My favourite place in Romania

The video was taken last year, in Bucegi Mountains, Romania. This is one of the most amazing places in Romania. What you see is just one of the breathtaking landscapes along the pathway to the top of the Omu Peak. If you decide to spend the night on top at Omu Cabin, take a glimpse of the sky at midnight. You will see millions of shiny stars that punch an infinite immaculate black curtain. An exclusive nature show only for you.
Sometimes in the morning, you find near the two thousand meters plateau a sea of clouds, and give you the impression you really are in an isolated, heavenly place.

I go there at least once per year. Unfortunately, this year I'll be far away. :(

Credits for video and pictures goes to Ionut and his cool Canon S5. :D

Gmail domain taken

"Give to Germans what belong to Germans"! Today, when trying to access gmail.com, I got the following message:



Apparently, Gmail lost a trademark trial in Germany, with some guy who owns G-mail, another website. Now, I have to access my mail using the address http://mail.google.com/. I don't like it.

Google translates Romanian

Finally, Google translates from Romanian to English and vice-versa. Is this a sign that the number of Romanian programmers at Google is getting bigger? :D

Via Vivi

Translate this post in Romanian

WTF

This song just keeps popping into my mind with apparently no reason.



Weird, it took me some time to find it.

Iasi on Google Maps

Finally, Iasi - my home city - can be seen in better quality on Google Maps. I could even find my block of flats.
Thanks Loredana :)

What I learned today

These are some random things that I learned/found out today:

- If you loose something in Germany, you have big chances to find it at the local City Hall. If you don't claim it in 6 months, the City Hall sells your stuff for almost free, in a public auction.

- If you loose your wallet in Germany and police recovers it, you receive it by post. One friend Ada, lost her wallet. After two days, she received it by post - sent by the local police. Both money and documents, cards were still there.

- Buying a bike in Germany is cheaper than buying a new wheel for an old one.

- I have 6 phone numbers where I can be reached. Two of them can be used to perfectly track where I am with a precision of less than a meter.

- If you listen to your mp3-player while riding your bike - and have an accident - insurance company won't pay you any money. I still listen to music when I ride my bike.

- One in three women will trade their password for free chocolate (sorry, it's only in German :(). I will try this during the next month.

- Bucharest, a city that I don't personally find special, can look very well from up above.

Image of Bucharest, Copyright doisase

Romanian words - ciufut

Ciufút
English pronounciation: cioo-foot

One that is ciufút can either be avaricious or simply somebody who has bad moods very often. I personally think that the second definition fits better.
Ciufút can also be an attitude, a way of living. Ciufút people can also be funny sometimes.

Example of ciufút attitude:
- I can't find my watch.
- You lost it! (notice the ciufútness)
- Hmm, I don't think so.. I never loose things.
- Then one of your friends must have stolen it from you.

The future has come

Yesterday I took part at a very interesting speech of Professor Hiroshi Ishii from MIT, which was the keynote of the TEI Conference taking part in Bonn. He presented very interesting work in the area of Tangible User Interfaces coordinated by him at MIT. It wasn't one of that boring technology speeches, but more like a quick look into the future. It was more like a vision of a creative and happy humankind interacting with high-tech physical objects.

At the end of his presentation, one of his students showed the video of a project on which he worked on, and which will be released in 2-3 months from now: G-Speak (an identical application like the one Tom Cruise used in Minority Report). Cool! That's even more science fiction than Microsoft Surface! Imagine 3 years from now, every police department having such a wall.

Plumb - Damaged

Here is a song that just sticks in your memory once you hear it. I like its soft & melancholic rhythm (doubled from time to time with short piano strokes), simple lyrics and the spatial and dreamy melodic line.

Recommended by Tudor.

UAE shocks again

After shocking the world with Burj Dubai, an almost 1 kilometer tall skyscraper, UAE does it again: Masdar City will be the first non-polluting city on Earth.
I definitely would like to see other cities investing big amounts of money in that, in the near future.

German grade conversion formula

Today, I got my first result from a German exam. If you didn't know, the German grading system is a bit different from the Romanian one: the grades are from 1 to 5, where 1 is the maximum grade and 4 is the last passing grade (5=failed). So, if you get 1 at your exam in Germany, you don't have to cut your veins, or jump from a building - but rather go out and buy your friends some beer, because you're da' man.
Also, you can have grades with fractions, like 1.3, 1.5, and so on.

