I first read Desiderata in Polish, at Letnia Szkoła Go. There’s a path that leads through woods. As you walk down, every few dozen of meters you encounter a slab with one verse on it. I found it hard to understand as my Polish wasn’t as great back then, but from what I understood I knew this was something special.

I thought it was just local folklore and so was surprised to find out that Desiderata was originally written in English almost one hundred years ago by Max Ehrmann.

Desiderata is a short prose poem, possibly the most powerful text I’ve ever read. Everytime I’m feeling down, angry, hurt, upset or desperate it brings instant calmness. Here’s a quote, one of my favourites:

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
–Desiderata

I felt an urgent need to print out Desiderata and cover the walls with it. As I haven’t used TeX for quite a while (a year or more?), this was a good opportunity to recall it a bit. You can download Desiderata (pdf) for printing.

The first time I saw square thumbnails (ie. thumbnails which are downsized and cropped to square) I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread.

The advantages of square thumbnails are obvious:

• they are really easy to align and never mess up your layout
• the layout will look more uniform and better than with irregular thumbnails
• they do not show everything so they invite the visitor to view the full sized picture

But there is a downside. Square thumbnails alter the composition of the picture. In some cases, when the photographer hasn’t thought much about composition, it can often actually improve the picture. But in other cases, when the composition is deliberate and well thought out, the square thumbnail can destroy it completely.

I use square thumbnails in my photo gallery (have you seen the pictures from my recent cross-country skiing trip?). And I keep wondering whether I should change it to normal thumbnails (normal = scaled down so as to fit into a given rectangle while preserving the aspect ratio).

Do you personally prefer photo galleries with square thumbnails (cropped) or with normal ones?

It used to be that I could barely run few hundred meters. The two main problems were that I couldn’t catch my breath and that the side of my stomach started hurting.

I started running regularly few months ago in connection with my extra hour a day program. I abandoned early rising – nowadays I just get up at 9 during the weekend feeling completely drained, not to mention Mondays. Changing this to rising early again is definitely on my to-do list. It rocked, and it sucks now.

When I was starting, I ran a little over 3.5km at a very slow pace (almost half an hour). After reading few articles about running, I started paying more attention to proper breathing and few other things. I added a longer 6.5km route along the river to add variety to the routine. I found it surprisingly easy to run almost twice as far.

And now, feeling pretty comfortable with 6.5km, I connected the two routes to make it over 10 kilometers (I am not sure how far it actually is, but according to google maps it’s something between 10km and a quartermarathon (10.5km)). I ran it in 57 minutes on my first (and so far the only) try. I’ll try again the next weekend, if the weather is any good.

Running is good because:

• it is rather demanding and makes you tired quickly (so that you can get back to your beloved computer as soon as possible ;))
• you need no special equipment and you can run anywhere
• runner’s high is not a rumour
• it helps your health in various ways (I used to have half-asthma and after running few hundred meters I couldn’t breathe for another two hours (really), but now I trained my lungs and improved my breathing technique)
• you have plenty of time to think when running, so you are bound to get various good ideas while running

Also, running is simply fun.

As any economist would tell you, time is money. What people sometimes fail to realise is that it works the other way around just as well: money is time.

That is, when you have time, you can work and get money. There are many things you can do with money. Most people just buy things they neither need nor want.

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.
– Tyler Durden from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Now, I mostly like my job. :) But this quote is still worth thinking about.

Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.
– Will Rogers

On a less serious but still related note…

By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing… kill yourself…you’re the ruiner of all things good… you are Satan’s spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage… kill yourself.
– Bill Hicks

So much for quotes. Back to the topic.

I live in an abundance of luxury. I have food to eat, a warm and dry place to sleep, and clothes to wear. I’m not willing to submit to pointless consumerism.

That said, I am left with some money. I can leave it in the bank waiting for the economical crisis to eat it up. Or I can use it to buy some free time to do what I really want to do…

Happy New Year, by the way. :)

I remember thinking about space (as in “three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction”) when I was a little kid. I asked my dad what was outside of the universe and he told me that we do not know for sure but most probably there isn’t anything. I couldn’t quite understand what he meant by that, so I asked him, and he continued to explain that there simply is no space. I couldn’t grasp that either, so I imagined that there is a very hard rock – so hard that nothing else can fit in there, and hence there is no space.

I grew older and abandoned the very-hard-rock theory. But I haven’t found a reasonable substitute for it. And it bothers me. A lot.

There simply is no reasonable possibility for space to even exist:

1. Space is infinite and extends everywhere and never ends. I think I do not even need to explain why this sounds stupid.
2. Space is finite. Then what is outside of it? There is no space outside. Then there is no outside. Unreasonable, too.

