I thought, well, the atmosphere has captured too much heat and energy, leading to warming. Everybody talks about reducing the heat, by limiting the production, energy consumption and, loss of energy in forms of heat, by making things more efficient.

All good thoughts, but I thought, why don’t we find a way to release more energy into the outer space?! Think about it. All the efforts to reduce heat production have been good but not enough, what if we really design solutions for example to reflect some of Earth heat into the outside? Can it be done? Can we make huge reflectors to redirect some heat towards outside of the Earth atmosphere and so control the global warming?

Please spread the idea, maybe this is a solution to one of the biggest problems of mother nature.

Paymaan.

This is possibly one of the worst weeks in history of computers, first Steve Jobs, and now the more important Denise Ritchie, the father of “C” programming language, which is behind almost every type of serious application and OS, died.

It is absolutely not OK to me that his death didn’t get the attention needed for his importance in changing the world the way it is. He is much more important than almost any other person in the computer industry.
Without him, none of OSes and Applications could even exist. Even many other computer languages are made possible by C language. If it wasn’t there, most other software didn’t exist at all. May he rest in peace, and we remember him as a legend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie

Paymaan.

RIP Steve Jobs Apple CEO and Co-Founder, PIXAR

I have never used an Apple computer yet except for emulations like ShapeShifter back on old Amiga days, We Amiga users were always in competition with Apple users, arguing etc. etc., But just like Amiga’s visionaries like the Jay Miner, Steve Jobs was a great visionary, a gigantically professional CEO and somebody who changed the world we live so hard.

Obviously, his products are far far better than Windows PCs and anything Microsoft based. and I doubt for sure Owners of Microsoft ever get such respect when passing, you know who I mean.

He died of cancer Yesterday 5th OCT. 2011, and I pray for him and hope he rests in peace.

Say something like a metal or composite material implant, or helping small flat bones like scales grow in front of heart, in a way not hurting the normal behavior of body parts?!

It is just an idea, but I guess it can have some futuristic, super soldier things in it…

Paymaan.

Paymaan.

At about $120, I guess there are lots of better choices.  This one is illuminated in green and red, but I guess an ordinary 4×32 does much better.

Paymaan.

Notice the serial cable attached to it!

Actually I have its original box like  new as it was at those times,  and it still works perfect.  I used this modem with my Amiga 1200 machine, as well as an additional external modem for my old PCs, for a few years!

Old gadgets were made in a way they didn’t fail that easy.  While my first ADSL modem broke after 3 years.

Paymaan.

It is real, believe me!

Here is NASA’s proof, I guess this is second time I join the program, last time was when Spirit and Opportunity were being sent up there, but I can’t remember if my name was included finally or not, this time it is officially included for sure!

Afjeh to Dasht e Havij hike.

Travel light! This is the most important advice I can give.  If you are going to take a long hike, do your best to keep your package as light as possible.  Learn easy ways to provide any needs by yourself, wherever possible.  the lighter you are, the faster you can move and the less you get tired, and you extend your range and possibilities this way.

Last Friday 20 May 2011, I finally begin to try my long planned solo hike.  It is years I have not done pressure tests like this on myself, and as a non-athletic person reaching 40,  I had to prove some things to myself and get back on track.

The original plan was to have a 100 km (direct line, not considering ups and downs and zigzags and hills/obstacles) path, from north of Tehran, towards Caspian sea.  This is one of  routes people used to travel a hundred years ago, passing through Alborz mountains.

Some 35 to 40 km of the way was hiking only, and the rest has roads. These are not unoccupied, there are villages in parts of the path, but the height isolates Tehran province from Mazandaran.  Tehran is almost at 1200 meters from sea level while the lowest possible paths in my plan are at least 2 series of 3100 meter steep mule and mountaineering routes.

The mountains are such high that even weather is totally isolated in those 2 provinces, they have a totally different weather sets because of this.

