Category: Random

My blog got my chess.com account closed

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments

I was very surprised to find this email in my inbox today. It said my profile had been closed for spam. This got me a bit upset because the last time I logged in chess.com was in 2024 and the only way I could be spamming would be if I got hacked.

As it turned out, I included a link to my blog in the bio years ago, and the anti-spam AI flagged that link as spam. Chess.com’s support bot connected me with a human within minutes, and my account was restored almost immediately. I got a bonus diamond membership, played a few games, and realized I forgot how to play there.

It’s great that chess.com maintains nice human support. Kudos to their support engineer who got my account back. Most online services do not make it easy to reach out a to an understanding human, especially if you’re logged-out. Boo for the AI that messed everything up in the first place.

Which author I’d like to meet

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Which author would you love to have dinner with?
View all responses

There’s a saying that you should never meet your heroes and after meeting some of mine, I stand by it. However, I checked and Linus Torvalds wrote a book so if I could have a dinner with 10-ish nerds and Linus being there in a way that the other 9 maintain the conversation, while I just stfu and listen, that would be fantastic. I had one of these with Monty Widenius, and while I don’t remember much of it because it was a long time ago, the setup was fine.

As for popular science or fiction writers, while there are plenty I’d love to see at a book signing, having an actual meaningful conversation would be too much.

My Sister’s Grave by Robert Dugoni, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

Tracy Crosswhite is the older sister in a family of sharp shooters. One day, the younger sister Sarah disappears after a shooting competition. A man is arrested and convicted of her murder, but there is no body. Tracy suspects that the wrong man has been framed. Twenty years later, the body is discovered.

For much of the book, this is a legal thriller in which Tracy tries to prove that the convicted murderer was framed, while somehow also looking for the real killer. Robert Dugoni drops clues about what actually happened along the way. I figured out a few details, but not the central mystery.

I enjoyed the book for the most part and ordered the next three. Maybe I over-reacted, I maybe next one would’ve been a better choice. It gets 4*/5 on my shelves.

Why four stars instead of five? I don’t know. I don’t like it when characters start doing horror-movie stupid things. Turning what was a pretty solid legal/crime thriller into something resembling a horror didn’t work for me. I also want to see Tracy using her sharp shooter skills. Hopefully, book two will deliver on that. It should be home tomorrow.

Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes’ Remarkable Theorem Explains the World, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I’m interested in improving my understanding of experimentation. As a person, educated in frequentist statistics, I wanted to learn more about the Bayesian approach, so I got myself a bunch of related books with an increasing level of difficulty to read (more and more formulas).

This is the first one of the batch, which is popular science. It’s tells the story of Bayes and his approach to decision making based on updating probabilities. The amount of useful content inside is roughly comparable to 2-3 popular science Youtube videos of the type I like watching.

The book shared some useful stories and examples, the backstory, and some context about the theorem and its use. However, once I got some of that, it started repeating, nearing unreadability towards the end.

Do I regret reading it? No, I think it cracked some doors open for me and it will help me understand the matter better once I get into the textbooks. So, while I wouldn’t give it a 5*, I think it’s a solid 4*/5 and worth the time and money, as long as you dedicate time for it and read it in 2-3 days, not in 1+ months, which is what I did.