Actually, I ain’t. I’m more of an agnostic. But it’s a cool quote from Luis Buñuel.

Here, let’s throw a couple random links:

• An atheist at Virginia Tech (if you have no time to read all the links, read just this one)
  
• Douglas Adams: Radical Atheist (look at the responses too)
• Atheism (quite a popular video on youtube)
• A few interesting quotes from Adolf Hitler
• More on Adolf Hitler
  
• The Murder of Larry Hooper
• Atheist’s Wager (most wars are fought because of religion)
• Religion on Wikiquote (if you scroll down, there are links to further related pages)

Flame me.

I want to have some real Hex and TwixT boards, so I’ve been playing around with PostScript a bit.

I found Larry Doolittle’s Hex board and started editing it without knowing almost anything about PostScript. The results were – you guessed it – disastrous. PostScript is not really intuitive language (for me, at least). But then I found a great PostScript tutorial, which helped me immensely.

First I edited Larry’s Hex board – I added black outline to two opposite sides (for the sides not to get confused), and scaled and rotated the 13x13 board (which is littlegolem standard, therefore defacto universal standard) so that it’s playable with normal sized go stones and fits on A3 sized paper (I am very happy that it fits). You can download my 13x13 hex board on A3 for use with go stones.

The next thing I needed was a TwixT board. This time I only found a pdf, which was exactly not what I wanted. So, with a lot more help of the PostScript tutorial mentioned earlier, I created a PostScript TwixT board.

I made it to be highly customizable, you can find parameters on lines 10 to 21. You can easily change size of the board (the number of holes), the space between holes, holesize, color of holes, filling of holes, color of the guiding lines (or whatever they are called, you know, those lines that help you choose the right move ;-)), width and color of the border, basic line width, and finally horizontal and vertical offset. I sincerely think all those settings could be quite useful to anyone who wants to print a customized TwixT board.

I agree that the code is not really great (I stay true to the “it was difficult to write, so it should be difficult to read” principle), but it works and I think that’s what counts.

Here is a short example of PostScript language:

1 step mul dup moveto
boardsize 2 div 1 sub step mul bs 2 sub step mul lineto stroke

Which means, rewritten to human language:

move_to(1step, 1step);
draw_line_to((boardsize/2 – 1)step, (bs – 2)step);

In PostScript, everything is based on LIFO (last in first out) stacks, so when you want to do 3+4, you have to write 3 4 add (3 and 4 are put into the stack and the function “add” takes two values from the top of the stack and returns their sum back on the top).

I could show a lot of other PostScript examples but I think it’s better for you to have a look at the code yourself (it’s heavily uncommented, I didn’t want to take the fun out of it).

I think I should create a category called “rant” in my blog.

I think you also read all those funny stories… Secretary: “I have a problem with Windows.” Support: “What do you have on your monitor?” Secretary: “A flowerpot.”

It’s funny as long as it happens to other people, but I get a lot of similar questions while admining on KGS, and believe me — it’s not funny, it’s just very very tiring. :|

The name has been changed to protect the guilty. There is a menu called “Rooms” on KGS, and right in this menu, there is a button called “Open Games”:

leebark: I accindently exited out of open games! How do I get back?
tasuki: Rooms > Open games
leebark: what catogory though?
leebark: main?
tasuki: no room list, no category
tasuki: just click on “Rooms” :)
leebark: I’ve clicked on rooms but it’s not there
leebark: :.[
tasuki: look carefully
tasuki: it’s in the rooms menu here
tasuki: not in the room list
leebark: I got it
leebark: thanks
tasuki: great…

He didn’t even say hello or hi (I respond very reluctantly to users who ask stupid questions and don’t even bother to greet me). He asks me something he could find out by himself, and then fails to follow the directions I give him (he searched in Rooms > Room List > [Various Categories]). I had to repeat it three times for him to get it. :-/

The second one was even worse:

tomoyuki: Please help me, how can I enroll the outcome?
tasuki: go to http://eygml.tasuki.org/
tasuki: log in
tasuki: proceed to the league page
tasuki: find the game in the table, click “sgf”
tasuki: and upload the sgf file of that game
tomoyuki: thank you
[ half an hour of silence ]
tasuki: so will you upload it? :-)
tomoyuki: how can I upload my game?
tomoyuki: from what?
tasuki: the sgf file
tasuki: you can download sgf of a game from kgs by right clicking on it in your gamelist
tomoyuki: It says “The game should have been played between tomoyuki and VincentV but it was played between VincentV and Prodigious.” What can I do?
tasuki: you should upload the game played between tomoyuki and VincentV, NOT the game between VincentV and Prodigious
tasuki: each user can only upload their own games
[ tomoyuki has logged out without uploading the game ]

