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.

It’s funny but I couldn’t find anyone having this issue. It certainly isn’t limited to Zend Framework, it affects everyone who doesn’t have access to apache configuration and wants to have document root in a deeper directory. Maybe I just can’t google very well.

Imagine a shared host. You can’t choose your document root, it’s firmly set to one particular directory. Now you want to install Zend Framework. Imagine you’d like to follow the standard directory structure (that means you more or less have these directories in your project: application (the application), library (zend and other libraries) and public (stuff accessible from the outside, images, css etc.)). Normally, you’d want to point your document root to the public directory, but when you can’t do that you can use .htaccess in the project directory to redirect everything to public.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule !.(js|gif|jpg|png|css|txt)$ public/index.php [L]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ public/$1 [L]</code></p> <p>This was the first thing I wrote, and it works on <strong>certain</strong> servers. Other servers will kindly remind you that <em>"Request exceeded the limit of 10 internal redirects due to probable configuration error."</em> Which kind of makes sense when you think about it. Makes me wonder how comes the above code actually worked on two different configurations.</p> <p>Now here's the code that works (and in my humble opinion it also <strong>should</strong> work, as opposed to the one above):</p> <p><code lang="apache">RewriteEngine On<br /> RewriteRule !\.(js|gif|jpg|png|css|txt)$ public/index.php [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/public/
RewriteRule ^(.)$ public/$1 [L]

And finally a disclaimer: I am not sure about the security implications. If someone knows more about possible security issues with this, please do leave a comment.

I’ve never really watched any television series. Sure, I saw an episode or two of many various series, but it never quite felt worth spending more time on them. This summer I was shown 4 episodes of HIMYM.

I tried to resist for a while, because I consider television series to be a waste of time (and time is the most precious for me). But after few weeks I just gave up and started watching the series from the start. And even though I “wasted” about 24 hours of my life, I don’t regret it.

Also, my opinion of Tuesdays has increased dramatically since I started watching HIMYM. Today’s episode (S04E05 as they say, or “Shelter Island”, if you prefer the full name) was simply perfect. There was a little bit of everything, silly jokes, profound jokes, back references, sad moments, life lessons, you name it.

Happy Tuesday!

Such an amazing word! It can be used to express a myriad of different meanings, but they all have something in common – indifference. “Whatever” is possibly the most indifferent word in the world.

I’ve been searching for a Czech equivalent, but there simply isn’t anything similar. When you are asked whether you want chocolate or vanilla ice cream, you can say “I don’t care”, but saying “whatever” is way cooler. Unfortunately, in Czech language, we are stuck with “I don’t care”.

Whatever…

First, I’m fully aware of the fact that my blog is public. I don’t mind people reading it, I even want people to read my blog – actually that’s mostly why I write it.

Why, then, is it so uncomfortable when people who sit right next to me are reading it? It’s not like I’d mind them reading it somewhere else, but them reading it when I’m nearby makes me feel really awkward.

I was thinking about this a lot, but couldn’t really come up with any reason. Maybe I’m scared of the possibility of immediate, real time confrontation? But there wasn’t anything much controversial on the front page at the time. Plus I’m generally not afraid of real time confrontation, as long as it’s either written or in person (I hate telephones).

So, to answer the question of how to read my blog: Please, don’t read my blog when I’m nearby. Go to the other room. Thank you.

Yay, I made it – one year without using Brno public transport. I walked, walked, walked and walked. Sometimes I used my bike when it was too far and when the weather was suitable. I only used car when it was because of someone else (such as driving my grandaunt to her home or similar occasions).

I had used public transport at Brno tournament one year ago, and now I had to do the same because the tournament site is too far to walk to and I couldn’t go by bike as I was going with my Polisz friends. The tournament was a minor disaster for me, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. Especially the moments not spent playing go.

While I’m not planning to break any more records as far as public transport is concerned, I still plan on trying to actively avoid using it. Walking is good.

And yes, j’aime français, why are you asking?

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone that I used to watch (English) movies with Czech subtitles.

About two years ago I found out that it was a really bad idea. Apart from the subtitles stealing my time because I had to read them, they also stole my brain cycles as I couldn’t avoid comparing what I heard in the English original to the Czech translation, looking for what I missed and what I’d translate better. While this might have been a good exercise as far as translation skills are concerned, it made me tired rather quickly. Plus I usually had no idea what the movie was about.

So I switched to English subtitles. That was a great improvement. No more time spent translating everything both ways three times. I could finally enjoy movies again. But still, I couldn’t help but read the subtitles anyway, just because they were there.

And so it happened that I almost stopped using subtitles for English movies alltogether. I still occasionally use subtitles for special things such as Monty Python, where there are a lot of jokes and puns which would be difficult for me to catch otherwise.

Do I spend too much time at work?

Let’s see:

First, I work eight hours a day and I sleep eight hours. That means I work half of my waking time.

Second, I only work two out of three days (counting weekends, public vacations and paid holidays adds up pretty close to one third). This means that I spend one third of my waking time at work. Not too bad.

Third, I’ll probably work around half of my life (I didn’t work during my first 20 years here and I won’t work when I’m old either).

That means I am going to spend about one sixth of my life at work (awake life, that is). That definitely doesn’t feel like “too much”, does it?

Oh, plus I got some tesuji up my sleeve… but more on that next time. 8-)

“What took you so long?”

Yes, I’ve returned from LSG a week ago. But I spent all my time either at work or creating the photogallery (I made over 800 pictures but my memory card got full so I had to delete the bad ones, I returned with over 650 pictures and the gallery is 187, so – as you can see – it was a lot of work).

LSG was great (you can see mroe photogalleries), and I really regret having to wait almost 350 days for the next one again. Last year when I came home from LSG I just sat there for several days doing nothing and waiting for the next LSG. Luckily, this year work takes care of that, it’s really good to have something concrete to do.

Sorry for a boring post, hopefully it was at least short enough. :-) (and hey – it included links to photos… by the way, my favourite pictures from my own gallery are 4, 32, 94, 100, 109, 149, 152, 176, 178 and 181)