z]

Nonsense

2012-02-11T09:32:00.017+01:00

It seems that I have lots of spare time recently. :) I'm still waiting for the Stanford University open courses to start. That will take awhile..

But now for something completely different... I might have mentioned about the "Society of Mind" lectures. In one of them, Minsky started to explain theories about "Why jokes are funny?". According to the mighty Freud, jokes are funny, because they are messing with "not allowed" topics. Things our society try to suppress thinking or talking of, like violence, sex, bad politics, etc.. So our mind is trying to mask our real thoughts by making them seem not serious. And you might say, "Ye, Freud, the guy is nuts!", but I find it reasonable explanation for the majority of the jokes. And here's the funny part, Freud's theory does not explain why the nonsensical jokes are also funny. Does it?

Think about it for a moment. Why are nonsense jokes funny? This is extremely interesting question for me, because I'm a big big fan of Monty Python, and the jokes there are totally nonsensical. It's like a surrealism without the depri-art part. So I needed to know why people are laughing like crazy when they hear a punchline that's completely illogical and sometimes not related to the rest of the joke.

The answer is here. In this wonderful paper, Minsky suggests that the reason people laugh when hearing nonsense jokes is the same as the reason they laugh about all other kinds of jokes . And this reason was originally formulated by Freud - they allow our childish consciousness to play with forbidden things. This time, the forbidden topic is logic, or more precisely, the lack of it. Illogical thinking is considered bad thing in our society and the people speaking nonsense are labeled dumb. Of course, not if you are telling jokes ;) .

And now for something completely the same: a fine selection of toys for your mind I found around the web:

________________________________________________

Two strawberries were sitting in the bathtub, one said to the other 'can you pass the soap' the other replies 'what the fuck do I look like, a typewriter?'

________________________________________________

If you say Jesus backwards it sounds like sausage.

________________________________________________

- Why did the plane crash?

- Because the pilot was a loaf of bread.

________________________________________________

- What's the difference between a duck?

- One's twice as long as itself.

________________________________________________

- Ask me if I'm an orange.

- Are you an orange?

- No.

________________________________________________

Driving down a road Santa sees a sign that says, “Watch for Fallen Rocks.” A few kilometres later, he sees some rocks at the side of the road, so he stops and picks them up. When he gets to the next town, he carries the rocks into the Highway Maintenance office and puts them on the counter. “Here are your fallen rocks,” he says to the man behind the counter. “Now where is my watch?”.

________________________________________________

Inpatient customer, sarcastically:

- "Waiter, do you serve crabs?"

- "Sit down, sir - we serve anyone."

________________________________________________

Descartes is sitting in a bar. The bartender asks him if he'd like another drink. Descartes replies, "I think not" and *poof* he disappears.

________________________________________________

These here are from the paper:

A gentleman entered a pastry-cook's shop and ordered a cake; but he soon brought it back and asked for a glass of liqueur instead. He drank it and began to leave without having paid. The proprietor detained him. "You've not paid for the liqueur." "But I gave you the cake in exchange for it." "You didn't pay for that either." "But I hadn't eaten it".

--- from Freud (1905).

________________________________________________

"A man at the dinner table dipped his hands in the mayonnaise and then ran them through his hair. When his neighbor looked astonished, the man apologized: "I'm so sorry. I thought it was spinach."

________________________________________________

Well, some of them are not complete nonsense, see.. But they are in the same category, since they make fun of false interpretations. (Btw, if you have more, please share! :)

Thinking like a moss :)

2012-02-09T23:20:00.019+01:00

Two days ago as I was derping around the web (not surprising at all), I discovered this awesome open course called "Critical reasoning for beginners". What's all about? The title does not say much to me, as I simply cannot catch what's so critical about reasoning. However, the content is circling around the nature of arguments and how by using logic and simple structuring rules to make your arguments stronger.

What's nice about all that stuff is, that even from the first lecture, one learns a lot of definitions formulated in "human understandable language" ( I mean, not only with symbols, as we learned it in the formal systems course, e.g. P or !P = true ). Besides, the lecturer has soooo amazingly wonderful beautiful amusing British accent, which might be the real reason for me listening to the lectures. Btw, she started the lecture with part of a Monty Python sketch (this one)!

Here's some interesting stuff: we are somehow used to say that an argument is true or false. But arguments cannot be true or false, they can be simply good or bad. The premises of an argument can be true or false, for example, but not the arguments themselves. And the good arguments are truth-preserving, because they can preserve the truth of the premises in the conclusion.

There is also this interesting statement I very much like: "There are only 2 sorts of things that can be true or false in this world. One of them is beliefs and the other is the sentences we use to express beliefs." At first, I was little bit confused, because beliefs are kinda subjective. But later on, it became clear, that there is a difference between religious beliefs, etc. and the term belief in the philosophy.

Also, I found out, that there are levels of abstraction and often the reason for a bad argument is when you are not able to make the difference between those. The clarity of thoughts is a consequence of not confusing those levels. And there's a very nice example:

Let's use chair, concept of chair and "chair". Saying that chair has 5 letters is not true, because chairs don't have letters. It also does not make sense to say that the concept of chair that someone has in mind has 5 letters. Therefore saying "Chair has 5 letters." makes sense only when chair is seen as a word. And that's definetely different abstraction level from the first two.

