Thu, 21 Jan 2010
Thesis Proposal
OK, I have managed to defend my Ph.D. thesis proposal and to pass the doctoral exam. Now I "only" have to write the Ph.D. thesis itself as outlined in the proposal.
Tue, 19 Jan 2010
Digital Slot Cars
We have got a new slot cars set for Christmas.
I had one when I was a child, and I quite liked to play with it,
build and tune my own cars, etc.
Several years later, we had an 8-track
slot cars simulator
in our SGI computer lab. Well, today's state-of-the-art slot cars systems
are completely different beasts to what I used to know.
The system we have is SCX Digital 1:32. I have bought an F-1 set with one additional car (guess which one :-) and some track parts. The features and my experience so far include:
- The speed of the car is communicated in a digital way rather that by changing the voltage in the rails, so it is possible to have several cars in a single lane without interfering with each other, to overtake, etc.
- The car can change lanes using a separate button on a controller.
- It is possible to race with refuelling in a pit box, and the players can choose their own refuelling strategy: a near-empty car is a bit faster, the car uses less fuel when not driven at full throttle, etc.
- The cars are fast: the system has so called "junior mode" with a limited top speed, and a full speed mode, which is very hard to use without derailing frequently. Even in junior mode, I use the full throttle only in a finish line.
- The cars have adjustable magnets under their rear axles, so they withstand much higher speeds in curves than what I had been used to from my childhood.
- There is also a lap counter, but it counts the laps for the leading car only, so after derailing several times nobody knows whether he is two meters or two laps behind the leader. The full timer and lap counter can be bought separately, though.
- The cars have adjustable electronic brakes. I usually set it to 0% in junior mode, and to 50% in full speed mode.
There are only two drawbacks: firstly, it is probably the most expensive slot cars system available, and then the F-1 cars are very brittle. Especially the mirrors of Ferrari are prone to snapping off.
Tue, 17 Nov 2009
Footwear Waterproofing
This year's Tmou with its almost start-to-finish rain has made me to think again about my approach to waterproofing my boots. I have about eight years old Hanwag Alaska Nubuk leather boots with Gore-Tex membrane (which is definitely not functional anymore after these years). So the leather is now the only barrier between the outer wet conditions and the inside of the boot.
In the last few years, I have used wax-based water proofing (e.g. Granger's G-WAX). It worked, and the boots remained water resistant for several times of usage. However, I often had my feet wet from the inside, as I tend to sweat a lot.
Recently I have bought Granger's G-MAX Leather conditioner, which is not as "thick" as a wax, but apparently the boot is still water-resistant. I have however had no chance to test it in rainy weather until this year's Tmou. Expecting heavy rain during the competition, I have applied several layers of the leather conditioner on my Alaskas.
I was rather surprised that this time not only the boots remained water resistant, but I also had not my feet wet from the inside. Probably the wax, unlike the leather conditioner, keeps the boot air-tight, causing the feet getting wet because of sweating. So far so good, but there was another rather unpleasant surprise after Tmou: when my boots dried, the most exposed parts of the leather (namely foreparts) were completely dry as if it were just to crack.
Is it expected? Do I need to waterproof my boots again only after a day in a rainy weather? How do you waterproof your outdoor boots, my dear lazyweb?
Mon, 14 Sep 2009
Svíčky 2009
As in previous years, also this year I took part in an outdoor puzzle solving competition - Svíčky. This year the weather was better than the last year.
You can read the description of problems, their solutions, and other detailed data at the competition pages, and you can read the report from our team in Honza's blog.
At last, we have won the game, even with a time-machine-like step caused by a misplacement of the papers with the last problem. It is nice to be a winner after so many years :-)
Tue, 21 Apr 2009
Pragocentrism
I live in a country with population of about 10 milion, with the capital Prague with about 1 milion inhabitants. Today's rant will be about narrow-minded journalists living and working in Prague.
