La nouvelle chansonette francaise

I didn't listen for a while any French music, but recently I saw on a wall this chansonette :)



And I liked it.

Royals

If elegance is an attitude (like in the Longines commercials with Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf), couldn't royalty be the same? Just rule your world, but also be kind with it, and voila, you are the king of your castle :)

New Placebo Song in Town

Today I heard on Radio Guerrilla a new song by Placebo, Too Many Friends. Apparently this song is so new, that I didn't find it on YouTube! Or maybe they have a very aggressive copyright protection policy. However, I found a cover of this song which actually sounds pretty good, so here we go:



I like also the lyrics about the proliferation of virtual friends/"friends" for which you will not really be able/want to be there for. And this is really true my friend...

Update: After two more weeks the official version of this song appeared on YouTube:

Dr. Spock

I started reading a new book about 8 weeks ago and it's very instructive. Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care is a reference book for taking care of your baby and child in U.S. and I guess even worldwide. It's not only about the practical advises that one can read about like the possible causes why the baby might cry, but it also gives you an overview of how the child will develop and how the parents should learn to deal with all these new problems, learn not to panic and still enjoy the ride. It's not a book to read in a few days or weeks, but in the years to come.

Everybody's Changing

Everything changes when you have a child, so like the song says: everybody's changing and I don't feel the same :)

Se habla espagñol

"Se habla espagñol" is the poster I saw in many store windows in U.S., indicating to non-English speakers that they can be served in Spanish inside. That's what I'll try to do myself, for those who would want to talk with me in Spanish, and not in Romanian or English. I've been trying to learn Spanish for a long time, as I like very much the sound of this language (probably because I have problems pronouncing the sound "s" and I sound similar to how it is pronounced in Spanish). I also like many writers of Spanish language, like Llosa or Marquez and it would be nice to read their novels in original one day. The problem with foreign languages is that you need to make a sustained effort over a long period of time in order to become proficient and as I will do it for fun, I may become easily distracted into something else. Not to mention that I would also like to learn a million of other things, but my time resources are more and more constrained lately :) So what makes me so confident that I will manage to learn Spanish this time? Well, it's a site called Duolingo that I discovered recently (via this blog post). Their approach is very interactive, it covers all aspects of communication (reading, writing, hearing and speaking). They also have a track record, and levels that can be unlocked only if you get a certain number of points, so it's like a quest game. And they also have a mobile application, so you can do a lesson or some exercises every time you have a few spare minutes. All this content is free and even if you are not into Spanish, they also offer lessons for German, French, Italian or Portuguese.
After all the computer languages I've studied since finishing high school (Java, C, C++, Prolog, Lisp, OCaml, Python, SQL, PL/SQL, XML, HTML, BPEL and probably more) it's nice to study a human language again :)

LLA

The whole song is about going to Radio Guerrilla, right? It's like a long gingle, but it's nice though...

Off & On

If you ever asked yourself if I like obsessive songs, then yes, I do like obsessive songs. So here's a new one from Findlay, a band so new that they're still offering free mp3 downloads on their site. Kudos to Radio Guerrilla and their musical board for bringing this band to Romania's radio waves.

Robot Rock

This is one of the coolest applications of computer science I've ever seen. A group of robots performing a rock song: there is a robot playing drums with four sticks (like Bonham from Led Zeppelin) and another two playing bass and guitar, but also headbanging while playing. What's missing is the vocals, but I'm sure they're working on it.

Where Do the Ducks Go?

If you read The Catcher in The Rye by Salinger you may remember the question that one of the characters asks himself:

"I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. … I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away."

Since this is a famous book, the administration of Central Park felt compelled to offer an explanation here. I can confirm from my visits in IOR park from Titan that the ducks on the lake don't migrate in the winter, they are always there.

But other birds do migrate, so the question is legitimate in their case: where do they go when they go? Luckily, the modern technology is helping again, so by attaching a transmitter to a small eagle's leg a team managed to track the exact migration pattern of the bird for a couple of years. You can see in these maps how the eagle (called Narcis) flew each autumn over 10.000 kilometers from Sibiu county in Romania to Turkey, Egypt and all the way down to South Africa. And back in the spring. Isn't that amazing?