Singularity

2012-01-16T21:16:00.005+01:00

Recently, I found some nice graphical novels. Pure pleasure. One of them is Singularity 7 by Ben Templesmith, who is sooooo god damn kiddnapped by UFOs, that my head explodes when I see his paintings.

Another nice stuff is Robotika, which is a story about Niko - steam punk samurai.

Some times ago, I had to buy paper comix, which was pretty expensive, very slow (especially for a person with NO patience like me). But now with my iPad, it is so easy and fast and cheap and does not require extra space to store the decaying paper bodies. *rainbows and unicorns*

society of mind

2011-11-22T22:10:00.003+01:00

Long time no writing.. I know.. :) But this time it's for a good.. So many amazing things happen around me and all over the world, that I can hardly find the time to write about them.. I'm learning everyday new stuff and perhaps that makes me happy. The big step is in accepting that knowing everithing is imposible. Which reminds me of that funny story about the little girl, that came to Marvin Minsky and asked him " Do you know what I'm thinking of?". Marvin replied - "No.". "I thought so!" conclueded the girl and ran happily away.. End of story :)

Conquest '11

2011-08-13T00:45:00.002+02:00

This year's Conquest was a little bit of disappointment.. Not enough action and this time we (the NPCs) didn't have fortress. So it was more like, players are playing and we were their discomfort element.

The plot was cycling around the closed seal of the "Technische Ratio" (no idea how to translate it properly, sry) It is the 5th and most powerful element of the ostracized (Schwarzes Eis, Untoten, Pestilenz and Leere). For some reason the NPCs cannot open this seal, so the elements got this honor. I personally cannot find much of a sense behind that action, because as we know, the "Technische Ratio" is on the side of the evil. Why should the elements (the good guys) want to set free the biggest evil? Hopefully there is a good explanation, different from "knowing there is a monster behind that door, makes you twice likely to open it". We'll see. Just patience (virtue I don't possess, unfortunately)..

Oh, and there is that awesome LARP I recently found the website of - 42k . A nice mix of futuristic cyber war. DO WANT! Plans in progress…

Bronx vs. Brooklyn

2011-07-21T22:31:00.003+02:00

A young man lives in Manhattan near a subway express station. He has two girl friends, one in Brooklyn and one in the Bronx. To visit the girl in Brooklyn, he takes a train on the downtown side of the platform. To visit the girl in the Bronx, he takes a train on the uptown side of the same platform. Since he likes both girls equally well, he simply takes the first train that comes along. In this way he lets chance determine whether he rides to the Bronx or to Brooklyn. The young man reaches the subway platform at a random moment each Saturday afternoon. Brooklyn and Bronx trains arrive at the station equally often - every 10 minutes. Yet for some obscure reason, he finds himself spending most of his time with the girl in Brooklyn: in fact, on the average he goes there nine times out of ten. Can you think of a good reason why the odds so heavily favor Brooklyn?

:) Yeee, it's not a morally right scenario, but the reason is a good one.. I like the riddle..

paradoxes

2011-07-14T14:49:00.012+02:00

Surprisingly, the whole western philosophy and logic are grounded on magic and are full of paradoxes. This doesn't make them less beautiful and useful, however..

Here some questions to ponder:

A classical example of statement, that is a paradox, but not recursive..

The Devil's argument:

BUT:

newChomsky()

2011-07-10T18:43:00.006+02:00

The language is one of the most amazing tools developed by humans. It reflects the way we think and the way we perceive our environment. It helps us transfer and preserve knowledge, emotions, experience. In my diploma thesis at the KIT, I had to work a lot with language and speech. I learned much about the acoustics of a speech. And I realized for myself, that the holy grail is the semantics and pragmatics of the language. We understand the acoustic part of human speech pretty well and therefore created accurate models of it. But the last % of perfect speech recognition performance can be gained only by understanding speech on top of parsing sounds successfully. In my opinion it is time to start more eagerly exploring structures that will capture the meaning and reflect the data organization of human mind. The problem here is, we need knowledge from engineering, linguistics, cognitive science, neuroscience, philosophy and behavioral psychology. We need a concept that will merge these areas and people brave enough to step aside of the path that is thought to be "the right". And while waiting for the new universal genius to be born.. a fun comic-shaped fact:

Richii Majhong Master

2011-06-16T17:53:00.005+02:00

And here is the successful recipe: 30% luck, 30% strategy, 40% statistics :)

Oh WAAAAW!

2011-05-11T11:21:00.000+02:00

swarming

2011-02-16T18:50:00.003+01:00

These little robotic creatures are working hardly. The red army is trying to sort the red blocks, the green army - the green blocks. Of course, this process takes time and unfortunately, I don't have enough space on my cell phone.

:) They have, of course leaders. These are robots that place themselves somewhere and wait for the others from the army to store collected blocks around the selected location.
They can also, communicate with each other, but only with very simple messages, like.. "Hey, I'm here, in front of you, let's both turn left, or we'll crash." (ok, not exactly this way.. however..)

sursum corda

2011-02-05T00:56:00.004+01:00

That's what one very special for me person used to say..

