December 2007 Archives
See you next year!
The Illusionist is a nice movie. The soundtrack is wonderful, the image is wonderful, the story well told, and nice actors. Regarding actors, and not commenting on Jessica Biel (I think you can guess), Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti did very impressive interpretations.
I just did not like one thing: to hide from us the full story until the end. You know, they show us just what they want we to see. Thus, at the end, you think you know everything that happened, and "unfortunately", you don't.
In any case, a good film. 8 in 10!
I just did not like one thing: to hide from us the full story until the end. You know, they show us just what they want we to see. Thus, at the end, you think you know everything that happened, and "unfortunately", you don't.
In any case, a good film. 8 in 10!
Some time ago I changed my DSL provider from Portugal Telecom (the former State company for telecommunications) to Vodafone. Basically, Vodafone was the first company to have a decent price and service in my zone. Thus, I changed. Now all companies have low prices.
Anyway, I am bloging this because today Vodafone delivered a Moët champagne bottle to our door, thanking for being one of the first 10 000 customers for this service. I think this was the first time any company gives me anything at all...
Anyway, I am bloging this because today Vodafone delivered a Moët champagne bottle to our door, thanking for being one of the first 10 000 customers for this service. I think this was the first time any company gives me anything at all...
This is not properly an interesting post. See it more like an advertisement. AHAHAHA! Well, as all cool kids have a wishlist and say people send them some gifts. So, why not to try it as well? So, I assembled a wishlist. It includes books, CDs and DVDs I really want, and some other books that are just bookmarked as probably interesting to buy to the University Library.
Well, this will not help solving my problem. But let me complain. I have an old stereo Grundig TV. I do not know the model, but looking to it, it says Monolith and, looking to the size and weight, it is really a monolith. In any case, it is an old TV (more than 15 years). But it is working quite well, nice image and wonderful sound. But it has a problem: when I connect the scart cable (yes, it has a scart connector) the TV can't sinthonise UHF (or is it VHF) channels? Well, one of them works, the other not.
Any hint?
Any hint?
Merry Christmas
You know, these are holidays and as such, I stop a little on my PhD thing, and watch some movies to distract a little. Unfortunately I am not good when choosing the sequence of movies to watch, and it seems to me that I watched the best movie in the first place. Anyway, I should not desperate. It must be there more great movies.
Balls of Fury is not a great movie. I would not say it to be a good movie. You know, when you are watching a comedy with less fun than an action movie, something is wrong. But it is not a bad movie. It is watchable. Also, it has Maggie Q that, while not having big boobies like Monica Bellucci (see yesterday post), she is quite cute.
There are some laughs (not much). The story is a deja-vu (see The Karate Kid), but in a small different sense (you know, in this case it is not karate, just ping-pong). Voting on IMDB for 6 in 10. (and I am voting above the average of 5 in 10).
Balls of Fury is not a great movie. I would not say it to be a good movie. You know, when you are watching a comedy with less fun than an action movie, something is wrong. But it is not a bad movie. It is watchable. Also, it has Maggie Q that, while not having big boobies like Monica Bellucci (see yesterday post), she is quite cute.
There are some laughs (not much). The story is a deja-vu (see The Karate Kid), but in a small different sense (you know, in this case it is not karate, just ping-pong). Voting on IMDB for 6 in 10. (and I am voting above the average of 5 in 10).
Today I got a completely different point of view about carrots. They just aren't good for you health and as people tend to say, to your's eyes or vision, but also are quite handy for a lot of different situations. In any case, watch the movie, as I will not explain more about this.
Shoot'em Up is a nice movie. One of the best I saw lately. While it is an action movie, with lot of blood and shots (and that's nice) it includes two nice girls (and nice boobs), and a lot of sense of humor. If you ask me to mention one of the best scenes in the movie I will not know what to choose. Well, depending on knowing you, probably I could get one scene I imagine you like too. But a generic best scene of the movie is completely impossible to find.
Rated it 10 in 10 under IMDB. Current rating is 7.3.
