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| Friday, April 1st, 2016 | | 1:22 pm |
| | Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 | | 5:51 pm |
Scotland, 8/8/2009
First half of that day was not very successful. On this day we took the car that we ordered. We ordered from Eurocar and asked to take it from the city with the thought that it is going to be easier than the airport. Wrong. Eurocar Edinburgh city is not far from the airport and you still have to take the bus in order to get there and it takes about half an hour to get there. When we arrived we had to wait for the car for more than an hour, since they had a lot of people there. Since we specified the time, they knew how many people should arrive and on which hours, so they could arrange the shifts accordingly. The guy there was really sorry and we don't blame him - it's a fuck on company level and not personal. ( Photos and movies )In Pitlochry we stayed in the Torrdarach house. It was a very lovely place with very nice owners - they made us tea with shortbread when we arrived and gave us explanations about the area. You might find a little bit problematic if you don't have a car - you have to climb up the mountain to get there and if you carry your luggage it might be not very nice. Otherwise, it's lovely - it has very nice rooms, a beautiful garden and a nice view. Current Mood:  happyCurrent Music: Led Zeppelin - American Woman | | Friday, September 25th, 2009 | | 12:49 am |
Edinburgh - 6-7 and 12-5/8/2009
On the 6/8 I went to Edinburgh. M. joined me on 7/8 and we went off north and got back on the 12/8 and stayed for three days . Some pictures from there Walter Scott memorail (they have sculptures of the many famous Scotts - Hume, Smith and so on):  ( Many pictures )
Places where I stayed:On the first night, when I was alone, I stayed in the Castle Rock Hostel. I totally recommend it. It has everything a hostel should have. Personal lockers with safes, big common rooms, wi-fi, good kitchen and so on. And they are very nice. Really couldn't ask for anything better. A day after that, when M. arrived we stayed in double room in the Edinburgh Backpackers Hostel. I can't really say anything about it - the double rooms are located in another building, but it was fine. And when I came there five days after I left and aked whether they'd seen my charger they were kind enough to give me another charger that was lying there for few month. Finally, we stayed for three days in the Rowan House. It wasn't cheap, but nothing is cheap in Edinburgh during the festival. It's a little bit off-center - it's half an hour walking or 5 minutes bus ride (there are a lot of buses there). The place is really nice. Two points - a) they charge 3% for credit cards. b) the perception of distance is problematic. A laundry place, on the way the buses (at least 3 stops) is "in walking distance". Not with a lot of laundry. Good thing - they serve freshly baked scones with the breakfast and have Nutella. Current Music: Loreena McKennitt - God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen | | Saturday, September 5th, 2009 | | 1:34 am |
Newcastle and Scotland, part 1
Between 31/7 and 16/7 I was in the UK. The first part of it was the EUDC 09 in Newcastle and the second part was a trip in Scotland with M. Most pictures from the EUDC are in facebook, but some are here. This EUDC was particularly successful for Israel - a team from Tel-Aviv, Uri and Yoni got to the main final - first time for an ESL team in five years and first time for an Israeli team ever. I was a judge and broke. I don't know why, but this EUDC was not fun. It was even worse, as far as "fun" goes less then Estonia. I think it's a British problem - their idea of fun is to put a lot of people inside a place where they can stand/sit and hold a glass. It can sometimes be, but on the organizational level I would expect something more. Having said that, I do want to say that organizers really tried to do a good job and worked like crazy. There was just very small number of them and they were on a tight budget, so a lot of things didn't work out very well. The accommodation was at the student dorms. This being UK, they don't share rooms in the dorms. Everyone has a private room - small and without a shower (they are in the corridors), but a private rooms. Right near the dorms there is a park that belongs to the Freemen of Newcastle upon Tyne. If you are part of the freemen, you have the right to let your cattle to roam the park. We had to cross the park few times a day, so it was interesting. The park:  ( Five pictures )Next time - Scotland Current Music: Bush - Personal Holloway | | Monday, July 20th, 2009 | | 11:45 am |
| | Monday, May 25th, 2009 | | 10:03 am |
| | Monday, December 29th, 2008 | | 12:40 am |
| | Monday, November 17th, 2008 | | 1:11 pm |
About ideology and engineering
