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.
For 2 weeks in a row, I was tryng to peneterate into the world of ActionScript 3.0 language, the one used in Flash CS3 and Flash CS4, to program the flash animation. It has never been easy for me to think and develope programs in the way Flash works, as it mostly conflicts with my methods. Till know, Flash to me has been an environment which you both have to set the objects manualy into the environment, and then program them individually or in groups, and you could not just start writing a program which does load the objects or creates them and use them to animate or whatever you like to do.
I still believe this system is very unusual, but with the introduction of ActionScript 3.0 language and huge changes they have made into its basics, Now it is like a real computer language, to me. Maybe I am wrong, but this is the way my brain works.
I tried two weeks and 5 books and lots of good hints on the web to find a point where I can understand the language and basically start the learning curve, which is the hardest point in learning a new language. 2 nights ago finally, I guess I did it.
Suddenly I had a feeling just like what Neo had, in the movie Matrix, where they upload the instructions to Jujitsu into his brain and he knows how to fight like a Jujitsu pro. And in the middle of the night, when my first pieces of ActionScript3.0 worked, I told myself; I know ActionScript3.0!
Believe me, aside from jokes, it is always very nice to know you have another language (or computer language) available in your brain. It feels you are a little stronger in understandings. It will take me a while before I’ll be using it like a pro, but I have already started using it for a project, and I know I will finish the project using this.
So, where to start? Try this books and sites:
1- OReilly Learning ActionScript 3.0 A Beginner’s Guide. This is a great book!
2- Flash CS4 for Dummies. I guess this one is a good one as well, although it talks too much.
3- The Flash Blog http://www.theflashblog.com lots of articles
4- GoToAndLearn(), http://www.gotoandlearn.com lots of video tutorial on flash!
And lots of other sites like Adobe itself, although Adobe is containing the worst set of information, they are actually useless for an starter unless you try seaching though google on their livedocs, and that is still no use to somebody who still doesn’t know where to start.
Try finding small samples on other people’s site and be careful as they don’t put most of needed headers and starter code on theirs, considering everybody knows what they already know. Find small, working demos and then read them and try to recompile them to get sure the code is complete.
Paymaan.
Hi everybody, and Merry Christmas and Happy new year and everything else. I wish joy for everybody out there, and peace.
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.
Hi Everybody,
This is a long time I have not written anything in here, but I am still alive (for those who prefer not 😀 ) but just either not have been in the mood to post, or havn’t had time. Actually, as the name of the blog says for itself, this is the place for whatever which overflows from my brain, if any at all. Sometimes my mood is not that exciting and so it makes some kind of hibernation to my brain, and it prevents me from being creative or making new ideas (even if they seem crazy 🙂 ).
Anyway, I’ll try to be better soon, and I am aslo planning to release one of my embedded processor board designs, for Microchip PIC18 CPUs containing 4 wire LCD output, power stabilizer, dual serial (RS232) ports, I2C interface and a very low noise design. If anybody has a need for this, let me know so I put it here sooner. I want to release it under GNU licence for free, although it first ment to be a source of funds for me 🙂
Send me your ideas.
Paymaan.
9th June 2008 was the beginning of the fishing season in the Laar reservoir at Laar dam, right at west of Damavand peak, and east of Tehran province, Iran. This year, I had the chance to go there to have a great adventure and fishing experience. The lake is native environment of an special species of fresh water fish; Brown trout. This kind of brown trout is called Red-Dot trout locally or in Farsi: “Khaal-Ghermez, خال قرمز”, because most of the fish are silver colored trouts with black and red dots on them (other varieties exist as well).
I tried to get some sleep the Sunday 8th June, as I didn’t get a good sleep for a few days before, thinking I needed to gather my strength and wake up very early and I was to drive about 90 Km to the Laar reservoir and Damavand peak.
Hi everybody,
Monday 9th June 2008, the fishing season at Laar dam reservoir will start. I see people are planning to be there for brown trouts (native to Iran and specially to Laar river), so although I have been at Caspian shore just a few days ago, I am planning to be there, probably to also participate in the season competition.
I am not sure if I can really be prepared in 3 days, but everything of my tools are in my car’s trunk and I am really eager to start the season wih everybody else. I also had the opportunity to take some pictures during my past trip to the Caspian, including a few from the road, which is very beautiful in this time of the year.
I will try to put these on Google Earth as soon as I can, so everybody else enjoys.
Paymaan.
I was shopping for a Laurel in the plant shopping center at the beginning of the spring and some old ladies started to ask about cherry tomatoes and what they can plant in containers in their apartments, so I tried to help them choose what is easier, what is pretty enough, smells good and can be planted in containers and indoors.
Well, this is a question to many people who love plants and greens just like me, but don’t know what they can plant in their apartments or balconies wihtout much need to light and soil.
I always have an answer to this question, it is simply: plant pepper!
Pepper plants have some characteristics which make them perfect for indoor and containers.
