Corporation killed the radio star 15 Apr 2009 
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Last.fm was a service which garnered a lot of respect from a lot of people, including me. It all ended with two words: geo location. Except for the US, UK and DE, the rest of the world will no longer have access to their radio feature unless they pay an (some say small) EUR3.00 monthly fee. You can read the official announcement here. And the response from the forums. Charging a fee for services is not something to be annoyed about, I mean not all things in the world should be free. My problem with this whole thing is the way it splits the community in two classes: UK/US/DE (3G) users and "rest of world" users. Last.fm explained that the 3G users are subjected to advertising, which basically subsidizes the monthly fee. So... somehow "rest of world" users are immune to advertising? Anyway they will try to spin this, it's hard not to reach the conclusion that it's basically a penalty for not being a 3G citizen. It's probably not last.fm's choice, considering that they are now owned by CBS, this has that special record label Eau de Greed perfume all over it. Yes, there are costs involved in streaming music all over the world, but this "subscription fees for some, advertising for the others" situation is against what I thought last.fm stood for: a community for people who love music, where they discover new music, share their taste, and promoting music beyond mainstream radio hits. What it wasn't about was selling music, although artist pages had links to the iTunes store and/or Amazon MP3 store. And let's not forget that most of the information on the website (artist descriptions, tags, event announcements, reviews etc) is the work of this community, which basically made Last.fm the musical barometer that it is today (cue We Built This City by Starship). Piss off a good part of your community into leaving and you'll end up with a big supermarket where you can either buy something or make yourself scarce. If I want 30 second track samples, I'll just go to iTunes or Amazon MP3 store. At least they are upfront about their scope. |
Need for feed 9 Mar 2009
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Introducing the amazing andreiiancu.net central feed. What that might be, you ask? Well dear readers, it's the future of the andreiiancu.net RSS feed. Basically it's a central point for all kinds of updates from my Internet universe: spliced together the usual RSS updates from this website, you will find updates from my Flickr, Picasa and YouTube accounts. Also, the main site updates will contain the header picture, not only text. Isn't that nice? It's all powered by Tumblr, which makes life easier for me as I no longer have to hand edit an xml file to add updates. So, what does that mean for you? Well, if you are already subscribed to the old RSS feed, you can go ahead and delete that. Then subscribe to the new one. If you are not subscribed to the old one, skip the deleting the old one part and subscribe to the new one. The central feed page can be viewed sans an RSS reader in all its splendor at central.andreiiancu.net in classic HTML styling. And if you are a Tumblr user yourself, you can also follow me. Should you head on over now, you will see that there are already some feed-only goodies, such as two themes of a new project I'm playing with, and some photos from Flickr and Picasa. Another thing you will notice is: a new color! The main site has been available in three wonderful tints: environmentally friendly green, sweet calming orange and cyan in the face. And now central feed will add a new color to this collection: pink my feed. |
Stop in the name of motion 10 Feb 2009 
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Hey kids! Two questions for you today: 1. Do you like stop motion animation? 2. Do you like Russian dolls? (I said dolls, dolls! not brides!). If your answer is yes in both cases (those who said yes to the brides part count too, you little scamps), this is gonna be a real treat: head on over to Fun & Games right now and find not one, but two stop motion animations featuring Russian dolls. If you said no to the first question, I guess I should be thankful you know how to read. Now go back to your anime manga whatever, your brain ain't squeaky clean just yet. If you said no to the second question, you must be looking for this maybe? Let me know how that worked out for you. If you said no to both questions, you sad sad dude... you need some Robot Chicken in your life. Like, now! And now, introducing the first ever stop motion animations to be featured on this website: Matrioshka (fun for the whole family) and Matrioshka Mindgames (this is more like a psychological thriller with surprise ending). Oh, and kids, stay in school! |
March of the French 30 Jan 2009 
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Yesterday there was this great commotion in the city, which turned out to be the mother of all strikes (and I've had my share of French strikes, so I should know). Workers from all fields were out on the streets protesting. The whole thing started somewhere near my building, as it is close to the train station and that's where they assembled. I decided it was a good opportunity to watch the French pull an all out, full blown strike. And they were certainly pissed. I won't get into the political details, thank you, let's just say that the economic crisis is taking it's toll on France's working class. It's a story as old as the world, the rich get richer (aka bailouts* baby!), while the poor get poorer (aka poorer). Things went pretty standard until they all poured into the park in front of the city