tasuki’s blog

Friday: I couldn’t sleep well, sweating and waking up all the time. In the morning I didn’t feel any better plus I had a horrible headache. After measuring my temperature and finding out it was slightly over 38˚C, I knew I had a problem. A big problem.

Decisions, decisions… First thing, I’m not going to go to work, that is completely out of question with my head spinning at about 180 rotations per minute. The big decision was whether to take vacations or become officially ill. If I became officially ill, I obviously couldn’t go to France in the afternoon. So I decided to risk it, called my boss, explained the situation and asked him whether I could take Friday off. He wasn’t too happy but he actually didn’t have much of a choice…

Then I slept for few hours and after that went to visit the doctor. After explaining my symptoms, I got the expected “no way you are leaving anywhere today” response. I let her know that I’d really really like to go there, and after some tests (urine, blood, etc.), none of which ended up well, she concluded that maybe I could try it.

Off to buy Paralen and Smecta. Temperature jumping back and forth between 37 and 38˚C. Funny how it was completely in sync with my headache.

After getting diarrhoea, drinking smecta (I bet I could get some clay way cheaper than this) and sleeping through the whole afternoon, I was facing a decision: should I stay home, get healthy in three days and regret it for the rest of the week, or should I leave and die far from home? Opposed to advice from almost everyone, I decided to leave.

Those 24 hours in the bus weren’t so bad, I just kind of sat there and waited. Both high temperature and headache were practically gone, all I was left with was a diarrhoea. And smecta for the rescue (it really tastes like mud). I think I ate about one roll during the journey.

We arrived at Tignes a bit earlier than planned, so we had some time to just enjoy the sunny weather and look around the town/village.

Sunday morning was rather sunny. There were ~30 centimeters of fresh snow, which was, uh oh… very nice… at least for those who were able to ski in it somehow. As for me, I never was any good at skiing in deep snow. I think I fell about 4 times. Moreover, stale rolls + smecta did not exactly give me much strength to fight all that snow. Luckily, the weather got substantially worse in the afternoon, so I just stayed home and slept through it all.

I don’t remember much of Monday, except stale rolls, smecta, and bad weather. I slept through the morning and only went skiing in the afternoon, but I don’t recall the details too well.

Tuesday was the turning point: The diarrhoea stopped (well, almost), I tried some new food like rice and even had two squares of chocolate. Weather was perfect, there was no new snow (ie. the pistes were groomed) so we went exploring the surroundings.

You might want to consult the map, as I’m going to present some otherwise rather boring names:

After skiing on Tichot for over an hour, while my sister was getting her snowboard repaired, we went up from Val Claret through Tichot and Col du Palet to L’Aiguille Percee (2748), then went through Sache piste all the way down to Tignes les Brevieres (1550). Over 1km vertically down in one go. It was very nice and there was plenty of nature around, so we had a nice lunch in the forest. Then we returned to Tignes 2100. As there was still a lot of time left till the evening, we went over Toviere (2704) down to La Daille (1785) and then by “funiculaire” up to Rocher de Bellevarde (2827).

Wednesday was also great. The weather was excellent, so we headed straight over Col de Fresse and Rocher de Bellevarde to Val d’Isere (1850). Then up to Solaise (2560) and down to Le Laisinant. From there to the fifth (!) and (as we thought) last valley. There we went down to Le Fornet (1930) where we had lunch (mmm, cheese). “Signal” was possibly the steepest red slope I’ve ever seen. We were rather surprised that Glacier de Pissaillas and the slopes on it were in yet another valley, it certainly didn’t look so on the map. And boy it was cold in there. So, after going Cascades once, we headed back using Leissieres Express, which is a silly chairlift that takes you up on one side of the hill and down on the other. Alas, it was the only way to get back. We returned in basically the same way from here (Solaise, Val d’Isere, Rocher de Bellevarde, Col de Fresse). As there was still some time left, we went to funiculaire Grande Motte, and then to the huge cabin (they call it “cable car” in English, but I don’t think that describes it well, “fucking huge cabine” describes it much better, imho). At 3456m, this was the highest point we reached in Tignes.

