Driving in the countryside

Prea bun, prea ca la tara (i.e. too good, feels like countryside):



The name of this song translates as "village after village" and the song evokes driving in the countryside.

An education. Which one?

In the domain which I studied and I practice now, computer science, there are four universities that are constantly ranked (often with an equal score) the best in the world: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, University of California - Berkeley and Stanford University. Last week I was in Silicon Valley, on a business trip to Oracle head quarters and I took this opportunity to visit the campus of Stanford University which is nearby.
Let me give you a few facts about the Computer Science Department at Stanford:

•  one of the emeritus professors they have is Donald Knuth, the author of one of the most influential books in this field, "The Art of Computer Programming"; on the cover of one of the editions of this book there is this quote from Bill Gates: “If you think you're a really good programmer… read (Knuth's) Art of Computer Programming… You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing."; 
• here studied the founders of Google and got the idea of the page ranking algorithm that transformed the on-line world in the last 10 years; you can read their paper here; 
• a team from this department build the first self driving car (which I think it will transform our lives in the future) and won a contest organized by the US army research labs (DARPA); watch a presentation of the concept here; 
• on the other hand this department is taking part in an experiment of distributed high quality education by offering to anyone in the world who is interested free on-line classes on various topics, like this one which I attended a few months ago, or these listed here; 

Bellow are a few pictures from campus where you can notice that all this is made possible partly by the donations of people and companies who truly believe in the value of education.
Campus entrance on Palm Drive:

Computer Science Department's building named after the biggest donor who helped to its building, Bill Gates:

The list of people and companies that donated for the new building of the Computer Science Department:

Now I'm back in Romania and here are some other facts that you might know about if you are around:

•  two months ago a person nominated for the Romanian Ministry of Education was forced to skip the nomination after it was discovered that she lied about having a degree from Stanford University (the name of the university was actually miss-spelled as Standford in her CV); 
• the next nominee, with a degree in computer engineering, was forced to resign after proofs of plagiarism in at least three of his published papers; 
•  last week the prime minister of Romania was also accused of plagiarism in his Ph.D. thesis where he copied more than 100 pages from other books and papers; 

You should ask yourself in what kind of society do you want you and your children to live: one in which education is valued and can lead to advances in science and a better life for all of us, or one in which education is just mocked? And if you care you should act every time you can.

As for myself, I know what I stand for.

Would the real good people please stand up?

This is a song called The Streets from a Romanian TV series Good Boys about mafia boys (the good ones) and the police (the bad boys):



Here is an approximate translation of some of the lyrics:

This is a place where you wouldn't dare to go
You may possibly win, but you will probably loose
So many slicks like here you can see only in Vegas
And you wouldn't believe how some turn into whores
This is Romania's capital, this is Bucharest...

Now don't get sacred, that was just a movie and Bucharest is a peaceful place, but it still has its problems (like corrupt and populist politicians), so this is my question (inspired by Eminem) for you for the coming elections: would the real good people please stand up?

Changing Skins - Baby

Well, spring is that time of the year when many animals change their skin, so I found something suitable for this season. They are a Romanian band with a very nice sound in my opinion.

A few pictures from Maldive Islands

I spent many hours under this coconut tree 

Various banana types at the local market in Male

Ocean view beach

The orchid garden

Pool - the cocktail bar is behind ;)

Baby shark

Sting-ray having dinner at the sting-ray feeding show

Sunset on the Sun Island

Tuna fish at home

A walk and a run in the city

This week-end I took a walk and the run in Bucharest. The walk was on Saturday was organized by Urban Ideas, a blog dedicated to urbanism and hot it should be applied in Bucharest. The walk was in the Unirii and Mircea Voda areas and the talk was about the new civic center build in the eighties under the direct supervision of Nicolae Ceausescu and what was the impact of this development on the city. You will see city plans and pictures from XIX-th and early XX-th century, what were the plans for city development back then and how the communist era changed everything. How entire neighborhoods where demolished including churches and how some churches were saved by being moved so that they will not be visible from People's House or the main boulevard. There were two interesting hours, followed by one more hour of discussions on urbanism in a coffee shop nearby. Apart from this tour they organize two more, one in Foisorul de Foc (Fire Lookout Tower) area and one in Mihai Bravu - Baba Novac area. 
On Sunday I went to a 4km fun-run race on the route Piata Charles de Gaulle, Arcul de Triumf, Piata Victoriei and back. The organization was not good and the weather was rainy, but in the end we ran and it was fun :)

