living backwards

My Next Live
by Woody Allen

In my next life I want to live backwards. You start out dead and fet that out of the way.

Then you wake up in and old people's home feeling better every day.

You get kicked out for being too health, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day.

You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement.

You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school.

You then go to primary school, you become kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in a luxurious spa with conditions like central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then, Voila!

You finish off as an orgasm!

I rest my case.

Dear Woody,
if you've seen the RedDwarf, you would know it is not just roses. Just think of Santa Clause! That bastard who is stealing the presetns. And after the orgasm, you would end-up as floating sperm in your father's balls...

Facebook killed my blog

It was about the time to return the favor. I feel miserable for not updating the blog for a while, a lot of happened . But I guess that is OK, there were just better things to do.

So in short, Eva and I got married, almost a year ago .)

Check that out.

Then we planned our honey moon in Egypt, but we've got pregnant in the meanwhile so we canceled the flight and went for just few days to Croatia. Beautiful but quite expensive (I got 4000,- Euro phone bill which I had to pay ... bloody facebook .) ). Those are things you want to forget in your life ..

Fast forward in time I was sent on a trip to Japan for three weeks, just enough time to see the most famous places in Tokyo (35 millions of people, shit no kidding).

Then, sick of bosses (except for the very first one) I got a new one. This one is the worst, it is me. Started stereoIT , hope it lasts until my retirement .)

My very good friend died, only when the death is near one realize how fragile everything is. Makes you think about a life quite a lot.

And then best "thing" in my life happened.

Filip, my son was born, love him with all my heart. I can watch him for hours. Sort of makes me feel good there is someone else who has to carry all the hassles on now, yet there is plenty of time before that. weird though ;) Now we have to think about new flat ... again?

I've turned 30 and so I am having my last battle with my body before I let it go. Running, biking and now, here I am, in Greece, working through day, kiting in the evening. Refreshing.

Oh, I also keep ranting on twitter time to time. Peace, out!

1234567890 is here, heureka

Time on UNIX like machines (including Linux) is counted in seconds since midnight January 1st 1970, the moment when time began on the Unix operating system (aka the Unix Epoch).

Today at 00:31:30 CET (23:31:30 UTC) counter showed magnificent number 1234567890 (that happens once in an epoch !) and many hearts of the right geeks have been pleased ;) Congratulations.

Celebrations have taken on many places around the world. Sometimes its the little things I enjoy.

Back to Athens, Greece

Well after my return from Kuwait, I managed to spent some time back in Prague and visit most of the friends I've been neglecting for a long time. With Eva, we bought some furniture and I've spent like a week to put it all together. But at the moment, the kitchen, the bedroom and the bathroom are almost finished. Hurray!



And then the good news came and I packed all my stuff (two kites and few t-shirts) and headed back to Athens to spend nice and warm autumn here. I kinda got used to sun this year (spring in Greece, summer was exceptionally hot in Denmark, then Middle East and now Greece again). Staying in the same flat with Petr Novak. Gotta visit Acropolis this time!

My friend Petr Drobny aka 'drobek' (which means tiny, but Peter is almost 190cm tall) arrived and we went to Paros to catch some wind at Punda. We stayed at SunSet studios (place I can reccommend to everyone). No wind on Friday was not at problem as we rented 150cc quads and it was a lot of fun to ride it around the island.



Rest of the stay was great, wind was up to 20knots and we managed to do some small jumps as well. Only problem was my kite, a local guy who knows how to ride told me: 'This is EVIL kite'. True, if I do not watch it for a second, the beast is already going another direction and I shortly fly-follow. Well as they said Nobile High Performance, turns fast, high power, superior hang time. If only I could say I match those prerequisites. Neverethe less I also tested 2009 Cabrinha Switchblade, this is excellent kite for beginners.



Now back to Athens, working for the customer and occasionally trying to catch some wind at Loutsa. Which is always too strong for me, so the whole point of riding is to get to the open water and then spend like 2 hours trying to get back to starting point. But I will manage!


I'm off to have my first lesson of scuba diving.

Kuwait, Al Kuwait

Ok, few days ago I moved to do some tasks in Kuwait. I flew with Fly Emirates and yey, what an Airline. On 1,35h flight I got served like a king. It was this huge Airbus (no, not the 380), and the food was delicious. Three courses, compare that to sandwich I get on 1.1h flight to Denmark with CSA (I still like CSA a lot though;) ).

