My friend FlameBird writes in his blog that he's been checking his MyMIT account every day to see if MIT applications came. I didn't do that. And today I decided to finally check it. But when I opened https://my.mit.edu/ it didn't work. It was saying that it's gonna be out of business until 11am(that's not GMT, so... it's a little bit later than 11am in Lithuania). I thought that they were putting the application forms online and I was right. Later today I joined and saw my application form. They say that my interview was waived. It's a sad thing, because I really wanted to talk to someone who has really been at MIT. Ah, well, I can at least hope I'll be able to talk to many people that have really been at MIT during my undergrad years there... :)
One thing I would like to mention is my activities. I mean like, I usually spend time doing random activities and there are no things I could mention doing weekly. Well, except going to music school. So how should I fill my activities? Huh?
Oh, and btw, today collegeboard wiped 68$ out of my bank account. Yup, I'm now registered for the October SAT reasoning test.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Science rocks! Didn't you know?
So there I was, translating this new about a retired spammer into Lithuanian, to post on one computer security site in here. The site's critical.lt . They're my colleagues in Lithuanian computer security community. So I was translating this new, and the RSS new passed my eyes in this awesome Firefox addon, called RSS ticker. The new was about MIT discovering a way to cure something(I will write about it below). I've read about that thing a few days ago, but it passed me several times, so I remembered that only guy, who didn't mind commenting my posts and saying that the ones about MIT are interesting. Well yeah, MIT really is amazing. So now I'm gonna write about these two amazing from MIT.
Let's begin with the older one which I've read a week or two ago. MIT actually found a cure for autism. At the time I knew about autism as much as I've seen on Hollywood movie "Mercury code" or how is it called in English. Well, I also knew that it's uncureable. But heh, we have those freaks at MIT who tend to amaze the world time after time. So, they found a cure for it. Even though they cured only laboratory mice, but I think it's soon gonna be available to humanity. Like 5 to 10 years.
And the second one I noticed today several times, as I mentioned earlier. So MIT guys have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear. And they also found a way to cure it. Also in mice, but if mice got cured, the same thing is going to happen for human. The only thing that I fear of is that it may be used for bad purposes. You know, like army of Bruce Willises(Life free or die Hard - the best of the best), who don't have a feeling of fear and just remain calm in every situation. This means like an army of brainwashed soldiers, who do their task and don't mind what happens to them. An army of those people could and probably will be used at war. Yah, maybe that sounds pacifistic, but does anyone like war? So be carefull with your invention there guys at MIT, untill I come there and put everything in their places. Ok?
Ok, these two paragraphs were about the topic that science and MIT rocks. It sure does. But what worth is an entry without an offtopic? And what worth is a website without any advertisements? I thing it would actually be cool if there was no offtopic and advertisements, but I have to admit that if it wasn't the ads, the web wouldn't be available to masses.
The thing I want to advertise in this entry is RSS Ticker addon for Firefox, that I mentioned earlier. It's really cool as it slides all the news one by one on your browser window. So you can download it for your Firefox from here. I need to mention that I'm not related to developer of this tool nor he pays me for advertising his open source tool for greatest browser of all times :). Hehe, even the preview image shows a new about MIT media lab :). I said it was cool.
Enough with the advertisement for this entry. Now I need to write about something different. Today I watched a TV show where one girl was asked "Who is the richiest man on earth". And the girl didn't know. So one guy was asked the same question. And he told it was Bill Gates. And that was the right answer. Well at least as the creators of the show said. But I don't agree! Bill from MS isn't the richiest man on earth! The slashdot wrote about it two weeks ago. Some guy from Texas now has 69 gigadollars and Gates only has 61. The guy's from Texas wireless firm just increased in revenue by 15% if I remember it good enough, and the guy just passed Gates leaving him in the second place. Forbes is going to release it's list in Autumn, so Bill is still #1 at Forbes list, but the guy from Texas has more money. I just wonder what would it be if Gates hadn't spent so much money on charities. He's a good guy, even though most of the IT world hates him. So do I :)
Let's begin with the older one which I've read a week or two ago. MIT actually found a cure for autism. At the time I knew about autism as much as I've seen on Hollywood movie "Mercury code" or how is it called in English. Well, I also knew that it's uncureable. But heh, we have those freaks at MIT who tend to amaze the world time after time. So, they found a cure for it. Even though they cured only laboratory mice, but I think it's soon gonna be available to humanity. Like 5 to 10 years.
