News and Guides

So, briefly, M.J. died. I think he died from natural causes, no point in a big advertised investigation. Rarely I add a listing to MGC. I added MJ’s site today: http://www.mygreencorner.com/Michael-Jackson-161688.html

Great loss for humanity, great loss for fans, great loss for MJ’s family, for which my prays and blessings goes out today.

Plane crashed in Africa, they still digg for bodies, a little scary for those who travel by air around this time:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070201409.html?hpid=moreheadlines

A little bonus from my side: don’t fly with Alitalia. I though I will dies from heart stroke before they crash (thank God they didn’t, and I got to write this post).

But the scariest and closest to me, train exploded in Italy killing 17: http://www.kansascity.com/934/gallery/1298024.html

Almost took the train to visit a friend that day.

Well, this was a bad week, I hope not for everybody.

Cheers

With the occasion of having an internship at one of the greatest research facilities in Europe (IIT, Italy), I find myself in the temporary position of being an inhabitant of Genova (Genoa). In this post I will try to describe Genova city as seen through my eyes. From the beginning, I would like to add that I come from a mountain city (Brasov, Romania), so the change is pretty big for me. Genova can be found in the NV of Italy:

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It’s a big city, mainly a sea port. In the center, you can admire some of the local attractions:

- the Aquarium (mostly impressive because of the dolphins, seals, penguins and big sea turtles).

- the architecture of the buildings.

- the light tower.

- that’s it.

Not such a big deal, there aren’t too many sights to see as this is an industrial city. I live in the Medino Potente district, which is full with a lot of colors. People of all races and probably of many nations meet together as Supermakets like LIDL, Castorama or Pam. As much impressed as I am about the cultural mix, as disappointed I am on my conational Rroms inclusion into it. Not trying to generalize this, when passing by then, almost all of them have either begged for some euro, or said some nasty things which obviously I understand but just pretended I didn’t.

So returning to our subject, the industrial part of this city transformed it into a big polluted town. Here you can see huge container deposits, big ships and a lot of places under construction:

The summer smells are strong and not pleasant (with the flowers exception). The weather is sometimes very hot, with temperatures that easily reach 35 C. There are some river channels along the hills. Local fauna (ducks, gooses, some fish and a lot of small lizards) can be found in these areas. When jogging, I spotted a badger.

The only beach I could find is the one at Voltri. I make around 2h from the Institute to Voltri with local transport. Traffic is infernal, Voltri is very far away.

Overall, I wouldn’t live in this city. Too much pollution, heavy smells and traffic flow. But for 3 months, one can discover the Italian lifestyle as seen through Italian eyes.

As the measures previously take to limit spam on our theme viewer were defeated by people that do not understand they waste both our time and theirs, I have decided to put and end to this situation. Thus, we will moderate from now on each theme that is submitted to our theme viewer before it gets released. Also, the  GPL 3.0 migration is complete. All the themes from our themeviewer are GPL 3.0 compliant, authors that want to remove their themes due this reason can do that in their admin panel.

I would also say a big THANK YOU once again to authors that are releasing wonderful themes. Our community salutes you!

Hi MGC blog readers.

As I have already said in a previous post, I have started a Ph.D. thesis in mobile robots. After a few months of work, I can list here my main results, and I will give an update of my situation as well.

First, the articles:

Completed:

Duguleană, M.: An Approach to Solving Kinematics Models and Motion Planning for Manipulators with Mobile Base, RAAD 2009 Conference - Presented

Duguleană, L., Duguleană, M.: New Communication Technologies used for Online Sites’ Marketing - BULLETIN OF THE TRANSILVANIA UNIVERSITY OF BRASOV, VOL.1(50)-2008

Pending:

Duguleană, M.: Towards Development of Brain-computer-Based Human-Robot interaction, DAAAM 2009 Conference

Duguleană, M., Mogan, Gh.: Aspects Concerning a Mobile Robot Cognitive System - BULLETIN OF THE TRANSILVANIA UNIVERSITY OF BRASOV, VOL.1(50)-2008

Now I am having an internship at IIT Genova. Genova is a nice city, but the one thing I don’t like about this region is the extreme pollution and the lack of sandy beaches. My tutor, Mr. Ryad Chelalli has given me the face detection + tracking + robot implementation theme. I hope I can meet his standards.

Hello.

After a lot of talk with several webmasters and SEO people, I decided to change the license used by wp themes submitted to our theme viewer.  Anybody that wishes to remove their themes as consequence to this decision can do so using their account. Although I don’t wan’t to discuss this decision, I will point some of the things that made me subscribe to this:

1. Theme users change the credentials anyway. It’s like in Wild Texas. Almost nobody is having respect for theme designers. I saw the copyright law broken so often, that I would need countless hours to report these infractions.

2.  GPL is better in this specific case. GPL allows users to modify themes as they please. The ones that feel good letting the credentials will do so anyway. By the way, I would like to thank to that kind people for their integrity.

3. Our theme viewer is getting spammed with casino and poker CC2.5 themes. Hopefully this will stop the spam wave.

4. Wordpress community subscribes to this: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

5. Google subscribes to this: http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2007/04/12/on-sponsored-themes/

6. In long-term, this will ensure less sponsored themes and more quality (forced by our editorial standards).

I will send a newsletter to all designers in a day or 2. You have one week to comply with this situation. Any themes that will remain in our theme viewer after this date will be considered as GLP themes. Thank you for your understanding.

Cheers…