Волшебники, первый сезон, цитаты.

Удалось таки досмотреть первый сезон "Волшебников". И заняло это у нас... почти три месяца, мда. А всего сезонов пять. И я склоняюсь пока сделать паузу в пользу сериала по "Королю и Шуту" и сопуствующих материалов. Один сезон, восемь серий, реальная история, происходившая в одном со мной культурном контексте - наверно в плане познания мира вокруг это сможет дать мне больше.
Опять же фандом живой, и если всё-таки выделять время на фикрайтерство в надежде, что моё восприятие, воображение и трактовки реальных и вымышленных событий могут нести ценность для кого-то ещё, то русскоязычный фандом "Короля и Шута" более подходящее для меня место, чем русскоязычный фандом "Волшебников". По "Волшебникам" я, на самом деле, начала даже что-то писать, и даже завела профиль на ao3 с "Language=Русский" фичочками, но в Hits, Kudos и Comments там пока всё грустно - и явно не только у меня. С англоязычным фандомом, вероятно, дела обстоят получше, но писать на английском и читать много фикшена на нём я пока не созрела. Приводить ссылку на свой профиль здесь тоже не буду, чтобы ничего тут не пропагандировать.

Тем не менее, одну из вещей, которые меня зацепили в "Волшебниках" хочется всё-таки прикопать и сохранить: цитаты на английском. Причём вся их красота мне видится именно на английском: те фрагменты, в которые я влюбилась по иностранным фан-фидео, в русскоязычном дубляже сериала звучат совсем не так.
Препод английского, с которым я занималась прошлой осенью, мне как-то рассказал про полезное упражнение: обращать внимание на фразы в живой речи носителей и повторять их за ними. Так что сохранить запомнившиеся моменты - это может быть полезно и с точки зрения моего изучения английского.   

Собственно, цитаты. Некоторые юморные, некоторые с претензией на глубокомысленность, некоторые просто нравится, как звучат. По большей части из 1-го сезона, но в конце не только по нему.

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James: Oh, my God. My girl. My friend. Have you no decency?
Quentin Coldwater: Not even a little.
James: Excellent. Three-way!
[Screams leaping on the bed between Quentin and Julia]

Quentin Coldwater: Am I hallucinating?
Eliot Waugh: If you were, how would asking me help?

Dean Fogg: You want to go back to Columbia? That pointless, miasmic march to death you call life? Family that never calls and friends that don't really get you and feeling alone and wrong until it crushes you?
Quentin Coldwater: No.
Dean Fogg: Then quit dicking around!
Quentin Coldwater: Stop it.
Dean Fogg: DO SOME GODDAMN MAGIC!!!
Quentin Coldwater: I SAID STOP IT!
[Does some goddamn magic with cards and faints]

Quentin Coldwater: Was he murdered?
Dean Fogg: Snuck a box of Oreos.
Quentin Coldwater: Magicians can't eat Oreos?
Dean Fogg: Diabetics can't eat Oreos.

William 'Penny' Adiyodi [Reading Quentin's mind]: Yes, I can. Yes, I have. Yes, everything you think is so boring, I replace it with dubstep.
Quentin Coldwater: What's dubstep?

Quentin Coldwater: If you're trying to tell me that it gets better...
Eliot Waugh: Oh, God, no. No, it doesn't. I'm trying to tell you, you are not alone here. Funny little irony they don't tell you, magic doesn't come from talent. It comes from pain.

Eliot Waugh: How about I find you, and I don't say magic is real, but I do seduce you, and so lift your spirits that life retains its sparkle for decades?
Quentin Coldwater: Yeah. That sounds nice. Thank you.
[Looks aside with strange gaze]

Kady Orloff-Diaz: Look, I did the spell too, Penny. If you're guilty, I'm guilty.
William 'Penny' Adiyodi: You're guilty.
Kady Orloff-Diaz: Okay, great, let's jump off a bridge.

Marina: Years reading Internet crap and accidentally poisoning myself twice, and now I'm stuck in a freezer with some bitch.
[Julia gives her a look]
Marina: Well, you are.

Dean Fogg: Being a magician has always been, in part, about accruing power. Power over yourself, the elements. Power over the future, the very world that exists around you. But power, as you all know, does not come cheaply.

Julia Wicker: Do you love magic? Is it in your soul? Is it like the secret heart of what you always were?

Pete [to Julia]: [...] You have magic. They don't. Better than money. Better than sex. Well, I guess that one depends.

[In a deleted scene]
Eliot Waugh: If not by charm, by threat of violence...

[In Quentin's hallucination]
Imaginary William 'Penny' Adiyodi [with a terrible Indian accent]: Please be knowing that dinner will be served in five minutes, and today, we are to be serving chicken curry, which is, of course, my favorite!
Real William 'Penny' Adiyodi [to Quentin]: You. Racist. Mother. FUCKER!

[In Quentin's hallucination]
Alice Quinn [to Quentin]: It's okay. I'll still mate with you!
Medical Orderly: All right, that's enough.
Eliot Waugh: Me three!!!

Eliot Waugh: Look, it was a party. He's probably sleeping it off under something or someone or someone's thing...

Quentin Coldwater [Reading pages from Jane Chatwin]: "The Madness Maker didn't play for the joy of winning, just the fear of losing. The real curse was, he only played when he could win, which cut him off from the surprise, horror, sadness, and wonder of life. Jane saw only one way out for him: stop playing. Start living."

Margo Hanson:  [...] Please tell me someone has pointed out to you that magic doesn't come from sunshine and ice cream, for any of us. What you're born with, what gets slammed on you as a kid, what happens now, like your dad... A great way to get what you want is to be so miserable that you don't want it anymore.
Quentin Coldwater:  What kind of system is that? Why can't it run on love, or... cocaine?

Quentin Coldwater: You know the worst part of getting exactly what you want? When it’s not good enough. Then what do you do? If this can’t make me happy, then what would?

Quentin Coldwater: You ever want something so badly and then realize that it's nothing like what you thought? And maybe that you are stupid for ever actually even wanting it.
Margo Hanson: Every guy I've ever slept with.

Quentin Coldwater: How could you know about all this and become a podiatrist?
Eliot Waugh: This isn't Middle Earth, Quentin. There aren't enough noble quests to go around.

Quentin Coldwater: What is the point of magic if we can't fix real problems?
Dean Fogg: We can fix some things. So we fix what we can.

Margo Hanson [Wearing robe and mask]: Oh, Manon! We offer up this virgin. Flesh and blood.
Quentin Coldwater: Jesus, I'm not a virgin.
Margo Hanson [Takes mask off]: Huh. Life is full of surprises.

Margo Hanson [about a wild horse]: Bring him to me.
William 'Penny' Adiyodi: Why?
Margo Hanson: I want to get my Catherine the Great on.
[Penny stares blankly]
Margo Hanson: Google it. Totally hilarious.

Quentin Coldwater [to Alice]: [...] You're the best.
Alice Quinn: You know what? I try so hard not to be.
Quentin Coldwater: Why?
Alice Quinn: I'm already pretty damn unpopular. Can you imagine what they would think if they knew how good I really am? "Spinster magician dies alone, eaten by cats".

Prof. Mayakovsky [to Quentin and Alice]: Why don’t you two… just fuck?

Alice Quinn: Can we just talk about this seriously for a second? What we did was stress and circumstances, and pheromones.
Quentin Coldwater: The first time, but not the next four.
Alice Quinn: You were counting?

Eliot Waugh: Why is your face making that face? 

Eliot Waugh [to Alice]: Let me guess. You got drunk on Mayakovsky's lichen vodka and you seduced him.
Quentin Coldwater: Maybe I seduced her?
Eliot Waugh: Please...

William 'Penny' Adiyodi: I need to punch you in the throat if you tell me what I need to do.
Quentin Coldwater: [...] I don't understand why we can't just be basic allies. You can't possibly want to be a dick more than you want to live!

Eliot Waugh: Life ain't fair. Why in the holy fuck should death be any different? 

Eliot Waugh: I'm in too. I heard the word «illegal».

