Първо се почва с някой ежедневни думички – например station (произнася се стейшън) вместо спирка, bill (бил) за сметка, landlord (лендлорд) за хазяин и т.н. После полека-лека разни изрази се вмъкват в разговора – “book an appointment” (за записване на час при лекар например), “get a bus”, grab the trolley”, “make a list”, “pick me up later” … Речта често започва да се изпъстря с бисери от рода на “Ще ходя на shopping, така че направи list за продуктите” или “Book-ни appointment при GP-то, че днес съм много busy и ще ходя да плащам bill-овете.”

Не стига че разговорите се замърсяват с какви ли не чуждици, ами правописа също започва сериозно да регресира. Шлокавицата превзема азбуката на солунските братя и преди да се усетя, veche se zamislqm kak se pishat razni bukwi na kirilica.

Ех родна реч, omaina, and sweet!

Най-страшното е че процеса е съвсем незабележим. Започва се неусетно, по една-две вмъкнати думички в разговора, then постепенно тенденцията becomes worse. После се хващаш че не само казваш думичките, but also и мислиш на “чуждия” language. С времето not only езика става not that foreign anymore, а даже става все по-difficult да използваш родните думички, и much easier to pick their english (in my case) алтернатива. С влошаването на симптомите I’ve started to notice that even словореда ми morphed into some odd beast като for example да слагам глагола in front of подлога. The next phase is when I намерих за completely нормално да говоря in english with other bulgarians. It was so…. естествено, you know.

Fortunately the transformation is not (yet) напълна, така че there is still някаква hope left. Although, I must призная, it becomes increasingly трудно to fight the trend. But I still firmly believe that it is such предимство to know foreign languages. You know – not only матерния. Just have to be a little bit more cautious and not pick up too much of it. But you know what I mean, don’t you?!

Following this mantra some experienced *nix (this is how all Linux, BSD and Unix flavours are denoted) users can do miracles with only a few lines of code. However despite this simplicity (or probably just because of it) it as equally easy to ruin a lot of months worth of work or even to get the the whole system down on its knees. Just a quick example – the dreaded “rm / -rf” command being performed as root.

Being involved in the IT for the last … many years (I don’t want to count them – it makes me feel older than I actually am) I still prefer the simple do-only-one-thing tools than the overly complex do-everything-under-the-sky programs (that breaks equally often). The simpler tools approach requires more technical knowledge than the simple “click here to start doing the stuff” theme often clamoured by the self-manifested “IT experts” or “Administrators”. The reason for my preference is not some kind of weird masochistic psychological disorder (Ok, this is not the ONLY reason), but the gratifying feeling I understand what is going on under the hood and the ability to troubleshoot the situation in the case things go wrong. Beside it is very satisfying to see the aforementioned “Administrators” scratching their head when their favourite “all-in-one” tool failed with some mystifying message. At the end most of them they end up being shown how to use alternative way of doing things… with alternative _simpler_ means.

Anyway, enough whinging about the admins and proclaiming how KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle will save the world and bring peace to all. The other reason I do enjoy Linux is the sheer fun when doing things even when doing them in the wrong way. A collection of true pearls of wisdom could be found in the so called “Unix Horror Stories” collection. For those looking for even more entertaining readings I would recommend the excellent “Unix Haters Handbook”. Beside the useful info there are few gems from “medieval” years of the Information Age history. Enjoy… and don’t forget to mount scratch monkey.

As advised at the end of Linux Journal article I visited BBC Consultation page and filled out the questionaire. I also decided to publish it on my blog, to make sure my concerns will not dissapear buried under the usual bureaucracy typical for large organizations. Below are the questions and my answers.

Answer:
Yes, I agree. However I would like to be able to access these services without being limited to single vendor operating system or media players thus restricting my personal choice and limit the options I am entitled to.

Answer:
Yes, I certainly would like to see BBC not only to follow, but leads the wave of new on-demand services. It will be so much more convenient for me and my family to access BBC content and feel that the tax I pay is really well worth paying for.

Answer:
I would rather prefer to have permament copy of the content since I have already paid for producing it. When I buy DVD, I own it, without limitation on how many times I could watch it. However I understand that may not be always achievable, but BBC should take every effort to avoid making content which need technical measure protections (also known as DRM) which actually prohibits users for watching the content they already have paid for.

