brain5ide on the net

More than a year without an entry

2009-11-19T02:17:00.011+02:00

So, what can happen someone in more than a year?

Well, for example:

A course of laser technologies:
This is the back of Ovidijus' (my friend) phone being engraved with a 1064nm infrared laser in one of the labs in Laser Research Center. It was one of the most interesting courses I had in my second semester in Physics faculty of Vilnius University.

This is the picture that was engraved on that back of the phone. It's me in the left, then Gediminas, Lukas, Lina, Aivaras and the phone owner Ovidijus. We were all lab partners during the laser course.

We learned how to operate a laser in the lab, what it contains and how to identify and compare different lasers, how to choose one or the other for a specific application and so on. It was really fantastic in Spring Semester of 09'. Maaaaan, that's ages ago.

Well, what else? Getting rejected from MIT once again but not being very sad about it, though, I still manage to react when I see those three letters somewhere in my curriculum or the media or hear groupmates talking about it. Ah well... life goes on.

One more thing that happened(but not the only) was Fidi - Physicist's day. About it - in another entry. Probably after another year :)

Anecdote!

2008-11-23T23:13:00.003+02:00

We had a FiDi(Physicists day) veteran party last friday(students prepare it for the alumni). And one veteran told a cool anecdote. So here it is:
Newton, Pascal and Archimedes were playing hide and seek.
Archimedes was counting to 10.
Pascal quickly ran to hide behind a corner.
Newton saw that he could not hide that fast. He took a stick and drew a square around him, with a side of about 1 meter.
Archimedes counted to 10, turned over and shouted: "I found Newton!"
Newton replied: "Wrong! Newton in square meter is Pascal"

brain5ide at Vilnius University Part 2

2008-11-20T17:11:00.011+02:00

The first of September. A national holiday here in Lithuania, because thousands of students start their studies.
So freshmen gathered by the Physics faculty early in the morning (10 A.M. ) to make some T-shirts.
Then we headed to the bus stop to go to Gediminas prospect. This is how a trolleybus filled with Physicists really looks like.

We were swinging the trolleybus together and shouting: "REZONANSAS"(Lithuanian for resonance).
After the trolleybus ride we joined other faculties for a walk through the Gediminas prospect to the yard of Vilnius university, which is in Old town in Vilnius.

And this is how I look:

My friends(Andrius in the bottom, Marius in the left, then Kornelija and Jurgis(roommate)): After the ceremony and the speaches of rector of Vilnius University, Minister of education and science, a classical music concert(which was actually impossible to listen, because of the echo from the walls of the university buildings), me and the fresmen of the Physics faculty gathered together and went to spend some time on the hill of three crosses.

And then there were parties in the dorm that evening. So this was my first day of officially being a student.

P.S. My November 2008 SAT subject test results just came. 740 Math II, 700 Physics. Not bad. But I can do better. I hope :)

brain5ide in Vilnius University Part 1 - Freshmen camp.

2008-11-16T13:25:00.008+02:00

As I said in my last post, I'm now a student in Vilnius University. It's actually a fun place to be. Especially the Physics faculty. So let's begin the story of brain5ide in Vilnius university just from the beginning.
Freshmen camp. It took place in some camping site by the Pailgis lake near Vilnius. We all gathered in Vilnius train station, got in to a train and headed to the camp. I met many new people (as I'm the only one from my town in this faculty as a freshman) just while going to the camp and even more throughout the 3 days of camping. During the first day every group (there are 6 groups: Theoretical Physics, Applied Physics, Telecomunicational Physics and Electronics, Computing Physics, Modern Technology Physics and Management and Physics of Nuclear energetics) had to prepare a theatrical presentation of their group. There really were many fun things to see during those presentations, and even some not to see (as a naked guy, only with a fern covering his silly place - from that moment he became a star in the faculty :) ). Then there was an informal "social night" with some (think a lot) alcohol, music, talks and orienteering at night. I led one team(teams were randomly assigned), as I had a flashlight in my pocket, and my team did all the tasks first. The prize was a juicy watermelon :). The next day we had some presentations: StartFM - student radio, StudentuEra - student newspaper, Student scientific comunity, Student representatic organization, FiDi - fizikų diena (Physicist's day) and ISIC - international student identity card.
Asside from the presentations, we had an event of national matter - an Olympic Basketball semi-final match between Lithuania and Spain. Since we were in the middle of a forest by a lake, the organisers didn't anticipate to watch a basketball game. But physicists are physicists :). So there was a TV-tuner, a laptop and a video projector brought in. The cable was connected to a metal coat hanger and put on the roof of one of the houses. And we all (like ~80 people) watched the game together, cheered for lithuanian points and spanish misses and grieved on spanish points and lithuanian misses. The match was had big tension and as sad as it is to admit - Lithuania lost. But we still are in the top 4 of the basketball countries and nobody can argue.
On our second evening there we had to make a presentation from each house(there were more than ten of them). This time there was no nudity. My housemates and me made a funny remake of a lithuanian pop song. We depicted some comical events in the camp, in our house, in physics faculty. When we were singin that song to others was probably my funniest moment in the camp.
After the presentations, there was a party in a bathhouse. I think it I went to sleep as early as 5 a.m. :)
We had to leave the camp by the noon of the third day. The next faculty comming to the camp was Communications faculty(which is opposite to physics faculty in male/female ratio and is located in the same building block as the physics faculty). So we had to greet the Communications faculty girls(when we came to the camp, we were greeted by the Faculty of Economy). And we did. We created a simple little game to entertain a bit. And after the entertaining game we left the camp by the same train by which we had gotten there.

