Over a month ago I had the pleasure of visiting UK again in the last 4 months. This time it was Scoooootland!
Saturday, 14th of November
I had to wake up at 4AM. Jesus... I'm not sure if anyone is up at this hour. Apart from kids on PCP who are coming back from the clubs. As I mentioned few times I'm a lucky bastard who is loved by her friends enough to ask (and receive) a lift to the airport at such time of day.
Wednesday 23 December 2009
Friday 18 December 2009
Snow for sale
Don't get me wrong. Winter is my second favourite season. It would be first but living in this country has few disadvantages connected to this time of year.
So yesterday is started to snow. And I mean real snow not this "wet white piece of s**t which melts within 30 seconds." This time the temperature was below 0°C (32°F) for the last few days. To be more accurate it was somewhere between -5°C (23°F) and -10°C (14°F). Therefore the snow was meant to stay.
The whole event started yesterday around 3PM. It was quite innocent in the beginning, some small snowflakes, practically one could not notice them. But an hour later or so the snowfall intensified and the wind started to blow (read: a regular snowstorm). Which is really cool, because it looks magical: dark sky, city lights. Yet there one condition: big snowflakes. Instead of which we had small icy flakes so it wasn't that pleasant.
So yesterday is started to snow. And I mean real snow not this "wet white piece of s**t which melts within 30 seconds." This time the temperature was below 0°C (32°F) for the last few days. To be more accurate it was somewhere between -5°C (23°F) and -10°C (14°F). Therefore the snow was meant to stay.
The whole event started yesterday around 3PM. It was quite innocent in the beginning, some small snowflakes, practically one could not notice them. But an hour later or so the snowfall intensified and the wind started to blow (read: a regular snowstorm). Which is really cool, because it looks magical: dark sky, city lights. Yet there one condition: big snowflakes. Instead of which we had small icy flakes so it wasn't that pleasant.
Monday 14 December 2009
Procrastination, oh how I adore thee
I should be reading the articles for the tomorrow's presentation right now. Instead I'm behaving like Bernard in this video. Though I do not plan calling my mother. Yet...
I even started writing during classes about my trip to Scotland which was like a month ago. As soon as I get the missing pictures I promise to post that. Unfortunately I have few projects to finish, mid-term and other things at work. But as the Christmas-shopping season is ending I may have some extra time too catch up with all the fun stuff I planed to finish weeks ago.
Alrighty... I'm going to be strong and do that bloody presentation. Maybe even learn for that test. Keep your fingers crossed.
I even started writing during classes about my trip to Scotland which was like a month ago. As soon as I get the missing pictures I promise to post that. Unfortunately I have few projects to finish, mid-term and other things at work. But as the Christmas-shopping season is ending I may have some extra time too catch up with all the fun stuff I planed to finish weeks ago.
Alrighty... I'm going to be strong and do that bloody presentation. Maybe even learn for that test. Keep your fingers crossed.
Saturday 22 August 2009
Sandman, tell me your secrets
Have you ever wondered why you can't sleep with opened eyes?
When I have my eyes opened I can often see floaters, so today out of curiosity I closed my wonderful devices of sight and tried to observe if I can still see those. So technically speaking eyes don't "shut down" when you close eyelids. The question is why do you need to close eyes in order to get sleep. Or rather why the shutters fall down when you're tired (falling asleep). Why does the body needs to do that in order to let the brain turn into regenerating mode?
And speaking of regenerating mode. Where the hello some of the dreams come from? Today I dreamt about going for a trip with friends, when all of sudden we appear need my parents' place mixed with views from The Shinning. Soon after that there was this great fog (I would like to greet Stephen King with his visions of Maine) and people started to fall asleep / unconscious. I found myself hidden with some of those people in a basement from where we observed aliens swapping real people with their hybrids.
Think this is weird? It gets better.
When I have my eyes opened I can often see floaters, so today out of curiosity I closed my wonderful devices of sight and tried to observe if I can still see those. So technically speaking eyes don't "shut down" when you close eyelids. The question is why do you need to close eyes in order to get sleep. Or rather why the shutters fall down when you're tired (falling asleep). Why does the body needs to do that in order to let the brain turn into regenerating mode?
And speaking of regenerating mode. Where the hello some of the dreams come from? Today I dreamt about going for a trip with friends, when all of sudden we appear need my parents' place mixed with views from The Shinning. Soon after that there was this great fog (I would like to greet Stephen King with his visions of Maine) and people started to fall asleep / unconscious. I found myself hidden with some of those people in a basement from where we observed aliens swapping real people with their hybrids.