Answer:
It is reasonable to expect people would like to see the whole season if they missed first few episodes while watching an episode in the middle of the series. However the whole point of having on-demand service is just that – having it ON DEMAND, no matter when or where the people are. So while I agree with convenience of a feature like “series stacking” I don’t see much value in it if BBC would really like to dedicate itself to on-demand service market. With regard to what series I would expect to be included – all educational programs for kids, all nature and science series and probably some news. As for the limitations – to re-iterate again: why should you put limitations on taxpayers for content created with their money?

Answer:
As I am using non-Microsoft software I don’t want to see BBC commiting itself to Microsoft only software (or any other single-vendor software in that matter). The idea of the content is to be UNIVERSALLY accessible and locking out even potential users is neither acceptable for organization like BBC, nor market wise – if BBC lock-out non-Microsoft customers, then someone else will fill the gap. And at the end of the day why should BBC impose restrictions to what software THEIR viewers are using, especially considering that these viewers have paid for making BBC productions in a first place? Also I would like to question the reason for choosing Microsoft, US based company sued for monopolistic methods both in US and EU and known to use vendor lock-in techniques? Doesn’t this undermine BBC independence and doesn’t it lower the confidence in UK’s own Information Technology capabilities?

Answer:
As long as BBC holds the copyrights or the books are already in public domain, I don’t see any reason not to. In other cases BBC could ask copyright holders to license their writings under Creative Commons Licenses whenever possible.

Answer:
If the classic music listeners are in decline, then the music should be promoted more. The easiest way to achieve this is to allow more classic music downloads. This in turn will attract more people who will eventually want more music, buy some of it, seek to attend live classical perfomances and thus will revive the market and benefit musicians. On the other hand if the people have no interest in classic music, even free downloads would have no effect on the market – they will just ignore this music alltogether.

Answer:
I reckon this kind of control will be major help for parents, but if the Internet has taught us something, this is that any kind of censorship will eventually be overcome. This does not, however, belittle the ability of parents to choose what their kids can watch.

Answer:
I don’t mind having access to non-BBC content. I assume BBC have to charge additional charge its subscribers for this content and if this is clearly labelled and the viewer can watch the content without being forced to use single-vendor software, operating system or hardware I am happy with this.

Answer:
As with the previous question – I don’t mind having additional content providers on BBC site as long as they do not force me what software or hardware I must use to access their content.

Answer:
I haven’t read the licenses in details, so I can not comment this at the moment. I only wish the licenses are not written as such, that I need a lawyer to translate them for me.

Answer:
Please use open technologies and open standards whenever possible. BBC is public institution and as such should serve in public interests. This means providing the content the public has paid for without imposing heavy handed restrictions, without locking out users, avoiding single vendor lock-in, adapting to new Internet realities and ultimately – maintaining the trust public has in BBC. I’ll be happy to know that my taxes are well spent and make my children’s life better with more content accessible to them than I had a chance to have.

Stay tuned.

Well, this was my first english wedding. As a best man I mean. And hopefully not the last one. I and Tanya were pleasently surprised that everything went so well. To be honest I expected the actual wedding procedure to be something like “Four wedding and a funeral”, but fortunatelly it was quite simple and not too mincing. The thing that amazed us was the hospitlity we were treated by the people – we felt just as we were at home with our close friends. The nature in Yeovil, Somerset is so close to the green hills at home… Surely most of these feelings were caused by the nostalgia, but apart from it the wedding was marvellous. I posted few pictures in the gallery (see here). You can see me wore a pink tie and to drink a pint of Guiness with Richard. But let me not forget to mention how beautiful the bride was and how much Rich and Ani loves each other. Tanya looked blindingly as always even with her not-so-little tummy. If you are watching the photos, please beware also of the excessive beauty here and there. Of course I didn’t miss the opportunity to capture the moment (me with the excess beauties on an urban background) just as Richard didn’t. For the chroniclers and my future autobiographic writers there is also a photo of me and Tanya, she – pure glamor and me – the incarnation of modesty .

I’d like to thanks to Richard’s family and their friends for the warm welcome and for everything they’d done to make us feel like being at home. Thank you guys. I and Tanya are looking forward to meet you soon again.