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) gottfrid here (Russian) was puzzled about how many people that claimed to be apolitical stopped being such during the last municipal elections. He wonders how the very same people do not want to take a stand in all-Israeli things, since these things are not less important than municipal ones. Add to what he wrote the recent screams about the death of capitalism and you'll understand why I'd want to write this post. I'm an engineer. Bear this in mind for later, but meanwhile consider a simple problem. You want to heat a room. Some kind of room. What is the best solution to this? You don't really know, right? First of all, it depends on the room - how big it is, do people live there or work there and etc. If it's a lab with some explosive materials, may be it's not a good idea to heat it at all, for example. Second, there is a question of the outside temperature - it's quite clear that heating requirements are rather different in Finland than in Israel. Even inside Israel there is a difference between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, even though they are only 60 km away. But even if you have all these sorted out, you still have a lot of options. It could be an air-conditioner. It could be an oil radiator. It could be a reflector. It could be central heating. It could be other things. Here comes my first point. Heating the house is a very important thing - it has a financial impact (the energy bill rises quite sharply in the winter) and it has global impact - in some cases it overstretches the electricity grid and contributes to the climate change. However, you don't see (among vast majority of population, yes) "heating ideology". You don't see angry blogs and arguments, people fighting and accusing others in Nazism, you don't see anyone accusing other of being socialist or a greedy bastard thinking only of himself and not considering the poor. Why? Because everybody understands that there is no perfect solution. We understand that there are some unacceptable solutions, like bonfire in the apartment, but realizes that there are plenty of other, non-perfect solutions. Air-conditioning is energy-effective, but is costly to buy and install and it dries the air, something that many people find to be not pleasant. Oil heaters are slow to heat the room, but their effect lasts for long. And etc., etc., etc. So, why do people accept that there are different solutions for such a simple tactical problem as room heating but think there is one best solution for such complicated, strategic problem as Israeli-Arab conflict? The second point is an engineering point. One of the things that we learn at rather early stage that there is no such thing as perfect solution. You always pay something. If it's energy-efficient, it's probably expensive to install. If you want something cheap, it will be less reliable. Think of it - just a camera will always take better pictures than a cameraphone (for the same price), but you wouldn't be able to call to your friend with it. And since you always pay a price, you have decide what you sacrifice. And the sacrifice depends on the conditions and goals. If you want to fly half a globe you will sacrifice motor efficiency for time. If you want good pictures, you'll have to carry around big camera. If you want convenience and to put the camera in the pocket, you'll have to sacrifice the quality of the pictures. It is quite clear, right? Not that clear when it comes to ideology. The capitalism is dead, some say. No, true capitalism and free market is one true answer others say. Democracy will solve all problems, some say. And etc., etc., etc. But two things are quite clear - there is no such thing as "solve all problems". Both socialism and capitalism (whatever your definition of this is) come at price, which is embedded into the system, will always be there and all these can't really be a perfect solution for anything. Second, it depends on what you want to achieve and where. Solving the Palestinian problem might require different approach than solving the Kurd problem and non of the solutions will be perfect. Fixing the economy in EU will require different approach than fixing the American economy for the same reason that heating a home in California is different then heating a home in Sweden. Furthermore, the fact that certain approach didn't work in practice, doesn't mean that it is a bad idea - it just means that the implementation was rather weak. The fact that Chernobyl saw a nuclear power plant exploding doesn't say that the idea of nuclear power plants is wrong - it just says that these power plants need better planning. But for some reasons, what is clear to a lot of people in simple tasks stops being clear to them when the tasks are complicated. Current Music: Afro Celts - Seeds | | Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 | | 1:25 am |
Про наболевшее
Башорг пишет: - Нет, понимаешь винда - это такая большая кнопка "сделай мне заебись". Конечно, иногда она делает не заебись, иногда не мне и иногда не делает, но обычно всё-таки у меня становится заебись. В твоем же линуксе необходимо предворительно набрать 30 страниц описаний понятий "сделай" "я" и "заебись" и если хоть раз ошибешься будет "сделай всем хуево" Ну, да, после того как я полтора дня уже не могу подключить Убунту к сети в лаборатории, и после моего опыта с Линуксом на моём компьютере, не могу не согласиться. Current Music: White Stripes - The Air near My Fingers | | Friday, October 10th, 2008 | | 4:13 pm |
