Theory of a stable relationship (guest post)

Until I find time to publish what's going on on my side, I'm publishing this "scientific paper" sent to me by a .. friend, who preferred to stay anonymous :) Let us know what you think of it in comments.

This paper describes the relationship between two human objects of opposite sex, discovering correlations between those two based on Newton laws of mechanics.

We particularly focused on gravitational forces affecting this relation mistakenly referred by general public as "addiction" as well as counter-forces that may potentially break relative stability known to public as circumstances.

The paper concludes on a formula derived to describe this phenomenon that can be used in the relationship science to support decisions and further development of the science of love.

General rule of addiction 

There are billions of study objects around the world. Some of them create families, others don't. Significant numbers of families break up after t period of time. The importance of this study comes even more vivid if considered that relationships between various human objects break at the stage of formulation even without reaching the state of a stable equilibrium. The phenomenon becomes even harder to analyze given that these billions of objects have over 35 billion communications daily and around 580 million people travel per day. 

To understand this phenomenon, we suggest looking at the stars. There are countless space objects moving, however the universe still keeps its firm structure over millions of light years. This is mainly happening due to the gravity forces between all objects that create network of forces to support the overall structure. This same gravity (although based on human specific parameters) creates forces between two humans to provide acceleration towards each other. This “addiction” (as we fictitiously call it) can be described by the formula below:

Where:
F - addiction force - is the actual force by which one object is pulling the other one.

G - addiction constant. This constant is not affected by any variable other than time. It can be calculated by the following formula G = B × (tn - t0), where B is the base underlying the relationship typically mol. mass of either oxytocin 1007.19, adrenaline 183.204, or pheromones varying between 230-280; and tn - t0 is the total number of days in relationship.

M1 - the mass of positive attitude and support provided by addicting object (further referred as addictor).

M2 - the mass of positive attitude and support received from subject of addiction (further referred as addictee).

R - the average distance between addictor and addictee.

Both M1 and M2 comprise of the aggregation of the following:

• support provided to counterpart 
• level of forbearance 
• attention to its counterpart 
• quality of gifts 
• rest time shared 
• etc

Thus, the force of addiction is positively correlated with the time of relationship (as provided in the G constant formula) and the relative weight of objects for each other, and negatively correlated with the distance between the two.

Circumstances or the surrounding universe

Given that there is no other object and movement around the addictor and the addictee, the addiction force described above would be the only force affecting the objects. Thus they would either pull each other until their integration into one object with no distinctive individual properties, or in case of long distance and/or negative M1×M2 product, would have insignificant mutual relations. 

In reality, all the human objects spin around the world and, as described in previous chapter, have a large number of other interactions. Thus, there is another force, giving us a tendency of avoiding integration and pushing objects away from each other. In universe this rule is known as the centrifugal force. 

In our study, the formula of avoidance provided below best describes the imprint of so called circumstances on the relationship.

Where:
F2 - is the force of avoidance

M1 - mass of positive attitude and support provided by the addictee

V - the speed by which addictee is being spinned around routine realities and the universe around itself

R - the distance between addictor and the addictee

Thus we can say that there is a clear hyperbolic positive correlation between the speed of our life and the force pushing us far from our addictors. Another interesting finding of this study is that the closer two object are − the higher is the force pushing to break up.

State of equilibrium
Any two human objects with positive M1 and M2 values are able to reach equilibrium stage at T point of time.

To prove the statement above, lets calculate through the formulas presented above. To reach the stage of equilibrium the addiction force F1 and F2 shall be equal, therefore:

Based on our assumption in the hypothesis, M1 is positive value, thus:

or

or

As we can conclude from the equation above, there can always be a positive M2 for given distance, speed of life and duration of relationship to bring the equation to solution. The faster the environment and longer the distance − the more positive energy and care is needed to sustain equilibrium. On the other hand, the longer relationship lasts − the less M2 is required for equilibrium given that V and R remain constant.

In conclusion, this study proves, that to reach a stable relationship, it is critical of addictor itself to provide necessary M2 weight to relationship. In the meantime, both addictor and addictee can calculate necessary V speeds and R distances to leverage the lack of Weight at a given point of time. This type of adjustments may provide short-term equilibrium situations to free up time to recover the M2 and M1 levels. Failure of recovering necessary mutual weights of objects will lead to shifting of V and R values to unrecoverable margins.

Once M2 value is sustained at the equilibrium value, the relationship can enter long-term stability stage.

I typed "y"... I am now suddenly, geekily and happily engaged :)

...or "How to propose to a geek girl".

The rumor spreads and everyone keeps asking - how was it? what did he say? Since it was very unexpected, geeky and with so many details, I thought it would be best to write down here and share my happiness with the world.

It was an ordinary Wednesday (November 7). The only 2 things that could be counted as "not ordinary" were the facts that a) I was sick and bedridden on Monday and Tuesday and b) my (now) fiancé was on a business trip in Stepanakert, Artsakh (or so I thought).

