new site

My new website (including a new blog) can be found under http://armin.diotavelli.net/. See you there

38

I guess this entry is more for the personal record but it’s something I wanted to do for a long long time – a compilation of my favorite movies. There are 38 of them listed right now but I probably missed a few. There are many many more that I like very much and which are funny, thrilling, interesting, or just pleasant to watch. About some I was very uncertain whether to include them in the list or not. There are many others that have won awards and which I find excellent films indeed. But this compilation wouldn’t make sense if I would simply list all films that are known to be good. Also, I did not intend to be fair regarding directors or the country of origin which is why, unsurprisingly, many of the directors on the list appear more than once and most of them are from the US. These are movies that have influenced me in one way or the other, that I like to remember and think about, and all of them I find brilliant pieces of art.

It would be very interesting to show such a list to a psychoanalytic – I would suspect they could draw some quite detailed conclusions about one’s personality from it. And I think I can make out certain tendencies toward particular kinds of films and storys here, too. Can you?

TODO

1. Check own scripts and their output in a more systematic way, even, and especially, if they are for one-time use, only.

2. Test hypothesis before attempting to work with them. Think stuff all the way through, not just half the way.

ps: Dear reader, please, don’t ask …

The one word that saved the day …

… or I should better say, the year, was “ACCEPTED”: for an internship at the Xerox Research Center Europe in Grenoble, that is. That’s right, Armin is going to France! What this means is, first of all, what my prospective supervisors paraphrased as “a total experience in the Machine Translation Team”. The internship will be about cross-linguistic information retrieval and split into two parts – one more in the realm of development and one more on the theoretical side. I needn’t say that I’m very excited and also a bit nervous. But learning is, as far as I’m concerned, always about asking just a little too much of oneself.

The best news is, though, that my ladyfriend is coming with me! We both applied (almost) independently for two different internships at XRCE, both of which happened to fit our profiles and interests extremely well and, luckily, both got accepted. So, apart from the technological and scientific aspect, this trip will just as well be a total experience of the Alps, wine, cheese, and bavarder français. It’s all during summer time, Lyon isn’t far. The Mediterranean isn’t, either. Realistically speaking, I hope we won’t be programming only …

tea junky

I just had to make the physically painful discovery that I am actually addicted to caffeine. Or rather to teaine, that is. I usually drink either one to two pots of black tea a day or two to three green tea infusions (of the same leafs). While I have noticed that drinking tea while working helps me to stay alert, I mostly do it for the taste, the atmosphere, and also for the sake of giving my body enough fluid. And then, today, I went to a one-day training course of the Karate club I’m in. I felt in raher o.k. shape but at around 3 pm I suddenly got such an awful headache that I had to leave early. I could have sustained the pain itself but my concentration suffered badly which could in turn have “affected” my partner. After I got home and had a cup of tea everything was fine again. Surprise – but what should I do? I would gladly leave the teaine be, but I don’t see any alternative drinks (suggestions appreciated).

Apart from that the training was ok. The sensei was a real Japanese and owner of the 7th Dan. I quite often had some difficulties understanding him due to his rather, uh, subgood German language skills. And this is where you can tell apart the advanced karateka from the the beginner: while the beginner is still trying to find out what the master is trying to show and tell at all, the advanced student discusses if the sensei’s shinbone is leaned forward by twenty or thirty degrees and if in a particular stance the knee cap forms a vertical line with the big toe. So, the second thing I brought home today (apart from an aching head) was the understanding that I’ve still got a long way to go.

Hello, World!

Another weblog. Not, that the world needs it or anything … nor do I really need it. But at times I do have the urge to, you know, tell stuff. And perhaps be part of something grand – which I do consider the bloggosphere to be to a certain extend. I have fancied Livejournal once, and I still like it, but I always had the feeling to not fit in well, there. Also, I’m not so good with consistency, which, in this case, means that there will be times when I’ll post every couple of days, and there will be times when I won’t post anything for months. At livejournal, people didn’t like this trait.

This is my personal weblog which means that it is not restricted to one particural field, but to everything that is of interest to me. I am planning to post a few lines from time to time about such diverse topics as computational linguistics, linguistics, technology, society, university related issues, but also small anecdotes, half-baked ideas, travel logs, books I just read, movies I just saw, or whatever comes up at times. Entries will be in English or German (to come: Russian ).

If you are looking for some factual information about me, about ongoing projects of mine, how to contact me, etc., please take a look at my homepage: http://diotavelli.net/people/armin/.