Punctuality part1

PUNCTUALITY


They say that punctuality is a virtue. But as I wake up at 7 am and struggle to get to school on time, fighting with the immense lack of sleep and then pushing myself unwillingly through the angry crowd in the subway… I tend to think otherwise.
So what is this “punctuality” that keeps me from starting the day 15 (more) minutes later? My short but rich experience tells me that a man cannot win with time. Therefore, punctuality must be an attempt to at least somehow control it.
As the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia puts it, punctuality is the characteristic of being able to complete a required task or fulfill an obligation before or at a previously-designated time. But a mere dictionary formula cannot fully describe the meaning of one of humanity’s greatest motors. Being late.


Punctuality – a student’s view

Among the many requirements put before a student by the “university environment”, punctuality seems to be simultaneously one of the most importunate and most obvious of them all. Though punctuality is hardly ever enforced, the act of being late notoriously performed (committed) by students, drives many lecturers furious.
As a student I have learned that being on time is actually relative. According to the student’s code, there are precisely five things that you should NOT be late for:
· a date
· an exam
· an appointment with a Polish doctor
· your own wedding
· your own funeral
Similarly, there seem to be five things that you SHOULD be late for as well, as it is thought to be either stylish or simply time-saving and economical. Those occasions include:
· a party
· a class or a lecture at 8 am
· a family reunion
· your best friends wedding
· your own funeral
Many lecturers see it as incomprehensible, that students will most probably come in late for just about anything they can think of – a class, an exam. Anything. My guess is that this can be easily explained, if we only think of punctuality as something that involves a certain level of seriousness. Which makes the phrase “a punctual student” an obvious contradiction.

Just few quotations by famous people

“Punctuality is a virtue, if you don't mind being lonely"- Evelyn Waugh

“ I've been on a calendar, but never on time.” - Marylin Monroe

“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” - William Shakespeare

“He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.” - Oscar Wilde

“Men count up the faults of those who keep them waiting.” - French Proverb

“Punctuality is the soul of business.” - Thomas C. Haliburton

“Punctuality is the art of guessing how late the other fellow is going to be” - Alex Taborrek

ROBOTS Part III

We watched on the television and read in the books that it is just a matter of several years to machines executing hateful work for us. Then it was turned out that kitchen robot is only a mixing device :(

Nowadays we can meet robots on every step. In the computer industry, robots solder tiny wires to microchips. Industrial robots insert integrated circuits onto printed circuit boards which are used in all kinds of electronics, from radios to microwaves. Robots are also at work making and packaging foods, textiles and medicines. Robots do jobs, we can not or do not want to do and even play with our kids. Who knows, maybe robot can go for shopping instead of us in the nearest future.

However, the road to intelligent behaviors remains a long one. The model for intelligence, the brain, must first be better understood before similar principles can be applied to humanoid robots.

The end :)


Questions to discuss:

• How soon will robots become part of our every day lives?
• Will robots replace people in the work?
• Will robots become really intelligent in the future?
• Will robots be able to threaten people some day?

ROBOTS Part II - How do robots help people.

Robots can be very helpful in the man life. They don't get tired and cope with executing quick and precise movements better than the man can. Industrial robots are designed exactly to such tasks.

Industrial robots are generally heavy rigid devices limited to manufacturing. They operate in precisely structured environments and perform single highly repetitive tasks under preprogrammed control. A robot the size of a person can easily carry a load over fifty kilograms and move it very quickly. Furthermore these robots can do that job 24 hours a day for years without failures.

Industrial robot ride :)


World’s fastest robot:

But there are more place for robots. It is dangerous for humans to be in space, deeply under water or inside a volcano. Other jobs are physically inaccessible, such as exploring another planet or cleaning long pipe. Places like these good fit for robots.


