Journals

The magic finger: Video Link
(and for members like DiscoStu: no, I will not be shoving down your throat 720p quality, you choose the quality :P).

This is just a little experimentation with camera movements. Done because I hadn't something else better to do( what a lie, I actually had, but at least this helped get rid of procrastination).

[EDIT] In the making:If you wonder how I did the smooth shot around the bullet as it traveled, here's how I did it: the cameras and the bullet( a thruster) are actually attached to an invisible bar that goes along a slider.
[EDIT] Oh shit, I just realized there's a children's book with this name. I better change the title.

Well I tried smoking. I felt really bad, psychologically speaking, as if I violated on one of my principles... but to be honest, I knew that someday I'd have to satisfy this curiosity.

I concluded that it's nothing really special, other than having the traditional effects of a first-time smoker like feeling a bit high. I've read that nicotine actually has some of the caffeine effects, like making you feel more focused and aware(although I don't understand how that works when you're actually also inhaling carbon monoxide, which basically disrupts the hemoglobin's ability to carry oxygen).
It's more of a social thing in my perception...

I still have some questions though. How do you actually inhale the smoke? I'm confused on this apparently simple part. Do I suck the smoke in my mouth, get out the cigarette, and then inhale air? Or do I directly inhale the smoke in my lungs?

I also tried cigarettes with no filter(those that look like a cigar). Holy crap, those blasted me.

And another issue, what's so wrong with cigars(it's easy in English to confuse cigars for cigarettes, at least for me) that you must not inhale the smoke into your lungs? What's the point of smoking a cigar then?

What are the best type of cigarettes when you want something more special? I've heard about vanilla or menthol aroma ones... what about brands?

I feel weird...
[EDIT] Ah, almost forgot about this! What about effective methods of getting rid of cigarette smoke, especially on the fingers?

Well, I just graduated high-school today. In the next weeks I'll be going to different exams for the baccalaureate. Wish me luck!

Gosh, it was an odd combination of tears, happiness and sadness... It's hard to accept the fact that we leave our colleagues, our second family...

Last night I had a very strange lesson to learn for today's math semestrial test. It was about polynomials, specifically solving algebraic equations with complex roots.

Hopefully, I knew at the test. I'm so relieved now!

Today I had to make a little walk at night between a local and my home. I was alone, and a bit frightened as the road that lead to the main one passed through a bit of swamp-like vegetation(trees and such), so it was quite dark there. I saw bats and heard frogs...

When I got to the main road though I felt relieved. I have to say that I was outside all day in hot sun at 32C(unusual for this time period), and the night air felt comforting and very breathable... it was a calming sensation.

I noticed the beautiful, almost full moon shining with an intense halo on the almost clear sky. I always admire celestial objects, especially the moon. We have a very popular poet(the last great romantic of Europe), Mihai Eminescu, that says in one of his poems(I'm not good at translating poetry though):
(you can skip the poem if you like, it's anyway a bit tl;dr already for some, the conclusion is the last sentence actually...)

"Moon, lord of the seas, you slide on the world's arch(sky)
And giving life to thoughts, you darken the grief
Thousands of deserts sparkle under your light
And how many forests hide in shadow the shining of springs!
On how many waves your reign extends
When you float on the moving loneliness of the seas!
How many blossomed shores, what palaces and strongholds
Crossed by your charm you show them to yourself!
And in how many homes you entered gently through the windows
How many heads full of thought, thoughtful you observe!
You see a king that plans the globe for centuries
When at the next day a poor hardly thinks of
Though remarkable steps have been given to them from the urn of fate
They're ruled alike by your light and the genial of death
To the same path of passions are alike subjected slaves,
The weak and the powerful, the genius and the foolish [...]"

I am not really entitled to translate such a piece of art, I assure you the the poem is actually a masterpiece( it is studied at school). I feel sorry I can't display it in its original perfection.

It is useless to re-explain what I felt when watching it, the poem displays my thought exactly.

At a point, a few moments after I looked at the moon, I thought again about this calming effect of the night air, and looked around me. Ah, the grace of the subtle shadows being cast from the trees, the grass carpet of the fields that would tickle and massage my feet, the still rocks that inspire eternal patience, the pacifying sounds of the splashing waves... I thought as if I could rip my clothes off right there and integrate myself in the surrounding nature. I just felt like I wanted something more than simple admiration for the nature. It was a wonderful feeling of calm, of freedom, as if peace has finally settled around me and I could hardly give a damn about stressful problems of the future...