Margo Hanson: Eliot. Honey, what are you on?
Eliot Waugh: Some pinks, a green, and a tab of something called "chocolate sunshine". I really like the name. Do you like the name?
[Glass shatters]
Eliot Waugh: Uh. Maybe I shouldn't have had that green.
[...]
Eliot Waugh: Wait, wait, wait. Are my eyes open or closed right now? And now?

Eliot Waugh: A golem of Margo. A Margolem!

William 'Penny' Adiyodi: What the fuck did I just walk into?
Eliot Waugh: My life. Welcome.

Margo Hanson: So this is a little hitch in our adventure. Are we just gonna act like children now?
Eliot Waugh: Now, now, Bambi. He's got a right to be mad.
Margo Hanson: No, he doesn't. People don't get to be mad at me because I had sex with them. You're welcome, both of you.

Quentin Coldwater: Standing in Fillory was the greatest moment of my life, and not just because, as I later found out, the air is .02% opium, which is a pretty unfair trick to get you to love a place.

Julia Wicker: I'm here. You don't have to like me.
Margo Hanson: Oh, don't you worry. We don't.

***

Quentin Coldwater:  Fillory was supposed to mean something. I was supposed to mean something here. But it’s random, it’s so random that the only way to save my friends is to yell at a fucking plant. Honestly, fuck Fillory for being so disappointing. You know maybe I was better off believing that it was fiction. The idea of Fillory is what saved my life. This promise that people like me, people like me can somehow find an escape. There has got to be some power in that. Shouldn’t loving the idea of Fillory be enough?

Dean Fogg: I'm not sure if that is the best way to happiness.
Alice Quinn: What if there is no best path?

[Margo hallucinates in the desert and sings "Here I Go Again" with her imaginary fellows] 
Margo Hanson [to imaginary Dean Fogg]: Okay, this is too much.
Imaginary Dean Fogg: Your subconscious thought you need some wisdom.
Margo Hanson: You do whiskey, not wisdom!

Young Quentin Coldwater's golem: Endings are the worst part. The characters grow up and move on with their lives. And some even die. It's like...
Julia Wicker: ...Your best friend in the whole world has abandoned you. I’ve had this conversation before.
[...]
Julia Wicker: Well, your real friends won’t abandon you. That will never change.


***

Quentin Coldwater: You know I've never really seen you care about something.
Eliot Waugh: Things aren't usually worth caring about.
Quentin Coldwater: With some limited, but very important exceptions.
Eliot Waugh: Very limited.

[Talking about 50 years spent together in alternate timeline]
Eliot Waugh: Did it happen?
Quentin Coldwater: Fifty years.
Eliot Waugh: It happened.
Quentin Coldwater: It was sort of beautiful.
Eliot Waugh: It really was.
Quentin Coldwater: I know this sounds dumb but us. We... You know, think about it. Like, we... we work. And we know it 'cause we've lived it. Who gets that kind of proof of concept?

Eliot Waugh: Q, I'm sorry. I was afraid. And when I'm afraid, I run away.
[...]
Eliot Waugh: If I ever get out of here, Q, know that when I'm braver, it's 'cause I learned it from you.

Quentin Coldwater: Life is unfair. But I'm good with it occasionally working out for people that I actually love.

@темы: Юмор, The Magicians, English, Фанфикшен

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Семейно-кишовско-вампирское

Ребёнок (5-ти лет) пропёрся от кишовской "Куклы колдуна". Не просто самой песни правда, а от вот этого клипа, с вампирами - но тем не менее.

История такая

Она в целом вампирской тематикой в последнее время увлеклась - сейчас даже мультики такие есть детские, про школу вампиров, какую-то Ви и проч. А тут мы шли втроём по улице и я мужу расказывала про песню "Письмо из Трансильвании" КняZz-я. И ребёнок тут же - хочу послушать, хочу послушать, нет не взрослая, нет не даже до середины не дослушаю, включи-включи-включи.

В итоге дома поставила ей вот это, но оно, разумеется, не зашло:

Текст песни

Прости, Луиза, но в письме я вынужден сказать,
Что не судьба отныне мне таким как прежде стать.

В чужом краю запретных врат не избежал и вот,
Теперь мне нет пути назад – и нет пути вперёд.

Чувствую, как ты дышишь, примчаться готов,
Но ты не услышишь за дверью шагов.
За дверью шагов.

Полна Румынская земля зловещих тёмных тайн.
Ведут охоту на меня все жители окраин.
Когда я принял этот дар, за пять минувших лет,
Я столько боли испытал, что страха больше нет.

Чувствую, как ты дышишь, примчаться готов,
Но ты не услышишь за дверью шагов.
За дверью шагов.

В холодных стенах замка тьмы я облик изменил,
Теперь энергию взаймы беру у древних сил.
Поскольку я к тебе привык, хочу забрать с собой.
Читаешь ты, а в этот миг я за твоей спиной.

Чувствую, как ты дышишь, примчаться готов,
Но ты не услышишь за дверью шагов.
За дверью шагов.

Чувствую, как ты дышишь,
Шагов ты не слышишь,
Мгновения мне
Хватит вполне.

Но зато потом вышли на "Куклу Колдуна" с первым видео и смотрели-смотрели по кругу всей семьей.

Заодно наткнулись ещё вот на это, тоже КняZz, тоже вампирское:

Текст песни

Как юнец, сто ночей, шел за ней, я шел за ней.
Мне несла эта роль - только боль, только боль.
Нутро мое шептало: "Тут дело нечисто!
Оставь ее, твоя любовь - самоубийство..."

Свет - тень; Ночь - день;
Хей! Хей!

Во мрак дома людские окунулись,
Шумят потоки ледяных дождей.
Блуждаю молча в пасти темных улиц,
Страдая от слепой любви своей!

Пробудив в сердце страсть, был готов в бездну пасть.
Я берёг нашу связь - не боясь, не боясь.
Чем ближе к ней, к созданию древних кровей,
Тем каждый шаг давался мне все тяжелей.

Свет - тень; Ночь - день;
Хей! Хей!

Во мрак дома людские окунулись,
Шумят потоки ледяных дождей.
Блуждаю молча в пасти темных улиц,
Страдая от слепой любви своей!

Способность очаровывать вампиров ей дана -
Опустошать их, как бокалы терпкого вина.
Лишаясь сил, в ночи упорно следуют за ней -
И гибнут, так и не достигнув цели призрачной своей.

Хей! Хей!

Во мрак дома людские окунулись,
Шумят потоки ледяных дождей.
Блуждаю молча в пасти темных улиц,
Страдая от слепой любви своей!

Цель была близка, сгинула тоска;
И, лишаясь сил - я глаза закрыл.

Так и живём, почти нормальной семьёй...

@темы: Это рок, детка!, Жизненное, Музыка

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Sound processing

Интересности из сферы обработки музыки и звука, про которые довелось узнать из  обсуждений на работе и этого курса:

1. Отношение частот одной и той же ноты соседних октав всегда равно 2, потому что субъективно для человеческого уха звуки с отличающейся в два раза частотой звучат очень схоже.

2.  При этом деление на ноты в рамках одной октавы, на самом деле, может быть очень разным. Пентатоника, например, делит октаву на пять нот.

3. Несмотря на то, что в общепринятом делении октавы, как всем известно, 7 нот, интервалов-полутонов в нём 12 - как чёрных и белых клавиш одной октавы на пианино.

4. Гриф скрипки ни как не разделяется на лады. Как хочешь, так на октаву на звуки и дели    Вероятно, потому скрипка считается одним из самых требовательных к музыкальному слуху инструментов.

5. За точку отсчёта, в т.ч. в камертонах, обычно берут ноту Ля первой октавы, имеющую частоту 440 Гц. Несмотря на название, первая октава обычно расположена не в самом начале, а в середине между другими октавами.

6. Музыкальные эффекты вибрато и тремоло - это модуляция звука, т.е. процесс изменения одного или нескольких параметров модулируемого несущего сигнала  при помощи модулирующего сигнала. Модуляция по частоте - это (частотное) вибрато, по амплитуде - тремоло или амплитудное вибрато. 