That's all that I was able to remember about an event that happened almost three months ago.

Ok...

2008-11-09T16:26:00.005+02:00

I just got from home to my dorm and decided to have a moment of relaxation. Blink 182 is playing in the background. You may not follow, so I'll try to explain it right now.
My last post was ages ago and the next will probably be ages later. Well, I got into Vilnius University, Computing Physics course. I was #4 by admission points to this course. I'm now studying for more than two months(since 09-01). I live in the dorms because they're really near the faculty. My classmate who got into Medical faculty, lives near me but has to travel >1h every morning to get to the faculty. So I couldn't be happier to be able to live in the dorms.
What else... Ah... yeah... I got my first job for Elsis Verslo Sprendimai - a Lithuanian business IT solutions company. It's not a biig job yet, I'm just learning the work methods and the software but it's interesting and the staff is really cool.
I also keep building websites while not doing other things. It really gets overwhelming but I like it so far.
Oh, and I am also trying to get into MIT again this year. I won't try to get in as a transfer because it would be even more impossible than a freshman admission.
That's all now. See you when the hell freezes or I get into MIT (dunno which will come first).

Lithuanian exams part 2 + Graduation + Driving lessons

2008-07-08T18:45:00.007+02:00

Read the title, so we go in order:
Lithanian: 64th percentile (that's the only thing they give us - percentiles...)
Math: 99th percentile
IT: 93rd percentile (omg, omg, totally awesom if you take into account how much I had screwed up)
Physics: 97th percentile.
So, summing everything up, I'm probably gonna get into my course of choice - Computational Physics(why? just because someone told me that if I want to learn anything new I should not take IT course only).

The prom is happening this Saturday! I'm graduating!!! This feels awesome and some sort of awkward. I'll just need to get used to it.

Oh, and driving lessons. Today I had my first one. The instructor just told that he had had worse students than me. But it was OK. Really, I didn't crash into anybody and the car is pretty much safe until my next lesson.

Lithuanian exams

2008-06-06T10:16:00.006+02:00

Yet again my do-not-procrastinate-to-blog plan didn't work out. But now I'm full of stuff to tell anyone who dares to read this blog.
As you know, I haven't been admitted to any of the US schools that I applied. One possible reason is that I didn't send then the TOEFL instead of SAT reasoning, which was awful. At the beginning I thought that TOEFL wasn't necessary and it costs so I decided not to take it. But then I tried to apply to Richmond American International University in London, I needed the TOEFL and I made it on March 1. You can see the results on your right. I got into Richmond, but for some financial reasons I'm not going there. So here I am, worrying about my final high school exams in Lithuania because they're the only thing that can get me into a school in Lithuania (there are no interviews, no teacher recommendations, just plain old sorting by test scores).
The first exam I took was Lithuanian. I don't think it was a very tough one but there's the thing that it really depends on somebody who checks my work. I actually went to the exam pretty relaxed and was kinda relaxed all the time while sitting there, but the thrill got to me just after I left. It's the only exam in Lithuania that you MUST take and if you fail, you're in a terrible position.
The second exam was IT. A bunch of MS Office knowledge + Pascal coding. There's an interesting story about my IT exam. During the first part(the test) I was OK. But there's always the second part which was one of the worst nightmares I have ever seen. So, there we had to write two Pascal programs according to the task(it tells where to use a procedure or a function, what data types to use, you just have to put it up to a working program). We had 1.5h for the task. So there I was, writing my first program, debugging it and writing proper comments(they rate these too, as the part of the coding style, or smth.). Ok, so I completely finished the program. Then I noticed that I had a typo in my filename(and you couldn't have a typo), so I decided to rename it. I went to the program folder and saw a bunch of files, the debug data for compiler. Well, who am I to keep then, so I deleted them. And along with them I DELETED MY PROGRAM. And you konw, since I'm a computer wizzard, I don't delete regularly, like when the files go to recycle bin. NO, I had to delete it by pressing Shift+Delete, which deletes the files completely. So there I was in the exam place after an hour without any program. My hands began to shake. For a minute of something I had lost hope. I had various thoughts, like should I leave the exam and come again next time(which wouldn't be the national level, but a school level and school level sucks when you're applying) or should I go to google and quickly find a file recovery program. But with my experience with looking for free software I knew that I wouldn't find anything. So I calmed myself and just thought about it. It was still in my head, so I quickly rewrote the program just from my head, tested it and it worked like it supposed to. I didn't comment it properly, but just went to another program. I read it, didn't understand it in the beginning. I read it again and the teacher told that there are 15minutes left untill the end. And I was one program short. So who needs understanding a task, right? Those 15 minutes were one of the ugliest in my life, but then again I probably broke my typing speed record because the guy that was sitting next to me was staring his eyes at my keyboard. I wrote the whole algorithm, it was syntax error free, it compiled and didn't work. It was in a neverending loop. I tried to debug it, but couldn't make it on time. The old "5 more minutes" would have worked out for me, but it was the end. So I hope that people will at least go throught the algorithm and give me some points for it. As I spoke to other guys, nobody actually wrote the second program in my test center or it was someone to whom I didn't talk, so I might have some chances compared to others :D.
The third exam was Math. Hell yeah! It was the only exam yet that I didn't suck much and I'm not worried about it at all. I solved all the tasks and that very same night I checked my answers with some other people and they were almost the same (there's one problem of probabilities that I got wrong, but it's not a major mistake). So now I'm at least cool about my math results.
And there I have, one last exam that's going to be on Monday. Physics! I'm not that confident about it as I was in math, but I still have the whole weekend to prepare and I think I'll make it.