It was a feeling that disappeared once I started walking around people again. It is very hard to live that feeling again, it can only happen in special circumstances, like the ones that happened today.

I feel relaxed.

My first PHP page! I am so happy I succeeded in making a simple, but functional comment system using php and mysql :).

Here's the page

Leave a comment! (also, try telling me here too that you left a comment, somebody is playing with it...)

[EDIT] As my website uses the co.cc domain, some stupid antivirus software might tag it as a potentially dangerous website. Yeah sure, like some basic php code can do any harm. You can safely ignore your antivirus warning.

[EDIT2] Added time and date!

[EDIT3] Thank you Daubster for the <div style="clear: both;"></div> tip!

Happy Easter to everyone!
Also, I'm 19 today. Man how the time passes...

Video project finished! It's ready for tomorrow's display of pupils video projects. I did together with a couple of colleagues.

It's about surviving in the nature, but because we had limited time and made our shooting in the course of a couple of hours afternoon, it resembles more with a parody of Bear Gryll's show( yes I proposed pissing in a bottle but then I agreed with my colleagues- this is too gross for the teachers).

Here's the link to the video.

A notable moment of laugh, if you're not into watching the whole video, is this "behind the scenes" clip.

Yes I realize our english is kind of bad, but it turned out quite well considering that we had just a scenario sketch and made our lines on the spot...

Well I finished the mini-project I was talking about in my last journal.

I wrote an article and also made a video for it(it's HD! :P)- Read Here.

Also, The Mighty Atom you might want to save this link for later if you'll ever buy an Arduino kit :).

I need a function that decreases linearly for an Arduino mini-project. I need to somehow program the RGB led to go from blue to green, to yellow to red as the temperature varies and that means that I have to individually control 3 pins.

I have a couple of "if"s for each pin.

While the red pin is easy to control, as I simply have to gradually increase the output from 0 to 255( gradual control of electronics with arduino is achieved through PWM(pulse width modulation), in this case in 256 steps) in the interval of, say, 45 to 120 degrees C, the green and the blue pin is more complicated.

The blue pin will be simply at its maximum value if the temperature drops bellow 0C, but from 0C to 25C it has to gradually decrease in intensity.
Before going into more details I want to say that Arduino has a special "map" function that takes an interval of values and maps it to another interval. So what I am doing is this:

map(temp, 0, 25, 0, 255); 

temp is what the sensor outputs( well it actually outputs a voltage that is used to compute the temperature). 0-25 is the interval that will be mapped to 0-255. I would have made a function that maps the values myself but I have no idea how, but it's kind of redundant since there's already one.

So I have to basically decrease the value from 255 to 0 as the temperature increases from 0 to 25. Is there a magical formula for decreasing linearly? Because using something like f(x)=1/x gives me an asymptote and only the first 2 or 3 values are "visible" on the LED.

For the green pin I have to do a combination of what I'm doing for the blue and red pin. From 15C to 45C it will gradually increase in intensity, but from 45C to 70C it will gradually decrease.

Anyone has any suggestions?

TL;DR I need a function that decreases linearly. Any suggestions?

Testing a condom by waving it outside the car window?

Link

This thing made my day. It actually oddly reminds me of the white cleaning solution drops in Portal 2.

Oh, and drinking milkshake at 160.9344 km/h.

Just 2 random awesome videos I found today...

[EDIT] So I visited the stats page once again too look at the browser pie graph:Who is responsible for the 5%?!

I have recently learned about the complicated ramification of the Unix systems. So Linux is just a Unix-derived system, which has lots of distributions itself, such as Ubuntu.

But when even Ubuntu has more ramifications known as "editions"...

So Mars was visible on the night sky yesterday:

uhmm... yeah, let me crop that for you:Oh, and here's a picture of the moon, since the sky was cristal clear:

The moon during the day:

And a random airplane...

It was too fast for me to catch it passing near the moon. It would have been a cool photo :(.
Archie, how about a cat on the moon?( since Scotch finds these funny...)

I ate some trout yesterday......from Australia...

I was thinking about fish names and then I realized that "carp" is "crap" in my language.