Locating robots to operate in space presents some challenges for engineers. The temperatures can swing wildly depending on whether the robot is in the sun light or shade and there is no gravity. Gravity is actually more of an opportunity than a challenge. Imagine big robot with twenty independent joints. On earth it would be impossible for this robot to support its own weight. This kind of robot named 'Canadarm' flown on every space shuttle flight for the last twenty years. Robot arm has three degrees of freedom shoulder and is used as a work platform for the astronauts for shooting out satellites into space, pushing a faulty antenna into place or directing a satellite into proper orbit. Another example of space robot is 'Sojourner'. For the first time Sojourner was deployed onto red planet Mars by sonde spatiale Pathfinder in 1997. The Sojourner is a six-wheeled rover of a rocker bogie design. During its first mission, it sent 550 photographs to Earth and analyzed the chemical properties of rocks. A true robot success.

Best job for robot is dangerous one.

Robots can work in dangerously polluted environments, such as chemical spills and radioactive hot zones in nuclear power plants. There are robots specially designed to explore areas where extreme radiation would kill a human.

The another example is 'Mini-Andros' - robot used by bomb squads to locate and dispose of bombs. Mini-Andros looks like a small tank with movable arms , which can be extended for climbing stairs. Robot is equipped in bomb-proof boxes and detachable accessories enable to break windows, see in the dark, blasting bombs. Mini-Andros ranks as teleoperated robot, so it is controlled from a distance by a human operator.

Andros robot presentation:


Robots ready to take over the home.

As prices fall and robots become smarter and cheaper. Today they taking simple jobs, such as cleaning an washing in over a million houses and become the part of the world entertainment. Kids meets it as intelligent robot that can walk, talk, dance, pick up objects and even shake hands like a human. It will go asleep and snore if not given commands. Similar robots become the best selling toys.

Sony Rolly music robot:


Nao robot:

Questions to discuss:

• What are the largest achievements in the field of the robotics in your opinion?

• Can the robot toy be danger?
  

• Please put some pictures or films of funny robot toys.

ROBOTS Part I - How science fiction has become science fact with robots.

A robot can be defined as a programmable, self-controlled device consisting of electronic, electrical, or mechanical units. More generally, it is a machine designed to execute one or more tasks repeatedly, with speed and precision. Unlike humans, they never get tired, they can endure physical conditions that are uncomfortable or even dangerous. The term comes from a Czech word, robota, meaning slave, servant, or forced labor and first appeared in a 1920 play by Czech writer Karel Capek: Rossum's Universal Robots.

Robots are sometimes grouped according to the time when they were first used. First-generation robots date from the 1970s and consist of stationary, nonprogrammable, electromechanical devices. Second-generation robots were developed in the 1980s and can contain sensors and programmable controllers. Third-generation robots were developed between 1990 and the present. These machines can be stationary or mobile, with sophisticated programming, speech recognition and synthesis, and other advanced features. Fourth-generation robots are in the research and development phase, they include features such as artificial intelligence and nanoscale size. Some advanced robots are called androids because they are designed to look and act like a human. Androids have been mainly an element of science fiction, today it is becoming a reality.

Dynamically balancing bipedal robot:

Robot with human face:

Baseball batting robot:

One of the earliest robots was sketched by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1495. The robot, witch appears in hiss sketches could (if built successfully) move its arms, twist its head and sit up. But the world's first successfully built mechanical automat was the flute player, invented by the French engineer Jacques de Vaucanson in 1738. He also constructed a mechanical duck. The duck moved, quacked, flapped it's wings and even ate and digested food!

In 1939 Westinghouse electric corporation builds a mechanical man 'elektro'. The robot relied on a combination of motors, telephone and record players to perform preprogrammed routines initiated by voice commands. As part of these routines, elektro could raise and lower his arm, turn his head, count on his fingers and smoke a cigarette.

But real robots wouldn’t become possible until the 1960s, with the invention of transistors. In 1953 American inventor Harvey Chapman built first remote controlled robot 'garco'.

