Endami

Paterei Prison

2009-11-08T22:09:00.000+01:00

Pictures from Paterei prison that was operational until 2005, and now serves as a "culture park" for tourists, parties and weddings in Tallinn.

Pictures from Helsinki

2009-11-08T21:18:00.002+01:00

Just a quick selection of the pictures I like the most from my August trip to Helsinki (including the World Heritage site, Suomenlinna).

Moscow

2009-11-07T00:59:00.003+01:00

In October I had made a short trip to Russia visiting St. Petersburg, Moscow and Pskov. The trip was quite fun, but also very tiring -- by the evening I already thought about the morning as something that had happened the previous day.
The Moscow part was probably the most exciting part of the trip as we detached ourselves from an organised bus tour to St. Petersburg and took the night train to the capital. On arrival we were immediatily confronted by the fact that the room we have booked in the hostel has not existed for the last two years...
Anyhow, after a couple of coffees we did a pretty good job of exploring central Moscow. Unfortunately we had limited time, and our attempts to get out of the centre were thwarthed by the powers that be (e.g. a World Heritage member monastery was closed and we were kicked out of Moscow University).
All in all, it was an interesting and feature packed trip with all its excitement and I think I should like to visit Russia again; though, first I have to go to London as the Moscow metro system filled me with nostalgia for all the time I spent in London...

Sunset in Paldiski

2009-11-05T17:30:00.002+01:00

Sunset in Paldiski
Originally uploaded by bdamokos

From the town where Lilja 4-ever was filmed. Unfortunately this town is as bleak in real life as was in the film -- even the setting sun over the Baltic Sea cannot help much as the shore is cut off by the railway and the harbour.

Queen's Champion

2009-06-07T22:09:00.001+01:00

The office of the Queen's Champion is an important hereditary office in the United Kingdom that apparently dates back to 1066. The duties to be performed in exchange for the 12 km² Manor of Scrivelsby are not manifold, but all the more dangerous. Until the coronation of George VI in 1821 his duty was to challenge to duel those who would not accept the new monarch.

At the coronation banquet he would throw down his gauntlet three times and a herald would issue a challenge among the following lines:

If any person, of whatever degree soever, high or low, shall deny or gainsay our Sovereign Lord George, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, son and next heir unto our Sovereign Lord the last King deceased, to be the right heir to the imperial Crown of this realm of Great Britain and Ireland, or that he ought not to enjoy the same; here is his Champion, who saith that he lieth, and is a false traitor, being ready in person to combat with him, and in this quarrel will adventure his life against him on what day soever he shall be appointed.

The champion was loaned the second best horse in the Royal Mews and an armor which was his for the keeping if anyone took up the challenge and the champion has won; otherwise he would get a cup from which the sovereign has drunk the champion's health.

There are no certain records that would show that anyone accepted the challenge, though there are some rumours about different Jacobites doing so.

After George VI the tradition of holding a coronation banquet in Wetminster Hall (the building of the Houses of Parliament) was abandoned and thus the life of champion became simpler, until the 20th century. In 1902 the then champion petitioned the Court of Claims -- the special court set up at every coronation to decide on who gets to perform what service at the coronation -- and since then his duty is to carry the Royal Standard at the coronation.

Find out more on Wikipedia; the painting comes from this website. A nice way to learn about chivalric traditions and the way a proper challenge was accepted and fought out is to read the Song of Roland from the eleventh century.

British Parliamentary archive as VOD

2009-06-07T00:21:00.003+01:00

I just stumbled accross the online video archive of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, where meetings of the last 12 months can be watched. (The written records going back centuries are partially available online, as well.) In theory, this allows everyone who has a vague idea about the British Parliamentary style to experience it with their own eyes -- the only obstacle is to sift through the boring stuff where only one or two members are present and find the good debates between e.g. Gordon Brown and David Cameron.
Among the more interesting videos I found is the motion for a humble address in the Lords (at just before the 2-minute mark) and the state opening of Parliament by the queen.