My grandpa passed away on 16th December.. It happend the same day I spent on the airport waiting for the plane to take me home.. He was the most amazing human being in the world and what I learned from him is that there is nothing stronger than the human spirit and nobody wiser than the one, who is thinking with the hearts of the other people.

There are moments like this one, when I'm about to lose my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, but then, I think I can hear him, calm and wise, like always, saying 'cheer up your heart!'.. and, of course, the morning comes...

the robot competition last week

2010-12-06T04:53:00.008+01:00

George the robot

2010-11-22T02:12:00.002+01:00

brain deciphering

2010-11-08T02:33:00.001+01:00

Gero Miesenboeck reengineers a brain | Video on TED.com

crazy talk

2010-10-29T02:49:00.002+02:00

While searching for something, I found a weird conversation. *rofl*

The American weekend

2010-10-27T07:13:00.008+02:00

A weekend under the motto: "You can get a lot farther with a kind word and a gun than a kind word alone" (Al Capone)
My colleague from CMU Mike decided to show us what is the feeling of being American. So he introduced his close friend Lee (x-US Marine) to us and we ended up equipped with some dangerous stuff in the shooting range. After the initial fear, we saw that it is not so easy to shoot yourself in the leg by mistake and then the fun began. :)

And of course, just for the sake of completeness, we finished with a biiig niceeee American lunch.

The guys (Mike, Manuel, Johannes and Peter), actually continued the American experience by watching football (not soccer), but I had some work, so I went home, took my books'n'papers and completed the day in the laundry :) Actually, that was also kinda American.

NIST SNR tool

2010-10-06T03:18:00.008+02:00

After I lost a lot of time, trying to compile the NIST signal to noise ratio (SNR) tool,
I've decided to write about the solution and probably that will save some time to those, who have the problem with compiling it. Not that a lot of people use it, but anyway...

The NIST Speech Quality Assurance (SPQA) package is special for calculating the SNR for speech and the biggest advantage of this piece of sw is that it is something like standard and it can also calculate the SNR of an audio file without a reference audio file (noise or noise free).
It can be downloaded from here:

NIST spqa

It's compiled on a 64bit machine running SuSe. But after the compilation I copied the executables on another 32bit machine, running Ubuntu and they were usable. Here the solution that worked for me:

Unpack spqa_2.3+sphere_2.5.tar.Z with the command:
> zcat spqa_2.3+sphere_2.5.tar.Z | tar xvf -

That will create a nist directory. Go to the dir
> cd nist

Before you start, you have to know your system architecture. To find that out, type in the bash.
> uname -a
Example architecture is i686, i585, SUN, Darwin etc..

Before you run the install, open the exit.c file (located in dir nist/src/lib/sp) in a text editor. Make the following changes:
1. Replace the line:
extern int errno;
with the following line:
#include <errno.h>
2. Comment out the line:
extern char *sys_errlist[];
and also the line:
strcat(exitmessage, sys_errlist[errno]);
3. Save the file

Now, start with the install. Run:
> sh src/scripts/install.sh
If you use gcc as a compiler, choose the "Custom" option when asked. Then write gcc, when you're asked about the compiler. Then you can accept the proposed options by pressing enter. They should be fine, except for the last one, when you should enter your system architecture (i686, i585, SUN, Darwin etc).

The installation begins then. When finished, checked if errors occurred. If you find executables in the nist/bin directory (for example the stnr, segsnr, atismd, etc.), then the compilation was successful, otherwise, go to nist/lib directory and rename the libutil.a library with the following command:
> mv libutil.a libsputil.a

Then change directory to nist/src/bin and open the Makefile. In the Makefile, find the following line:
LLIBS = -lsnr -lsp -lutil -lm
and change it to
LLIBS = -lsnr -lsp -lsputil -lm
so that it reflect the change you've just made.

Now, from the nist/ directory run:
> make clean
and then repeat the make with the command:
> make

If after that you still get errors, see where the error comes from and change some code if necessary. The problematic library is usually the sphere (nist/src/lib/sp), because it is pretty old (1992) and some functions are deprecated (that's why the high amount of warnings you'll get while compiling). Good luck.

Btw, I also tried another tool, which is much easier to compile and seems to be reliable. Here it is: CTU snr tool . I suspect, that it will spit the same result as the NIST tool, when the appropriate options chosen, but didn't tried to compare them. More about the algorithms behind the CTU snr tool here: Calculating the SNR for speech - paper.

Types of computer viruses

2010-09-28T05:05:00.002+02:00

Adam and Eve virus: Takes a couple of bytes out of your Apple.

Airline virus: You're in Dallas, but your data is in Singapore.

Arnold Schwarzenegger virus: Terminates and stays resident. It'll be back.

AT&T virus: Every three minutes it tells you what great service you are getting.

The MCI virus: Every three minutes it reminds you that you're paying too much for the AT&T virus.

Bill Clinton virus: This virus mutates from region to region and we're not exactly sure what it does.

Federal bureaucrat virus: Divides your hard disk into hundreds of little units, each of which do practically nothing, but all of which claim to be the most important part of the computer.