First thing I really enjoyed was the TAXI ride from Airport to the hotel. Perhaps it was because I tried to look like I do not care (or better like 'I own the world' - which was btw another advise from my Danish colleagues ! They said, every Arab behaves like that :)) this guy has impressed me. Driving old Ford (but with at least 5.0L engine) we were in 140+Kmh (or was it Mph?) going on the motorway from one lane to another and honking everyone around. What a ride, say WOW!

Al Kuwait city centre from the Marina Mall.

During a day I was mainly working and because the sunset is about 6:30pm most of the pictures were shot at night when I wondered around the city. Hotel was great and I spent a lot of time in this place ;)

Hotel's pool on top floor (23rd).

Most of the week I was starving. Ramadan in Kuwait is a litlle bit more seriously taken (at least when it comes to people just visiting the place) then in UAE. If they catch you drinking or eating during a day (Iftar starts about at 6 pm) you pay fine of 1000 KWD (about 4000$) and you go to jail until end of Ramadan (about three weeks from now). I really tried my best to not to miss my vacation. So the first day I was very happy to see the hotel service to forgot to clean my room. There were some leftovers from the breakfast .)

In the evening I tried to explore the surrounding areas but at the first sight there is just nothing in Al Kuwait. Only a few people wondering around, lot of dust and heat. This is what the Mall looks like at 7PM. At 10PM it got quite crowded.


Yesterday I got little bit of tired of thinking of Al Kuwait as a bad place to live. I asked the people where the locals go, there has to be some markets right? So I went to Souk Mubarakia. And that changed my mind completely. Temperature got down to about 37 degrees at night so it was 'comfy' to walk around in my full cotton trousers.
The whole markets is consisted of hundreds of small streets connected together. Those streets are full of small shops of various kinds. Interestingly same types of shops are close to each other. From spice shops, dates shops, fish market, meat streets to all kind of groceries shops.

Gold district :0 I am not into gold, but this place is magnificent.

Dinning place, I've really enjoyed local fish with rice, Arabic bread, salads, mango juice and Čaj a lot. Eva would be proud of me for the way I cut this fish and got rid of the fishbones (she is the real master in this!). And all this just for 2KWD, I could barely walk after eating here, delicious!

On the streets one can see the REAL cars! In some way the time is ticking slower than other places. What I also found interesting were the people. Very friendly. And you go somewhere, you think there has to be something special because you see crowds of people there and when you get close, you realize they are just standing there. Talking and nothing more.

I even managed to get to the Liberation Tower and everybody told me it is possible to go up and see the city from the top. Well that turned out not to be so true. Anyway it is magnificent construction, tallest in Kuwait. I've enjoyed the markets a lot, bought a lot of junk (like night vision binoculars which of course do not work and zooming 1:1, but don't buy it if it was 3KWD).

Well, time to say good bye to Kuwait. My flight to back to Dubai is in about 4 hours, then transit to Amsterdam and then back to Prague, home sweet home. Full album is here.

On the trip again, this time Dubai, UAE

There was not enough of wind in Denmark so I took the opportunity to try Dubai.

(the picture is pretty bad, I know)

People said things like this is not a good time to come here (temperature, humidity and Ramadan). A lot of that is true. Yesterday on the beach, I got new kite F-one Revolt 13m and was desperate to try it. But the wind was only about 5-7 knots (about 3m/s) and it was not flying at all of course. The water was so hot, it almost felt like a shower temperature Eva is used to ;) I tried to stay in the shade of the kite, but was sweating too much. By coincidence there was a 'ultimate survival' show on national geography that evening that showed how to squeeze a seaweed to get some water, will try that next time.

Then you get into taxi, and you get cold immediately. I think Taxis here are like public fridges. The temperature in it is close to zero. Everything here is air conditioned, so while you are in the building, Dubai looks like a great place, until you go out of course. Like trying to catch a taxi for 30 minutes makes you learn how to swear in Arabic. My colleague says, it is ok, you just get a shower three times a day. I agree.

My Danish colleagues also said a lot of other things that you cannot wear shorts on public, one cannot see womens face and more of that stuff. It took me several days of sweating in the trousers to figure out this is not true at all (they were just joking, like always). Dubai is actually quite open minded in those terms. People are very friendly. Just respect some basic rules and you are ok. It is Ramadan, so do not eat or drink on public as that is a sign of disrespect to those who are fasting them selfs. But takeaway is doable (just use the curtains in the hotel room).

