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.

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 not going to talk about excuses about why you came late, why you didn’t do your homework, why you broke your promise, etc. These excuses are necessary, if you omit to explain why it happened, you will face unpleasant consequences (you will face unpleasant consequences anyway, but you can at least lower them by having a good excuse).

Then there is another type of excuse – an excuse no one is interested in. Why you scored bad on an IQ test: “126 but I got bored and quessed some of the later ones”, followed by: “oh and I had 20 min left at the end”, why you lost a tournament game (talking about go) against someone – I know a person who “has had a flu” everytime he loses against someone weaker.

As you can see, these excuses are unnecessary and they make the author seem like an… well, you choose what it seems like. ^^

Please, no one is interested in these excuses. You might be just lazy and/or not care about the IQ test at all. Fine, in that case you are happy with your suboptimal results. If you weren’t happy with them, you would have tried harder. (If you spotted the logical fallacy, you get one point. If you realised what I wanted to imply, you get ten points)

You might have made a blunder which cost you the game – in that case, feel free to point out that you lost the game by a blunder. But please, omit the unnecessary (and often imaginary) details about what led you to make that blunder. Or how huge advantage you maintained during the whole game (this applies even if you are a pro… being a pro doesn’t mean you can say you were winning by 30 points when in fact it was almost even and the situation was changing all the time… but sure, saying that you were winning big can improve your image and save your face (that is, if the game record is unavailable (ooops))).

And what is worst – I also make those unnecessary excuses that no one is interested in. So, while I usually don’t make any New Year’s resolutions, I will make a September the 16th resolution: no unnecessary excuses!

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. :-)

I write with my right hand.

I sleep on my left side.

I hold spoon in my right hand.

When I walk in a circle I always turn to the left.

When I walk next to someone, I prefer walking on the right side because I want to have the person on my left side.

When I walk alone, I prefer to walk so that there is something on my left.

When I listen to just one earphone, I put it in my left ear.

I chop wood with my right hand on the nearer the axe head.

I saw with my right hand.

I play floorball with my left hand near the blade.

When using a knife, I hold it in my right hand.

I hold mouse in my right hand.

When writing on a keyboard I use my left hand for about 65% of keypresses.

When swimming crawl, I always breathe on the left side.

When putting leg over leg, the left one is on top.

When putting my hands as if to pray and bending the fingers (is there one word for this?), I always end up with my left thumb on the top. Doing it the other way requires a lot of concentration and then it feels very unnatural and alien.

When crossing hands, the right one is on top.
When using a telescope, I look with my right eye.

I hold the shower head in my left hand and use the right hand to handle the soap or shampoo.

I hold the phone in my left hand (this might be so that I can write something down using my right hand when calling, but I hold the phone in my left hand even in the middle of the woods with nothing to write on).

Am I weird to even think about this? Is it strange that I use right hand for actually doing most of the stuff but the left side somehow feels more special (leg over leg, earphone, walking next to someone)?

To continue my previous post about films…

A Fish Called Wanda, 1988, 8/10: It’s a comedy, a reasonably good one too. Undeniably Pythonesque.

A Hard Day’s Night, 1964, 7/10: Something between a comedy and a documentary. Maybe documenting a comedy.

Citizen Kane, 1941, 10/10: Classic, well worth watching (some people said that they expected too much and were disappointed afterwards; well, I don’t expect anything anymore (I still remember “expecting” before watching Pulp Fiction, no thank you), so I was more than satisfied).

Sling Blade, 1996, 10/10: Absolutely stunning film, wonderful atmosphere, great plot, and fitting end.

Black Cat, White Cat, 1998, 7/10: Romantic village comedy… a bit too many characters, but otherwise ok.

Taxi Driver, 1976, 3/10: The main problem here was that I couldn’t associate myself with the hero at all. After a while, I started actively hating him. It got a bit better when he had a good chance to bang a 12 year old girl and chose not to do so. The four points are solely for the ending, which was rather good (but the ordeal of the first three quarters of the film is not really worth it, me thinks).

Seven Samurai, 1954, 9/10: Great movie, many interesting ideas and good points. Moreover, the ending was just marvelous.

You can expect more posts like this, I guess… :)

Helium Vola is a German Darkwave or “Electro-Medieval” band, at least that is what wikipedia says. But the article is a stub and there isn’t much more info. There is a bit more on last.fm, but nothing special. Amazons has a few good comments on the album.

After searching for half an hour or so, I even managed to find Helium Vola lyrics. This page has no pagerank and I am not sure anymore how I found it, anyway, I am pretty sure it’s about the only page with complete Helium Vola lyrics (as you will see if you search for snippets of the text). Quite funny that the main page of something as wonderful as Lyriki (they have shitloads of lyrics and no ads whatsoever, as opposed to all the lyrics sites which are virtually cluttered by ads) has only PageRank 2. Gotta share some google love…

And now for something completely different: my impressions. My first most favourite song was of course…

Omnis Mundi Creatura

Omnis mundi creatura
quasi liber et pictura
nobis est in speculum.
Omnis mundi creatura
quasi liber et pictura
nobis est in speculum.

Nostrae vitae, nostrae mortis
nostri status, nostrae sortis
fidele signaculum.

This is not the full lyrics, just a highlight… The melody is very catchy but it can get on your brain a bit after a while…

Les Habitants Du Soleil

Les habitants du soleil jettent sur nous un regard impassible
Nous appartenons définitivement á la Terre
Et nous y pourrirons, mon amour impossible
Jamais nos corps meurtris ne deviendront lumière

I completely love the atmosphere of the “sun inhabitants”, especially the male voice “nous apartenons definitivement a la terre” contrasted with the female voice… extatic.

Je Chante Par Couverture

Je chante par couverture
Mais mieulx plourassent mi oeil
Ne nul ne scet le traveil
Que mon pouvre cuer endure

Very captivating song, repeating the title over and over, yet it never gets boring. :-)

Next great song is Do Tagte Ez, however, it’d be a bit difficult to pick up part of the lyrics (it has no refrain), definitely the most “magical” song of the entire album (where most of the songs are rather magical). And I can’t omit mentioning Selig, which is the last song of the album, and has an extremely catchy and merry melody.

And in case you are now wondering how comes that some lyrics are Latin, some French, and some German… all the lyrics from Helium Vola are based on various medieval texts (feel free to google them to find out more).

This post is not about math, it is about how I perceive the world.

I know, fourth dimension is easy, for example you can easily create vector v=(1, 2, 3, 4) … but somehow, this is just numbers and tricks, I can’t really feel the fourth dimension. I recently had some free time to think about random stuff, and, well, I thought about this:

Let’s start with: 1 = x² + y². As we all know, this equation draws a circle.

The next step consists of substituting the one for another variable: z = x² + y². Now we get one more dimension. Although it might not be completely clear on the first sight, this is paraboloid. If we assume z is a variable that we can set to anything we want, different values of z create different circles (z is the height at which we cut the paraboloid to get that particular circle).

We had a circle already, so let’s bring the circle to the third dimension and make a sphere: 1 = x² + y² + z²

Now, what do we get when we make the transformation we made in the first step – substituting the one for yet another variable?

w = x² + y² + z²

I don’t know about you, but I can finally feel the fourth dimension within my reach. ;-)

While I don’t know what exactly this “w = x² + y² + z²” looks like (neither know what it is called, for that matter), I can see that there is precisly the same relation – the same way circle is one “slice” of paraboloid, sphere is one “slice” of w = x² + y² + z² (for some concrete set value of w).