There is a huge variety of peppers you can grow at home. It doesn’t need much sun light, so you can plant it in small containers and put them behind the windows. I normally use 8 liter containers and although I put them in my balcony, they are still under a shade (preventing summer heat). The leaves of pepper, are shiny and in some varieties they are very wide, which makes them perfect add on to house greens, and it is a really clean plant.
The blooms on pepper which are in most varieties small white flowers, add to to its value, and then comes the smell. I really like the smell of fresh peppers, specially the mild smell of bell peppers which make you feel so fresh and relaxed. and when the peppers are hanging finally, it is one of the best add-ons to your cooking food, and to be honest, I love to use vegetables grown on my small containers instead of those somehow artificial crops bought from store, which have no smell and no taste at all, and I don’t know with what kind of water and soil they are grown.
Anyway, so the process is easy, in a suitable season get some 8 liters containers, stuff hem with soil, and put a seed or 2 half a centimeter in the soil and spray some water over it for a few days. I prefer light container soil I buy from plant center near me, for about 1.5 USD a 10 kg pack. The prices may vary in your place and your country, I am shopping in Tehran and right from the center.
If you want to plant indoors, the season doesn’t matter much, just keep the temperature so plant doesn’t freeze in winters. 15 degrees centigrade to 20 makes a perfect conditions I guess. If you don’t have enough light, put them under fluorescent lamps.
Remember, Pepper seeds are very slow, so you have to be patient. It normally takes more than 12 days before you see any sign of the plant and it may take even more, so just keep the soil moist and let the nature do the rest for you.
Now how to select seeds or how to find the seeds yourself? You can either buy from shops, or you can use the available seeds in the peppers you see.
Shopping, everybody knows how, ask your local stores, or simply type “pepper seed” in google and you will find a thousand sellers, I have used seedfest.co.uk and I guess north Americans are also easy with burpee.com.
But if you prefer not to buy seeds, it is still easy. Find a perfect pepper of any kind you like to grow, preferrable not a hybrid type (hybrid seeds don’t grow exactly like their mothers, and they don’t smell or taste like those we like, and market is filled with them). The pepper you want to use must be fully grown, I mean it must be colored other than green for most species. If you use seed from a red pepper (which is still green), then the seeds are not grown enough.
So select the perfect pepper, open it and use seeds. put up to 3 seeds in the container and cover it with soil, and if more than one came out, trim the weaker ones.
Be careful with hot chilli peppers, Habanero and every other kind of hot pepper. When these grow, they start getting very hot and even the smell might be hot, so keep the kids away from them.
Peppers don’t need much attention as I said before, if you wanted to give them some food, after a month give them a tiny bit of an slow release fertilizer like green KRISTALLON dissolved in water and that’s all.
Enjoy while your plant are slowly growing, giving you some taste of the nature.
Paymaan.
I believe knowing the target species of fish is very important. Almost everything is related on the species and its behavior.
If you are fishing for fun, or just playing by the lake or river in a good day, you may use a single line of any type, a wooden or metal hook made by yourself and a branch of a tree and it may work, but here I want to share tips which can help us achieve better results, and have more fun or more fish for the dinner 🙂
Fishing by rod and hook is actually tricking the fish to think she is reaching for food, hunting for it, finding it or anything else you like to name it. We want to fish to eat the bait or whatever we have on the hook so it traps himself and we catch it.
So first of all we have to know the feeding behavior.
For visual feeders, we need baits which attract the fish visually, for those who smell, we need smelly food and bait, and for the third we can almost do nothing if we use hook instead of the net. Mullet is of the last type, ofcourse it too has some ways of catching which we can later talk about.
The other thing we have to know is that in what condition they start feeding. If you have everything ready and fish is not willing to eat or attack, then you will not catch it. I have stayed at a lake full of brown trouts for several hours without any fish even trying to bite the tons of different lures and bait I had with myself. Well don’t be scared, even if I didn’t catch anything, I enjoyed the lake side and the weather and the nature so much! that is the good thing about fishing.
Then in some ways, consider planning what size of fish you want to catch. The size really matters in this case, you have to have proper line, hook and rod, as well as proper reel.
As we go, you will learn more about this kind of fish behavior. I’ll try to share my knowledge of the some of fish so we can better decide to how fish for the target species.
As an start know that Sport fish like trout, bass and pike are all visual hunters and this is really good for us. Then species like carp, chub (white fish or Sefid Maahi as we say in Iran), catfish and surgeon are more likely to hunt for the smell of the food, smell attracts them more than the visuals, although not absolutly.
Because of this big difference, we normally take two kind of strategy for this two major groups.
More on this in the next post.
Paymaan.
Hi Everybody,
Noruz and Spring holidays are finally over in Iran, and as a new version of WordPress (2.5) is out there, I decided to update the blog. So we are now using WordPress 2.5. please enjoy and let me know of any possible problems.
Paymaan.