The card

On Tuesday evening, while tracking his journey on latitude, I asked him to call and wake me up on Wednesday morning and so he did. I promised I'd get up soon. But since my tummy was till aching, I decided to cuddle in bed a few more minutes and eventually fell asleep again. I woke up a couple hours later to find his messages like "Asleep again?". I started to slowly dress up and get ready to go to work. My friend Lia called to ask me if I was still at home and could take the pocket books I had promised to pass to her. It was around 1pm already. Then it turned out I had to buy my dad's newspapers. So I went out, bought the papers, brought them home and headed to work. (see the bullet points below the post to find out why I described these details)

On my way to work, next to the Charents monument pathway, a teenage boy handed me something. I asked "what's this?", in order to avoid the religious pictures that kids give on streets and ask for money. The boy eagerly replied - "vizitka!" (business card). I took it and saw a nicely designed business card (pictured below).

the QR code reads "Will"

I went on a few more steps and checked the QR code on a side of the card, which read "Will". "Hm.. Interesting", I thought and entered my office.
I told about the card to Azar, my boss. My guess was, that this is some promotion or maybe a puzzle, a quest..

The Facebook tag

In about half an hour I am being tagged on a picture on Facebook. It was in a closed group of AIESEC alumni. See below:

I was tagged together with a bunch of other people.. It had the same logo as on the business card.. and a QR code reading "You". The description was "Cool initiative, guys i am sure you will like this! Detail coming soon!". I started to suspect that it had something to do with AIESEC - some kind of a new project and I was lucky to get the card on the street! The comments on the post didn't shed any light to what it was.

The hack

At 6pm I had an appointment with Kristine, Gohar and Lia (TEDxYerevan organizing team) at The Green Bean Coffeeshop. Kristine had written us a week ago asking to get prepared for a dinner with the US Ambassador John Heffern (who attended TEDxYerevan 2012). We had to discuss our possible cooperation. Kristine asked us to dress nicely, no jeans or suits -- just a cute dress. She also asked me to bring my netbook, since we had to discuss things in Green Bean, before going for the dinner. I didn't suspect anything yet :D
I got there and we started to discuss our stuff. The waiter approached, and I ordered a bagel and no drink. Gohar ordered tea and Kristine insisted that they bring another cup for me to drink too, since i was recovering from cold. I got the Green Bean mug... and it had the "liveit" logo and again a QR code!

I got surprised and started telling them about the card and the picture from facebook... and then finally got to scan the code. Guess what? It read "Marry me?" ..... I blushed and smiled... and then immediately got a call from Azar (my boss), who told me that supposedly panarmenian.net was hacked and I should check it quickly and call him back, since he was outside, far from a computer. I turned on my netbook and opened panarmenian.net. I got this console screen instead (click to view bigger):

I typed "y"...

The waiter, in a white elephant t-shirt, was looking at me and smiling. She led me to the other hall of the cafe to find my Areg. With white lilies and a ring. On his knees.

We were surrounded by friends - who were involved in all this - cheering, applauding ... By that time i was blushing with my full capacity :).. shocked to find Areg to be in Yerevan and to have a ring on my finger...

The story didn't end here.
We sat at a big table with this company and everyone was telling details of the "QRաջարկություն" operation.. Something that was being planned around me for the past few weeks.

Areg's masterplan for THE day :)

It turned out that:

• Areg had created a secret group in Facebook for communicating the stuff for organizing matters. Sharing mindmaps, coordinating everyone's actions for the day. 
• Areg didn't have a business trip that week. It was just to enhance the "effect".. and also have a free Tuesday for arranging the stuff. 
• Areg was near my building since early morning when he called me. He was waiting for me to go out for several hours! Standing! Tracking me on the latitude if I was still there... until his phone drained out... (yep, I feel very very bad about this :()
• Speaking on the latitude.. he did arrange somebody to login with his account on latitude on the trip to Artsakh. That's why I was seeing him there...
• Lia called me to ask if I was at home to take the books with Areg's desperate request. 
• He asked his friend to follow me on my way to work. When i went to buy the papers, I could accidentally see them. They were hiding behind a car :D
• They arranged someone to wait for me near Charents monument, to hand the card. She was available only till 1:30 pm. Afterwards, they were trying to find someone else and in the end approached a school boy having a lunch nearby. The idea was to suggest him some "bribe" for giving me the card. The boy politely refused the money, and after some convincing ("heeey, it's our friend's birthday, we need to give her this card, blabla") he agreed to stand there and wait, only until their teacher (who was almost near) could notice him.
• Areg followed me on my way to work until he was ensured that I read the QR code on the card. 
• Lia had been thinking that I saw her trying to hide near the cafe at Charents monument, but in fact, I didn't. 
• Azar reported in the FB group, that I had told him about the card. He also called Areg when I went out of the office, saying "Объект вышел".
• Kristine had made up the story about the Ambassador and asked us to dress up, because she knew that on that important day for me, I would feel upset if I wouldn't be dressed :)
• Areg had prepared beautiful flower compositions for the Green Bean (partly seen on the picture with the QR code mug). They are still there, decorating the tables in the cafe.
• The hack was created by our friend Tiko and was "enabled" on panarmenian.net by Azar (CEO of PanARMENIAN.Net). It was targeted specifically for the IPs of Green Bean (Areg and Tiko have been tracking cafe's IP address for few days, to ensure it was a static one). While installing the hack on the website, Azar was testing it in our office's IPs, and as a result, the whole editorial was frustrated, unable to work while the testing and installing took place. 
• When I just got to Green Bean, I didn't order any drink, which was a little out of the plan, but thankfully Kristine managed to convince me to ask for another cup for me to drink the tea. That's when I got the mug with the QR.
• There were actually 2 t-shirts with a pixelated white elephant - one for the waitress and one for me.
• Areg had prepared special "Thank you" cards signed by both of us (i did it right there) for all the participants of the "operation". 