Millennium Trilogy

I didn't see the movie The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo yet, but I decided to read the book instead. In fact, this is only the first book from a trilogy, now I'm actually at the third book and it gets better and better. If the first novel is about an old family mystery, the second and the third are getting into police investigations and secrete police activity, but keeping the main characters from the initial novel. Highly entertaining for a vacation on a tropical island :)

A Veces

Back to work... a veces :)



I've seen this song on Nat Geo Music which I didn't know it even exists until a few days ago.

Return to the twenty first century

I first heard about Ioana Parvulescu for her books about the old Bucharest from 19th century and the period between the two world wars. So now I read her latest book, Return to the Twenty First Century, which is collection of journal notes and columns from the magazine of Romanian writers union (Romania Literara). The book describes the life in Romania at the beginning of this century with the good, the bad and the ugly. Many stories are about books, their authors and their readers and how they constantly interfere with our life in the most unexpected ways. Overall, it is an enjoyable read from the land of dragons, as this is how Romania is portrayed in one of the Harry Potter novels :)

Simon's cat in his very own book

The ones that spend time on the internet and sometimes "catch" viral videos probably know about the Simon's cat who makes poor author's life miserable at time, but highly entertaining for the rest of us. Here is the first video with the cat trying to wake up his owner:

And another one which is more appropriate to the current season in Bucharest, snow business:
 The reason I write about this famous cat is that I recently got from a colleague two of the comic books which continue the career of the YouTube cat: "Simon's Cat in his very own book" and "Beyond the Fence". They are funny to read and I can testify that at least some of the chapters are real, like the ones on the cat and the vacuum cleaner and on how to put the cat into a cage :)

This could be spectacular

As usual, taken from an advertisement :)
This time it's about a legal online music site which is about to be launched in Romania: Zonga. It seems I'm in the target audience for this service, ain't I?

Rock, alternative rock

Since Santa already granted my wish and I already got my tickets for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers concert in Bucharest, I have one more wish for the organizers of this concert: to open it with a performance of Zdob si Zdub, which is probably the best alternative rock band in Romania (they are actually from Basarabia aka Republic of Moldovia) in the last 20 years. I know they opened the RHCP concert in Moscow in 1999, so I think we deserve them too. Meanwhile here it is one of their songs having the unmistakable combination of rock and traditional music.

Extreme wedding song:

On the Beautiful Blue Danube

Every year I try to watch the New Year Concert of Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, which is a unique type of celebration of the new year, classical music and even more. The concert has many waltzes and polkas mainly from Strauss family of composers, but what stays the same is the ending with the An der schönen blauen Donau waltz and Radetzky March. Well, Danube is a very special river, at least for me cause every time I cross it at Cernavoda (Cernavoda actually means "black water" so it seems people there had a different view of the color of Danube) on my way to Constanta I feel I'm getting home, so I'm glad there is such a beautiful waltz dedicated to it. Here are the two pieces mentioned above from this year's concert:

