BaSzErr - blog

2009_01_28_2009.01.28

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:45 +0000

2009.01.28

i propose new motto for spamers: “enlarge your rolex”. in case you'd like to spam me about this, please send your remarks here.

2009_01_29_2009.01.29

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:08:51 +0000

2009.01.29

i wanted to have a tea therefore i've shake tea pot in front of my friend and he said he does not have any change. perhaps i should dress a little bit better?

2009_02_07_2009.02.07

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:45 +0000

2009.02.07

yesterday i took my new-old car from repair and hoped to make it back to Wroclaw (~200km). car broke just behind the “welcome to Wroclaw” greeting sign, around 10-15km from its final destination, but i made it to Wroclaw, indeed. i still do not know – have i succeed?

i think that polish saying “poniosłem sukces” suites here perfectly…

2009.02.11_image1_forexperiment

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:45 +0000

¹⁾

taken from http://www.henryzecher.com/CrosbyArmstrong2.jpg

2009.02.11_image2_forexperiment

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:40 +0000

²⁾

taken from: http://two-man-gentlemen-band.com.hosting.domaindirect.com/images/press-2-750.jpg

2009.02.11

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:08 +0000

2009.02.11

armed with recent life experiences of mine on my mind i came to a bit strange conclusion. do you think about yourself as a sexist? or perhaps a racist? probably not. but the funny thing is that most people actually seem to be not that tolerant as they think, since they do not perceive everyone in the same way.

background work

before we start, let me introduce 3, short, life-taken situations.

situation 1

in a moment you'll be shown image showing two man standing next to each other. your task is to take a very fast look at it (let's say: 2 seconds, then close it) and then take down your notes about people you have seen. whatever comes to your mind, what have you noticed, etc…

so here we go with test image 1 (note: image has been randomly taken from google images – original can be found here).

situation 2

let's call, hero of our next story, John. if you're a man, assume he's a good friend of yours who has a nice, intelligent girlfriend named Barbara. if you're a woman, assume John's your boyfriend. situation goes as follows: John tells you that this evening he's going to meet with his friend, Susan. it happens that another friend of yours (Bob) had a night shift that day and he lives next to John. next day he tells you that he have seen light still up in the kitchen around 0200h-0300h.

situation 3

let's stay with John and you for next story. few days later John's phone rings and Ann invites John for a beer at her place. around midnight John sends you sms that he's a bit tired and actually he has to be in the early morning in his job, which is not far from Ann's place therefore he decides to stay at her place.

conclusion(s)

what have you written as the answer for the first example? what was your first thought about John's attitude to life?

and now something completely different

now take a look at next image for a short time and write down your observations.

see test image 2 (note: image has been randomly taken from google images – original can be found here).

have skin color of one of two man at the very begin of list o adjectives you have written for the first image?

have you considered John as a dishones man for Barbara? now read again story 2 and 3, but instead of name Susan use Damian and instead of Ann use Chuck. how does it sound now for you?

when equal means truly equal

there has been interesting period in south park about their town's flag, which looked like this³⁾:

local school's chief (who was a black man) argued that it is racist and should be changed. children from school argued that it is mayby cruel, but surely not racist (they were white). new flag has been proposed any how, so that “everyone were happy”. new flag looked like this⁴⁾:

chief got mad and many not nice words have been told in a public from both sides, when finally one of the young boys said something like this: “god dame it! what are you arguing chief about anyway? what the hell is racist about bunch of guys who hanged another man?!”. then chief understood – from town-wide (in)tolerance discussion only the kids happend not to show any intolerance – they haven't seen black man hanging, but instead just A MAN hanging. they have not noticed color of a skin at all. they perceived chief as equal in every aspect.

an experiment

how about difference about sex? how does it influence us? when reading situations, when John met his friends who were women, most of us assumed he could be dishonest with Barbara (some were probably sure about this). the second time there was no such a problem – “hey! John is not gay – he has girlfirned. they must have drunk few beers, have a good laugh and went to sleep later on.”.

there is an obvious difference between meeting people of the same and of the opposite sex.