Starting at 11:30 a.m., I began the hike.  It was years I have not tried steep trails, and I had some 20kgs of packs with me, which made it even harder at first. the first part took about 5 to 6 hours, including time for lunch and drink etc.  But it was obvious my body was not adapted yet.  I pushed and pushed until I reached the first day target, Dasht e Havij (Carrot plains). It is said a hundred years ago people were used to grow carrots there, but now they cultivate cherry trees.  People hike there at holidays, but not more.  after this plain, it is mountaineering.

I set my base there at 17:00, set up my poncho tent, prepared food, sleeping bag etc. before sunset I noticed a caravan of mules coming down from the west  side of valley. so I talked to them about conditions and if there is any danger out there etc.  They told me  there are no wolves as it is warm and also we talked about if there are thieves etc. I was a little worried then.  Imagine a plain, huge valley and nothing but you, it could be dangerous   So I totally went stealth after dinner, no flames no fire nothing.  Nobody could see me.

Night was so beautiful, black with the whole set of stars and planets, until at around 24:00 or 1:00 moon finally came up over the east wall and made everything light, and I finally fell asleep.

Day 2 was tough (at least for me).  I climbed to 3160 altitude, through a mule way locals showed me.  It was wider than the walking way but more stones and less water.  All water was at other side of the valley, eastern wall.  Started 7:30 and about 1 or 2 I was at top of the path, after lunch.

Then I had to descend down.  It was beautiful scenery, with Damavand peak at one side, and all green mounts and hills spread through the scenery, again with lots of streams and small waterfalls, and snow in some places.

I reached the flat at around 4 maybe, and I had to path now-bigger streams so I could reach a road,  to make shelter and sleep for the next day.

For some reasons, my mobile charge emptied, and solar charger couldn’t help either.  I couldn’t take photos after descend and I had no access to Google maps etc. to map the trail directly.

After having dinner and coffee, and due not being able to take photos the next day,  I decided something strange.  I decided to go to plan B, not going forward, but towards Lar reservoir, where I fish every summer.  No cars were ever passed that road, I had to walk, and it was just getting dark.  I walked very fast for two hours,  funny when you are heavy and go up it differs a lot.  I guess I walked about 10kms in 2 hours until I reached an environmental office so I could get clean water (all streams were fast and muddy, although  a huge amount of water existed).

I made shelter there and blanked out

3rd day,  I couldn’t even walk.  My stomach was upset and I didn’t want to eat any breakfast before I feel better.

Last night the guy at that office told me what road I should chose to continue on, so I followed his instructions, find a bridge (I was between 2 large streams at this time) and crossed south of it.

Then it was a road among green hills towards south east and after a few hours, and seeing only 3 cars in the opposite direction, talking to them, I reached the entrance point to the park.  There was no chance any cars pass before sunset, and it was about13:00, so I had to continue on foot.  From here it was an steep road up to 3000+ meter altitude (again!), and I walked and walked to about 50 meter to the top point when a car came by, 3 young men were inside and I asked them for  a ride and they accepted, so we drove the next 10,15 km to the city of Rudehen, east of Tehran.

Rest is history, I took a taxi and an hour later I was home.  3 days of walking finished in an hour!  That morning I didn’t even think I would be home by afternoon, but it happened.

Next time I will continue the plan A and I will reach Caspian sea on foot,  But I will go there much much lighter than this time, I am sure!

You can view more photos of the day 1 and day 2 at my Panoramio account and on Google Earth.  There are also a few clips I took which I may edit and upload on Youtube later.  I will let you know in next posts.

King's Mosque Entrance gate from inside

Walked in Tehran Bazaar for a few hours and had a chance to take a photo of  Masjed Shah (King’s mosque) entrance gate from inside. Illegal but who cares, it is just a photo.

Bazaar always looks amazing.

The image is also available on Panoramio and Google Earth.

After entering login info, screen goes blank, and this happens to any of control panel pages, anyway you want to enter, while the blog works correctly.

Read about of a lot of solutions, but the simplest worked best.