7. Частотное вибрато на скрипке выполняют путём вибрирующих движений по горизонтали, изменяющиее в небольших пределах длину прижатой струны и,  следовательно, частоту колебаний. На гитаре струна прижимается к порожкам ладов, поэтому такой приём провернуть сложнее. Можно подтягивать струну пальцами вверх-вниз - это называется бенды. Голосом и на духовых инструментах вибрато тоже делают.

8. Попытками разобраться в теории музыки можно сломать голову и вынести мозги не хуже, чем попытками разобраться в теории обработки сигналов.

9. При работе со звуком часто (чаще, чем для обработки изображений или текстов) используются комплексные числа, т.е. состоящие из действительной и мнимой части. Если удариться в философию, можно предположить, что восприятие звука и музыки человеком лучше всего описывается чем-то, что отражает как происходящие в реальности процессы, так и нечто, существующее только в воображении.

10. Гармонические звуки, издаваемые, например, человеческим голосом и многими музыкальными инструментами (не ударными) имеют структуру, состояющую из одной наиболее ярко выраженной частоты, называемой основной, и чуть менее выраженных  строго кратных ей гармоник, т.е. частот выше неё в 2, 3, 4, 5 и более раз.  
Такая структура хорошо видна на амплитудной спектрограмме. Например, спектрограмма человеческой речи выглядит так: 



11. А вот эти узоры - это спектрограммы разных типов сирен:



Пока всё, что захотелось законспектировать и поделиться, может потом запишу ещё что забавное. Если вдруг есть что поправить или дополнить - буду только рада, ибо реально интересно же это всё    

@темы: Музыка, Работа

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Total eclipse of the heart

Музыкальное, про хорошо забытое старое

Честно говоря, я нежно люблю каверы, как возможность по-новому взглянуть на известную, любимую, но начавшую приедаться песню. Хороший исполнитель всегда найдёт способ свежо это сделать. Особой строкой здесь идут инструментальные каверы, оседающие в небольших плейлистах у меня на диске, гоняемых по кругу, когда мне нужно с одной стороны заставить себя работать, с другой - не слишком от этой работы отвлекаться. 

Так, инструментальный вариант песни Total Eclipse of The Heart, originaly performed by Bonnie Tyler in 1983, в исполнении Simply Three & Vitamin String Quartet для помощи в концентрации я использую уже достаточное время. С видеорядом она вообще просто релакс:




Но написать этот пост меня сподвигла не она, а попавшаяся совсем недавно power metal версия:




Оригинал, если что, такой:



Вариант Tommy Johansson нравится мне больше всего, потому что музыкально эта песня с её экспрессивностью и напряжением, кажется, была просто создана для тяжёлого варианта, но вот её текст в таком исполнении, как по мне, смотрится очень неоднозначно. Формально вроде в нём нет ничего такого, что не может петь мужчина-металлист, но я вот хорошо чувствую, насколько он написан под эмоциональную исполнительницу-женщину. 

Потому что когда на подобную тему поёт мужик-металлист, он делает это так (хотя этот текст, честно говоря, как раз был написан женщиной):




Однако, если уж заводить разговор на тему затмений сердца, то лично мне конкретно сейчас ближе всего вот это, оптимистичное, принесённое одним из фан-видео по "Волшебникам" (ниже не оно, а клип со словами):




(Но Tommy Johansson всё равно крутой чувак, его metal-версия Ave Maria или The Winner Takes It All  - это тоже что-то с чем-то.)

@темы: Музыка

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My new device

Английский

The contemporary market of electronic gadgets, in my opinion, clearly shows how consuming our society is. The choice of technically complex personal (and often entertainment only) devices is abundant; the models lineup is changed so quickly and so quickly users have to changed their equipment. I've bought my previous tablet PC, Huawei MediaPad X, five years ago and had to purchase something new recently.

For sure, the main reason was weakened battery that started to discharge too rapidly, but if it was the only problem, I could just replace the accumulator. But beside this, the Android version became obsolete, I often saw warning «the application may be not suitable for your device», backround programs sometimes crashed, there was too little free memory, tablet became so slow… Thus, I had to dive into market proposals, technically characteristics, experts' reviews and customer's feedback comments.

The device chosen afterwards was again Huawei MediaPad, the Huawei MediaPad M5 8.4. The last number stands for screen diagonal, as MediaPad M5 is produced in two sizes, with 8.4 and 10.8 inches. It's more than 7 inches that my old tablet has, and I firstly was disappointed that this size is unpopular now. Most proposals are either smartphones with 6'' screen or tablets with diagonals starting from 8''. However, the size of 8.4 inches turned out to be quite convenient. The new tablet does not create impression of being big or heavy. Instead, it very comfortably lies in the hand. And in general, it is very pleasant, with modern design, smoothed back surface, rounded edges and wonderfull screen. IPS LCD matrix with 2560х1600 resolution and pixel density 360 PPI is something of really high quality.

The tablet lock screen is very beautiful as it has a set of professional photos to show. All these photos have both portrait and landscape orientations and are changed every time the device is awaken. It looks like this and I like it:







The device camera is quite simple, but I don't think that it is a great disadvantage for a tablet PC.

The screen aspect ratio is 16:10 and as I know playing video is one of the functions MediaPad M5 was designed for. The 8th season of Game of Thrones show has started and we are watching the series on my tablet. Yes, the device seems to be create to hold it in hands while lying in bed and watching movies. The sound is said to be cool as well, but we didn't tested it as we are using earpieces.
By the way, there is no 3.5 jack output and such earpieces should be plugged with the help of 3.5-to-type-C adapter. That is explained by type-C earpieces having very high sound qualities that 3.5 ones are not capable for.

I spent some time searching for the Heroes of Might and Magic III in the Google Play but finally managed to find it. I've bought this game while using old tablet, and I still play it when want to relax. For some reason, it needed installation of Google Play Games, that for some reason was not presented by default. Copying folder «games» in the application directory from one device to another was sufficient to get all the saved games on the new tablet. Here are screenshots taken directly from my new device:







That's all about entertainment, as the device was bought for more practical purposes.

The operating system installed on MediaPad M5 is Android 8.0. There's unofficial information that update with Android 9.0 is being tested for this device and it affected our choice.
I hoped that QPython, an application that allows to run Python code on Android, will be fully functional on the new tablet. Scripts worked normally on my old device, but Jupyter Notebooks were not able to load. I thought it was due to old OS version or hardware, and moving to modern environment would change the situation. On the new tablet Jupyter Notebooks are loaded normally, but there are problems running them. However, even the ability to read this type of source code is useful too. I also have Source Code Viewer, it allows to view highlighted code on some other languages, but without executing it.

The application for documents editing installed by default is (suddenly!) MS Office (on Android!). However, I don't like its interface, it doesn't look convenient for me. Unfortunately I didn't found in Google play free non-ads versions of the application that were installed on my other devices, WPS Office or Polaris Office. So I'm going to use MS Office for some period, may be I'll get accustomed to it, find how to customise or will edit just plain text notes, without using any Office programs.

I'm using EBookDroid as a reader, it got normally installed on the new device and properly opened all *.pdf, *.djvu and *.epub that I needed. I had also Amazon Kindle reader on my old tablet, but I have not being buying new books there for some time, so haven't installed it. But I have installed Google Play Books and read and listen some free fragments. It allows to use audio books along with electronic ones.

Lingualeo got installed and works normally as well, but there's an inconvenience here. This app has no landscape orientation, the tablet had only one portrait orientation and earpieces output in this orientation is situated on the bottom side. It hinders a little.

It turned out that messengers that I'm using, Telegram, Viber and WhatsApp, all need a phone number. So I had to move SIM-card from old tablet to new one. I also moved the SD-card, and copied most part of needed files this way. The rest I copied through Google Drive and Dropbox. Dropbox suddenly allowed me to use three devices only in the base account, and I see no reason to prefer its usage to Google Drive now.