Think this is weird? It gets better.
Wednesday 19 August 2009
Oh the United States of America
I'm playing http://www.purposegames.com/game/states-of-the-usa-quiz the moment. And I must say: it is a wicked idea to put the state Washington on the other coast then city Washington.
Saturday 6 June 2009
Because people speak not only in English
Learning foreign languages is kind of fun. For those who of course have right amount of masochism flowing in their veins, to remember tons of grammar rules, vocabulary or punctuation. So let's start from the end. Punctuation. A pain in the... even in my mother tongue. But when I had my small encounter with Spanish and Norwegian, I understood that it isn't that bad here and other nations are more creative.
So let's start with Spanish:
So let's start with Spanish:
—¡Qué tiempos, Señor! —refunfuñó el corregidor—. ¡Qué asquerosos tiempos!
Hace sólo veinte años, ¿a quién se le iba a ocurrir, ni siquiera borracho, que pudiera
haber tales profesiones? ¡Brujos! ¡Trashumantes cazadores de basiliscos! ¡Asesinos
ambulantes de dragones y utopes! ¿Geralt? ¿En tu gremio se os permite beber?
El último deseo, La saga de Geralt de Rivia
Andrzej Sapkowski
As you can see above Spanish people are very expressive. They have to use a lot of exclamation, question marks. And as a bow (of respect) towards Spanish-speaking countries that are situated in South America they also turn those upside down. What else you can see are dashes above some letters. They are not different from those without those tiny thingies ó is still o and é is e (in my tongue o and ó are not read in the same way; ó should be pronounced in the same way as u), you just have to accent them.
But my favourite thing are sentences like:
So why they complicate their lives so much? Because they were lazy in the beginning and they haven't thought about such simple thing as inversion when creating questions or adding pronouns in the begining of those. So "Eres español." (you are Spanish) is written in the same way as "¿Eres español?" (are you Spanish?).
Another official reason is that it's to show where sentences are divided, because it's not obvious where the question starts. Again calling the example for above: "¿Cómo lo sabes?, ¿tú eres español?" (How do you know? Are you Spanish?). Apparently the reader could get lost and not know that question about that knowledge is a different one from the question about nationality. Understandable... I also don't give much credit to my interlocutors.
Summing up. Spanish were not only lazy, but are also hasty (with that lovely Spanish r sounding like engine of a little bike; hey, I really like that sound) and think it's better to squeeze as much information in one sentence as possible.
Believe me, it's not :p
However Spanish is nothing when it comes to how in Norwegian dialogues are written. At first I thought I would have to cheat a little bit here, because I was afraid that the author of that short novel we read during our Norwegian classes was creative (and oblivious of the grammar rules). Yet, I checked Agatha Christie's book and it turns out that it is the way Norwegians write. But to the point.
As Spanish use dash to "open" dialogue they also do the same to separate spoken text from descriptions like "he said", "she added". Norwegian think that it's more intuitive to do so with a coma. It may work with a question, it may work with simple sentence, but I kind of see an epic fail with "Ja, ditt forhold til Karl, gjentar Vikan og tar fram notatblokka" (Yes, your relationship with Karl - repeats Vikan and takes out a notepad). Before I found out it's the way it works I had few problems with understanding who says and does what.
Of course Norwegians couldn't live without playing tricks with oblivious foreigner, who try to read aloud in their mother tounge. If you think that restaurant (same in English and Norwegian) is read simply as that - you're wrong. It should be "restaurang" with small French accent. Sometimes you also have to forget that there is a letter in a word. Forskjellige (different) should be pronounced as "forsheliye". While g is mostly forgotten to be said, nd changes into double n.
Except for this I can't really cavil. Norwegian is lovely and pretty easy language.
Last, but not least - English (speakers, who laugh they always have to be different). Whole world uses kilograms, meters and they have to stick with yards and pounds. So why it should be different in matters of language?