Installing Ubuntu over and over again

2009-06-06T23:02:00.001+01:00

For the past month every so often I played with Ubuntu by using the CD-on-a-stick and the Wubi solutions and finally I actually installed it on a dedicated partition. The one feature that has seen countless repetition in my short acquaintance with Ubuntu has been the installation and numerous reinstallation part. Fortunately I am getting better and better at it. Although reinstalling can be done quite easily on a clean system (delete partition, reinstall system in under 40 minutes) I would very much like a "restore system to the state of installation".

The main reasons Ubuntu has failed me have been its update manager, graphics and the installer itself.

A couple of years ago my first encounter with the autoupdater has been the occasion when after a restart there would simply be no graphic interface any more, very user friendly... My latest problems with the updater are still connected to graphics: at one time (I guess, after an update, but didn't reoccur yet) the screen would randomly flicker; most recently the update manager froze while updating an application that I have never used, and might never will. Naively, I killed the frozen update manager which has resulted in strange but unexpected results: after logging out and logging in the themeset was different, more exotic (although the system wasn't very operational which was accentuated with the fact that the graphical interface would not load upon rebooting).

A more frightening instance I had to take measures against a fresh Ubuntu install was when the installer froze at 97% completion. The good news is that the other partitions were not corrupted and even better is that the bootloader, grub works as it should and doesn't multiply the number of available OS's (as opposed to the expected behaviour of adding a new "Ubuntu" option next to the existing ones every time I reinstall Ubuntu -- at the current frequency this allows me some time to figure out how to remove grub once I decide to deinstall Ubuntu).

Today, after close to half a dozen installations I figured out how to enable the Wifi LED on my Acer Aspire One (with some help) although I still don't have a definite idea what the second LED is for (marked as number 8 on the image). Also, on the Netbook Remix edition, I discovered that the launcher actually has a translucent background, so if you set a background image, it will shine through (see image at the top).

The reason I am so resilient is that there are some very nice features in Ubuntu that interest me, but at the current rate of rei nstalling I am not ready to make the switch final (one of the biggest obstacles would be gettint used to the interface of OpenOffice.org and the lack of some Windows fonts).

Clandestine outlawries

2009-05-29T23:15:00.003+01:00

I am a big admirer of long-kept traditions and I am always happy to see one survive or flourish. Thus, I was happy to discover a British Parliamentary tradition that has been kept for over three hundred years and has been exported to other Commonwealth countries as well.

When a new session of Parliament is opened the Queen (or her representative) makes a speech from the throne in the upper house of Parliament. (According to tradition she is not given entry to the House of Commons.) After the speech is read both chambers of Parliament demonstrate that the Queen is in no position to set the agenda of debate so in defiance they introduce a bill for a first reading (which means they first read the title of the bill and then decide whether to discuss it further in committees). For the last three hundred or so years this bill has been the same in the United Kingdom: in the Houses of Commons it is “A Bill for the more effectual preventing clandestine Outlawries” and in the House of Lords “A bill for the better regulating of Select Vestries”).

The Outlawries Bill basically sets up measures to prevent people from declaring their fellows “outlaws” in secret and also has some extra penalties for sheriffs doing this.

The Select Vestries Bill deals with the rights of “select vestries” to administer poor law.

In Canada the bills are titled “An Act respecting the Administration of Oaths of Office” and “An Act relating to Railways”. It is worthwhile to read the actual texts of these two bills that have been printed maybe for the first time ever in 2009. It is a good indication of the serious thought behind these pro forma bills is that the text stops after a short and one clause reading:

This bill asserts the right of the Senate to give precedence to matters not addressed in the Speech from the Throne.

After this pro forma bill, as far as I can see from the Hansard records I’ve seen online, the Speaker informs the members that he has obtained the Queen’s speech “for greater accuracy” and then a member moves to present an humble address to the Queen along the lines of:

Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament

After some long speeches by the mover and the seconder of this address, the actual work of Parliament begins.