Food here is great, you can pick from Indian, Pakistan, Japanese (I recommend Wagamama restaurant ), Arabic and many other cuisines. Price are affordable. What is really cheap is the oil (of course) and the cars. Friend told me a new VW Touareg costs around 110 000,- Dhs (around 20 000 Euro). Unfortunatelly you can't bring them back to Europe. Shops are huge, the only one I was to is Mall of Emirates, but that is enough.

I can't take photos, it is too humid here these days. This is the best I got to.


The temperature is close to 40 in the shade, I am heading off to Kuwait in two days. There is 50+, will see.

While in Dubai I met another Czech guy living in there. His name is Honza, he is kiting a lot, likes bikes and he is a great company, follow his story here. His friend is Passi (Finish guy, I hope I got it right) and he gave mi a ride in his Chevy Corvette. That car has 505HP and can do 0-100Kms in 3.6s (I witnessed it ;) With them I visited a place called Barasti Bar. One of the top rated bars in the world, check it out if you are in Dubai.

Ok, off to Kuwait now.

and she said Yes

Well it is probably time to tell everyone. Nine years ago I fell in love with Eva.

Our life together until now was like a video game with all the ups and downs. However last time I was in Czech, we took the boat and in the middle of the Máchas lake she said Yes.

And now, the game is over :)

(thanks to my lovely family for the perfect gift)

something about me

so skip if not interested.

I've decided to post about me, mainly because I wonder how is it to read it when one gets older .)

so, at the moment I am 28 years old guy, living in Denmark and traveling a lot. Doing an interesting job and meeting a lot of new and intelligent people. Enjoying life with lovely girlfriend and I can't believe I haven't married her yet (got to fix that really soon). I also like Linux, Gnome, Python and Open Source thinking in general. and I love my parents (with all the quirks included ;)

The Job
Still when people asks me what do I do for living, saying "I work with computers" is probably the easiest way to go. However there is so much more to computers then just that, hard to explain though. At the moment I find the IT industry really interesting place with a lot of things happening (unlike Physis :)

I still dream about realizing my own business and slowly walking there. Yet many times I also find my self in the middle of million things (ideas/unfinished stuff..) but trying to reduce this lately (with various results).

Hobbies
Recently I started to enjoy the wind and a sea a lot. trying to catch up on some sports and health in general. My music taste is satisfied with streams from soma.fm and downtempo.org (I would like to know where djdusty is gone). Regarding movies, beside the regular stuff, the southpark online is worth it.

Otherwise, I still feel unwise yet a little bit more experienced. I think I have really great people around me and it means a lot to me.

So far so good.

Being a Linux Consultant

Ok, since I'm now traveling a lot I've decided to use this blog to expose some more details of me so those who want can catch up on me. For those who knows Red Dwarf series: Perhaps, in some distance future, on Sunday, I'll be drinking Cognac and reading those bits of my success story, what else better a man can do .)

I'm now working as an Linux Consultant implementing GSM/GPRS/UMTS (network you use when calling and using internet provided by your mobile operator) monitoring system. This means a lot of traveling, meeting a lot of people, installing the system at customer premises, solving any issues that appears and mainly being on your own most of the time. I am all excited about that, it is like being business man without doing that business staff I do not enjoy yet. Implementations last from couple of days to several Months depending on customer and state to work.

It also means wake up at 5:00am, catch up plane, work hard all day long and get dead tired to the hotel (really, yesterday, after walking Oslo for couple of hours I got to the hotel at 6pm and found myself at 2am still dressed up on the sofa), just to find out that my Maestro card is not accepted anywhere in Norway. And since there was Nobel Peace Concert happening that same day in Oslo and I was staying far away from Oslo I had to travel to the Airport to try the cash machine to get some cash. I got lucky.


So I have my new Master Card being ordered at the moment, looking forward what next ten days brings as I'm still going to stay in Norway for that time. And for those thinking Norway is expensive, you are right, Norway is way expensive.

Bits and bytes of my analog life

Silly title, but what the heck, there are so many changes in my life right now.

Eva: After seven years of living together my girlfriend left me and I feel empty and miserable, I really do. Something is broken in me and I do not know how to fix that.