When IRC talk becomes a blog entry...

2008-03-19T04:55:00.005+02:00

First of all, I would like to say that I just recently got my TOEFL score and it has beaten all my expectations. I was praying to get above 90 and ended up with a 110. OMG OMG A 110. That's the first test result that I'm actually proud of and don't think of retaking.

Now, to get to the main topic of this entry. MIT decisions. Someone who reads this blog might think that I have gone crazy about MIT and I'm in a hysteria, but I'm not so it's safe and sound to meet me in real life. So, I was talking in #mit channel on freenode and came to a discussion with a prospective applicant to MIT about it. Maybe I'm not the best mentor on admission decisions in the world because of not being admitted, but I had to give that guy a few ideas. And the discussion was so long that I ended up thinking to blog about this(so that's how that feels...).
So the guy regretted that he hasn't taken Calculus AP course earlier(he's in junior year now and is planning to take the course in his senior year) because that would show the universities what he's capable of. As an unqualified person I can say that it's a bad point of view. Of course, it's cool to know Calculus, but only if you have to do something with it. If you don't - then why is it for you? I know, the guy wanted to be a match for colleges, but the match isn't always the one who takes advanced courses earlier.
I then asked him what does he do instead of the Calculus AP. And he said he doesn't nothing specific - mostly surfing the web, managing personal website. So I offered him to take a textbook on Calculus(Calculus demystified, for example) and do it on his own. But then again he responded that this wouldn't be marked anywhere. Why does everyone want to have a mark, a line in CV or a project in project list that he could show to colleges? I understand it is all about impressions but I can tell you one thing - I hate impressions. Impression is a think that deceives people and it rarely turns into good. If you have an impressions to be a genius, then you must work your ass off to match it and not to ruin it. This is tiring and often not constructive. Just let people expect from you what you actually can, not what they think you can. This way you won't need to work your ass off and you won't ruin other's expectations on you.
Otherwise, if you have a bad impression, you won't be given a task to reveal your full potential and will also have to work your ass off to prove to others that you're not just a dummy.
So, maybe taking Calculus AP in 9th grade is making you look good, think if you really want to spend a lot of time to create an impression that might give you a lot more problems.

Two down, two more to go

2008-03-16T09:49:00.005+02:00

The decisions for two of my four US schools are out. They both rejected me, but I'm almost in a good mood. So next year I'm not gonna be a Caltech freshman, nor MIT's. It was more like a lottery to me and I once again didn't win Jackpot. And as I just wrote in MIT blogs: "The application process was so addictive that I'll definitely have to try again next year.". That's right. If I don't get into other two US schools and Richmond, I'll probably take a gap year, do some hardcore programming(I have a plan about some project, just not enough time), do some traveling (with money earned from hardcore programming project), learn English a little bit better and take the SAT's with a little bit more preparation.
Oh, well. Despite being rejected I had a good night yesterday. About 5 minutes after my decisions came out the doorbell rang. There were my two classmates and so we went to hang out a little. Funny thing is that when I was walking down the stairs(I live in a flat), I noticed that there was something in my mailbox. I took it out - a Caltech decision letter. Ah well, I just put in into my coat pocket and went out. I already knew the answer(which had come by email at 1 AM my time a few days ago). But if I wouldn't have read it in my email, it would have been two decisions in five minutes. BAHHHH.
OK, enough about the decisions. But since that's the only thing that I'm capable to think of now, let it be the end for this post.

