2011.06.15: “The Psychology Student’s Survival Guide” by Robert S. FELDMAN and Sara Pollak LEVINE
McGraw-Hill College, 1999
ISBN 0-07-232521-6
Comments: My thoughts on the book are on the blog;
I’ve read it three times;

2011.06.15: “Monahismul ortodox ca viață profetică, apostolică și martifică” – mitropolit Ierotei VLAHOS
Editura Mitropolia Olteniei, 2005
ISBN 973-86551-7-X
Comments: Blunt ideas, didn’t like it;

2011.07.09: “Învață să învingi: cancerul de sân se poate vindeca” – Brândușa ARMANCA, Dana HARBUZ-MIRICIOIU
Editura Curtea Veche Publishing, 2006
ISBN (10) 973-669-276-0
ISBN (13) 978-973-669-276-5
It was so shameful for me to read it in the train, I didn’t look at the pictures, and the covers made it impossible to turn the book upside down without showing any naked pictures;
The stories were very motivating for me to put (even) more emphasis on health; and reading how do women think was a bit amusing; quite a poor book, overall;

2011.07.09: “Acasă se vorbește în șoaptă: dosar & jurnal din anii târzii ai dictaturii” – Stelian TĂNASE
Editura Compania, 2002
ISBN 973-8119-42-21
Pretty boring, but with some interesting thoughts by the author; interesting to spot what was life in communist time; I don’t recommend it;

2011.07.18 “N. Steinhardt și paradoxurile libertății: o perspectivă monografică” – George ARDELEANU
Editura Humanitas, 2009
ISBN 978-973-50-2382-9
I liked it a lot, lots of notes; I will blog post about it on fiieficient.com;

2011.07.31: “Peter Pan” – J. M. Barrie
Editura Prietenii Cărții, 1996
ISBN 973-573-092-8
Comments: My thoughts on the book are on the blog;
Very good book!

2011.08.07 “Jurnal”, vol. 1 & 5 – Gala GALACTION
Editura Albatros, 1996 & 2003
ISBN 973-24-0228-8 & 973-24-0887-1
Comments – I’ve read only partially volume 1 & 5; this is the second reading of the entire series; I started reading the journal and couldn’t understand what I liked about the books when I first read them, back in the winter of 1997-1998; I absolutely hated Gala GALACTION now, couldn’t read it, it overwhelmed me with hate; despicable books;
His passion goes into last, his own hate is overwhelming, he’s whining, he adheres to socialism, he can’t think straight;
Yet he speaks in fine words, which makes it even more troublesome (so, he has the intelligence and culture to speak with refined words, but not that to speak normal, with normal thoughts);
Perhaps he’s just an ordinary guy, although he doesn’t seem to act like one; in this case, he’s excused; but for my previous placing of him, someone close to a model, he’s a bitter disappointment;
I don’t want to read anything from him right now;

2011.08.19 “Creștetul ghețarului” – Constanța BUZEA
Editura Humanitas, 2009
ISBN: 978-973-50-2550-2
Comments: see my blog post;

2011.08.21 “The Western experience” – Mortimer CHAMBERS, Barbara HANAWALT, Theodore RABB, Isser WOLOCH, Raymond GREW
McGraw-Hill College; 8th edition, 1999
ISBN: 0-07-01306
Comments: nicely written, good pictures, good organization of the text, crammed with cool data; I couldn’t focus very well on the text, though (a bit sleepy), so I didn’t quite understand much; but it is a good lecture; good book;

2011.10.07 “Oliver TWIST” – Charles DICKENS
Editura Prietenii Cărții, 1996
ISBN: 973-573-097-9
Comments: I knew the basic plot of the book, so I could follow the reading, at least in the first part; a rather sad book, but also a book about the values of life; despite everything, there is still a lot of good in life; Oliver was a nice boy; I couldn’t follow the book on the second part;

2011.10.17 “Ivanhoe” – Walter SCOTT, volume I
Editura Prietenii Cărții, 1996
ISBN: 973-573-74-X
Comments: Sorry, I couldn’t follow the book; I don’t know what it is about; some basic style I did understand – old words in the book;

2011.10.17 “Tales of mistery and imagination” – Edgar-Alan POE
Editura Prietenii Cărții, 1995
ISBN: 973-573-010-3
Comments: Sorry, I couldn’t follow the book; I don’t know what it is about; some basic style I did understand – rather like a detective, in some part;