now assume that you're unable to see things with your eyes as you do now. you're unable to hear as well. instead you have cybernetic implant that shows you all living things as an icon (cat, dog, human, tree, etc…) and you see everyting they say as a text that displays, on what happened to be your “new eyes”. now you're unable to tell if you're talking with man or woman… and so you have a good field to start judgements about people.

got the idea?

some time ago, when i truly realized the meaning of all those mechanisms that drives us without our consciousness i started to seek for some solutions to this. my very personal way to simulate such a behavior is doing mind experiments – for example, when in doubt if it's ok to act like in situations 2 and 3 i imagine that i'm talking with a person of the same sex, instead of opposite. when i find it as ok for the same sex, what is the problem then? if i like someone, i simply like him/her for who (s)he is and sex does not matter, since we're friends – that's all. nothing more, nothing less.

there are surely things like hugging, kissing or dancing that you prefer to do with person of an opposite sex, but there are also many things that you can do regardless of your friend's sex, for example going for a beer 'till a very early morning or staying and one's place for a night on a couch. in my life though i spotted few times very rough reactions to such a things and arguments like “we're very good friends – we talked, drunk some beer and went to sleep in separate beds” were treated as “an excuse” at most, but not as an honest response. if you think the same i think this is a good place to introduce you to Mr. Albert Einstein and one of his interesting quotations:

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

in fact, in psychology it is commonly accepted fact that most of the society is not normal⁵⁾. knowing that others live intolerant way should not affect your perception. but in everyday's life humans are social and very often agree to what they have found in they surrounding just not to be an “outsider”.

i hope this thought i came to recently will make you wonder at least. if you'd like to share your opinion with we, just let me know.

³⁾

image taken from http://flagspot.net/images/f/fic-spk1.gif

⁴⁾

image taken from http://geek-woman.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/southpark_flag.gif

⁵⁾

refere to Erich Fromm's publications for more details

2009.02.18

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:45 +0000

2009.02.18

“it appears that from psychological point of view i stopped at the anal-age. that's why i've become programmer” – today i realized. ;)

2009.02.19

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:45 +0000

2009.02.19

a friend of mine, Zuza, just noticed that her flickr profile is not present in friends sites section and i'm in deep troubles right now. in case no entry will appear on this blog in a weak or so, will someone notice police, please?

qotd: “to drink or not to drink? i can't remember what was the question…”

2009.02.22

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:30 +0000

2009.02.22

Kazik Na Żywo after recent reactivation played in Wrocław. good concert is always welcomed here. i'm under big impression of how much WFF can take – when they played “Odpad atomowy” i was pretty sure nothing would make it… ;)

2009.02.28

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:40 +0000

2009.02.28

this weekend started with editor-plugin error, making it unable to automatically show recent changes on the page.

“To make a mistake is human, but to really fuck things up you need a computer.” – author unknown

but for now…

“I will make no bargains with terrorist hardware.” – Peter da Silva

2009.03.02

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:18 +0000

2009.03.02

QOTD: “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vince Lombardi

in case someone haven't noticed yet, got to remember that! :)

2009.05.16

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:40 +0000

2009.05.16

QOTD:

Real programmers don't comment their code.  It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

why this has to be so, so true… :/

2009.06.01

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:08 +0000

2009.06.01

Sometimes being yourself is enough to be though as an eccentric by most⁶⁾.

Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.

all best especially for you in your day! :)

⁶⁾

recently went through my mind

2009.06.03

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:33 +0000

2009.06.03

We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.

i find it so true in corporate projects.

