PewDiePie vs OpenAI

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

PewDiePie got banned for using ChatGPT to train his local model. His argument, why is it bad to take some data from AI, given that 100% of all AI on the planet is trained using other people’s data and nearly 100% of that data is just taken without permission, sometimes despite all effort by website owners to stop or block scraping.

His video is hard to watch but the point is real and this guy knows how to talk to the younger generations.

Autumn hike to Cherni Vrah

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

The little one (7) asked to go to Cherni Vrah. After climbing Vihren and Musala, he’s now planning and nagging about going to other peaks, like Mount Olympus in Greece. I was a bit under the weather, with a slightly inured ankle and a neck that can’t turn right. But none of that prevented us from doing the hike. We went to the top. It was beautiful and we had good time. It felt very easy.

The highlight of our trip was that we found lots of blueberries and some rare raspberries. The raspberries were delicious but scarce, the blueberries were a bit overripe but abundant. The red bushes below are all blueberries.

The top was cold, some of the puddles were frozen. We have some time until the first winter conditions, though, as despite the cold, I don’t expect snow before December. I hope to have the chance to go to the top again this year.

Austin Archey on Drumeo’s YT channel

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Lorna Shore is one of my most favorite currently active bands and probably the only one I’d still love to watch in person. Their songs are technical and extreme in a way that makes you hit repeat. The vocal performance is the obvious most insane part but I think all of the musicians are like that in their own way.

I found a video today about Lorna Shore’s drummer. Watching him play is like watching David Blaine doing street magic.

The following video is best consumed with headphones.

Reading in September

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

My blog is at least partially about books but last month the books category remained silent. I attended the Alley of Books, met Nicholas Eames and bought many books but didn’t read much. Everything I started reading was either sub-par or slow. I finished 4 books, one of my worst months over the last years.

Best books

  • Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh – an unusual mix between Ender’s Game and Infinity Gate. A young, genetically modified super soldier, tries to save humanity while battling with prejudices. I enjoyed it and rated the book 5/5.
  • Inside Man by John McMahon – a crime story with several intertwined cases and a main mystery I couldn’t guess. I’d love to keep reading his Head Cases series. However, I never wrote a post about it and the reason why is probably also the reason for giving it 4/5 rather than 5/5. I can’t quite put it into words.

Worst books

  • Walk me Home by Sebastian Fitzek – DNF. I tried reading this thing for 3 days, going through 20-25 pages/day. It made me feel miserable. It’s an awfully unpleasant book, focused on describing torture and suffering. I only read maybe 70 pages in total before throwing it away. It might be better after the shocking intro but I doubt it. I didn’t give a 1* it on Goodreads because I didn’t finish it but this book is so unpleasant that I’m done with Sebastian Fitsek for good.
  • The Jury Master by Robert Dugoni – 2/5, an action/thriller that’s constantly switching between characters, successfully confusing you who is doing what. A few weeks after I finished it, I remember none of it.
  • Damage Control by Robert Dugoni – 3/5. The author clearly improved a lot after The Jury Master. The book has some good writing but the plot and the characters are cartoonish, painted in black and white. Unlike the previous two books, this one is readable and a solid 3/5. Robert Dugoni is a good writer and I’m glad my journey through his earlier works is over. I read all of his translated books.

GothamChess in Bulgarian

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

I had a period of chess addiction around the time my big kid was 5-7 years old. He showed interest in Chess, so I started learning it to make him a world champion. My kid lost interest in chess quickly but I kept playing and even attended the national championship for Rapid chess, where I had a terrible performance and got my soul crushed.

One of the streamers I watched at that time was the then younger Levy Rozman, GothamChess. I even subscribed to his Twitch and bought his courses before switching to streamers, more appropriate for my level. That period of my life ended long ago, I no longer study chess, don’t follow the developments, and very rarely play blitz. But I was surprised to find out that GothamChess grew so much in popularity that he got translated to Bulgarian.