Work: I've quit my work at DHL. Last four years were excellent when it comes to my professional carrier and I'm really gratefull to DHL for letting me grow. Access to technology one cannot see anywhere else but what I really liked the most was the team of people and the "FUN" of a corporate life we shared. So, Lukas, Pepe, Marketko, Zdendo, Ondreji, Peetee, Honzo, Marku, Petre, Radime and all you many others I forgot to mention, thank you for being so great to me, thank you for being such a great team and friends. I hope we will stay in touch wherever we go.

Work2: And I got a new job. I should say it is a dream job. My current position is Linux Consultant for Denmark/Japanese corporation operating at monitoring field for telco companies all around the world. That means working with open-source technologies, learning more about GSM/GPRS/UMTS networks and lot of traveling and since I'm still below thirty, I'm really looking for that. Recently I had a feeling that my capability to absorb every happening in open-source movement is dropping and I should specialize on a subset of that. So lets try.

random life ranting

...only for interested. Everything is ok, lot of things happening all the time. We moved again. This time to our new flat at Malešice. We changed the view of Prague 4 for a view of football playground and surrounding green area, yet still close to Prague city center. I started to like to going to OBI for all kinds of nifty things we need at the house at the moment. Learned something about house works. One of the things I failed to manage was Internet connection so far. I was blaming provider for not being able to deliver on time just to find out few days later that my name is not on the mailbox, stupid me. My side money for a decent digital camera has slowly but for sure dissolved into things like mattress, furniture,jalousie and many other small things. Anyway anyone coming to Prague for a sofa surfing, just let me know.
Our dvd player is down for repair so we can't watch Heroes at the moment. But that is fine as I finally managed to read a couple of books (IT related to be precise). I'm getting really interested in python+django at the moment so let's wait and see if something good comes out of it.

Ireland ..reloaded

Well I do not know why but it seems I have developed some kind of an addiction to Ireland, very interesting island. Rough country but kind people and a lot of friends. So while the "review money" were hot I bought a cheap flight to see them all. Leaving all "the stress" (no not really as I didn't have stress for a while) behind and went last Thursday right from the work to the airport. Two planes of Aer Lingus and ČSA were heading to Dublin, one flew on time, I was in the other one. Well Laďa and Michal were kind enough and both waited for me patiently, chewing their time in one of Dublin's casinos ;)

We got to Carlow and I tried to do my best and stayed up to 4 am. Time schedule was pretty tough and this was just really the start of it. My friends in Carlow are all croupiers, pretty good one. So there they were Poli, Gabča,Meggie, Michal and Laďa ... time to drink. I got up at nine and others around 4pm. The very same thing happened on Friday's night, tried to stay up as much as I could and managed to get to bed around 5. During the day I spent most of the time fixing Michals computer and talking that nice and crazy stuff about Global warming and so on and yes in the free afternoon I sent couple of CV's just to see my chances. And I even got one call and scheduled meeting on Monday, what a productive day.

On Saturday we had a trip to Dublin to buy Poli new computer, unfortunately one do not see any kind of DatArt or Electro World in Dublin's major shopping center DunDrum's. Well we still managed to get HP Pavilion with Core 2 Duo and Nvidia Go7400 chipset. Vista included. I have to say right now, VISTA IS SLOW and SLOW. We spent like at least 40 minutes in the shop before the "first time" process was over and I do not want to go through it again. But is has Aero, the real reason why Poli bought it. Later the night I felt really tired and yawned all the time. But Poli and about 6-to-8 vodkas (sometimes double) helped me to stay up through the night again.

Sunday I was bit clever and got up about 1 pm, my friends are even smarter and got up about 5pm. Except for Gabca, lovely girl, she got up quite early, she rules the house. House is still clean and everything is in its place. Without her I probable would ended up in a place where people and bugs (all kind of them) tries to live in a synergy, just like the old times from the college. During this day I started to feel a bit dizzy, likely all the sleep lag I acquired during last few days. All I ate the day was veggie soup, but good one. Finished setup of Vista (it does not come with DivX codecs preinstalled and is still far from ideal user experience, mixing things from Apple and previous versions of Windows, sometimes it is better, sometimes not) and now I really feel confident telling people to try Ubuntu as it provides user with nice, coherent and intuitive interface to work with.