I think this requires no further explanation. I could upload the game for him, but am I expected to upload all the 250 games that we are going to play in the league? :S

I have enough of people complaining that the game uploading procedure is too difficult (it isn’t, it takes one click to choose which game to upload, one click to select the game file, and one click to actually upload it; could it be any easier?). I have enough of people using different KGS nicks than they chose in their profile (which they can edit anytime) and complaining that they can’t upload their game. I have enough of people writing their nickname in ALL CAPS once and in lower case the other day and being surprised (remember kids: Capitalization is the difference between “I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse.” and “I had to help my uncle jack off a horse.” (if you don’t know what the second one means, good for you)). Just choose one capitalization of your nickname/password and stick with it, mmkay? ^^

Simply put: I don’t enjoy providing free tech support for idiots in my free time. I enjoyed creating the EYGML site, I learned something and created something useful. I think I spent few dozens of hours doing that. Now it’s the users’ turn to do some work (the navigation is intuitive for most people, however, the few who don’t find it intuitive should first try it out, or try thinking, before asking me silly questions).

With love,
tasuki

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. ^^

I’ve just spent a wonderful week in Risoul (their web sucks big time, but I feel compelled to link it anyway).

It was a great trip, the weather was nice (mostly sunny but some clouds too, which was good because the snow usully kept bellow zero even in the afternoon).

Out of the six days of skiing, I fell three times:

The first one was classical – I was trying to do a left turn, but my left ski got stuck in a pile of snow. Subsequently, the binding let go and I fell in a magnificent way, providing entertainment for the few onlookers.

The second one was just plain stupid and boring. I was trying to brake by making a 180˚ turn at a very low speed (always a bad idea). Of course the heavy snow layer was a bit thicker than I expected, so I fell over.

The third one was nasty, I was just practicing carving skiing and was inspecting my last carved turn (carving turns usually throw you out at a fairly high speed). It was in the morning, the pistes were groomed and there weren’t many people. I thought it was all clear and easy, but apparently I missed the fact that the piste was going quite a bit uphill. As I approached this uphill at a fairly high speed and completely unaware, it cought me by surprise and threw me on my back. I managed to stand up without losing much speed, but after stopping, I noticed that my right thumb was really hurting.

After that, the thumb was growing for about an hour. It grew so much that removing my glove showed impossible (in the evening I somehow managed, but it took a lot of effort and it was rather painful). Now (after more than three days), I can move my thumb and use it for simple tasks that do not require much power.

I spent the first three days skiing the boring same style I’ve practiced for all my life. It’s quite elegant, but not quite as enjoyable. I just go down the hill, letting the ski slip vertically. I think I got quite good at it, but it requires quite a steep slope to reach a good speed, and I was always really bored on the less steep pistes, waiting for a place to gain some speed.

Carving style, on the other hand, is much more dynamical. You retain your speed, because by doing the turn using the edge of the ski, you effectively avoid skidding.

So I spent the other three days trying to learn carve turns and I think I succeeded. Because of the hurt thumb, I got rid of the poles and I found out that they were in fact quite useless.

Mhmm, this post is getting quite long, so I’d better stop it soon… anyways, if you have read this far – have a look at my photo gallery from Risoul!

Well… where to start?

The other day I read a complaint on Keoblog that all the wordpress blogs look the same: Kubrick theme. Well, I used to use it too. With that dark image in the header which didn’t fit there at all.

So I thought it was time to do a redesign… I did some search and found a template containing the functions that I need to call in proper loops. Needless to say, I’d hate it if I had to explore all the wordpress functions just to make a different design. I started writing the css from scratch and editing the template files. The design was created in the Chaotic Way (tm). I had no idea what I was about to create, I just knew that I wanted the header image to stay where it was and that I would like to have some light green (CF0, more exactly) in it.

I couldn’t get the colours right (as usual). It was looking real awful, until I tried to make the whole background (which was previously white, black, and all kinds of grey) green. Suddenly, I got a surprisingly good looking contrast. The rest was a piece of cake… Well, in fact it all took me about 10 hours and that’s without the bubble strip (which I added today) and smilies. ^^

Oh yeah, smilies… you know the gorgeous looking smilies I used to have here? They are gone (and I also broke the backward compatibility, so some of them will not be displayed and you will see text instead). They were way too big and broke the text flow, so I basically stopped using them in the text. And they were transparent gif’s. Ooops, as we all know, gif has no partial transparency, so the borders of the smiley are just fading to white. If you put such a smiley on a black background, it is ugly. So I took the small invision smilies (16x16 pixels) and had some fun with GIMP (normally I don’t link to such obvious things, but I think I should at least share a little bit of google love).