Welcome another rejected by Caltech person

2008-03-12T16:12:00.005+02:00

Haha, it's funny that my last post was about procrastination and it was 5 months ago. Could I say that I'm "back with a brand new rap"? I don't think so. Today, at about 1AM I got an email to have been rejected from Caltech which is kinda bad feeling. But I'm mostly sad because the FedEx courier will not visit me. UPS has visited me when she brought my Collegeboard books, DHL has visited me too when she brought my other books and no FedEx. Maybe anyone(huh, who am I kidding???) wants to send me something throught FedEx?
So, what has happened through all those 5 months? Well, quite a lot actually. Probably the most important thing is that I dropped Windows and am now using OpenBSD. One sad thing is that Skype doesn't want to run and the tutorials I have found do not work.
What else? Well, my HDD on PowerBook went off and I'm not notebookless which is sad by itself and sad because I had ran a webserver and was able to do webdev on it. Well, I'll probably try to netboot or USB boot it somehow. Anyone has any offers on how to it with PPC Powerbook?
I also had a Brown interview(on the phone with Mark Dembitz). I think I blew it. Everybody knows the main interview question - "Tell me about yourself". Duh. I don't like speaking about people, including myself so my interviewer had a tough time pulling it out from me. When my questions section came, I asked him only two questions about Brown. First was about Brown CS department and he assured me that it's cool, despite the fact that he hasn't had any courses in there. Another question was on how expensive is the cost of living in Providence. So I think that I looked like an unmotivated guy to him who's just spending his free time applying to universities. Anyways, I hope it'll go good.
What else... Oh yeah, I took a TOEFL on March 1. Whaaaa... it's already past MIT deadline, why would I want one you ask. And I answer: because I found another university. I got an email about American international university in London, Richmond. I'll be applying to it if I don't get into MIT, Stanford or Brown or if I don't get any decent scholarship to any of them(hoping that this won't happen). I'm applying for the spring semester so that I could finish something in Lithuania. I need to get a driver's license which is given only after 18th birthday, which is in July for me. But I need to prepare for the driving exam and I don't want to do it together with my national exams(I'm taking Lithuanian, Physics, Math and IT) becasue they're very intensive.
That's probably about it for this time.

Procrastination hoo haaa

2007-11-14T00:28:00.001+02:00

Procrastination is a big problem for almost every young person. I think I don't know anyone who would not procrastinate. You usually table things away until the very deadline. For young people it's because everything is very interesting, and school course is sometimes very intense so you study only the day before test. Of course parents, teachers, psychologist and other people tell you not to procrastinate, but just to study every day. As I mentioned, students (I'm talking about myself being in highschool) prepare for the test only the day before it. And since in higher grades you write a test almost every day, you ACTUALLY STUDY EVERY DAY. And I was a worse case. I am one of those "Genius" procrastinators - people, who don't need to study much to get things done at least moderately or actually really well. So I arrived at this condition, when I didn't actually prepare for the test until the test day. I mean not the day before the test, but the actual test day - during breaks between lessons. And for the fun of it, my grades were all getting better and better. Averages 9.1, then 9.5, 9.7, 9.8 out of 10. And I relied only on my memory. I didn't even do my homework. I don't know, maybe I'm very lucky because of where I am right now. But when there's not enough challenges you have more free time and you start looking for some other challenges. Applying to MIT is one of them for me right now. And also keeping my grades up. And developing several web projects at once. And learning about microchip design, Boolean algebra, graphical programming, Linux administration and so on and so on. Just trying to be perfect at everything. And with all these objects shining in my todo list, I finally understood that I can't watch a good movie every day, discuss in forums the way I do(refresh, refresh, refresh, reply, refresh, refresh). I finally found that I suck at all of these subjects. Maybe not as much as people who have no idea about what I do, but people, who I taught about computer security(or at least the ethical part of it) in forums a year or two ago, left me waaaay behind them. It's time to change.
First thing I'm doing is I'm checking the forums only once or twice a day. Lose the refresh-refresh thing. Login, read, answer and leave it all until the next day. Another thing is I started paying attention to doing my homework again. It's about time (after the SAT's, but before Lithuanian exams in May-June). A good night sleep (6-7 hours instead of 4-5) is also helping me up. I was actually thinking about getting polyphasic, but as I read that it takes as much as two weeks to adapt to it, I decided not to do it because of the lack of time and this hard period. You may also have noticed that I started to blog actually instead of write a summary of my month events. Real thought live now. Only at brain5ide.blogspot.com ;) Just a little bit discipline and I think I'll be able to lose the quotes from the "genius" procrastination :D.

P.S. I'm actualy procrastinating right now :(. A test of trigonometry tomorrow and I don't know half of the formulas. A flashlight and a book should help.

Beaver awards and welcome winter!

2007-11-12T00:48:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I was in awards of Beaver. A rip off from the Kangaroo(a math contest, for those who don't know). So Beaver is an IT contest, with LOGO, MS Excel and some other comon non-IT-guy problems. Of course there are some problems which are actually related to computers, but... Anyways, this year I was 5th in Lithuania (3 guys including my classmate being 1st, one guy being 4th and me and some other guy being 5th) in 12th class level. When teacher asked me why did my classmate get a higher score than me, I just simply answered that "He misslooked one of my answers". Of course it's a joke, because the guy surely knows his computing(a Gentoo user, now hacking and studying his Cisco router to get a CCNA). So me, him, one other classmate who was 10th in 12th class level and a 11th class student who was 12th, went to awards in Vilnius . Well, it was a free trip and free food along with free "Stardust" movie was offered. However I can say, that the movie sucks. Is it a fairy tale? If yes then why the leading pirate is gay? And if it's not a fairy tale, than what the f*** is it? It was the first movie during which I slept. My classmate had to wake me up because I was snorring. Anyways, the trip went fine, and when we came home we found at least 5cm (2 inches) layer of snow everywhere. The winter has come and it's more fun to look at everything around being white instead of rainy greyness.

The end of this worthless blog post about my Saturday.

Go comics

2007-11-02T16:58:00.001+02:00

As you might know tomorrow is SAT day. And I'm retaking Math 2 and Physics. So I was just doing some physics tasks and ended up drawing this nice guy on a piece of 9cm x 9cm paper.
I wasn't that bad as I was hoping and since one of my friends has this, I drew another one.