Shoot'em Up is a nice movie. One of the best I saw lately. While it is an action movie, with lot of blood and shots (and that's nice) it includes two nice girls (and nice boobs), and a lot of sense of humor. If you ask me to mention one of the best scenes in the movie I will not know what to choose. Well, depending on knowing you, probably I could get one scene I imagine you like too. But a generic best scene of the movie is completely impossible to find.
Rated it 10 in 10 under IMDB. Current rating is 7.3.
About a week ago, in a Friday (30 November, if I am not wrong), Apple did a fantastic day full of promotions. You know Apple promotions: in an iMac that has a cost of 1100 euros, you can pay just 1050. Not that bad...
Well, in any case, I found Need for Speed Carbon for Mac being sold with a little more than 10% of discount. Not that bad (I think it was the only product with such a promotion). So, I bought it, and paid the difference to the real price for transportation.
In any case, I am writing because I am having some problems. I have a MacBook Pro, 2.4GHz, with 4GB of Ram, running Leopard. When playing Need for Speed Carbon everything works smoothly (and fast), but sound hiccups from time to time (and more often than desired).
Unfortunately the game has no control over the audio (just volume). I remember some games that had a 'sound quality' parameter we can tune. This is not the case.
Anybody with such a problem, and with some solution?
Well, in any case, I found Need for Speed Carbon for Mac being sold with a little more than 10% of discount. Not that bad (I think it was the only product with such a promotion). So, I bought it, and paid the difference to the real price for transportation.
In any case, I am writing because I am having some problems. I have a MacBook Pro, 2.4GHz, with 4GB of Ram, running Leopard. When playing Need for Speed Carbon everything works smoothly (and fast), but sound hiccups from time to time (and more often than desired).
Unfortunately the game has no control over the audio (just volume). I remember some games that had a 'sound quality' parameter we can tune. This is not the case.
Anybody with such a problem, and with some solution?
As you might know I am doing my PhD on Natural Language processing and specifically, on Machine Translation resources extraction for English and Portuguese language. During this week I was reviewing a paper for LREC2008, The 6th edition of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, that will take place in Marrakech (Morocco). Of course I will not talk about the article, as that review should be confidential. But reviewing that article made me think how difficult it is to process a specific language morphologically and syntactically. Not if this kind of analysis is difficult or not, but how different it is when processing different languages.
One of the biggest differences from Portuguese to English languages is the high level of flexion for verbs. In English we have about four or five different forms for a verb (present, present third person, past, gerund and infinitive). In Portuguese we have about... well, let me count... more than 50 different forms.
Now, is this favorable or not for language processing? Well, it all depends on what you want to do. If you want to extract semantics from the sentence, Portuguese version might be better, as it includes a lot more information about the tense, gender and number. If you are creating a morphological analyzer, Portuguese might be better as well, as there is less ambiguity. But in the other hand, if you are trying to translate into Portuguese, you will have a lot of more work to make gender and number to be correct accordingly with the context.
Thus, probably to say something is harder or easier to process is not that easy. We need to know what in fact we are trying to do before getting conclusions. Though, to get conclusions can be really hard. We never know all the language, nor we can imagine all of its combinations.
One of the biggest differences from Portuguese to English languages is the high level of flexion for verbs. In English we have about four or five different forms for a verb (present, present third person, past, gerund and infinitive). In Portuguese we have about... well, let me count... more than 50 different forms.
Now, is this favorable or not for language processing? Well, it all depends on what you want to do. If you want to extract semantics from the sentence, Portuguese version might be better, as it includes a lot more information about the tense, gender and number. If you are creating a morphological analyzer, Portuguese might be better as well, as there is less ambiguity. But in the other hand, if you are trying to translate into Portuguese, you will have a lot of more work to make gender and number to be correct accordingly with the context.
Thus, probably to say something is harder or easier to process is not that easy. We need to know what in fact we are trying to do before getting conclusions. Though, to get conclusions can be really hard. We never know all the language, nor we can imagine all of its combinations.