Freudian virus: Your computer becomes obsessed with marrying its own motherboard.

Gallup virus: Sixty percent of the PCs infected will lose 38 percent of their data 14 percent of the time (plus or minus a 3.5 percent margin of error).

George Bush virus: Doesn't do anything, but you can't get rid of it until November.

Government economist virus: Nothing works, but all your diagnostic software says everything is fine.

Politically correct virus: Never calls itself a "virus", but instead refers to itself as an "electronic microorganism".

Texas virus: Makes sure that it's bigger than any other file.

UK Parliament virus: Splits the screen into two with a message in each half blaming other side for the state of the system.

punk evolves

2010-09-24T00:03:00.008+02:00

Looking an year back in my playlists, here they are - some of the tracks I've killed from listening:

Slagsmålsklubben – Malmö Beach Night Party

Toy - Rabbit Pushing Mower

btw, just for the record... Most of them are something similar to punk evolved for synthesizers. And most of them are part of the Scandinavian pop culture.

Welcome to Europe

2010-09-16T02:28:00.001+02:00

about Aronofsky and good old Europe

2010-09-03T09:46:00.005+02:00

The new movie of Darren Aronofsky will open the Venice Film Festival this year. And it will be beautiful movie about ballet and Natalie Portman. This time no math, no science, just pure art, art about art. By "beautiful" I mean.. "beautiful" in the Aronofsky kind of way.

I like the first Aronofsky movie - "Pi". Numbers, Kabalah, the simple well known message, that the more you know, the better you know how sad the story of life is. When I was a teenager, once a friend of mine (Christophor) said to me: "How can you be so happy? There are only 2 ways - either you are very stupid, or you know something we all don't." (I suppose, it was the first one :) )

However, I love art.. and I love science. But I'm agree, that artists should stay artists and they better be no scientists. Otherwise we miss a lot of beautiful stuff.. Like.. Imagine that the frontman of Pearl Jam was thinking about logic, when he wrote the song "I am mine". Then he would stumble upon the sentence "North is to south what clock is to time". And he would probably throw his manuscript in the bin, because anyone who has a basic knowledge of logical expressions would notice how it does not make any sense. But fortunately, Eddie Vedder' s last priority when writing the song, was logic.

And for the fans of Queen, the good news is, Freddy also hasn't put his statements under deep consideration. Otherwise he would notice, that you can't fall in love for the first time knowing that this time it's for real (because you don't have a basis to compare and because "this time" implies the fact you already was in love at least once before).

Anyway..

In 2 weeks I'm changing my home temporary. I got my J1 visa 2 weeks ago and now I'm preparing my stay in Pittsburgh. The good news is, I have the unique chance to learn plenty of new things at one of the best computer science universities in the world - Carnegie Mellon University and I have the support of 2 very important professors, moreover very kind persons. The bad news is, that I had so much stress and disappointments last few months, that I'll be too tired to enjoy completely my stay in Pittsburgh. And I'll miss the good old Europe as well. I hope it's worth...

ascii pictures

2010-08-16T22:10:00.005+02:00

Yesterday, I wanted to experiment a little bit with ascii art and was searching for a nice simple piece of software that converts image in ascii art console output. After a while I decided to write some simple java class that do the job (not because there were no such nice programs, but I was tired of searching). It works simple, outputs the image in the console and in a txt file, takes as input argument an image file, but it is not (still) suitable for large images (> 50px each side). Works good with pictograms. And it is not quite ascii, just sign art :) If I find some free hours in the next week, I'm gonna improve it to do more and better job, but for now that's not the case. And here it is:

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

public class Visualizer {

public Visualizer(File file)
{
try
{
// the line that reads the image file
BufferedImage image = ImageIO.read(file);

int height = image.getHeight();
int width = image.getWidth();

System.out.println("Picture width: "+width);
System.out.println("Picture height: "+height);

int i, j;
String output = "";
for (i=0; i < height; i++)
{
for (j=0; j < width; j++)
{
int pixel = image.getRGB(j, i);
int grayscale = convertToGrayscale(pixel);
//writes the string for the txt file
output = output+" "+getASCIIforGrayscale(grayscale);
//prints the image in the console
System.out.print(" "+getASCIIforGrayscale(grayscale));

}
output = output+"\n";
System.out.print("\n");
}

writeToFile(output);
}
catch (IOException e)
{
// log the exception
// re-throw if desired
}
}

public int convertToGrayscale(int pixel)
{
//int alpha = (pixel >> 24) & 0xff;
int red = (pixel >> 16) & 0xff;
int green = (pixel >> 8) & 0xff;
int blue = (pixel) & 0xff;
int grayValue = (red + green + blue) / 3;

return grayValue;
}

public String getASCIIforGrayscale(int grayValue){
String ascii = ".";
ascii = lookupTableGray(grayValue);
return ascii;
}

public void printPixelARGB(int pixel) {
int alpha = (pixel >> 24) & 0xff;
int red = (pixel >> 16) & 0xff;
int green = (pixel >> 8) & 0xff;
int blue = (pixel) & 0xff;
System.out.println("argb: " + alpha + ", " + red + ", " + green + ", " + blue);
}

public String lookupTableGray(int gray){

if (-1 < gray && gray < 40)
{
return "@";
}
else if (40 < gray && gray < 60)
{
return "#";
}
else if (60 < gray && gray < 80)
{
return "%";
}
else if (80 < gray && gray < 100)
{
return "0";
}
else if (100 < gray && gray < 160)
{
return "*";
}
else if (160 < gray && gray < 210)
{
return "o";
}
else if (210 < gray && gray < 256)
{
return ".";
}else
{
return ".";
}