2011.10.17 “Jurnal: 2003-2009″ – Oana PELLEA, cu o prefață de Ioana PÂRVULESCU
Editura Humanitas, 2009
ISBN: 978-973-50-2436-9
Comments: see my blog post;

2011.10.21 “Ivanhoe” – Walter SCOTT, volume II
Editura Prietenii Cărții, 1996
ISBN: 973-573-75-8
Comments: Sorry, I couldn’t follow the book; I don’t know what it is about; some basic style I did understand – old words in the book;

2011.11.01 “Tom SAWYER” – Mark TWAIN
Editura Prietenii Cărții, 1995
ISBN: 973-573-050-2
Comments: I understood little from the book, but what I did understand, I liked;

Contents:

A. What blog posts I liked best?
B. What other blog posts I liked?
C. How did I discover the blog?
D. What do I like about the blog?
E. What could be imprvoed?
F. Final thoughts

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A. What blog posts I liked best?

Let’s get to business, shall we?

I fully recommend these five articles on the blog; as you see, there’s no differentiating title, the URLs contain numbers, so they don’t say much either:

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B. What other blog posts I liked?

Besides the blog posts above, I also liked quite a lot:

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C. How did I discover the blog?

I’ve probably read this article on Mihnea MĂRUȚĂ‘s blog when it was posted, in July 2009:
“Starletizarea politicii, agenda presei şi vânzarea conştiinţelor“.

I probably haven’t read the link to the person who writes the blog, and about which Mihnea MĂRUȚĂ wrote:

Romanian: “[...] blogul unui intelectual român care nu vrea să-şi dezvăluie identitatea (semnează “meden agan”) şi care, dacă am înţeles corect printre rânduri, trăieşte undeva în vestul Europei, probabil în Franţa. Nu-l interesează traficul şi nu permite comentarii. Şi sunt convins că această “modă veche” îi asigură liniştea.”
English (my translation): “[...] the blog of a Romanian intellectual who does not want to reveal his identity (and signs “meden agan”) and, if I correctly read between the lines, lives somewhere in Western Europe, probably in France. Not interested in blog traffic and he doesn’t allow comments. And I am convinced that this “old fashion” ensures him a peace of mind.”

Time passed, and Mihnea quotes “meden agan” (in ancient Greece, the temple of Apollo at Delphi bore the inscription Meden Agan (μηδεν ἀγαν) – ‘Nothing in excess‘ – via Wikipedia):

Romanian: “[...] mizantropul domn care ţine blogul soirs.wordpress.com [...]“;
English (my translation): “[...] the misanthrope gentelman who runs the blog blog soirs.wordpress.com [...]“;

I’ve started reading “meden agan”‘s blog and wrote a ultra-positive comment about “meden agan” on Mihnea’s blog, to which Mihnea replied:

Romanian: “[...] Citeşte-l şi, dacă poţi, rămâi detaşat. Viaţa e mult mai luminoasă, totuşi, decât o vede el.”;
English (my translation): “[...] Read it and if you can, don’t get too attached to it. Life is, still, much brighter than he sees it.”.

I’ve read about every article on his blog. I should mention that I didn’t look at his YouTube clips, nor have I read most of the articles he links to (perhaps I’ll do this later, but I’ve found that, although a bit strange, I can live with just reading a chronicle, not the work itself).
When I’ve read the blog, I’ve noted “Ah, I like this blog post, let’s put it down”. Due to the fact that his language is sometimes harsh, I’ve reread, at the end, all of the blog posts linked above, to make sure there are no such blog posts included.

OK, now you know how I’ve discovered the blog.
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D. What do I like about the blog?

I have two favorite books – I strongly recommend “Essentials of Understanding Psychology” by Robert S. Feldman (in English). In Romanian, you can see “Happiness Diary” by Nicolae STEINHARDT.

I like Le Notti di Cabiria (another comment on the movie of mine).

I like some people (read about some of them here).

Where does “meden agan” fit in this? Well, his writing is better than anything I’ve seen. I like it a lot. On the other hand, he’s not a personal model to me. I just like his deep thoughts a lot. To me, his writing is better than that of my two favorite books. His style is better, I get better ideas from him. But since he’s not a model to me, I’ll just mark him as “Best blog read”. Let’s just say that he’s very smart, I perceive it as funny, and I like a lot of his ideas.

