how time flies

On the last day of the month I managed to find some free minutes for a quick November overview. Luckily, this November could be described only with one sentence - it was very very busy month. And that's all... In the column TODO there are many records, while in HAPPENED almost nothing interesting (except the completed work at the university and my 2 jobs).

Interesting stuff I found in Internet:

Google fight: Google Fight Not only funny, but it also can be helpful. For example, if you're not sure about the correct spelling of a word. :) However... the first things I put in conflict were: Apple and Microsoft.. Won't tell you the result... Watch the fight yourself.

The second worthVisiting site is Sorry Gottago!
I suppose it can find application in the reality, but the main point is certainly not the application but the clever idea.

And now.. for something completely serious... :) My fave BBC news in the past few weeks (actually, only their titles):

1. Commuter cat is star of bus route
2. Hi-tech holy water calms flu fear
3. Windows 7 borrowed 'look' of Mac
4. Bangladesh men jailed for beating crocodile
5. Australian aims to breed 'green' sheep that burp less
6. 'Thatcher dead' text sparks fears


Oh, yes.. Yesterday I watched the best from all movies I watched this year (if no surprises in December). The movie is called O'Horten and guess, who's the director... :) That threw me back in the 2006, when I was part of the Sofia International Film Festival team... Some pictures from these happy times:


Here: [left] Jim Stark (the producer of "Factotum") , me in the middle and [right] Bent Hamer (the director of "Factotum" and "O'Horten".. and "Kitchen Stories")


With Sir Alan Parker (on the SIFF closing party)



The whole team from the International Guests department @ the final party



Stefan Kitanov (the boss of Sofia IFF), Stefan Laudyn (Warsaw IFF) and Andreas Ströhl (Munich IFF)


With Matthieu (I still can't write his family name.. :) too difficult :P , but he is one of the Cannes FF movie selectors)



With Kami (my best friend from the team.. phew, I haven't seen her for centuries... :( )


With Tim Oliehoek (director of "Too fat too furious")


The last one is special for me.. :) On this picture - Terry Jones from Monty Python.. :) And now... for something completely different..

THE END


:)

Clockwise Operetta

Last week I bought the best game ever! :) From the same team as Samorost, but this time entitled Machinarium. Really interesting stuff with wonderful graphics and magic soundtrack!



z in love tick tick tick

Oh! :) It was wonderful! ("Splendid! Splendid!" as John Cleese says..)

Cats in the concert hall

My trip to Rome as a photo story:

The greatest Current 93 fan. Almost impossible to CATch him, but the success's worth. :)


There's the reason why I moved my ass to Rome. Not because of the sightseeing (hate hate hate sightseeing), but just see the live performance of David Tibet and to feel the atmosphere of the town.


Here: me eating caramel - chocolate ice.



Pizza-pasta automat.


The Fountain with predatory swans in front of the Pantheon.

Picture in front of the Pantheon (where a bottle of Chardonnay passed away gracefully)



Must confess: the italians make wonderful capuccino, but in the beer competitions - they are history.


Graffitti near Termini station.


no need to comment


no need to comment


Ancient FANTA (burried in the holes of the Colosseum centuries ago)




Black cat under car.


Ardecore, Sarah Dietrich and David Tibet



The famous Trevi fountain (without the the tourists' heads)


The city of Vatican.


..and again



Laaaaaangweilig....

Langweilig pt.2


San Pietro





The bridge of the Angels


Mountain view from the plane...

8bit poems

Inspired from the 2.0 poetry of Rives, I've decided recently to update my poetic misunderstandings to a next level. Besides, this genre helps me more clearly to express my point of view:


/* this one involves elements from the classic love poetry, but offers kind of solution for the classic love problems */

should I always get this alert,
that
your heartdisk has not enough space?
or you would better buy another one?
or you would better delete some unused files
from the old one?
if (it doesn't work)
I should take some action.
Like kickin' your box through the window
or showing my blue screen:
running out of patience.


/* this one is inspired from a false geek image, but statistically quite possible to be true. At least 50% of the poem applied to 50% of the geeks. */

The real geeks
have default food value: pizza
with default attribute: deep_frozen
Their "DoYouWannaCoffee" variable
is set to "yes"
(again by default)
and if you try to bother them
with a high level questions
like "What is the meaning of life?"
they throw a
"BegoneYouCrazyAnimal"
exception.