}

public String lookupTableBinary(int gray){

if (-1 < gray && gray < 170)
{
return "@";
}
else if (170 < gray && gray < 256)
{
return ".";
}
else
{
return "_";
}
}

public void writeToFile(String output) throws IOException
{
BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("asciitest.txt"));
out.write(output);
out.close();
}

public static void main(String[] args) {

File file = new File(args[0]);
new Visualizer(file);
}

}

ConQuest 2010

2010-08-11T15:19:00.004+02:00

Back from ConQuest... That was my first LARP, but definitely not the last one.
Here's the story, in pictures and words, although these two are far more insufficient to describe what happened:

Day 1:
After 9 hour train trip, we finally got there and my first impression was: Oh, God! No internet, no electricity and cow shits everywhere. I have to survive somehow until Sunday..

Der Sieger baut ab :)

The town

Day 2:
As in all stories, the world is inhabited with good and evil. At the beginning, there was only good - the pure elements: earth (avatar: Terra), water (avatar: Aqua), air (avatar: Aeris), fire (avatar: Ignis) and magic (avatar: Magica).

But then, of course, in order to preserve the balance, the evil was created. And that's us - the banished, the evil children of the second creation: Schwarzes Eis, Untotes Fleisch, Leere, Pestilenz and Technische Ratio.

Schwarzes Eis

Untotes Fleisch

Leere

The Technische Ratio is part of the story, but there are no players indeed, because it is too powerful and therefore buried.

Doerchgardt is the fortress of the Untotes Fleisch and our mission is to defend it from the attacks of the elements.

Fortress Doerchgardt

An'nai Herr von Doerchgardt

The throne of the Knochen-Königin

2 years ago, we buried the avatar of Terra under a pyramid in Doerchgardt and now, the elements want to set her free. To do that, they first have to conquer our fortress.

In this first day of the play, our swarm (Schwarm 7) of Schwarzes Eis had duty from 21 p.m to 4 a.m. We had to defend the fortress, but there wasn't much to defend at all, because the players had party and didn't care much of attacking at this time. They also didn't have the necessary equipment to damage the walls of our fortress. Therefore we succeeded in stealing a big army gun from the Neutral camp.

Day 3

Day 3 was really hard, since we had duty till 4 a.m. previous night. After long hours of defending, at the end the players invaded Doerchgardt. Which was actually good, because otherwise we had to stay till 4 a.m. again. I was very sad, but our Sharun - Andy told me that it is not a big deal and we will get our fortress right on next day. So it was…

Day 4

Early in the morning we organized a little invasion in the Air Camp, just to wake up the players and prepare them for the fight. After lunch, we all marched in Doerchgardt and in approximately 20 min the fortress was ours again. However, it wasn't for a long, because in the late afternoon the players got together and Doerchgardt fell gain. And again, it was good, because they freed us of duty during the night.
Although the fortress was theirs, they couldn't set Terra free, because the players didn't succeeded in fulfilling their plots. Moreover, the group responsible for the instructions how to free Terra was dead.

Day 5

The players seem to learn very slow, since they left not more than 20 people to defend Doerchgradt again. And again, early on Saturday, 2 swarms marched in the fortress and in 10 min it was ours. At this point, the story was black for the elements, but the rest of the day everything changed.

We attacked the Magic and Fire Camps, because we received the mission instructions to bring back 7 prisoners. A hard fight under the midday sun, but we succeeded. Moreover, we captured another Avatar (but I'm not sure which one). We were already very very tired and it was pretty clear, that we cannot keep the fortress till the end of the day… And the end of the day was also the end of the play.

On the right side - me, dead

We lost the final fight, indeed. 3 holes in the fortress wall and a burning tower. Aching muscles everywhere, sun burn and unconquerable sleep drive.. We've lost the fortress.. They freed Terra.. it's part of the game.. but in practice, when you give 100% of you, nobody can call you a loser :)

On average..

2010-07-23T18:46:00.005+02:00

"Announcing that on average, people have an average intelligence is kind of boring. What's interesting about intelligence and what is interesting about things like personality is the variation around the mean and the explanation about that variation. And that's what we need to start talking about now.

Oh, btw. well, it is, of course, by definition the case, that on average, people have average intelligence, they don't believe it. If you ask people "Do you think that you are more intelligent, less intelligent or about of average intelligence compared to the rest of the population, you'll get some distribution around that, too. But you'll find that the average perception of intelligence is that we're all above average.

