Tag: blog

April in Books

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments

I read 6 books in March. This is a significant decrease from the previous months. I wake up before 7am and go to bed earlier, perhaps because of the daylight savings time. Falling asleep earlier means less time reading and fewer books in the monthly report. It may also be related to my choice of books, these 6 above are not page-turners.

The best book this month was Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich. Stephanie Plum is blue like Smurfiette there and solves crime. The other 5 were also fine. Nothing stands out as particularly good or bad. The two Sand Wars omnibuses (6 novels inside) were classic sci-fi with aliens and had some good moments but can’t compete with a bounty hunter Smurfiette.

1337

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

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 🙂

When do you feel most productive?

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
When do you feel most productive?

Productivity is like a flower, it needs nurturing and dies if salted. For me, the fertilizer is knowing the meaning of work, how to do it, being on a good team, and feeling enthusiasm.

I feel most productive in the mornings, late afternoons, and early evenings, and least productive after lunch.

San Stefano

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

Flower shop on the corner of Shipka and San Stefano.

Saw many students with robes and funny hats today in the area. No photos because I don’t feel comfortable taking photos or strangers.