How to gain weight and increase your carbon footprint

Published on 11.02.2010., in Ranting

Take a really big project to work on from home.
Try to have as short deadline as possible, so you'd work all of your woken hours.
Take a parallel project as well, with slightly longer deadline.
Optimise your workspace: make the same room your office, dining room and bedroom. Optimal room size shouldn't be over 6m². If possible, try to pick a room within the shortest walking distance to the toilet.
Work explicitly during the night, and sleep throughout the day.
Order all of your food on-line. Order more than necessary in order to receive free shipping. Desserts are optional.
On extreme occasions prepare your own food, but only if it requires just microwaving something or putting something to boil. Please note that this method both produces less non-recycable junk and counts as a workout, so you should think it through.
Drink approx. 2l of soft drinks daily, opt for most sugary-carbonated ones.
Make your biweekly shower the most physically demanding action.
Repeat for as long as required.

Upon completion, take a moment to admire the amount of plastic and styrofoam in your trash, as well as your new plump line.

Birthdays, like they used to be

Published on 19.12.2009., in Ranting, Madness

Do you remember the time before Facebook, when birthdays were special?
Y'know, when only your closest friends took the trouble of either writing down or memorising the date, then going to even more trouble to think of a witty SMS, cute greeting card or similar and finally sending 'em seconds after midnight to be the first to congratulate you?
Childish as it may be, it did make me feel special, and it went on for over 20 years.
Then, last year, I opened the damn fagbook account and ended up with about 150 wall posts for my birthday, almost all of them generic, and some starting even hours before the actual date (even though the sender was in the same city as me, spare the time-zone).
Did that make my birthday special? No, it made it quite the opposite - it made me feel like the village whore.
So, this year, I went on to conduct an experiment. In hope not to see a Facebook birthday greeting ever again, I decided ti deactivate my account the night before my birthday, and reactivate it at some point the day after my birthday. Alas, I failed in my initial intention as I received a generic greeting about noon of the day before, under excuse "better not to forget". Jumping Jesus, WTF? I'm not blaming this person in particular, it's the whole current "culture", but the basic idea of birthday greetings IS to remember the SPECIFIC date. It's not "happy birth-period-thingy", now, is it? However, that urged me to deactivate account sooner (even though that meant a bit more boring day at the hospital, but all in the good name of science!).
So, people would now have to try and remember how did they send me greetings for all those years prior to last one, and so far - they're failing. It's 2AM, I haven't recieved a single SMS, my email inbox is slowly filling with auto-generated greetings from all the forums and major sites I'm on, and the ONLY human-sent greeting so far is from a cousin.
Ha.
I'm not saying "experiment over, that's that" - but the first stage is rather clear - so far I'd be on at least 50 wall posts, instead I'm on 1.
Morning came with a lousy start - first 4 greetings were from family members (which was never the case), but soon enough, my friends realised that it's definitively not a glitch, and that I'm not on Facebook any more, so SMSes started arriving. Interestingly enough, the first one was from a friend in Slovenia, whom I do hold close and dear, but didn't really expect her to be the first!
The day went on as I hoped it would - which is exactly like all those pre-fagbook years: with actual phone calls (notably more than last year!) and witty SMSes. For me, that's "mission accomplished", and I'll be sticking to the recipe for years to come!

Incompatible

Published on 19.07.2009., in Ranting

While everyone else is asleep, I'm awake. When they get up for work, I go to bed. I don't believe in mornings, and sleep through them. I can sleep ridiculously little, but only if I start from 6AM - if it were to end at 6AM I'd be sleep depraved.
I haven't been using Windows for almost 5 years now, yet I'm your support contact when it fails on you.
I'm a tech-geek, but I'd rather talk about music, beer or lifestyle in general.
I absolutely love music, yet I'm a music-nazi. My taste is mismatched to everyone else's, and I'm gonna randomly hate something that should match to my taste, or love something completely berserk.
I'll recommend you some rather obscure TV series, but will fail to hear about your latest and greatest TV hit.
You'll comment on how my taste in movies is crap, yet I'll have hard time being serious while watching bollocks you recommend to me. It seems like everything I prefer is "badly acted", yet everything I watch with you is badly written for starters.
I'll have no clue about what's in the news (since I've turned telly off several years ago, and I'm not touching it), yet I'll happen to grab the very piece of news you didn't yet hear about.
I'm blind to cultural trends, and I'll occasionally hook up to one years (or even decades) after it goes out, not even realising that I did.
I wear geek shirts to concerts, music-related shirts to lectures and shirts that scream 'informal' to work.
I'm a gourmet who's giving out tasty recipes while on a boring diet, feeling less uncomfortable than you are. I'm up for crazy food, yet I don't like quite a number of elementary stuff.
I'll complain about your smoking, yet will buy you fags if I'm popping to the shops already.
People compliment on my American accent, which I'd prefer to lose.
I'm picking up British culture, even though my heart and future are in Ireland.
I still enjoy studying, even though I graduated.
I spent a lot of time working through high school and uni, yet I'm putting down job offers now when I should be taking them. World is in "economic crisis", yet I'm being offered good job positions more than ever?!
I never drink and drive, yet I'd let select drunk people drive me home.
I'm in love with you while you're with someone, yet I'm completely blind when you're picking me up.
My dream travel destinations don't include beaches of exotic islands - they're a bit more on the extreme, and way more personal than that.