This goes for a variety of other questions like "How good looking are you? Above average, below average or average?". Well, we're all little above average there, too. It turns out, that there is one group that gets the answer correct. And if you ask this group of people on average "Are you brighter or dumber than average, they'll come out in the middle. Asked "Are you cuter or uglier than average?", they'll come out, you know, average. Anybody knows who that group is? ….. Yes, it's the depressed. Depressed people have an accurate assessment of their own intelligence and good looks. In fact, it has been seriously argued, that part of what keeps us undepressed is an unrealistic assessment of the world. Right? We're smart, we're good looking … if we knew the truth, we all will be depressed. But that's a topic for another date. …."

Extracted from the Jeremy Wolfe's lecture "Intelligence: How do we know you are smart?"

from A to B losing time T

2010-07-18T22:15:00.004+02:00

Traveling from point A to point B means losing time t. Say, knowing the distance and your speed, you can proudly calculate the time you gonna lose. :) This, however doesn't solve your problem.

Happily, we live in a wonderful world (what have our poor parents done without the magic devices we own?!? ) and now we are able to graduate MIT without leaving our dens. :) Check what I found here. Amazing, wonderful, funny, especially this lecture dedicated to the subject of "behavioral psychology" is the perfect stuff to entertain you on your way to work or university or in the train/plane/car/whatever. Why we stop inserting a coin in the cola vending machine when it stops giving us cola but we don't if we gamble? How can you implant and modify false memories in somebody's mind. Or how every cell of our brain is mapped to a small areas of our bodies.. Really interesting stuff. :)

Oh, and last week we won the "KIT Company of the year award", part of the simulation we did during the previous semester in the "Business Leadership" course. The prize itself is not important, but the fact, that we almost believed ourselves in having the future in our hands and knowing what we want and wanting all that so much… :) (btw, we stands for 3D Innovations: Diana, Christian, me and Martin)

What else… what else.. Tomorrow I have to get the chips from the custom office. I also have to fight again with the bureaucracy in Deutsche Bank to get my bank statement letter translated in English. Firefox has a new version 4. The rechargeable battery of my macbook was almost up to explode. "But the wind still blows over Savannah and in the Spring the turkey buzzard struts and flounces before his hens." ;)

Nao's dancing :)

2010-06-30T20:08:00.001+02:00

ze's page :: zefrank.com: Aldebaran Robotics Nao Robot (dancing)

bugz and patches

2010-06-08T09:31:00.006+02:00

Tiny, Blacky and Rotko - the new fauna in my room. Rotko ran last week out of batteries. And they are not very clever yet. The problem is, if you want to buy a programmable robot, the prices jump over 200 Euros. These hexbugs are, unfortunately, not made to be reprogrammed. But they are very cheap and with more enthusiasm and skills in electrical engineering, these creatures can be far more interesting. Let's see what will happen :) We formed a group of 3 people (me, Ray and Jonas) and now we are waiting for the delivery of the new components. Here's our guide.
To be honest, the el. schemes seem to me like Egyptian hieroglyphs. But that's why we have Jonas, who happens to be an e-Ing. Ray said, he hasn't programmed in Assembler, but he graduated the "Hochschule" (something like university in which you learn practical things like programming rather than just the naked theory). Therefore I believe in his skills. I have almost no experience in Assembler (except the fuzzy programming of these step motors in the TI: technische Informatik, 5 years ago). But the good news is, that at the beginning you don't have to be so creative. Just follow the steps, there are enough resources on the Internet. However, if we want to make our bugs really smart, then we should prepare for sweating.

grunge, energy drinks and old ninja movies

2010-05-30T21:09:00.006+02:00

Since I've already described in the title how it is going in the past few weeks, I'm gonna use the remaining few minutes of your spare time to invite you to one event. :)

Yes, that's right. With the bless of my kind bosses from CIE and the help of the friendly fresh entrepreneurs from PionierGarage I'm about to organize a nice open air evening with TED presentations (the best ones), beer and BBQ. :) See you there.

colorful performance: Katzenjammer@Substage

2010-05-14T12:11:00.022+02:00

The girl with the "whiskey-nized voice" :D

Tour de vin à Strasbourg

2010-05-14T11:52:00.009+02:00

Sunny Sunday in the company of nice people. Thank you guys for the trip. :)

mountains of fun

2010-05-11T12:40:00.003+02:00

:D

2010-05-06T14:19:00.004+02:00

Questions and answers

2010-04-16T22:15:00.004+02:00

Recently, I was busy dreaming strange dreams about robots (it is side effect from the preparation for my last university exam). For example, yesterday I met a robot, who said " Aa, oh, hi Zlatka..". I was, of course, shocked (how could it know my name?) and soon after that I asked its owner and understood, that the robot connects via wifi with Internet and has an access to the Google face-recognition database. Someone has tagged me somewhere and the robot just used the fancy face recognition service that google offers.. :) (I'm not even sure, that google offers such thing).. However… Suddenly, I realized that google must know everything, therefore I rushed asking the old questions about the meaning of life, love and anything which is supposed to have no answer. Here's what came on the surface (or at least the stuff I consider closer to the truths):

What is the question to the answer "42"?
Answer: What is President Bush's IQ?
Alternative answer: What do you call a six-pack of 7-Up?
Here's one more "spiritual" interpretation of this question: What's 6 (number of man) times 7 (number of God)? (.. but hell! How did he/she calculate these numbers???!!!)
Some other nice answers:
What is the atomic number of molybdenum?
How many teeth do wolves and dogs have?
At what age did Elvis Presley die?