And the second one I noticed today several times, as I mentioned earlier. So MIT guys have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear. And they also found a way to cure it. Also in mice, but if mice got cured, the same thing is going to happen for human. The only thing that I fear of is that it may be used for bad purposes. You know, like army of Bruce Willises(Life free or die Hard - the best of the best), who don't have a feeling of fear and just remain calm in every situation. This means like an army of brainwashed soldiers, who do their task and don't mind what happens to them. An army of those people could and probably will be used at war. Yah, maybe that sounds pacifistic, but does anyone like war? So be carefull with your invention there guys at MIT, untill I come there and put everything in their places. Ok?
Ok, these two paragraphs were about the topic that science and MIT rocks. It sure does. But what worth is an entry without an offtopic? And what worth is a website without any advertisements? I thing it would actually be cool if there was no offtopic and advertisements, but I have to admit that if it wasn't the ads, the web wouldn't be available to masses.
The thing I want to advertise in this entry is RSS Ticker addon for Firefox, that I mentioned earlier. It's really cool as it slides all the news one by one on your browser window. So you can download it for your Firefox from here. I need to mention that I'm not related to developer of this tool nor he pays me for advertising his open source tool for greatest browser of all times :). Hehe, even the preview image shows a new about MIT media lab :). I said it was cool.
Enough with the advertisement for this entry. Now I need to write about something different. Today I watched a TV show where one girl was asked "Who is the richiest man on earth". And the girl didn't know. So one guy was asked the same question. And he told it was Bill Gates. And that was the right answer. Well at least as the creators of the show said. But I don't agree! Bill from MS isn't the richiest man on earth! The slashdot wrote about it two weeks ago. Some guy from Texas now has 69 gigadollars and Gates only has 61. The guy's from Texas wireless firm just increased in revenue by 15% if I remember it good enough, and the guy just passed Gates leaving him in the second place. Forbes is going to release it's list in Autumn, so Bill is still #1 at Forbes list, but the guy from Texas has more money. I just wonder what would it be if Gates hadn't spent so much money on charities. He's a good guy, even though most of the IT world hates him. So do I :)
Sunday, July 15, 2007
A significant day in my life :D
There are three main purposes why today is significant annually:
Year 1410. Location called Žalgiris in Lithuanian and Grunwald in German. This would be Greenwood in English. So Lithuanian and Polish armies against crusaders who tried to occupie Lithuania, which was pagan at the time. So, the biggest battle in the Medieval ages with almost 40 thousand people in Lithuanian-Polish side and 29 thousand people at crusader side. The leaders were:
If anyone has seen a painting of Jan Mateiko, called "The battle of Žalgiris", you can spot Vytautas in the middle. That painting is huge(10x4 meters) and was drawn in 6 years. I began to read about this battle after seeing this painting and listening to the guide about the battle. Vytautas is my name, so I was interested in it because of that.
The second purpose why 15th of June is important annually is that two Lithuanian pilots, S. Darius and S. Girskis(called Girėnas) flew from New York to Kaunas. That's one of the first transatlantic flights. They never reached Vilnius as their plane "Lituanica" crashed in Germany at the time(now Poland). The details of the crash are not known even now. Some say they were hit by German artilery, some say they just landed on the trees. Nobody knows that. Anyways, this flight was important and their names are forever marked in Lithuanian history.
And now the third purpose why this day is important is that today is the day before my birthday. Yes, tomorrow I'm gonna turn 17. This is also the second purpose why did I learn about battle of Žalgiris.
Year 1410. Location called Žalgiris in Lithuanian and Grunwald in German. This would be Greenwood in English. So Lithuanian and Polish armies against crusaders who tried to occupie Lithuania, which was pagan at the time. So, the biggest battle in the Medieval ages with almost 40 thousand people in Lithuanian-Polish side and 29 thousand people at crusader side. The leaders were:
- Vytautas, grand duke of Lithuania and the main leader of battle
- Jogaila, king of Poland, cousin of Vytautas
- Ulrich von Juningen, master of the crusader ordin.