I frequently ran into a blatant cases of pragocentrism. For example in almost every traffic news in a country-wide and state-funded radio station Radiožurnál they use formulations like this: "there is an accident in the Brno motorway in a direction to Brno". WTF? Which of the three motorways heading to Brno do they mean? The D1 from Ostrava? The D2 from Bratislava? No, of course they report from the perspective of people living in Prague, so naturally with "the Brno motorway" they mean "the motorway from Prague to Brno".
Another one was a few days ago, also on Radiožurnál. They were doing an interview with a candidate for the minister of the interior (who currently works as the head of the anti-monopoly office, the institution located in a barren countryside far away from Prague, namely in Brno :-). The first question was "Have you already get used to living in Brno instead of Prague?". Mr. Pecina replied something like: "I don't understand the question - I am from Frýdek-Místek, I have been living there for almost all of my life, except only one short stay in Prague.". The journalist had naturally expected that every important person must have been from Prague. That said, the journalist was really stupid anyway and she manifested it several other times during that interview.
Another case of Pragocentrism is more general. In the main news of the Czech TV (also state-funded), they often report about Prague-local things (such as some affairs of mayor of some part of Prague or even of a mayor of Prague, building some tunnel or some stadium in Prague) during the main part of the news, even though they have a separate part "news from the regions". Also when doing a coverage of a country-wide event such as elections, they report about the situation in Prague, and then they say something like "and now we will look into the regions". WTF? Prague is not a region? Why should the Prague-local news be forced to us by state-funded media as something important?
I know I probably sound like some women-rights or some minority-rights activist with a well-developed inferiority complex, but hey, about 90 % of citizens of this country do not live in Prague! Journalists, keep that in mind, please. My dear lazyweb, is a ${your capital}-centrism also present in your country? Is there even a Brnocentrism from people living in Brno towards people living near Brno?
Fri, 27 Mar 2009
Status Update
I am still alive, but busy doing a real-life work rather than writing about it :-) In the meantime, I have received my results from the JLPT 3 exam: I have passed, but with lower points than I had from JLPT 4 last year. So the next step would be JLPT 2, requiring about 1000 more words and 600 more Kanji, definitely not a task for the next year only.
Tue, 09 Dec 2008
JLPT 3
After a year, I went again to Budapest, to undertake a next level of Japanese language exam. A month ago I tried to do a pre-exam test, from which I had 57 % (the limit for the exam itself is 60 %). So I hoped I would manage to gain those remaining 3 % in the last month by studying hard.
In the end, I am not sure. The real exam was definitely harder than a pre exam, and I have a worse feeling from it. However, I have managed to learn almost all the required vocabulary and Kanji, so in this part of the exam I have definitely improved. The listening sucked as always, though. Fortunately, listening is only a small part of the exam. And as for grammar, there was less questions where I was totally sure about the answer, so I only have to hope my partial guesses have been correct.
If I fail, nothing happens. After all, the expected study time for JLPT 3 is 300 hours (of which 150 are supposedly required for JLPT 4). So far I have studied the JLPT 3 textbook for maybe three months only, one hour a week, so I am not exactly expected to pass the exam with this amount of work (altought I spent a good amount of time studying vocabulary and kanji myself besides regular Japanese lessons).
The results are due in March, so we will see.
Sun, 02 Nov 2008
Stepping Madness
People around me became addicted to dancing computer games (like Dance Dance Revolution, Stepmania, or In The Groove). I have to admit I tried it, and became addicted too. We have even bought our own dance pads and we dance^Wstep at night.
I think it is an excellent way of exercising in the late Autumn, when it
is not possible to ride a bicycle because of instable weather.
Even people with different level of skill can play together. Also there are
many stepcharts, so one can even listen to the music he likes, instead of
default songs. (image taken from the DDR Wikipedia page)
Stepmania has a Linux version (I had problem with it on my laptop with Intel chipset). I have also tried to compile it from the source, but failed because of incompatibilities between my newer C++ compiler and older Stepmania source code. I wonder why people these days still use C++ when it cannot sustain two or three years of the difference between the source code and the compiler. The CVS version compiled correctly, but needed a different format of the config files, which I did not have time to dig into further. In The Groove works flawlessly under Wine, though. It is pretty amazing to see how advanced Wine has became - it can even handle a 3D-accelerated game with synchronized sound (however, some people complained of worse sound sync than when running natively), USB joystick devices, etc.