Please note that I am talking about space, not necessarily in connection with the universe. Just the concept of space and its infinity/finity confuses the hell out of me. And it makes me scared.

It’s similar with time. According to wikipedia, universe is the “entirety of space and time”. So, if I understand it correctly, there was no time before universe. And the universe is approximately 13.73 billion years old. Which means that 14 billion years ago, there was no time. Wait, what?

After pondering about it for a long time, I’ve finally decided to sell my soul. Yes, this blog, the place where I share my thoughts and opinions with you, my dear readers, this very blog has become polluted by ads.

Now, before you leave for good, here are some quick tips on how to avoid being exposed to ads:

• don’t browse old posts or
• browse as a registered user or
• use holy water to protect you from the devil

Any one of the above mentioned tips will help you stay on the safe side. The third one is the best option, as it will also protect you from the devil on most other websites…

I started trying to touch type about two months ago. I used Klavaro (if you are on linux it’s most probably in your distribution’s repositories) to learn, and I’ve also learned by trying to use the right fingers for typing and not to look at the keyboard whenever typing.

My typing speed was promised to increase dramatically in few weeks while practicing a little every day. No such thing happened, although I’ve practiced almost all the time. I still write considerably slower than I did before I started touch typing. Am I unhappy that I started touch typing? Not at all – let me explain:

The advantage is that I can just look at the screen while typing. That might seem like a single advantage, but it’s actually several in one.

First, I can read other stuff while typing or look at people who are talking to me while I type (I learned that from a colleague, it’s real intimidating).
Second, I don’t have to switch display, keyboard, display, keyboard, display, keyboard… I just look at the display. This is much cooler than it sounds – it enabled me to move the monitor cca 40cm above the keyboard (both home and at work). So I can finally sit straight instead of bending over the keyboard.

On a completely unrelated note, I finally switched from czech qwerty (writing !@#%$&^% characters with alt) to standard english keyboard layout. A lot of stuff in vim has become much more comfortable – such as the ; right under my pinky, which means that repeating f/F/t/T has just gotten even easier and better.

On a semirelated note, I never knew that to write the capital X you can press the right shift plus the x. It’s not that I thought you couldn’t do that, I just never realised it could be useful and no one ever told me “you are doing it wrong”.

Many posts have been written on the topic of best free fonts. Therefore, I’d like to approach it differently.

Here, have a picture:

You should click on that picture to see the large version. And if your screen isn’t big enough and your browser thinks the image would look better downsized – your browser is wrong: click on the zoom button and view the picture in its original size.

As you can see, there are only 14 fonts. Surely there must be more quality fonts available for free? Yes, there are. This is a small selection of only the best of the best.

Now that you have the original picture open, let’s have a look at those 14 fonts (all available either in otf or in ttf):

• Antykwa Toruńska is a very original typeface created by Polish type designer Zygfried Gardzielewski in 1960. It was digitised by Janusz Marian Nowacki. The font contains many obscure glyphs (various diacritical marks, math symbols, etc.) and is available in light, regular, medium and bold versions, each of which has its own italics.
• Typo Latin Serif is a slab serif (egyptian) typeface with an extremely large x-height. It was created by a German type designer Manfred Klein.
• The DejaVu fonts are based on the excellent Bitstream Vera typefaces and extended by additional glyphs. They are well hinted so they preserve their onscreen readability even in small sizes.
• Palatino is a typeface by Hermann Zapf, a pioneer of computer typography. Palladio L is a free Palatino clone created by URW in cooperation with Hermann Zapf. You can download it in URW fonts pack (together with 79 other fonts).
• Gentium, a typeface for the nations by Victor Gaultney, extensive unicode support.
• Optima is another wonderful typeface by Hermann Zapf. You can download it as MgOpen Cosmetica.
• Bembo is a dynamic antiqua created by Francesco Griffo in 1496. The font Cardo, based on Bembo typeface, was created by David Perry.
• Vollkorn is an old style numerals featuring typeface which was created by Friedrich Althausen. Old style numerals own.
• Computer Modern is a Didone typeface created by professor Donald Ervin Knuth.
• Avant Garde by Herb Lubalin can be downloaded in the above mentioned URW font pack where it is known as URW Gothic L.
• Goudy Bookletter 1911 is a reincarnation of Frederic Goudy’s Kennerley Old Style by Barry Schwartz (funny thing, another Barry Schwartz… there is also Barry Schwartz the SEO and Barry Schwarts the psychologist from Paradox of choice). By the way, have I mentioned that old style numerals own?
• Helvetica by Max Miedinger. Perhaps the most famous and most abused typeface ever (seriously, fuck Arial). Helvetica isn’t any less awesome now than it was 50 years ago. This version was created by Magenta Ltd. and is available in the MgOpen pack as MgOpen Moderna.
• Geo Sans Light is a font by Manfred Klein, which is based on Futura, a geometric typeface created by Paul Renner in 1926.
• Garamond. The best serif typeface ever. For the third time, URW font pack.