In general, I'm greatly satisfied by my new Huawei. It's nice, handy and quick, though having a pair of small inconveniences. I felt similar about MediaPad X when it was new, as I remember. May be that shows that the progress is going on and there is no limit for perfection

@темы: Вот так живут программисты, english writing skills, Жизненное

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Backwardly about mlcourse.ai

Английский

Apparently, I'll never make a habit to write diary posts regularly, without falling offline for long time, even for the sake of improving English. This time I got deeply into family solicitudes, that are mercilessly devouring my time. That's good that I've managed to finish the OpenDataScience course, things could go the other way.
And this course was another activity that took almost all my time, in November and December. Usually, I stop writing due to participation in competitions and for some extend mlcourse.ai was a kind of a "competition".
It had a rating and names of participants with top-100 (out of 2000+) results were published on the course site. This list is there and I'm the 5th (yes, I'm bragging):
https://mlcourse.ai/rating

There were Kaggle Inclass competitions among activities that give points for rating, but in general structure of the course was more complex. The activities that gave credits for the rating were:

Assignments, most of which were Jupyter Notebooks with tasks to write code, compute the answers and fill a Google Form. It was the main, but the simplest part of the course, in my opinion. I've mistaken only a pair of times and lost ~3-4 points out of ~100.

The first two assignments, devoted to Exploratory Data Analysis with Pandas and Visual Analysis, were easy, so I managed to complete similar lessons from Kaggle Learn simultaneously:
https://www.kaggle.com/learn/pandas
https://www.kaggle.com/learn/data-visualisation

The 3rd, the 5th and the 7th assignments about Decision Trees & K-NN, Ensembles of Algorithms and Unsupervised Learning correspondingly, were more profound ML topics, but not so difficult too.
The 4th assigment, about Linear Models, was connected to competition and had two parts. The first was again to fill the answers into Google Form, the second, the "freeride", was to improve created model and beat competitions baselines. That wasn't easy.
The 6th, Feature Engineering, and the 10th, Gradient Boosting, were competitions too and had only "freeride" parts. I'll tell about competitions separately.
Though the 8th topic was devoted to the Vopal Wabbit library, in the corresponding assignment we were implementing our own version of logistic regression and used it to predict tags of StackOverflow questions. It required good mathematical skills and organizers considered it as the hardest assignment. For me, however, the competitions were harder. (Maybe because I Math).
In contrast, the 9th assignment, on Time Series prediction was short and simple. Possibly, it was the easiest task in the course, though corresponding articles were long and saturated.

Competition "Alice" (do not mix up with yandex voice assistant, nothing in common), the 4th assignment:
https://www.kaggle.com/c/catch-me-if-you-can-intruder-detection-through-webpage-session-tracking2
The task was to distinct web sessions of specific user ("Alice" from sessions of all other users. Each session was presented by a row in the dataset, containing up to 10 sites along with the times they were visited. It was assumed that a session lasted 30 minutes or until ten sites were visited. If user visited more sites in 30 minutes or was visiting them a longer period, they were considered as belonging to a next session. That not very correct dataset composing, in my opinion, but that was just given as is.
I spent a plenty of time and efforts trying to beat all specified baselines, but finally managed to. In the first two competitions, there were additional credits, awarded to those who had achieved the top-10 places, but I decided not to participate in that race. Due to my gender I'm not so fond of "dick contests" of all types

Competition "Medium", the 6th assignment:
https://www.kaggle.com/c/how-good-is-your-medium-article
The task was to predict the amount of "claps" (likes) that article gathered on the blog platform Medium. Again, I've beaten all needed baselines, but didn't try to go higher.
What confused me in this competition is that the "author" feature turned out to be the most useful and it was recommened for usage by organizers. Such model works well only for known authors, and for someone new it will show poor results. It would be better to make predictions on the characteristics of the article itself, after "anonymization", in my opinion. But the dataset was provided in such form and I had to work with it this way.

Competition "Flight delays", the 10th assignment:
https://www.kaggle.com/c/flight-delays-fall-2018
In this competition we had to predict, whether the flight would be delayed for more than 15 minutes or not. Organizers claimed that it was a simple task, but for me it wasn't so primitive, though, yes, much more easier then two other competitions.

Project "Alice" or individual project. In this activity we had to create data analysis project on either the data from the competition "Alice" or on our own dataset. In the first case, the analysis was performed with step-by-step procedure, prepared by the organizers. n the second we were working by ourselves with accordance to specified plan. I've choosen the second option and analysed dataset with results of Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2018. Here's my research:
Developer Career Satisfaction.

Tutorial. A Jupyter Notebook that teaches some ML-related topic or shows some library usage. Initially I thought I would not have enough time to write tutorial, but when I had finished individual project, there were several days left before deadline. I remembered that I had encounteret interesting information about NumPy in different places and quickly composed it into tutorial:
NumPy tutorial

That's it. For now, I'm not going to participate in any course or competition in the next few months. It makes me upset, because there are so many opportunities, and I'm busy


By the way, there are three PyLadies community in our country now. Besides PyLadies Spb, PyLadies Msk (tadam!) and PyLadies Kazan have appeared (Telegram chats links):

@темы: english writing skills, Data Science, Machine Learning

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Upper-Intermediate, or English once again

Английский

I have mentioned the Puzzle English service earlier. It helps in learning English by yourself, like Lingualeo or Duolingo. I looked at it closer recently, but it doesn't seem to be more suitable for me than Lingualeo is. However, I passed a test here, and it made me think again about my language level. Puzzle English evaluates my skills as this:

In general, it corresponds to my subjective perception. I listened a lot, and grammar exercises and courses in LLeo are good enough. I started to practice writing and speaking skills much later. I do not know how the service was able to evaluate the last two aspects through an automated test, and speaking seems to be more difficult for me than writing, but I indeed feel that they are my weakest points. What's worse, these weak points make my English a "passive" one, suitable mostly to receiving information, not the two-sided communication. Nevertheless, I'm still not ready to hire a tutor and am thinking how to shift educational focus toward these skills by myself. May be I should put aside listening to TED Talks and TechLadies webinars and start watching TV shows and movies in order to follow the live dialog flow, not a single person's speech. And yes, I'm going to continue practicing with recording my voice on a dictaphone. And writing posts, for sure. But again, it may be good idea to search where to read correspondence of two or more participants instead of journal articles. May be participating in OpenDataScience chat in the Slack will help There can also be specialized training programs for such aims...

I've also taken the vocabulary test there, it showed this picture:

The first funny thing about this test is that I already know all the words offered in the link "Show the recommended words". Those asked in the test itself were much harder and less widely used. The second funny thing is that in many tables in the Internet the vocabulary size of > 4000 words is said to correspond not to Upper-Intermediate, but Advanced level, that I haven't achieved in any other skills from the first picture. So, it looks like I should slow down in learning new words in favor of improving other language aspects.

The question «Upper-Intermediate or not Upper-Intermediate» bothers me so much because it is the level that is considered sufficient to live and work in English-speaking country. It allows to pass TOEFL and IELTS exams, which certificates are needed to enter a foreign University or work for a foreign country. Though I was never asked about language certificates when proposed foreing-company vacancy, and have never heard about that from my relocated colleagues, I think the question of obtaining Upper-Intermediate is important enough when having plans to move abroad.

I've also passed a test on one of the sites I've read about English proficiency levels. It was shorter and easier then Puzzle English one, and said that I already have Upper-Intermediate:



Thus, it looks like I am somewhere around, but have to continue improving. So I'll continue...

@темы: english writing skills, Жизненное

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Oceanarium Moskvarium

Английский

When the autumn came I started to spend much less time going out. The weather is not so tempting, and educational activities started, and the working mood came back... However, we've made a sortie to one of Moscow oceanariums, Moskvarium, at the VDNKh expo center. Actually, it was not our own idea. Vova was presented a "box of impressions" on his birthday at work (with this one). It is a set of different activities to select and use the one you liked the most. I don't think it's too useful gift for friends or relatives, as it's easier and cheaper to discuss desired pastime directly and just buy tickets. But as a corporate present it may be a good choice. The birthday was in May, the "box" had limited validity, so we decided to use it before it has expired.

