Month: December 2022

Yuki saw the weather outside in the morning and was mesmerized.

Manages to simultaneously sit, stand, and descend

🌧🌧🌧

School is completely canceled for today and tomorrow because of the rain and plus 1º

I finished reading “Endurance” by Alfred Lansing. A very interesting story, it’s a page-turner. The only thing is that you gradually need to get accustomed to the vocabulary, which is unusual for an IT person far removed from the sea.

And to illustrate, look at what a programmer does in about 20 minutes. He downloads the book in EPUB format (found only via Yandex on some pirate sites). Unzips EPUB to HTML. Writes a quick Python script that extracts text from the HTML, breaks the text into sentences, the sentences into words, and converts the words into their normal form (using NLTK). Downloads a word frequency corpus from Kaggle — 333K words with usage frequencies. Then, for each sentence, it calculates two values — the number of words and the number of rare words. Then it sorts the sentences that are at least 10 words long and have a frequency below a certain threshold (500K). Eventually, one of the top results is a sentence that I even remember reading in the book and was just thinking about as something to post on Facebook to illustrate the complexity of the text:

“…A vulgar person who often indulges in whoops and yells of ‘Yoicks Tally Ho,’ had the indescribable effrontery to let go his horrid war cry whilst riding on the imposing conveyance drawn by these dignified but nervous creatures, and was reproved by their indignant owner pointing out to the Vulgar Person into what terror his voice had thrown the beautiful but highly strung and delicate doggies. It is my painful duty to relate that this Awful Vulgar Person the very next day being out with an ordinary team gave vent to his fearsome bellow when passing the ‘Heart Disease’ Team. The result was disastrous, 2 of the poor creatures fainted and had to be brought round with hartshorn, etc., while the remainder went into hysterics until the Vulgar Person and his associates disappeared over the horizon.”

But it must be said that such complex text is not encountered very often. These are excerpts from the diary of Frank Worsley. This sailor expresses his thoughts in a rather unusual way for someone reading his words a century later. The book itself, written from the perspective of a well-educated 20th-century person and journalist, is relatively easy to read (again, one needs to get used to the vocabulary, some nautical terms will have to be googled).

Finished reading “Endurance” by Alfred Lansing. A very interesting story, it reads in one breath. The only thing is that you need to gradually get used to the vocabulary, it’s unusual for an IT person.

And to illustrate, look at what a programmer does with my face in about 20 minutes. He downloads the book in EPUB format (only findable through Yandex on some pirate sites). Unzips the ZIP, finds HTML. Writes a quick script in python that splits the text into sentences, the sentences into words, and converts the words into their normal form (NLTK). Downloads a word frequency corpus from Keggle — 333K words with usage frequency. Then calculates two values for each sentence — the number of words and the number of rare words. Then in Excel, sorts the sentences not shorter than 10 words with a frequency below a certain threshold (500K). As a result, among the first results, we get a sentence that I even remember where I read in the book and just thought about it as something to post on Facebook as an illustration of the text’s complexity:

“…A vulgar person who often indulges in whoops and yells of ‘Yoicks Tally Ho,’ had the indescribable effrontery to let go his horrid war cry whilst riding on the imposing conveyance drawn by these dignified but nervous creatures, and was reproved by their indignant owner pointing out to the Vulgar Person into what terror his voice had thrown the beautiful but highly strung and delicate doggies. It is my painful duty to relate that this Awful Vulgar Person the very next day being out with an ordinary team gave vent to his fearsome bellow when passing the ‘Heart Disease’ Team. The result was disastrous, 2 of the poor creatures fainted and had to be brought round with hartshorn, etc., while the remainder went into hysterics until the Vulgar Person and his associates disappeared over the horizon.”

However, it should be noted that such complex text is not so frequent. These are excerpts from Frank Worsley’s diary. This sailor expresses thoughts quite unusually for a reader a hundred years later. The book itself, written from the perspective of an educated person and a 20th-century journalist, is relatively easy to read (again, you need to get used to the vocabulary, various maritime terms will have to be googled).

Now she came to us, dressed up for the holiday, bringing plenty of joy to the dog. Yuki finds all the Christmas ornaments boring, except for one.

Also, I asked OpenAI to come up with a poem about what is currently in the video. Its creation is in the comments.

At the exhibition, Rudolf de Crignis.

Unexpected!

It turns out that in French, it’s “complicated” with words like love/like/adore.

So, Je t’aime means “I love you.” Generally, to intensify verbs, words like beaucoup (a lot, strongly, “much” or “a lot”) and bien (I love you well, well) are added. It turns out that adding beaucoup or bien changes the meaning not in the way intuition would suggest: je t’aime beaucoup/bien means “I like you”, whereas without these additions it uses the meaning of love. If you want to say I love you very much, you would say je t’aime tellement (tellement translates as so much).

There is also the word “adore”, which can mean very strong feelings, and I really love you). So, if it’s not about a person but about apples, for example, then j’aime les pommes will mean I like apples, but if you want to use love, then J’adore les pommes is used.

