Octav Druta

Idealist, ambitious, music freak, co-founder of Trigwee. Loving passionate, fascinating people.

November 11, 2009 at 12:52am
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Setting up your Online Footprint →

I wrote a little something on the theme of “Setting up your Online Footprint”. The article was featured in the 5th issue of Beyond the Pond - the Alumni Magazine of Jacobs University. Feel free to explore it and drop me a line if you liked it or not, ok?

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November 4, 2009 at 11:03am
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The dream that envisioned the Web →

It all starts with a dream. Even the Web started with one. Here’s how Tim Berners Lee described his dream of the World Wide Web:

Photo Copyright: Living Juicy

“I have a dream for the Web…and it has two parts.

In the first part, the Web becomes a much more powerful means for collaboration between people.  I have always imagined the information space as something to which everyone has immediate and intuitive access, and not just to browse, but to create.  The initial WorldWideWeb program opened with an almost blank page, ready for the jottings of the user.  Robert Cailliau and I had a great time with it, not because we were looking at a lot of stuff, but because we were writing and sharing our ideas.  Furthermore, the dream of people-to-people communication thorough shared knowledge must be possible for groups of all sizes, interacting electronically with as much ease as they do now in person.

In the second part of the dream, collaborations extend to computers.  Machines become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web —the content,links, and transactions between people and computers.  A “Semantic Web,” which should make this possible has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy, and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines, leaving humans to proivide the inspiration and intuition.”[1]

[1] Berners-Lee, Tim. Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web. Harper Paperbacks, 2000.

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October 17, 2009 at 4:27pm
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My way, your way, their way →

What you see in the image below is a timeline of the universe, from the big bang to the present. In order to get a sense of how big this is, imagine that the lines around the cylinder are about a bilion years apart. As you can see the diameter of the cylinder is increasing. This increase represents the expansion of the universe.

Somewhere deep in that huge universal silence, people say that something should, ought, must or has to be done in a certain way. Hilarious isn’t it? Enjoy your choices my friend.

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October 14, 2009 at 2:00pm
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Today’s meaning of 25 →

I employ numbers for various purposes and I guess you also do. I am taking 25 for a ride today. I want this number to tell a story for me. I promise it’s very short. Here I go: Today, I am 25 years old! Done.

Twenty Five. Copyright Octav Druta

I’m no different than bacteria or any other organism in this Universe. We all struggle to be different and that makes us all the same. Still, there are some things that I want to mention:

  • Thanks Mom and Dad for “seeding” me
  • Thanks to everyone who taught me, advised me, inspired me, created with me, scolded me, hated me, struggled with me, cried with me, danced with me, played with me
  • Thank you all for existing and contributing to what I am

I finally thank myself for being here and now, grateful for the freedom to work on my dreams.

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October 13, 2009 at 12:59am
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You are what you watch →

I often hear the expression: “X shaped my Y” (i.e: Networking shaped my relationship with people, Exercising shaped my body, etc). I use it myself quite often. In fact, I’ll use it right here. Here I go: “Movies shaped my culture”.

The picture above represents a selection of the movie genres that I prefer. How did I get to it? Well, jinni.com knows most of the movies that I’ve seen by now and generated this nice movie genre cloud for me.

“Jinni is a Taste Engine. We look at film through the lens of what makes you love or hate anything you watch. With a Taste Engine, you don’t search by what you’re looking for, you search by what you like. And recommendations are based on analyzing your preferences, not statistics.”[1]

Please leave a reply in the comments section below. I’m sincerely curious to know your answers to the following questions:

  • What are your favorite movies and how did they shape you?
  • What movies would you recommend me?

[1] Jinni.com, “About us”. October 13th, 2009

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October 5, 2009 at 11:02pm
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You are what your friends are →

In Romania there’s this popular saying: “Tell me who you befriend so that I can tell you who you are”. You might have heard this saying in various forms in your home country.



Photo Copyright: -Antoine-

Is my behavior influenced by my friends? I did some empirical observations on Facebook, my primary social network.

I often immerse myself in the stream of items (photos, videos, links, etc.) shared by my friends on Facebook. Depending on what they share, my mind wanders and creates stories about my friends, automatically tagging them: Cool guys, Business guys, Crazy guys, Party animals, Geeks, Lovers, etc. Based on those classifications, my intentions and my emotional state, I comment and like their shared items. It’s obvious, my actions depend on what my friends share and how my mind classifies my friends.

Clive Thompson wrote a comprehensive article about this topic in the New York Times. If you read Clive’s “Are Your Friends Making You Fat” you’ll find out that:

  • behaviors can be “contagious”
  • good behaviors - like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses
  • happiness is more contagious than unhappiness
  • this network thing can cut both ways, subverting our ability to have free will, but increasing, if you will, the importance of us having free will

What we are is more than what we think we are. The fact that we’re able to explore the aspects that affect our behavior is a great opportunity to design ourselves at new levels of consciousness.

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September 8, 2009 at 10:00am
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Playing with the perception of time →

Yes, I am crazy. I want to be able to increase or decrease the resolution of time and I found one way of doing it. I had this thought while realizing that my perception of time varies when I experience similar events.

Image copyright Siebe

I usually feel that time passes slowly when I’m bored. On the other hand, time flies when I am doing exciting stuff. I bet that you felt the same many times.

When I dreamt of being able to modify my perception of time, I was thinking about control. It seems that wearing a pair of special glasses would do it. A new study shows that wearing prismatic glasses that adjust your vision 10 degrees to the left will “slow down” the passage of time. A similar adjustment of 10 degrees but to the right will “speed up” the passage of time.

Whenever you have a crazy thought, write it down, share it, talk about it. Sometimes, only the fact that you brought it into your awareness will reveal a lot to you.

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September 4, 2009 at 9:23am
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Honda’s power of dreams →

“One must keep chasing one’s dreams” - Soichiro Honda

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August 31, 2009 at 8:53am
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The dream behind the man in the mirror →

One of Michael Jackson’s greatest dreams as formulated by himself: “Give to the world what I was lucky to receive: the ecstasy of divine union through my music and my dance.”

“No message could have been any clearer if you wanna make the world a better place”.

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August 29, 2009 at 12:56pm
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What religion are you working on? →

Whether you participated or just tuned into the buzz around Madonna’s eighth worldwide concert tour: Sticky & Sweet, I want to share a little something with you. Whether you’re aware or not, you are participating in one of Madonna’s greatest dreams. She declared it a good while ago and it goes like this: “I won’t be happy till I’m as famous as God”.

Image copyright: madonna.com

Engaged in Madonna’s dream you’re probably listening to her songs, criticizing, reading news about her, going to her concerts, sharing information online, etc. A dream you dream alone is just a dream. Madonna did a fantastic job in engaging the world in her dream of “becoming as famous as God” and that gives her the power to transform the dream into a reality shared by hundreds of millions of fans worldwide.

I sincerely don’t know if she’ll ever become as famous as God. What I do know is that by declaring this dream and engaging the world in it, she achieved extraordinary results: she created her own religion.

Madonna herself invited the world to “Never forget to dream”. What religion are you working on? How many followers did you engage in activities that generate the reality of your dream?

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