יער עופר
היינו ביום הולדת של ידידה ביער עופר. יש שם מגדל, אפשר לראות רחוק. התמונה, דרך אגב, נעשתה בנוקיה אן 95. לא רע
 Current Music: Marilyn Manson - Obsequey (The Death Of Art) | | Thursday, October 9th, 2008 | | 4:27 pm |
| | Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 | | 11:53 pm |
At this point I went to Hartford, CT, for the conference I arrived for. The conference was rather nice, my presentation went fine and I heard some very interesting talks in the science fiction field. I also visited a friend in New Haven. Do you know what's in New Haven? Yale university. I took some pictures there, but not with my camera, so I'll post them later. My camera was with M. She stayed in NY and dedicated these days for going to museums. I am not a big fan of museums and it was her time. She took almost no pictures, since it is not allowed to photograph in the museums. She did take three pictures in the Frick museum:  ( Many pictures ) Current Music: Alice In Chains - What The Hell Have I? | | Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 | | 12:42 am |
New York, part 1
On 18/8/2008 me and M. flew to the great city of New York for two weeks. It was a first time in the US for both of us, and it was a lot of fun. On the way there we were quite nervous. My passport had been washed a week before the flight. Everything was fine (including the old US visa), except the valid US visa. Which was OK too with all the text intact and etc except the picture, which was totally blurred and unclear. Knowing that American immigration is quite unpredictable, you can understand why we were nervous. But everything was OK. In Turkey, the security guy saw the visa, looked at me and asked "Washed you passport lately, eh?". And in the States, the immigration officer was very nice, brought me on the computer (all the text was OK), checked the visa with magnifying glass and eventually let us in. New York's public transportation sucks. We stayed with our friends in Brooklyn. In order to get to Brooklyn by public transportation from JFK we needed at least 1.5 hours and at least 2 train changes (assuming no wait for the train and that we knew where we were going). The short way, by taxi, is not served by any public transportation kind. US is quite religious (I guess Irish live here):  ( A lot of pictures ) Current Music: The Beatles - I Want You (She's So Heavy) | | Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 | | 10:31 pm |
Lithuania, part 2
On this day I had a walking guided tour around Vilnius. Before it started, I went to the see the Jewish parts of the town.  ( Там внутри доктор Айболит ) Current Music: Louis Armstrong - Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good to You | | Saturday, September 6th, 2008 | | 2:27 pm |
Lithuania, part 1
After the tournament I went for 4 days to Vilnius, to visit my friends. He is a good friend of M since the high school and she is his wife. She was born and lived most of her life in Vilnius. They met in "Taglit" program and after they lived for a while here, went there. Since I was in Tallinn, it was only logical to visit them. I flew there with Air Baltic. You wouldn't believe, but there is no normal rail link between Tallinn and Vilnius. There is a bus, for 30 EUR (10 hours) or plane for 38 EUR (1.5 hours). Guess what I chose. This is the plane, F-50:  ( Pictures ) Current Music: Aerosmith - Beyond Beautiful | | 1:49 pm |
Tallin, part 5
First - some personal pictures. Me with Lior and Era; me and Andy Hume; me and Shaughan Dolan; me posing as rock-star. After the diner we went to the party. The party was held in the museum of modern art or something like that. They had cheap wine (red, white, and white sparkling) and sold some canned beers and water, but didn't have anything to munch on and the choice of drinks was rather disappointing. This is Hannake dancing with Haran. Yes, Hannake was drunk that night:  ( More pictures ) Current Music: The Beatles - All You Need Is Love | | Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 | | 11:03 pm |
Tallinn, part 4
This is Ross Frenett, from UCC Phil. A, debating in quoters with a duck. They didn't go past semis, and I know why - they didn't bring the duck to the semis.  ( Some pictures ) Current Music: Chick Corea - Now He Sings, Now He Sobs | | Saturday, August 30th, 2008 | | 9:26 pm |
| | Monday, August 25th, 2008 | | 12:39 pm |
Tallinn, part 2
 Current Music: Draconian - On Sunday They Will Kill the World | | Monday, August 11th, 2008 | | 11:33 pm |
Tallinn and Vilnius, Jun 2008, Part 1
In June I went to participate in EUDC 2008. For some unknown reason Tallinn won the bid (instead of Hertzelia) and we had to go there. After that I visited my friends in Vilnius. Shall we start? This is Uma, in my backpack, ready to go:  Current Music: Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love |
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