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Archive for November, 2007

Soviet architecture: MSU building

27 Nov

There are a lot stereotypes about Soviet periods of Russia (and of course those republics as a part of Soviet Union), but what’s really hilarious and comes to a standstill when you see the architecture of that non-existent country.

Just check out some photos of 50′s and present time of Moscow State University, which was built in 1954. I’ve resized some of them via Flickr account, however you can find out more pictures here. The author tries to compare the composition of MSU environment planned in 50′s with chaotic ensemble of New York skyscrapers. You can use Google Translator to check the post.

Evzerikhin_7

Evzerikhin_1

univer_1-1

IMHO,looks gorgeous!

 
2 Comments

Posted in Design, Links

 

About Russian piracy

26 Nov

Dmitry Chestnykh gives a nice review of Russian piracy, and the reasons of its appearance, stating “laziness” as its main cause.

Definitely, a lack of shopping services and/or its inability of serving transaction procedures is also one of the statements, here I agree with Dmitry.

However, I’m curious how many people really buy software products in Russia, because a simple googling will give bunch of forums and portals where you can find tones of cracks; thus using a cracked software becomes really easy. Prising policy is definitely another cause, but it’s 21th century – we’ve got lots of open-source software solutions which in some points are better then paid software products.

And when are they going to purchase software or any other products paying for them?..

 
8 Comments

Posted in Blogging

 

Tune of a day: 5nizza – Hmari

25 Nov

P.S.: Hmari stands for “sky” in Ukranian

 
2 Comments

Posted in Heap

 

Irony of The Matrix movie

21 Nov

It’s already 8 years, when the first movie from Matrix trilogy came out. After a couple of times, watching it with friends at the beginning I liked it. Some interesting ideas, scenario approaches, story line.

Comparing it with those movies released in 1999, Matrix was awesome. But I’ve never thought of the facts like:

  • Agent Smith looks like a typical garbage collector with AI encapsulations. Could you imagine this utility with some humour and irony nowadays.
  • Neo. A tiny bug in the system with machine learning capabilities. Of course, later on we’ll understand that’s not just a simple bug, however knowing the story in full, looks a bit amusing.
  • Piphia, or a lady with a vase. Statistical path analyser. Looks like a Best-cost algorithm with some sophisticated evaluation functionality and a sense of humour. So you shouldn’t worry about the vase!
  • Cypher, or a bad good guy. A very very greedy bug – impossible of being fixed – thus, rewritten from scratch or simply deleted.
  • Switch,or the only girl in white. Very small and fast transition from “enable” to “disable” states in the movie!
  • Mouse, or lady-in-red boyfriend. C’mon, there should be at least one kid hacker, otherwise that’s not a hacker movie!

Waiting to watch the Matrix Reload, hopefully, so more amusing computer alternatives will appear which I didn’t noticed back to its premier.

 
4 Comments

Posted in Blogging

 

Safari Browser on j4vk.com

19 Nov

stats

Not so long time ago, Apple released Safari for Windows platform, and as the result this browser gained some popularity on Win machines. At least, that’s what you can see from my Google Analytics charts.

Of course, each blog’s got different stats and measurements on visitors browsers, however I do like this achievements of Apple Inc.

What would really enhance the popularity of Safari is plug-in development community, because so far it’s not small. It’s terribly weak: 6 plug-ins.C’mon, it’s ridiculous!

 
2 Comments

Posted in Blogging

 

Tune of the day: 5nizza – Spring

18 Nov

 
No Comments

Posted in Blogging

 

Access Outlook with Java

18 Nov

Few connectors, someone may want look at:

 
No Comments

Posted in Heap

 

Programming Lego NXT Robots with RobotC

14 Nov

Chris Anderson from Wired Mag gives a great article covering some issues concerning Programming environment of Lego Mindstorms robots using different programming languages.

For anyone who’s ever programmed, there’s nothing better for understanding programming logic than properly tabbed and commented code, all in a column of text as God intended. And for your kids, there’s no time like the present to introduce real programming, using coding conventions that will be as relevant in the decades to come as they were in decades past.

Simple and straight advantage of RobotC platform – coding in plain C, with well written Documentation on each function used for NXT’s. For the last month, RobotC upgraded from v1.05 to 1.10, so there are some improvements and updates from Carnegie Mellon University developers.

A great news is that for our projects on Robotics and Automation subject, we have switched from Microsoft Robotics Studio to RobotC due to some reasons:

  • Lack of documentation on MRS (Professional MRS from Wrox will be published at the end of the year)
  • Missing some simulation sensors’ files for NXT (can’t test all the capacities of sensors without robot)
  • Not all of students run Windows (but it can be managed via Wine)
  • Full access to encoders and sensors data in simple programming manner.

As more sensors are about to come in stock, I believe NXT will become one of the easiest ways of implementing Robotics concepts and algorithms for students.

 
No Comments

Posted in Cyprus

 
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