Monday was quick, I got up, said goodbye and got on bus to Dublin. Bruno was there, managed me a place to put my bags. Met friend of him Katerina, which is great companion and was about to see what is on the market. But the day was cursed and about 1 pm I realized my CV contact is partially wrong. What the heck. After four there was another beer with other Czechs in Blue Goose. As far as I remember Bruno,Babu,Petr,Katerina,Tomas(perhaps twice) were all there and then another couple of drinks at Bruno's house. Battery depleted...completely.. for sure

Don't know how, but got up at 4:50, and then it was quick ride to home... 12:00 lunch with Eva.

Love you, glad to be home....

Happy couple

It looks like there is another happy couple under this Sun. Congratulations to you both Dan and Daniela.

the Computer Language

I'm diving. Yes thats is right, in my free time I'm now diving into Python. Finally it seems I found THE language. I grew up on Pascal and C and even it takes an effort to code something useful in it I like it (most parts of GNOME is written in C). Java is now mature but I never had enough time and will to follow up with it. But I have to say with things like J2EEv5 and above frameworks like JBoss Seam, web development in Java has bright future. Then there is Perl which I love, it is like extended bash with OOP in it. But I'm not skilled in any perl web framework and I'm unsure how to do Webservices in Perl and I'm even not sure I would like to do it Perl. So this leaves Perl to my Unix related skills where it works great for managing machines and automating small tasks. I've missed the Ruby On Rails hype.

And now Python. Something I heard about many times already. Something that has OOP built in from start, Interactive and is highly mutable (easily shape able) into anything you need. For some small project I'm developing I needed something simple and easy I looked into django. Because of great documentation and good people on IRC I've decided to stay with Django for some time. With Django you need python (well it is so simple you do not need it for tasks like CRUD) so here I am. So now I'm in the middle of diving into python eagerly reading how to do polymorphisms, SOAP and more in just few lines if you get to code right ;)

Google Tech talks about Django and several more videos from Alex Martelli aboyt python is definitely great way to start.

off topic

For last two weeks I managed to be mostly without computer and I'm still alive! Firstly, late skiing on iceberg with my colleagues at Hintertux in Austria was excellent. Surprisingly I could breath in 3000 meters above sea pretty well. I've managed to drink a lot of beer cans, sprained my ribs and completely exhausted all vitamins in my body (like there were any). Then small sickness and right after I got fit we spent whole extended weekend with Mira, Jita and Evicka in Kochel Am See in Germany visiting Eva's friends. Kochel Am See is interesting place, mainly for tourists, just before Alps. Two lakes right next to each other, one about 150 meters above the other one. Fantastic view of Bavaria area. It was mostly raining and we slept in caravan. Next day we had trip to Neushwanstein beautiful neo-romantic castle facing Austria.

Hint: get the Bratwurst !

N800 is on the way

and while it is, I browsed the web to see how to utilize this gadget to the max. N800 is an internet tablet from Nokia equipped with WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, crisp, clear and wide display (800x250) bringing the surfing and staying on-line to another level. Power of laptop without the weight of laptop. Small compact device is all you need. While at home, connected to wifi, check you your TV guide or stream a multimedia content from your UPNP enabled server. Make video calls, download music to device and surf the web.
It is nice to find out that Nokia provides official navigation kit for it. I can't understand why does Škoda Car provide navigational kit for 50 000,- when all you need is an integrated bluetooth enabled GPS device. Dear Škoda, we already have a PDAs, Smartphones and many other devices capable of running latest versions of TomTom, iGo or any other navigation SW out there. What is better, sell 100 kits per 50 000,- or 10 000 kits for 5000,- ? Anyway this Nokia navigation kit includes some really cool things like downloading POI (points of interests like hotels, police radars,...) automatically as you need them, or possibility to surf the web when you are on the highway (ok not driver, but co-pilot can). Only issue here seems there is no buy button on the Nokia site.
And it runs on Linux! Sweet.

How to get poor

If you want to get poor and live in Czech Republic, just sign in to Vodafone. I'm switching provider because of company phone and I just wanted to see my last monthly bill. Good they have on-line access to all your information/services and this was always appreciated. Not today.

GPRS, 3 data accesses , 31MB downloaded charging 1699,- KC + VAT (around 90US dollars). 31MB come on! It was likely bloody network driver for HP laptop I had to download when Windows failed and were reinstalled.

Funny is when I officially asked to switch, they asked for reasons. Advised that Vodaphone's (Czech Republic) Data services are poor and expensive (no UMTS/3G, mainly GPRS and somewhere EDGE) and today this.

I guess I just got bit more poor again. Very expensive experience.