If anyone has seen a painting of Jan Mateiko, called "The battle of Žalgiris", you can spot Vytautas in the middle. That painting is huge(10x4 meters) and was drawn in 6 years. I began to read about this battle after seeing this painting and listening to the guide about the battle. Vytautas is my name, so I was interested in it because of that.
The second purpose why 15th of June is important annually is that two Lithuanian pilots, S. Darius and S. Girskis(called Girėnas) flew from New York to Kaunas. That's one of the first transatlantic flights. They never reached Vilnius as their plane "Lituanica" crashed in Germany at the time(now Poland). The details of the crash are not known even now. Some say they were hit by German artilery, some say they just landed on the trees. Nobody knows that. Anyways, this flight was important and their names are forever marked in Lithuanian history.
And now the third purpose why this day is important is that today is the day before my birthday. Yes, tomorrow I'm gonna turn 17. This is also the second purpose why did I learn about battle of Žalgiris.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Nightwalking
Well, this post is about nightwalking, because of some recent events in my city. So lets get to the beginning.
My friend came back from studies in Denmark a week ago and visited me yesterday(well, it's 2:39 am in here, so day before yesterday). My mom made some tea for us and we had a good talk about stuff in Denmark. He told he was really relaxed while studying there because they do not have math classes(and almost every class he had while studying here in Lithuania) there in course of business management. So, after coming back from that one semester long vacation he was talking about his studies there to people all week. After our talk, we went so see Die hard 4 on my computer as I downloaded it from some torrent tracker(I watched this film 6 times during last 3 days) the day before. The movie is really cool even though when watching 5th time, I began catching some direction mistakes. Anyways, after watching the movie we decided to have a walk around our city at night(1AM). We went to the center square, which was built 8 months ago and walked in circles there discussing about purpose of meaning and other psychological and philosophical things.
When I came back home it was just before 3AM. And just today(yesterday) I understood the really crazy thing about our walk. This evening I saw on the news that there was some fight in my city the night we were walking around. And it was at the same time, about 3AM, just like less than 1km away from my house. At that time we were on the river side and the place, where the fight took place, was almost in our sight, but we didn't see or hear anything. 5 people were injured in that fight: one of them was shot, one was cut by knife, one had his arm broken and two had their heads beaten. The real interesting thing about that was that while we were walking, I said that it would be cool to have a coat that's shoot proof. There is one being sold, but it costs too much. Even though we were walking in different place(as I said, it's less than 1km, maybe even less than 500m, just because our whole city is, or was some time ago, only 9 square km's), it looks scary.
My friend came back from studies in Denmark a week ago and visited me yesterday(well, it's 2:39 am in here, so day before yesterday). My mom made some tea for us and we had a good talk about stuff in Denmark. He told he was really relaxed while studying there because they do not have math classes(and almost every class he had while studying here in Lithuania) there in course of business management. So, after coming back from that one semester long vacation he was talking about his studies there to people all week. After our talk, we went so see Die hard 4 on my computer as I downloaded it from some torrent tracker(I watched this film 6 times during last 3 days) the day before. The movie is really cool even though when watching 5th time, I began catching some direction mistakes. Anyways, after watching the movie we decided to have a walk around our city at night(1AM). We went to the center square, which was built 8 months ago and walked in circles there discussing about purpose of meaning and other psychological and philosophical things.
When I came back home it was just before 3AM. And just today(yesterday) I understood the really crazy thing about our walk. This evening I saw on the news that there was some fight in my city the night we were walking around. And it was at the same time, about 3AM, just like less than 1km away from my house. At that time we were on the river side and the place, where the fight took place, was almost in our sight, but we didn't see or hear anything. 5 people were injured in that fight: one of them was shot, one was cut by knife, one had his arm broken and two had their heads beaten. The real interesting thing about that was that while we were walking, I said that it would be cool to have a coat that's shoot proof. There is one being sold, but it costs too much. Even though we were walking in different place(as I said, it's less than 1km, maybe even less than 500m, just because our whole city is, or was some time ago, only 9 square km's), it looks scary.
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