-and-white film?!
Her name is Che-Chee, she was born on 12th February 2008, and she’s with us since this monday, 24th March. Surprisingly, she got used to us very fast, no crying or anything, already the first evening she was checking around what all belongs to her.
Many more photos to follow, don’t worry, for now just a small “appetizer”:
I just finished eBook Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, english translation and notes by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, with illustrations by Charlie Stone.
Released under Creative Commons - Attribution-Noncommercial licence (see the eBook for details).
You can download it here: Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita (419pp, 1.50 MB).
Any comments welcome! 
Just realized I could share with you the LaTeX template I used for the Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy; it’s nothing special or pro, but if anyone wants to get a similar result, feel free to use the template - I added quite a few comments inside, you can delete them once you orient yourself in the source.
Also, it can be used as an example of adding poetry in verses, adding illustrations, etc.
This is my break off work, since yet again I found myself amazed by how the Visual Assist X (VAX) is… no, there is no strong enough superlative to describe it! I just wanted to share this jewel with those people that might not know what VAX is.
VAX is Visual Studio plug-in (all popular versions - VS6, VS2002, VS2003, VS2005 and newly also VS2008 - supported) that saves you nerves, time, and also saves you from quite a few bugs along the way. See more at the official site.
Are you tired of the pointless or totally wrong hints IntelliSense gives you (yes, it got better in VS2005 and VS2008, but still…)? Are you tired of switching between files, trying to find the prototype you need, definition of class, or even just where you were moment ago?
VAX is a program of (almost) infinite possibilities. Except of being “the really intelligent IntelliSense”, it provides many refactoring facilities, for any variable provides you with info about its type, in VAX panel shows you member of variables, provides you with definitions of macros (and knows how to work with them, unlike IntelliSense), speeds up typing (e.g. if you type in MFC dialog class gdi, it right away provides you with GetDlgItem as hint), go to definition and declaration (no need to generate the useless Browse Info anymore!) and much MUCH more…
One thing that might seem totally pointless, but that really made me happy when I found out it’s in VAX - the “go back” function (just like in your web-browser) to get back to where you were before you e.g. skipped to declaration of a function. It sure saves a lot of time and nerves, to fast find where you were moment ago.
Of course, VAX is only a program, and as such has also its little “problems”; for me, main problem (and the only I so far faced!) is its confusion while working with templates; esp. while working on template metaprogram, it’s easier to switch it off. Yet of course, even the best and newest compilers get often confused around templates, not to mention humans… 
What more to say? Just go to the official site and check out the trial version!
One warning - price of full version, for individuals, is set at $99; if you don’t want to, or can’t afford to, spend 100 bucks on piece of software, do NOT download the trial! Once you go VAX, there’s no going back… For real, no kidding.
One link to end off the praise - example of refactoring abilities of VAX.