In the summer VDNKh expo center was under reconstruction. That's strange to make one of the most popular Moscow rest places blocked, dug up and noisy in the main rest season. We tried to go for a walk there once in June or July and got disappointed a little bit. Anyway, now the reconstruction is almost finished, many pavilions look like new. But the middle part is still fenced, may be they have already started to build winter ice rink. Fountains are off, but the aircrafts are on their usual places:

The Moskvarium is located in the special, quite huge, building. It has a statue with dolphins in front of the entrance (or exit, in the case of this photo):

Main part of the oceanarium is located on the basement floor and is organized as a set of big aquariums, built into the walls and having one or more windows for the viewers. Windows at the beginning are crowded a little bit, that can be irritating, but further people (and kids) scatter and you can observe the aquariums much more freely. In my opinion, the start of the exposition is not so interesting. If that was done intentionally, it was a wise decision.

I guess, content of some aquariums is quite expensive. Of this one, for example, that is inhabited by different sturgeon breeds:

Though this previous may look faded and gray, there is a great variety of shapes and colors deeper in the exhibition:

Sometimes fishes can stare at you with various "facial" expressions:

And sometimes those expressions can be very funny from the human perspective:

As it can be seen on some photos above, there are not only fishes on the exhibition, but a lot of other water forms of life. It may be not so clear, but that's a crocodile (too uncommunicative crocodile):

There are turtles, lobsters, sea stars, corals, seaweeds, etc. That's pity that the lighting didn't allow us to make photo of seals (the photo flash was forbidden on the exposition). Photos with medusas can sometimes look in a very cosmic way:

And color illumination can make them looking like a part of a fantasy:

The were sharks, sure. Many of them, in a huge aquarium, along with others large fishes. I think, it's not only the rows of sharp teeth that make them so intimidating, but also the insane look in their eyes:

There were not only large sharks. A pair of aquariums were open, one of them, a small one, was said to be a "touch aquarium", where you can immerse your hand into water and reach for its inhabitants. I do not know, whether this one was "touch" too, but I would not risk putting a hand there:

There was also a performance with dolphins and killer whales on the higher floor, but the tickets for it should had been bought separately. We didn't go there. There was a windows to the bottom of their pool, but it was hard to discern anything there, especially during the performance. We saw only vague shadows and silhouettes. However, may be there was something even in such view, something mysterious...

Yes, oceanarium is something that is better to see, than to read about. So, I'm finishing my picture-spam post. Hoping, it was impressive enough

@темы: Визуальное, Вот так живут программисты, english writing skills, Жизненное

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Learning English

Английский

It's funny to write how are you learning English in order to practice learning English Nevertheless, it takes a considerable part of my current activities, and I do not have more meaningful topic to write at this moment.

I was again watching Tech Ladies webinar last Thursday. My ability to understand live american speech disappoints me much. I had to re-watch the recordings of previous two webinars that I listened to, and will do the same this time. The main ideas were clear, especially when looking on the presentation slides, but there were a lot of phrases that slip away from my perception. So, considering it as a audition exercise, I often had to replay recorded fragments, some of them several times, and concentrate, and listen to them attentively. I'm proud of understanding some compound sentences, for example «our ancestors, who thought that the rumbling in the bush was a pretty little bunny and not the the rattlesnake, probably haven't become our ancestors». (Because I didn't known the word «rattlesnake» at that moment and the «rumbling» was a new entry in my vocabulary). But my general inability to perceive the whole speech on the fly upsets me.

Sometimes I think that it would be better not to play into self-education, but join some online English school, or take a personal tutor. It would be displeasing to memorize something wrongly, to "seal" speech mistakes without the control of a literate person. And also my progress seems to be very slow In the article from one English school it was stated that to be improving quickly you have to work with a teacher 2-3 times a week, make homeworks, and additionaly spend 5-10 minutes dayly refreshing words in your vocabulary. I don't think I'm capable of this.
On the other hand I have no immediate need to speak English on the high level right now, so I prefer to postpone the idea of paid lessons for some time. It is hardly possible to learn figure skating without a trainer, as there are not so many opportunities in everyday life to interact with whose who can skate. But there is endless number of sources with English from native speakers, educated and having correct pronunciation. At this moment I prefer to believe that regular practice is more important than having someone tracking your mistakes.

Recently, I've pushed Vova to start learning English too. He installed Duolingo app and now plays with this funny owlet every evening:



However, for me Duolingo lessons seem to be very easy. I've tried exercises even from the last levels, but they looked trivial and stamped for me. Possibly, it is the application for those who learn several languages on the base level, not single English in the deep.
The feature that I greatly liked in the Duolingo was the opportunity to check phrases that you pronounce to the microphone. But, unfortunately, it is again possible only for template sentences.

I'm still using as a main tool the application with another animal, Lingualeo:



Besides this two services I know also about "Puzzle English", but I haven't looked at that closely.

For me, the most useful feature Lingualeo is ability to learn words in dictionary that I've collected by myself. There is opportunity to add words from ready-made sets, but as I read, listen and watch material from real-life sources, I prefer to fill the list with unknown words encountered there. Word excercises in Lingualeo are multilateral: choosing correct english->russian translation, choosing russian->english translation, composing a word out of mixed letters, spelling a heard word, deciding weither the translation is right or not on speed. The main drawback of these training, in my opinion, is that the word is marked as "learned" right after you correctly performed all the exercises with it the first time. Such words do not appear in subsequent learning sessions anymore. At the beginning I used to look through "learned" list and manually transfer unremembered words back, but now I prefer to re-sent for studying only those words that I meet once again in another place. I'm adding new words frequently and it seems unreasonable to thoroughly memorize rarely used terms.

Another training I greatly like in Lingualeo is the "Compose sentence" audition exercise. You have to listen to a phrase and then select words that form this sentence, one by one, from proposed options. I usually fail on mixing up words like "are" and "were", plural form with singular etc.
Similar principle is used in a grammar exercise. You are given a russian sentence and you have to select corresponding English words, one by one, to form grammatical construction of specified type. There are also theoretical grammar courses, with explanation of rules, examples, exercises and tests, but they are included into commercial version only. My subscription has ended recently and I decided to do free exercises for some time.

Lingualeo has also wide range of materials, both textual and video, but I prefer to use resources that I encounter in everyday life. Besides the webinars mentioned in the beginning of the post, I've subscribed to a number of mailing lists about IT, Machine Learning, management, entrepreneurship etc. They provide an endless source of new words and phrases for me. Recently I've started to train speaking skills using the read articles. That mean that I turn on a dictaphone after reading and pronounce my thoughts on the discussed topics, then listen to the recording, notice errors, re-formulate better and speak again. Three such iterations take about ~30 minutes, so I rarely perform more.

And again, I write this posts, with great assistance of Google Translate I use it not only to translate something to English, but also to check the spelling and the correctness of the composed phrases. In addition, the OpenDataScience course that I joined recently is also performed on English, so it adds to my training opportunities.

And I sincerely hope that it all will help. I've heard that getting immersed in language is very useful method to learn it. So, I will go this way for now.

@темы: english writing skills, Жизненное

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Algorithms

Английский

In the first approximation, programming is essentially based on algorithms. A program is a declaration of the steps that lead to desired result through execution of commands, conditions, loops, subprograms etc. However, modern software development is much more complex and complicated process that involves a lot of skills, competencies, stages and actions. There is no surprise that the question "Does a programmer really need knowledge of classical algorithms?" arises from time to time, along with those "Does a programmer need math knowledge?" and "Does a programmer need higher education?". And, in my opinion, the answer to all the three is "not necessary". Really, the design skills can be more useful for a web-developer, and the drivers programmer can benefit from electronics and circuit knowledge more. I do not like people from big software companies who claim that the ability to algorithmize is the most important one and that a person who can algorithmize is able to adapt to any project and cope with any IT-task. I suspect that such programmers participated in informatics olympiads when being young, that can be an indicator of access to high-quality education and prosperous life in the whole. And that is something that can lead to career success by itself.

