Vali Petcu blog

Sort of. After a short vacation in Venice, i am in Oradea, preparing for TIFF (Transylvania International Film Festival). Romania hasn’t change much, but i like Transylvania better than Muntenia, people are more relaxed and a few hundred years of Austrian occupation shows.

So, I have realised what my 5-year plan is. 1. Buy a new car. A Volvo S40 or V50. Or maybe a Subaru. 2. Settle to a country in Western Europe. A good plan, right?

This is a popular topic these days. Everybody seems to have an idea about it, except the newspaper managers. One I hear on a daily basis is “newspapers need to reinvent themselves”. No, they do not. They need to look at what they are not doing anymore, but used to do 2-3-5 years ago. Reporting. […]

Yesterday, while I was driving from Cluj to Debrecen, I spotted a little cabin, somehow resembling the one in the picture on the right, in a little hill village. Some windows, a little lawn, a big orchard in the back of the house. There was a banner on the cabin, saying “for rent/for sale”. I […]

Blog20.ro was a project i started in October 2007. Wasn’t too successful, because I was focusing on zoso.ro more. In February Bobby Voicu, freshly departed from Yahoo, took over the reins and change it to CAPSLOCK.ro. I don’t know if it’s because of him (I have a pretty controversial/bad/ugly image in the .ro internet) or […]

So, i bought a Creative Vado HD camcorder a few days ago. I wasn’t expecting much, because I paid for it under 200€. But the thing is great. Very light, shoots 2 hours of 720p video footage, charges from USB. Yes, the Sony TG3 i initially wanted had more features (stabilizer, 1080p, changeable storage, face […]

I am thinking about becoming a consultant. You know, someone who tells people what they should do. You get up, you analyze something for somebody, you give them an input and then you go home. You don’t care what they do with what you said. You are just a consultant. You get paid. You don’t […]

So, in order for me to fill a DMCA complaint, i must send an actual letter to Google. Of course, 99% of the people do not do that. And Google bets on it. So, blogger.com and youtube.com and picasa is filled with copyrighted material. And Google makes money on it.

Let’s take a Sony HDR TG3 camcorder. I’ve receive one from sony to play with for a couple of weeks. I really like it and i want to buy one. in US – 744$ in France – 559€ in Germany – 593€ A Canon 400D, my current camera: in US – 469$ in France – […]

I think the American higher education system is well-thought. With college taxes, i mean. You have two choices to achieve higher learning: either you are good and receive a scholarship, either your parents save some money. We are not equal. Some are born with chances, others have to fight for them. And, if your parents […]