Cats, good books, AI, and religious walking in the city of Sofia
Hard to imagine that this is a bridge but it is.
I’ve walked where the tracks are many times. It didn’t look like that though. Had no tracks, no blue plastic cover, or even guard rails. There were some ways for you to fall down, although I don’t think it ever happened. Getting in and out was clearly forbidden but there were no guards, just a broken wall and a muddy ramp.
Still, it was the fastest walk to the other side.
The view is good.
Vartopo park, Vitosha, and Darvenitsa.
In 1998, I had the privilege of studying under the old accounting professor Kosta Pergelov (may he rest in peace). He would love to sneak philosophy into his lectures. One of his proverbs stuck in my mind. He would stand in front of the full hall with about 100 students and slowly yell if you can imagine slow yelling:
Colleagues! The drop drills the stone not with force but with persistence.
I adopted that in my personal belief system. Perhaps it helped that Professor Pergelov would repeat the proverb every other lecture with his signature slow yelling.
Give the drops enough time and they’ll carve a path to the stars.
AMD K5/90, 8MB RAM, 1.08GB HDD, 1.44″ FDD, 14″ PW DISPLAY. $460, August 1997.
It smelled like ozone. I can close my eyes and smell it. The screen was black, the case was big and white. It had no games and no connection to the Internet. I had to install software with the floppy until I purchased a printer port cable to connect to my neighbor through LTP1. It cost a fortune – 2 years of savings and summer jobs plus anything my parents, brother, and grandmother could give.
That smell… it smelled like the future.
The sign says “Videotapes for rent”.
Before 1989, private businesses were mostly not legal in my country. One of the first business types that kickstarted capitalism in Sofia was stores for lending video tapes. They were found in improvised spaces like car garages or electrical substations. It was fun to find a sign for one of these still not repainted. The sign looks fresh, almost like graffiti. Made me check if it actually works.
When I was a child in the 80s and early 90s, computers were rare. Computer games were a scent from another world you could see and enjoy briefly, if a kid whose parents had an 8-bit computer, would invite you home and let you play when their parents were not watching. I used books to fill my curious brain with data. I liked them very much and I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.
It was 1991-2 when some clever folks started translating non-linear books with choices. There are two doors in front of you. The left one is small, with an iron frame, and the right one is large and barely hanging. Which one would you open? If you choose the iron door, go to 185, and the broken door is at 195. Reading these felt challenging and great. The best from that time was the series Blood Sword.
I couldn’t buy it at that time because they were expensive. A friend let me read his. And decades later, I saw someone sell the first 3 books on Facebook, in pretty bad shape. The seller was apologetic. “You know they’re kind of cut, and have handwriting inside and so on. Are you sure?”. Not a problem, it’s actually better that way. Which modern-day book gets to that shape from being read a hundred times? Can we find a Hobbit read more than 2-3 times? Or a Game of Thrones?
These are the first 3 books from the series, and book 4 is on its way to me. I’ll figure out the missing book 5 sooner or later.
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