Cheap access to information

2009-05-29T17:33:00.000+01:00

In the last couple of weeks or so I have seen a huge increase in my access to information. Firstly, I subscribed for a second time to the Economist (currently they are sporting a 3 out of 4 issues delivered record), I found out that the Book Depository is quite cheap, but I also found some other great opportunities. Firstly, Népszabadság, one of the biggest Hungarian dailies keeps giving me free one-month subscriptions; moreover, the International Herald Tribune is also offering a free one-month subcription (no strings attached, as opposed to e.g. the Guardian Weekly's offer, where you have to subscribe for real and than cancel after your first 4 issues). Finally, the United States Army War College is willing to ship its publications on security studies to your home.
Now, I have cheaper and free access to contemporary information, studies and books, what remains is to find a service that ships DVD's with low or without shipping costs to Hungary...

New search engine for Wikipedia

2008-10-23T19:31:00.002+01:00

The English Wikipedia has a new built-in search engine, which is purely awesome. The changes are subtle but very useful. There are some behind the scenes improvements in the quality of the results but the big change is that searches now return results from the sister projects as well.

For example, if one searches for "good offices " on Wikipedia, one discovers that there is no such article, yet immediately sees a link to Wiktionary (a dictionary) that gives the definition for this term:

The beneficial services and acts of a third party; especially when used to mediate between people in a dispute

With over 2.5 million articles it is quite difficult to find something missing from Wikipedia, but if you do find such a thing now there's a chance you won't be left unsatisfied.

An other example is if you search for something that already has an article, e.g. "Bill Clinton" and you immediately receive links to some of his speeches, best quotes, and most recent news appearances.

I can hardly wait for the Hungarian Wikipedia to be migrated to this new system as this might be the very best thing that will have happened to the sister projects in a long time: they will receive greater exposure, possibly encouraging more people to contribute and the readers will have easier access to more information.

[Update]: The new system has been enabled for all Wikimedia wikis, apparently not having enough RAM was the low threshold preventing this happening earlier. The system could have a little more polishing, e.g. instead of displaying the meaningless "hu.wikisource.org" as the location of the alternative search results, it could simply say "Wikiforrás" ('Wikisource' in Hungarian).

The language of bees

2008-10-02T19:38:00.001+01:00

It has been almost a month I study English at ELTE, so far I enjoy it, although my past few weeks were a quite tiring, as I attended almost every class there was.

I mostly have seminars and a few lectures, which I cannot really attend as they are either early in the morning or conflict with my other major.

I have a lecture on Linguistics by Nádasdy Ádám, who is quite famous here in Hungary, but unfortunately it's in conflict with an other lecture. There is a corresponding seminar which I believe is quite good, the teacher tries to explain all the complicated terms as well as she can. The associated books, both the English one and the Hungarian one is quite readably, with good examples: I consider myself an expert on the topic of how bees communicate the location of food to their hive.

An other lecture and seminar pair is Academic writing, nothing really exciting there.

I would have a lecture on Introduction to literature, but the teacher's secretary always cancels it on the day of the lecture, just about 3 hours before it should start, to make sure that nobody gets the message. It will be interesting if she demands that we know everything she was supposed to teach, but did not, just because she did not feel like it (and did not bother to send in a substitute).
On the corresponding seminar, which should "follow the lectures" almost everybody is analysing poems and other texts, we are tasked to decipher long studies on the theory and history of literary criticism.

I don't usually attend the lecture on English-American political culture, as the lecture hall has a capacity of about 50-100 people less than the number of students taking the course. There are not enough seats, its impossible to hear or see the professor, who is hard to understand even if one is close enough to hear him. The recommended reading consists of books that either cost a hundred bucks or has not been printed in the last four decades. Anyways I am hoping to learn it from somebody's borrowed notes, as I am a bit familiar with the topic from my previous studies and interests.

I have a class on British Civilisation at the other university, but mentally I count it towards my English studies. This lecture just makes me angry, as although there is always some interesting tidbit that can be learned, the professor is spreading misinformation, which is most annoying.

And last but not least I have general language practice twice a week which I enjoy so far the most.