(I’m soon going to Canada, vigorously reviving my French, which has almost fallen to zero over 7 years (although it didn’t have far to fall)

Birds of this week. A red cardinal (northern Cardinal) visited us on the balcony, while a hawk (Cooper’s hawk) simply sat in the tree in front of the house watching. Then something upset it

Yuki surprised us today. Suddenly shows up in the middle of the night, and wakes us up so gently. Usually, that doesn’t happen. After waking us, he heads to the bathroom, pawing at the door. We opened it, he entered, sat down, and just looked. Well, I guess the dog was bored. Wanted to open the door for him, so we did. We go back to sleep. A minute later, Yuki is pawing at the second bathroom door on the floor. Then the thought – Maybe he wants to go outside? We suggested it. He ran (usually he doesn’t run much). And indeed, he really needed the bathroom. Something urgent for him. Smart dog, managed to explain 😉

(A fantasy of ChatGPT+Dall-E, the Russian version is below, translated by DeepL – fantasy of ChatGPT and Dall-E, translation by DeepL)

Nadya was a determined volleyball coach who had been at the top of her game for years. She had led her team to countless victories and was known for her tough-love approach to coaching.

One day, Nadya’s 17-year-old daughter Masha approached her with a request. Masha was a competitive figure skater and she wanted her mother’s help in improving her routines.

At first, Nadya was hesitant. She didn’t know the first thing about figure skating and wasn’t sure if she could offer her daughter any valuable advice. But Masha was persistent and eventually convinced her mother to give it a try.

So, Nadya put on a pair of figure skates and stepped out onto the ice for the first time in her life. She quickly realized that figure skating was not as easy as it looked. She struggled to stay upright and found herself flailing about like a fish out of water.

Masha, on the other hand, was a natural. She gracefully glided across the ice, executing perfect spins and jumps with ease. Nadya couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of her daughter’s talent.

Despite her initial struggles, Nadya was determined to help her daughter. She spent hours on the ice, practicing and perfecting her technique. She even started incorporating elements of volleyball into her skating, using her powerful legs to launch herself into the air for impressive jumps.

As the weeks went by, Nadya’s figure skating skills improved significantly. She was no longer the clumsy, flailing mess she had been at the start. In fact, she was starting to look like a legitimate figure skater.

Masha was thrilled to see her mother’s progress and couldn’t believe how well she was doing. The two of them spent countless hours practicing together, pushing each other to be their best.

Eventually, Nadya’s hard work paid off. She and Masha competed in a local figure skating competition and, to everyone’s surprise, they took home the gold medal. Nadya couldn’t believe it. She had gone from being a clumsy novice to a championship figure skater, all thanks to her determination and her daughter’s guidance.

From that day on, Nadya became known as the “Volleyball Coach Turned Figure Skating Champion.” She continued to compete and even started coaching other aspiring figure skaters, sharing the lessons she had learned on the ice. And Masha, of course, continued to shine as one of the top figure skaters in the world.

——

Надя, лучший тренер по волейболу, на протяжении многих лет был на высотке своей карьеры. Она приводила свою команду к бесчисленным победам, но была известна своим жестким подходом к тренерской работе.

Однажды 17-летняя дочь Нади Маша обратилась к ней с просьбой. Маша занималась фигурным катанием и хотела, чтобы мама помогла ей улучшить свои выступления.

Сначала Надя сомневалась. Она ничего не знала о фигурном катании и не была уверена, что сможет дать дочери ценный совет. Но Маша была настойчива и в конце концов убедила маму попробовать.

И вот Надя надела фигурные коньки и впервые в жизни вышла на лед. Она быстро поняла, что фигурное катание не так просто, как ей сначала казалось. Она с трудом держалась на ногах.

Маша, напротив, была естественной. Она грациозно скользила по льду, с легкостью выполняя идеальные вращения и прыжки.

Несмотря на первые трудности, Надя была полна решимости помочь своей дочери. Она проводила часы на льду, тренируясь и совершенствуя свою технику. Она даже начала включать в свое катание элементы волейбола, используя свои мощные ноги для впечатляющих прыжков в воздух.

По прошествии нескольких недель навыки фигурного катания Нади значительно улучшились. Она уже не была той неуклюжей, неуклюжей, какой была в самом начале. На самом деле, она стала выглядеть как настоящая фигуристка.

Маша с восторгом наблюдала за успехами мамы и не могла поверить, что у нее все получается. Они проводили бесчисленные часы вместе, тренируясь, подталкивая друг друга к лучшим результатам.

В конце концов, упорная работа Нади принесла свои плоды. Они с Машей участвовали в местных соревнованиях по фигурному катанию и, к всеобщему удивлению, завоевали золотую медаль. Надя не могла в это поверить. Она прошла путь от неуклюжего новичка до чемпионки по фигурному катанию, и все благодаря своей решимости и наставлениям дочери.

С этого дня Надя стала известна как “тренер по волейболу, ставшая чемпионкой по фигурному катанию”. Она продолжала участвовать в соревнованиях и даже стала тренировать других начинающих фигуристов, делясь с ними уроками, полученными на льду. А Маша, конечно же, продолжала блистать как одна из лучших фигуристок мира.