[ Fun ] You know you're Eastern European when...

1.You had to share a room until you were 21.

2.Everything you eat is savored in garlic and onions.

3.You are standing next to the two largest suitcases at the airport.

4.You arrive one or two hours late to a party - and think its normal.

5.All your children have nick names, which sound nowhere close to their real names.

6.You talk for an hour at the front door when leaving someone's house.

7.Your mom tells you you're too skinny even though your 30 pounds overweight.

8.Your house is full of medicine from your old country and it's probably all illegal here.

9.You and your friends have been kicked out of a restaurant or recreational park for being too loud or rowdy.

10.You dont know how to use a dishwasher b/c u are the dishwasher.

11.You have a vinyl tablecloth on your kitchen table.

12.You use grocery bags to hold garbage.

13.Your dad has butchered a pig or lamb.

14.You don't use measuring cups when cooking.

15.If you don't live at home, when your parents call, they ask if you've eaten, even if it's midnight.

16.Your parents don't realize phone connections to foreign countries have improved in the last two decades, and still scream at

the top of their lungs when making foreign calls.

17. It's "normal" if your wedding has 600 people.

18.Your 15 year old sister can out-drink any American guy.

19.You drive a nicer car than your parents.

20.Your dad carries around enough money to buy a car.

21.You have all brand new appliances in your kitchen but your mom cooks in the basement with the stove from your old house.

22.Your parents have gone on vacation ONCE and it was to your home country.

23.You base your whole life on the fortune in your coffee cup

24.Your parents still prefer to buy cassettes instead of CDs.

25.You're actually nodding and laughing at most of these things

26.You 're a proud Eastern European and pass this on to your European friends.

27. your non-english speaking grandmother gives a shocked looked when you say 'pizza'

28. you wear french connection and other designer clothing when going to work out

29. you carry liquor back here from your country in plastic sprite bottles under tons of clothing in the suitcase

30. You have 17 consonants and 2 vowels in your last name

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Yeah, so? At least we have the best food, the most beautiful women, we don't see people weighing 200 Kg on the streets and we know how to enjoy life.

[ IT ] Whitespace Language

The guys here, decided that it will be fun to create a programming language whose syntax contains only of spaces,tabulations and newlines.

And here it is! I would try to program something simple in this language, but a look at the examples section just erased this intention of mine. Anyway, for sure it will be very hard for someone to say that your program is not ordered,or that it is not readable and you should not be concerned for anyone looking in your screen now :-)

Furthermore you can go to a meeting with your project leader with a bunch of white sheets and explain him what a great things this program does...

and so on

Mainly jokes...

Ok,I add a simple example here:

Below is an extract from a program which asks for a name then outputs it:

####################################

  

 
 

####################################

[ Fun BG] Team building

Действие Първо: Мотивация / Де-мотивация В една клетка затворили няколко маймуни (екип). В клетката имало кашони (ресурс) и банан, закачен на тавана (награда). Една от маймуните (лидер) наредила три кашона един върху друг, покачила се по тях и взела банана. От тавана започнала да пръска студена вода (намеса на Топ мениджмънта). Маймуните се разбягали. Закачили нов банан. Друга маймуна наредила кашоните, покачила се по тях и взела банана. Пак запръскала студена вода. Останалите маймуни я набили и изяли банана (работа в екип). Закачили нов банан. Сработил "рефлекса на Павлов" - щом една маймуна решила да вземе банана, другите я набили, защото знаели, че всички ще бъдат намокрени, но не всички ще ядат банан (групова отговорност).

Действие Второ: Силата на екипа
Намесил се HR отдела. Подменили една от маймуните (развитие на екипа). Новата маймуна решила да вземе банана, но останалите веднага я набили (фирмена култура). Постепенно подменили всички маймуни. Последната нова маймуна решила да вземе банана. Другите усърдно я набили, без да знаят защо - те никога не били мокрени (Team Spirit). 

[ Fun БГ] Chessboxing

Е това вече,тотално ме втрещи!!! Спортът наречен шахбокс. И не само това,ами вече е минало и първото европейско първенство.И не само това, ами дори и шампионът е българин! Значи не само ,че имаме световните титли за шах при мъже и жени и няколко олимпииски титли по бокс,но вече сме шампиони и в смеската им. Идеята на спорта е да се редуват рундове по бокс и блиц шах. Абе на кой му хрумват такива идеи ,че дори и успява турнири да организира,това е просто ненормално. Въпроса е че ако си много добър шахматист и видиш пред себе си някой 120 кила, злобно гледаш, кубинец,е тогава наистина имаш стимул да матираш в 4 хода :-) ... Някой навит за спаринг търся?