The most advanced humanoid robot 'ASIMO' was created by Honda Motor Company and it is still developed. The robot resembles a small astronaut wearing a backpack (where is battery placed), and can walk and run on two feet with speed up to six km/h. Latest ASIMO generation robot has 156 cm and weighs 54 kg. ASIMO was created to be able to function in the real human living environment and serve people. In order to interact better with humans, ASIMO has many interesting features in its design. ASIMO has ability to recognize moving objects using information captured by the camera, detect distances and directions which makes possible to following a person. ASIMO can also interpret postures, gestures and react to voice commands. ASIMO using advanced movements. It can move not only in the front and in the back, but also in the sides, go up and down using stairs, analyze terrain and avoid hitting humans or other moving objects. Very interesting is ability to identify faces and addressing by name after registering new person.

ASIMO commercial:

ASIMO walk and run abilities:

Questions to discuss:

• What is the most interesting or advanced robot you have ever seen? Please put some pictures or films.
• Why do robots have human appearance?

FOOTBALL – part 3 My favourite football club

My favourite club is FC Barcelona. It was founded in 1899 by the group of Swiss, English and Spanish man. Barcelona is one of the most titled world teams in football. The most important titles they have are being 19 time Champions of Spain, 3 time getting Euro Cup and 3 time winning Champions League plus a lot more. But I won't write about trophys becouse it's not why I love this club. The reasons are totaly different. The most important is the way they play football becouse they do it very spectaculary and it looks beautiful for eye which makes watching games even more interesting. The second thing is that Barcelona don't have any adverts on t-shirts on the contrary they only have the logo of UNICEF's and each year donates quite large amounts of money on this fundation.



Now something about the palace where you can see the "Proud of Catalonia". The stadium of Barcelona's is Camp Nou. On it's bleachers can sit 98 722 peoples, so it's the bigest stadium in Europa and one of the bigest in the world. By UEFA it deserves five stars becouse it's arena fulfills the highest standards.



When writing about Barcelona it's not possible to no write about one of the most emotional games for Spain and probably for rest of the world which is the game between Barcelona and Real Madrit. The games was hailed as El Clásico It's something more then normal football match, it's a holiday for a fan of one of the clubs and football fan as well. With this games comes grate emotions and unbelievable atmosphere which you can feel even in
front of a TV.




At the end couple of words about right now the best player of Barcelona. Leo Messi is 22 years old. Before he finished 21 he was nomineted to Golden Ball and the Player of Year by FIFA. Thanks to his style he is compared to the football legend and his countryman Diego Maradona. Maradona even says that Messi is his successor.


If you are a football fans or any other team sports fans please write what's your favourite team and why this team in particularly ??

Some places to go and how to get there

If you don’t mind wasting money, for small distance you can travel by taxi. It’s much cheaper than in Poland and drivers are not as dishonest as they are considered to be. The funny thing is that in many places you can see more taxis than casual cars. Although Tunisia is rather reach in African perspective, many families just can’t afford to buy a car. They travel using ‘louages’, kind of small buses similar to our Polish ones. There are few kinds of them signed with different colors of stripes, depending of the distance they ride on.

Souse
We were staying in a small village near Souse, which is the third big city in this country. Therefore that was our first destination. It is also the most popular area visited by Polish tourists, so I will write a bit about it and possible trips from this place. City is very crowded and noisy (using horns is common) and can by tiring. Especially walking through little streets of old medina and trying to neglect pushy traders can cause a headache. When you need to rest, you should go to local ribat. Ribats were kind of fortified monasteries inhabited and defended by fanatic monks. Built of sandstone, as most old buildings in this area, fortress looks quite ascetic and inaccessible, but rooms inside are pleasantly shadowed and quiet. You can climb up to the tower, which lets you admire all surrounding.