hall. When I got there some kind of live outdoor concert seemed to unfold. Young people with beers in their hand, stands selling some kind of fried meat (and producing lots of "warzone drama" type of smoke) and... loud (playback) music. But then some people started to talk on the stage effectively killing the whole "tea in the park" vibe. The people seemed to like the new vibe, vocally underlining the speaker's sentences as they were shouted across the crowd. Then 12:00am happened. For the French this time of day has a special nutritional meaning. So people once again started pouring out of the park, in a feeding frenzy. The ones that were still there produced sandwiches and other portable means of sustenance. That was interesting, strike with a lunch break. The nearby eateries certainly had a very good business day, I wonder how many of those were striking. 1:00pm, the crowd is back in full. Words are shouted on the PA system. Energetic cheering (must have been the food). Now I'm pretty confident that I know how a proper strike should be carried out. Lesson one: A lunch break does wonders crowd-wise. I wouldn't be surprised to find that there is a company specialized in organizing strikes in France (what if the strike company itself strikes, you ask? well... then the backup strike company will come into effect. Ha!). An hour later I decided to flee the scene, there was no one speaking, the PA system was just blaring music and the crowd started to thin out. Later in the day some utterly inefficient machines started clearing the streets of flyers and other strike related paraphernalia. Not that it was so dirty that the machines were unable to cope, but that the machines were really that clumsy that they needed five passes over an area in order to pick up all three flyers (oh the petrol!). The guys driving them should really strike over the futility of their tools. It was like watching an elephant trying to solve a Rubik's cube (and dropping it a lot). Actually there were four of them, so it's more like a herd of elephants taking turns trying to solve one (and dropping it a lot). Then people with leaf blowers came out of nowhere in the aid of the "elephants", to no avail. The stuff being blown in the middle of the streets so that the wheeled machines could suck them up would just get shuffled around. And then... people with brooms appeared and finished the damn job. Somewhat. The three flyers were still there, blowing in the wind. Maybe they had cleaning immunity or something. I guess people really got back to their economic crisis (or whatever) after all. You can see some pictures I took right here. *If you don't know what a bailout is, go ask your bank or your local american car manufacturer (based in Detroit, of course). |
On sale 22 Jan 2009 
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It's 2009! Yaay! Now get back to your economic crisis or whatever. No time to celebrate. Hard times are knocking at the door. Some already broke in and entered the house. Took the TV and the stereo, left the back window open, bitches. It's just a matter of time until the rest of the crises realize that the fridge and washing machine are there for the taking. On this depressing economic situation, it's sales time (here in France at least). Forget layoffs, cutbacks and other fashionable keywords of the day. Everything is 70% off biatch, so grab your credit card and shop 'til you drop. People can't even strike because the streets are full of bargain hunters. Shit just flies off the racks. Heck it doesn't even matter if it looks good, at 3EUR a t-shirt, bag that sucker. I really can't complain about this, I have indulged myself in the shopalicious soup that is out there. I contained myself and had only a few spoonfuls. The sales seem deeper than in the previous years, so it must be the crisis at work here. Now this is a silver lining for you gloomy faces. At least we have a nice selection of threads while the water runs out (that's gonna be real fun), the oil too (this is already somewhat fun), the vegetables are slowly killing us apparently (thank you very much Monsanto), the polar ice caps melt uh... completely (you should visit Holland before this event, by the way), the Russians blow the world up, the extremist Islamists blow the world up, the Americans blow the world up (hey, cutbacks mean less quality control), the Chinese do something involving lots of them. You know, which ever comes first. And people were worried about the Large Hadron Collider. OK, the LHC too (so that Europe has something on that list damn it). Maybe not just the clothes are 70% off, maybe everything is on sale these days. Damn, here I go again, all doom and gloom. It's 2009 people! Let's party like it's... 10 years ago! |
Retrospectives & Resolutions 27 Dec 2008 
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It's that time of the year. The time in which the year comes to an end. The time when people get all retrospective on that year, as well as pimpin' out some resolutions for the one following. I'm not really a fan of retrospectives, and I really hated when TV shows had those clip show episodes, with 'memories' and all that stuff that I had already seen. But sometimes retrospective means perspective. And having perspective over such a long time span can offer some interesting insight. But I'm going to spare you the clip show episode of andreiiancu.net. All I'm going to say about the year 2008 is that it's been an interesting year for me. I've been traveling to lots of places, and living the most of it outside my home country. I guess I'm officially an expat. An international citizen of Europe. Do I miss my country? I know I miss my family and