Octavian

A few days ago somebody asked my name. Nothing in common until now until I’ve been asked where does my name comes from and what does it mean.

I knew that my parents gave me this name after a Romanian poet  (Octavian Goga) and that the first Roman emperor has a similar name. As Romanian is at his origin a Latin language there would be a very big chance that my name means something in Latin. I searched on Wikipedia about my name and about the emperor.

Born Gaius Octavius Thurinus (23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), he was adopted posthumously by his great-uncle Gaius Julius Caesar in 44 BC, and between then and 31 BC was officially named Gaius Julius Caesar. In 27 BC the Senate awarded him the honorific Augustus (”the revered one”), and thus consequently he was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus. Because of the various names he bore, it is common to call him Octavius when referring to events between 63 and 44 BC, Octavian (or Octavianus) when referring to events between 44 and 27 BC, and Augustus when referring to events after 27 BC. (read more)

After further searching I found out that the first name Octavius was not common in Rome. It was more often in the countryside. This name is also similar to octa (eight) respectively octavus (the eight). Apparently at that time parents gave to the children names like the first, the second…. the tent. Names like this for boys are Quintus, Sextus, Septimus, Nonus, and Decimus or for girls Prima, Secunda, Tertia, Quarta, Quinta, Sexta, Septima, Nona, and Decima.

My next question was the eighth what? The most common probabilities are:

• he was the eighth born child or boy in the family
• he was born in the eight month of the year

From what I have read about Octavius it was never mentioned to have any other brothers or sisters and also he was born in September (which would be the 9th month in the year). This seemed as a dead end but the I remembered that the calendar we are using nowadays (the Gregorian Calendar) is based on the Julian Calendar with a minor change(in the Julian Calendar – which is actually Octavianus Augustus – the year lasts 365,25 days and the Gregorian one 11 minutes less). The Roman Calendar is a lunar one. and the first month is March. That means that September is the 7th month. The strange thing is that the Romans where calling the day of the month.

Calends: (from which come the word calender) is the first day of the month (originally it meant new moon). After the middle of a month, for example July, they were calling the date as n days before the calends (month) of august. So 23 September would be a.d. VIII Kal. October (a.d. stands for ante diem N and means the N-th day before).

From all this I assume that the Octavius in this case is coming from his birthday.

The big coincidence regarding the whole story is, that if would tell my birthday in Latin it would be a.d. XI Kal. Oct.

I am born eleven days before the eight month of the Roman year.

I was surfing on the web searching for ideas for making a website. I got on a commercial website where you had to pay for listening to some music. I found also a cool application in flash with which you can type in a band or a singer, and you would get as an result, a network of artists related to the one you are searching for, each artist in a circle (with a dimension accordingly his importance)  united through lines. I became curious to find out from where does this application get the data. I got to find out it was actually the same thing with a free flash application from somebody else, but with now references. That wasn’t enough for me, so after I decompiled the flash file, i actually saw that the request where made to amazon. From which i observed the application was building the artists network by finding things that people bought on amazon. I find it amazing what you can do if you have all the information you need under your nose.

I remember my grandmother saying that in her times not everybody could read or write, so they didn’t have access to much information or knowledge. Nowadays you cann access a lot of information from everywhere and about almoust anything.You could find out what Angelina Jolie was wearing at the awards gala yesterday, what car Elton John drives, the weather for the next 48 hours, where your car was yesterday (through GPS), what you have bought in the last 20 years using your credit card. It is amazing how the technology has evolved and that you can gather  personal information about other persons, possible also invading their privacy.

I think we are facing a new era, because it is  not so important to have the information but to know where to find it and what to do with it.  An other question would be, could you face it? What would you do if you know you will have one more week to live? Or you know every detail what the people think about you, or that your boyfriend/girlfriend is cheating on you. I think in these cases you should see what options you have and take a decision.

I find it also important to forecast things that might happen according to the things you know now. For example what if you knew before you bought the car, that they are going to be 10% cheaper in two months?

All in all, I think the value of raw information is much less than the informations gathered from more sources and on it build something new with inovating functions. And people are focused more on what decisions to take according to the information gathered.

In the last year I travelled a lot and got to know different kind of people with different social background. I soon realized that everybody has an interesting story to tell. A story called life.

This weekend I traveled by train (I loved this. This might be also because it reminds me of my childhood ).  As i was travelling by train I got to sit next to a young couple, who decided to take their own path through life, and to do what they like the most.

The guy decided to quit his faculty, and he started working as a photgrapher, he also wants to start making short videos. The girl is currently in a contest as a DJ at a national radio station. She managed to be in the last 4 candidates standing in the contest.

Don’t be afraid to follow your dreams, and if you find on your way that you don’t like them, than  find an other one.

“If you can dream it, you can do it.”

I got up this morning and thought that this would be a great day. I would finally meet my tutor for discussing about my diploma thesis(which i recently changed). I realized yesterday evening that at the same time i will have to write an exam.

So i decided to go to the exam. The tutor came an hour later (in that time i could have discussed with my other tutor about my thesis) and gave us the subject for the exam. Lets say that was my worst exam ever.  In conclusion i did not achieve anything today. I started asking myself if I should take some decisions regarding my future actions.

At least I finished my day chatting in German. I felt very good because I haven’t spoken German in the past two years and it reminded me of the great time I head a few years ago.