Month: March 2015

How I liked it! Indeed, it’s one of those films that make you want to finish a bottle of Tokaji, opened at the start of it) only 16 actors, a single closed pavilion in Sweden, and six weeks of shooting. A masterpiece!

So, I dreamt of Putin. AAAAH! I didn’t even manage to put on a shirt in my dream. Then I see – a guard is taking our photo. Damn, I thought, what kind of photos will those be. Ran for a shirt, then Putin went somewhere down to the basement via a long staircase, and it turned out to be some kind of glass factory. That’s when I woke up;) thank God. Otherwise, it would’ve continued, and I would’ve been a United Russia party member by morning!

A sample of British humor) looks good right after the Apple presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObD_8OfkSbs

Today we assembled a new model from Lego – a little dinosaur. Now it’s time to program it. In the end, it should work something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=p_zBfAY7azo#t=49

The little dinosaur has three motors – one for each pair of legs and one for the jaw, and for now, two sensors – ultrasonic “eyes” and another inside – to programmatically move the legs correctly. I will do the programming tomorrow. If it turns out interesting, I’ll post a video.

It took about five hours to assemble. A couple more hours will be spent on programming.

Well, what can I say about “The Imitation Game”. A decent film, but tough for IT folks to watch.

Below are spoilers.

The film suggests that Turing worked on creating the machine alone. The rest of his team had little idea how this thing worked, and didn’t really believe it could solve the problem. It’s like they found an alien computer and were trying to use it. I can understand skepticism from the military leadership, but his own engineers!

How does an interest in crosswords relate to narrowing down options for brute-forcing? In our backwoods, every other grandma solves crosswords or scanwords better than a Moscow engineer) Or is it customary in England to solve crosswords by brute force?

It’s unclear why they abandoned manual decryption as soon as midnight struck and the Germans changed the password. It seems that the algorithm for narrowing down options was unformalized, i.e., depended on the size and presumed content of the message and sometimes it led to finding the key.

Unclear how, after the “idea” in the bar, he didn’t have to redo the machine. If there was initially no assumption about lines repeating in all reports, why was this already implemented in the “hardware”?

And the machine itself looks very “glossy”. Those who have made prototypes will understand me)

Sherlock’s ears are constantly visible in Benedict Cumberbatch) But, it seems, this is now his lot for all subsequent films)

Playing Gershwin’s Summertime, kinda jazzy

What’s the best movie to start with – “The Imitation Game”, “Carnage”, “Dogville”, “Boyhood”, “The Lego Movie”, “Leviathan”, “The Equalizer”, “Locke”? If you have watched any three films from this list, which one of the three is a must-see?

I have a theory that I use to explain why Russian speakers find it difficult to start speaking in English. It seems easier in other countries. But ours – they stumble. And they are afraid to start speaking.

The theory is as follows. In Russia, a person with a strong accent is often a native of the former republics, almost always from a different, lower level of life, often uneducated, with whom most language learners do not really intersect in the business environment, and if they intersect somewhere in life, there is a perception of this person as “foreign” – “not from our social circle”. Friendly ties do not really form, and talking about cooperation or partnership often doesn’t even come up. Just because there are simply few migrants in “decent jobs” here. Very few.

As a result, if a Russian-speaking person encounters in a work setting someone with an accent, in 99% of cases, they automatically assume – “it must be some educated European or American learning Russian”. Because there’s this ridiculous stereotype that a Russian citizen cannot speak with an accent and make mistakes in connecting words. There are no such examples. If there are accents and speech errors – it must be an expat. And if without an accent – then our own, “Russian”. When facing a European or American learning our native language, all mistakes are forgiven. Eventually, they are simply not noticed. But if “our own” person starts stressing the wrong syllable in the word “call” or in the word “cakes”, speaks incorrectly “on Wednesdays”, confuses put on/wear, writes “during 1 month”, omits commas, or makes similar mistakes, both feel discomfort – both the one who erred and the one who noticed. Migrants from countries where Russian is “a second language” or “not even a second language” seldom come here for high-, no, not high-, even mid-paying positions.

Now let’s shift to the States and look at the same situation through the eyes of an American. Around him – half the people speak English somehow, yet they are part of his professional circle, and this is how they have lived since childhood. If an American meets someone with an accent who makes gross errors in written and oral language, it doesn’t bother him as much as it does “ours”, because such people – are half the population. And this half – is part of his “immediate circle”. They are colleagues, they are partners, they are his bosses or subordinates.

In Europe, the situation is similar – open borders mix people. Germans, French, Romanians, Scandinavians – all in one team.

The theory is actually that when we make mistakes in an English sentence, we “stumble”, because we think that the listener thinks the worst of us, because that’s how we ourselves react to others’ mistakes in our native language. This leads to the “fear of speaking English incorrectly” among Russians. Forgot an article! Mixed up the tense! Now they’ll think I’m an uneducated log!

But an American or European hears all these mistakes, ignores half of these inaccuracies, and considers all this flawed speech as almost “the norm”. Yes, he will listen more attentively, and even then feels discomfort, but it’s a different kind of discomfort. His brain simply works overtime to extract meaning from your speech, full of errors.

That’s my theory.

P.S. My English is fluent, but I constantly make mistakes. Going to finish watching Birdman in the original language. Maybe I’ll enjoy it that way.

Playing the theme from “The Godfather” (that’s “Speak softly love and hold me warm against your heart” or as it is in Russian “Let’s paint the refrigerator black”)

In the middle of the movie, deep into the night, the pastel scattered, and each of the 48 colored pencils broke into 2-3 pieces. I’m gathering them back into the palette. In such moments, you realize that the blue-black or white-gold dress from recent posts is just the tip of the iceberg compared to searching for a missing piece of one of the 8 shades of yellow by nightlight.