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.

As some of you might have noticed, I’ve been writing this blog in English exclusively. My “official reason” was for it to be accessible to more people. While I’m happy that more people can read my blog, it certainly wasn’t the main force behind my decision.

I spent my highschool days writing papers in Czech, and I always found it very difficult. For some reason, it never felt comfortable. Although Czech is my native language and I’m certainly much more proficient at it than at English, I definitely prefer English for writing any kind of prose (haven’t tried poetry yet ;)). I am not sure why I prefer English, but I think the language just suits my style of thinking better. The idioms are also quite different, and I like the English ones better.

Writing in English is a joy for me, while writing in Czech is a nightmare. Isn’t that enough of a reason?

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. ;)

It all started about a year ago, at a go tournament in Blansko, where I played a game called “fujtajblíci”. I enjoyed it a lot, so I thought I could create online version. But as you might know, it is quite a huge leap from thinking about doing something to actually doing it.

Anyway, now I really couldn’t resist anymore… And I thought “fujtajblíci” might be a bit difficult for a lot of people to pronounce or remember, so I rewrote the name as “fuytayblees” (insert fanfares here).

There’s much more info (including the rules, for real) at the fuytayblees site itself, so just visit it, register and start playing. ;-)

After a more or less forced break last year, I didn’t think I’d play the championship this year either. I played just one qualification tournament, and I messed it up. But somehow, many people couldn’t (or didn’t want to) play, so I ended up playing.

First two rounds were reasonably easy wins, but the third round against fido was a disaster. I messed up several times in the opening, then had a dying group, and even when I miraculously escaped, it was still an even game. In the end I got a lucky win. But that was about to be the end of my good luck…

On Thursday, I had two not too strong opponents and was determined to win both games. The first game was a bit strange, with nothing really happening for a very very long time, but it got interesting in the endgame. Well, there I made a horrible blunder which cost me about 4-5 points, and finally lost the game by half a point.

The second Thursday game looked more promising, as my opponent made a very silly mistake. But I was impatient and so I gave him a chance to catch up. Then I messed it up several times, among those giving up about a 30 point group which could have lived through a ko (or where I could have got at least 6 points in sente endgame), and – surprise – lost the game by half a point. After losing both games by half a point, I was just aimlessly wandering through the dark and cold streets, angry and subdued.

On Friday I played against Vladimir Danek, who is the only strong Czech player whom I haven’t beaten yet (though I had some close results against him). The game didn’t start well for me, but during the middle game an enormous fight emerged. Basically all the groups on both sides were simultaneously dying. I somehow came ahead of this fight, but then missed a rather easy tsumego, and lost by about 10 points. Anyway, it was a cool game and I enjoyed it a lot. In the afternoon we went to a swimming pool, which was a neat break from all those go games. And we had a party with lots of food and wine in the evening.

Saturday morning I played against Jan Hora, the game started very well for me, but then I made a totally insane invasion, which I also managed to missplay, so the game ended rather quickly. After this I was already almost giving up, I had two more difficult opponents and considered it rather probable that I’ll get no more points. However, afternoon game brought a nice surprise as Radek Nechanicky managed to attack his own group, moreover in a way which helped my huge potential to become a solid territory. After his magic endgame (I was rather scared because I saw I was winning) I survived by 1.5 points.

This result gave me the necessary willpower to come to the last game against Jan Simara with the intention to win it. After making a very bad mistake in order, which killed my own group, my opponent was generous enough to make a blunder of his own, which practically undoed my blunder. After that, the game was still a bit worse for me, but he made several inaccurate plays, which cost him the game.

So in the end I got the 4th place, which is quite ok.

And btw, you can download all the games (the page is in czech but if you search for my name, you’ll find my games easily).

Seriously, what would you think about a language that is weakly typed and uses the same operator for concatenation and addition?

I think it’s insane.

Well, so much for my first encounter with JavaScript. And although I encountered way more problems (most of which were caused by my own stupidity, as usual), the fact that the plus sign (aka +) either adds or concatenates (based possibly on the current mood of the interpreter) struck me as the ultimate wtf.

Luckily, parseInt() comes to save the day. But still, why not rather use some other operator? I don’t really care which… just anything else, mmkay?