I could also make some quips about different spellings or vocabulary, depending near which ocean one is in a English speaking country, but then again... Spanish also developed many versions depending in which part of the world it settled. Why they can't see how easy it is in Europe? Every country has its own language. Almost every. Simple and economic ;)
Andrzej Sapkowski
As you can see above Spanish people are very expressive. They have to use a lot of exclamation, question marks. And as a bow (of respect) towards Spanish-speaking countries that are situated in South America they also turn those upside down. What else you can see are dashes above some letters. They are not different from those without those tiny thingies ó is still o and é is e (in my tongue o and ó are not read in the same way; ó should be pronounced in the same way as u), you just have to accent them.
But my favourite thing are sentences like:
"Sí, ¿cómo lo sabes?, ¿tú eres español?"4 question marks and it is still one sentence.
So why they complicate their lives so much? Because they were lazy in the beginning and they haven't thought about such simple thing as inversion when creating questions or adding pronouns in the begining of those. So "Eres español." (you are Spanish) is written in the same way as "¿Eres español?" (are you Spanish?).
Another official reason is that it's to show where sentences are divided, because it's not obvious where the question starts. Again calling the example for above: "¿Cómo lo sabes?, ¿tú eres español?" (How do you know? Are you Spanish?). Apparently the reader could get lost and not know that question about that knowledge is a different one from the question about nationality. Understandable... I also don't give much credit to my interlocutors.
Summing up. Spanish were not only lazy, but are also hasty (with that lovely Spanish r sounding like engine of a little bike; hey, I really like that sound) and think it's better to squeeze as much information in one sentence as possible.
Believe me, it's not :p
However Spanish is nothing when it comes to how in Norwegian dialogues are written. At first I thought I would have to cheat a little bit here, because I was afraid that the author of that short novel we read during our Norwegian classes was creative (and oblivious of the grammar rules). Yet, I checked Agatha Christie's book and it turns out that it is the way Norwegians write. But to the point.
Evelyn setter seg bak skrivebordet. Hun tar opp en sigarett.
- Er det i orden? spør hun og ser på Vikan.
Han har lys til å svare nei, men han nikker. Han likker ikke røyk.
- Mitt forhold til Karl, begynner Evelyn etter at hun har tent sigaretten.
- Ja, ditt forhold til Karl, gjentar Vikan og tar fram notatblokka.
Ny i Norge
Gölin Kaurin Nilsen
Gölin Kaurin Nilsen
As Spanish use dash to "open" dialogue they also do the same to separate spoken text from descriptions like "he said", "she added". Norwegian think that it's more intuitive to do so with a coma. It may work with a question, it may work with simple sentence, but I kind of see an epic fail with "Ja, ditt forhold til Karl, gjentar Vikan og tar fram notatblokka" (Yes, your relationship with Karl - repeats Vikan and takes out a notepad). Before I found out it's the way it works I had few problems with understanding who says and does what.
Of course Norwegians couldn't live without playing tricks with oblivious foreigner, who try to read aloud in their mother tounge. If you think that restaurant (same in English and Norwegian) is read simply as that - you're wrong. It should be "restaurang" with small French accent. Sometimes you also have to forget that there is a letter in a word. Forskjellige (different) should be pronounced as "forsheliye". While g is mostly forgotten to be said, nd changes into double n.
Except for this I can't really cavil. Norwegian is lovely and pretty easy language.
Last, but not least - English (speakers, who laugh they always have to be different). Whole world uses kilograms, meters and they have to stick with yards and pounds. So why it should be different in matters of language?
"Leto said something to disturb you," Ghanima said.
Jessica found herself shocked at the necessity to suppress anger. "Yes... he did."
"You don't like the fact that he knows our father as our mother knew him, and knows our mother as our father knew her," Ghanima said. "You don't like what that implies - what we may know about you."
Children of Dune
Frank Herbert
Frank Herbert
First thing noticed? There are no dashes for dialogues, only quotation marks. This gives opportunity to put part of dialogue (not a quote, which would be totally understandable) in almost any part of a longer paragraph.
Second thing is placement of comas and dots within quotes. Normal people put those outside. Let me compare it to boxes. First we have big pink box, inside of which we have slightly smaller blue and green. Let's say that the pink is a sentence, as a whole, while green and blue are parts of it (that within the quote and description for it). Coma is something that separates those two within a sentence. I would say it's a space in the pink box. Ending dot is cover of the biggest box. So why mix two different things and try to put pink cover onto smaller green box, right?