2009.07.02

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:09 +0000

2009.07.02

Leading Corporate Institution Inc. improved delegations by providing AmEx for each employee to pay with during his/her business trip(s). the problem is that it is registered for employee him/her-self, who pays corporate expanses with it.

what does it mean? you pay, you return, you got money back from corpo.

how does it work in real life? you pay, you return, you have to prove what were your expansions (i.e. hotel, train/plane/car…) and you way. not many ppl know, starting from this point they should pray as well. the key is that IT LASTS very long time before corpo paper work is done in multiple sites, with all required signatures, blah, blah… in my case it took longer than AmEx pay deadline. this way i left with quite a few “expansions”, which weren't actually mine, but were on my name. i got over time payment to pay. so i gave it back to corpo – and surprise, surprise: sorry dude – we don't calculate over time payments! after like half an hour talk with Hun from remote location (which probably cost comparably to this over time payment, by the way…) i finally gave it up, said what do i think about it and disconnected. my luck was that money were not big (just the first day) and so were the extra cash to pay. it is not worth my health but there is an lesson for me to remember – never ever pay for company, signing it with your name. i can imagine such a problem when this would all include whole business trip over time payment penalty + probably joining the hall of un-fame and having problems with getting any founding later on, if needed.

that rainy day i failed to prove i'm not camel – there will be no second try. next time they want me on business trip they pay directly or i don't go at all. :P

Next to BajsWiki i found Jargon File today. few interesting definitions can be found there, i must say. this was the nice part of this afternoon. :)

2009.07.03

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:30 +0000

2009.07.03

“telecommunication project out of hell!” (came to my mind today)

2009.07.06

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:25 +0000

2009.07.06

one upon a time one of higher managers of one of the corporations ruling this Earth's telecommunications heard somewhere about SCRUM – the agile approach to software development. now imagine huge project with tens of developers spread around sites, dealing with their components using vendor-specific-incremental-waterfall for their work. after 2 years of separation, all components were meant to move to SCRUM. just like that.

despite overall implementation results (which has not yet been decided whether funny or sad) one of main principles came across my mind: technical excellence. it's great and should be always true, i.e. ppl who does not know what software development is, should not touch it, but what about practice? in many cases new corporate employees are hired because higher management came to terrifying conclusion: “if there will be more of us, we'll have higher position on the market and develop faster!”. it means of course that technical level on many sites is at most average. this implies lower technical skills, far from “technical excellence”.

agile is all about smart ppl doing smart things and managers not disturbing them with their brilliant “technical” ideas. but what if such a new SCRUM team will agree upon creating loose poo (see http://bajs.vmh.net) instead of actual software? most cases they will even not be aware of it… what about cooperation then? when most of equaly-important-developers in SCRUM will not agree to do nice work but will code shit instead development dies…

it's so corporate way – lets hire 3 ppl with lower earnings than one with 1.5 of regular payment, but who really knows what (s)he's doing…

2009.07.11

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:08 +0000

2009.07.11

recently it reminded myself about theory i've heard during my studies - that intelligence is unable to create something more sophisticated than itself. this would eventually mean that we cannot make more intelligent beings (i.e. thinking software) than we're by ourselfs.

sounds interesting, but what is the reasoning behind it anyway? i mean: why such an limitation would exist? during centuries, especially last ~200 years, we've developed many machines that allows us to do things better/faster/cheaper/safer/at all. can you imagine your self building semiconductor based microprocessor with your bare hands? doubly. but can you imagine machine that is able to do so using precisely controlled physical/chemical processes. if you can read this, it means that actually you're using an effect of such a processes on own your desk at this very moment.

continuing this trail of thoughts - why shouldn't we be able to create artificial intelligence greater than ours? i don't believe it is not possible. if we haven't achieve it yet, perhaps we're doing it all wrong?

at the present moment main focus is not creating exact solutions for particular problems. most AI you can see in real life does not have a very basic aspect of what we usually call “intelligence” – learning while “living” in environment. notice that solutions provided to real life are dedicated to very limited set of problems. one example number recognition that will fail to recognize pattern, if font of digits were dramatically changed. often there is event no feedback loop within the system, to show it works wrong!

the problem is surely within ourselfs, but the case is not impossibility of achieving “real AI level”, greater than ours, but maybe its our usual approach that is not generic or perspective enough? think big!