Teaching ravens to fly underwater

2008-09-26T20:27:00.000+01:00

Teaching Ravens to Fly Underwater

Busy, busy, busy

2008-09-24T20:32:00.001+01:00

This Bokononist phrase best describes my last week. I arrived home from Germany at about midnight on Sunday (my Germanwings flight was delayed about 20 minutes and as a nice courtesy upon landing everybody got a bottle of ice tea as a present).
Almost all week school started at 8 o'clock in the morning, and its getting to be too much: I decided to skip any class that starts too early. Even using such arbitrary measures to decide which lectures to attend I still am in school at least till five in the afternoon.
The point behind all this self-pitying is that after so many tiring days I don't have neither time nor opportunity to jot down my ideas that I consider more worthy of this blog, such as my anger at ELTE (my new university) for not informing me of a deadline for a scholarship I would have received or some parallel I drew between the topic of media freedom and my weekend in Germany while on the metro. These pieces would not have been Kubla Khans in literary quality but still, they are lost for ever.

US Election: Is it just a big stand-up comedy marathon?

2008-08-26T22:37:00.002+01:00

In the last couple of days I've been watching CNN quite a bit, and the impression I get is that all these rallies held by the candidates are just stand-up comedy performances held to mock the opponents, whomever they might be at any given moment:

Obama mocking H. Clinton (but not any more, as they are now United for Change)
Joe Biden mocking Obama (later switching to McCain as the punchbag)
McCain mocking Obama using clips of Biden mocking Obama... and so on.

Based on this one could think the race is about finding the new host for The Daily Show, and not a president who would have to fill some big shoes.

Wikipedia manifesto

2008-08-14T00:27:00.001+01:00

The National Library of Australia has digitised and made publicly available the newspapers published in Australia that are in the public domain. In of the first issue of The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, could serve as a slogan or manifesto of what Wikipedia is all about. I reproduce it here (please change any reference to the colonial newspaper to a free encyclopaedia or similar, as appropriate):

ADDRESS.
Innumerable as the Obstacles were which
threatened to oppose our Undertaking, yet
we are happy to affirm that they were not
insurmountable, however difficult the task
before us.
The utility of a PAPER in the COLONY,
as it must open a source of solid information,
will, we hope, be universally felt and ac-
knowledged. We have courted the assistance

of the INGENIOUS and INTELLIGENT : -
We open no channel to Political Discussion, or
Personal Animadversion :--Information is
our only Purpose ; that accomplished, we
shall consider that we have done our duty, in
an exertion to merit the Approbation of the
PUBLIC, and to secure a liberal Patronage to
the SYDNEY GAZETTE. , .

Stupid frustrations over The Economist

2008-08-11T22:45:00.003+01:00

A couple of weeks back I subscribed to a 12-week trial of the Economist. So far it has been nothing but trouble. Originally I planned to subscribe for the option that I get twelve issues for 24 euros and an other 12 for 36 and a USB stick for free. Then a popup came up advertising the 12-week trial, so I ended up with the trial subscription.

I contacted them to check if I still get the free USB stick (I am kind of an impulse buyer, but I also hate when I am cheated out of a better offer). Apart from the fact that they first dressed me down for not providing a "customer reference number" that one gets after the first issue is delivered (~21 days after he has subscribed) and wanting to check my location to confirm my identity. At this point I'd like to add that the Economist sends you an automated reply for every e-mail you send them that they will answer in two business days, which is getting annoying, and moreover frustrating, as they literally wait two days to reply every time. So after waiting another two days, they issued me a reference number and said that they are sorry but can't answer me.

This turned out to be the least of my problems, as my copies are not arriving. On their website they count down my remaining issues, but I'm not receiving any. So far I have managed to extend my subscription with one week, for not having received my copy, but I'm still waiting for the two days to pass so they do something about me not receiving this weeks' issue neither (and as I have just hinted at this, in total I will have to wait an extra two days on them). I'm not confident that I would receive the next issue as well.

An other issue I raised with them is that the student rates they offer are far better than this trial offer, and me already knowing that I like the articles in the Economist, so I wanted to just switch to a student subscription by cancelling my not-yet-started trial in September and paying the student rate (with three weeks for a subscription to register in their system, this would have been an easy change; but after waiting a couple of two-days it turns out their staff is not so helpful in cases of these kind of manoeuvres).

Judging by the length of this post, I'm sure you can guess that I'm totally fed up with them. If I don't receive my copy this week, I'll just cancel the whole thing and apply for a refund of as much as is salvageable from my initial subscription fees (given their full refund policy, and their 48-hour reply cycle I am not sure its worth my money to ask for a full refund arguing that I haven't received any benefits from this subscription...).