Heh, pretty good prepartion for SAT, right?

Ok...

2007-10-31T21:29:00.000+02:00

Hehe, following the MIT blog recent fashion to talk about their Boston Red Sox win (congrats to whoever is from Boston) I start writing this blog entry sitting in front of TV where the 4th quarter of Euroleague basketball match has begun. Kauno "Žalgiris" (Lithuania) - Sopoto „Prokom Trefl“ (Poland). 56 - 52 at the moment. Well the match will probably end before I finish this entry so I won't need to edit it to write the result.
Anyways, I'm writing not to tell about baskteball. As in every other my post I write to discuss several topics however. First one would be Laura's recent blog entry at MIT admissions blogs. There she answers Donald's question about revealing the true yourself, not the to-be-admitted one in application to college(or at least MIT) process. To tell the truth, I haven't started my application process yet. I filled some fields, but not thoroughly. Since it's November 3rd comming(yup, I'm retaking SAT subjects) and I had some other stuff to do, you know how it works. Or probably doesn't. So, getting back to revealing yourself in college application, it's pretty hard to do that when you're a teenager and you've just begun the journey to know who you are. I thought I didn't have this problem since I am into computers for past several years. But now I find myself enjoying just messing around the computer, pretending to be working on some hardcore problem, but just maybe surf random sites or watching this same old movie for 9th time this month. Simple random not computing orientied stuff. This state of course came because of my slackery, but still, I'm confused about it. I thought computers, programming would nevere tire me. And it did. Well, not only it, but this whole school-college thing, classmates around who are pretty stressed about the forecomming exams(May-June 2008, two months that can ruin your life here in Lithuania). Being messed up of course is not so bad, but then how would you describe this being messed up phase to college admissions office. They'll try to understand, of course, they have experience in it. BUT it's the feeling that they won't. Or maybe it's just that I was too lazy in my schoolyear, haven't attended any serious event or made any significant or at least interesting project. I just found it fun to mess around with computers. Ah... This post is a mess, DON'T READ IT IF YOU STARTED FROM HERE, and forget about it if you started from beginning and came here. Bye.

P.S. The result is 82:72. Žalgiris won!

Hacked my pipes

2007-09-18T00:32:00.002+02:00

As topic states, I hacked my pipes. Hacked in a meaning of fixing something not the way it should be fixed. Well, for some time in my flat electricity has been flowing through the metal pipes and the water, so when you washed your hands or got into shower you were nicely shocked. I didn't think about it before today, when I simply got tired of getting shocked. My mom had called the electrician, but he said he couldn't help as there's no possible way to find the leak(several other neighbours are also facing it) and eliminate it. Well d'oh. Anyways, today after getting shocked I came up with a simple idea: take a wire and connect the incoming pipe to the outcoming pipe. So I cut one not working UTP cable and split the wires from one another. Then I just stripped the isolation and tied it to both pipes. Eureka!!! The shock reduced(d'oh, paralel connection). But the water was still "biting". So I just added another wire which reduced the shock even more, that I couldn't feel it anymore. W0000000t! My first hack if I can call it a hack.

If you read the labels of this post before the post itself you may notice that I mention Lithuania and basketball. Wanna know why? Because today at 23:00 (11PM :D) local time our basketball team came back from Eurobasket 2007 with bronze medals. Although I was watching the welcome through a TV I was still in euphoria. Lithuania remained the only unbeaten team until the semifinals when it was just a terrible day for almost everyone in the team(except Siskauskas, who scored 30 points which was the game high and 1 point higher than russian Andrei Kirilenko who was killing our team). Lithuania had beaten the other unbeaten team - Slovenia - two games before that. Well it's good that they got well in their last game against Greece(Eurobasket2005 gold medalists) and knocked them down. Congratulations for our team. The irony of this championship is that Lithuania has only 1 lose, just like champions Russia, and Spain has 2 losses but ended 2nd in the tournament withouht facing our "Baltic giants" as the commentators like to call them. Ah well, tough luck, but still: Lithuania, with only 3,5 million people can be at the top of the european and even the world basketball.

P.S. To make this post geekier I promise to add some numbers about current and p.d. between my pipes :D

MIT application forms are out

2007-07-24T22:54:00.000+02:00

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.

Science rocks! Didn't you know?

2007-07-19T02:39:00.002+02:00

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 :)

A significant day in my life :D

2007-07-15T21:11:00.001+02:00

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:

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.

Crusaders were winning at the beginning of the battle because lithuanian soldiers started running into the woods using the old war technique. The Crusaders then attacked Polish army and started singing their songs of victory. But then, Vytautas gathered lithuanian army and stroke the crusaders from behind making them be in the center and Lithuanian and Polish armies in the sides. So this way the crusaders lost the battle with many soldiers and the master of the ordin dead. This stopped the invasion of west Europe into Lithuania and crusaders were not a threat to anyone no more.
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.

Nightwalking

2007-07-10T01:34:00.001+02:00

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.