So.. this is the story :) I want to thank all of my friends (and the Green Bean staff) who were involved in the organization of this beautiful day.. it's really something that me and Areg will remember forever :)

At the end, there are a few pics...

giving out the thank you card

Adios to my *Desire* and welcome *Simply Stunning*!

The time has come for my old Android phone to retire ... numerous scratches are reminders of the passionate kisses my phone had with the streets of Rome, Amsterdam, Doha, Warsaw, Cologne, Prague, Paris and others. The saved wi-fi networks could make a separate page in my memoirs :) - TOUR_EIFFEL, Den Haag Nieuw Centraal, Starbucks, TEDx2012, The_Bulldog, ViennArt, UEFAEURO2012, MosaicHouseHotel, ictQATAR_iParks, Hilton Gdansk, ING Internet Gate .... scrolling through that list always makes me travel back in memory and smile :)

My HTC Desire served me for whole 2 years.. I flashed it once with a new rom a year ago and it had a little more better battery life then. The worst thing about HTC Desires is the awfully small internal memory.. I couldn't install new apps for months.. had to constantly clear the browser cache and choose between the apps - which ones to keep. It was too annoying and I finally found the substitute :)

My A. bought himself a cool white HTC One X - the latest and one of the most powerful smartphones... I was hesitating between the X and S and eventually chose the latter, for difference. And my geeky self is HAPPY!!!

I installed some 30 apps the first day and of course - started instagraming :D I now enjoy the ICS Android and the dual-core processor performance..The camera is just amazing.. I can take quality pictures while videoing! and it has the Beats Audio™! 

I bought it from VivaCell-MTS, as it added me a "smart-bonus" worth half the price of the phone. I basically now have unlimited viva calls, texts and 3G internet!!!!!!! which is just awesome :) Listening to online radios on the go? no problem! :P

and here are the specs:

a lunch with @dolboed and meeting @stevewoz at the airport. quite a day!

Often, when you wake up in the morning, you have no idea how many awesome things will happen to you on that day.


This week, I was invited to take part at the EU-Armenia Seminar on "Media Today" in Tsakhkadzor with many international guests and had a chance to get acquainted with Anton Nossik, the Russian internet guru. We had some interesting conversations over lunch and coffee and he even started following me on Twitter and 4sq! :)

You know, as a rule, I don't take photos of me with celebrities. I hate that. But i love being around them and talking to them. I get inspired by the conversations and learn a lot indeed.

Today the news broke that Steve Wozniak is arriving to Armenia to receive the Global IT award by the Armenian President. While posting a status about it I saw a Facebook suggestion to subscribe to Steve Wozniak's updates. I checked out his profile and saw his Foursquare checkin that was posted on his wall with the comment mentioning his flight number and destination - Yerevan :)
I couldn't miss the chance to go and meet him at the airport with friends. Despite not having any "i" devices to give him for signing and not quite being an Apple fangirl, it was a great chance for me to meet the Apple co-founder in person :)

My friends prepared a small surprise for Woz. He was really excited to see them (and his wife and other people there too!). He signed their iPads (they're priceless now) and got an Armenian apple from Lia (and hugged her:))

Armenian Apple fanboys meeting Woz in the airport

I was watching it from the side :)

me tweeting!

the geeks...checking in 

upd. watch the whole photo report here:  http://www.panarmenian.net/eng/photoset/1085/ 

Adrineh blogged today about the 10 reasons she loves about living in Yerevan. I can relate to the points she mentioned but would add a new one that's very true for me: life in Yerevan is full of surprises! You can hear that a legend like Woz is coming to Armenia right on his arrival day and actually rush and meet him in the airport :)

pics by Lia Mkhitaryan

"Guinea Pigs in Technology" or geek girls are cool! my TEDxYerevan talk

As I have told you already, I was honored to be selected as one of the speakers of TEDxYerevan 2011.