Give it a try, it is really good!
Tue, 12 Aug 2008
Alpha 700
My old camera stopped working with any memory card bigger than 512 MB, so I have finally decided to buy a true D-SLR. Having several Minolta-A mount lenses and a Minolta-compatible flash, I have decided to buy a Sony Alpha, which is a successor of Minolta (later Konica-Minolta) cameras.
I had a great dilemma choosing between α350 and α700 (both links point to in-depth reviews at dpreview.com). The first one is a newer "higher entry-level" SLR with 14.2 megapixels, live view on a tilting LCD display, etc. The latter is a semi-pro body about a year older, 12.2 megapixels, bright pentaprism (cf. pentamirror in α350) viewfinder, etc. But no live view.
After reading the above reviews and the article "Which Sony Alpha?", which directly addressed my dilemma, I have decided to go for a slightly more expensive α700 (the difference was not so big because I wanted the SAL 16-105 lens, which is sold in a set with α700, but has to be bought separately for α350).
Want to see the photos? Look at the last page of the above reviews. Some of my own photos are here (not edited, just scaled down; click for the full version):
This one has been taken by my wife.
From a tearoom in Hlinsko, IIRC.
Zelená hora in Žďár nad Sázavou.
Even the photos in a foggy weather are not bad.
So, after several weeks of using α700, I can wholeheartedly recommend it. Maybe it does not have many exceptional functions, but for many of them there are dedicated buttons, which means you can actually use those functions in real life shooting. Nobody who is in a hurry would use functions hidden in some deep menus. Also their dynamic-range optimization really works and is useful, as well as their anti-shake system built in the body (instead of in the lens, like other vendors). So far I have found only one drawback: the exposure bracketing can bracket by at most 0.7 EV steps, which makes shooting frames for HDR[?] photos from hand difficult. The only workaround I have discovered is to use five frames instead of three, which gives you a range of +/-1.4 EV. Another drawback is that my home workstation is too slow to handle 12-Mpix files, so I would probably have to upgrade soon.
Update - Thu, 20 Nov 2008: Fixed in new firmware
The version 4 firmware adds a wider EV range of bracketing (upto +/- 2 EV), so the problem with usability for taking HDR photos from hand is gone. Good. On the other hand, the α900 full-frame body is out now, so my α700 is officially obsolete now :-/
Mon, 30 Jun 2008
Barcelona
Two weeks ago (yes, I am too busy to write a blog now) I have been to Barcelona. One of the busiest tourist destinations in the world is definitely an interesting place.
I have spent most of the time at the conference, and it is not possible to see even the most famous sights in such a short time. Few things I have found interesting:
- The system of public bicycles (see above). I can't imagine having such a system in Brno (not only because of almost non-existent cycle roads).
- Working system of public transport (their multi-fare ticket T-10 can be used even for funiculars).
- Exceptionally wide main streets: usually a wide walkway and a cycle road on each side, two or three car lanes on each side, and sometimes a tram track between them. Also the street names were interesting: two of the biggest streets are named Paralel and Diagonal (which is not parallel to Paralel :-).
- Interesting architecture (not only Gaudí's work).
- Bilingual labels (in Catalan and Spanish). For a foreigner it is quite funny: you see a label in two very similar languages you do not understand, and none in English.
As for the conference itself, it has been a disappointment. Often the author of a well evaluated paper is not a good presenter. The most interesting presentations were those which showed at least some practical result (by practical I mean something that even I could understand, not something like "We have successfully used ontology in the context of X"). Probably the most interesting talk for me was the last keynote presented by somebody of Yahoo!, who has told pretty interesting details about their search engine and its distributed implementation.
In the same hotel as the conference there was a meeting of Japanese people living in Barcelona (or something), so at least I had an opportunity to say few Japanese words and to see real Japanese women in kimonos :-).
Tue, 11 Mar 2008
What is Jabok?