With those with a problem alike, simply ftp to your site, rename the content/plugin folder to something, now you can login.  Now upgrade your wordpress automatically (it is v3 at the moment).  Then rename your plugins folder back to what it was before (“plugin” exactly ).

Problem will be solved. log out and log in to check. now you can also update your plugins if you need any.

Update: Your plugins will be deleted, you need to reinstall them, take a list of them before doing that.

Paymaan.

Please also visit my images on Google Earth or Panoramio:

Right at  new years eve of Iranian calendar  (21st March 2010), and the start of the spring, my computer shut down and never turned on again

I didn’t want to rush to fix it, as everything is being rushed here just like what happens at the Christmas eve, so I thought I have to put myself on computer-rehab for the holidays, and I did. Well, I used my mobile phone to connect to internet sometimes

After a week, as soon as shops opened, I went to the market, bought a new main board (GA-EP45-UD3L), a core2 duo E5300 Intel processor (I have been stayed with AMD since 5, 6 years ago), and 2GB of DDR2 dual channel RAM.

Seems not much, but I didn’t want to consume a lot as the old main board can be repaired for about 12USD and I will possibly put it up as a second system.

I had to also buy a new power for the computer, as it needed more wattage and I wanted the system to be stable. I also lowered the BIOS settings to have an even more stable system and it is still fast enough for my purposes.

Hard Disk and GFX board are still the same, and optical drives as well. This new Main Board has more SATA ports, lots of USB (10 at back of the case, 8 on board and I added 2), but no 1394 and no visible RS232C and Parallel. It has them on board but I need to put sockets there myself. Better than nothing though, as most other Main Boards lack RS232 and Parallel these days.

The funniest part was that although installing new Main Board drivers was very easy, there was no sound. It took me three days (nights to be correct), until I found a solution, and the main reason was that Microsoft has been forgotten to include the UAA Microbus drivers for HD Audio in its WinXP SP3!!!

Well, some good guy had a page to share his info to resolve this. Overall idea is to edit the registry so stupid Windows XP thinks it is SP2, installs the driver, and you again tell it that it is SP3!!!

Very idiotic I believe. I have never seen an OS so stupid

The other problem was with my Linux Mint.  Although I have not changed my Hard Disks, it can not find its /dev/sda5 partition to boot, although it is there.  I guess as main board is changed and probably I have changed the SATA ports for each of 2 hard disks, the UUID of partitions are changed.

I am working to resolve this one too, still no success.

and  I have turned 39 this last 4th April   and happy spring to all of you.

Paymaan.

Take care.

This video contained a great Greenday music synched to it beautifully, but unfortunately Youtube forced me to remove the music for copyright problems.  If you wanted the original version tell me directly please.

Paymaan.

The story is about somebody who taught me a lot through his website, and his near space electronic projects, who showed me lots of what I know about electronic and hardware design.

I have been forgetting his site name (which was also his HAM radio sign), and I was trying to recall his code, and when I finally recalled and googled it, the page told he has been killed when bicycling back in April!!!

May he rest in peace, Michael Gray, AKA KD7LMO, KD7LMO.net a real professor and engineer.

His website is now archived at http://www.ansr.org/kd7lmo/www.kd7lmo.net/index.html

looking west south, in the middle of lake (a point of soil is out of water) is where I was fishing last year, when water level was so low!

For 3rd year on, I decided to go to Laar lake at Damavand peak foot fishing for the rare brownies, yes these are really rare, at least in Iran, where this lake is the only lake holding them.

Line of cars waiting to enter the protected area and get permissions, Fog everywhere.

Well past 2 month have passed very hard in my country, so I really couldn’t go sooner, and it is about the end of the legal fishing season (for this species of course).   I thought I need to go there before I totally miss this year’s chances.

after environmental post, I am waiting for Sepehr to take the permissions.

My cousin and I got on road at 3 in the morning and went along Haraaz road.  When we were about to turn to the Laar road at Polur, 3 hitchhikers asked us to give them a ride to the lake, and we made friends along the way.