Second question:
What is the rare quality that would make you set a woman apart from the rest?
Answer: The rare quality of possessing many rare qualities.

Next question:
If you set grizzly bear, crocodile and tiger fighting pairwise, who will win?
Answer:
grizzly bear vs. crocodile - 0:1
grizzly bear vs tiger - 0:1
The final round: tiger vs crocodile: 1:0
and the winner is: the tiger
Just for fun, two more interesting results from another league:
puppy vs robot: 2:1
elephants vs tourists: 6:0

Another question, I already regret asking:
What future looks like?
Here's the long answer, but be bewared : the long answer
The visual answer: the visual answer
And here's the short answer: the short answer

And the last fundamental question:
Is there an afterlife?
Since it was extremely difficult to find out a convincing answer, I've decided to make a fight between the people who believe there is a life after death and who don't. And …. the majority doesn't believe… or.. to be more precise - the majority human beings who use Internet and shared their opinion about this topic online do NOT believe in life after death. However, the big problem here is, that no matter of what we believe, after life may or may not exist. Which reminds me to ask google:
Does a universe exist if nobody knows about its existence?
And… the answer given by the Descartes and approved by the Solipsism is:
NO
because: "Only things that can be known to exist for sure should be considered to exist."

now we know...

swarm robots

2010-04-15T20:48:00.003+02:00

And the news-braking line:
"so ... no risk that the robots may take over" ;)
we can now sleep well...

jeffry :)

2010-03-29T12:25:00.002+02:00

i like this ad... :)

Can you make a phone call from a black hole?

2010-03-18T10:11:00.005+01:00

In the past few weeks I discovered an important statistical rule: If the half of the questions get their reasonable answers, the proportion between answers/question gets even smaller. I have no theoretical proof of this rule, but empirically everyone is sure about the correctness.

So, back to the answer.. No, you can't make a phone call from a black hole. But you can theoretically send an sms to somebody you definitely appreciate, just in parts of the second before you vanish forever. (although the concept of "forever" needs also discussion) :)
Here's the proof: NakedScientists Podcast

And just to fill the hole between two points in time, 1 more brain teaser:

Why does a mirror reverse right and left instead of up and down? (lol)
:)

have fun,
z

My fave movie recently :) amazingly weird

2010-03-14T17:28:00.003+01:00

Ode to the Internet

2010-03-14T12:34:00.003+01:00

After the last year's Nobel Prize for Peace mistake Obama, I expect this year a lot more freaky things to happen. But try to understand me right, I have nothing against Obama, just find it funny winning Nobel prize for peace, because you haven't made war. (although the definition of "peace" allows it). The eskimos also have no offensive ideas to fire some "rotten" part of the world, but they usually don't get anything..
This year, We, the People of the World have our favorite candidate - the Internet . Internet reflects us, our intentions and for the first time, we don't seem to be the "bad guys". We ran to search justice for the middle east (although it wasn't quite our job), we helped Haiti and we done many many good things.. And despite of the fact that this doesn't have direct relationship with the peace, it's quite fair to give the Nobel Prize for Peace to all of us, who try to bring back the harmony. It sounds idealistic, but it is not. It's just fair. Therefore VOTE FOR INTERNET. :)

p.s. Another interesting story about the Internet: Internet access is 'a fundamental right'

Recommendation: see the "findings in detail". There I found the lines:
"Germans are also the least frequent users of social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, with only 18 per cent saying they enjoy spending time on these sites." :) …. which is the pure truth…

running@11p.m.

2010-02-26T09:07:00.002+01:00

running@11p.m&rain. some of those everyday-miracles, which happen once in a month. sometimes once in a lifetime. such activity you won't write in your CV (although this is far more unique than programming in Java). if unlucky enough to have boyfriend/girlfriend, he/she won't ask you why, because it is not an argue-starter or a coolness-measurement. your cat will still think you're boring and your imaginary friends will open the next beers while you pass them by in sneakers. there's nothing special about running@11p.m. except.. the streets, the rain and the pedometer detecting movement.

afterlife

2010-01-22T14:49:00.031+01:00

Finally,

yesterday night I finished playing "World of Goo" :) Amazing play. I particularly like the graphics, how the physics machine behind worx and the challenges, of course. Here some screenshots:

Near a month late, the BBC pearls for December 2009:

Zulu king wins South Africa bull-killing case
Reading while rolling Cuba's famous cigars (and imagine reading while smoking the Cuba's famous cigars)
Fast forward to the past
Singapore birds sent to market party (the same procedure for the cockroaches may increase the degree of socializing them... just a suggestion)
Rising seas "clue" in sunken world of Orkney (why do I have the feeling, they are solving the wrong problem?)
Unholy row over New Zealand Mary and Joseph billboard
Christkind (Father Christmas, Santa Claus, the spirit of Christmas, Christ itself... and now, the Christkind.. the whole family invades!)
Switzerland geologist on trial for 'causing quakes' (he must have escaped from the forces and hidding himself in Haiti.. it's not funny! serious!)
"Boat" could explore Saturn moon (it is not actually a boat.. and it won't actually swim in water.. but journalism, you know..)
Man jailed for eating rare tiger (I just couldn't make reference to the article from November: "Two man jailed after beating crocodile with bamboo sticks"..)
Swedish Christmas straw goat burnt
HP computers are racists
The official choir of the European Organization for Nuclear Research is to record a song dedicated to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
"Oldest duck" Edwina dies aged 22 (poor Edwina...)