[ IT ] Vint Cerf,the Vice-president of Google, in Saarbruecken

Vint Cerf (Turing Award 2004 -meaning very important person at the moment) visited Saarbruecken on 10.03.2006.This event was preceded for us by a dinner with a Google engineer and a recruiting lady. At the dinner they told us the known story of what a nice place,with intelligent and open people, open and interesting Google is. The bad thing is that to some extent they actually convinced me in this. But anyway I am not to be trusted with respect to this , because I am by default a Google fan.However Vint made a good show, making the audience laugh a lot. But somehow at the end of the day when I asked myself ,what was the idea behind the talk it was a hard question to answer.Still I have some idea and I want to present it here in short. First, even though they claim it was a recruiting talk,somehow it was not a talk about Google at all. It was a talk about an idea that Google is promoting as the next step in the development of the Internet and the network as a whole. The idea was very simple - from now on some research should be focused on the direction that all devices will be connected to the Internet and how to manage this infrastructure in order to be open,secure and scalable. All devices,computers,telephones,washing machines,ovens,fridges and even photo frames. That is why it is our goal now ,us in the universities,the so called research community to develop standards and designs and not to leave it to the commercial companies to do it. Mainly because they are driven by other goals than "making the world better".Thus Vint was more talking to the big researchers in the room like professors and post-docs advising them which will be an interesting,hot and supported research field.At least this is what I understood,however the talk was interesting and funny and I am still looking for the above mentioned picture frame connected to the net. 

[ Personal ] EU Parliament Strasbourg

Yesterday, we went to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. I was astonished by the interesting architecture and remarkable interior design. Furthermore Strasbourg is very interesting city with very nice small streets,french people everywhere and a lot of fascinating buildings. However it was extremely cold so we didn't see as much as we wanted :-(
Anyway what we are left from this excursion is the news that Bulgaria and Romania are going to enter the EU earliest in 2008. This was mentioned as indisputable fact from one of the gentlemen in the picture(German representative in the EUP),while he was explaining some of the current issues to the german group that we were with. He didn't consider it an open topic at all ,he mentioned it in a sentence like: "..with the new members joining in 2008,we need to do now this and that...". This was in German of course :)
However since we requested more details on this topic ,he was very surprised by our current standing. He said that it is known to most of the people in the parliament that we cannot enter with the current state of our justice department and corruption levels.
He said it is only a question of formallity to make this decision official.

Congratulations and lets hope for 2008! 

[Personal] Jazz Concert

Wow. Today was my first jazz concert. This was a really strange experience. Four guys in front of some average 40 years old audience,claiming to know what exactly were they playing but in fact there was no melody, no coordination...nothing. At least this is what it sounded like. Maybe I am absolutely wrong but anyway I'll give it a second shot ...someday...stay tuned 

[IT] Google Updates

A few comments on the Google recent developments:

 

Google Base: Google is going into the eBay's and all online actions business and as we know,when Google goes to some new web development sure as hell they do it good. And this can mean only one: hard times are to come for eBay and the other famous auction sites. However we as users are very much interested in the new big player in the auction game cause this will mean improvement of the service quality that we receive.

 

GDrive: Recently more information was released on Google's intention to provide users with online storage drive with code name GDrive. With the idea that the users can store all their files on this drive for free,thus accessible from every other point on the web,the only issue which will concern the end users is the security. Once again Google makes large steps towards collecting enormous amount of information. With the quality of the data mining procedures that they have we can all expect to have new "world leader" soon.

 

Videos from the Googleplex: Google were kind enough to make us a part of the atmosphere in their camp by sharing some of the talks given their with the community. This is a great opportunity for which all we need, is a good Internet bandwidth. Thank you  :)

 

Google Page Creator: A new very interesting idea from the Labs is the development of page creator. Of course in their typical style Google will provide us with easy tools and hosting for our web pages thus getting rid of all the nasty details for us.

 

Google is on an interesting path of retrieving and structuring all the information in the world...I wonder where will this end?!

[Interesting] Bermuda Triangle

Recently I watched a documentary which showed what kind of paranormal events are happening in the Bermuda triangle. I got interested and i visited the wiki page as a first source of information( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Triangle ) .It provided me with much more satisfactory information. It is written in a sceptical style but still If you read the "scientific explanations" section ,you will notice that some of these explanations ,like "Tidal waves" and "Methane hydrates" sound much artificial. After reading about the famous incidents with missing Flight 19 and Star Tiger airliner I still think there is a lot about our mother Earth that we have no clue of!