The weather worsened significantly on Thursday. We spent the morning on Lanches, with the occasional funiculaire not to get bored. As the weather was so-so, we lunched back in our appartment. After the lunch we went to Tignes 2100, where we spent the rest of the day.

Friday morning, clouds and fog everywhere. Plus 20cm of fresh snow and still snowing. First few rides were an ordeal, I tried skiing the way I’m used to (long turns accross the whole piste, mostly carving, sliding slightly on steep slopes to keep the speed under control). After getting no answer from my dad, I watched others and noticed most of the people who seemed in control of the situation were doing very short turns. I think it almost trippled my speed when I discovered (almost simultaneously) two very important things about skiing in deep snow:

• It is vital to only have your weight on one leg at a time (I used to be very precise about this, but with carving I kind of forgot, since there it is not very important). If possible, try to have the other leg high enough not to get it stuck somewhere.
• To greatly increase your stability, you should try to move your body in a constant direction at a constant speed. Make extremely short “turns” just with your legs. These slow you down considerably, while constant direction and constant speed of your body provide perfect stability.

Actually I didn’t fall at all on Friday, which is very good considering the zero visibility and huge amounts of snow (which got irregularly scattered during the day). There were many (dozens) cases where I almost fell down, but always somehow miraculously prevailed.

We spent the afternoon on Bollin and Tichot, as all the other lifts were closed.

The journey back home took a bit longer (slightly over 24 hours) as we got stuck in a traffic jam, but otherwise it went ok.

All in all, it was a great week, I further improved my carving skillz, and I finally learned to ski in deep snow.

I think I have a drinking problem.

During all of my life, it was enough for me to drink 4-5 glasses (slightly over a liter) a day. I was never thirsty and often had to force myself to even drink at all.

Recently, this has changed tremendously — I drink over 4 liters a day. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I drink water almost exclusively. I used to drink a lot of sweet carbonated water, but now I can’t stand it. It leaves a very annoying aftertaste (funnily, I used to think exactly that about pure water). I am not sure when I started drinking water so much, but I think it was around last summer. I usually drink just tap water, and at work there are big canisters with water kind of similar to tap water.

*Think think think… There must be some kind of a point at the end… Or just something…*

Does anyone have any idea what could have been the cause of such a dramatic change in the amount of water (or liquid, if you prefer) I drink daily?

A year ago I predicted that 2007 would be better than 2006, and indeed — it was.

And I have plenty of reasons to believe that 2008 is gonna be even better.

Today I went skiing, and it was grrreat. The slope was not steep at all, but carving skiing makes it plenty of fun even without steep slope. And without poles (pun fully intended ) it’s even better.

Also, I think I’ve become happy. At least during the past few months I’ve been feeling happier than ever (it’s not as intense as sometimes, but instead it’s a very, very persistent happiness). And I don’t think it happened by chance. I concentrate on my happiness a lot. For example, I eat about 1/3 of an extremely dark chocolate (”Wawel” chocolate, 90% cocoa, made by Poles (see, Poles can be useful, after all )) during each workday. Also, I’m going to take a really hot shower right now, and then I’m gonna get close to 8 hours of sleep (gosh, I’m almost envious… ).

Happy new year!

I’m mildly paranoid — and fully aware of it.

For example, when leaving a windowless room with the lightswitch inside (typically a bathroom) and entering a lighted corridor/passage/room/whatever I always switch the light off before opening the door. Why? Well, if there was anyone out there out to get me, this could give me a considerable edge. First, I wouldn’t be occupied with switching the light off, and more importantly, you always want to be in the dark with the other person out there in the lighted area.

I’m also slightly paranoid in other ways, but it’s not as funny as the above example and I don’t want to tell because you guys would abuse the knowledge to poke fun at me.

No, not another Pink Floyd post…

It happened that I changed schools again. Faculty of business management at vutbr was real crap (so crap I’m not even giving them a link). Easily the worst school I’ve ever seen. While I think that educashion is very important, I’m not a fan of schooling. One can educate (or should that be “educash”?) oneself watching google’s educashional videos (thanks to keo for pointing it out), reading books (some of which are even available online, like SICP), or listening to podcasts (I’m not really into that, though).