Today I got a result that didn't tell me too much, because where I come from, the grading system goes from 1 to 10 (where 10 is the maximum grade). So, I came up with a formula to convert from German grades to Romanian grades:

RomanianGrade = 5/3 * (7 - GermanGrade)

If you want to have fun converting your grades from Romanian to German grading system, use the following formula:

GermanGrade = 7 - 3/5 * RomanianGrade

Glass noodles

Today, my colleagues from China gathered in my flat's kitchen to celebrate Chinese New Year's Eve. They also cooked "glass noodles", and invited me to try. They are really tasty, and very spicy. Actually, delicious!!!

Plate of "glass noodles"

The upper-left part says "medium spicy", but my mouth was already burning :D

This is how the pot looks like.

People gather around the pot, and eat for a couple of hours. It's more of a social thing like shisha, or chimarrao. Everybody picks stuff from the pot (shrimps, noodles) and when it gets empty, they refill. Cool!

Rheinland goes crazy

Tomorrow is Altweiber. All shops will close, and the carnival will be celebrated on the streets. Everyone will wear costumes, dance and sing carnival songs. Although I am not a fan of buying costumes for just one day, at least I tried some of them on. :D

Funky ...

Jailbird costume :)

Leapsa de voci

I was tagged by Simona, with the "vocal tag" ("leapsa vocala"). Hmm, 3 of my favourite voices in romanian music industry? Simplu .. (not the band) ;)

1. Andra (and here)
2. Holograf
3. Celia

Tag goes further to Bianca and Marius :)

Un blog interesant

Iata un blog care merita tot respectul! E al lui Marius Ursache, fondatorul Grapefruit. In fiecare an, cam jurul Craciunului, omul isi alege o destinatie exotica si porneste, incercand sa evite pe cat posibil drumurile batute des de turisti. Cititi mai multe aici ...

Winter holidays

I just came back from Romania, where I've had great times with my relatives and friends. The new year's eve caught me and my girlfriend in Baile Herculane, a wonderful resort with thermal spas in the South-Western part of Romania.


All the above pictures are from Baile Herculane. To see more, visit my Picasaweb gallery.

Above is the entry to Brancusi House Museum; very traditional. Check out other pictures here.

Cellphone finder

I found a cool service from O2 Germany. You can locate your phone if you loose it, or it gets stolen (only in Germany). To do so, you need Internet to login to your O2 web-account, and click on some link. The good part is that it's free too.

You can also use the service to track others.

Going home for holidays

Finally, some free time! First half of the semester is over, so I have a small holiday. The school is quite tough here. I have to better appreciate free time. For the next weeks, I will try as much as possible to be a couch potato, and to ignore my laptop (including Internet, Facebook, messenger).

Now I'm in Bonn, attending my last lecture. Later, this evening, I'll be in Vienna, enjoying Elisir D'Amore, by Gaetano Donizetti at Vienna State Opera, and hopefully visiting the Christmas Market too. Tomorrow morning I'll be in Bucharest, and by the end of the week I'll arrive in Iasi, my dear home city.
I'm really looking forward to spend some time with my family and friends again.

The intellectual "tag, you're it" :))

I was tagged by Marius. Here are the rules:

1. Take the book that is the closest to you.
   
2. Open it at page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence (including).
4. Post the text of the following 4 sentences on your blog.
5. Don't dare to search for that very special or "intellectual" book through your bookshelf.
6. Pass "it" to 6 friends.
   

The book I always carry in my backpack is "Fundamentals of Computer Graphics" by Peter Shirley and at page 123 you can read:

These days, postmultiplication using column vectors is fairly standard, but in many older books and systems you will run across row vectors and premultiplication. The only difference is that the transform matrix must be replaced with its transpose. The transpose A(T) of a matrix A is one whose rows are switched with its columns.

Tough book, but interesting if you can understand all the mathematical concepts. I hope I will pass the exam :P

Later edit: I tag you, the one that read this post. If you pass it on, write a comment.

Want to be cool?

After reading Simona's post, I thought I should do it too. You should now call me AREKKUSU. :))

Japanize your name too