Stefan Nicolae

Few hours after launching Roweb’s new website, I am both happy and proud to be a small piece of the Roweb’s re-branding team. When I first saw Roweb’s website six years ago, I immediately wanted to work for them, as I thought this was the best web development agency in the area. And I still think I was right. Even if my contribution to the whole re-branding process is rather small, I can’t stop being happy for the result (plus I was the one who pushed the Upload button ).

Roweb’s main website
Roweb’s Romanian website

My friend Alex needed a little image fading effect for his blog. As an example, he gave me a nice Earth Hour gallery (i think it was the boston.com Earth Hour 2010 article). The idea is to overlap 2 images and provide a fading effect when the visitor clicks them. I’m sure there are hundreds of scripts that do the exact same thing, but I proffered to write the 10 lines of jQuery code myself.

Here’s an example of the effect: http://shakabut.com/examples/jqueryFader/.

This is the little piece of code:

Also, please check Alex’s post to see a great photo project: http://3punctefoto.blogspot.com/2010/06/pitestiul-urbanizat.html. The post is in Romanian, but the pictures are not – don’t forget to click the images!

PS: If you like nice interface elements, check our web agency website and contact us.

5 minutes after watching all the little videos and features lists on apple.com I have a deja-vu. The phone(+OS) has all (and nothing but) the characteristics the online media was buzzing about lately…

First of all, I don’t understand why Apple names all their stuff iSomething?!? Why on earth do they need to name the new operating system iOS??? What does the “i” stand for?

Anyway, the new phone looks nice (I like it’s slim rectangular shiny looks), all the new features are great and after 2 years of 3G I actually have a list of favorites:
- iBooks – I know, it won’t be available in Romania soon, I know, reading a book would be nicer on the iPad, but hey, I like the idea
- Video calls – my old Nokia has this feature since 2006, I haven’t used it too much but hey, I like the idea
- Improved camera – I do have a SLR camera, but I would probably use the phone’s camera for holiday shots. I don’t actually need an HD camera on my phone, but hey, I like the idea
- Improved battery – my old 3G needs daily recharging already, so yeah, I like the idea…

Now, that we’ve established “I like the idea”, here comes the big question: will I buy one?

The Easter Bunny (aka my wife) brought me a new Canon EOS 550D last month, but since the weather was moody, I wasn’t able to play with it that much.

Last week, Alex convinced me to go and take some pictures of the Arpechim oil refinery and yesterday we decided to wait no more. After one hour of off road driving while searching for a better angle, we finally found a deserted road just behind the oil refinery which proved to be a decent spot for photos.

Alex wanted to shoot a few frames (I’m soooo curious) and I decided to make a time-lapse of the refinery. This is my first one so I messed up the last frames by letting the white balance on auto, but we had a good time and I learned a few things.

Here’s the nice time-lapse:

I also took a few pictures:

… you smoke all his cigarettes.

This morning, mr. Sandulici, wanted to take a short smoking break. The rest of the office inhabitants decided they needed a cigarette break too (they are all non-smokers, by the way).

Mr. Sandulici stated: “If I see you all smoking, I will quit!”. Well… they did.

The problem was none of them knew how to hold the cigarette, so the show was fun enough to quit smoking for.

Sandulici, I hope you appreciate what they did for you, man!

I was thinking to write a script that prevents IE6- users to see the sites I’m developing a long time ago, but I never seemed to have the time.

Fortunately a nice guy (I think his name is Mihai Ile) did, so he wrote this little script “that displays a warning message politely informing the user to upgrade the browser to a newer version (links to newest IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome are provided)”.

Thank you Mihai! Thank you in the name of all frustrated web developers, who spend their precious time downgrading their code to support IE6 or explaining their customers and visitors why it’s not a good idea to use a browser that was produced 9 years ago.

Also, thanks Mirel for the link!

Update: Smashing Magazine published a nice  comic-book-like story about IE6. You might wanna check that too…

After all the (online and offline) pressure we put on Velea, he finaly brought back our precious whiteboard!

Manny thanks to all the nice programmers, students, bank employees, little boys and girls who know how you feel when somebody takes your lolly-pop, grannies, kitties, doggies and aliens – in one word all the nice people – who supported us to get it back!

13th of August 2009.  This is the day I lost something precious, something I miss a lot. My whiteboard. Our whiteboard. Together with it’s markers and sponge.

A human being (if we can call this… this… this… heartless programmer, a human being) managed to trick me to lend it to him.It’s been abandoned on his terrace ever since. Every morning, when I come to work, I see a blank spot on the wall. Two nail holes are the cruel testimonial of the missing piece of my soul. Each and every morning I have to endure my 5 colleagues hoping-faces and the question you can read in their eyes: “Did he bring IT back?“. I can’t live like this!

Everybody knows I have a terrible memory. That’s very bad if you’re earning your living working as a web programmer. I need the whiteboard. I can’t create hundreds of interconnected database tables without drawing a few schemes on the WHITEBOARD. I can’t design nice UIs without sketching my ideas on the WHITEBOARD. I can’t code functions of hundreds and thousands of lines without the WHITEBOARD.

I’m crying in despair. I want it back! I need it back! All 6 of us do.

Velea, if you read this, I’m begging you, BRING THE WHITEBOARD BACK!

Update: I started writing on windows…

Using the window as a whiteboard

Update 2:The windows are NOT OK coz’ the cleaning lady thought they were dirty and had to clean them… I hope she won’t clean the back of my laptop too…

Using the back of my laptop as a whiteboard (actually a greyboard)

... this technique leaves marks on the laptop's case