tasuki’s blog

What does your religion mean for you? Do you think that other religions are wrong?

I am a satanist. More exactly, philosophical satanist (read it through before arguing please). No, it doesn’t mean that I eat children and listen to heavy metal (though sometimes I do, but now I am listening to Enya and it doesn’t make me any less Satanist ). I also do not believe in any rituals, I just find them boring.

Satamism, as I understand it, is about harmony with nature. Concerning people, you should be nice to the ones that are nice to you, simply because it is profitable for you. On the other hand, if someone gets in your way and is not nice to you, you have no reason to be nice to him either (and no Christian I know of is nice to people who are not nice to him/her, it is just that Christians are waaaaay too hypocritical). When you are going to harm someone, you should be completely sure you won’t regret it, and if it’s so, then just go on.

Satanism also has a bit different approach to sins than most other religions (though satamism doesn’t even seem to me like a religion, more like anti-religion as there is no god, satamism is a philosophy). If it makes you feel good it is not a sin (that is, if you do not harm other people in the process, you should be careful about that).

Also, in satanism, you are your own god. Satanism makes you more yourself as opposed to Christianism that only makes you more hypocritical (I spent 13 years of my life in Christian schools, I know what I am talking about (hello to all my Christian friends who are rather normal despite their religion), btw did you know that Christians (especially their inquisition) murdered and tortured many more people than Islamists?).
Well, that’s about it, I am open to discussion.

Me: “2+3=5″
Stupid: “No, that is not true, 1+1=2″
Others: “Hmmm, Stupid is correct, 1+1=2 … tasuki, you should accept that!”
Me: “Well, duh, of course 1+1=2, but that has nothing to do with 2+3=5″
Others: “tasuki should really calm down as it is completely clear that we are correct and 1+1=2″
Stupid: “See? I said it from the beginning that 1+1=2″
*tasuki gives up*

I really don’t know why so many people use arguments that are true, but completely irrelevant to the matter. I already met dozens of people in my life who usually argue this way. I find it really annoying and I am perplexed that they can be sooo utterly stupid. Guess I should follow the saying: “Never argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and then beat you with years of experience”.

Which way to go for creating a poker bot: neural networks, fuzzy logic, bayesian filters? Or try a combination thereof?

Motivational links:
Slashdot | Artificial Intelligence in Poker
Slashdot | Online Poker Bots Problematic?
Slashdot | $100,000 Poker Bot Tournament
MSNBC: Poker bots raking Online pots
Wired: In the internet, nobody knows you are a bot (highly sugested)

Informational links:
Poki Poker (very succesful one)
Intelligent poker player (scroll down for a great image)
Aaron’s poker bot resources
University of Alberta computer poker reasearch group
Opponent modeling in poker

If you use firefox or opera, just middle click on the links and they will open in new tabs, if you use internet exploder, well, good luck managing all the windows…

It feels a bit weird to ask for a discussion again, as there was no response when I tried it, but hey — I will do it again: feel free to discuss and add your opinions in the comments.

Here it is, in my very own room.

It’s a floor goban made of the highest quality wood known as kaya. The stones are made of slate and shells.

It cost 10 000€, which I find quite expensive, might as well be the best goban in the whole Europe. Now I should say that it is not mine, it belongs to “Moravian go players” and it is in my room only temporarily (so if you plan on stealing it you will have to hurry (and I have to warn you that it is damn heavy)).

I fell in love with it instantly, it’s most delightful to play on it (or replay and study games), the sound of stones being put on the surface is gentle, not the usual awful cracky one you experience with thin and hard gobans.

Canada? Civilized country, right?

Hmmm, not so sure… Do you know about Canadian seal hunts? It really makes one wonder…

Keo pointed me to a page that has extensive information about first video game. The game was made in 1958 and played on oscilloscope, which I find utterly hilarious (playing videogames is one of the few things I surely wouldn’t use oscilloscope for ).

There is also a 2 minute video, which is worth watching even if you are too lazy to read the text (and you are too lazy, I know my readership ).

Some people think that I “understand computers”, which in their mind somehow implies that I will be able to solve their Micro$hit Windoze ™ problems ™. They know that I use linux and that I hate Windows ™, but that doesn’t stop them from asking me various questions about how to solve their various Windows problems (ranging from networking problems (I only know that ifconfig is called ipconfig in windows and that’s about it), through undeleting their deleted files, to questions about obscure things concerning Word and Excel).

It is completely beyond me why they think I will be able to help them (and that I will actually want to ). Go and ask Bill Gates, he is responsible for your Windows related problems…

Well, I once posted some optical illusions, and now I found a site that has them all. Yup, pretty much all the optical illusions that are, they are about 60.

Humm, it would be probably useless to write more shit^H^H^H^Hstuff here, so I will just send you to the optical illusions page.

As a side note, I feel really exhausted now, not sure why, haven’t done anything tiring today and it is only eleven o’clock…

I’ve played DVONN (which is a game from the GIPF project) once in Prague’s board games club called Paluba. Now I started to play DVONN on littlegolem (no link needed for regular readers, right? ) and I found myself in trouble after noticing that I play it despite not even remembering the rules exactly.

Well, now I am trying to fill the gap, and I found out one interesting thing – my brain probably consists of a neural network because I was able to mimic my opponents’ strategy even without knowing the rules… Now you might think that I spend my time talking about banalities, but have you thought about it thoroughly? I mean, I have no idea how neural networks really work although I’ve been trying to understand it, I have no idea how my own fscking brain works.
On a more positive note, my and your (however dumb ) brain is still a wonderful thing capable of solving very difficult tasks. Congratulations!

I guess I’d better go to sleep already… (by the way… why is this post called DVONN?)

They built a bus stop just in front of our house. It is only used by night buses, which none of our family uses much, so it is pretty useless for us. The bus goes up the hill so as it accelerates it makes a horrible noise.

Now to get to the main point — there are english speaking (or more like english shouting ) students waiting for the bus almost every hour from 10 in the evening till 1 at night, and most of my relatives want to sleep by then.

I was sent to talk with the students (who are often a bit drunk already) and found out they were coming from Vinařská campus. They have one bus stop that is closer and down the hill (as opposed to the one by our house which is up the hill for them). Some of them didn’t know about it and some just said they were used to coming all the way up the hill to our bus stop. So now I go there every night almost every hour to give them little papers that contain a map showing the closer station and I explain them how efficient it will be for them to go there next time they want to get to the city.
One really surprising thing is that these are only foreign students (and I met several 5-30 people groups), some of them are apparently French (yeah, all the French people speak English in their own French way), but they are probably from all the different countries because else they would just speak French.

And the point of all this? … You were expecting a point, huh?