I was very excited about the opportunity and I also knew that it's gonna be a tough job. I had to pass auditions with the organizing team and prepare a talk which would be:

• short
• fun
• geeky
• inspiring

After my sudden success with the BarCamp's talk, everyone expected of me something similar: just an easy, funny speech about geeks and dating. But I really wanted my talk to contain a personal story (like in most of TED talks), have a message and to inspire at least some people. So i had many conversations with various people, met other geek girls. My closest friends were particularly helpful as they were "working" on my talk all the way from the start to the final submission. I even organized some small auditions at in my apartment, asking for feedback on slides, texts and even my body language when talking (a friend even recorded my rehearsal on a video so i could watch myself).

So here I can finally present the result. I'm posting the slide deck, narrative speech (a little extended with some parts that were cut out in the final speech) and also the video of the talk. 

"Guinea Pigs in Technology" or geek girls are cool (contains slide notes)

Do you know what guinea pigs and women in technology have in common?

This is an old joke i used to hear a lot some time ago. The popular answer is this: the common thing between women in tech and guinea pig is the fact that women are related to technology the same way guinea pigs are related to pigs. I'm here to tell you that this is complete and utter… nonsense.
Let me tell you a story.
So it’s about a girl, who was born in a very typical Armenian family. Normally her destiny would be pictured like this: she’ll go to school, enter university, find a husband, have some kids, become an exemplary housewife who can cook excellent dolma… and work as a teacher maybe.. well, in this particular family i'm going to tell you about, things went a little different.

Something somewhere went wrong and the first signs of the troubles have started to emerge as the family bought their first PC back in 1996 and their teenage daughter started to show signs of computer addiction.. becoming a «computer rat» in their words. Her initial plans to become a journalist quickly vanished and she started to dream of becoming a hacker.
Since the age of 13 she became the computer expert for her whole extended family, getting emergency calls whenever someone couldn't find a certain key on the keyboard, or couldn't change the font properties in the Word processor.

Since then, “Let Me Google It For You” has been a phrase she used a lot. Well and the RTFM.

She has been studying computer science and one day she realized that the profession she's chosen is changing her while studying databases when she was around 18 years old. She had this idea.. of being able to remember big amounts of information, to be able to connect things she heard.. and just to be able to fit in all the things she was learning. She found out how to optimize her brain's databases, arrange the tables with a 'foreign key' and index all the data, so that all the new information she gets, gets stored in the appropriate table with the keywords, and she can fetch the information quite easily. This was a remarkable moment when she realized that she somehow managed to optimize her brain the way, so she quickly connects the facts and random pieces of information and her memory is significantly improved…

One of the happiest moments of her life was buying a laptop. She needed a portable computer that she could use it even in bed and in cafes, and when she had it, it was not very common to walk in the streets with big laptop bags yet.. and she occasionally felt herself like the little Tiffany from the Men in Black.

With the web 2.0 and new media emerging, she became an early adopter, and was labeled as a tech evangelist. One who signs up for all the new social networks, manages to be aware of all the industry news… she has built some impressive online personality with big network, and with many followers and all…
She was labeled as a geek. Then she started to explore what’s in that word.

So who are geek girls?

These are the most common perceptions I’ve brought together.

• They are not feminine 

• They lack social skills, mostly hang out with other geeks

• Using a lot techno-slang 

• They must know good programming 

• And they work just in tech industry

Some of these things are truly just myths. In reality geek girls are:

1. Independent or better to say - self-dependent people. They solve most of their own problems :)
They can easily setup a home wireless network, configure a router, even without a prior knowledge in networking. They just know how to find it out digging through search results and technical forums.

2. Geek girls are smart, witty, tech savvy


3. They are gadget and connectivity dependentEven though they don’t depend on other people for their problems, they are very much dependent on their gadgets and network availability.

4. They learn really quickly and are actually very good at quick self-learning. They know how to google stuff, or youtube things like “how to fix damaged headphones” or simply “how to gift wrap a box”.

5. Geek girls are info-junkie and love sharing. They have to be up-to-date with the latest information on their interest and they all love sharing information and useful hacks. That’s why they are active in social networks.

6. Also, geek girls can be really cute
Just like socialites. Not convincing?

Well.. for the socialites we all know that they are:

• Obsessed with shopping and worship shoes 

• They actually admire lady gaga for some reason. 

• They are obsessed with SATC show and frequently quote the heroines. 

I know a geek girl who’s a shopaholic, with a particular passion for shoes. Well, she recently told us, she counted about 27 pairs in her 2011 spring-summer collection.
And not only her… among my geek girlfriends there are ones who think that Lady Gaga is actually cool. They read Cosmo and yeah, Sex and the City is one of their favorite shows of all time, they were noted to be stylish and pretty. Not quite like the perceptions, right?
Now lets go back to the girl I was telling you about in the beginning.

