Just a piece of my mind

New Short Story Published – “Pachira Aquatica”

Iulian Ionescu — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:26:22 +0000

One of my short stories, “Pachira Aquatica” was published in the Danse Macabre Magazine Issue #65. Enjoy: Pachira Aquatica Thank you, Iulian

New flash fiction story in Wisconsin Life

Iulian Ionescu — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 19:44:10 +0000

One of my flash fiction stories made it into the semi-finals of a flash fiction contest organized by Wisconsin Life. Here it is, please enjoy it: “Lady in white” http://wilife.tumblr.com/post/34767736933/lady-in-white-yes-it-may-be-the-day-after Iulian

New fiction writing blog

Iulian Ionescu — Sun, 27 May 2012 02:05:19 +0000

Just wanted to let you know that I finally started my fiction writing blog. I've been longing to start one for quite some time now but, as always, life got in the way. Now it's finally up and I hope it will become a good resource for fiction and non-fiction writers of all levels and for all genres.

Funny IPhone auto-correct mishaps!

Iulian — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 14:54:22 +0000

IPhone's auto-correct feature is famous among its users for giving funny guesses when the user mistypes a word. The folks at damnyouautocorrect.com made a website out of it and in this post I wanted to summarize the most hilarious, funny, rolling on the floor laughing out loud moments in IPhone auto-correct history.

Let Me Believe in MY God

Iulian Ionescu — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:05:17 +0000

Since the dawn of time, humans must've known that they were special creatures. Just by pure comparison with the surrounding animal reign and regardless of its sometimes overwhelming physical power, the humans must have known that they were superior. The elevated human intelligence out -shadows any other living creature on this planet, but this extraordinary feature doesn't come without its specific problems.

10 More Best Stand Up Comedy Routines

Iulian Ionescu — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 12:15:40 +0000

This is the third installment in my series on stand-up comedy. Here I am bringing you 10 more of my favorite stand-up comedy routines from various stand-up comics. If you want to read the previous two posts, just look at the bottom at the related links. Otherwise, enjoy these 10 videos as they will bring you lots of joy and laughter!

Learn Blogging From Master Bloggers

Iulian Ionescu — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 02:51:52 +0000

A blog can be anything where one or more people share their ideas related or not to a specific topic. It's like a journal open to the world that allows the visitors or readers to interact with the content by adding their comments, suggestions, and own ideas. Usually the blogger is more than a writer. A writer publishes a book or a story and then only limited interaction exists between the writer and the readers. Bloggers are social creatures. How do you become one?

Fifa World Cup 2010 South Africa Resources

Iulian Ionescu — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:27:40 +0000

Soccer is the most watched sporting event in the world, no doubt about it. And the FIFA World-Cup is by far the largest soccer related event. Even though in the US the sport has far less coverage and fans, compared to baseball, basketball or american football, since the US team is getting better every year, I see a more extensive interest for soccer as well. Since I am a big fan and before every World-Cup I try to get myself all the necesary resources to make it easy for myself, I decided to share this year's list and maybe make your life easier as well.

Funny and Strange Google Suggestions

Iulian Ionescu — Mon, 31 May 2010 01:31:52 +0000

As Google becomes our tool of choice for our daily research on any topic, the company does a great job at collecting, archiving, structuring and analyzing their user-fed data. And at some point they come up with a cool feature called Google Suggest. Basically, when you perform a search on Google you will see a drop-down with a number of suggestions designed to make your search easier and speed it up. Well, some of them are funny, some strange, and some just plain weird...

“LOST” Finale – Questions or Answers?

Iulian Ionescu — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:35:36 +0000

Here are my thoughts on the last episode of LOST... The LOST Finale aired on May 23, 2010 and, if you missed it, you can still catch the episode online here: http://abc.go.com/shows/lost. My thoughts about the general idea of the show as revealed in by the the final episode is that all the events that took place on the island actually took place and the "flash-sideways", called by some the "alternate reality", was an imaginary place where all the characters got together in death. So, it's not really an alternate reality, because it is not a reality at all.

How to use #FollowFriday on Twitter for Best Results

Iulian Ionescu — Fri, 21 May 2010 20:31:07 +0000

Many writers and Twitter users stress the importance of reciprocity, acknowledgement, and courtesy in using a micro blogging technology such as Twitter. The root of it lies in the fact that micro blogging is extremely fast-paced and therefore having your message get through to all those that you had as targets is particularly challenging. This means that you need others to help you pass that message through. The more people send their message out there, the more chances are that someone will actually read it and acknowledge it. And that is the real root of the #FollowFriday phenomenon.

14 More Best Stand Up Comedy Routines

Iulian Ionescu — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:58:19 +0000

If you loved my first post, 12 Best Stand Up Comedy Routines , than this is just a follow-up bringing you more of these amazing, best stand-up comedy routines I saw over the years. I hope you enjoy this group of videos, I believe these will make you laugh and feel really good about yourself!

Best Twitter Analyzing Tools To Improve Your Results

Iulian Ionescu — Sat, 15 May 2010 02:25:01 +0000

As Twitter becomes more and more prevalent in all aspects of business, marketing, sales and personal communications, the need to create a better strategy is more and more stringent. And, as always, the old saying "knowledge is power" still stands when it comes to Twitter as well. As your involvment in Twitter grows, as you acquire more followers and start developing a strategy based on your needs, the analysis of your results becomes critical.