You actually need to study for the SAT

2007-06-21T11:32:00.002+02:00

Hehe, yeah, half an hour ago my SAT results came out. I was spent all night waiting for them, because beople said that they would come at 12AM EST. This means 7AM in Lithuania. I decided to stay awake, since I usually do it until 5AM. But unfortunately I thought I would rest my eyes at 6 o'clock. So I rested my eyes until about 10AM, when the doorbell woke me up. It was my grandmother, who brought some delicius strawberries. Yummie.
So getting back to the SAT, at 10 AM I checked my collegeboard account, and found no trace of scores. I was like in "WTF?". So I waited, refreshing the page every minute. About 12 o'clock something happened to my Mac and I had to restart it. When I restarted it, I just joined one IRC channel where we discuss about applying to mit(#mit at irc.freenode.net). So I joined it and found out that the scores are up. FlameBird was shouting bad words and pasting his scores again and again. So I just ran the browser, typed in www.collegeboard.com, cliked twice, entered: brain5ide, pressed TAB, entered ********** and got in. And my scores were there... 690 for Marth II, and 700 for Physics. Pretty good, since I didn't prepare a lot. Anyways, I'm gonna have to retake the tests in October or November. I think I need at least 750 for both of them to be competitive enough to get to my school of dreams(yup, that's MIT). Even though they say that test scores are not that important, I think they are for internationals. And I know I can do better than those 690 in Math. Just need to practice a little bit.

Beautiful life and miserable me

2007-06-09T01:27:00.001+02:00

02:09 here in Lithuania. 9th of June. It's about time to write my essay for MIT, even though I don't know the topic on which the essay should be written. But still, I'm just going to write my personal thoughts at this time.
So half an hour ago I went to bed, I was too sleepy to work on one of my web projects. So here I'm lying in the bed and don't feel sleepy anymore. Now I feel miserable. I'm actually a big slacker. I had to present my project few weeks ago and I haven't been online on my Skype account since then. I don't know what to say to my customer. Maybe "I'm just a kid"? But he doesn't care if I'm a kid or a pensioner as long as I do my job. And I haven't done it yet. Lack of experience? Maybe. Lack of time? Hell, no. Lack of discipline? Bull's eye. I'm not disciplined young man who thinks he wants to spend his life in front of a computer typing some crazy commands like "mysql_query("SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = '".$id."');", or maybe soldering some chips on a soldering board, or maybe even be a cryptanalyst who knows math better than anyone else in the world and can easily generate an MD5 hash in his head. Yeah, I'm dreaming. It's night an I should be dreaming. And I feel really miserable because I can't achieve my dreams not because I'm not smart enough, but because I don't work enough. So… half an hour ago(now it's 40 minutes ago) I was lying in bed thinking why am I so undisciplined. And I couldn't find the answer. But I just took My PowerBook, opened it, found a book on assembly language and started reading it. I don't know the number of this book about assembly that I have read. But I usually stop reading until 50th page of the book(current book contains >500 pages). So I know all the beginning, assembly is the low level language, high level programming languages need to be compiled to assembly and stuff like that. So I just need to read a book, test it, understand it and go further. I don't know how to achieve that and how to keep working. I'm just going to try to do that.

P.S. He who reads this blog might remember me saying to have 3,18GB of ebooks(it's just 2 posts lower), so it's false. I burnt a DVD with those ebooks because I needed some hard drive space to mount a video. And you know what, Acme DVD's failed me. All my 3,18GB's of books are gone now. But I can't mention this thing, that the same day I lost my ebooks I went to one torrent portal, which is famous enough and I don't need to mention it, and I started downloading to sets of ebooks, both beign near 5GB's. So now I have about 10GB's of Ebooks most of which are about math and physics(5GB's of each).

P.P.S. While I was not posting in my blog, I graduated from music school. If anyone's interested, here are my marks (there was an exam for each):
Accordion(major): 8
Clarnet(minor):8
Musical writing: 9
Accordion ensemble(I was in it in 3rd grade): 9
Folk ensemble(I was in it for 3 years in grades 3,4 and 5): 10
Music history: 10

P.P.P.S. I had my SAT Subject tests in math and physics a week ago. The results are comming on 21st of June. If I somehow manage to get more than 750 in both of them, then I'll probably not gonna retake them. But it's hard to guess as I didn't prepare much, just did a few sample tests from College Board study guide that I got months ago, and I got 710 for Math 2, and 720 for Physics.

That's the end of P.S'es. I promise to blog more often so I wouldn't need to P.S. that much.

My own wikiniser

2007-05-03T00:40:00.001+02:00

If you wonder what a wikiniser is, it's an organiser that's run on wiki. That's right, I created the word wikiniser. More about organising your life with a wiki is in this article
in lifehack.org website. I found this site because I was searching for some info on polyphasic sleeping and just followed a couple of links. So, I read this article and remembered that last week my friend FlameBird a.k.a. Ajay Chahar from mitprospectives.org showed me a Wiki engine that he had written(or he said so) some time ago with JavaScript. It was originally called EvoWiki but now it's known as TiddlyWiki.
By combining these two things I now have my own wikiniser which I'll try to use to improve my work. Awesome

3,18GB of ebooks

2007-05-01T23:36:00.001+02:00

Ok, so yesterday I managed to back up my Literature directory to a DVD disk. And I discovered that I have 3,18 gigabytes of written stuff. So taking everything in categories(I really need to categorize my books) I have:
1. Math books (1,3GB from calculus to algorithms and probability theory)
2. Engineering books (not much, but there are stuff like Lego Mindstorms book and similar things)
3. Computer stuff (didn't count how much but it's quite a lot. Mostly about programming and computer security).
4. All kinds of references(x86 CPU reference from Intel, PPC reference, RFC archive and more)

I hope I'll be able to read at least a fraction of my library some time. And not only read but study.