Moonlight Breakfast

The sound, the rhythm, the voice, all are very good in this band. I can't get enough of them, so I decided to post two songs: "No More", a sad song which reminds me on Amy Winehouse (although the voice reminds me of Duffy), but not quite depressive like Portishead:
and "Play", a happy song with an unexpected clarinet solo:

Is one hour enough?

Today it's Earth Hour, that one day when people around the world turn the lights off for an hour, showing their respect for the planet Earth. The cynics say that one hour in a year of turning off your lights makes no difference in the end, but this event is about much more than that. Not only that WWF (the NGO that had this idea in the first place) organizes many other events related to this day (like the contest for the official Earth Hour city which was organized in Romania and which resulted in collecting over 9 tonnes of plastics, or the pledges I will if you will), but more important, Earth Hour is about changing people's attitudes towards our environment. If that hour in the dark will make you think before you print the next day, or about the products you consume the next week, or about the water you waste every day, or about how to recycle all the plastics that you through away then the effects will be bigger and everlasting the few watt hours that you save in that hour. So go on and enjoy tonight's "dark" hour!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

And a traditional Irish song for today:


And if this doesn't say much to you, try this version:

Pure nostalgia

I always liked this song, but I never knew who sings it. Until yesterday when I heard it on the radio in the car and I decided to find out its name once and forever. This was not on the playlist of Radio Guerrilla, the voice didn't sound familiar and I couldn't remember the lyrics, so it was a tough task to find it. I looked first at a list of most famous alternative rock bands, I picked some that I didn't know so well, then I started looking among their songs: Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, but no luck. Then I searched some tops of all time best alternative rock songs and I tried listening the ones I didn't recognized on the list, but it was too time consuming. Then I found another type of top, a collage of best songs compiled but somebody. So I just listened the collage until I recognized the song I was looking for: 1979 from The Smashing Pumpkins.

Another plugin bytes the dust

Two years ago I went to a conference at University Politehnica of Bucharest and in one of the panel discussions there was a topic about the future of web technologies. I stated my point that plugins in browsers are annoying and the trend in the following years will be to get rid of them. Some guys from Adobe Romania were very vehement and upbeat about the future of Flash especially. Two years on the situation is clear: Flash was banned on iPhones and iPads for stability and security reasons, Adobe announced that they will no longer develop Flash and open-sourced the Flex platform, we have a version of YouTube that runs videos using HTML5 player. And a few days ago Mozilla released a new version of Firefox that has a PDF viewer, so you can see PDF files in browser without using the Adobe Reader plugin. I am on the beta update channel for Firefox, so I had this feature for a couple of months and it works just fine. Since the PDF viewer is written in JavaScript and it's open source I expect a similar feature to occur in the other browsers in the near future. Enjoy!

El Plato Supreme

The patent war goes to Super Bowl. Maybe you heard about patents, but even if you didn't, they already affect your life one way or another. The principle behind the concept of patents is correct, namely to protect one's invention for a period of time, so that he can excessively benefit from her idea. The problem is that this system leads to everybody rushing to claim a patent on any idea they have each morning and to formulate their brand new idea as vague as possible, so one can later claim that is applicable in different places than where was used originally. In IT field the result was also a series of patent wars and lots of litigation, which further made companies acquire as many patents as possible in what is effectively an arms race. The latest war of this kind is between Samsung and Apple over the design and features of smart phones and this war was brought to the most watched television event in U.S., the Super Bowl final in American football, by the commercial bellow. Enjoy the game!

More good music and good tennis

It seems the year started well for my stumble on music discovery, cause I found another cool band, this time on the monitors from Hard-Rock Cafe in Bucharest. Silversun Pickups produced 3 LPs so far, but they are still in the phase of opening concerts for other bands (like Muse or Placebo).



On the other hand, the first grand slam of the year in Australia produced an epic match between Djokovic and Wawrinka. Below is the match point after 5 hours of play, one of the most beautiful match points I ever saw:

