Reading Cyrillic, one of the most used writing systems

Disclaimer: The characters listed below are non-exhaustive and the whole Cyrillic alphabet can be found here.

Ever felt confused when you saw such signs and they seemed Greek and Latin to you?(Well, it's Cyrillic, actually)

The Cyrillic script is an alphabetic writing system employed across  Eastern Europe, North and Central Asian countries. It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, in parts of Southeastern Europe and Northern Eurasia, especially those of Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian. Cyrillic is one of the most used writing systems in the world.

At first glance it may seem really difficult to read the text in Cyrillic. But there are some really basic rules which can make these obscure looking-symbols really easy to read. Hopefully, within the next 5 minutes you can read sign-boards and basic words in the Cyrillic script.

1. Many of the letters are similar to those in the Roman script (English) . The Cyrillic letters A, K, M, O, and T are close relatives of their English counterparts. The Cyrillic letter Б (which looks like a lowercase “b”)  also makes a “b” sound. The letter “C” always makes the “s” sound, like in the English word “cite.”

2. Others are closely related to Greek. People who have taken math/physics classes already know the letters Г (gamma), P (rho), П (pi),  and Ф (phi), which are the English equivalents of “G”, “R”, “P”, and  “F”, respectively.

Easy so far, right? Check out a few examples:

кафе́ = cafе́

бар = bar

о́пера = opera

ро́бот = robot

3. Some letters are pretty humbug. The letter “H” makes the “N” sound, “y” makes the English “oo”  sound, and “B” sounds like the English “V.” This letter, И, which looks  like a backwards “N”, makes the “short i” sound, as in the English word “pin.” The Russian letter “Я” sounds nothing like it’s mirror image in  English. Instead, it makes a “ya” sound, as in “yacht.”

Here are a few more Russian words you already know.

Интерне́т = internet

CпyTHИK = Sputnik

POCCИЯ = Russia

4. You probably have only seen the rest of the letters in some movies with a Russian back drop or a Russian space shuttle.

Ц = “ts” as in “boots”

Ш = “sh” as in “shore”

Л = “l” as in “lamp”

ж = “zh” as in “pleasure”

Д = “d” as in “door”

З = “z” as in “zoo”

Ю = “oo” or “yu” as in "use"

Ч = “ch” as in "chat"

a. You’re in St. Petersburg and you see a restaurant with this written on it: MAKДOHAЛД’C. Where are you?

b. You’re in a Moscow bar and would like to drink something authentically Russian. Someone suggests Bо́ДKA. What are you having?

c. You’re applying for your Russian visa and a form asks whether you’ve ever criticized the Russian президе́нт. What’s it asking? 

The characters listed above are non-exhaustive and the whole Cyrillic alphabet can be found here.

FYI: The first image in this answer is the logo of Pepsi-Cola and the second one (yeah, you guessed it right) is McDonald's.

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Did you know Pixar's Toy Story 2 almost got deleted?

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Pixar is one of the most influential CGI animated film makers with 15 Academy Awards won by their films. Not only have their films received critical acclaim but have also gone on to be financially successful.

The ratings of the Pixar Movies according to Metacritic.

Legend: Green = Won the Oscar, Orange = Nominated, Red = Not nominated, Blue = Not applicable.

Pixar's earnings and Academy Award status arranged chronologically.

Out of the 15 movies that Pixar has created Cars 2 was rated the least with 57/100 while Ratatouille scored the highest with 96/100.

Image credit: Disney/ Pixar

It will be the first time in Pixar's history that they will release two movies in the same calendar year. The first being 'Inside Out' followed by 'The Good Dinosaur'.

Image Credits: Dreamworks

A project by the name of 'Newt' was cancelled in 2008. Pixar cited that the plot-line was similar to that of another animated file, 'Rio'.

In 1986, Steve Jobs bought Pixar (then known as Computer Graphics Division from George Lucas) and it was later bought by Disney in 2006.