More facts about brain5ide

2007-04-10T14:47:00.000+02:00

One fact about me is that I want to get into the MIT and I recently joined this community of people that also want to get into the MIT. I have found out that people have posted their profiles on the net and I don't have one so here's profile of brain5ide:

Marks in Lithuania are in scale from 1 to 10 where 1 is the worst and 10 is the best
IX (average of 9,41):
Math: 9
Lithuanian: 9
English: 9
German: 9
Biology: 10
Chemistry: 9
Physics: 9
IT: 10
History: 10
Geography: 9
Art: 10
Physical education: 10 (I don't know how I got this one :) )

X (average of 9,77):
Math: 10
Lithuanian: 9
English: 10
German: 8
Biology: 10
Chemistry: 10
Physics: 10
IT: 10
History: 10
Geography: 10
Art: 10
Crafts: 10
Physical education: 10 (also a mystery)

XI (average of 9,8):
Math A level: 10
Lithuanian A level: 9 (this one's a must)
English A level: 9
IT A level: 10
Physics A level: 10
Biology B level: 10
Chemistry B level: 10
History B level: 10
Art: B level: 10
Physical education B level: 10

Now EC's:
1. I'm graduating from music school this year. My major is Accordion, minor is clarinet.
2. I was elected to music school council - the highest rank management
3. I'm a current student of Lithuanian school for young Mathematicians.
4. 1st place in Math Olympiad in Tauragė county in 8th grade
5. 3rd place in Physics Olympiad in Tauragė county in 10th grade
6. I participated in quite a few local and national math contests since 4th grade(no wins in national contests except being there).
7. 11th place in IT contest Beaver in 11th grade
8. 3rd place in "Žvaigždžių valanda 2006" contest of general knowledge with our school team.
9. I've developed a minimal PHP engine for our school website www.versme.org and also developed a few web projects some of which cannot be announced in public(sound's kinda stupid for a web project, but that's how it is).
10. 5th place in "Žvaigždžių valanda 2007" contest of general knowledge with our school team(we got prizes for getting first to the contest place - a math study book called "Useless math study book".

SAT Subject tests:
Math II : 690
Physics: 700

Foje

2007-04-09T22:58:00.001+02:00

My blog is becoming a videoblog but I don't mind. This time I'm posting video clips of my favorite band. It's called Foje. This band had won more Lithuanian awards than anyone else. But they separated 10 years ago. People were crazy about Foje. Last three concerts in biggest cities of Lithuania were completely full and the last concert, that was held in Vingis park, in Vilnius, was biggest event ever with about 60000 viewers(that's a lot for a country of 3,5 million people). And I discovered Foje just six months ago because I wasn't into music before, even though I go to a music school.
The four band members:
Andrius Mamontovas - the founder and the leader of Foje(guitar,vocal, sometimes drum). This man creates and plays wonderful music and is full of ideas. Right now he is organising a street music day on the 5th of May,2007 in Vilnius. He offers every musician to go to the streets and just play music. He began his music career with Foje in 10th HS grade in 1982 and when the group separated 14 years later he began his solo career which is not worse than the one with the band.
Arnoldas Lukošius - also known musician, who is famous for his dancing. You may have seen him with LT UNITED if you watched Eurovision 2006. He was the bald guy, who was dancing like crazy. Arnoldas also plays with Andrius in his concerts.
Algis Kriščiūnas - the drummer of the group. Now he's a well known photographer in Lithuania.
Darius Burokas - keyboard. I don't know a lot about him.

Kitoks pasaulis(Different world):

Tušti delnai(Empty hands):

Kibernetiniai žaislai (Cybernetic toys):

Vieną kartą Paryžiuj (Once in Paris):

Winter:

And one more from Andrius Mamontovas solo. Saulės miestas(Sun city):

I hope you like it even though not everyone will be able to understand those songs in Lithunianian. If you got interested here's a link to Andrius Mamontovas' website.

Coolest desktop environment

2007-04-09T13:15:00.001+02:00

Okay, so I have a Mac for more than six months. I thought it was the most beautiful desktop environment. And today I saw a video of XGL & Kiba-dock:

What can I say. It rocks. It has the best features of OS X environment and also adds some more. It's just beautiful. I'm now searching for the info about technical requirements for this beast.

The end is near???

2007-04-06T04:53:00.001+02:00

That's it ...

My first videoclip

2007-03-30T00:17:00.001+02:00

There was a contest in our school of making video clips that would reflect our class. I accidentally got the camera, because I had to copy the videos and give them for someone who is experienced enough(well more experienced than I am) to make the clip. But I decided to make one version of the video myself, so here it is:

I can say just one thing: It's really easy and fun to create videos with iMovie. I was the only one who has done it with iMovie in this contest. Macs are not that widespread in Lithuania, so I'm feeling lucky to have one.

