Some facts about the Hungarian language

For those who like languages and like learning weird/interesting facts about languages, here are some about Hungarian. I wanna get back to studying the language of angels quite soon.
Warning: if you are not a linguist, you might start feeling sleepy and bored after about 20 seconds... (or even earlier). :)

Minimalistic Classical Music

This is a piece I just found out about (and loved!) by the American composer John Adams. The conductor here in only 18 years old nowadays and was 17 when this was recorded. I really like his style! The name of the conductor is Alexander Prior (born in 1993) and the name of the piece is "The chairman dances". This is only the first part. Have fun!

After a long dry period...

Hey guys,
I realized today that I have not posted any pics of myself and/or the people who study with me here in Groningen in a long time. Therefore, here it is:

Me, Ihor (Ukraine) and Marco (Italy, in blue pullover)


From Left to right: Laura (Germany), me (BH), Zöe (USA) and Katrin (Germany). Nao galera, nao to pegando nenhuma.

Marco and I. How do you like my breath? :)

The Gang, left to right: Laura, Katrin, Jelke (Netherlands), me, Ihor (Ukraine), Kaitlin (USA), Zöe (USA).

One of the most creative ideas I have seen

A quick talk (About 11 minutes) by a professor of Computer Science at CMU. The guy who invented those distorted words we have to type on website to prove we are not robots, has come up with an even greater idea. Just watch it.

USA postal service and OCR

It seems that the US postal service uses Optical Character Recognition a lot, in order to optimize its system. It tries to understand human writing in then sending the letter to that address it understood. Given my awful last experience with the US post, where nothing arrived after 6 weeks (other issues were involved as well) and given this knowledge of their using OCR, I have made a decision: I am never sending a letter to the US again hand-written. From now on I am printing the address. Much better for OCR, no problem (Unless you use this amazingly bizarre font for your typing, of course... hehehe).

Biggest Touchscreen in the world is from Groningen!

Hey guys,
I just found out that the university where I am studying has produced what has been claimed as the biggest touchscreen in the world! Nice, eh! The name of the university is Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG), or University of Groningen, in English. Check out the video:

Hungarian: the language of the angels...

In my opinion, Hungarian (Magyarul) is the most beautiful language I have ever heard. Of course, this is a quite subjective opinion. However, it's simply music to my ears. I love the soudns, the cadence, the Hungarian people. One of my best friends is Hungarian himself (Geza) and so was my previous girlfriend (Timi). I still wanna live in that country, and I cannot leave this world without at least advanced mastery of this language of Angels...(or the devil, as some say...) :)

LiveCode and Wrist donut (making it simple...)

Each day I become more and more fascinated by and interested in the idea of developing simple, yet very effective solutions/concepts. Below are two of them. The first one is a "wrist donut", a litte thingy that prevents wrist pain. It's a wrist rest for people who work on the laptop a lot and want to avoid problems usually caused by too much pressure being exerted in the Carpel area.
The second one is an IDE for developing Iphone and Ipad application, but with a very simple programming language.


Click here to go to the Wrist Donut website

Chega de Saudades (Yo Yo Mama)

Check out this beautiful piece of a famous Brazilian song called "Chega de Saudade". It's funny, but the word "saudade" does not exist in English and many other languages.. it's the feeling (a noun) which indicates that you miss something or somebody a lot. The song could be translated as "Enough with missing" or "Putting an end to missing". Even then, it's not a good translation.
The american cellist Yo Yo Mama plays in this version and I think it's simply beautiful.



I am also including another song he plays, a Brazilian samba called "Brasileirinho", which is the diminutive form for 'Brazilian", but can also imply "in a Brazilian way".

Wind and classes

Wow, yesterday and today were, I think, the windiest days of my whole life!
The wind was really strong and a few times I almost got knocked off the bike! This makes me want to go out of my apartment even less than normal...
Today I went out for about 2 hours to meet a Dutch friend of mine who studied with me in Saarbrucken (her name is Fai) and we chatted and had a beer together here in Groningen. It was quite nice seeing her again.

Next Tuesday now I will start working on my Master thesis for good. I will also start the job as research assistant here pretty soon and on top of it all, I will take a course here called "Computer Assisted Language Learning and Technology", which should be pretty nice.
I am quite looking forward to the new semester.
As for the results for my PhD applications, some of them should be out in less than 3 weeks. I will post the results here as they come.

In terms of classical music, I have started listening to Bartok (a Hungarian composer), specially some of his violin works. I have found it pretty interesting and original so far. Next Friday I will go to the Rachmaninov concert! :)