HNY and Merry Xmas!

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas are going to knock at the house of everyone, but to be sure that they gonna knock into the right door (or window), you must prepare for it... And the "Unikum" team is ready to help you with this!
Especially for the blog readers, we have created several Happy New Year an Merry Xmas designs that will give a festive mood for you and your loved ones and will have practical value. But let's look at these gifts more closely so each of you could choose the gift by yourself.

Gender Relations

In my posts I somehow appeal to the theme of gender relations... Despite the fact that I am already inveterate bachelor, my girlfriend plays a big role in my life, and she even became a muse for doing this blog! I could now write you a post about all "++" relationships with women, love, romantic evenings and all this rubbish... But my post will be much shorter, because it is devoted to "--" the same relations.

Math

School gives us a huge store of knowledge. But when you go out there all that you can apply working for example a simple sales-manager, is knowledge of AutoSum in EXCEL. And your unclaimed skills gather dust lying on the cerebral cortex. And certainly some of them already lying around somewhere in the vicinity of the pituitary gland, and you hardly ever get them from there because of the absolute uselessness.

But there were many interesting and developing cognitions. Take the math: open any handbook, and you will find many paradoxes and puzzles that sales-manager's brain is unlikely to be able to explain to you properly.

Thundering Mantis

I revisited my collection of kung-fu films and found one obviously out of the general concept. Not the plot, the plot as always very simple (villains kick ass of the protagonist, and then he learns kung-fu super-style and kicks everyone's ass in return), but the ending... Well, in the end almost all have been killed (this is despite all the jokes that accompany us throughout the film)!

Let's be consistent. The film is known as "Thundering Mantis" (nothing special). Name calls us to drop everything and to learn mantis-style, and also to protect weak and the disadvantaged people.

Android Based Sequencers

Today I try to overview music programs for the "Android" platform. A lot of them has been written, and now I review only a few to leave the topic open for further discussion and elaboration.

Android Comics

It is strange of course, but people have a habit to give knowledge about the World through toys and pictures... Instead of to show you a serious science movie on the "Discovery" or at least a plausible photo, you slip a picture with handwritten image of some cheerful bear and say, "Look, this is a Teddy bear!". Your children's little eyes look at this picture and you draw a clear analogy with disheveled teddy bear lying around in the corner. And you do not realize that behind this image hides one of the most aggressive animals whose clutches killed more than one hapless hunter.

Finally it comes out that in your life you have to face with some things or cases which you have seen before only on children's pictures or in cartoons. And you have to re-experience them in real life by yourself. Although of course it is more logical to gain "adult" knowledge initially, because it is always harder to learn again. Definitely all those dead hunters lost their lives by reason of some ridiculous confusion happened with them when they met with a real bear. Probably some of them were confused by bright childhood memories even cried out: "Look! This is just a Teddy bear!" and tried to touch bear's wet button-nose. But "adult" fate was inevitable and took away childhood dreams together with life.

Anyway, love for drawn and puppet heroes sits in us for the rest of our lives. Only this can explain enormous popularity of all those "shreks," "kung-fu pandas", etc. As well as it explains for me constant interest in comic books and artworks of that kind. I do not collect them by thousands but I can't pass through them neither in book stores nor in internet...

Space Invaders

I'm not a gamer... But sometimes, of course, I play "Solitaire" in the office, until there is no bosses, or I can play "SweepMiner". But it is not systematic.

But only when I see those games that I played 20 years ago on console "Dendy", my soul overflows with children's delight! So when I was presented with tablet based on "Android" and visited the "Android Market", I saw a huge number of games written for this platform, I decided to try my luck and typed in the search engine: "8-bit games"...

FLOSS Manuals

Most of my hobbies are somehow related to the computer, so I'm constantly in the search stage of software to meet my needs. But the more professional is software, the more the price of all these developments. But I'm not a professional! So why should I spend big money on the purchase of certain products, if I did not earn a penny from them in the long term?

Use of limited "home" versions or "light" packages is also not an option, because they usually cut a very interesting and useful functions... So I concentrated on testing the "open source" analogues of the various programs, fortunately enthusiasts willing to share their experience are enough in the world (for what they have honor, praise and respect). But here there is one problem: the developers of professional products are focused on "loyalty" of its user, so running in parallel with the development of the product they supply it usually with serious and informative guides. But in the case of "open source" it is not always possible. It could be argued that the "good" software is clear and intuitive for the user at any level, but personal experience suggests that to read manuals is still very, very useful exercise. Because every program has its own quirks, to understand that empirically is not so simple. And manuals speed up the process at times (unless of course, they are not stretched more than a 500 pages, but in any case there is a glossary or table of contents))).

So, in search of regular manuals to music program I dug up a project called FLOSS Manuals. List of manuals decently surprised me: besides the well expected VLC-player or a sound editor Audacity, I found a manuals for such interesting projects as Csound (audio programming) and Ardour (digital audio workstation (DAW)). Well, a manual for Pure Data (a program for creating interactive audio-visual applications) I think one of the most convenient, complete and easy to understand for a standard user!

My pd-patch © :)

30 Years of IBM PC (Some Thoughts about Computer History)

Well, it turned out that I am almost 30 years old. Usually they say that it s a half of a distance. And you feel that you need to look back and try to remember significant things happened in your life and around it. Unless you are Tom Hanks, most noticeable things happen to be in some other people’s life and you watch them through the window of your routine.

Anyway check out interesting coincidence that came across me recently. Anniversary of first IBM PC!! And guess what? 30 years as well! It means that I am first and original PC generation representative. This is my destiny! )

Processing

Let's proceed from the assumption that ideal for women is not only rich men, but also clever... I do not claim, just assume. In this case, it is unnecessarily to appear in front of her sitting behind the wheel of the latest model of Mercedes, or to make an appointment at the most expensive restaurant of the city. You simply show your intellectual ability, and your darling is in love, enslaved, etc. The question remains: HOW TO ...? What a way to make her believe that you really got the "brains"?

Quoting of Nietzsche or Kant? It is too abstract. I'm not sure what a sultry bosomy brunette appreciate your thoughts fly, because the women like to operate more earthly terms. Agree with her about the meeting in the park and come early and sit on a bench with a weighty volume of poetry "Silver Age"? But the leggy blonde think that all the best in the literature is limited to the last release of "Cosmo" or even worse - "Oops!"

You need an instrument to act instantly, transforming your thinking in some of the tangible results. I suspect that I have found such a tool for me. Processing.

Enter the Dragon

I almost never seen in my life any guy who would not admire heroes of Bruce Lee in childhood... Likewise, when I was 12-year-old boy, I've seen enough Chinese movies and wanted to master the mysterious techniques of kung-fu. My childhood is gone, video tape recorders with those movies are gone too, I have not mastered the kung-fu, but Bruce Lee still remained in my life.

In August 1973, shortly after the death of the Master, on the screens out in my opinion the best and most powerful picture with Bruce: "Enter the Dragon". Yes, exactly the same "Dragon's Island", after which we all could stand for hours in front of a mirror for checking: did I correctly "place my fingers"?