Kosovo to be Serbia's Trianon?

2008-07-30T21:15:00.001+01:00

I am listening to Gde je danas Srbija (Where is Serbia today) a discussion on the Serbian Television (as the image quality is not so good to actually see much), today's topic is Karadzic and Serbia's future.

One interesting idea brought up by one of the guests was that there are "wounds" that hunt countries for decades, and among the examples he mentioned Trianon (in the way that it involved losing territory and people still talk about it, it has not yet been processed by the people*). He went on to warn that it is possible that Kosovo will for a long time be seen in a similar way as the Hungarians look on Trianon, especially by the radicals. I didn't really understand his conclusion, but I have found his comparison as a possible foreshadowing of the things to come.

*I might be one of the silent majority, or maybe a minority that doesn't stick Greater-Hungary maps on everywhere. I also hold the heretic view that the Hungarian minorities living in the neighbouring countries should do almost everything to integrate into the respective societies of the countries they live in: obviously with their minority rights protected.

On a totally unrelated note CNN has published a video about the protests in Belgrade, the twist is that they spiced it up with pictures from a previous riot from Hungary. They are now ridiculed all over the Hungarian and Serbian press...

[Image created using this picture under GFDL licence and this one found on the internet]

I'm not letting the World pass me by

2008-07-26T17:17:00.001+01:00

I decided that I should keep a closer look on the events of the world, as there is so much I do not know, and moreover so many things happen that skips ones attention. To remedy the situation I have decided to subscribe to the print edition of the Economist. I currently have no income, but I'm also thinking about subscribing to Foreign Affairs.

Foreign Affairs

2008-07-22T18:24:00.001+01:00

While I was in Holland I grabbed a copy of Foreign Affairs in the hope that it would be an interesting reading even if there is no Clash of Civilizations class article in it this time.
The articles I read, so far, haven't changed my life but nevertheless they were interesting. There was an article discussing American support for a Jewish state (which was never limited to the American Jews, but included for different reasons groups from the whole spectrum of public life).
One other was discussing the misuse of American oil reserves by the previous presidents since its creation in the 1970s and proposing an independent board to oversee it. The article, though this wasn't its primary intention, has given an interesting insight into how different countries store their oil, for example Japan has to use earthquake-proof steel tanks on valuable land, the US uses - I presume, among other locations - sand domes, while South Korea counts towards its capacity a storage facility in Norway.
With the elections coming closer many articles were discussing the foreign policy of the US as it should be. I haven't read all the articles on this topic, yet, but the main ideas expressed were stronger North American integration - with supporting the deepening of NAFTA cooperation, as it seems this is against the views expressed by the leading candidates, stronger economic cooperation with China, and measures to regain the lost respect of the world. An interesting tidbit from these articles was the fact, that to transport anything from Mexico to the States, it usually needs 3 different trucks, because Mexican trucks can't enter the States: one to bring it to the border and unload in a warehouse, one to transfer it to an other warehouse on the American side, and one to deliver it to its final destination.
I have found this journal quite interesting, and I don't regret buying it: even though its whole content is available on their website for free, it is much more comfortable to read the printed version.

Back from the Netherlands

2008-07-22T17:37:00.001+01:00

I just arrived home from a two weeks Travelling Summer University programme in the Netherlands, where I had an amazing time. I did things that otherwise probably I would never have done, including mudflat hiking, which apparently - against all my expectations - has a proper Hungarian name, sailing,eating burning Mozartkugelns.

Apart from these adventures we spent quite a lot of time in Eindhoven, Ternaard (Friesland), and Utrecht and visited The Hague, Amsterdam and Leeuwarden, and by far the most time in the local pubs, clubs, and discos...