Image credits: Pixar

Pixar's mascot goes by the name of Luxo Jr.

Tom Hanks was interested to voice Woody as he wondered how toys would be if they were living.

Joss Whedon, the director of The Avengers, co-wrote Toy Story's script. He also came up with Rex, the dinosaur in the franchise.

Image credits: Pixar

The Pizza Planet truck appears in most of Pixar's movies.

Monsters University has an actual admissions website of its own.

Image credits: Pixar, Pixar Wikia

'A-113' is an easter egg in many Pixar films. It is a tribute to a classroom at California Institute of Arts, where many animators had worked.

Did you know that Toy Story 2 was almost deleted? Read the whole story here.Or
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Mendeleev's Periodic table and the Modern Periodic table

Mendeleev's Periodic table

In case you're wondering why is it in German and not Russian? Well, his idea was first published in a German journal.

The Modern Periodic Table

Read about the prophecies and predictions of futurist and inventor, Nikola Tesla and chemist, Mendeleev which turned out to be true in the 21st Century.
Check out Pixar's success visualized using d3.js.

Of Predictions and Prophecies: Visions that will boggle your mind

Mark Twain known for 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and 'The Great American Novel'.

This world has seen oracles come and go. With the likes of Nostradamus who would peek into the future using his water-filled tripod under the moonlight, George Orwell talks about "telescreens [that] received and transmitted simultaneously" and CCTVs in his dystopian sci-fi novel 1984. Mark Twain is known for his writings but he had predicted his own death on the arrival of Halley’s Comet and unfortunately had envisioned the death of his brother. When he arrived at the place his brother lay between two chairs and even the wreath was arranged as he had dreamt.

A Serbian born American scientist, futurist, engineer and inventor, after whom an electric car-company is named is another of the oracles the world heard from. Nikola Tesla worked as an apprentice to Thomas Edison credited for the light bulb, one of many inventions he’s known for.

Nikola Tesla claimed to sleep at most two hours and supposedly possessed an eidetic memory.

Tesla went on to pursue his ideas of wireless lighting and electricity distribution in his dangerous experiments, and made predictions on the possibility of wireless communication. He had registered about 300 patents under his name and the inventions he made still influences modern day life.

Many of his ideas were way ahead of time and technology at that time. It was difficult for the folks to digest his ideas and often invited ridicule from the scientists. Many consider Edison had stolen Tesla’s ideas.

Wireless communication and the internet

"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."

"We shall be able to witness the inauguration of a president, the playing of a World's Series baseball game, the havoc of an earthquake, or a battle just as though we were present."

"It will soon be possible to transmit wireless messages all over the world so simply that any individual can own and operate his own apparatus."

"…the household's daily newspaper will be printed wirelessly in the home during the night."

When Tesla was working on the trans-Atlantic radio, he proposed to his funder, J.P. Morgan. The idea was to create a plan for a "World Telegraphy System”. He planned to provide instant communications between individuals. Such predictions and ideas would prove to be true decades later.

Dream on

Another scientist by the name of Dmitri Mendeleev had predicted something. But this time it wasn’t about smart phones or CCTVs. Mendeleev had designed a periodic table using his scientific prowess so perfectly that even till date his version of the Periodic Table is used with a few minor changes. Mendeleev predicted future elements and where why would be placed with the properties they exhibited.

Dmitri Mendeleev, chemist and inventor.

At that time, in 1863, only 56 elements were discovered but by the ingenious way of arranging elements based on atomic weight that he had apparently seen in his dream helped him predict positions of elements that would be discovered. [Mendeleev's table and the modern periodic table].

"I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary."

—Mendeleev, as quoted by Inostrantzev

Inventing the electricity that we use in our homes, pioneering research about the X-rays and the neon lights in your favorite pub, are a small fraction of the contributions these men made. With such remarkable visions and spot-on predictions, these men contributed to the science and technology, paving way for the luxuries we enjoy today. 

Did you know that Toy Story 2 was almost deleted? Read the whole story here.

