November 7, 2009

Mai e tinereţe şi după 30 :)

Dorin face o postare imensă despre lucruri învăţate în 30 de ani: aici. Varianta mea pentru "viaţa de după 30" şi ce am învăţat e foarte scurtă:
Timpul le distilează pe toate.

July 14, 2009

June 23, 2009

It's me... Like we all are.

Alone on a preset path. Trying to do my best. Trying to get as far.

April 23, 2009

The Hermit

" - You have grown in the shadow of others and are found of it. But when lights go off and darkness takes you, when silence quiets you... you are always alone. The demons you face came all from within you."

April 14, 2009

Bacteria... know what they're doing

So apparently bacteria function like organized criminals or the secret societies: quiet until they reach the required infiltration level to be sure an attack cannot be stopped and then they fully launch their attack. I like the thought that even single cell organisms outsmart humans at times.

January 25, 2009

Aging into God

When all else fails, God is left.

December 15, 2008

Piese instrumentale favorite - repostat

Dorin îmi propune o leapşă. Nu prea cred în asemenea chestii, dar te fac să scrii pe blog când n-ai nimic interesant de zis.

Deci piese instrumentale favorite, incredibil de greu de găsit:


Şi ar mai fi, dar îmi e foarte greu să găsesc preferinţele mele pe net. De obicei ascult şi îmi place ceva, ce aud odată, din întamplare, pe fundalul unui film, pe la radio, pe la alţii... şi apoi caut şi caut cine a cântat acele 3 sunete de mi-au atras atenţia :) Şi în cazurile fericite le găsesc.

Nu prea am clasică în top pentru că nu prea ascult clasică. E foarte multă muzică clasică ce îmi place, dar nu intră neapărat în favorite. Dar... îmi place la nebunie: mai întăi vioara (tristă sau jucăuşă, cum e ea) şi apoi pianul. Dar nu numai, sunt atâtea instrumente şi sunete superbe pe lumea asta şi de la atâtea civilizaţii şi culturi. De ex. Tan Dun - In the Chess Court. Deşi nu ştiu pe unde să o găsiţi.

December 10, 2008

Said in the '70s... to no effect?

We will see how very important it is to bring about, in the human mind, the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness. A crisis that cannot, anymore, accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. And, considering what the world is now, with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression, and so on… Man is still as he was. Is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive. And, he’s built a society along these lines.

J. Krishnamurti


Perhaps more than 30 years after these words were spoken I sent them to most of my friends in the form of a video. Some fell asleep on it in the first minute. Some didn't find the time for it, considering the demands of modern life. And in my opinion, all are cases of the omnipresent ADD of the modern man.

I (used to) enjoy sharing and discussing matters of the life. Yet now, my rare occasions of a discussion resembles web surfing. My conversation partner reads through my words and before I could finish my statement follows the links in a word. In less than a minute we're talking about completely different subjects. But just like web surfing, we both have the vague impression that somehow the conversation is still linked to the "home page" we've left of.

EDIT: Initially I didn't want to post the videos just to make it more entertaining to search and find it, for the easily distracted :-)



September 8, 2008

Farming


Farm·ing
a.

Pertaining to agriculture; devoted to, adapted to, or engaged in, farming; as, farming tools; farming land; a farming community.

Farm·ing
n.

The business of cultivating land.


Or so Webster's Dictionary says. I think I have a vague memory of that. But I am not sure. Think I might have met a farmer once, and he was doing exactly that, but it was early in my childhood and my memory wasn't well formed.


Farming is the killing of monsters for the purpose of gathering items, experience, gold, Faction, or promotion points and is considered to be one of the quickest and easiest ways to amass wealth.


Ah, now that sounds more familiar. You learn more about it here.

So yes, I do like playing video games and I happen to play Guild Wars, why that and not something else is besides the point (they're all the same). Now let's go back to the dictionary again:

game
n.

An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime: party games; word games.


So... who exactly was the sick mind behind the idea of "farming" in video games? I can imagine the following discussion in a team developing games:

"- Oh shit! We worked 5 years on this game and the test users finished it in 10 hours! What do we do? What do we do?"
" - Oh well... we can't provide new content, that would actually mean working to make the game interesting and exciting. And even if we did that for a month or two, we definitively don't want to do that for the next two years! I mean that would mean us really working on the thing!"
" - Yeah, but what to keep our players busy with while we monthly take money out of their accounts for doing nothing?"
" - Well... I know! We can make them like work!"
" - Work?"
" - Yeah, you know like when you have a daily job and you have to go mine for ore or something."
" - Hmmm... mine for ore. So we just put some ore mines here and there... oh I have an even greater idea make the mining succeed or fail randomly! I mean it's not like a real miner in a mine, though some of them were dying weren't they?"
" - Yeah, that's a great idea! If we make mining to give in return random items and the cool ones will be rare I bet players will just mine forever hoping to get the rare items. I mean you know hope dies last!"
" - Excellent! That should keep many busy, but how about those that don't like mining?"
" - Oh well... make them farm!"

Brilliant, just brilliant. From game "an activity providing entertainment or amusement" to "mining and farming". Brilliant I tell you. No one would ever want to farm or mine in RL (that is Real Life) but they would all do it online! As if the modern man has so much free time and his job is not "job" enough, so we need to give modern man another "job" for the spare time.




WTF? Really! WTF are you people doing? WTF are you gamers doing? Farming? And WTF are you game developers doing? Throwing work at people and *charging* them for working??? And making millions while at it?

I want a *game* I am *not* looking for a job! And I find mining and farming to be crappy jobs even if i was looking for one.

August 13, 2008

Încă un an!


Am mai îmbătrânit... acadicătelea.

Azi plănuiesc să dorm... dar mâine la muncă.

Mersi de urări tuturor.

PS: Până acu am frecat la un cuptor murdar (mă dor mâinile), că dacă încercam să fac ceva ieşea fum. Poate mai încolo reuşesc să şi coc ceva :) Hmm nu prea pare a fi ziua ideală...