The netbook that’s the default accessory in her purse is actually pink. It has Google, Firefox, Android and Hello Kitty stickers next to each other. Among her 200 RSS subscriptions, there are many fashion, gossip blogs. Her smartphone has more fashion apps than you know existed J She meets her friends not by calling and asking where they are, or telling where she is. They have foursquare and other geolocation services for that. She tracks her not suspecting sister with the google latitude she had setup on her cellphone.

You can meet geek girls in some glamorous party, all dressed up, on towering heels, talking on her smartphone.. Explaining someone from her workplace how to fix the server..
You can meet a girl restarting that damn router at a café when they badly need a wifi.
This is Ani, she has written an alarm clock application for her friend’s phone, because it didn’t have one.

These girls - Nelly and Gayane, have created a very popular website dedicated to indie music all by themselves, coding, promotion and stuff.

Geek girls were active in Yerevan Barcamps’ organization, well; I was one of them and guess what? I was telling about “how to date a geek girl”. Somehow this presentation became a viral hit on the web, becoming the top presentation of the day, then week, then most tweeted and ended up getting about 20K views in couple of weeks. And I got featured in a Taiwanese website with a special mention of my netbook which turned out to be a Taiwanese pride. It got a huge positive feedback and I want to share some of the highlights.

When geek girl is dating a geek guy.. well. That’s predictable. They communicate via messengers (even when they are in the same room), they schedule meetings via google calendar invitations, their computers are sweetly connected via a shared folder in dropbox, and they express their emotions via likes and comments…

When geek girl is dating a non-geek. Either the guy gets paranoic thinking that their (potential) girlfriend can hack everything of theirs, starting with text messages on the phone, ending with email and social media accounts. And nothing good comes out of it.

You can never know that a pretty girl you’ll be flirting with in a bar, might have already checked your FB profile on her smartphone while you were looking away, and might have tweeted how bored she is with your conversations.
But, if guys are smart enough, they start exploring her ‘territory’, signing up in the social networks she’s in, following her posts and reacting to them.
If you follow these simple steps, a geek girl can give you the root password for her heart.

But actually, being a geek girl is really cool.

Being a geek girl makes you feel more confident, independent. You can solve your own problems actually. You become needed and demanded by everyone around, from your boss to your friends.

So what do guinea pigs and girls in technology have in common? Yes, they are both cute J

We, the geek girls of Armenia have decided to establish a community of our own. So i invite the girls to join us.

At last, I want to tell you that a geek’s image for girls actually comes with a ‘dumbness filter’. If you’re a geek girl, you can attract all the right guys and scare all the wrong ones J

Girls, enjoy being geeks.

The video of my talk

I'm really thankful to all the people who approached me, gave feedback, told me that they could relate to some parts of the talk and just told me they enjoyed it :) I'm thankful to fellow speakers for cheering me up when i was nervous and for all the support. I am so lucky to be part of this great team!

TEDxYerevan 2011 speakers

Don't forget to check out other talks on the TEDxYerevan website. 

How to date a geek girl (my #barcampevn11 presentation)

This is the presentation and slide notes for my BarCamp EVN'11 talk.

A certain person, who considers himself as ‘definitely not a geek’, inspired me to start writing a blog post about this, which was never finalized and published before this… but while i was trying to chose a presentation topic for this barcamp, and had two serious topics in mind, well… 2 days ago i had this “tadaaa” moment and that was it :) i’m here.
So .. well.. i have to say.. I’m a geek. A tech-savvy, gadgets dependent, spending tremendous amount of time being connected. There’s also a term – wired.

So i’ll be telling some insights on this topic from my own experience… a little bit spiced, however ;)
Just one thing before i start – you have to promise not to use any of these tips against me, okay?


These tips might be particularly useful for non-geeks as they give some perspective from an actual geek girl.
They will particularly work if the girl has some initial interest in you, or at least nothing against.

1. Subscribe and Follow

Geek girls, probably not everyone, but of the type i’m gonna tell you about, are quite accessible. Meaning, they are easily reachable via some social networks, have quite a noticeable online presence. Like if you google their name, you’ll get at least couple of pages of results for her profiles, blog posts, comments etc.

One of the first things you should do is - if she has a blog – definitely subscribe to it. Find her on social networks, get on to the messenger she’s using and start friending.. but not in all places at once. Note: if you’re not on any of those popular networks, you should seriously consider signing up for them, that will significantly ease the job ;)

Start exploring her online personality.. her likes and dislikes.. chances are, you’ll get pretty much informed on how she spends her days, what does she do in life, etc.. 

If you’re still interested in her after discovering her online personality… then you should start... interacting.