Before reaching dam, fog everywhere

They were enough enthusiastic for this species that they have been came all the way from Amol at northern province of Mazandaran.  From Imamzadeh Hashem peak The way was all in the fog, and it continued to be the same along the Laar road.  Near the environmental post, it was a long long line of cars waiting to get permissions and enter the area.  Believe me, some of those are so eager they almost race this last part which is not much paved and has no asphalt.  They all want to get to the lake to get the best place and also to not lose the morning, you will find out why this one is important later.

Delichai river

In that day, they started giving permissions at 5:30, so everybody lost at least 30 minutes of valuable time. I guess we lost even more, as line was long.  So we continued towards middle of the lake.  This year the lake contains much more water due lots of rains in the spring, and my last year’s fishing location was totally under water.  That is good news for Tehran of course, we have enough water this year.

camera looking south, My cousin Sepehr, we are walking toward the lake.

After parking at side of road and 20 minutes of walking, I decided on a location eastward which was under a hills shadow at least for an hour or two, we started at about 7:00, finally.

looking east, still foggy, but sun has rose and still ok for fishing

Some other people have been reached there before us, and their lines were casted already, but we had a 100 meter area to our own.  I used a 3 string trout rig (a last night’s work), used earth worms on two bottom ones and 1/4 of Kilka (some kind of Caspian Sardine) on the top hook set.  Casted about 50 meters and started to prepare the second rod.  The first fish was caught in a few seconds.

looking east, laar lake, still foggy, cool, best conditions for brown trout fishing.

It was not a big catch, but very encouraging.  Kilka bait worked there. and as it was still foggy and cool, I believe this was the perfect condition.  caught the first one, again caste the line and tried to prepare the second rod, again the first one caught some fish!  I was really feeling lucky

a 39 cm brown trout, with black and red dots, and almost green top

This one was 39 cm long, and kind of heavy for this species, maybe about 1 kg or so, I didn’t weight it as sun was raising and clouds were disappearing.  Then it seemed no luck, and I was also trying different combination of baits.  Nothing except Kilka seemed to work, and overall we got another big brown trout which was both big and fighting.  Unfortunately (for me, not for the fish )  after I removed hooks from her, she put 2 of hooks in my finger and jumped in the water, and danced all the way to the deep lake

My fishing rod still waiting more fish, but no fog and it is getting warm

We got nothing as clouds were gun, and nobody in our area caught anything.  We stayed untill 3:00 p.m. and at the same moment the small one found a way in my keep net to get out, right when we were about to get back.  As it was too small, we didn’t anything serious to stop him, and he went back to the lake as well.

Overall, this time it was much more fun than those times before, and also warmer.  weather is so clean and cool, so wind is cool, but sun burns your skin.

Damavand peak inside clouds.

And last but not least, as always, I bought a few big rainbows from a Haraz river fish farm, it is always nice to buy fresh from the source!

I am not sure if I can og again this year, but I will if I can.  only one week remains from the legal season.

Paymaan.

Overall, it is really strange in this time of year in Tehran to snow.  Not that Tehran is a warm city, but we have had quite some not so cold winters in the past few years.

Cheers,

Paymaan.

Hi Everybody,

Tomorrow is the beginning of a new spring, NowRuz (new day), and the day after tomorrow will be the first day of Persian new year 1388 Solar Hejri.  So I use this opportunity to say a happy new year to all the friends and family and all those good people who read this, and I wish a happy and joyful and prosperous new year for all Persian, and a new spring for all the rest

I hope you enjoy your holidays, and be happy.

Paymaan.

Lots of things are going on here, and I have been under lots of stress in the past monthes, two heavy website and multimedia software design and development at the same time, and some other unpleasing life issues.

Of course I don’t claim only bad things are happening, I am also having many good things happen to me, but ok, let internal issues aside

While I am developing this two projects, I am also exploring new topics in software and web design.  So far I have gone deeper into many languages, from deeper usage of Javascript, to CSS2, changing my priority web design language from HTML to XHTML and XML.