On the Beautiful Blue Danube



and Radetzky March

Book of the year

The book of the year award has a different meaning this time and goes to my Kindle device which I started using a few month ago and which promises to greatly reduce the physical size of my library. They made a good job at making the e-book readable in almost any kind of light, at it's very nice to be able to have a library in your pocket at any time. The first books I read on my Kindle were some poetry by Eminescu and two novels by Phillip K. Dick: Minority Report and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? A long time ago I read Time Out of Joint by Phillip K. Dick and I found it one of the most fascinating SF books, very different from the usual settings of robots and wars among empires from the SF stories. The same are the two books that I read recently (there were also movies made starting from them Minority Report and Blade Runner). The author imagines hypothetical worlds and then asks fundamental questions about these worlds. In world where one can see the future, should we imprison the ones that will commit crimes before they actually commit them? Or in a world where robots are so advanced that look and behave like humans should we have anti-Turing tests (i.e. tests that try to distinguish a robot from a human) and "retire" the robots that fake their identity and pretend to be real humans? It's easy, you see. And then you just start to write characters and captivating stories which analyses your fundamental questions. I'm just getting started with my Kindle, so there will be many more books to talk about in the year to come. Stay tuned!

Remember the times

Today we celebrate 22 years since the fall of communism in Romania. Here is a satirical song from that period about how you could see cheese only at TV, but not in the stores. I know it seems incredible and every time I told this kind of stories to people from western Europe or U.S. they shake their head in disbelief, but those were the times we lived. Let's remember once again, cause you know how that saying: those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Invest in a software developer today!

The post about hug a developer today was by far the most visited entry on this blog ever, so I think it's about time to push it to the next level. In these dire financial times, but at a moment when holidays are approaching, what better option do you have than to invest in a software developer? Because according to the well respected business magazine Forbes:

"The one absolutely solid place to store your capital today — if you know how to do it – is in software developers’ wallets. If the world survives looming financial apocalypse dangers at all, this is the one investment that will weather the storms. It doesn’t matter whether you are an individual or a corporation, or what corner of the world you inhabit. You need to find a way to invest in software developers."

You don't really need to read all the details in the article, as the author at some point thinks very low of us software developers, but it's important to understand the basic things: how tough and miserable the life of a software developer can be (please insert a hug here) and, on the other hand, how good is an investment in a software developer (probably the best investment you can do at this moment). So here is a very easy way you can profit from this once in a lifetime opportunity: I officially open my wallet for donations investments from anybody interested in such a good business. Contact me and I will provide detailed instructions on how to quickly transfer your money in my wallet. I can even promise to write a few lines of code for each donation deposit received :)

Don't waste time anymore: invest in a software developer today!

More cover power

It looks like we are in the cover season, bands are producing more of them and in the last year every concert I attended contained at least a cover performance. Omul cu Sobolani even released an LP containing only covers called Retro. So here are two more covers (the first one from this band is here) from this LP. One of Alexandru Adries, Cea mai frumoasa zi (The most beautiful day):



 The other one is a cover of a much older song by Mondial, but one of my favorites songs from childhood (I remember I had a 45 rpm single vinyl disc with this song which I listened to many times, instead of doing homework of course :))



You can listen the original version of the song by Mondial here:

The Bad Girl

"The Bad Girl", or "Travesuras de la niña mala" is an unusual novel from Mario Vargas Llosa. The action takes place mostly in Europe, there is only one narrative thread, but above all, it is a love story that follows the entire life of the heroes (including the good boy half). The storytelling style remains the same though, so I submerged like always into the sea of words of Llosa even if I opened the book for five minutes in the subway or I read from it for hours.

The kid that runs towards sea

An outstanding music video featuring one of the greatest Romanian actors, Victor Rebengiuc:


and the story of this video:

Romania care este cu Tudor Chirila si Victor Rebengiuc pe apropotv.protv.ro

AI Books

Last week somebody asked at the online office hours for the AI class I'm taking this fall (a great class by the way) about other AI books that we should read apart from the textbook of the current class (Artificial Intelligence - A Modern Approach). The answer from Peter Norvig was to point to his public list of books from Google Books. So if you ever need some good references of all kind of AI books (planning, logic, machine learning, agents, games, natural language processing, philosophy, robotics, search, vision, programming) you can find it here.