2. Interact

Write comments. Carefully pick when and where to comment so that you don’t annoy. Learn the netiquette and some basic ethics of online communicaton in those networks.. that’s why it’s important to observe a little bit before you act. .. so my advice here is.. don’t like or comment her every post :) or write messages like these:

3. Find her

Ok third.. find her. I mean find out where she hangs out. If you’re lucky enough to be mutually friended with her in Foursquare, then you’ll know when she hangs out in the evenings, her favorite spots.. you’ll find the good time to join her. If you’re lucky to be authorised to see her location any moment via google latitude.. that means wow.. she must really like you. You get bonus points for that :)

So basically, she'll appreciate a msg like- "r u still in Segafredo? can i join you? of course if i won't disturb".

And again here, you have to know the limits.. you’ll learn them from her reaction actually.

..and by the way, couple of words about privacy. If you find out that she has started being online for you in Facebook chat, that must be that she added you to her some kind of “online for chat” friends list. By the things that are accessible for you in her profile, you can guess how much she trusts you.. if she’s a real geek, she has to have multiple friends lists with custom privacy settings, so if you see all pictures she’s tagged in, all her wall posts, profile info.. you have pretty good chances ;)

4. Be nice

Find things that you can do that make her happy. Geek girls are not that kind of ones you can achieve by sending the standard flowers, inviting for a classic café dates.. if you notice that she’s very picky for details.. try not to do spelling mistakes when typing. That can annoy her :)

You can send her offline messages by the way.. and long emails are still trendy :)

Just don’t be too sticky.

5. Don't be always on

While you might be refreshing her wall once in every hour, checking her tweets and statuses in messengers, don’t show that you’re constantly dying to get a message from her. Make her miss you and she’ll be contacting you herself. But don’t also make her feel so it’s just her that always writes first :)

6. Be informed

Try to discuss the latest tech news with her.. like facebook’s new feature, or google… but try not to argue much :)

If you know that she’s an Android-er.. chances are that she hates everything about the “fruit” company and iPhones. Don’t bring that neverending “Android vs. iPhone” topic up :) 

If you made a gadget/app choice because of her advice – let her know about it. You’ll get your plus points :)

7. Don't play too much

You know what games i mean :) don’t leave her uncertain about your feelings and intentons for a long while. She might get pissed and take some steps. Like writing a kinda pissedoff letter, then publishing it in her blog :)

I know this list is not comprehensive and there’s still a lot to say and a geek girls can be very different… so in the end i want to give some bonus advices in case things don’t work with her after all :) or maybe you weren't meant to be together actually.

So “how to remove someone from your (digital) life” (without burning bridges, going brutal like unfriending) 

1. Limit the accesses - -put her in limited profile friends list, so that they don’t see your activities etc, and also hide them from your newsfeed as well. The less you get reminded of the failure, the faster you get over it.
2. Untag from the pics that had you once connected..
3. Disable notifications for checkins in Foursquare
4. Hide/remove/block from messengers
5. Filter the emails (so they are marked as read and archived)
6. Delete her number from quick contacts, or just remove from contact lists at all, in case you get drunk and want to text..
7. … if all this doesn't work – simply do the inevitable:

• Delete all old emails and get rid of their email address (clear it from the "autofill" in your email)
• Delete their number out of your phone
• Unfriend them on all social networking sites
• Block/Delete them on your messengers

Good luck! :)

Here's the presentation file:

 

p.s. a tip from @netcrash - buy her a domain name if she doesn't have one already :)

if you have comments or more tips, write here in the comments, i'll update the post with them :)

update 1: Lusine Barseghyan has translated my post into Russian, thanks, Lusine! :)
update 2: My presentation went viral and became top presentation of the day/week and most tweeted on Slideshare! THANKS everyone! :)))

Organizing the Foursquare day meetup in Yerevan #4sqday

When writing this post about a year ago, I could never imagine that I'll become one of the "ambassadors" of Foursquare in Armenia. Being an early adopter and a geek willing to try everything new, I'm somehow influential in the tech-related things among my friends and they often consult with me for new services and gadgets (like Kindle, Android phones, apps, tablets, geolocation services, etc).
Throughout last year, I made a presentation on Geolocation services and Foursquare during the BarCamp Yerevan 2010, appeared on Yerevan.ru promoting Foursquare, and Banadzev production's Interactive program, then my own PanARMENIAN.Net interviewed me about the meetup.

It somehow happened that I became the organizer of the annual Foursquare Day meetup in Yerevan (4sq Day).

Celebrated on April 16 of each year, Foursquare Day (4sqDay /4 squared = 16, hence 4/16!) is a chance to get out and connect with others in your neighborhood and around the world. 

I began following the official 4sqDay twitter, read the blog and howto's for organizers to make the most out of the meetup. I created a Facebook event, since it was easier to promote than the meetup page, in our case. I submitted the information about our meetup in the local meetups database. I also set up a Twitter account for coordination of our Foursquare activities in Yerevan - @4sqYerevan.
I also filled a form to request a swag from Foursquare, even though in order to receive it, we had to have 50 confirmed participants on the meetup.com page by April 4.
Couple of days ago parents called me in the afternoon to say that I've got a package delivery home from Fedex. Turns out it was full of Foursquare goodness! A huge banner, stickers, badges as buttons and other stuff.