A Short History of Nearly Everything

After his analyses of English and U.S. societies and into Shakespeare, Bill Bryson turns his eye on science in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything. Mr. Bryson was trained in humanities, but he still remembers a diagram from the fifth grade describes how the Earth looks inside if slice it to its core. What haunts him is the question: how the heck do the people know what is inside the Earth since nobody really dug a hole to its center? That led him to embark on a quest of three years of documentation about the history of natural sciences that resulted in this book. His write is entertaining as always and he shed light not only on the various scientific discoveries, but also on the many characters behind them. From well know figures (like Newton or Einstein) to less know people who were often unlucky to discover something but not be recognized for it or even worth be derided for it (like the Englishmen who had the intuition of the periodic nature of chemical elements a couple of years before Mendeleev, but was not taken seriously). It is a fascinating history that makes you fully appreciate the great distance that science evolved in the last 300 years. We are know taught in school in 12 years the gist of the work of thousands of people over hundreds of years, so no wonder it's so hard to get a grasp of it for many of us.
What amused me most was the attitude that was prevalent towards the end of the 19th century. After the discovery of gravitation, laws of mechanics and electricity, magnetism and thermodynamics and the principles of chemistry many people considered that the science discoveries were almost done, with only a few nuts and bolts remaining to be clarified to complete the picture of how nature works. As Mr. Bryson says: "In fact, of course, the world was about to enter a century of science where many people wouldn't understand anything and none would understand everything. Scientists would soon find themselves adrift in a bewildering realm of particles and antiparticles, where things pop in and out of existence in spans of time that make nanoseconds look plodding and uneventful, where everything is strange."
At least we are more humble know about science, especially that the two main theories from the 20th century, general relativity and quantum mechanics, are yet to be reconciled. The quest goes on!

511

I don't watch actively the music scene nowadays, but sometimes I stumble upon gems like the one below. Although they sing for many years and I even heard about them sometimes at Radio Guerrilla, only a few days a ago I listened some of the songs from Alternosfera. The sound is incredible and I also like the Moldavian accent of the lead vocals guy. Enjoy 511, a kind of ars poetica from Alternosfera.

Cum am devenit producator de ler

Pe cand eram student la Maryland am avut parte de o experienta foarte interesanta. ASTROM (Asociatia Studentilor Romani) era condusa de unul din colegii cu care locuiam in casa, asa ca am participat si eu la multe actiuni de-ale lor. Iar una din preocuparile constante ale ASTROM era organizarea de spectacole cu artisti romani care faceau turnee prin State (asa am ajuns sa ii vedem pe cei de la Divertis sau trupa teatrului Nottara, de exemplu). In acei ani inca nu era moda concertelor de sarbatori in Romanai, asa ca Hrusca, fiind stabilit de multi ani in Canada, facea in respectiva perioada spectacole pentru comunitatile de romani din Statele Unite si Canada. Intr-unul din ani s-a hotarat sa vina si in zona Washington DC si cautand oameni de contact in zona a ajuns la ASTROM. Cum nu prea erau oameni disponibili la acel sfarsit de an pana la urma m-am oferit eu sa ma ocup de organizarea acelui eveniment, adica sa fiu un fel de producator. Primul pas a fost sa cautam o sala, de obicei gaseam sali in campusul universitatii, dar atunci a fost o problema, asa ca a trebuit sa caut in alta parte. Pana la urma am ajuns sa inchiriem o biserica anglicana din zona. Am batut palma cu cei de acolo, am trimis emailuri la oameni cu data si ora spectacolului si acum credeam ca lucrurile sunt gata. Insa cu trei zile inainte de spectacol ne suna Hrusca sa ne spuna ca a ramas fara instalatie de sonorizare. In mod normal el isi aducea singur instalatia, dar de data asta la intrarea in State vamesilor li s-a parut suspect ca se cara cu asa ceva dupa el, desi nu declarase ca vine in scopuri comerciale (va dati seama ca toate spectacolele astea se faceau la negru, banii incasati nefiind declarati la fisc), asa ca nu l-au lasat sa intre cu aparatura respectiva. Iar noi fiind printre primele locuri unde avea sa vina ne-am trezit ca trebuie sa facem rost in doua zile de o instalatie de sonorizare. Pana la urma am gasit o firma care inchiria asa ceva, dar era nevoie sa o si transportam. Am gasit mai multe masini si am carat boxele alea cum am putut, am intins cabluri, testat microfoane, dar pana la urma total a fost gata la timp. Desi am "produs" si eu la ler in acel an, nu am aflat nici atunci mai multe despre ce e acest ler. "Leru-i ler" va intra in legenda definitiilor recursive alaturi de "GNU in not UNIX", asa ca mai bine urmez indemnul celor de la Kamikaze: ler it be :)

La Multi Ani! si tot ce va doriti in 2013.