Other videos of the competitors are embeded into our school website: www.versme.org

Any comments about the video?

kill -9

2007-03-26T23:23:00.001+02:00

Hello everyone who are reading this thing(probably noone). Some time has passed since my last entry. Pi day was weeks ago and it's still the newest entry until today. Well, I'm writing here now because I just saw an awesome video clip on Youtube. I have never heard such passionate music before(yeah, it's nerd hip-hop and I like it). Just watch and enjoy hearing a song about one of the most useful Unix commands.

Have a nice Pi day!

2007-03-14T00:51:00.001+02:00

Yes, it came again. Mar 14,2007. Why is it Pi? Because March ir 3rd month! So have a nice Pi day!

Creepy calculations

2007-03-13T21:30:00.001+02:00

Hey, I'm writing to this abandoned place! Again! Well this time I'm writing because of this video that kinda shows the present and the future of humanity. Just watch and learn from the numbers from this Calculation video

Interesting Web for every computer science student

2007-02-14T00:37:00.001+02:00

While reading the MIT blogs I noticed a post that linked to this site: www.paulgraham.com
Here you can find many interesting essays about starting your own computer related company and even more. I read a few essays and was astonished by this persons(Paul Graham, as you can see in the domain) deep look into computer related business, arts and life. If you're planning to open a computer related company this is a must visit site.

That's all I wanted to say for now.

Back in love with programming

2007-02-07T01:04:00.000+02:00

Today(actually yesterday) I got a message about a bug in my software, that is a "big" commercial secret. I wasn't surprised, because I have fixed tons of bugs in this very same program before. I almost went mad, because it started to bore me. These bugs were near making me to drop programming and choose a different thing. But today, when i finally fixed this bug, I feel different than the other times. It's like a crack in my thoughts. I have fallen in love with programming once again, and I'm back to full-free-time(that's the term, that I made up right now, which means that I spend all free time doing something, in this case computer programming) programming.

One Laptop Per Child

2007-01-04T17:06:00.001+02:00

Today I have rediscovered this project. I have read about it before but didn't take much about it. But yesterday I saw "a new", that was telling about OLPC in one Lithuanian news portal and decided to dig some info about it.
Here's a video where Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of whole OLPC project, talks about this idea and how it's getting close to reality. It's really interesting.
The main thing I like about OLPC laptop is that it runs a Linux, and a different UI called Sugar. This way people from developing countries won't be addicted to Windows as most of the users in other countries are. This might give more freedom to the whole computer industry because the more people are using free software, the more proprietary de facto standards die.
Wish you good luck and keep up the good work.

Math Olympiad results

2006-12-21T16:33:00.001+02:00

At least one Olympiad I didn't suck this year at is Math Olympiad. It wasn't perfect as I predicted, but I was 3rd in my region, so I'm going to the National Math Olympiad in March. I hope to have some time to prepare during winter holidays(from tomorrow to the 6 of January). I also hope to learn some more of C over the holidays. Wish me luck to fit in time, because there are some other things to do also, and it'll be pretty hard to fit them in my schedule. And you know what they say: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy".

Math Olympiad wasn't that bad

2006-12-15T16:54:00.002+02:00

Today I participated in regional Math Olympiad. It was pretty easy: only 6 easy tasks and 1,5 hours. The tasks were really easy: three from this year math school course, one task, that has on the Olympiad for the fourth time, I think and two easy tasks that required some deeper analysis. That's all. It took me about an hour to do them, have a relaxing break and check myself. If these tasks were given for 10th grade students, I think they would have solved them. That, I think, is all that I wished to say now.

I hate myself

2006-12-13T13:02:00.000+02:00

As I predicted, I didn't get through the regional Olympiad. I really suck at algorithmic coding. And there is nothing to blame except myself. That's what happens when you try to be perfect in everything: school subject, IT, math, physics. Damn it! Now I need to concentrate on the upcoming Math Olympiad the day after tomorrow.

IT olympics

2006-12-12T19:55:00.001+02:00

Today was pretty hard for me because I had a regional IT Olympiad today. Maybe because I didn't have enough time to prepare(some say, who needs preparing, but I haven't done C coding for a while), maybe because I didn't sleep well, maybe because of the chemistry test today (yeah, I had to go to the first three lessons) I didn't do so well. 1 out of 4 during 4 hours. That's horrible. Well, 1 is done fully, 2 other ones are done in half and the last one, which was actually, as the teacher said, the easiest, was not done. Well, better luck next time. I don't know how did the others do, but if I want to study in computer science field I need to do more practice.
After I came home I decided to read the HHS material and when I got to the part about blogs in Lesson 1, I remembered that I have a blog myself, so that's a little story about how this version of the blog is born.

P.S. I know, that there is no one reading this blog, but wish me luck in regional math Olympiad on Friday.

Hello everybody!

2006-12-12T19:52:00.000+02:00

So, as you could read in the header, this is not my first try to make a blog. It is the same blog, but the posts are now deleted because I have figured, that sometimes being different is not that cool as I thought before. So, what can I say, enjoy the blog.