Author: Veselin

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Avenger! By Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

Back in 1992, I had the chance to read a series of 4 gamebooks called The Way of the Tiger. It was the second-best series after Blood Sword, captivating the young mind’s imagination with both its well-crafted fantasy world, and the feeling of challenge. Little did I know that the original series had 6 books. It required completing the first two for a successful read. The series has a secret kick called “Kwon’s Flail” that is only available in the first chapter. My friends and I didn’t know that, so we searched the 4 books from 1992-3 for any hint on how to find that. It remained a mystery for some years.

The local community figured out the Kwon Flail problem in the Internet age and published books 1 and 2 sometimes over the last decade. I managed to find a copy of book 1 last week and read it this weekend. It was a nice refresher. Got me back to my teenage years.

The book itself is in a magic world where Gods compete with each other and use humans as puppets. The main character is a ninja who follows the good god Kwon. There’s magic, taverns, warriors, monks, a Barbarian, arenas, and whatnot. The authors describe it as Middle Earth with Ninjas. What makes it good is that the choices actually make sense. You need to pay attention while reading it, and take notes, and there’s a strong chance you’ll succeed in the mission with 4-5 failures. It has some hidden gems, not all of which need to be uncovered. The book allows for collecting unnecessary items and fighting dormant enemies.

Overall, 5/5, first true 5/5 for a gamebook this year. I have book 2 on my shelves, waiting for me but do not have the final book 7. It might turn out to be a hard find.

The Hammer of God by Arthur Clarke

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I read this book with the intent to read a classic sci-fi from the times when the skies were still tempting and the Solar system felt within our reach. The book felt close to that but to my surprise, it turned out it was written in 1993. It’s still a 1960s book, just one that ignores large areas of the emerging tech and focuses on the dreams from the past. It has neuralink but the data transfer reminds me of floppies. The propulsion methodologies remained in the 60s as well, or at least sounded that way.

I found the prediction of societal changes more interesting than the tech area. The biggest one in the book is that Christianity and Islam merge and form a new hugely influential religion – Chrislam. Artur Clarke predicted that the massive mixture of people from these two faiths would lead to the birth of a prophet who will merge the faiths in one. Okay, this idea is cool, but how would that happen? There are so many problems that would need a resolution and remained unaddressed. Religion is not just about faith, it’s also about history and tradition and these have gained thousands of years of divergence. How do you undo something like that?

Perhaps some other book will imagine an answer while addressing at least some of mismatching historical claims, the spiritual differences, and the cultural problems. The common ancestry is not good enough. The whole asteroid approaching Earth problem didn’t help and was probably unnecessary.

Difficult name

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Something makes my name difficult to say and hear. English speakers tend to confuse it with a random Russian last name, the Greek Vasilij, or Vaseline. Bulgarians improvise around it, surprised when they hear it.

On the photo – Vasilen, actually not a bad interpretation because it’s close to a real name. 4/7

How does failure lead to success

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Daily writing prompt
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

I saw this writing prompt days ago and wanted to share a clever story about how I failed miserably at something, and then it turned out to be okay. However, I couldn’t come up with a good enough story, or even any story. No matter how I twisted it, it sounds like the things that lead to anything remotely positive after a failure were related to:

  • My response to it
  • Having a contingency plan that worked

Regarding the planning part, I pretty much try to make sure that I know the revert command and when I need to run it (or the real-life alternative of revert if it exists). It’s not impossible to fail and not know you did, especially in engineering. A user may report a critical bug weeks after the introduction of it. Bug reports are like cockroaches. By the time you see one, you may already have an infestation.

Regarding the response, I’ve had more chances to develop a strategy. Respond with dignity, take ownership of the failure, and deal with the consequences. Don’t blame others. Try to be objective even if that means putting yourself in a very bad light. When the failure was caused by someone else but it is me under the spotlight, I try to not blame the person but depersonalize the mistake. We can blame a commit for a critical bug, for example, rather than the person who deployed it.

And a couple of sayings:

  • Fall down seven times, get up eight.
  • This, too, shall pass.