Gender issues

2008-07-01T23:36:00.000+01:00

I am almost finished reading A Series of Unfortunate Events, and for a children's book I'm quite glad to find that it doesn't reinforce some "old-fashioned" perceptions of gender: in the story both the father and the mother is portrayed as cooking (the mother usually having a good recipe for every occasion, and the father always doing something special for his wife) and the mother is shown as handling the finances of the family while the father is watching over the kids.
Speaking about the kids, they accomplish some quite unbelievably feats, with the oldest sister being an inventor, and the middle sibling being the researcher that remembers everything he reads (as opposed to Hermione in the Harry Potter series).
In general I think this is an important aspect of the series, if not in the context of contemporary American society, but in the Hungarian one (where, I am being told, perceptions are changing, but there is still a lot of headway to be made in the field of the hidden curriculum).

Illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament?

2008-06-28T05:43:00.002+01:00

I have spent the last couple of hours trying to track down the law that states that it is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament. I have heard about it from a friend, and doing a search on Wikipedia didn't yield any verifiable results.

There are three mentions of this in Wikipedia, two of them linking to two newspaper articles, one stating that this law has been voted the most ridiculous while the other that the practice is to mark St. Thomas' hospital as a place of death in cases anybody breaks the law and dies there. Neither of these articles provide the source, or the actual name of the law that would state this, and I have not found it in neither of the online law databases of the UK I have checked. I couldn't find that law either that would say that those dying in a royal palace have to receive a state funeral, the closest thing was the Coroners Act 1988, that states that inquests into the deaths of persons lying inside one of the Queen's palaces are done by the Queen's coroner; alas no mention of a state funeral.

While the third about Spencer Perceval, the only British prime minister to have been assassinated, while seems to misquote his last words (either, according to the article "I am murdered" or according to the 10 Downing Street website "Oh, I have been murdered") states without providing a source that it is only illegal to die in the House of Lords.

Thus I have to think that this is probably an urban legend, though quite interesting nevertheless. Through my quest I have found the law that states that whales belong to the King.

Next semester subjects

2008-06-23T18:59:00.001+01:00

The time has come again to chose the subjects for the next semester. As usual the servers of my school went down minutes before the system should have been opened. Its 3.5 hours later and finally I could apply for my classes, and though barely, but I could even squeeze in to some optional courses.

This is a frustrating period, as chance decides who can actually log in to the system and chose the subjects/exams he wants and who has to live on what's left. Even if one gets in to add to the frustration one has to face that the system is quite badly written.

Anyways, it seems next year I will be having a lot of lectures on the subjects of

security policy
international economy
British civilisation
international law
history (again...)

and others. I hope I can manage the workload as I have applied to study in a second university as well.

Sonic screwdriver: boring

2008-06-22T12:55:00.001+01:00

The sonic screwdriver is a device in the Doctor Who series that can open any door, scan for alien life or radio signals, deafen any enemy, lock any door, and rarely to drive screws.

As you can clearly see from this description, in the hand of the Doctor - the protagonist - it is quite a useful device in any situation. Unfortunately it is used constantly and too conveniently in almost all the episodes which makes it a very easy way out for the writers of the show. It makes them lazy as they don't have to invent any MacGyverisms as they can just rely on the good old screwdriver to get the Doctor out of any trouble the writers have put him in. I think it would boost the creativity of the whole show and thus its quality if it was written out of the show for a little while, as it was in 1982 when the then producer, John Nathan-Turner had the same opinion about it as I do now.

Tom Sawyer Abroad

2008-06-20T22:53:00.001+01:00

The sequel to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Tom Sawyer Abroad that tells the tale of Huck, Tom and Jim travelling in a hot air balloon to discover the wonders of Africa.

The story was not as interesting as that of the prequel. The circumstances are obviously different, in the previous novel Huck and Jim were travelling on a raft in constant danger, while this time they are almost isolated from any danger in their balloon with which they can observe and evade any adversaries on land. The whole story is unbelievable in the sense that I can imagine a trip downriver the Mississippi in a raft, but hardly a pleasure flight over the Atlantic at speeds in excess of 300 mph.

I found it quite annoying that Jim, the freed black slave, is portrayed as uneducated and superstitious, who is usually given all the work (like mending the clothes, shovelling tons of sand, being sent on a threethousand-mile errand to fetch a pipe, etc.) and left out of most of the fun. These two aspects (no danger and the way the only black character in the book is portrayed) made this book a one-time read for me.