2009.07.14

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:34 +0000

2009.07.14

i came, i looked above, i saw… recently, since lack of (reasonable) food in the fridge i was preparing something-to-eat™ and came to conclusion: this is cooking under Jolly Roger!

the new flag of mine now rises above my own kitchen.

btw: this somehow reminds me of one Wilq's adventure – the story of one-head pirate…

2009.07.18

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:18 +0000

2009.07.18

yesterday i came across this:

“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning.” – Rich Cook

and i've realized i was coming across this for a very long time… ;)

2009.07.23

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:45 +0000

2009.07.23

few interesting things that took place recently.

"when shit hits the fan"

finally it happened – after last project cancellation i was moved to not-that-interesting-one which i was tired of recently. yesterday good news arrived – with 1st of september i'm moving to new place: WCSS. despite the project which i'll not repent i'll leave bunch of nice guys i had a chance to work with - i'll mis you guys! …and hope we'll have a chance to find each other on our paths' crossing once again in the future! :)

pharmacist's tincture

i finally got recipe for pharmacist's tincture – i've always liked it, but never tried to make one of my own. not to forget i'll place it here - perhaps someone else might give it a try? :)

2009.07.29

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:34 +0000

2009.07.29

build_process v1.0.0 has been finally released! :) it contains a lot of changes since project's start, many improvements and new features inspired by every day development of many users.

long live the build! :)

2009.08.01

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:41 +0000

2009.08.01

Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your program doesn't deliver it.

thanks god The Day has arrived – today no more users complains – only gliding the sky! :)

2009.08.17

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:25 +0000

2009.08.17 - gliding continued

gliding itself

still flying, still in the air. :) primary gliding course approaches an end with at a speed. in few days time there will be first lone flights around club's airfield, as a summary of gained skills.

allong with the formal skills we're introduced unofficially to other pars of secret (sacred?) knowledge. today i've learned about the existence of lotne opowieści⁷⁾ (see also other version⁸⁾) – flying-oriented version of probably one of the most famous polish shanty called morskie opowiesci. it somehow reminds me of another famous sond, 10 w skali beauforta and its non-censored version… ;)

bureaucracy continued

except the gliding few days ago i had a chance (a must?) to check my kinship with the camel. since i'm about to change my employer i was sent to do so called “work medicine tests”. the funny thing was that i had to do this despite of the facts that i: 1) already have exactly the same tests done for my current employer (valid still for ~3 years) 2) passed precise medical tests that confirmed my ability to fly as a pilot of a plane 3) have a driving license i had to do the tests anyhow (“just in case” i assume). bureaucracy will never stop making me wonder! tests were passed (surprise! surprise!) proving that not only i can drive a car or fly the plane, but i can also sit in front of computer. i sure they all are going to be terrified with the result - camel gens not found…

misc

to make this day easier see this – animals rules! :)

⁷⁾

found on http://files.derynski.net/lotne_opowiesci/lotne_opowiesci.pdf

⁸⁾

found on http://aeroklub-podkarpacki.pl/app/webroot/img/upload/File/Varia/opowiesci.pdf

2009.08.21

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:08 +0000

2009.08.21 - primary gliding course done

primary gliding course has finished. my 10th standalone flight took place around noon on the 21st day of august 2009 – wow! this was something.

during these days (around 20) just by riding to the landed glider i've drove about 230 kilometers on the airfield – i could be home using just 1 gear that way. ;)

we had a chance to fly with great man, with excellent didactic skills – Mariusz. i hope we'll have a chance to meet during next trainings parts again.

2009.09.02

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:08 +0000

2009.09.02 - t-shirt for Mariusz

as a “thank you” for our gliding teacher, Mariusz, we prepared t-shirt with a dedicated image on it. i'm especially proud of wild boar of my design! we had some issues with hols they've dig during nights, so i was worth mentioning them too as an integral part of training too. :)

2009.09.03

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:40 +0000

2009.09.03 - theory vs. practice

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."
-- Albert Einstein

…and it applies to IT in a very straight forward way: see the documentation, than take a look at implementation/code.

2009.09.17

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:30 +0000

2009.09.17 - red baron

flying (i.e. starting) glider behind the plane has finished. not bad i must say - on the windy days it was been real rodeo! :)

as for now - some propaganda (found here).