He makes me laugh so much, I found myself reading a very serious blog post and bursting into unstoppable laughter. And how does he make me laugh? Two solutions – he makes me get an insight (“oh, now I see it”) and he has a way of saying things that usually are left unsaid (“wow, did you really say that?”). Voluntarily or not, his humour is great.

I like his courage of saying tough things – very unusual.

He sometime mentiones people who are important in world’s culture. I enjoy it very much to see the way in which he can approach them – yes, with respect, but also with an ability to still say the things that cross his mind. Quite brave in this aspect, also.

Also nice to note is his style: very good grammar, hardly any typo, a classical perspective on things.

I like to read blogs. I read friends’ blogs, strangers’ blogs, it doesn’t matter. I’ve made a small calculation – out of the 586 articles (currently) on his blog, I like about 90, and I consider other four to be exceptional, life changing. That’s a ratio of a bit more than 15%. So, I like about 15% of the blog posts on his blog. That’s a huge ratio, liking 3 articles for every 20 blog posts on his blog. And the exceptional blog posts are, to me, just that – exceptional. I have yet to read a blog giving me so many insights.

From time to time, I read a blog post and think “wait, but …, but …, that’s me!”. (OK, don’t think that I’m as good in writing as he is, but merely that he can describe and put in words feeling that I already have)

Sometimes, he seems old fashioned – he likes old architecture, mostly classical movies, he prefers literature over other arts, he can appreciate a good (alcoholic) drink, he seems untouchable, he prefers loneliness, he looks back with a melancholic look on the past. My reaction to this?

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E. What could be imprvoed?

You may note that his blog theme is dark, and his style is somewhat dark as well (negative perspective on things, lack of happiness/contentment, negative outcomes expected, very critical with current situation). Also, he doesn’t allow for comment on his blog (yet blog comments are fine), and there’s not link to get from an article to the homepage, you have to manually set the URL for this. Yet these are, all, minor things. I can easily overpass this.

His blog is rather simplistic, only with an archive of messages, the blog posts have no titles (other than “~”), he offers no “About” page, no categories box, no search functions. On the other hand, you might notice that his blog posts are very meticulosly categorized, each have their own labels, and, with a little knowledge, you can do a search on his blog.

Sometimes he does use a rather tough language (not impolite, but still brutall), so this is one thing which I would appreciate less.
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F. Final thoughts

This is, by far, the best blog that I’ve read. Great insights, funny (by my standards),

One final comment: “meden agan” had a survey on his blog. As this seems to happen rarely, I’ve answered it (he asked if he should allow comments on his blog), and commented that I would love to be able to write only positive comments about him, he’s so great (I was enthusiastic that I was able to say something about him) etc. Prior to my answer, two other people have answered that it’s best not to allow comments on the blog, and gave more “meden agan”-style explanations for their choice. Soon after I posted my comment, the poll was deleted from the site. Perhaps I should know my audience better.

What would my answer be? I told you before that I will not leave my country due to the views of Horia-Roman PATAPIEVICI on the subject. Not physically, at least. But, on the other hand:
1. Two of the most important blogs I own are in English, and are targeting mostly an English audience (you wouldn’t say that by looking at my traffic analysis, but still);
2. You can see on my Last FM profile that a lot of the singers I like are not Romanians;
3. Most of the movies I watch are not from Romania (I actually have a small phobia on watching Romanian movies due to the small budget, thus lack of quality);
4. My Google Reader application is filled with English feeds (I actually started adding some French sources too);
5. A lot of the things at supermarkets I buy are not from Romania;
6. Most of the electronics I have are out of this country;
7. As an Internet-geek, I use a lot of web sites outside Romania;

Still, I can say that:
1. All my relatives are Romanian;
2. My friends are Romanian;
3. Most of my workplaces I worked were filled with Romanians;
4. The persons I meet daily are (surprise, surprise!) Romanians;
5. I read mostly Romanian news;
6. The things I buy at the local marketplace are from Romanian persons (I wouldn’t call them peasants, but it’s not far from that);
7. Most of the time I speak, think and read in Romanian.

So, I would say that most people I’m surrounded with are from Romania, while a lot of the things I do, read and use are not Romanian-specific. It is a surprising fact to see things like this. I didn’t expect foreign customs, items and creations to be so important in my life. Writing this article was quite a discovery for me.