Who is Your Favorite “LOST” Character?

Iulian Ionescu — Thu, 06 May 2010 01:08:09 +0000

There's no doubt about it, if there is anything that "LOST" is not lacking, it's characters and lots of them. It's probably the show with the most fully developed characters that I've ever seen. The creators do an excellent job in shaping the characters season after season, switching between flashbacks, flashforwards, life on the island and various moments in time and space. I thought that you would like to take a shot at who is your favorite LOST character of all times?

Why You Shouldn’t Email When You Are Angry

Iulian Ionescu — Tue, 04 May 2010 02:24:15 +0000

All of us have been angry or upset at someone else at least a few times in our lives. No matter how accepting, reconciling and peaceful you are, you are bound to get into a situation where you get angry with a friend, co-worker or a member of your family. It seems as if the anger in our lives is growing in the last few decades, but I am not sure that this is an actual true statistic. I think that nowadays we have a lot more tools to express our anger in a public manner that it has become much more obvious and in our face.

The Types of People You Find on Escalators

Iulian Ionescu — Sun, 02 May 2010 02:16:04 +0000

If you live in a decently sized city or town, chances are you used an escalator more than once. They're a pretty cool feature of modern society so I try use them when I see them. Give or take, it takes about 5 to 15 seconds to go from one end of the escalator to the other, and that's enough time to notice the people around you. After twenty years of deep observation, I was finally able to divide the people riding the escalators in 6 different groups.

15 Amazing Power Rock Ballads

Iulian Ionescu — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:51:17 +0000

As a huge fan of music of all kind, rock ballads always had a special place in my playlist. And there are really dozens and dozens of ballads, some more "rockish" than others, that I could include in my top list, so compiling it was not an easy task. I know that some of you will argue that some of the songs I picked can hardly be qualified as "power" or even "rock" ballad, but most of the time I find there is a fine line between genres, and I chose to group them all under this category based on how I feel.

12 Best Stand Up Comedy Routines

Iulian Ionescu — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 01:51:46 +0000

I am a huge fan of stand-up comedy. I watch it every time I get a chance. I watch it so much that I actually started to learn the routines by heart and I am able to recite some of them... Yeah, I know, it's a little weird. But I love fun, man! I love jokes, I loooove comedy. If there is anything that I wish I was, besides a rock-star, it's definitely a stand-up comic. But since I don't have what it takes, I decided to put together a list with some of the stand-up routines I've seen over the years and are by far the top in my favorites.

Great Twitter Tools and Applications

Iulian Ionescu — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 13:17:26 +0000

Social Media is the "big word" these days and Twitter is probably the most popular site in it's niche. We've seen it's popularity skyrocket over just a few months since its inception. So it's only natural that a lot of enthusiasts set to deliver lots of tools that work along Twitter and provide various helper functions, sometimes useful, sometimes fun or bragging-rights worthy, and sometimes plain silly. In this article I will try to present you some of the tools that I use on a day-to-day basis and that I grew to love over time. This is not a comprehensive list of ALL the tools out there, just tools that I actually use and that worked for me in my social media activity on Twitter.

“LOST”: Is The Island a prison for the evil?

Iulian Ionescu — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:26:17 +0000

Ok, so based on last night’s episode of LOST, it seems as if The Island is some kind of prison that keeps the evil inside. And Jacob is some kind of guardian that won’t let this evil go out… Or at least that’s my angle. So, why is he bringing the people on the island? [...]

New Asp.Net Website for Vacation Rentals

Iulian Ionescu — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:24:43 +0000

As I mentioned in my about page, I am a self-taught programmer and my preferred language is C#. I created a few Windows Forms applications and libraries in the past, but lately I've been really working a lot on web development. Over the last two years my knowledge and experience grew exponentially and while learning I used a project as my own personal "lab". So, here's what I wanted to do: I wanted to create a site that has a clear focus and provides all the popular networking and community features that are available today. So, I need the site to be able to provide the following [...]

.Net Encryption Wrapper

Iulian Ionescu — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:01:36 +0000

Encryption is always one of those things that you know you need but you are not exactly sure where to get it and which one to select for your needs. Well, definitely .Net makes it much easier with the comprehensive System.Security.Cryptography namespace. But sometimes, you just want to be able to type Encrypt and get an encrypted string, or type Decrypt and get a decrypted string. Is that so much to ask? Not at all [...]

Top 10 FireFox addons for Web Developers

Iulian Ionescu — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 02:49:39 +0000

FireFox is an extremely popular browser and probably my personal favorite. One of the best features of FireFox its openness. The browser allows third party developers to create plugins, called add-ons in the FireFox world, which can then later be deployed by users in their own browser, enabled and disabled with ease and removed when no longer needed. This is a very powerful features which opened the doors to developers’ creativity and allowed them to share this creativity with the users of the browser [...]

Finally starting…

Iulian — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:26:14 +0000

Ok, so, who am I? I’d like to think about myself as a Renaissance Man, but that might sound a little too much like a cliche. But the truth is that I am not able to quickly point out one specific thing that I am, I do or I like, just because my spectrum of interests [...]