Yesterday I finally had my laser eye operation, called LASIK, which went really great. It lasted less than 10 minutes, really impressive. Right after the surgery I was feeling much annoyance in my eyes, like there was something inside them, plus I couldn’t stand the light. I was also a little dizzy, but nothing strong, and most importantly, I didn’t feel much (any?) pain. After two hours I was back to normal, no problem in standing in light places and no pain at all. Of course I have to be very carefull for the next two weeks (at least), and continue the eye drops for about 2 months. I’m not allowed to touch my eyes, thus I’m wearing eye patches at night, and I can’t wash them yet, which is the most annoying thing, as they are itchy almost always since yesterday. On the bright side, I have no myopia at all any more (opposed to my previous -6.50 degrees, to get the picture, everything further than ~20cm was blur). My original plan to stay offline for a number of days is not needed according to my doctor, as long as it doesn’t bug me. Actually, I take regular long pauses, the light is still a bit too intense for me, so don’t expect me to come into active development soon.
I’m too excited now, I highly recommended to everyone, just do the preliminary tests and if your doctor gives you the green light go for it, no second thought. Finally, some freedom. Thanks to all the people that supported me (online/RL), much appreciated.
PS: RSIBreak is great, it notifies me about my next pause plus my eye drop time
Disclaimer: This is not a Gentoo or KDE related post, but I am the administrator of this planet.
I’m getting a laser eye surgery that will keep me away of screens for at least two weeks. Planet/blogs requests may lag a bit, Joshua should handle them. The rest (Overlays, KDE, Qt) should be fine, they have strong active teams behind. I’m really excited about this, I suppose it will be a great freedom not to rely on glasses or contact lenses, being able to sleep anywhere. No more blur vision or tired eyes, I’ll be able to stay on my computer for more than the usual 16 daily hours.
Below are a few highlights from fellow gentoo developers:
miknix: have fun looking at girls in high definition with your new guys
nightmorph: Sweet, laser eyes are a first step in becoming a cyborg
wired: Yay, hardware upgrade! Just to be clear on this: are you getting a “laser eye” surgery or a laser “eye surgery”?
likewhoa: ask them about the xray vision package
me: I didn’t like that mutation, i chose to become magneto so I can control CPU’s and various PC parts
c1pher: And remember, if you need a Gentoo fix, you don’t need to see the screen to do anything… Corny joke about using the force
And the all time classic (made by pchrist):
I gave a lot of thinking on what to do all those centuries that I’m going to be offline, and I decided to learn to skateboard.
This summer I had some fantastic holidays. What made them so special was that I didn’t plan to go to the places I visited, I mostly just followed my friend Alex while visiting his relatives in different places across Greece. Apart from the usual (and boring) seaside resorts near my city, I also went to a mountainous village (first time in my life that I went to a place which was cold on July, usually it is over 30°C), Athens (twice), Thessaloniki, Heraklion (Crete), and the highlight, Corfu.
Corfu is a Greek Island on the NW side of Greece, in the Ionian Sea. A magnificent place for holidays, as it consists of a beautiful city, with many archeological places and other tourist attractions, the best beach I’ve ever been to, and of course a very vivid night life. The old town has among the others a huge square, two fortresses (located on high spots, a very relaxing and impressive place to have a drink or coffee in the cafe-bars located inside them and enjoy the view), and a labyrinth of very narrow streets (in greek: καντούνια (cantounia)). I’ve been in Corfu again in 2004, twice actually, the first time on a school trip, so I skipped the historical places and went straight to the drinks. It was very nice to be again in that beautiful Island, and see all those people, since I haven’t seen most of them since then, as well as meeting new ones.
And some photos of the old city, the fortress, us getting drunk, and the partyyyy!!!
After that, Alex and me traveled for 23 hours to Crete, where I’ve been again last year. Another great place to visit, where I had fantastic time with the RPG guys. And a photo with Petros at a party he was DJing.
This month I was having my exams (which didn’t got very well, I only passed two out of six. I hope the next exams will be my last ones). This had two cons in my geeky life. The first is that I didn’t do anything for Gentoo, and I mean nothing (apart from a quick and failed attempt to package the enterprise branch of kdepim, which I’m going to blog the following days even if I don’t succeed). The second is that I lost FOSDEM, which I went the past two years and promised myself never to loose again. A lot of Gentoo Developers went though and had a terrific time (I have to say it again, I officially hate you). As a side note, I wanted to participate to KDE’s Klassroom about porting apps to KHotNewStuff 3, but I missed it as it started a week before I had time to do anything
What I really enjoy though in my exams periods is that I have the chance to listen to a lot of music. As a result I also have time to organize my large collection of Rap music. The last year (maybe more) I store my music in two folders: The first is with music ready to be imported to Amarok’s database, and the other is with tracks that have wrong ID3 tags and will mess my collection. The list is still huge, and since it always grows magically, I don’t think it will ever be done. The real subject of this post is to present some old and new tracks that I digged recently, but before going there, I want to say first that current system of handling tags is not very helpful, especially when it comes to compilations, mixtapes or DJ/Producer/Radio show presented tracks, where there are multiple artists. The "various artists" entry in Amarok is definitely a step forward, but still, it needs more. Plus some other issues that I don’t want to advance now. Hopefully after my exams I will have plenty of time to start working on those ideas.