The picture was created with Inkscape. Inkscape rocks. For anything that you think might be vector use Inkscape. Generally, GIMP for photo editing, Inkscape for everything else. It enables very easy manual kerning, and after you are done, you can convert the letters to paths (Bezier), and continue making changes (not sure whether that was clear – anyway go and try it out :)).

Ah, I almost forgot – you can get the SVG source file (already converted to paths, as I don’t suppose you have all the fonts installed).

Got other excellent free fonts? Feel free to leave a comment! ;-)

I recently watched Schindler’s List and it was a very intense experience. You can read the movie reviews elsewhere, so I will just share transcripts (shamelessly stolen from wikiquote) of two dialogs that I really liked:

Goeth: You know, I look at you. I watch you. You’re not a drunk. That’s, that’s real control. Control is power. That’s power.
Schindler: Is that why they fear us?
Goeth: We have the fucking power to kill, that’s why they fear us.
Schindler: They fear us because we have the power to kill arbitrarily. A man commits a crime, he should know better. We have him killed and we feel pretty good about it. Or we kill him ourselves and we feel even better. That’s not power, though, that’s justice. That’s different than power. Power is when we have every justification to kill – and we don’t.
Goeth: You think that’s power.
Schindler: That’s what the emperors had. A man stole something, he’s brought in before the emperor, he throws himself down on the ground, he begs for mercy, he knows he’s going to die. And the emperor pardons him. This worthless man, he lets him go.
Goeth: I think you are drunk.
Schindler: That’s power, Amon. That is power. [gestures toward Goeth as a merciful emperor] Amon, the Good.
Goeth: [He smiles and laughs] I pardon you.

You can watch “control is power” on youtube.

Stern: We’ve received an angry complaint from the Armaments Board. The artillery shells, tank shells, rocket casings, apparently all of them have failed quality-control tests.
Schindler: Well, that’s to be expected – start-up problems. This isn’t pots and pans. This is a precise business. I’ll write them a letter.
Stern: They’re withholding payment.
Schindler: Sure. So would I. So would you. I wouldn’t worry about it. We’ll get it right one of these days.
Stern: There’s a rumor you’ve been going around miscalibrating the machines. They could shut us down, send us back to Auschwitz.
Schindler: I’ll call around, find out where we can buy shells, pass them off as ours.
Stern: I don’t see the difference. Whether they’re made here or somewhere else.
Schindler: You don’t see a difference? I see a difference.
Stern: You’ll lose a lot of money, that’s the difference.
Schindler: Fewer shells will be made. Stern, if this factory ever produces a shell that can actually be fired, I’ll be very unhappy.

Imagine you could get an extra hour every day. That means 365 hours a year. 365 hours is like 45 eight-hour work days. Wow.

I’ll start with a success story. Over a month ago, I read something very interesting about how to sleep properly. I used to have problems getting out of bed at 7am. I used to have those mornings when I felt like half asleep zombie for several hours after getting up. Now I have no problems waking up at 6:45, sometimes I even wake up earlier without the alarm clock. Oh, and I also started going to bed later (usually shortly after midnight but it really depends on when I start feeling tired).

Out of the last 8 days, I went jogging in the early morning 7 times. Today I woke up at 6:42, three minutes before my alarm would go off. It’s Saturday 7:37am and I just came back from my half an hour of jogging. I had a shower and am enjoying my breakfast, while all of you are asleep. ;) These long weekends are amazing – it really is a measurable difference.

Here are the keys (more or less sorted by importance):

• get up at a regular time (yes, that includes weekends), go to sleep when you get tired (no earlier and no later)
• get enough sunshine and natural daylight during the day (bulbs will not cut it, you need real light)
• every day, do at least 20 minutes of increased physical activity such as running (most effective in the morning)
• drink a lot of pure water (it’s also generally good for your health)
• if you feel like taking a nap after lunch, do so (limit it to 20-30 minutes), naps are good for you
• never ever take sleeping pills (important, but rather common sense, isn’t it?), don’t drink coffee or overeat yourself before going to sleep

When I was starting with this I was called gullible. What is worse – I was called gullible by someone who believes in a three-in-one god that is supposedly omnipotent and sent his only son (who was actually one of the three) to save the mankind by dying on a cross in huge pain. Crazy stuff.