I have been using for a while the about.me website and their mobile app Intro by about.me. (I use an Android phone, and as such I am supplying here the link to the Google Play appstore, however I’m sure they have an iOS one too you’ll have to search in the App Store for it.) For […]
Posts Categorized: Ramblings
Liv’s Guide to London
I was asked recently by a couple of friends on this side of the Atlantic about suggestions regarding London — as they were planning their London trip. I put together an email with basic pointers and sent it to my first friend. Shortly after it turns out another one decides he wants to visit Blighty and […]
My Thoughts on Brexit
I have been following closely the Brexit referendum in the UK — I’m sure it comes as no surprise to those of you who know me. Because I am Romanian. And I am British. And I live in USA. And I care! I have followed the news online and listening to the likes of LBC […]
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi…
If you don’t know your Latin by the way, the above translates to “Thus passes the glory of the world” (see this wikipedia page too). More than 4 years ago I crossed the Atlantic from London, UK and based myself in California, with a small startup, Cognitive Match, that came out of London and expanded into […]
TuneIn Advertising — Highlight
Working in advertising, you’d think I have my ad blocker on 24/7 — but I don’t! 🙂 And the reason for it is because I am curious what other companies are doing in this space so while I am quite likely not the main target for their advertising messages, I am very very interested to […]
Of Customer Service — American Airlines (AA) Style
I am saddened to have to write this blog post — I don’t like taking space on my blog for complaining about companies! But in this case I feel it’s needed — and I would like to hear from others who had similar issues with this airline and find out how they dealt with it […]
A Case to be Made for Managing Advertising Inventory Better
I just saw this the other day on LinkedIn — a set of 2 job openings targeted at me. Nothing unusual, LinkedIn does a good job at targeting jobs at their users (it is in fact due to LinkedIn I ended up at Netflix, via a very similar targeted job ad). However, there is something […]
Checkstyle, Findbugs, PMD and the Likes
I’ve been using the above (and a few others like CodeNarc) code quality plugins for quite a bit and I thought I’d give my 2 cents here on a matter of style: the way you can suppress checks in each of these tools. I do like the way Checkstyle allows you to define what to […]
Please Stop Using Thread.sleep() in Java!
Ok, I need a good moan about this to the extent that it deserves its own blog post, but I had it with the bloody Thread.sleep() method in Java! I know it was the only way to “sleep” back in the day but seriously, but seriously, we have TimeUnit since JDK 1.5 — and nowadays […]
Tales From Ole’ Romania: TV
Yet another post in the series about pre-1989 Romania. Now that I started publishing some of these, I became more self-aware when I get asked questions randomly about my past — and they stick with me and if the question pops up more than once I end up writing these posts. One such question encountered […]