                XXXX
               X    XX
              X  ***  X                XXXXX
             X  *****  X            XXX     XX
          XXXX ******* XXX      XXXX          XX
        XX   X ******  XXXXXXXXX                XX XXX
      XX      X ****  X                           X** X
     X        XX    XX     X                      X***X
    X         //XXXX       X                      XXXX
   X         //   X                             XX
  X         //    X          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/
  X     XXX//    X          X
  X    X   X     X         X
  X    X    X    X        X
   X   X    X    X        X                    XX
   X    X   X    X        X                 XXX  XX
    X    XXX      X        X               X  X X  X
    X             X         X              XX X  XXXX
     X             X         XXXXXXXX\     XX   XX  X
      XX            XX              X     X    X  XX
        XX            XXXX   XXXXXX/     X     XXXX
          XXX             XX***         X     X
             XXXXXXXXXXXXX *   *       X     X
                          *---* X     X     X
                         *-* *   XXX X     X
                         *- *       XXX   X
                        *- *X          XXX
                        *- *X  X          XXX
                       *- *X    X            XX
                       *- *XX    X             X
                      *  *X* X    X             X
                      *  *X * X    X             X
                     *  * X**  X   XXXX          X
                     *  * X**  XX     X          X
                    *  ** X** X     XX          X
                    *  **  X*  XXX   X         X
                   *  **    XX   XXXX       XXX
                  *  * *      XXXX      X     X
                 *   * *          X     X     X
   =======*******   * *           X     X      XXXXXXXX\
          *         * *      /XXXXX      XXXXXXXX\      )
     =====**********  *     X                     )  \  )
       ====*         *     X               \  \   )XXXXX
  =========**********       XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
                     CURSE YOU RED BARO

2009.09.21

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:08 +0000

2009.09.21 - monday o' knowledge

this monday, not as casual one, started earlier at PWr – the first day of DFN, artificial intelligence presentations. this year TIER has been shown once again (3rd time in a row) as a part of the presentation. tomorrow i'll try to attach some pictures.

as every year, young ppl from many schools have been present. it was an interesting sight to see how some of them are extremely interested in artificial intelligence while others are absolutely not. once or twice i thought about shouting a bit louder asking for silence, when a thought of a day came to my mind. it is not a difficult task to make someone listen when you're pointing gun at him – key is to present knowledge the way others will wont to listen to it by them self. i think this is one of a golden rules of education – test to check who may present knowledge and propagate it to people – be a fountain of knowledge, instead of cistern. it's special case of what Indira Gandhi said: “You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.”.

2009.09.22

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:08:57 +0000

2009.09.22 - TIER and DFN

this year, as in 3 recent years in a row, TIER robot has been presented as a part of artificial intelligence lectures on DFN. not as every year, today i had an unique chance to see it… on a poster of this year's sessions! :) during last year's lectures a guy with professional camera was doing pictures during some parts of our presentations. i wasn't aware that side-effect-of-my-master-thesis was on more than just guy's hard drive. any way it was nice to see. in a way it is a good motivation to build new robot. maybe TIGER will finally be more than just a set of parts on my desk. it waits for about 2 years to be completed now - about time to finish i guess… ;)

here are some of the pictures taken during this year's session. :)

2009.09.23

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:45 +0000

2009.09.23 - Choya

while being on a business trip in Munich, Germany, at the first half of the year along with a friend of mine – Marcin – we had a chance to eat in orient restaurants quite a few times. especially one still visits my mind – it name was Wok'n'Roll. except nice food and 'all you can eat' offer they served small apéritif too. it was incredibly delicious wine (note: in general i don't like wines!), served with crushed ice on the top, which i always forgot to ask the name of… until few days ago. with my family we went for a supper to a Japanese restaurant. we met there two girls that just few minutes ago were explaining us how to get there. they were drinking wine of known to me color, with typical, crushed ice floating on the top – they said they recommend it very much.

it couldn't any be better – i immediately asked waiter to have one glass, and to write down the name of it on a piece of paper. when order was given, with my sister we went to nearby wine shop and bought 3 bottles straight away (only 3 were left): one for me, one for grandparents (they like wine a lot – let them try it too! :)) and one for Marcin.

it is really amazing how coincidents can for a whole new quality! as en ex-corporate employee i can say it's a real, true synergy in pure form. :)

2009.10.03

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:45 +0000

2009.10.03 - CPU caches know-how

today i've wrote short article summarizing and showing code examples of how do modern CPUs' caches affect overall performance and how to use it effectively – cache usage effects on modern CPUs. it is based on very interesting article by Ulrich Drepper, What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory. you can be surprised how much CPU cache and its proper (though mostly implicit) usage affects speed of modern CPUs… :)

2009.10.08

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:41 +0000

2009.10.08 - DFN report

few days ago i was informed that this year's DFN's report, from institute that was organizing part i've attended, is already present on the net. :)

http://www.ii.pwr.wroc.pl/index.php/pl/Instytut-Informatyki/dolnoslaski_fetiwal_nauki

2009.10.21

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:45 +0000

2009.10.21 - Tatry mountains trip

last weekend with 3 friends, using accidental proximity of Kraków, we took a trip to Tatry mountains to see the very first snow this year. the usual thing is that mountains gave me incredible impression – the key is that it was absolutely amazing to see winter mixed with fall at the same place. this year's snow felt so rapidly and so soon that leafs did not managed to all fall from the tries, making it incredible view of tries hidden in the snow, which in turn was covered with colorful leafs! and the air… the mountain air, on a bit below zero temperature… you feel like on a different planet, where there are no cars, no pollution, no traffic… we all become different people when entering such a places. during this trip i though came through my mind – “bartek – your home”.

i don't know yet when, but i want to go back there the very first time i'll have a chance to do so.

2009.10.22

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:30 +0000

2009.10.22 - inheritance of history

recently my complaining nature took over again. i started thinking about what are some things on this world for? there are many things that as they are, though they do not seem to have ANY logical explanation except just one: we got used to them.

24h, AM/PM and more

as everyone knows full rotation of earth around takes 24h. what is the idea behind 2x12h mode (AM/PM), common in England and USA and few others?

if you live in 24h-time country don't get too excited yet – do you have wall clock somewhere around? take a closer look at it. what do you see? yes – it has just 12h drawn on it! as far as i remember i had a chance to see 24h wall clock one or twice in my whole life! why? because we're used to it.

time vs. zones

you all know UTC time. but what is time in your country? it's GMT plus or minus few hours. but that would be too simple, so let us add more to our model: there is daylight saving, thanks to which depending on the time of year most countries change time adding or subtracting one hour! why? it was used to switch working hours, so that more of it will be when sun shines saving some energy on artificial light. does it work? not exactly – now days it is quite commonly thought to be more of a problem than an advantage of any sort.

but wait! there is even MORE! there are countries that have time shifted from GMT more than full yours! example can be Afganistan having 4.5h time difference.

but wait! did you know, that GMT is shifted to UTC in some parts of the year? did you know that UTC have leap seconds?

what is that whole mess for? it is pure-historical! wouldn't it be simpler just to have one time zone on the whole planet (UTC seems a good candidate – no daylight saving mess), using 24h clock with 24-hours painted on it? what is the problem of going out to work/school between 0200h and 1000h, if this would be the time when sun shines in a given region? this is only our habit to get up around 0600-0800h every day – nothing more.

the length of the second

not many people know what is exact definition of a second. in fact it is duration of 9192631770 periods of radiation of caesium 133 atom⁹⁾. why that? well – it has been normalized some time ago to ensure proper understanding of this time unit keeping in tact with previously, more coarse definitions.

what does it mean? not much. there is one interesting thing though – do you know the speed of light? it is c=299792458[m/s]. it is very basic constant in modern physics. few years ago i've read John Gribbin's book “Quantum Physics Encyclopedia”, where he suggested changing that definition of a second so that speed of light would be c=300000000[m/s]. notice that difference is only round 0.0692% but give's us some logic behind it.

distance

now how about a distance? my friend's mum had an interesting experience recently – she bought a car from USA and took it to her home city. when she took a ride she noticed two things:

it's nice
everyone drives so slow today

even when she was driving in a city with allowed speed of 50[km/h] she had to pass every each car on her way. what was the problem? why everyone drives so slowly? actually it was other way around – since it was American car, it was calibrated to show MILES per hour not KILOMETERS per hour, so in fact she was driving 50[mph], which in turn is around 80[km/h]… which is far more than the allowed speed.

everybody knows there are kilometer and mile units. fortunately kilometer is far more common, since it is logical SI unit, easy for computations. i've been once a witness of a talk like “aa - it's simple! 12 inches is a foot, 3 feet is one yard” and so on. then the question came: “ok. can you tell me please how many inches does 2123.2 yards have?”. after a few seconds of silence someone else begin on the table at that time confirmed “this is true – we think it is simple because we got used to it”. imagine the same question using meter and similar units! 1000[mm] is 1[m], 1000[m] is 1[km], etc… it's all about moving the comma to a right position – couldn't be simpler!

but there is more! historically there were tens of different “miles” definitions. now it is much simpler, since in common usage are only USA/UK mile and nautical mile. the second is not SI and is around 1.8[km] – sounds strange, but this time it does have a meaning. using nautical miles it is simpler to calculate distances on the see, but let us leave the details.

holidays and weekends

making a survey on days off i'd expect that nearly 100% of working/learning people would say: saturday, sunday, new ears eve, christmas and so on. do you notice any pattern? most of our planet work in 5+2 shifts that covers the same days of a week! what is the problem? well – have you ever complained about traffic jams when trying to leave city on friday afternoon? or maybe entering it on sunday evening?

it was annoying me for a years – what is the problem to let people choose when do they want to have they days off? 5+2 is ok, just why these 2 must always be saturday and sunday? this makes life harder for all of us. leaving for a holidays – traffic. going back – traffic. being at the place – many people. the key is that when weekend ends problems are gone! the main issue here is that we all try to do the same on the same time. if everyone choose some 2 days in a week to have it free distribution of people at holidays and at work would be also like 5:2 while keeping nearly constant load.

until recently the idea i've just presented was purely theoretical. since few weeks it is not. i've managed to reorganize my working days and hours so that i get up early to work, and get back late, but in turn having 2 extra days off during the week. it is incredible to see how it works when you get off from it – you can do the shopping without long lanes and high traffic, since everyone are at work/school. you can go for a short holidays wherever you want, since everyone works at that time so except of yourself at the place there are just few more people how happened to take they days off at the same time.

conclusion

man are creatures of habit. we don't like changing habits and it is not quire natural for us to notice we actually do have them at all. but when you stop for a moment and see it from other perspective it becomes obvious – it doesn't have to be that way and it's all up to us.

⁹⁾

this definition is not exact, but it gives the main idea. for more read definition on wikipedia

2009.10.29

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:33 +0000

2009.10.29 - software that can survive an encounter with users

i've just came across interesting article on Joel On Software. i raises once more thing i had a chance to talk through many times before – program of studies, with a lot of theory and little real-world practice. don't get me wrong – i DO like theory and i thing it is very important, because tools change and basic concepts remains. the key is that resigning from real-world practice is a terrible mistake.

since i've graduated recently my self i know this from own experience. if not over 1.5 year of work experience in IT during studies and deep interest in linux i'd came out of one of the best polish technical (!) universities seeing VCS once in my life and writing just few non-windows programs/scripts.

as for now solution is just once – never let your schooling interfere with your education (Mark Twain). during your studies time you'll have a chance to learn many interesting things, but this is about half the knowledge you should have by that time. rest you need to gain by yourself, sometimes doing this on a cost of your “official” assignment(s), but this is good and this is just you doing your dreams and preparing for the future.

article that inspired this short note can be found here.

2009.11.07

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:34 +0000

2009.11.07 - this weekend starts nicely

i came across interesting quotation:

“The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.” – Paul Fix

i started nice - have a nice weekend then. :)

2009.11.28

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:08:57 +0000

2009.11.28 - "the free lunch is over"

yesterday i've just back from Intel's tools workshop that took place in Poznań, Poland. Among many things, tools and concepts presented during 4-days-logs event we came across interesting article by Herb Sutter: the free lunch is over. since many years it was a main goal to provide working software, that did not have to be really fast and work optimal, since according to Moore's law computers in few-months time frame will be fast enough to handle it in a proper speed. oh - wait! there is a trick! Moore's law says only about transistors count, which until early 2000's was nearly 1:1 applicable to home PCs' speed. this was the “free lunch” – your application were running faster and faster over a time, without any extra effort from your side, as a developer.

these days are over for now and it appears that it will stay that way for some time. we've came across 2-3GHz CPUs about 6 years ago and GHzs on shops' shelves didn't changed much since. computer run faster though, so what have hanged? 3 main things change now, and it appears that it will continue that way in predictable future:

architecture upgrades (new algorithms, new, specialized instructions' sets, etc…)
cache sizes (i.e. faster handling of bigger programs and data)
cores' count – and mostly this, in fact

what does it mean for developers and software architects? no more free lunches! if your application has to be fast and/or scalable it has to use what CPUs offer, which will be multicore architecture. this means extra effort to prepare and test the program. “ok then - i'll make my application 2/3/4 threaded”. nope - this will not do the trick as well. it will, if properly designed and implemented, bring reasonable speedup of course, but assigning pre-defined number of threads to do the work simply won't scale for future CPUs. during the workshop we were told what are the main Intel's plans for speedup in recent years – mainly core's count. we already have 2-cores laptops and 4-cores workstations as a standard for some time. 8-cores? no problem! on the beginning of 2009 AMD has presented 24-core server system. does your recent code scale to this CPU count?

the truth is we don't have nice, parallel language, that count hide complexity of concurrent programming from developers. C++ doesn't have threads in specification at all, as for now, thought there are some interesting solutions that help going multithread easily, for example: OpenMP or Intel's Threading Building Blocks. there are languages like Ada that has build-in concurrency, though it is explicit anyway. new Google's Go language has a build-in concurrency, that appears to be easy to use, but it still does not look like revolutionary.

as for now, when doing production code for large systems we're bounded to more classic approach with explicit parallelism.

2009.12.04

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:08 +0000

2009.12.04 - here come the cores

just a few days ago i've wrote, after Herb Sutter, that the free lunch is over and here it comes – in response to AMD's 24-core computer shown on the beginning of the year, two days ago Intel shown 48-core processor (yes – procesor, not computer!). this time it seems to be far more than a show off. processor includes 48 fully equipped IA cores, arranged in pair of dual-cores, interconnected via 2D mesh network (24 nodes). article does not mention that, but it seems pretty sure that this is NUMA architecture. interesting topic is also efficiency of cache coherency protocol used there.

debate can be long, but in general the cutting edge technology trend is obvious.

2009.12.10

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:48 +0000

2009.12.10 - future perfect

The term “Future Perfect” has been abandoned, since it was discovered not to be. –Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

2009.12.21

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 20:09:33 +0000

2009.12.21 - let it snow, let it snow, let it snow... :)

this year, along with friends we dressed up christmas tree, doing some of the decorations manually – it's far more fun than to simply buy them. nice atmosphere, nice work and incredible smell of fir (used as a christmas tree in poland) in the air… the spirit of christmas itself! :)

there are just 3 days left until eve – it's very short so i'd like to wish everyone merry christmas, happily spent with family around the table. may all your wishes come true! :)

ok - now turn off computer and enjoy life during christmas time, snow outdoors and stars in the sky… it's really worth it! :)

blog

anonymous@undisclosed.example.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 11:45:55 +0000

blog

“life should not be a journey to the grave, with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skim the outside, in a clad of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming: “wow, what a ride!”