Author: Veselin

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It’s cool to care

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments

I walked today alone with my thoughts. I was upset about something and was thinking about ways to resolve the problem. After 30-ish minutes of walking, I saw this reassuring sign. It says “It’s cool to care”.

It is indeed cool to care, but it is not cool to act under the influence of a strong emotion. When a person is in the red, the most productive thing they can do is usually to cool down and get out of the red.

I’m sure the poster wasn’t there to reassure people who care but nevertheless, it helped me get out of the red and move to the orange.

Here’s this generated with an AI duck who doesn’t care.

In case you’ve missed it, the image block now has AI. This duck is the first time I have used it.

13K Steps

~ Veselin ~ 11 Comments

The natural trend of everything in life is a decline. Health, relationships, skills, happiness – it all needs effort. You’re either working to improve it or it goes sideways, south, or just vanishes.

I’ve been trying to improve my health by walking 10K steps daily. Last week I achieved 13K, using the colder weather and the willingness of my wife and the little kid to participate. At the end of Sunday, after meeting the goal of 13K for the week, I just tossed the Apple Watch and turned off my brain. Didn’t even read a book. Felt overwhelming and unpleasant.

Why does it feel like it is too much? An average of 13K means about 2h 10 min/day. The day is 24h. This leaves 21h 50min of inactivity. The human body was not made to be physically inactive for 22 hours per day. I have no answer yet. I’ll keep walking meanwhile.

True Magic by Roger Wilco

~ Veselin ~ 11 Comments

Roger Wilco is a Bulgarian fantasy gamebook writer who published exactly two books sometime around 1998. He was inspired by the more famous writer Michael Mindcrime, who he met on a tram. However, he started with the other book and ended with this one, and there’s no trace of other creations 26 years later. A Bulgarian version of Harper Lee.

I received a beautiful and well-preserved copy of True Macic by mail and it invited me to read it.

The book is short and readable, about 260 episodes. A junior mage and his anti-mage friend go after a magic book and a disk. The issue is that as it seems, there are lots of books of various colors, and the disks are likely CD-ROMs. They will find thousands. Judging by the book + CD-ROM-combo, I think the mission was to find one of those programming books from the 1990s with a CD glued inside.

The world is a post-apocalyptic fantasy where the current civilization has been transformed by a nuclear (or asteroid) holocaust. It remains unclear which one. The cities are in a mad-max-style chaos, and magicians roam around and wreak havoc. There are some safe spaces here and there, maintained by magic (and CD-ROMs).

I found a path to the end but the book likely keeps other mysteries hidden, including flying carpets. I might give it another chance.

A milestone for the little one

~ Veselin ~ 10 Comments

My younger kid made it to Cherni Vrah today and discovered the raspberries and the blueberries.

We did a relatively easy path (+510m, about 5.6km one way) but it took forever, given the obstacles. This is a major milestone for anyone living in Sofia. I think I reached it when I was around 7.