'Save Woody and Buzz': When Pixar's Toy Story sequel almost got deleted, thanks to a single line of code

Toy Story 2 (Picture Credits: Pixar)

With Pixar out with the latest film Inside Out, the animation heavyweight always treats us to awesome movies with each passing year. They have come a long way from giving emotions to toys and now their latest venture is a film where emotions have emotions (just guessing what’s up their sleeve for the coming years).

Watching the great work of the artists and the animators since childhood has been really amazing as well as inspiring. Pixar has released 15 films, the first being, Toy Story a major hit with the audience and achieved critical acclaim as well with an Academy Award and 3 nominations.

Toy Story 3 released in 2010 and became the second highest-grossing animated movie. It is only second to Frozen (2013) which grossed $1,279,852,693. Lion King missing out on the $1,000,000,000 club, Frozen and Toy Story 3 being the only computer animated films to gross over $1,000,000,000 in worldwide earnings.

The Toy Story franchise (Picture Credit: Pixar)

Before Pixar released Toy Story 2, Woody was almost deleted twice. It was when they were trying to fix Woody’s hat, they discovered that Woody’s folder which had 40 files now had only 4. It was an erroneous command that had wiped off all the man hours put in.

When the news started making rounds, there was only one question, ‘how did it happen?’ Since Pixar had a considerable number of people working on the project, almost everyone required write permissions to the master files to deliver projects on time. Pixar worked with Unix systems and it was only a matter of a 'slash' to change directories and login to another system (even that of Steve Jobs). It was a single command that had almost deleted Toy Story 2, '/bin/rm -r -f *', which removed all files from a particular location on the system. Since every machine was connected, the command could have been issued from any machine on the network.

Piece by piece Woody had lost his hat, boots and whole scenes had vanished into thin air. They grabbed their backup tapes and started restoring the data. It took a couple days to complete the restoration process. Everything seemed to be working fine, except a few errors here and there.

Now, Pixar was familiar with such lapses. Many of the ants got wiped off the system during the production of 'A Bug’s Life'. These little creatures were restored, thanks to Pixar’s backup tapes. At that time, frequent checks would have to be made to ensure backups were taking place normally.

That’s where the trouble began as the backup drive had been filled to the brim and even the error log (located on the drive itself) was zero bytes in size. It was like a stack of plates; new data was being overwritten on top of the older data. They realized that the backups were busted when they took a closer look at the rendered files from the restoration.

'You almost got annihilated.'(Picture Credits: Pixar)

Luckily, a Pixar employee had recently given birth and was working from home, with the entire copy of the files on her workstation. She rushed back and carefully hauled the machine into her car and put a seat belt around it. They drove at 35 mph with their blinkers on carrying the machine like an 'Egyptian pharaoh'. The car was worth 100 million dollars, with all the team’s efforts in that machine, safely strapped to the backseat like a child.

The team crossed their fingers hoping the drive hadn’t crashed. They quickly copied the two week old backup. They started verifying each file, 100,000s of them. They got all the people they could to run checks and verify as quickly as possible. Pixar finally retrieved the data and made up for lost time instead of wasting it on blaming one another.

A Bug's Life (Picture Credit: Pixar)

But this was not the end. A Bug’s Life had been released and the bosses came around to take a look at Toy Story's sequel. Toy Story 2 was particularly not a good film and the film was re-written, the only constant being the characters and some scenes. They had to re-make the film in 9 months with the release data set in stone. If the project wouldn’t be delivered on time, it would mean a big setback for the company. They went all-in and completed the project on time and grossed $490M, cementing Pixar's stronghold in animated film-making.

Here is the Pixar's success visualized using d3.js, check it out! Did you know it was only once in the NBA, NFL and MLB that the losing team’s player got the MVP award check out 2015 NBA Finals with d3.js interactive visualisations, a two part series. Or read about the remarkable predictions Nikola Tesla and Mendeleev made which actually turned out to be spot-on.