Currently, I study cca 8 hours a day and I’m learning a lot. Although it consists mostly of selfstudy, if I face a hard problem that I can’t solve or just get stuck, there are teachers to help me. Also, there’s free water and they even pay me money for studying there. All in all, can’t complain.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I’d something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

Probably my favourite Pink Floyd song. The lyrics are slightly related to certain events that happened in my life recently.

While I didn’t have any spectacular results recently, my results were stable and I reached my all time high GoR of 2454 (I came close to 2450 several times but never actually reached it).

What a pity I don’t live in Poland, I could already boast (undeserved) 5d rank.

To sum up my go career so far, I reached 2d after two years, then 3d in under a year and then 4d in a year and a half. I’ve been stuck there for almost 3 years now and I don’t see it changing anytime soon (partly because I just don’t want to sacrifice my life to go). Sigh.

I am now officially a registered vim user.

There are several reasons:

I greatly admire Bram Moolenaar, the creator of vim and founder of ICCF Holland. Bram sends all the vim registration fees to Uganda to help local children.

I can now vote on vim feature requests.

And last but not least – I had some money stuck in paypal (it is stuck basically because paypal is stupid). If you need to pay something by paypal, you can send me the money by bank transfer (or simply give it to me) and I’ll pay it for you.

You might have seen my crazy ticket folding gallery.

Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Here are some of the latest, greatest and bestest tickets:

This ticket is currently my favourite, but you’d have to see it as a whole to really appreciate it, seeing from just one direction simply isn’t enough.

Another view of the previous one, a bit of a rear view.

The part that you can see in the upper left gave me a lot of headache, and the more I try to do something reasonable with it, the worse it gets (the one thing that you should avoid when folding is making folds which tend to erase each other (ie. as you fold one the other unfolds and vice versa, that is exactly the situation in upper left))

This one has a lot of straight lines, but I still love it, the upper left contains one fold that shouldn’t have been there, but it can’t be really seen from this side )

A very artificial one, cascading round folds (extremely difficult to do well, I succeeded here, although the pic might be a bit too small to see it properly.

Totally baroque ticket. It’s getting a bit old and I am afraid it will soon fall apart. Again, it has many features that need to be seen (and touched!) irl.

An artificial experiment that turned out very well. There is an annoying straight fold between the cascades which shouldn’t have been there.

The same, a bit less artistical lightning which allows a better view of the actual ticket.

Pure round fold. If you think that those tickets are easy to fold, try this. I made this one exclusively for the photo (I fold most of tickets just for the sake of folding, therefore they are rarely suitable for photos).

This is on the other end of the scale – 100% natural. I found it in the trash one day, crumpled and abandoned. Of course I saved it, removed some folds that needed removing and improved the good ones (and added a few of my own). I very much like it. It’s not very suitable for a photo though.

Round folds, one inside another. Quite photographable.

Wrapped up in itself – prolly needs to be seen irl to appreciate.

This is a rather big ticket (some 10×12cm) from Poland. Recently I added the leftmost fold (the one which can barely be seen), not a good idea, it disrupts the lower fold (as you can see).

Testing the boundaries.

Tight round fold, a bit tricky to keep it round, these tend to sharpen.

Just some cascades.

Am I crazy? Well yes, sure.

PS: Hello WordPress, could you fucking stop touching my html? Many thanks.

UPDATE: The photos are now clickable (use the middle mouse button in firefox to open in new tab).

KGS was founded in 2000 by William Shubert.

The first Czech on KGS was probably makov (registered on 3.9.2000).

I registered on 2.12.2001, I’m not sure how I got to know KGS, but I think I was told by makov.

I have no idea when I founded “Český pokoj” (the Czech room). It was probably later than in 2001 and definitely earlier than 2004. But all else remains unknown… I am not even sure who were the first people in it. If anyone knows the details, tell me!
I became owner of the rengo room around the end of 2003
The next big thing was summer 2004 – Czech version of CGoban (translated by me). That’s also how I became an admin (actually there was one more reason for me to became an admin – several of my friends were already admins).

I spend a great deal of time chatting and idling on KGS, I have many friends there (most of whom I’ve met in real life), but also many that I only know online.

This must have been a boring post for you (at least it was rather short), but it was very enjoyable for me.