I am getting pretty sick of KGS. It’s been bothering me for several months already.

Most admins don’t care about the users at all. What’s worse, I’m starting to be like that too. I simply follow the rules: “leave me alone, we don’t deal with escapers, the system does it automatically”. Which is true only partially. As of now, the escaper system is still fucked up. Sometimes people forfeit after getting disconnected from just one game. Also, the escaper system is inherently flawed because it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do — it doesn’t protect users with bad connection from losing games. Au contraire — after they reach the critical amount of escapes (quite a lot of people will not continue the game because they are assholes and know that their opponent was marked as escaper), they lose every single game as soon as they get disconnected. If there was a simple five or ten minute limit for them to return, sometimes they would lose, but not nearly as often. Come on, they lose on time very often anyway! Plus the limit would take care of all the escapers.

But wms thinks that people should not be forced to finish their games (like when you are playing against someone who is obnoxious). This is in contradiction with the “rated games are supposed to be serious” policy. I’ll be much more angry when someone refuses to finish the game than when they are obnoxious (what does that mean, anyway? if they break the ToS, the should get banned, if they don’t, someone is just oversensitive here).
Many users complain about escapers, yet most of the admins think that there is no problem (there’s reasonable amount of freedom on kgs, but you are not allowed to talk about escapers in EGR, for example).

Look at the rating system, it is mathematically sound, but it sucks. And users know this. Still, the administration is unable to accept it. Now it sucks a bit less then it used to, but it still does: when people play too many games, they get stuck. Then they can win as much as they want and will not improve their rank. Or it will take half a year. A simple Elo-based system would perform much better. It would make it easier to change your rank, you wouldn’t get stuck, and it would be much more transparent. Users want transparency, not some insane maximum statistical likelihood function over last half a year of your performance.

The KGS server manager is rarely on with admin nick, usually just uses an alternate (secret) account. You know why? … Doesn’t want to be bothered by users… (did I mention that admins don’t care?)

Few months ago, a user reported someone heavily abusing him. No senior admin was online at the time. So I decided to use a senior admin account which I got access to because of some KGS+ lectures. I snooped the chat and wrote a reason “tasuki snooping based on user complaint”, so as to make it all transparent. I just tried to help. But I was scolded and told not to do that again under any circumstances.

Recently I (ab)used a bug which enables all admins to make permanent rooms. Yes, I know the rules for room creation, and it was a reasonable room (co-owned by Fan Hui). As no senior admin was online (only the server manager with alternate account, not to be bothered, as usual), I used the trick to make the room permanent. I was told not to do it again.

I haven’t done anything wrong, I was using tricks (which I am not officially supposed to do to) to help users and do the work of senior admins (while they keep hiding behind their alternate accouts, not to be bothered). Yet I get scolded for trying to help. And when some other admins seriously fuck up, nothing happens. Sure, we all make mistakes, but it is necessary to accept and correct them, if possible.

Unfair banning happens, but I think it’s not such a serious issue. It’s at most 48 hours, which doesn’t really harm the user too much. Still it sucks when people get banned for “offtopic chatting” or just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Much worse thing is unfair deranking. That is very harming to the user, he practically loses the account. Users often get emotionally attached to their account, so this is perhaps the hardest punishment. However, these fuckups (usually caused by someone deranking just based on same ip or without checking the games at all) usually get corrected after a complaint. Not always, though.

There is one more thing, unnecessary deranking. The official policy (aka wms) says “deranking is not a punishment, deranking serves to protect the rating system”. Well, if one established user plays against himself to get 9d to be able to brag to friends, sure, the 9d needs to be deranked to preserve consistency of the ranking system. But deranking the other account might not be necessary. This was not a repeat offender, he did not lie, he admitted it and said he’s done it just for fun, and added that he didn’t want to use that account to play against other players so as not to damage the rating system. I see no reason to keep both accounts deranked, yet that seems to be what most admins support (or they just don’t care, as usual).

And there has been at least one occasion when an admin was unable to accept his mistake and very persistently and repeatedly kept on harming an obviously innocent user, although he was told by other admins not to do it. Punishment for this admin? None.