However, though I do not consider the algorithmic skills as the most important ones, I find them significant. According to my feelings, them form a special type of thinking and problem-solving ability, that are invisibly useful in everyday programmer's life. I'm disappointed that in my university we almost did not learn the algorithmic theory and insufficiently practiced, especially considering the amount of hours spent on physics, economics, draftsmanship etc.

I've bought this book after the diploma:


I liked it and managed to read the first three parts (from the total seven), but had to lay it aside as there were many other more practical things to learn. The book is quite hard, especially when solving exercises, so my reading speed was low. And yeah, I didn't even consider studying the classical multi-volume Knuth's work ever.

As now I'm working at improval of my fundamental basis, I've returned to Kormen and moved a little bit further. I've mastered the part about graph algorithms. (Without solving exercises, however. They are too deeply mathematical, I don't think they are necessary).It seems to me that I've come across graph algorithms in the area of machine learning, in the clusterization topic, in social graphs analysis, etc. And in general, I see examples where grapth theory can be useful in real tasks, for instance, in maps services or in Yandex Metro. So, I spent a lot of time learning graphs in September, and I finished this part only recently. The list of chapters for further study is ready, but I'm going to postpone it till the next iteration. There are more beneficial activities, as my main goal is data science now, not the computer science. If I had enough time, I would rather prefer practicing on such resources:

HakerRank
Project Euler
CheckiO
TProger ru
... but I haven't enought time.

And again, I'm not sure that it is so practically useful. Even Yandex, that loves to conduct algorithmic challenges and give algorithmic tasks on interviews, cannot clearly show why are they so important: https://habr.com/company/yandex/blog/420305/
Creating their own data structure, using specific non-classical algorithm, customizing standard library structures... And being much more free in choosing input data and form of the output, in stating the problem and desired outcome, in adherence to time frames, in making several iterations to improve, etc. That's different to what is happening in code contests, in my opinion.

In another article Mail.ru explains algorithmic interviews puzzles, but again, gives no notion, how they helps in everyday work. So, I think it's good practice to train your brain from time to time, but not the aim to aspire to.

Machine learning contests seems to be much more closer to the real life problems, but even them are often considered by industry experts as not reflecting the main part of the work of data scientist. And that's interesting that the "Algorithms" hub on the Habr contains machine learning algorithms and many other types of algorithms, not only classical computer science ones: https://habr.com/hub/algorithms/

So, now I'm returning to Data Science in my educational activity. The next step I'm going to overcome is free ML courses by OpenDataScience, that starts on October, the 1st:

@темы: Программирование, english writing skills, Data Science, Machine Learning

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Отписалась от ru_programming.

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На дайри никогда и не было нормальных программерских сообществ, но сейчас уж совсем в УГ скатилось.

21.09.2018 в 00:07

Пишет  CD_Eater:

А что такое "глубокий кодинг без ТЗ"?

19.09.2018 в 12:02

Пишет  Эрл Грей:

Программистка-индивидуалка. Выезд, апартаменты. Классика, реверс-инжиниринг, глубокий кодинг без ТЗ. Звони! Есть подружка бизнес-аналитик.

Всё чаще вспоминаются мне картинки из этой серии:



Я бы правда их так нарисовала:



...нельзя запускать английский...

@темы: Люблю филосовствовать, Вот так живут программисты, Жизненное

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Toxic workplaces

Английский

Recently I've encountered announcement about series of webinars on Tech Ladies and decided to buy access to one of them, devoted to working in toxic environment. It was interesting and relevant for me, so I'm going to continue with some of upcoming online classes. I'm not sure that subjects of next webinars will be worth retelling, but I think the content of the first was. There are numerous toxic social ambiences here, in Russia, as I can see.

Well, the spokeswoman told that the toxic workplace can be can be characterized by:

• hostile behavior
• gaslighting
• bullying
• personal attacks
• inconsistent rules (double standards)

According to this, I think, most of the people who have been learning in russian schools are able to imagine what toxic environment may look like
It occurred to my mind, that work or education in toxic social ambience can be metaphorically compared to being in poisoned atmosphere. There's nothing visible to complain about, but the virtal energy runs out and abilities decrease.

Some time ago I've read an article about the «Dark Triad», the individuals who lack empathy and cause interpersonal issues. It seems to me that these phenomena are connected, and companies' cultures degrades through expansion of toxic workplaces. Possibly, the most important thing here is not that such person appears in the social group, but that he/she got highly appreciated, promoted and his/her behaviour starts to be imitated.
In my point of view, it is hard to fight such problems, because that individual gets favorable attitude and forgiveness from the higher leadership, as he/she appears to them as superior to the others. And it is not too hard to be superior to others if you are allowed to to treat them dishonestly. Get the best opportunities and resources, dump your problems and difficulties at someone else, blame others for your mistakes - and voila! - you are the bright star among grey, lazy, demotivated and depressed mass.
The author of the webinar also states that it's hardly possible to correct the situation and to persuade the leadership while being an ordinary member of the team, until the "critical mass" is reached and the leadership starts to muse that something is going wrong by themselves.

The spokeswoman also mentioned that such environmens are tend to be hyper-masculine, and I think that such hyper-masculine collectives as russian army and male prison can indirectly confirm that this assumption. They are really toxic, and they are not so effective (the purpose of prison is not to break down human destinies). Maybe the «Lord of the Flies» book by William Golding can serve as one more illustration to such tendencies (I haven't read it, to be honest, only saw the plot at wikipedia).
According to the webinar, the values that are appreciated and overestimated in such workplaces are:

• aggression
• competition
• winning at all costs
• risk

And though them often lead to success, I think, they have significant drawbacks as well. Aggression is useful against your enemy, but not toward people you are creating something together. Aggression causes stress, fear, "fight or flight" reactions that does not favor effective mental work. Aggression and cruelty was effective when the humanity was fighting for survival against other species. But in modern world, we almost haven't natural enemies, while the intraspecific struggle can destroy the whole civilization along with the whole planet.
For sure, a competition motivates, force you to tense up, to lay yourself out, to do your best. But it works only in a short term on a narrow task. Constant competition exhausts, increases stress level and does not look so useful in the long term when applied to a diverse team for a wide range of tasks requiring wide range of skills. And the other disadvantage of competition is the desire to win at all cost. Including destroying something, and making harm to someone else, even when they have no relation to the happening. Like a superhero who is chasing his villainous enemy through the city streets with chaotic firing, exploding buildings and turning cars over.
And the risk as a risk. You can win and you can lose. And nobody can know in advance is it better to risk now or not to risk.

On the other hand, states the author, the femininity in such circumstances is considered as something unimportant. Women are percepted as weak, too emotional and incapable of serious accomplishments. The strengths that are undervalued in toxic hyper-masculine environments (and that are usually considered as feminine qualities) listed in the webinar were:

• emotional intelligence
• ability to estimate and appreciate opportunities and aspirations of others
• collaboration
• creativity

My own expirience confirms that's bad when such characteristics are ignored; and I think it's worth noting that there is no highly-developed country in the world that does not care about women rights and consider women opinions and interests. And there is no lagging county that does.

So, what does the author suggest if you find yourself in a toxic workplace? The first she recommend is to honestly answer the question «Why are you there?». There is always fear of unknown and fear of failure, and fear to trade bad for worse, and the fear of not deserving something better. There may be objective reasons to endure such surroundings, and may be some psychological barriers. She offers to get familiarized with her materials Tackling Limiting Beliefs. (I didn't, so can't say anything about them).

Another thing, that she repeats several time directly or indirectly is about not blaming yourself for inability to react quickly and immediately, for the need to ponder everything in a quiet surroundings and to discuss it once again. And I think that just the understanding that the environment is toxic helps to dissuade yourself that all the problems are in you.
Next, she advices to use the construction «If you want to get the best work from me, that's not how to do it». That is said to return the situation from personal dimension to the work. In addition, when you form phrases on the «If ... then ...» principle, you don't command your counterpart what to do (people in authority do not like this), but rather state the rules. «If you behave this way, I react this way. And there's nothing that disallows me to».
Also, it can be useful to "separate the intent from the impact". Asking, for example, the question «What do you mean by that?». And when the answer is «Oh, I was just kidding!» the possible reply is «But that was not funny».