How to make full transparent images in GIMP? First, you have to convert the picture (if it is indexed) to RGB (use menu Image > Mode > RGB). Now you just choose Layer > Transparency > Color to alpha. Then you have to repaint (or copy from a backup that you had made) the places which really should be white (like eyes). There is one drawback to this method: the light parts are semi-transparent. You can either copy these parts from the original smiley or just let them be semi-transparent (it usually doesn’t hurt to have the smiley a bit darker on a dark background and it will look exactly the same as original on white background).

Oh well, that’s it… no more writing for me… now it’s your turn to write your remarks (noticed the “be the first to comment”? ;-))

“Little Feather McAbony” (the Czech title is “Dál než východ slunce”) is the title of a book written by Eran Kroband.

I got this book for Christmas, back in high school, a few years ago. And now comes the queer part – I don’t know who gave it to me.

In high school, we used to give each other just very small presents (like funny pencil or something similar). This was a hardcover book, that in itself made it quite special. First I thought it was a kind of game, the person who gave it to me hiding and letting me guess. I read the book, and although I enjoyed it, I was not a bit closer to knowing whom I got it from. So then I went around asking people, but no one knew anything. Someone obviously had to put the book under the tree, right? It’s not like this was ever done ultra secretly…

I’ve had the book for several years, read it several times, and searched for any possible clues (in the storyline, something marked somewhere, etc) to no avail…

This weekend, I was at a tournament. Saturday was not nice, I got just one win out of three, in the first game. Second game was a loss against Vladimir Danek, in a position that was impossible to lose. So third game was an automatical loss too (you know, totally demotivated). Then I didn’t sleep much, so I was pretty tired on Sunday morning.

I came ten minutes late to the game, and mercilessly removed ten minutes from my opponent’s clock too (with assistance of the referee). I was tired, I needed the win and I didn’t feel like playing. Moreover, I didn’t know where he slept. So, I didn’t go to wake him up, I didn’t really care, I just checked the game room regularly to see if he arrived. The hour passed without him arriving and I won on time.

Later it turned out that he was sleeping in the same gym where I slept too…

I can understand it if some people are angry with me. I can understand it if they despise me. But did I do anything wrong by not doing anything? To be sincere, I’m not sure.

Here, let me defend myself:

• I was tired and didn’t feel like playing.
• I didn’t know where he was and didn’t feel obliged to try to find out.
• Losing on time like this has happened to me too.
• Few months ago I lost a game to this very guy because of ING time – I had to pay 2 points for time and lost by 1.5 … I think that ING time is flawed and it shouldn’t count towards EGF rating… this was kind of a compensation.

Who am I explaining this to? Probably I’m explaining it to myself too… I’m not sure I believe my explanation though…

EYGML stands for European Youth Go Masters League. I’ve been creating (official) EYGML 2007 pages. I have learned a lot of new things, and I have refreshed some that I knew already…

I’ve…

• …discovered some xhtml/css tricks (like using double divs right inside each other to avoid weird margin adding).
• …learned to work with GIMP (using layers religiously) when creating logos and favicons.
• …finally learned to use (My)SQL.
• …wrote almost a thousand lines of php, including:
• highly automated registration, logging in/logging out, possibility of changing personal info
• choosing a random quote from a file formatted as a standard ‘fortune’ file
• showing nearest three birthdays (actually you can call the function with a paramater like 500 to learn that Lacour will be 31 years old on 10.10.2016 (poor guy))
• automatic info updating from the official EGF database
• sgf uploading and parsing of the result
• (members only) voting for a logo
• and last but not least: GD – it completely rocks, now you can see GD generated graph on the logo voting page, and if I ever get a possibility to create something else with GD, I will :-)

The pages are a bit of a mess, but when I’m done with all the features (I still need to create the league playing system, for example), I will try to make the interface more comfortable for users.

I’ve completed an official Mensa IQ test a few years ago. When one of the organizing guys was telling us the results, he has taken me aside, which suggested something special – I scored 144. That means that I should be able to solve IQ tests better than about 99.8% of people. I considered it a pretty good result back then. I was even proud of it.

During recent years, I talked about IQ with several people. Turns out that all of my friends that I talked to have IQ 140+ (some even 150+). It was at least ten people, from different countries, but all of them (reasonably succesful) go players.

There are three possibilities (or combination thereof):

• Coincidentally, I am a genius and my friends too (and many of them even more so than me).
• There is a very tight connection between being good at go and being good at solving IQ tests.
• The tests are simply flawed.

I’d really like to know the truth, so please share your results in the comments (you can do it anonymously if you prefer).

PS: I don’t enjoy individually asking people what their IQ is, it makes me look like a complete idiot… the problem is that I really want to know the truth about IQ…