Cats, good books, AI, and religious walking in the city of Sofia
Back in the late 90s, this brand Koop was a symbol of change. We saw the cooperative was some kind of incorporation, a private structure instead of the nearly 100% government-owned everything from that era. The outside A/C unit doesn’t fit though, I don’t remember seeing a single A/C unit in Bulgaria before 1989.
The pavement is from the same period.
I celebrated 1337 likes last week. It’s a hacker-speak for “elite”, and a short form of 31337 or l33t. Some kids would speak like that on IRC when I first got online in the late 90s. It was some form of an anti-language, made to obfuscate conversations so that you don’t get autokicked by the bots if you type something silly or hacker-related.
31337 was also the default port for Back Orifice. I was a n00b on IRC in 1998 when a friend sent me this funny .exe. It showed an alert with an okay button that could not be clicked because it’d move around on mouseover. I tried to click the button, failed, terminated it, and deleted the program. To my shock, an experienced IRC user pinged later that day to tell me was pwned. The exe had the Back Orifice trojan and my computer could be remotely controlled. It was hugely embarrassing and taught me a lesson 🙂
The character is a freelance tank driver, roaming the desert with the tank on a square map. He enters a competition. What does he need to do? Solve a bunch of riddles! Anagrams, basic math, and the music kids listened to in the 80s.
Here’s a riddle from the book.
You have two 6-side dice. What’s the odd for one dice to show 6 and the other to show an even number?
I’ll try to finish the book later this week. After this question, my tank was disqualified because I couldn’t find the solution I knew from playing Backgammon as a child.
In the early 2000s, I was a new and ambitious software engineer with very little theoretical knowledge. Worked as a webmaster, which included front-end, back-end, databases, and a bit of systems work, all with Microsoft products. My confidence didn’t match the realities of my actual knowledge. Something happened and 2-3 colleagues quit in the same year, leaving me as the most senior developer, despite my young age and limited knowledge. I had to hire replacements. So, I found some article that said that I should only hire people who are better developers than me. It said that “A people hire A people, B people hire C people” (attributed to Steve Jobs). I took that meme very seriously. The folks I hired were so good that I needed to step up my game significantly to remain relevant. In the process of learning, I decided to go back to the university and get a Master’s degree in Information Systems from Sofia University.
I’ve done some hiring work later and found loopholes in this rule (so did others on Hackernews). Looking for people who are significantly more competent than the hirer opens the gates to masters in BS language (link to a post from January on the subject). If I discuss an area where I’m not particularly knowledgeable with a candidate, the candidate could fool me by using impenetrable language, specific to that technology.
Over time, I changed. I currently believe that:
Despite that, I did hire some good folks, and they motivated me to learn and improve. Maybe not the most impactful choice I made in life but quite good.
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.
Veselin.blog 