Even more you can see from a massive tower of a castle in the northern part of the medina. The tower is still in use and it serves as a lighthouse. During our vacation the castle and its museum were renovated, but its workers were happy to show us everything (our guide did perfect job) for few dinars. We were offered to see more than it’s normally available also in Souse’s catacombs. They are well hidden so not many tourists get there, especially that many citizens don’t know about their existence. The catacombs have about 5 km, but only a section is prepared for visitors. If you let local guide earn some extra, he will use his secret keys and show you all :-)

Kairouan
Another interesting city where you can get by louage (or by bus, but it will take an extra hour) is Kairuan. For Tunisians is something like our Częstochowa. If they are not reach enough to go to Mekka (which is one of the duties every Muslim must do in his life), they can replace it by 3 peregrinations to Kairuan. It was the first city founded by Arabs in Tunisia. If you start visiting it from Basins of Aghlabites (first Arabian dynasty in this area) you can buy a carnet for all tourist attractions with map which will guide you all over the city. The Basins are the rests of old aqueducts and huge reservoirs which used to supply the city with water.

The biggest attraction in the town is surely Great Mosque. Unless you are Muslim, you will not be allowed to get everywhere, but you can see praying worshipers from beautiful yard decorated with columns from conquered Carthago. Worth of seeing are also other sanctuaries (little mosques and mausoleums), museum of carpets situated in old governor’s house and amazing well powered with camel in the center of medina.

Mahdija
From Souse you can easily get to Mahdija travelling by ‘metro du Sahel’. Actually, this ‘metro’ is a small and very cheap railway. Try to imagine our ‘wukadka’ in times of PRL, but a bit older, more dirty and devastated. If you are very sensitive person, it might be not the best form of communication. All the way long we were the only foreigners :-)

Mahdija is a village located on the scenic penisula with great Turkish fortress from XVIth century screened off from the centre with huge walls. Their ruins are partly covered by sea and Arabs use them as comfortable place for fishing :-)

South
Our journey wouldn’t be complete without excursion to desert. This time we decided to participate in 2-days trip organized by travel agency because of long distance, high prices of renting a car in Tunisia and permissions requested from foreigners. Description of our excursion would need one more part of the presentation. To not make it longer, I will just say that during this fantastic tour we were traveling by bus, jeep, rig and camels. Some of my pictures should be the best recommendation :-)

Definitely 2 weeks in Tunisia is not enough to visit everything, especially if you want to spend also some time resting (we were traveling with little children). Accordingly we are planning to go there in few years again to see northern part of the country with Tunis, Carthago and Bizerte :-)

FOOTBALL – part 2 The Best Players of all time

Hi this part will be more seriouse. I want to introduce three best players of all time which had the privilege to play on the biggest football fields of the world. Of course there was a lot of good players but this three are by me the best.


On the 3rd place is Zinedine Zidane. He was playing in football representation of France with which he got the titles of World Champions and Europe Champions (1998, 2000). He had grate overview of field. He saw literally every thing that happened on the field. Plus unexceptional technique which "Zizou" had and we have one of the world best players. Unfortunately last game in his career wasn't worthy the title one of world best players becouse in World Cup finals in Germany he with his head hit Italian player Marco Materazzi geting red card becouse of that.










2nd place belong's to Pele the legendary Brazilian player. While he was 17 he played his first game in representation of Brazil and thanks to his play in 1985 Brazil got the title of World Cup Champions. He was very good at dribbling and scoring goals was quite easy thanks to that in 91 games of Brazilian representation he scored 77 goals.





The 1st place goes unconditionally to the irreplaceable and one of a kind Diego Armando Maradona. He was remarkable player. His amazing game with England in quater finals of World Cup in 1986 was something marvellous. First he scored not so nice goal (becouse by hand) but later he scored beautiful goal passing around 6 rivals which let Argentina advance to finals and winning World Cup.



If you are interested in Football or any other sport I encourage you to make your own Best players list with short justification why and if not then to watching movies and puting this players in order which you thing is best.