Despre mine

Am scris randurile ce urmeaza in engleza si apoi, recunosc, mi-a fost lene sa le traduc in romaneste. Ma bazez pe faptul ca multi romani cunosc limba engleza, mai ales dumneavoastra, care navigati pe Internet.

As you can read in my resume, I was born in Romania, in a city called Iasi, on the 10^th of March 1977. Throughout my life, I've had several hobbies, and each of them was the "main" one for a certain period of time. 

I've always liked to imagine things or see things from a different perspective. So I read many SF books, watched a lot of movies and wrote a few stories myself. Here are some of my favorite TV series: Star Trek - The Next Generation, Babylon 5, The Outer Limits. Star Trek NG, unlike (the) other Star Treks, had interesting ideas and invited the audience to meditate about something. This rather philosophical approach was taken to a higher level by The Outer Limits. Some of the phrases in the beginning and at the end of each episode really touched me. And Babylon 5 was unique because of the complex political intrigue and the fact that all episodes were connected, revealing a fascinating story. The best SF film I've seen so far is The Matrix. Not only for the astonishing special effects, but also for the question it poses: what is reality? Unfortunately, Matrix Reloaded was one of the my greatest disappointments.

A wise man said that a good way to come to know yourself is to begin knowing the others. A very interesting approach is considering humans as highly complex systems, therefore predicting the behavior of someone in a given circumstance. The manipulation theory proves that people are not so much different, as they like to think, and there are many ways to determine someone to act in a certain manner. Doing so, or even recognizing those methods, gives you a very nice feeling - power. Have you played The Sims? I think it remains a good game, but it must improve before becoming a good human simulator.

When I speak about astrology, I don't mean the ridiculous horoscopes from newspapers, that sound like "Gemini - take care how you spend your money; by the end of the day you'll have a nice surprise". I mean the personal horoscopes, which are made considering the exact moment and place of birth of one individual. I appreciate astrology because it's the only method that can give you a pretty good image of a person's character with a ridiculously small amount of input data. 

It is very closely related to psychology and the basic psychological portrait synthesized from interpreting a horoscope was accurate in more than 90% of the cases I studied. However, I could never make any fine predictions for myself, although I know the theory. It's kind of surprising, but thankfully, the tarot cards exist, that can always answer some important questions, by leading you to find the answer inside your own soul.

Where did I come from? Are you happy? Do miracles exists? I'm a Christian Orthodox. There was a time when I used to go to church every Sunday and I felt excellent. I even read a Dogmatics book, to find out what we're supposed to believe in. However, I also tend to believe in reincarnation and the occult. (You know, there are no really solid arguments against reincarnation). It amazes me how American movies try to make priests and religious people look like either hypocrites or evil fanatics. I'm a Romanian and I know that communists tried the same thing. I feel there is a worldwide undercurrent to break down traditional religion. I guess Malraux was wrong. The 21st century will be (it already is) and won't be religious. 

I don't like to learn foreign languages, because it's very difficult for me to memorize words. However, I'm very interested in studying the differences and resemblances between languages, their grammatical mechanisms and the evolution of words. There is another interesting field - the psychology of language. It's people who make the language or it's the language that models people? 

I learned English and French in school. In the 11th grade (in high school) I discovered Welsh language and then Irish. It was a new thing for me to see sentences that start with the verb. Once, when I went on holiday in a region in Romania where Hungarians are the majority, I bought myself a Hungarian dictionary and a conversation guide, and I learned a few expressions, but eventually I didn't need to use them.  I could truly study the languages I wanted only after I had been admitted to University and I discovered the Internet. 

Because of a Norwegian friend I came close to the Scandinavian languages and I decided that Norwegian was the most accessible and beautiful, at the same time. I tried once to study Sanskrit, but it was too hard. Among other languages that have interested me there are Latin, German, Icelandic.

I love the strange beauty of fractals. From a simple formula you can develop shapes with infinite complexity... And beside the aesthetic aspect, it looks like chaos is a model for nature itself. Until now, I haven't heard about any practical applications using chaos theory, except for very realistic graphic effects. Fractal compression is still being studied. Some guy pretended that he could predict the evolution of the stock market, but I don't know if he was serious or not. Anyway, if an android were to be build, chaos would have to be taken into consideration, in addition to probabilities.

My most recent hobby refers to numbers. Have you ever wondered why universal constants exist? Why is the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter a transcendent number that appears in most various places (round involves pi)? And why is it 3.14...? Why does the limit of a simple series (e=2.718...) appear in everything that includes growth? Why does Golden Mean (1.618...) seem to govern the proportions of the body throughout the entire living world (maybe that's why we consider it the aesthetically perfect proportion). And it's also the "most irrational" number, as it's the most difficult to approximate. Or the Feigenbaum number (4.66...) which pops up whenever chaos is implied.

Another interesting field is related to prime numbers, divisors, number bases. A very ingenious way to write non-integer numbers in a base-independent form is through continuous fractions. For example, an irrational number like sqrt(2) is, in decimal form, 1.4142135623... No pattern. However, if you transform it into a continuous fraction, you'll get 1+1/(2+1/(2+1/(2+...))). I find this fascinating!

Who doesn't like music? When I sit in front of my computer, whatever I'm doing, I need to listen to music. I especially like Gothic and Alternative Rock, but I can enjoy anything that has a nice melodic line. Here are some of my favorite bands: Nightwish, Rammstein, Theatre of Tragedy, Amorphis, The Offspring and some Romanian bands. I don't really like rap, save for Eminem, Limp Bizkit (hip-rock?) and a couple of Romanian hip-hop bands. I hate britpop and jazz. 

I sometimes enjoy classical music, Mozart and maybe Beethoven. I taught myself to play the piano, and I played for 1 or 2 years, but, unfortunately, I haven't got time to practice and I forgot most of the songs I knew. 

See the programs I put on this site. Most of them were not school projects, so, if computer programming hadn't been my hobby, why would I have made them?