When you are a bystander of inappropriate behavior toward somebody, one of the ways to interrupt it is to distract attention by asking for help, or for clarification of something, etc. Again, returning the situation from the personal dimension back to the work, as everyone came here to work first of all.

I don't think that I've exactly outlined all the ideas of the webinar, and unfortunatelly its recording is not available for public access, but the speaker seemed to be an interesting women. Her name is Kristen Knepper, here is her site: Kristen Knepper Consulting. May be it turns out to be useful to someone

@темы: Люблю филосовствовать, english writing skills, Жизненное

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Women in Tech

Английский

Not to say that topic about women in programming is very popular in my environment, but it arises from time to time and occasionally causes heated discussions.
The most common point of view in our country, as I see, is that there are no significant obstacles for girls in technological career. Be a good specialist, and you'll be appreciated and promoted. But as I'm working in the area more and more years, I'm getting more and more convinced that the situation is much more difficult and complicated. My personal opinion is that there are more hurdles and less opportunities for girls in tech than for boys, more prejudices against women, and more labor law violations. That's funny when an HR says: «No, there is no gender discrimination in our country. Employers are just reluctant to hire women due to risk of maternity leave and often prefer men». I met not so few people who think that girls are bad workers and should choose family responsibilities. What is worse, even those who claims that they have no stereotypes, often still (subconsciously?) evaluate guys' opinion higher and believe them more.
At the moment when left KL, the company was quite sexist. There was even a hype once in english-speaking Twitter because of impolite advertising:



The company apologized to the public, but it didn't change anything inside, and I can bring much more materials that I consider offensive for a woman professional.

To be honest I've got accustomed to sexist comments in the workplace and did not considered them as something meaningful. But then it gets up to such level, in my opinion, this is too much. It seems to be an indicator of really deep problems. So when I became free, I decided to look at this question more attentively. After all, that can be also considered as a part of education, in the soft skills aspect.

Well, this subject is quite lively discussed in the western countries. There is a number of projects and initiatives to face up such problems. For instance:

Women Techmakers
Anita Borg Fund
Tech Ladies
Women who code

I've found there useful articles, materials, gender researches etc. that corresponded to events and situations I've seen around me, explained and emphasize some phenomena, gave practical advices. They also offer grants, mentoring programs and job boards, but unfortunately all of them are abroad

The most similar materials that I've managed to find here, in Russia, were the gender studies by the Higher School of Economic:
Гендерные исследования IQ.HSE

Some useful articles can be also found here:
Конcорциум женских неправительственных организайций

However, both resources have mainly informational nature and are devoted to more general women problems. The sad situation with initiatives for women in IT in Russia can be illustrated by that map of communities:



Fuck! Three communities in Ukraine, Arab Women in Computing in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, groups in Africa. And a single community in Russia. CryptoChicks Moscow. Where do I live???
And yeah, I feel a little bit discomfort when hearing the word "chicks" regarding inexperienced beginner girls in the area of unregulated currency. It is used in Darknet for prostitution and childporn affairs, by the way...
That also causes me associations with this article about cryptocurrency beauty contest: Miss Blockchain
The contest emcee told that Russia is very rich country. And the most beautiful its "property" are russian girls. Thanks that not "commodity" (Bitcoin is money, first of all.)

There are russian feminist groups in the net, and I'm reading them to see what's going on around. But sometimes it seems to me that the main part of their activity is just chitchat in social networks and other media. I also had two unpleasant quarrels there, when I commented some posts.

The first was related with this article: Сексизм в томском IT and this video (link to VK):


Okay, I came into another's person facebook, and my comments were not so open and friendly, and they were not moving toward her desired direction. But should they have been? The blogger created an impression that she was interested in the situation inside IT and ready for the conversation about its peculiarities. Apparently, she wasn't.
What did I say wrong? I brought her another video and told that I consider it more insulting, because it depicts female workers of large international company as powerless and helpless dummies:



Also I wrote that it's easier to prepare for moving abroad, than to change something here. Let the guys stay, with with a sick liver and sluts [snide smiley]. (The first video has mentioned alcohol, and the girls clearly portrayed not the QA engineers).
The rest of discussion was devoted to the question if it is permissible for me to use the word "slut" or not, regardless of the woman behavior. (Hmmm, is there a term for shaming for slutshaming?).

That conversation left me with an unpleasant feeling. The author lamented that women in IT ignore such materials instead of raising a stink, causing a loud discussion and creating communities where beginner girls will be taught programming. But the reality of women in tech didn't matter to her at all. Damn, so I have not only to work hard in unfriendly environment and cope with my problems alone, but also prove and explain to my male fellows why their behavior is obnoxiously to an ordinary woman, as well as educate those girls who cannot learn by themselves the way I do? And never-never-never, never!, show disrespect to any other female. That made me sad

Another quarrel I provoked when comented a post about percentage of fatal auto crashes caused by men and women. I'm not so good in driving, but there are a lot of car owners around me, so I thought I could share some observations. I wrote that women are driving cars not so often as men, but do it more carefully, thus causing less accidents. In the same time men consider cars as a source of pleasure, hobby and self-assertion so drive them in risky and dangerous manner, that can lead to human victims.
Suddenly a very pushy woman appeared in the thread and asserted that women drive cars not less, not worse, not slower than men. She provided no indisputable arguments but blamed me in projecting my own subjective perception to the whole world. I assume she was a good driver, but wasn't she projecting her own subjective experience to the whole world too? She blamed me that I stuck in the past centuries, while I see the whole country stuck in the past centuries. With a car being a masculine symbol of status, not the transport. It seems to me that I saw a general picture and she saw only her grandiose personality. Is the second more important for the society? Okay.

The main topics in feminist agenda in this country, as I see, are prostitution, home violence, sexual harassment and rape. Not the questions of education, self-development, professional growth, moving up social hierarchy, going for sports and obtaining physical form, self-defence etc. And I cannot understand why. Who will be able to involve into prostitution a woman who has enought money? Who will beat his wife if she can fight back? Who will humiliate his wife if she can easily leave to her own dwelling? Who will harass and force to sex a status woman, knowing that it can lead to troubles?
Eric Berne wrote that people often gathers in groups not to solve problems and to bring positive change, but just to "play games", gather "emotional coupons" and confirm their positions. It looks like this is that case. There is even such a "game": «if it weren't for you». It allows to put all the blame on somebody more authoritative, for example, on a dominant husband, And I hear similar thoughts in such groups. Men are awful. Women are better. Women can be better at anything! But men are awful, they are responsible for all women problems. Women deserve more! But men are awful and do not allow them to achive more! Men must give women more! Women are not guilty for anything!

Well, I saw a category of women obsessed with the word "career", status etc., who are trying to operate in the IT area. But they are glamorous, not geek
Once I went to their meetup titled "Career for women in IT" and found myself in the room where two HRs were explaining for non-technical student girls how to pass HR interview in a large company. Fuck. It was never a problem for me to pass HR interview and I didn't consider it anything more than an idle formality before a conversation with a technical expert...
I attended the «Ladies Code conference» and I didn't see tech women, self-made women, I didn't hear effective advices. Most "experts" invited to "inspire" the audience, in my point of view, were "successful" just because they were born in high social stratum or somehow else got surrounded by influential men. And their behavior patterns seems to be deeply patriarchal. I looked at them and saw just pampered pretty girls, who wanted to speak about trendy topics in beautiful clothes in the surroundings of bright pictures. And when something goes wrong, such girls run to a, maybe virtual, "father" with tears and whims, demanding to give them the same things that foreign girls have... Women with high position, but having nothing under their feets. If their protectors stop holding them, they will fall from that height. So they will never argue with the strong...
Just for the sake of interest I tried also the project «MyMentoring», but again, I found it senseless...