I am really going to like this change, XML is something I can not describe, but I feel enjoying using it, and for my other project, I am exploring things like Adobe Flash CS4, to Adobe AIR and Adobe Flex, to Pure Basic and even some VisualC++ of Microsoft,  while almost everybody knows I prefer ANSI C/C++ over anything which involves some kind of work from Microsoft .

Some other changes in the past months have happened which I have really enjoied it. First, my daughter have gone to first grade and after almost 3 month now, she can read and write and I believe this is an evolution for every person.  This is were we got our power to learn more.

Then I did something really relieving. My Windows were killing me after 4 years of not being re-installed, it would crash several times a day and you know how dumb WindowsXP is, and it can’t even keept itself clean.  MY registery was 180 MB, can you believe that?!  I tried every piece of junk software I found to clean up my registery and Windows, to no avail, and it got worse and worse, and in the past 7,8 years which I have been forced to use Windows I have always been unhappy, and missed my good old Amiga.

I have been downloading several versions of Linux since end of summer, planning to make a really big change, and to ease the life, and to get rid of Windows, finally.

I had Ubuntu Hardy Heron, Novell’s SuSE and Open SuSE, Linux Mint Elyssa, and afew others.  I have been recently uninstalled my older SuSE as it was heavy and wanted to update it in whole, but my 160 GB hard disk was almost filled and I needed its space, but I changed my mind and got a new 320GB for more freedom and for those projects I mentioned in the beginning.

I wanted to chose one of those Linux so I habe another option on this machine in addition to WinXP, and suddenly I tasted this Linux Mint, I have played with all of these diferent linuxes on different machines and none is as great as Linux Mint.  Some of Linuces can not read your Windows partitions.  Some can only read it but can not write to it. Some have fonts very different than what a WinXP user have experienced with.  Some are also very heavy, even being a Linux, consume your CPU power so hard your machine will actually work slower than with Windows!

But, Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu itself, which based on Debian itself, is almsot the fines of all I have ever experienced.

It is a Linux, who can read, and write to your Windows partitions so easily that I have shared all my pictures and music and video folders with it on windows partitions.

It is very efficient (I use the Gnome desktop on it and I am used to it very fast, it is very easy to use) and works much faster on my 4 year old machine, that I am relieved and feel no need for a new machine now.

Then its graphics power is so high, I actually have a much more fancy desktop effects on this machine using my old NVidia 6600GT than what you can see on most Vista machines.  The Desktop is actually liquid, you can make ripples on it, you can trun it and see the other 3 desktops with your mouse or key combinations.  It has some carousel like application chooser, a four side desktop cube etc. etc.

Then something really funny when you install it. It actually asks you if you want to import your windows accounts into it!  It can migrate your windows to Linux without any hassles!

Ok, I am not affiliated with authors of Mint, and they also provide it for free so this is no advertising, explore the rest your self, using its live CD.

After I installed Mint (version 5 is called Elyssa), I simply migrated all my email from Thunderbird on WinXp to Mint, also my book marks from FireFox to FireFox on Mint (and almost every software there has a twin sister here on Mint).  I also took a copy of my Windows main partition, formatted that partition, and reinstalled windows, just for when I need to play a windows only Game, or for when testing my web designs on IE, and for when clients want a Windows only software.

Now I spend most of my time on Linux, and have installed Apache 2 server as well as everything else on it, and when I am designing web sites, I design and run them on my machine and when evrything is fully tested, mirror them to the client’s web host.

I feel really free now, every tool you need, you go to package manager, search for the proper keyword, and when you find the proper program, you simply ask it to install, no money is going to be paid, and your software is ready in a few minutes.

And please don’t kill me before I say this, you have almost no virus there, although you can be extra careful and install a free virus killer like ClamAV, with just asking package manager to install it for you

Ok, enogh for now, my brain overflows are finished for now, I guess.

Paymaan.