One of the Iva's favourite pastimes is that she thinks up a random word and asks me whether it does mean anything. Yesterday she asked: "What is JABOK?"
Well, I happen to know what Jabok is, so I said Jabok is a school. She thought up another one and asked: "Is it also a school?" I said I don't know. "Why?" "I don't have a big enough head to hold the names of all schools in the world there". Her answer was really stunning:
"Does an elephant know all those names?"
Mon, 10 Mar 2008
JLPT-4 Done!
As I wrote before, last December I have taken a Japanese Language Proficiency Test (4-kyu) exam. Today I've got the results: I have fortunately passed with 348 points out of 400 (i.e. 87 %), which is not so bad.
Now let's see whether I can manage to pass the 3-kyu this December. It means about 200 more Kanji and 700 more words learned, not counting things like grammar. So far I have found the following site with JLPT 3 resources. Unlike other sites, they at least have the Kanji and vocabulary in plain text form (and not Kanji images), so it is usable for importing into the learning software, etc.
Also I have found a nice archive of images of Kanji stroke order (available as animated GIFs or still PNGs with all phases in one row), and it even has a relatively free license, so it is usable in the learning software without tricks like deep linking.
Thu, 17 Jan 2008
Roomba?
Yesterday's Hyena writes about the robotic vacuum cleaner. I have looked into this (having the flat cleaned when you are away looks tempting :-), but I think I need more references.
So far I have found Roomba robots (they even have a user-programmable version designed for hackers!), and I have read some reviews. There seem to be some problems:
- I did not find whether it is available in the Czech republic (well, there is www.irobot.cz, but it seems outdated and there are even no newer models).
- Or, can it be bought somewhere with the Czech wall plug inlet and the European warranty?
- I have read the robot is quite noisy. Is it true?
So, my dear lazyweb - do you have Roomba or some other vacuum cleaning robot? Where did you buy it? And would you recommend it?
Wed, 05 Dec 2007
Publish or Perish
Another deadline of the last month was a paper submission deadline to some conference. Well, I have decided that because I work for the company where academic titles matter, I need to restart my Ph.D. study.
I have submitted a paper about a (herein unspecified :-) problem, which I have tried to solve recently. The results are so far promising, so maybe they will accept the paper about these results as well.
When I have failed my previous attempt, it was mostly because my lack of time for doing a research in a topic that was not exactly related to my job. So I have decided that if I ever want to re-enter the Ph.D. study, the topic has to be something which I am directly involved in. My current plan is to have the sufficient number of publications first, and only then enroll to the Ph.D. studies, with the dissertation thesis topic already written. After defending it, submit the dissertation thesis itself.
Maybe I will have more luck this time.
Tue, 04 Dec 2007
JLPT 4
I am sorry for the infrequent updates of this blog - I have been rather busy lately. One of my deadlines of the last month was the Japanese Language Proficiency Test exam, which was scheduled to the last Sunday.
There are only few exam sites in Europe, with the nearest one being in Budapest. Because the test was scheduled at 10:30 am, we have decided to go there a day before, and stay in a hostel over night. We have booked a room in Astoria City Hostel - it was relatively cheap with even breakfeast included. However, the beds were not very comfortable, and the hostel was quite noisy (esp. for those who want to sleep well before the exam).
The exam started an hour later than it was announced. The most annoying part of the whole process was the supervisor of our exam room: altought there were people from all over Central Europe there (even Serbia, Croatia, or Slovenia), he only spoke in Hungarian. The other supervisor was a woman which, when we asked "What that man said during his 10-minute speech?", said one or two English sentences, which we even couldn't understand, because the man was still speaking loudly :-(. Talk about rudeness.
As for the test itself, I think there is still a chance that I have passed JLPT 4. The Kanji and vocabulary part was quite easy (altough it would help if I could distinguish between the left and right side ;-). The listening was quite hard, as well as some grammar parts. An evening before I have tried to redo some exercises from our textbook, and I made the same errors like I did when we wrote those exercises before. Almost no improvement since then :-(. We will see some time in February or March, when the results will be announced. If I pass JLPT 4, I want definitely try JLPT 3 next year.
