Happy Anniversary, Automattic!

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments

Happy 20-year work anniversary to Donncha — the very first person to join the company, even before Matt! His post brings back the early days and shows the small group of people who started it all. They all look so young! It’s amazing to look back and see how far we’ve come. Here’s to the next 20!

I remember joining in 2011, and blaming the already 6-years-old codebase to always find Donncha’s username in the oldest corners of the code.

Photo by Mark Ralev. Thanks to Mark, I have some photos of myself from 2011.

This was the computer I used when I joined Automattic. I did my trial with it and bought a new one for my first team meetup.

And 3 of the only 4-5 photos I still have from the said meetup in 2011. The last photo features Matt and I think Stephane Daury but with the photo quality of my 2011 camera, it could also be Jason Statham.

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I feel a bit silly reading a book that just turned into a TV show.

In book 4 of the series, the Murderbot flies between space stations and faces several attempts to be stopped. However, it has no clear goal or understanding what’s going on, and it’s also not clear why the rich corporations are trying to stop it. We’ll have to wait more books to reach that clarity. Alien artifacts are involved, so it is promising.

This and the previous sci-fi book I read made me think about something else.

The Murderbot is flying through wormholes. Sten in The Wolf Worlds is also flying through wormholes. Assume a wormhole existed, and I flew from point A to point B through a wormhole. No object in space is stationary. Galaxies move towards gravitational attractors, star clusters orbit around the center of the galaxy, and planets orbit around stars. Flying to the other side of the galaxy through a wormhole means that my spaceship will suddenly be accelerated to incredible speeds, compared to the local objects, speeds from which the deceleration may take years. The spaceships in both books do not address that.

There is no plausible space flight, unlike what we see in true 5* sci-fis like Legion or Project Hail Mary. And if we remove the space flight, this book turns out to be a short cyberpunk novel, similar to Gibson’s world, where a heavily modified human surfs the Internet like if it’s a water slide.

For that, I think I’ll allow myself to score this book 4/5, still a great little adventure. The sci from the sci-fi doesn’t add up, otherwise very nice.

Sky Fort

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

The new tallest building in Sofia is almost complete.

It’s called Sky Fort, and once finished, it will rank among the top 100 tallest buildings in Europe, and the top 25 within the EU.

I’ve grown used to seeing this unfinished skyscraper. It’s not far from where I live, and for the past five years or so, it’s been slowly getting its glass facade. I’m not sure why architects design such complex glass structures. It seems to be common among high-rise buildings in Sofia, and it often takes years to fully wrap them in glass.

In any case, the new building will offer 202 meters of uninterrupted mountain views, direct access to the subway, and a location that otherwise raises eyebrows.

King’s Garden

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments

This tiny patch of the King’s Garden used to be the famous and beautiful Writer’s Coffee, a central spot for the intellectuals of Sofia until the 70s.

It was destroyed likely to create a photo spot with the church behind, however the true reasoning is not known to the Internet.