Let’s get to the point. After a lot of digging I got some new magnificent albums, and also had the chance to discover some old diamonds that I already owned. First on the list is the new R.A. The Rugged Man album, named Legendary Classics Vol. 1. This album contains old songs (even from the Crustified Dibbs times’), and R.A.’s tracks in compilations (Soundbombing, Wu-Tang meets Indie Culture, etc) and other artists’ LPs (like Jedi Mind Tricks’ Uncommon Valor). So, basically it’s not a full new LP, but rather a compilation with 8 new tracks, and lots of other artists included, Kool G Rap, Hell Razah and Blaq Poet to name a few. This is pure classic, I recommended it without a doubt. Of course, a week ago I saw this crazy dirty fat guy live in Thessaloniki, more to follow in the relevant post. There have been two videos after the release:
Next is Plague Language: Farewell Archetypes Vol.2, a compilation of the Canadian label Plague Language. I knew some of the artists like Penny and Noah23, but this specific album was a diamond, a bomb in my head, something totally unexpected. It’s the first time I heard some of the artists featured in this compilation, like Ceschi and …Of Proletariots, and they were an amazing surprise to me. Who are you people, who flow like water? I am definitely going to check out more work of those. A perfect album from the beginning to the end.
One very recent album is In Search Of Stoney Jackson by Strong Arm Steady. The album includes verses of Planet Asia, Phonte (of Little Brother), Chace Infinite, Sick Jacken and Oh No to name a few, and is entirely produced by the genius who goes by the name Madlib. I am a big fan of Madlib and it is a common belief nowadays that he is one of the most talented producers out there. I don’t have anything else to add, just listen to this. Madlib created a classic album.
Speaking of Madlib, the other half of Madvillain, DOOM himself, left his million aliases to the past (MF Doom, Viktor Vaughn, King Geedorah) and shortened his name. Under this name he released two albums last year, a full LP called Born Like This and a compilation called Unexpected Guests (with some of his old tracks, plus tracks released in other artists’ albums). Yes, the album is another DOOM-style sound that we all loved from the man behind the mask. And remember ALL CAPS WHEN YOU SPELL THE MAN’S NAME. Also, the new Madvillain album is very close. There have been videos on youtube with J-Rocc and Madlib playing tracks of the new album. I just can’t wait. I hope it will be half as dope as the first one.
Time for some Canibus! This guy has released my favorite album, Rip The Jacker, in 2003, that made me change the way I listen to this music. He and Stoupe of Jedi Mind Tricks made a 10/10 album that is still my #1 choice if I want to prove to someone why I listen to Hip Hop. This guy released a new album named Melatonin Magik, full of epic instrumentals and his nasty voice on the top, bringing a war atmosphere in the space. He came back to battle rap, and even more back, to dissing Eminem again. This was not a clever move imho. He even tricked D12 (along with rapper DKZ) and created a song that disses Eminem, with his crew in the track. Well, I don’t care about beefs anywayz, so I don’t care much about his specific decision. I really enjoyed the album though, and what I enjoyed more is that at last, after so many years, after so many albums, Canibus chose some cool productions for this one. And accidentally I found out that there has been released a Rip The Jacker Instrumentals album that made me go crazy!!! I was expecting this one since I first heard the original one, about 6 and a half(!) years ago. This is a must for everyone.
Last but not least, my beloved Antipop Consortium reunited and I had no idea! Only recently I found out that they had released a new album called Fluorescent Black. It was in the usual strange antipop style. I really enjoyed it as I hadn’t listened to any new of those guys for years. I wonder how many of those hardcore hip hop listeners can appreciate the supremacy of this group.
Welcome to my blog. This is going to house my random everyday thoughts.
Some quick info about me:
I’m (still) a student in Computer Studies in an ugly Greek city, and a Linux enthusiast. In the past 2.5 years my major Linux contribution was my college’s Linux Team, where we have successfully organized and participated in millions of linux events (conferences, install fests, etc). Also, I am a Gentoo Developer, member of the KDE/Qt Teams, which sums up my two biggest unexplainable loves, Gentoo and KDE Recently I started organizing a Greek Gentoo Community, results will be printed here and in the official (now-under-construction) site.
Apart from Computers, my other activities pretty much include: music (almost exclusively Hip Hop), movies and going out with friends (geek or not).
You can have a look at the About page where I have already stated more personal info and the subjects that will be expanded here.
Of course I’m looking forward for your feedback. Hope you n_joy it here.
