Saint George’s Day

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

I visited the official celebration for Saint George’s day, which is our military holiday. It was very lively, with lots of parents with kids, waiting to see the fighter jets. Good weather, blue skies.

Regarding the airplanes, I was hoping to see and take photos of our brand new F-16. Unfortunately, they flew over in seconds and I had a camera malfunction, so no photos from me. The organizers, who might be a bit east-leaning, made the star of the show our old Soviet Mig-29. They executed some aerobatic loops.

Sofia is nice in May.

Is the Coca-Cola app worth installing?

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

I drink Coca-Cola Zero almost every day. I know it’s an unhealthy habit but I’ve not yet felt the need to deal with it. As a frequent Coca-Cola consumer, when Coca-Cola Bulgaria started advertising their app, I installed it. I’ve been using it for almost two months, which qualifies me as an expert reviewer.

The Coca-Cola app lets you enter the unique 10-character alphanumeric codes hidden under the cap and probably somewhere inside cans. Each code gives you 1 or 2 coins, which you can then use to buy raffle tickets. The raffle awards vary from completely useless to just useless. I saw IKEA and Dominos vouchers a few times, otherwise not stuff an adult is likely to want.

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The awards, I challenge you to find the oddities.

Observations:

  • There are two types of coins in the app Diamond-shaped and C-shaped.
  • The diamond-shaped can only be obtained from the worst value Coca-Cola bottles, the 0.5l and 0.3l plastic ones. Probably from cans, although I couldn’t find any code there.
  • The C-shaped coins can mostly be used for raffles like a Coca-Cola umbrella or a ticket for the Coca-Cola annual concert.
  • A third type of coin was mentioned when I installed the app, and I must have 50 of it, but I never saw a raffle ticket that could be purchased with it or a place where I can see if I still have the 50 of that coin.
  • Despite collecting all these raffle tickets, the app doesn’t offer a way to see if you won anything or if anyone wins anything.
  • I’m unsure if I ever participated in a raffle or not.
  • Apparently, we have Coca-Cola imports from Moldova and Ukraine, and the bottles from these countries don’t have codes.

What’s the point of all of that?

It’s most likely to gamify the Coca-Cola consumption, targeting people who may be tempted by a GoPro camera, a VR set, or a low-end 40 inch TV. That is clearly not older adults. It attempts to add value to the worst-value Coca-Cola bottles that generate the most plastic waste but might be available in school cafeterias. I suspect it works well, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. Also, it is to discourage people from buying the imported Coca-Cola.

Did I win anything? I don’t think so. I expected that I will, at least, get an umbrella, a concert ticket, or get some indication that a raffle happened and I didn’t win. No Coca-Cola umbrella for me.

New Writing Prompts

~ Veselin ~ 7 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment you wish you could freeze and live in forever?
View all responses

Faust broke his contract with Mephistopheles by asking time to stop. It’s a funny blogging prompt to appear today… so let me explain why it shows up, to the horror of everyone who expected the usual May 4th writing prompt and instead sees something new (OMG, it’s Star Wars Day).

I used to rely on writing prompts quite often because I’d run out of blogging ideas. After a 365-day blogging streak, they started repeating. Then, after 730 days, they repeated again. I wanted something fresh, so I began collecting prompt ideas in a spreadsheet, aiming to gather 730 fresh ones. I sourced them from good posts in the Reader, brainstormed with AI, the Sunshine Blogger Award, and picked some from the engagement threads on Reddit. I got to around 400–450, then started cleaning them up aggressively and eventually finalized a list of 366.

My colleague Tess then improved them by rewriting those that weren’t in proper English. She deleted the weakest ones. What’s left is this new batch of writing prompts.

They’re not perfect. I had some goofy and fun ones that didn’t make it to the final list out of concern some of you may find them inappropriate. So here we are.

We have a hackathon called “Radical Speed Month,” where we can ship cool changes without going through the usual approval process. I wish I could dedicate a few more days to this idea but I count my minutes because there are other areas that also need love and are at least as fun.

I hope you like the new prompts. If not, I take full responsibility.

PS. The results of the prompts API call is heavily cached and the new batch of prompts may appear to you within 24h.

Violet and Pink

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

I knew about violets and lilacs before this blog but I had no idea there are so many other trees that bloom in these colors.

Empress Tree (saw two different today), Chinese Wisteria (one but with two photos), Lilac, and a very well groomed stray who visited my parents to complain about her scratched nose. No help with the nose but she got some ham.