And as we mentioned the afterlife... Since we all know that it is a cubicle, hopefully this cubicle is equipped with a Mac and fast Internet connection.. Pray..

Sincerely mines,
z

the black list

2010-01-03T23:07:00.005+01:00

The movies you better never watch (in order to preserve your sanity)*:

A Hole In My Heart (2004, Lukas Moodysson)
Gummo (1997, Harmony Korine)
Hotel (2001, Mike Figgis)
Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)
Racconti di Canterbury, I (1972, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Taxidermia (2006, Gyorgy Palfi)
Tetsuo - the Iron Man (1989, Shinya Tsukamoto)
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989, Peter Greenaway)
Requiem For A Dream (2000, Darren Aronofsky)
4 (2005, Ilya Khrjanovsky)
Edipo re (1967, Pier Paolo Pasolini)**

* not ordered by the degree of damages
** as well as every other movie from Pasolini, I suppose..

how time flies

2009-11-30T14:28:00.027+01:00

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

2009-10-31T19:09:00.010+01:00

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

2009-10-27T21:31:00.038+01:00

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

2009-10-10T18:47:00.008+02:00

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

2009-10-06T21:09:00.024+02:00

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..

2009-09-22T10:12:00.000+02:00

..never felt so cold

Nouvelle Vague

2009-09-12T08:40:00.005+02:00

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?

2009-09-03T10:08:00.008+02:00

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

2009-08-16T18:33:00.004+02:00

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.

self organization

2009-08-09T15:35:00.006+02:00

Producing chaos in my room is the greatest thing I've ever done, I would ever probably do. On the equation's left side - incompleteness. On the right side - answer's missing. The equal-sign in the middle is also kind of simplification. By this ingredients, guess how the result looks like?

[miracles] [garbage containers] [water-proof towels] [solar powered flashlights] [social web sites for unsocial guys] [screen doors for submarines] [inflatable dart boards] [squared watermelons] [strawberries bigger than apples] [AI researchers scared from robots] [biologists denying Darwin] [physicists believing in god]

I'm not sure that the chaos is in its right configuration, but just can't stop producing it...

fetishism.. kind of..

2009-08-03T20:00:00.008+02:00

The day, I understood, that I am a fetishist, was night..

And that day (which actually was night), I've decided to make a list with my weaknesses:

my only one true love:

my red book-helper:

my little cheer-up friend:

once again..

my shoes (obviously):

my Parker (present from my dad):

machinery

2009-07-30T00:48:00.005+02:00

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

2009-07-11T11:53:00.013+02:00

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:

stereo pleasantries

2009-07-05T17:27:00.007+02:00

Yoyo.. :) I've just found in Internet pictures from this special stereo cameras and decided to merge in photoshop both images from a stereo pair in one. The result is pretty good..nice degree of immersion.. have to buy one.. :)

my Katzenko here:

and British museum: http://z.arttoday.org/britishMuseum.jpg

complex pleasantries

2009-07-04T01:58:00.007+02:00

I found this nice album yesterday and just can't stop listen to it.. The serial Swedish loonies. Zeigeist - The Jade Motel

..and.. btw, around this guys I rediscovered one more band - The Knife. Consisting of a singer with awfully good voice and her brother.. Furthermore, they look so freaky .. Like their lyrics, which probably could explain another reality, but not the simple space we're inhabiting..

Be Kind

2009-07-04T01:54:00.004+02:00

BE KIND by Charles Bukowski

we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.
one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.
but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.
not their fault?
whose fault?
mine?
I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.
age is no crime
but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life
among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives
is.

@Home part.3 final

2009-06-25T09:31:00.014+02:00

YOGA + PEACE

WHO THE HELL...

SUICIDE

"O, DEAR GOD, PLEASE SEND ME FERRARI"

OH, HI!

MONKEY STORIES

HORSE PLAY

HOME ALCOHOLISM

DOGGY PRESENT

DOG KICKIN'

DANCE

MORNING

BOOK READING

@HOME part.3

2009-06-21T15:09:00.007+02:00

SK8

TORTOISE VACUUM CLEANER

HRRRRRRRRRRRR....

SWINE!

OMMMMM...

@HOME part.2

2009-06-19T00:38:00.007+02:00

POKER

KUNG-FU

ICE

NIGHT VISIT

@HOME

2009-06-17T02:23:00.010+02:00

I found some old stuff on my DVDs.. :) It's made exactly at the time of my math courses for university exams 6 years ago.. And there are millions of them.. or, at least 30-40...

COMFORT

MR STUPID SMILE

PONG PONG

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