friends. Other than that there's not much to miss really. Talk about perspective. Maybe the relative low pricing of stuff (but that is going to change rather sooner than later). The directionless mess of the political scene only makes me angry (and I'm not even into politics, just some basic facts please). The dull mediocrity of the art scene. The suffocated music scene (by all kinds of self entitled lip synching "superstars", focus grouped one hit wonders, market tested auto-tuned deaf tone silicone boobed teenage singers, and the utterly dreadful and unfortunately a staple of my country, "manele"). The infuriating sheep-like general attire of the population vs. the public servants' way of handling even the simplest of tasks with constant bored facial expression while being superiorly patronizing and condescending. I'll stop here, this is becoming a rant with ever longer sentences. Of course there are exceptions to all this, but those are so so few, they are really getting smothered into oblivion... These are things that I miss the way I miss having a pain in the back of my head. Sure it makes you feel alive and all that, but if it keeps going on and on, it probably means you have a tumor. Have that checked. OK. Deep breath. Enough of that. On to the resolutions. I've never been good at making resolutions. Or keeping them. So this will be short: I don't have any particular one. I usually make this stuff up along the way. There are the basics such as making a (better) living, being happy(er) etc. But that's not really so special as to resolute(?) it on a yearly basis. Sorry if you found this to be quite anticlimatic, especially after the fireworks in the retrospective, but that's how I roll baby. Try to make the most of the rest of 2008, it's going to end in, like, 4 days. See you next year! PS: If you really need a retrospective fix, head on over to Europe Tour. It's the better part of 2008 for me. |
On weather and updates 4 Dec 2008 
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As promised dear reader(s?), more updates accompanied by new headers. It might come a bit late, as it seems that I always make an update every two weeks or so. It must be because I'm in France right now, and let me tell you, these guys strike and strike like there's no tomorrow. I think they have their own Striking Professional League. So there might be some influence right there for my rather lacunar update cycle. But hey, an update is an update and this is one update. (Whoa... quite the 'update' rate back there). Anyway, on with the... erm... update. I've been going through my DV tape collection these last weeks and collected some choice materials that will make an appearance on the website. It's been a nice trip down memory lane, as it so happens that I used to have the nasty habit of shooting a video and then just archiving the tape somewhere on a shelf and forgetting about it. The fact that it was such a nasty weather around here (raining mostly and one pathetic little snowing) nicely facilitated the process of going through the digitally archived past. This being said, there's a new video in the Fun & Games section called simply Geneva. It was a tape made on a trip to said city during summer, which contrasted nicely with the drizzle outside while I was editing it into website material. Also, you will notice that the video is no longer hosted on YouTube. That's because I am sort of displeased with their 'everything looks censored' compression. So this video is brought to you in a splendid H.264 Quicktime encoding, set to the quality setting called 'galore'. But enough about me already, how are you doing? |
Sign of the times 14 Nov 2008 
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Times are changing dear readers, that's an undeniable fact. While I added quite a few novelties to my site since its (re)inception, the headers remained the same, despite the fact that my initial plan was to change them ever so often, especially when new stuff was added. And yet, the headers remained unchanged for almost half an year. "It's all new, baby!" can only go so far. After a few months it got downright offensive. Well time has come to fix this offense. Today all new headers are unveiled. So jump around the website (it's got like only 4 sections anyway) and gaze upon its new clothes. I guess I can gather up the courage now to name the Here & Now section my official... ahem... blog. Which means that there will be more of those... you know... posts. Which finally means that the header will get updated even more often. However, that will not be the case for the section headers. Those will be delegated to my procrastinating side and will see some less regular updates. Also, while I have you here, I just got to mention my new RSS feed. Which is just like the old one, except that it's now pimped through Feedburner and you can see a little RSS logo next to the color selectors. Click that and Feedburner will take good care of you in order to subscribe to it. Oh, and if you are wondering what will happen to the old headers, I guess now is the time to tell you that I'm also working on an archive section, which will host the old headers in their former glory. Now click that RSS feed icon and subscribe. That'll be all. |
Crash + burn 12 Nov 2008 |