/* the next one examines one important business strategy */

i do not know
how their algorithms function
but there are some general approaches
working perfectly in the general cases..
like
loading smile
while a destruction daemon
is running its jobs in the background

everything

Today I saw the new place of the department where I write my "Studienarbeit". The building is former children' clinic, pretty dark but somehow cosy despite of the ghosty atmosphere. I met there Dominik, who returned from a robotics conference in Japan few days ago. We chatted a little and this gave me the idea to make a list with the cutest robots, which won't be a simple task, because I don't know where to put the border. I mean, should I include also bots without any trace of intellect, or better choosing among the most advanced ones. However:

1st place: QRIO (Sony)

He's not only cute, but also clever. He can communicate with people, play football, but most importantly - he can learn. Unfortunately, this pleasure costs more than 50000$ (not exactly sure about the price).


2nd place: ApriPoko (Toshiba)

:) sweet: robot which is also universal remote control. He has camera and responds to a voice commands.


3rd place: PLEN (Systec Akazawa)

The unique thing for PLEN is his ability to balance very well when skating. Not simply task at all. And his price is also acceptable - around 2000$.


4th place: PaPeRo (NEC)

This babies can sing, send sms, talk with people and lots of other things. They are specially developed to watch over children. Wow. :) But the intelligence has its price...


5th place: Nuvo (ZMP)

Another home friend. He isn't an AI, but at least he can respond to some voice commands. Price: ~7000$.



And, btw, I also met Edy today. She is an african princess and owns the largest smile ever.

Unfortunately, Emilian wasn't there. He is no more with us. He must be sitting somewhere in Seattle working hardly for our enemy and not regretting for anything. Especially because he must have a new strawberry shaker and a huge sea window view. I miss him.. We used to play hacky sack. He has a very big heart, even bigger than Eddie's smile (if the both things are comparable).

After a hard emotional disaster, which left me disabled for the rest of my life, I'm again on my way. But one personal note: what doesn't kill you, doesn't make you stronger either.

but the last day of summer..

..never felt so cold

Nouvelle Vague

If I planned this concert carefully, it would surely fail. But fortunately, I'm aware of my bad luck, besides I don't have much time for planning. I missed my train to Mannheim, but thanks to Tony (who obviously takes his decisions also in the last possible moment), we were exactly on time! (suppose, because of Tony's aura, the impossibility of germans to be late, whom I'm very thankful).

Everything was so amazing 60's! And Nouvelle Vague's performance was brilliant! Who could suppose 4 years ago, when Matthieu showed me the band for the first time, that I would see their live performance here. Nobody. The fate is a bitch, by default, but sometimes she do her job very well... very well!




Next event - October, Current 93 and Spiritual Front in Rome. I'm already excited.. :)

Why is this picture so special?

for 2 reasons:

- the action takes place in ZKM, my favourite virtual bubbles generator
- it is reshaped with gimp. RIP photoshop.

we found the tunnel at the end of the light

Bukowski's birthday today.. Some of my fave cites from his optimistic realism.
"he's not alone tonight 
and neither am
 I"



OH YES by Charles Bukowski
there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.



YES YES by Charles Bukowski
when God created love he didn't help most
when God created dogs He didn't help dogs
when God created plants that was average
when God created hate we had a standard utility
when God created me He created me
when God created the monkey He was asleep
when He created the giraffe He was drunk
when He created narcotics He was high
and when He created suicide He was low

when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountains and the sea and fire at the same time

He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.




THE WORLD"S GREATEST LOSER by Charles Bukowski

he used to sell papers in front:
"Get your winners! Get rich on a dime!"
and about the 3rd or 4th race
you'd see him rolling in on his rotten board
with roller skates underneath.
he'd propel himself along on his hands;
he just had small stumps for legs
and the rims of the skate wheels were worn off.
you could see inside the wheels and they would wobble
something awful
shooting and flashing
imperialistic sparks!
he moved faster than anybody, rolled cigarette dangling,
you could hear him coming
"god o mighty, what was that?" the new ones asked.

he was the world's greatest loser
but he never gave up
wheeling toward the 2 dollar window screaming:
"IT'S THE 4 HORSE, YOU FOOLS! HOW THE HELL YA
GONNA BEAT THE
4?"
up on the board the 4 would be reading
60 to one.
I never heard him pick a winner.

they say he slept in the bushes. I guess that's where he
died. he's not around any
more.

there was the big fat blonde whore
who kept touching him for luck, and
laughing.


nobody had any luck. the whore is gone
too.