By the way, Foursquare has been encouraging the meetup organizers to approach our city mayors and ask them to proclaim the April 16 an official Foursquare Day in our cities.
Today we learned that mayor Bloomberg Proclaims 4/16 as Foursquare Day in NYC!
Somehow we thought that it won't be possible in our case.. and could take forever to reach our mayor, but maybe we should try next year? ;)

In case you are interested to learn more about the Foursquare, there's no better chance than coming to the meetup on Saturday, April 16, 19:00 near Cascade.
71 people are already "Attending" according to the FB event and 38 people confirmed participation on Meetup page.

If at least 50 people check in at the same place around the same time, everybody will get the "Swarm" badge for the first time in Armenia! and of course, the special 4sq day 2011 badge too.

• Confirm your participation on the meetup page: http://www.meetup.com/foursquare/Yerevan-AM/88180/
• RVSP on the FB event: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=200849073282283
• Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/4sqYerevan and the hashtag #4sqDay.

there were 2 "4SQ Day" t-shirts in the package and i reserved one for myself:) who wants the 2nd one?

Breaking: an Armenian guy found a big security hole on Google

I'm kinda proud and happy to share this while it's trending!

Vahe G. (an Armenian 21yo guy), installed a JS code in his blogspot blog (now closed by Google) and if you visited it while logged into your Gmail (even from an incognito window), you would receive an email from him. Creepy?

He has tried to reach Google for this but got no response. Then a friend suggested to write to Techcrunch, so he did. Now he's making headlines all over the interwebs.

Google has already shut the blog and responded: “We take potential security issues very seriously, and our team is actively investigating this one. We’ll share more information soon."

I don't personally know him, but he's been following and commenting me on buzz and twitter, for which I'm now pretty proud! :D

Seems like Google will have to hire him finally. Or maybe Facebook?

Hey Google, know Armenian guys ! Hovik, your brother is really cool! :)

Kindle, my review of the great e-book reader

i've put my favorite Salome
as a screensaver :)

My Kindle arrived! I wrote about gadgets in a recent post.
Many of my friends have been demanding a blog post about it ASAP, but I could actually start writing after a week of playing with it.

In case you don't know, Kindle is a book reader device from Amazon. It is a thin, lightweight, electronic reading device that you can take anywhere and download your favorite book, newspaper, or magazine right into it.

As for the technical details...

• Display: 6" diagonal E Ink® electronic paper display, 600 x 800 pixel resolution, 16-level gray scale (no color!)
• Size: 203.2mm x 134.6mm x 9.1mm.
• Weight: 289.2 grams.
• Storage: 2GB internal (approx.1.4GB available for user content). It's said it can store approx. 1500 books.
• Battery life: up to 2 weeks with wireless connection off.
• Connectivity: 3G, works in many countries, but not in Armenia ;( check the map.
• USB port: USB 2.0 (micro-B connector) for connection to the Kindle U.S. power adapter or optionally to connect to a PC or Mac.
• Audio: 3.5mm stereo audio jack, rear-mounted stereo speakers.
• Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.

My impressions

iPad and Kindle, why compare?

It's the best e-reader of everything I've considered. It's certainly better than iPads as a book reader.. they are actually not comparable! My thoughts on Apple are here, and actually, i think that having multi-functional devices is not the best solution. To me, cellphone should be mostly for mobile conversations, a photocamera for photographing, e-reader for reading, PC or a good laptop for work, and netbook for browsing, working from home, writing etc... I can't find a good use for a tablet (especially iPad) so far :)

my netbook and Kindle. each of them has its place in my heart :-))

good for eyes
E-ink makes it so easy to read on... I've actually discovered that "weekend reading" thing can be real :) I've read an entire book on Kindle in just 1 weekend! And i was not just reading, but also going out occasionally :)

text-to-speech
you know, you can make Kindle to read for you :)) Just plug the headphones and enjoy a male or female voice reading for you :)))) (you can choose also slower and faster speech)

music
you can put some music into the respective folder in Kindle and it can be played during reading. some instrumental music would be good to focus on reading and isolate from the ambient noise.

easy to transfer
when plugging the USB cable, the computer instantly recognizes a new device as a removable memory. there are folders for documents, audiobooks and music. just drag and drop the files.. no software needed for transfers.

cool features
Kindle has a Built-in Dictionary with Instant Lookup. In text format documents you can put the pointer to a word, and its definition will be instantly shown from the Oxford dictionary. Very useful! Also, it's possible to highlight quotes, make annotations on interesting parts, put bookmarks etc.. (that's what the qwerty keyboard is useful for).
Also, unlike a laptop or smartphone, Kindle never gets warm so you can comfortably read as long as you like.