Here’s the official announcment of this job title (I just formatted the text):

“We at Lionbridge www.lionbridge.com are continuing to work to improve the quality and recognition of languages by expanding our collection of data (emails, reports (articles, thesis, and college reports), letters and blogs) to help develop language tools e.g. spell checker and increase the word count for your language. To do this, we are collecting data from many people world-wide.

To check if you qualify please answer the following questions:

• Do you write and save your sent emails in your native language?
• Do you write or maintain a personal blog?
• Are you in college in college and write / save your draft reports?
• Are you a journalist and save your draft articles?
• Are you interested in earning additional money on work already completed?

If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, then congratulations! You have passed the first step of qualification. Please contact datacol.bal@lionbridge.com  and we will help you to find out more details and provide you with out FAQ. All replies must be returned in English please.”

So, if you qualify, you know what to do. Let me give you a few hints on Lionbridge:
1. From my experience, they are a serious employer, they will pay you for you results, no question asked; they are assertive, and will provide you with technical help;
2. I don’t think they’d compromise their image, so your data is pretty much secure;
3. You should choose carefully if you wish to enter the program for email data; the emails must have been written by you, they can’t be text that are found easily on the Internet;
4. You should especially adhere to this program if you have a large quantity of emails written personally by you; the payment is proportional with the amount of emails you have;
5. (if you’re a Romanian reading this) Romanian-language specific characters (ăîâşţ) are not a must, but they are preferred.

Having read all these, I wish you best of luck if you decide to apply for this program.

Let’s say you wish to use the WordPress function for blogging via email posts. This work great for HTML emails in Yahoo Mail. It works great for Google’s Gmail in plain-text format. How about Gmail in HTML emails? Things get trickier. That’s why I present you my very first PHP small add-on.What ca you read in this blog post?
1. What does my software do?
2. What does my software doesn’t do?
3. How can you personalize the blog to work only for your email address?
4. What should you note?
5. Ok, ok, where’s the software? Download link?
6. How do you know it works?
Ok, now you know it. Let’s get going.

1. What does my software do?
My PHP add-on does one single trick: helps you put HTML emails. It works great with Gmail (tested it a lot on some of my blogs, see the end of this blog post), and it works not-so-bad with Yahoo! Mail (only done a few tests, though).
It also try to fix a bug of WordPress for breaking posts that contain Unicode characters.

2. What does my software doesn’t do?
Unicode characters are a big pain for WordPress. There are some characters which are poorly converted. This problem is also common for sending emails. What’s the solution? I’ll present my case story: whenever I send an email that has Unicode characters, I first try to convert those Unicode characters into ASCII. This can be solved quite easily in Notepad (under Windows Operating System). Just create a blank document in Notepad, put the Unicode text in there. Save it. Notepad usually warns you that if you want don’t save as Unicode, you’ll lose some formatting. Hit Ok, then reopen the document. Most Unicode texts are gone. There are still some problems (quotes, for example, are not converted) and for those … I’ve created a different software. See the blog post in here.

3. How can you personalize the blog to work only for your email address?
You can replace this line:
if (( is_email($author) ) && ($author == ‘PUTYOUREMAILADDRESSINHERE@SOMEMAIL.COM’)) {

with this line:
if ( is_email($author) ) {

Also, replace these two lines:
// Author not found in DB, set status to pending.  Author already set to admin.
$post_status = ‘publish’;
with these two lines:
// Author not found in DB, set status to pending.  Author already set to admin.
$post_status = ‘pending’;

Finally, replace these three lines:
if (!$userdata) {
$post_author = 1;
$author_found = false;
with these three lines:
if (!$userdata) {
$post_author = 1;
$author_found = true;

4. What should you note?
I am not responsible for errors you might encounter with your software. You can leave a comment below and explain your errors, and I’ll see what I can do, you can post your errors on WordPress’s support page or search its archives. Please note that this is my very first software in PHP and I’ve learned the commands mostly by trial and error.

5. Ok, ok, where’s the software? Download link?
You can download my software in here:
wp-mail.php made by Olivian BREDA. Use at your own risk

Use it at your own risk.

6. How do you know it works?
Well, I’ve tested it for a few months now. These are the blogs where I’ve tested my software:

• Fii eficient! – Blog despre eficienta
• Conferinte. Blogul WordPress
• Grupul Fotografilor Interesati de Concursuri (gfic)
• Ortodoxie – blog despre evenimente ortodoxe

Update: this blog post doesn’t apply to WordPress versions newer than 2.7.