Happy new year! I wish you health, love and tranquility. Let the new 2009 be better than 2008 and bring you many positive memories.

It is sad to say it, but it looks like 2009 will be the last year with Macworld Expo. Apple announced today not only that, but also Steve Jobs will not be delivering the keynote.

No more “Well let’s see in January what will come out” or “I’m waiting for January to get my new laptop”.

I hope Jobs’ health is not the reason he is not the keynote speaker.

Apple Announces Its Last Year at Macworld

CUPERTINO, California—December 16, 2008—Apple® today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Press Contacts:
Steve Dowling
Apple
dowling@apple.com
(408) 974-1896

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/12/16macworld.html

Last year’s cabbage wasn’t bad at all and we ate it all. This year I decided to put some horseradish, corn and one red cabbage head for color. I can say that yesterday we had the first salad of this year’s batch and it was ready for eating. This Thursday we will cook something with it. The broth/brine also tastes nice (not like salt water). I hope it gets a little cooler soon, otherwise we will have to freeze it.

As you can see I have a new theme for my blog, gallery and home page. It took a while to do for Wordpress and Coppermine, but I think the final result is pretty good. If anyone is interested, let me know. It is valid XHTML 1.1 everywhere except for Coppermine, where it is XHTML 1.0 due to the many tables that I didn’t want to spend time to update.

Last Thursday of every November is Thanksgiving. We went to Silvia’s with a bunch of other Bulgarians. The turkey they had was very very good. Here is a video of the carving of the turkey: Ave Maria (music vodeo for the song) and the uncut original footage:

Ave Maria 480p (55.2MB)
Ave Maria 720p (138MB)
Turkey - Uncut 480p (118MB)
Turkey - Uncut 720p (296MB)

I spent the day as any other Friday. Work all day, gym after that, drive to Long Island…
I went to Mamas to see how are the rest of the Bulgarians doing. They all had costumes. Petko has some pics in his gallery. It was also his Birthday, thus the cake.
When Dary and I went home I took a few pics of her and we went to bed.

Officially, today is my first day at my new job. I started work in UBS A.G. - Investment Bank in the IT Equities department. We spent most of the day, today, listening to various presentations and speeches. I am saying officially, because I started last Monday as I had to go trough a pre-week financial and accounting training. I now live in Stamford, CT and my new place is not bad, it only lacks an AC, but not for long.
Because I work in a bank now, I will have to be careful what I write here and I have to put some disclaimers here and there that all you read here is my personal opinion and does not reflect that of my employer… the general stuff. However that will happen some other day because it is late now and I have to get up at 7am tomorrow.

There is one problem when frying tomatoes. Usually they are cooked in a pan and after the are done, everything around it is covered in tomatoes. And because the idea is for the water to evaporate it is not convenient to cover the pan. That’s why I decided to make myself an enhanced version of my pan which resulted in clean kitchen. All I needed was a piece of thick aluminum foil (the thicker the better so that the tomatoes don’t dissolve it) long enough to go around the pan. Just take the foil and build a high wall around the pan. It should look something like that::


It works wonders.

This is the recipe btw:
2 big cans of petite diced tomatoes (or shredded tomatoes, or tomato juice)
5-6 eggs
3 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp oil

Add the oil in the pan and before it gets too hot just add the tomatoes so that you don’t get an eruption of burning oil and water later. If the tomatoes are in big chunks use the hand blender, but keep some chunks of tomatoes for texture. Cook the tomatoes until all the water is gone and they are well cooked. After that just add the eggs, stir well to incorporate the eggs and cook them. That’s it. Remove from the heat and add the mashed garlic. If the tomatoes are too sour, just add a little bit of sugar (1/2 tsp). At first the garlic will be strong, but the high temperature of the tomatoes will reduce the strength.

Both Dary and I love to skate, but the skates we have in Bulgaria are quite old and beaten up, at least mine are, so we decided to get ourselves new ones. Hers are Rollerblade Spiritblade III - 2008 (left on the picture), mine are K2 Moto - 2007 (right on the picture). I gave mine quite a run the other day in the park. Also I did try them here on the street. Dary only tried hers here, but not as much as I did.

Nothing fancy, just a few prompts and use of Net::SMTP::SSL and Authen::SASL

1. #!/usr/bin/perl -w
2. # Send email from Gmail
3. # Will not work on windows, because of the echo
4. # for the password. Just uncomment the two
5. # system lines and should be fine.
6. # Will wait for EOF (Ctrl+D) for the msg body.
7. # by GT
8.  
9. use Net::SMTP::SSL;
10.  
11. my $smtp;
12. my $username = 'youremail@gmail.com';
13. my $password;
14. my @lines;
15. my $msg = "";
16. my $to;
17. my $subject;
18.  
19. $smtp = Net::SMTP::SSL->new('smtp.gmail.com', Port => 465, Debug=>1) || die "Cannot connect to server" ;
20.  
21. system('stty -echo');
22. print "Enter password:";
23. $password = <STDIN>;
24. chomp $password;
25. system('stty echo');
26.  
27. $smtp->auth($username, $password) || die "Authentication failed";
28.  
29. print "\nTo:";
30. $to = <STDIN>;
31. chomp $to;
32. print "Enter subject:";
33. $subject = <STDIN>;
34. chomp $subject;
35. print "Enter message:\n";
36. @lines = <>;
37. foreach $line (@lines){
38. $msg = $msg.$line;
39. }
40.  
41. $smtp->mail($username."\n");
42. $smtp->to($to."\n");
43. $smtp->data();
44. $smtp->datasend("From: ". $username."\n");
45. $smtp->datasend("To: ".$to."\n");
46. $smtp->datasend("Subject: ".$subject."\n");
47. $smtp->datasend("\n");
48. $smtp->datasend($msg."\n");
49. $smtp->dataend();
50. $smtp->quit;
51.  
52. Свалете този код/download this code: gmailsmtp.pl