file formats
while text formats are preferred, PDF files can be easily read on Kindle too. I noticed that it's better to convert PDFs into text format (like .prc) since the fonts will be scalable on Kindle and it will be possible to highlight interesting parts in text and make notes on it.

file converting
turns out the old good Mobipocket reader (the only e-reader app that worked on my symbian phone) has been acquired by Amazon and it converts PDFs to a favorable format.

screen

reading on a beach :)

it's not touch screen. But the coolest is: Read in Sunlight with No Glare. Kindle's screen reflects light like ordinary paper and uses no backlighting, eliminating the glare associated with other electronic displays. As a result, Kindle can be read as easily in bright sunlight as in your living room.
The screen has a sharp display with 16 shades of gray and is very unusual for someone not familiar with electronic ink technology. At first i had to persuade someone that it's not a sticker on the screen i didn't scratch, but the screen itself :D

interface
The device has a 5-way controller (joystick) enables precise on-screen navigation for selecting text to highlight or looking up words. There are buttons for Menu, Home, Back, Next page and Previous page.

Jeff Bezos - the founder of Amazon.com

sleep mode
after 5 minutes of inactivity the device goes to the sleep mode thus saving the energy. the sleep mode is a nice graphic pic usually with some great author depicted or a page from an ancient book. After digging in some forums i found a way to put custom screensavers :)

charging
it fully charges in 4 hours with its USB 2.0 cable, however it has also a power adapter included that can be connected via USB port.

audiobooks
it's possible to download audiobooks from Audible.com (in its format) and listen them on Kindle, bookmarking in some parts, like in text.

books and other content
of course Amazon's benefit in Kindles is not just from selling the devices itself, but the books which are now available widely for the Kindle format and special price. On their website it's announced that The New York Times Bestsellers are only $9.99 in Kindle format. Some content is licensed for credit cards with billing address in the US only. This concerns all magazine and blog subscriptions (it wouldn't work here anyways, due to our non-inclusion in the Kindle global wireless / 'whispernet' service)

how to buy Kindle in Armenia
As you could guess, Kindle is not available in any tech store in Armenia (unlike iPads which are wide spread here now). The only way is to order it online on Amazon.com itself. The website is promising to deliver it here:

However, I'd highly suggest to do the traditional Armenian way of shipping stuff from the US -- finding someone coming from US to Armenia to actually bring it with him. It ships within 5-7 days in US for free.. faster shipping can be available at some cost, however if you haven't yet got the Amazon Prime account, you can get a 1-month trial for free and get things delivered faster, for free :) (if you forget to uncheck a certain button there before the trial expires, it will, however, charge you some $70 for the Prime account).

collections
when i first turned on my Kindle, charged it and put some test files on it, i didn't find a way to sort books by types or other criteria. In the manual it kept saying about some collections and ease of ordering. I dug the internets and found out that the collections and some other features are available in the new software update that was out just couple of weeks ago :)

what's bad?
Ok, i know that you see that I'm quite happy with it, but there must be something that would make it not perfect :D one thing i would state is that the page flipping is a bit slow, however it's not annoying and easy to get used to.
another thing is that it doesn't support unicode... but! you can make PDF files with Russian/Armenian texts, in appropriate format and still read it on Kindle. Still, copying quotes and making annotations won't be possible if it's not a text file.

other Kindles?
Kindle was first launched in Nov. 2007 it was the 1st generation device and had a slightly different design from the current Kindles (launched Feb 2009).
In June 2009 Amazon released a bigger Kindle DX (close to A4 format) and in June 2010 Kindle DX Graphite (roughly black version and with 50% more contrast display).

the Kindle evolution

It's rumored that Amazon will release a new, thinner Kindle in August 2010.

covers

I was recommended by a Kindle owner (privet, Gaspar! ;) to buy a leather case unless i want to have the back of the device worn out.
So i ordered original Kindle's leather cover (orange) which was about $35, and, in reality, was kinda desaturated orange...
But what was most depressing... after few days of my purchase, it turned out that my favorite Moleskine has released a special Kindle cover with a small notebook in it! ;(

my Kindle and its orange cover

Moleskine Kindle cover

why Amazon rules

The next day I bought my Kindle and its cover and it was shipped, i am opening my Google reader just to read that... Amazon has reduced the price for the Kindle (from $259 to $189) to compete with other e-book readers (the day before that, practically, hours after i purchased it). And it's $70 difference!

I'm shocked, devastated.. accepting sympathy notes... writing a status on FB about how ugly Amazon is... and BAM! the power of social media comes for help :) actually it was a good friend of mine - Susan Meschian who gave a hint that Amazon should have some refund policy for these cases... I dug in help and FAQs, but didn't find a relevant info.. then i wrote to their customer service... (their reply could come in 12 hours) but i didn't resist and called them. I didn't have to explain much :) they said i'd be refunded $70 in 2 business days :) and I was!!! I also got the same reply to my email. So i'm just a happy Amazon and Kindle customer :)