...and that's why you love me.

Instead of sleeping, I'm arguing with people I don't know

Published on 12.04.2009., in Ranting

I received one of those "ever so cute" mails which bombards us with a great number of supposedly interesting/funny questions one is supposed to admire/laugh to, which are, basically, ignorance wrapped in big colourful font.
So, half-asleep I went on a Don Quixotian quest of correcting someone on the internet:

Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are getting weak?
a) You can't know whether it's about batteries or a faulty contact if you don't try harder
b) Consequence of remotes being a mixture of mechanic and electric bits - if there are moving parts, they are the interface the human sees (and uses), thus the impression that mechanic bit is faulty. If the said remote were a flat touch sensitive gizmo (with no buttons), pushing harder wouldn't seem natural thing to try.

Why do banks charge a fee on "insufficient funds" when they know there is not enough?
Because they will take that money from you at some point in future - whether when you top up your account or get to court.
Yes, they're greedy bastards, but you agreed to their policies once you initially signed the contract.

Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?
Empiricism is a big part of how we perceive the world around us and/or form our opinions.
While the second information is a simply checkable fact, the first is a theorem that can be proved and disproved with a lot of complicated formulas.

Why doesn't glue stick to the bottle?
Even though this question isn't precise enough (glue does stick to the outer side of the bottle, thus the labels) the reply (for implied inner side) is, again, simple - glue needs air to dry, and it reacts with air slowly enough to enable you to open the bottle for a short period of time without the whole lot inside drying up.

Why do they use sterilized needles for death by lethal injection?
Needles are sterilised in production, and are mass-produced for all medical purposes.
Using non-sterilised needles would require collecting previously used needles which is not only a pointless but a dangerous task.

Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?
Because some men just can't grow beards?

Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest, but ducks when you throw a revolver at him?
Trying to be objective, I'd say: because every story has its flaws, and writers often use ill-fitting elements from real life in imaginary environments. The most common example would be the dogfight scenes from (early) Star Wars where superior futuristic aircraft fly like WW2 planes in combat.
On the other hand, Superman fans would probably give you a deeper response, based on the universe Superman lives in.

Why do Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
Because they need to fly to their suicide destination first, and that flight requires all the precaution as any other flight.

Whose idea was it to put an "S" in the word "lisp"?
Dictionary says the following: "ORIGIN Old English wlispian (recorded in āwlyspian), from wlisp(adjective) ‘lisping,’ of imitative origin; compare with Dutch lispen and German lispeln."

If people evolved from apes, why are there still apes?
Evolution doesn't necessary mean that one species replaces the other.
Humans and apes live in different environments and thus humans adapted to be more efficient in the environment they inhabit (e.g. "on ground" vs "in trees").

Why is it that no matter what colour bubble bath you use the bubbles are always white?
Bubbles are, actually, transparent.
The said "white" is scattered reflected light from many surfaces that bubbles create.

Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale?
Yes, there is.

Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?
When you have a fairly full fridge, there's a high chance you didn't see all of its contents in a first glance (i.e. you'd have to have moved a pan or a carton of milk to see something "hidden" behind). But even supposing that you saw everything in (and haven't forgotten anything you saw), you'd open the fridge again to try to think up a different potential meal (which is, generally, easier when you look at the ingredients rather than remembering what's actually there).

Why do people keep running over a string a dozen times with their vacuum cleaner, then reach down, pick it up, examine it, then put it down to give the vacuum one more chance?
Because they can't be bothered to do it properly?