I've subscribed to some thematic groups in VK, sometimes they publish news about events, meetups, hakatons, internships for student, grants etc. Those that are proposed here, locally, are gender-neutral, and all women support initiatives are foreign. Thus they require good level of english and ability to spend at least several months abroad. I do not have that at this moment. However, some posts turned out to be useful. I learned about some good free educational opportunities there.

The most promising community among all of these, in my opinion, is freshly organized PyLadies Spb:



It is a Saint Petersburg subsidiary of international women Python developers group. PyLadies Spb grew from another project, Django Girls Spb, that conducts workshops about Django framework for beginner web-developer girls. As there were a lot of non-beginner girls interested, the organizers decided to create PyLadies department too. They held one meetup with presentations about algorithms, git, plotly and Python technical interviews, and one "breakfast" (it's exclusively a communication activity). The first event was broadcasted online and recorded, so I watched it:

PyLadies on youtube

But I was not ready to go to Saint Petersburg cafe just for a developers breakfast, of course

They also have Telegram chat:
http://t.me/pyladies_spb

Well, I don't consider the average level of the participants as being very high, but I think it's enough to start from. It's cool if I'll be able to invest something in it in the future. And sure, I hope the similar group in Moscow will be started, they talked about that.

@темы: Люблю филосовствовать, Вот так живут программисты, english writing skills, Жизненное

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fandom IT 2018

@темы: IT-fandom

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Eric Berne, "The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups"

Английский

Well... all the previous week I spent in the countryside with my mom and a cat. Learning Numpy, statistics, algorithms, English, all as usually. So usually, that I don't even have anything to tell about, besides this smug muzzle:



However, I can't say a lot about it. Tomcat is just a tomcat. I would rather write about a book of Eric Berne that I've finished reading a little bit earlier. It's «The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups». In russian (and I read it in russian) it looks like this:



I greatly like Eric Berne and his theories. Though he is a psychiatrist, his models look as really explaining the processes that I see around me, in interpersonal communications and in social dynamics.

We all are the members of different social groups, whether we like it or not. There is a little chance to avoid it, as lack of sensory stimuluses can be a serious trial for one's mind. Berne describes common patterns and rules that are intrinsic to any type of groups, from small psychoanalytic groups to large countries. He states that a group should be distinguished from other social aggregations, such as crowd, mass and reception. The main difference is that the last forms have neither structures, nor roles distributions, nor rational aims. As I understand, every time people gather for purposeful activity, not the idle pastime, they subconsciously get organized into a group.

Berne tells that though the group structure can be quite complex, in the first approximation all groups are formed by an external border, that separates its participants from the outer world, and an internal one, that separates the leadership apparatus from other members.
Schematically, it looks like this:



Besides the leader, the leadership apparatus consist of the part that defends the group from the outer world, and the part that solves internal group issues. These two apparatuses are fighting against the group disruption, that can happen due to following reasons:

• the physical destruction, that means that individuals forming the group were physically liquidated;


• the ideological decay happening when members have too weak need to retain the group and lack uniting feelings;


• structural demolition that happens in the result of the main group borders violations and breakdown of the group structure;

Every group obligatorily has a leader. The leader formulates and personifies the group canon, that is the aim of the group, its constitution, morals and culture. It's also leadership apparatus duty to maintain the respect for the group canon as well as for the leader. As an example, Berne told the story when he was participating in a spiritual seance. For the sake of an experiment he decided to question the position of the seance master (the leader). Instantly he saw the forces, arised to counteract the disturbance.

In addition to performing the main activity, the group has also to put its energy to fight external threats along with strengthening the group cohesion. All these three activities can be crucial for group existence and should not be neglected.

Sure, individuals become a part of the group because they get something important from it. For the sake of entering the group they usually have to sacrifice a part of their individual inclinations and needs. It's obvious, that a structure of a real group is more complex then the scheme above depicts; there can be different roles and niches that the individuals have to fit into. Except for those who were born for the specific roles, the other members have to use adaptability and flexibility to settle down in the group. The adaptability means thorough scrutiny of the group structure in order to use available niches for getting the most from them for the individual's live scenario and aspirations. The flexibility is about the readiness to sacrifice some aspects of his/her aspirations in order to fit into the proposed niche. It seems to me, the neuroses are formed when someone needs participation in the group, but he/she is not adaptable and flexible enough to fill any of the free niches.

Well, when an individual is not able to get into one of available roles, he/she can try to modify them, asking the neighbours to move a little. Not all of them will be so kind, however As I understand, that forms so-called internal group process. I think, such processes should be solved with the assistance of the group apparatus. When the individuals fail in the internal group process, they can redirect their energy towards the leadership, showing that group canon and its morals are not so moral for some participants. It can look like this:



And this can turn into a structural demolition threat!

Many other parts of the book are considering the interactions inside a group, both between the members and between the members and the leadership. Berne believe that such interactions can be studied using his transactional analysis approach. It means that all the people participating in all the communications are acting in one of three states of Ego: the Parent, the Adult or the Child, as well as appealing to one of the parner's Ego states. There is another interesting book dedicated to this concept: «The games people play» and I will not recite it here. May be some time later

@темы: english writing skills, Жизненное, Книги

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Saint Petersburg

Английский

Summer makes me the lazybones. The break in english records is again almost a month, and previous records were about walks, trips, sightseeing... And this one will also be about a trip, walks and sightseeing...

So, Saint Petersburg. It was the third time I visited this city and the second visit along with my dear.We believe that renting a private apartment is the best way for domestic tourists to stay in St. Petersburg. Especially when such services as Airbnb allow to do it easily. It's funny, but the round trip tickets on Sapsan cost us much more then week of living in separate flat.
For me, we selected the right location, on the Vasilevsky Island, not far from the Primorskaya metro station. The place was quiet, without crowds of tourists (and football fans!), but we could quickly reach the city center as well as walk on foot to the sea on the Island edge. I liked the view, though it was a little bit cold there.

The most beautiful picture, in my opinion, can be seen from Lenexpo territory, near the Marine Terminal. It is the bridge of Automobile Ring Road running above the sea:

But the Vasilevsky Island is cute in general, with its monuments, flowerbeds and modern residential complexes:

We liked the ButerBrodsky bar, it was so atmospheric


The first showplace we visited in Saint Petersburg was the Peter-Pavel's Fortress, as we failed to get there the previous time. Well, it's just a historical place, with a number of museums and not all of them are even devoted to Saint Petersburg history. For example, there was a museum of space technology there. We didn't go inside, but the artefacts near it was interesting:

There is also Aleksandrovsky Park (not to be confused with Alexandrovsky Garden!) near the Peter-Pavel's Fortress and we walked within it a little. Until the traditional Petersburg's rain had begun

We didn't go to the most popular tourist sites, as we've already seen them. Rather we prefered to explore less known places. One of them was the New Holland, a relatively novel Saint Petersburg park established on historical spot. It has nicely arranged island territory with rest places and an interesting cylindrical building called "The Bottle". "The Bottle" has different cafes on the ground floor and tables with chairs inside its internal round court. A few other floors host creative stores selling funny things like this T-shirt with G. Martin:

Or these stickers (I've bought them!):

Unfortunatelly, I haven't many good photos of the New Holland territory, only those of such a kind:

Vova's colleagues recommended him to visit the Grand Maket Russia museum and we did, as I greatly like houses' makets, toy railways, moving cars and so on ))) It's an exciting place ))) However, I wouldn't call it so Grand (and so interactive) as the Madurodam in the Netherlands )))

Saint Petersburg is a seaside city, so you can easily find there ancient sailboats, operating shipyards, museums inside submarines and icebreakers, battle boats on the pedestals, etc. (No, I have not photos with the cruiser Aurora this time )

We went to museum of the D-2 submarine and the one on the board of Krasin icebreaker, so here are some interiors and stuff:

Besides this, we just walked a lot. Walked, walked and walked. And made occasional photos

Yeah, it's time to stop relaxing, get down to business, continue to learn... Yeah... I'll only visit my mom in our country house... She's alone there, and it's summer now, after all...

@темы: Визуальное, Жизненное

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I'll be back

Уехала в Питер на недельку. Будем там гулять...

@темы: Жизненное