I guess nothing ever works for us. we're fools, of course---

bucking the inside plus a 15 percent take,
but how are you going to tell a dreamer
there's a 15 percent take on the
dream? he'll just laugh and say,
is that all?

I miss those
sparks.




IF WE TAKE by Charles Bukowski

if we take what we can see---
the engines driving us mad,
lovers finally hating;
this fish in the market
staring upward into our minds;
flowers rotting, flies web-caught;
riots, roars of caged lions,
clowns in love with dollar bills,
nations moving people like pawns;
daylight thieves with beautiful
nighttime wives and wines;
the crowded jails,
the commonplace unemployed,
dying grass, 2-bit fires;
men old enough to love the grave.

These things, and others, in content
show life swinging on a rotten axis.

But they've left us a bit of music
and a spiked show in the corner,
a jigger of scotch, a blue necktie,
a small volume of poems by Rimbaud,
a horse running as if the devil were
twisting his tail
over bluegrass and screaming, and then,
love again
like a streetcar turning the corner
on time,
the city waiting,
the wine and the flowers,
the water walking across the lake
and summer and winter and summer and summer
and winter again.



And something I use as mantra:

There you go: behind for 8 races, winner in
the 9th. Nothing big, but bankroll intact. This comes,
my friends, out of years of training. There are thorough-
bred horses and thoroughbred bettors. What you do is
stay with your plays and let them come to you. Loving
a woman is the same way, or loving life. You've
got to work a bit for it. In a day or 2 I'll go again
and get off better.

machinery

Back from a seminar in France. I didn't want to write a word for this event, but will, because I was (and still am) amazed from the direction of one of the workshops, namely "humanoid robots".

I remember when i said to Monika, that I love my Mac (not just like, but love) and talk to him. She was very upset, because she could fast and easy imagine the old ever repeated ugly movie scenario, how machines are taking over the world and control the human race. I laughed, because it was funny and naive, but somehow the workshop discussion went in the same direction and it wasn't funny anymore. Because I saw people with 30 (maybe more) years of experience in science and technics, which shown the same strange fear of "conscious" robots. Couldn't believe it! Noooo way!

firstly: If we want to play Gods, then we have to be ready for eventual failure.

secondly: If we succeed, then it is a clear sign - the next stage of evolution has come. And in fact, all the knowledge we have worked for won't be lost, it'll continue living in another embodiment.

thirdly: We are pretty lonely creatures. The idea of feeling sympathy to an object without soul sounds perfect. It is solution. I don't say, that the computer-friend would substitute the human-human relationships, when they are present, but only when such lack.

fourth: Creating with our own tools a form of consciousness able to self organize is amazing achievement. I can't think of price, which is too high for not to be payed! We should afford it, because if the answer of the old stupid question about the meaning of life is self reproduction, then why the hell we try to develop all these fancy things? And if is not, then finding the secret of our own brain function seems to be a good candidate. The unique chance to solve the old puzzle stands in front of us, and discussing the morality of what we are trying to achieve should not be a stop sign. Call it another kind of moral, if necessary.

fifth and final: Lets not forget after all, that the discussed scenario has a very low probability. It won't happen if our job is well-done. Another topic is how strong we actually believe in ourselves?

win a brighter view

What happens, when you try to merge comics with science book?
Somebody would surely say: "bad idea - you see the surface of a very deep ocean", but lets calculate it:

We assume, you are studying physics. And you have no idea about the meaning of semiotics, or linguistics.. You have heard about Nietzsche in the school during the interval of speaking with your desk mate and trying to solve the new sudoku puzzle at the same time. And you specially thinks, that Marx is a rich dictator who has fired almost all revolutions in the world.
To get to the truth, you need:
4 x 3 x (356 - 2 x 30) x 8 = 28416 hours
(4 subjects, 3 years, 356 days- 2 months vacation, 8 hours)

And if you are ready for this sacrifice, then wonderful! But would you sacrifice additionally 56832 hours for the topics:
Anthropology
Fractal geometry and chaos theory
Kant
Modernism,
sociology
Wittgenstein
Religion
Evolutionary psychology


I know the answer - "NO". And not because you don't want to, but because you don't have the time. It's also not necessary to know everything about everything, but how could you possibly decide what's interesting?

Help?

well.. :)
wonderful book series: http://www.iconbooks.co.uk/intro.cfm

I have read and can recommend these book from the sequence:

Fractal geometry is my favorite!



nice pocket choice

now I'm reading about Marx:




And next victims: