Mai jos, un interviu cu activitatea mea.
Non-practice
Dor de Curmătură
Am avut niște bunici undeva la munte, în jud. Buzău. Un sat la câțiva kilometri de astfalt, undeva în zonă muntoasă. Drumul de asfalt era și el departe de civilizație. În sat se ajungea greu. La casa bunicilor încă și mai greu. Ce era specific zonei respective era timpul. Trecea greu, nu exista vreo presiune. Nu apăreau surprize, nu veneau vizitatori neanunțați. Nu ți se cerea socoteală. În principiu, era mereu câte ceva de făcut, dar nimic nu era, realmente, obligatoriu. Dacă erau mai mulți oameni în gospodărie, avea cine să îți preia din sarcini. Când ploua, timpul înceta să curgă. Nu puteai face treabă, stăteai în principiu în casă. Bunicii, Dumnezeu să-i odihnească, erau oameni calmi, și blânzi. Nu îți cereau socoteală, nu țin minte să îi fi văzut supărați sau isterici. N-am regăsit nicăieri starea asta adusă la nivel de sistem. Da, în variate ocazii, uiți de toate, te relaxezi, te liniștești. Dar nicăieri liniște la modul general, total. Doar o semi-stare de semi-relaxare și, temporar, o uitare de griji. Pe când la Curmătură liniștea, relaxarea, non-stresul, non-pretențiile erau la ordinea zilei. Din când în când, merg pe la Curmătură, căutând să îmi amintesc de starea aceea. Nu mă duc pentru relaxarea de acum, mă duc să îmi amintesc de starea de atunci.
Meta on movies – how do I evaluate movies and how do I decide what movies to watch?
I wrote this blog post hoping you’ll learn something from the way I watch movies.
How to be better against Chessmaster software
If you play at Chessmaster‘s highest level, it is likely you will never win a game. But, Chessmaster has a mode allowing you to pick the level of your opponents. So, let’s say you play against someone with 1200 level. The trick to win the game is the following: At the beginning, there are lots of pieces on the table. The computer needs a long time to start calculating possibilities, because each piece has lots of options to move. So, the trick is to gather some good advantage material at the beginning (a rook, two minor pieces). Then, force him to make exchanges, queen for queen, rook for rook. You’ll end up in the endgame with big advantage and, even if the computer can calculate much better now, with fewer pieces on the table, he won’t be able to beat you. The alternative – avoiding confrontation at the beginning and just exchanging the pieces can get you in the endgame with relative equilibrium and it won’t be long until Chessmaster will be able to play on your mistakes and beat you with ease.
My (new) favorite quote
The Good, the True, and the Beautiful are celestial ideas, independent and inseparable.
– Plato
So, the same thing, if it’s true, must also be beautiful, and must also be good. If something is beautiful, then it’s good. And true. All at once.
The sick pleasures of rich people
Sometimes, I meet people driving expensive cars and running big business who want to negotiate with me things. Making a site, things like that. And what strikes me is their willingness to negotiate. At first, I thought “hmm, they must have made those money by being good with power & negotiation, so this is an explanation”. But I think it’s more than this. Once you reach a level in your life, you get bored of things. You have pretty much everything in life, and nothing really excites you. And you enjoy the thrill of negotiation. You actually like & have pleasure in being better than the person in front of you. Most poor people would have two problems in negotiation: The lack of experience & practice. The feeling that they’re, somehow, inferior when they negotiate. The rich people don’t have any of these problems. They have lots of experience with negotiations (1) and they perfectly know they’re better than the person in front of them (2). The second point excites them, so they keep on doing this. So, the next time a guy driving an expensive car comes to you and tells you you should leave your prices them, try and have your excitement. Negotiate with them, smiling, knowing that you won’t care if you lose them, and enjoy the pleasure of seeing them annoyed by your lack of cooperation. Enjoy the game and don’t let them run over you. But, on the other hand, if you do need the name of that client on your portfolio, …
“I’m good, you’re evil” – What should come out of this?
Let’s say X does something wrong. What should you do? You have the option of complaining. You’ll help others avoid the same mistake you’ve made. You have the option of putting some rules. If X damages your property, you want to make sure the next time something will be different, from X knowing that the thing is a wrong thing to do, to not having a contact with X anymore. You have the option of ignoring this and moving forward. I’ll talk about this option here: If you ignore the thing X does to you, it will haunt you. You’ll think about that thing, and it will consume you. But, mostly, you will tend to focus on your mistakes in the relationship with X (not filtering things right at the beginning, ignoring some signs, not taking precautions). Thus, you’ll tend to solve things better next time. You’ll be better at handling business the next time. X can change. If X does something wrong to me, yes, I can tell everybody about my side of the story. But I am believer in human improvement. I don’t think that one who did a mistake will always repeat that mistake. That person may do so, but it also may not. It’s OK to give detailed feed-back to X, in order to improve. But, mostly, that feed-back needs to be asked for, not given without a request. You can and may give feed-back chaotically, but it’s not always a good idea. It is possible that if take action and …
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) – a brave movie
They say The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) is a comedy. I’d say it’s a bit more serious than that. The main two characters – M. Gustave and Mr. Moustafa (Zero) have great courage. To be what they want (noble). To go after a psychopath, to fight police and armies. To protect nobility, beauty, poetry, kindness at all costs. M. Gustave is very polite, at times flirting, at times seeming he is as polite just to get better in life. But events prove otherwise. When escaping, he is polite. When he has an alibi, due to politeness, he doesn’t use it. He doesn’t confuse politeness with being weak. He fights until he dies. A hero! The movie itself has the courage to be different than others. It’s not an easy take. It tries to makes things simple, but it present powerful things, shocking at times. Yes, it is lots of fun, but mostly due to the fact that the main characters are different. I watched it two times. I really really enjoyed it. I recommend it!
Backgammon Strategies
I played some backgammon these days with my father. He says the following: I should focus on winning. I should focus on learning the optimal route. I should avoid making mistakes. He seem to enjoy winning. I say the following: I should focus on learning. The best way to learn something is by making mistakes. I deliberately allow myself to make mistakes, even if this makes me lose some games. I really enjoy the excitement you get by being very close to winning and then to see him try so hard to beat me due to a mistake I make. We have some disputes based on this. :) In chess, I tend to have some fixed moves at the beginning, and then adapt to the situation. My father is very close to having an algorithm good-for-all at backgammon, which makes the game dull and boring. He just have to learn and remember his algorithm. A computer could do this very easily. Chess, and my style of backgammon, are not like that. You need flexibility. Sure, this implies some mistakes, but it’s more fun (I think).
Some things learned from PC games
These days, I spent some time playing games (chess and Heroes of Might and Magic, 2 and 3, complete version) and watching some videos. (Bogdan Sverediuk – YouTube & Chris67132 – YouTube) Some thoughts? Travel is good for you – in Heroes of Might and Magic games, the player is rewarded for travelling. Good things come for those who travel – resources, map explored, things spotted. Sure, there are risks – you can be in the North, and the computer might attack from the South. It’s not black & white. But, overall, it’s much better to travel & move than it is to stay in your safe area. You risk, and, most of the times, you win. It all starts from a small area – you don’t need to own a big kingdom from the beginning. If you control a small area, then you expand gradually, then you can control large areas. Why focusing on the time pressure is pointless? I see this in chess blitz games (3 minutes per player). Some players focus on the time, and lose on gameplay. Also, stressing and obsessing on “you have 30 more seconds” seriously hinders your performance. Yes, you win the game on time, but you lost on gameplay. I prefer to quickly move, and win 50% of the games on time, but lose no game on gameplay. Shortcuts are part of the game. In H3, there are lots of magic tricks. The best players not only know those tricks, but know them extremely well. They win games by knowing …