It's confession time dear readers. Ever since I was a little kid I got a strange pleasure from watching all kinds of mundane stuff go wrong. I'm not talking airplane crashes or the human life loss kind of stuff. I'm not that kind of freak. I'm talking about small stuff. Like the VCR sometimes jamming tapes and outputting weird video distortions. And when the VCR was having a good day and wasn't mangling perfectly good tape, I was lending it a hand and ever so subtly crumple some tape for an almost instant gratification of video distortion. And then many years passed. I was crumpling audio tapes, video tapes, reel-to-reel tapes. Anything that could be crumpled really. Which excludes vinyl records. I mostly left those untouched. The holy grail was the CD. The CD with it's wonderful fingerprintability and all the same it's amazing cleanability. I could trash it until the CD player would take it no longer and then with an alcohol wipe the thing was brand new again. Although, really, digital read errors were no match for their beautiful and unpredictable analog counterparts. And then I grew up and started to appreciate when things actually work. But sometimes, on rainy days, like pain in a once broken bone, I got that crumpling feeling. And here I am today, in a world obsessed with perfection, almost infected with this virus of having everything look brand new. I still have my little escapes, such as liking my shoes better when they are worn (I can't understand shoe collectors, keeping them pristine for... ever really. I want to wear the things, not stare at them as they were in the shop window all day.) Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Where was I? Ah yes, perfection. You look at movie posters and magazine covers and you might get the idea that George Clooney or Madonna have the most perfect porcelain skin in the world. And they are, like, in their 50s. Babies don't have skin that perfect. Those are Photoshop commercials really. But now I'm delving into a whole other subject all together and that's for another time. Speaking of Photoshop, the wonderful thing about it is that besides having the magic ability of removing old skin and replacing it with the pristine baby bottom quality stuff, it can also do the complete opposite. And this finally brings me to what I wanted to say all along: I've been playing with digital images (taken with a fine Canon DSLR) to make them look as if they were not only taken on film, but also the film was left in a basement for a few years. A humid, warm basement. With creepy crawlers in it. Which sometimes would chew at the film. Besides the garden variety of scratches and discoloration I also enjoy light leaks in the camera, so you'll be seeing some of those as well in the vintage emulation that I have for you. Isn't modern technology grand? Here they are in all their wonderfully aged splendor: the digital analogs. |
Tourist 14 Oct 2008 |
Hello there. It's been a long time since the last update, and unfortunately for me, I can't say that I have been especially busy. Unless you count wasting time an effective use of your time. I'm sure you don't and that's a good thing. So, dear visitor, in order to reward you for your continued interest in this nook of the web that I can call mine, I shall reveal to you something that took quite some time to produce. Not to say that I don't invest time and effort in everything I do (I even invest time+effort in time wasting thankyouverymuch). In this particular case, there was a requirement of a geographic nature as well as temporal one: images from my journey through some of the cities of Europe. Depending on your definition of 'some' this can mean a few or a lot. It's up to you. Hopefully I will be able to add to the list of cities in the future. Until the next update, which should come sooner rather than later, I bid you enjoyment. |
What is Project Stargaze? 15 Aug 2008 |
A new multimedia project developed under total secrecy (aren't them all?). Enjoy trying to make something out of it. As with most of the video and/or multimedia works on my website, having the Quicktime software installed on your computer should make all the difference, as in some of this stuff won't work at all without it, really. Now that the technical briefing is complete, this way to find out what this whole Stargaze thing is about.
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The lure of film 5 Aug 2008 |
I've been dusting off my film cameras today, a Nikon F301 and a Canon EOS 50E. Yeah, I know, nothing to be excited about. However. The Nikon still has some film in it (Kodak Ultra 400) about halfway shot. So I couldn't help myself from taking the Nikon for a spin. The annoying reflex of looking at the back of the camera after taking a shot was simply baffling still after 3 or 4 shots. This is where digital photography led me. I am taking photographs with a film camera and after each shot I instinctively look at the back to check the picture. Well surprise surprise! All I could see on the Nikon was the film window and the film wind indicator. Every single time I took a picture, I looked at the back of the camera. I remember the anxiousness of shooting film, imagining how the final shot will look on paper, blown up. The sound of the shutter, such a final sound, like a guillotine, forever sealing the fate of that shot. There is no undo, no delete function. The sound of the film being advanced through the camera so that a new frame will follow at the guillotine of vision. I always found so utterly funny and pretentious at the same time that the cameraphones use this "real film camera shutter" sound, especially in a context where there are many people that never even heard a film camera, let alone use one. The sound is now just a simple marker, an afterthought that a picture has been taken. And yet, it was so much more when films camera ruled the world, like a once famous superstar that now sits at a street corner bearing a "will sing for money" sign. As I was saying, I couldn't help myself from taking the Nikon for a spin. Physically. Couldn't help pressing the shutter button for that instant fix of shutter sound and the knowledge that the moment has been permanently seized. This has released a long dormant *need* of shooting film, of not having the instant gratification that digital photography so promiscuously offers. That feeling of longing to know how the print will look. It somewhat saddens me that entire generations of photographers will never experience this. |