Why is it that no plastic bag will open from the end on your first try?
This is just a misassumption.
Some plastic bags won't open from the first tried ends, while some will - at worst there's a 50-50 chance.

How do those dead bugs get into those enclosed light fixtures?
They usually get in alive and get burnt on the light bulbs.

When we are in the supermarket and someone rams our ankle with a shopping cart then apologizes for doing so, why do we say, "It's all right?" Well, it isn't all right, so why don't we say, "That hurt, you stupid idiot?"
It's a matter of being polite - if someone was polite enough to apologise in the first place, the properly polite thing is to accept that apology.
Also, the person who has done the said deed didn't do it intentionally.

Why is it that whenever you attempt to catch something that's falling off the table you always manage to knock something else over?
Yet another ill-constructed assumption which infers that the said concept happens every time, which is often simply not true due to times which lack things to be knocked over (not mentioning other variants).
But, supposing that something got knocked over anyway - it's because we concentrate on the falling object "too much" and react impulsively, thus not being completely aware of our all-around movement which then renders us more "clumsy" than usual.

In winter why do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat?
I, for one, try to keep my house at about the same temperature in all the seasons.

How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?
Women in jokes are usually more background-portrayed (blonde, mother-in-law, ...), while men tend to be more generic (Irishman, Scotsman, Frenchman). This probably has something to do with the whole said genre of literary movement, which is out of my reach.
However, empirically, mothers-in-law have proved to be more nosy and generally pain in the ass to both male and female population. Fathers-in-law are more commonly "problematic" before weddings than after.

And my FAVOURITE...... The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you!
"Some sort of mental illness" covers a wide range of illnesses, including the minor ones that aren't easy to spot.
Also, "1/4 population" (or, popularly, "1 out of 4") doesn't mean "1 out of EVERY 4", because the latter infers that even if you collected 4 clinically sane persons, 1 would still have to be clinically insane, and having that you can't be both "clinically sane" and "clinically insane" at the same time, the said construction is impossible.

I might be a boring fart, but ignorance is scarcely fun.

If websites updated themselves

Published on 15.01.2009., in Ranting

It's been almost 6 months since the previous blah entry and, unfortunately, even longer since the last website update. So many times have I thought of the great wisdom I should have shared in blah but never found time to, as well as the many feature upgrades that should have be done. But, alas, these thoughts used to approach me just before I'd fall asleep, and many a time would I ponder what would it be like if I could just WiFi my thoughts into my computer and let it do the magic :)
However, it struck me the most when someone pointed out that I used to, at least, keep my photo galleries fresh with the recent social activities, yet that I failed to upload anything in the last year. Thus I decided to right my wrongs and have started collecting the missing photos that were the prime excuse for my idleness and have started modelling the minor upgrades to the website itself.

Now, a month later, something has been done.

First of all, data has been updated to be more accurate: dead websites have been moved to their rightful places in the list, current running ones have been updated, personal info on the adequate pages has been updated (you might notice that a colleague of mine and I won a certain competition, especially having written this in bold), etc.
More importantly, photo galleries have been upgraded and now they should be loading faster as I've drastically reduced the number of requests sent to the server per gallery and have enabled the thumbnail caching. Not only that but they should be easier to navigate having that now you can use Left and Right arrow keys on your keyboard to go back and forward, and hide the currently open photo by pressing Escape. Finally, now you can clearly see if a photo has a comment associated to it having that each such photo has a small icon in the top-right corner as well as the fancy mouse-over hint displaying the comment.
But what will surely shake your pants the most is the fact that I've uploaded 3475 new photos, and that now you know what to do this weekend :D
To make it easier for you, the galleries are listed below, in reverse chronological order:
Old Town (2 photos, 68kb), Five days in Java, Awards ceremony (4 photos, 160kb), Žika's 24th birthday (5 photos, 240kb), Petrovac na Mlavi (225 photos, 13.9mb), Vinski Podrum (4 photos, 216kb), Kilt approval party (91 photos, 3.6mb), United Kingdom (2046 photos, 115.1mb), Croatia (Lovran, Istra) (895 photos, 49.9mb), Skupština (15 photos, 524kb), VMC (3 photos, 104kb), Labour day BBQ, Zvezdara (72 photos, 4.9mb), 31.12.2007. New Year's Masquerade (79 photos, 2.9mb), Imagine Cup '07, Serbian Finals (4 photos, 120kb), Irish Pub (27 photos, 1.2mb), Nina's 19th Birthday (3 photos, 112kb).

Enjoy!

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