[Fun] Germany

http://www.zenadsl5692.zen.co.uk/WeAreSinking.swf

 

Enjoy Germany ;-)

 

[Fun BG] Иванчо - приказки за програмисти

На Иванчо са му дали 3 ябълки.
Той е изял 2.
Колко ябълки има Иванчо?
Мислите си че 1?
Ама никъде не е казано, колко ябълки е имал Иванчо преди да му дадат 3-те.
Извод - нулирайте си променливите!

Иванчо има 3 ябълки. Дали му още 3. Той изял 2. Колко ябълки има Иванчо?
4? Неееееееееее! 6! Двете ги е изял един ден по рано.
Извод - синхронизирайте си нишките!

Иванчо имал 5 ябълки. Изял 2. Колко са му останали?
3? Нееее! Той не е ял свои ябълки! Пак има 5!
Извод - защитавайте си адресното пространство!

На Иванчо му дали 3 ябълки. Той ги изял.
На другия ден дошли да му ги искат, защото били дадени само за съхранение.
Извод - четете си спецификацията.

та така се програмира значи...

гледайте си ябълките

 

[Fun BG] Български език,омаен сладък

Събрали се учени - лингвисти на симпозиум, за да обсъждат езиковите проблеми. По едно време така се обърнала посоката на дискусията, че всеки взел да хвали колко съвършен е неговият език, как дадено чувство можело най-добре да се изрази и т. н. Нашият представител слушал, слушал, па накрая му писнало да слуша глупости, станал и теглил следната реч:
"Дами и господа,
моите почитания към вашите езици, но няма по-богат и цветист език от българския. Ето тук съм ви приготвил няколко примера в подкрепа на твърдението ми:
1. Кажете, има ли някой език на тази планета, на който да има дума, означаваща нещо средно между "капе" и "тече"? Няма такъв. Аз съм проверил специално. А на български има - "църцори".
2. Има ли някой език, на който да има 4 степени на сравнение - няма. А на български има - далече, по-далече, най-далече, на майната си.
3. Има ли език, в който да има минало незапомнено време? Хе хе - няма. А на нашенски има - Бил съм се напил.
4. Имате ли вие бъдеще евентуално време в миналото? Нямате. А ние имаме - щял съм бил да работя.
5. Колко начина имате по заобиколен начин да кажете "не знам", когато ви питат нещо? Общо взето всичките се свеждат до един: "I don`t know" "No idea" "I got no clue". А вижте ние колко по-заобиколно можем да го кажем: "Казва ли ти някой!", "А сега де!", "а - сега ме хвана!"
6. И накрая, господа - хайде кажете - има ли език, в който да има една такава дума, която да може да замести всяка друга дума в този език? Няма! А на Български има - това е думата "такова".

[Fun] European union Language

The European Union has just announced an agreement whereby English will be
the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was
the one other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's
Government has conceded that English spelling does actually have some small,
but significant, room for improvement and has thus accepted a 5-year
phase-in-plan of these improvements that will eventually become known as
"Euro English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly this will make
the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of
"k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one letter less.

In the sekond year, there will be growing publik enthusiasm when the
troublesorne "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like
fotograf 20 persent shorter!

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected to
reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments
will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a
deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the
silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. By the fourth
year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z", and
"w" with "v".

During the fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords containing
"ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil
be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech
oza. Ze drem of a United Urop vil finali kum tru. If zis mad u smil ples pas
on to oza pepl.
Zen ve vil rul ze vorld!!!!

 

[Fun] Men :)

1. The nice men are ugly.

2. The handsome men are not nice.

3. The handsome and nice men are gay.

4. The handsome, nice, and heterosexual men are married.

5. The men who are not so handsome, but are nice men, have no money.

6. The men who are not so handsome, but are nice men with money think     we are only after their money.

7. The handsome men without money are after our money.

8. The handsome men, who are not so nice and somewhat heterosexual,     don't think we are beautiful enough.

9. The men who think we are beautiful, that are heterosexual, somewhat     nice and have no money, are cowards.

10. The men who are somewhat handsome, somewhat nice and have money       and thank God are straight, are shy and NEVER MAKE THE FIRST       MOVE!!!

11. The men who never make the first move, automatically lose interest      in us when we take the initiative.

NOW...WHO IN THE HELL UNDERSTANDS MEN?!?!

"Men are like fine wine. They all start out like grapes, and it's our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something you'd like to have dinner with."

My first blog post

This is my first blog post. I hope this is "the beginning of a beautiful friendship".