All these people I'm not 15 Jul 2008 |
My name is very popular with Google. Under normal circumstances that would make me a very happy Andrei Iancu. If only all those links were about me... But they are not. And the saddest thing is that I'm not even first in the search results. Let's see who exactly does Google think I am: - first up: I'm an intellectual property/patent lawyer in the US - second up: me! it's really me! - third up: some manager at a software company in Canada - fourth up: an author of some sorts in Germany - fifth up: the first up guy again - sixth up: someone with a Facebook profile with my name with pictures that don't resemble me a bit - seventh up: the first and fifth up again (God this guy is all over the net!) - eighth up: my profile on Dreamstime (really me, the author of this site) - ninth up: some guy on a poetry portal - tenth up: again, the guy from the 1st, 5th and 7th. Again! So this is it, the Top 10 me's on Google. I am a very busy man apparently. Going deeper into the results reveals more me's out there. Just to clear things up: I'm not a lawyer, developer, scientific author, poetry writer and I'm really not into any social engineering schemes such as Facebook, Hi5, MySpace and all the lot. Is this a problem for me? Well it's at least a nuisance, like having the same phone number with a bunch of other people you don't even know. For example I can't just tell someone to google me up and reach my site. I have to be specific. "Google me and pick the second result, or whichever result points to www.andreiiancu.net." See? It's easier to just tell the person the URL. Parents thinking about naming their children, first look up your prospective names on Google to see how confusing your offspring's online presence will be, and do try to minimize that. Anyway. Just wanted to get this off my chest, as boring as it may have been for you. Speaking of you, what are you still doing here? Explore the rest of the site! There's, like, a whole bunch of other stuff that will interest you more than these rants (they are just a filler you know, meant to update the RSS feed and keep you coming back for more - by the way, is it working?). |
Studio biking 26 Jun 2008 | There is new stuff in Fun & Games: Studio Biking. Photographs of harmless bycicle fun indoors. Kids, don't try this at home! This stunt was performed by |
Two new videos and RSS 25 Jun 2008 | Check them out in Fun & Games: Night Biking and Spinner, one more Also, I am testing an RSS feed. It should be automatically detected by your browser, provided that you have a modern one of course. The indicator for RSS feed should be an orange RSS icon in the address bar for Firefox, a blue RSS rectangle in the address bar for Safari, and something similar for IE 7. Click on that and you will access it directly. You can use the link http://www.andreiiancu.net/feed.xml to add the RSS feed to your news reader of preference. I'm a Google Reader man myself, so I strongly recommend that one. But it's OK to use something else of course. What is RSS you ask? Glad to answer. With a link to Wikipedia RSS article. |
Hello world 13 Jun 2008 | The website is finally done, it's been in the works for some time now. Still, there are some things that I have to work on, so it is not 100 percent final. There are still some cards up my sleeve and I shall reveal them in due time. Right now I'm working on polishing those cards so that they will look brilliant when the whole thing goes live. Enjoy what is available right now, keep in mind that there are some new works in the... works. Until the next update, hopefully soon, i bid you adieu! |
Dear testers 16 May 08 | First of all thank you for coming to my site and checking out. Before you begin tearing it apart, please read this message. Besides being very green (obviously), the website is my first attempt at coding with CSS (mostly), and most importantly is that I achieved to do all this coding sans Dreamweaver and by actually typing code by hand (can I get a group 'Yaay!'?). You will however find some tables in here (if one is so inclined as to browse through the source code of this thing, the much dreaded TRs and TDs are right here in the this section). The content in the Works section will be added as soon as the website goes out of beta testing and into the real world, so that's not a bug. Since I have nothing else to add for the moment, browse around. You can always e-mail me or PM me on messenger* for any tips you may have for me. * that is if you have my messenger ID. If you don't... it's mailbox AT andreiiancu DOT net for you :) |
The waiting is over 15 May 08  | Behold! The new andreiiancu.net. Isn't it grand? If you are new to this URL, then this might not look like a big deal to you. However, if you are someone who watched this domain for the past two years (freak!) only to see no changes to the website, this is one big whopper of a change. Getting around to making it into a real palpable thing took a bit more than expected, but then again I am known to be on the procrastinating side (professional crastinating league). Anywhoo, I suppose you are all anxious to see what's inside this shiny new website, so I'll let you to it. Enjoy! PS: Oh yeah: as always my inbox is open to your praise and adulation at mailbox AT andreiiancu DOT net |