There are more skeletons in the KGS closet, I think I could write a book on the topic…

KGS has one very important thing though — amazing user community. Users who care and who try to help (although most are ignored ;)).

Still, currently there is no overally better server than KGS, so we somehow have to live with it. And if you avoid EGR and play no serious games, you will probably be able to avoid most of the potential troubles.

Recently, Merlijn lent me The God Delusion, a book written by Richard Dawkins. He urged me to read it, but I thought that as an agnostic or weak atheist, I will not be very influenced by reading it. Now I can see how deeply mistaken I was. So, big thanks to Merlijn.

// Side note: While I do not believe in a “personal god” (who reads our minds, knows everything, and crap like that), I think that we can’t completely reject the possibility of a being outside of our universe that created it (and watches it evolve). But if that was the case, it seems very likely that this relationship is recursive, i.e. there are other beings on the same level as this one and there is a being above (and so on, imagine a tree structure). But it seems rather unlikely and artificial as well as purely philosophical (= blabber about something we have no evidence for and aren’t ever likely to have it). //

The God Delusion primarily contains a lot of answers to various questions. Answers, some of which I vaguely felt, but which weren’t clear before.

Sadly I’ve already returned the book, so I can’t quote, but I’d at least like to paraphrase few things that I found interesting:

“We are all atheists, some of us just go few gods further than others.” This is wonderful: funny yet it tells a very important message.

“What impresses me about Catholic mythology is partly its tasteless kitsch but mostly the airy nonchalance with which these people make up the details as they go.” Which continues by pointing out how Pope John Paul II credited some particular saint with guiding bullets during the assasination attempt so that he would survive. WTF?

Dawkins also explains why religion is harmful to society. As I have spent more than 10 years in Catholic schools, I was obviously exposed to several biases and incorrect views (and sometimes even lies, I guess). My math teacher told us very passionately how most scientists believe in God, because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to cope with such complex things as infinity. It didn’t look like a very good reason, but I failed to investigate the facts back then (hey, teachers are supposed to be right). In fact there are much less religious people among scientists than among non-scientists (it isn’t so surprising anymore, now that I think about it). I feel deceived and abused by religion, because I was fed various nonsense by teachers during their task to convert me.

I highly suggest watching Dawkins’ two part documentary on religion:

• The Root of All Evil? 1: The God Delusion
• The Root of All Evil? 2: The Virus of Faith

This documentary is basically a substantially shortened version of The God Delusion (the book), and while not exhaustive, it at least addresses some of the important points. However, I would like you to read the book, as it covers the topic in a much more thourough way.

[Although I don’t currently own the book, I will try to get it (not as easy as you might think) so that I can lend it to my friends (afaik there’s no czech version available, so if you’re czech, you’ll also practice english, which can’t be bad for you).]

Let’s end this post with a question: Why won’t God heal amputees?
That’s a very serious case of discrimination from God’s side, if you ask me…

Thanks to Orwen who notified me (crap, I just reread the email and noticed that the part “I’m not going to be there because I have lectures at the time” was not written by him but quoted because of forwarding, and that he asked me if I was going to be there) I attended a presentation by Google’s VP of engineering Douglas Merrill called “Secrets of search”.

First thing that I noticed was VUT’s incompetence (not too much of a surprise) – they thought that a rather small room (for cca 200 people) was enough for presentation of someone important from Google. Turns out it was not. So it was a bit difficult to fit in even though I came 10 minutes earlier.

Douglas had about an hour long talk about how Google works. While I already knew most of the things (as did everyone else in the room), I wasn’t bored at all as Douglas was extremely entertaining. I think there’ll be a video of the whole event, so you can watch it (I’ll put the link in here as soon as I find it).

Douglas’ personal blog is surprising in several ways. First thing that struck me was pagerank 2. Anyone who has anything to do with Google has blog with pagerank about 7-9, two is ridiculously low. Second thing was almost total absence of computer related stuff. And the third thing that struck me was how personal things Douglas shares on his blog. This is easily by far the most sincere blog I have ever seen.

Well, as I was leaving the presentation, they were giving out very nice black t-shirts with Google logo… I was near the end of the crowd, and they ran out of shirts just about three people before me. Bad luck. Or not – I got a Google pencil.