Second thing is placement of comas and dots within quotes. Normal people put those outside. Let me compare it to boxes. First we have big pink box, inside of which we have slightly smaller blue and green. Let's say that the pink is a sentence, as a whole, while green and blue are parts of it (that within the quote and description for it). Coma is something that separates those two within a sentence. I would say it's a space in the pink box. Ending dot is cover of the biggest box. So why mix two different things and try to put pink cover onto smaller green box, right?
I could also make some quips about different spellings or vocabulary, depending near which ocean one is in a English speaking country, but then again... Spanish also developed many versions depending in which part of the world it settled. Why they can't see how easy it is in Europe? Every country has its own language. Almost every. Simple and economic ;)
Friday 29 May 2009
All you kids in the US
Have you ever tried to do something like this?
And by "this" I mean reprogramming sign as the one above? Apparently it's quite easy. All you need is get your hands on the controller, write default password (if it's changed, resetting it takes 2-3 seconds) and be creative.
Today (and yesterday, for the record) at my University takes place Infoshare conference. Long story short - bunch of geeks meet and talk about new, cool things that happened in the last year and what new features are in the business. I won't bore you with tech stuff like Glassfish, web apps for mobiles and disputes about creating Silicon Valley in our local playground, but in the schedule there's one lecture for normal people - "Hacking ATMs." But advices how to hack those poor machines wasn't the only subject of the 1.5h talk. Apart from that we had some advices on social engineering and how to get free stuff this way.
For sure most of people just want to use ATMs, phone booths (if such still exist in ones country), but there are always those, who think "what will happened if I push this button." It's a kind of challenge, to see if you're able to get that free can of Cola (unfortunately the most you can do is change the welcoming text; but there's always brute force) or open a padlock. As for the latter... I know, which laboratory has laptops and that kind of protection. So next week I'm taking a pen or toilet paper (yes, this also works) and we'll see if I have spare notebook after classes. Opening padlocks is also tempting. Unfortunately skeleton keys are kind of illegal here, so I have to stick to other things to satisfy my curiosity.
ps. I know it's Friday, but people wearing paper bags with "502 Proxy Error" and "No Image" is just too much.
ps2. English punctuation is weird. However there two other languages, which are even more creative - Norwegian and Spanish.
And by "this" I mean reprogramming sign as the one above? Apparently it's quite easy. All you need is get your hands on the controller, write default password (if it's changed, resetting it takes 2-3 seconds) and be creative.
Today (and yesterday, for the record) at my University takes place Infoshare conference. Long story short - bunch of geeks meet and talk about new, cool things that happened in the last year and what new features are in the business. I won't bore you with tech stuff like Glassfish, web apps for mobiles and disputes about creating Silicon Valley in our local playground, but in the schedule there's one lecture for normal people - "Hacking ATMs." But advices how to hack those poor machines wasn't the only subject of the 1.5h talk. Apart from that we had some advices on social engineering and how to get free stuff this way.
For sure most of people just want to use ATMs, phone booths (if such still exist in ones country), but there are always those, who think "what will happened if I push this button." It's a kind of challenge, to see if you're able to get that free can of Cola (unfortunately the most you can do is change the welcoming text; but there's always brute force) or open a padlock. As for the latter... I know, which laboratory has laptops and that kind of protection. So next week I'm taking a pen or toilet paper (yes, this also works) and we'll see if I have spare notebook after classes. Opening padlocks is also tempting. Unfortunately skeleton keys are kind of illegal here, so I have to stick to other things to satisfy my curiosity.
ps. I know it's Friday, but people wearing paper bags with "502 Proxy Error" and "No Image" is just too much.
ps2. English punctuation is weird. However there two other languages, which are even more creative - Norwegian and Spanish.
Wednesday 27 May 2009
7 random facts about me
- I have dark blond hair. Or bright brown. However during summer its colour changes to real blond. During autumn my hair turns dark brown - red.
- Being a procrastinator helped me to develop this superhero power of doing 5 or 6 things in the same time.
- You can call me synaesthetic, which means more less that while looking at word "however" I can smell fresh peas. At 2 a.m. In the middle of winter.
- Bribery means 3 things for me: lemon sorbets, cool earrings and gloves.
- I have 2 phobias. First is connected to spiders (which usually ends with death of those creatures), second - treatment with "bubbles" (see: picture below).
- I drank whiskey with umpires of European Curling Championships (mostly Scots). And after that I was able to stand up and go back to my room.
- Once I'd listened to Ieva's Polka for 4h without a break. Some time later I broke that record by listening to The Knife's Marble House for 10h without a pause.
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