I’m not a big fan of books with short stories. Too much context switching. Context switching is hard. Makes you stop reading the book. Not all short stories are good. Some are bad. Bad stories make you want to throw away the book. Safe Enough is no exception. But it’s Lee Childs. … | Continue reading
Car Brain‘s Dilemma is a (made-up) form of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. It’s faster to go by car but if all people don’t use cars, the average commute time would improve. How do you resolve that? I wrote a small essay on the subject of why people associate cars with freedom in 2023 | Continue reading
Arena Sofia, formerly known as Arena Armeec, is now called Arena 8888. It was quite a surprise to see the name change. 8888 self-identifies as an entertainment website but is actually an online casino. Our society is pushing back against online gambling at the moment and this con … | Continue reading
I used to have lunch in this garden – a pizza slice, doner kebab, or a sandwich. The pigeons would circle around, trying to grab a potato in a tight competition with the smart sparrows. There used to be a farmer’s market nearby where you could buy some fresh veggies on the way ba … | Continue reading
We went to Slaveykov this Sunday because of @knotty‘s comment about their visit to Sofia in the 90s. Back in the day, the square was a book market. My high school was 15 minutes walking from it so I visited it almost daily for many years. It had crowds of readers and piles of tra … | Continue reading
I visited Rome on a work trip last week. Couldn’t experience too much of it because the trip was brief and the schedule – tight. I liked their inner gardens and pretty, well dressed people. The food outside of the tourist centre was superb. I hated the car culture, the swarms of … | Continue reading
I’ve been a big fan of book fairs ever since I was a child. I hunted for comics and Karl May books, then gamebooks, then sci-fi, and so on. I usually visit them multiple times so that I don’t miss anything. Couldn’t do the multiple-visit tour this year due to my work trip where I … | Continue reading
The daily writing prompt is poking me at my weak spot. I walk every day I can and my goal is to walk roughly 2h per day or 10K steps. I believe that walking makes life better, and cars make it worse. Walking also gives material for blog posts. Here are photos from my two … Contin … | Continue reading
About 48 hours ago I spilled a glass of sparkling water on my laptop. After a very long wait, I booted it and it works! It’s not out of dodge yet, apparently corrosion issues can appear in the next 2-3 days. I plan to migrate to a backup computer over the weekend and will send … … | Continue reading
My computer took a hit. I spilled a glass of sparkling water over the keyboard. It’s now drying. I can’t work and the OCD is strong. I’ve been glued to that thing for far too long. At least I can still blog, thanks to the Jetpack app. Ps. Apparently there’s a strong chance that t … | Continue reading
I had no idea that the tech park has a supercomputer. I wonder what they do with it. You can do miracles with a resource like that. Mine bitcoin 😉 Also something with AI. | Continue reading
Bansko is changing. It used to be a small town with an old city. Then the ski zone came with thousands of new hotels, growing faster than the infrastructure. It had lots of people in the winter but was a muddy ghost town in the summer. Now the central area is expanding with paved … | Continue reading
We tried and failed to go to Vihren peak this weekend. We got to the hut. The plan was to do Vihren hut – Vihren peak, which is 3.5h and +950 meters. However, the road to the hut is closed and there are frequent busses that go to it. We missed the bus and ended … Continue reading … | Continue reading
“The Sum of All Men” is an epic fantasy set in a world where the strong and powerful can extort and extract skills from ordinary humans. The poor give up their intelligence, strength, or beauty in exchange for care and protection for themselves and their families. Once they make … | Continue reading
I take breaks. My long-term fitness goal is to do 10K steps per day on average over the course of a full year. It forces me to go out and not be attached to a screen. Do 20K steps on a good weekend day and I get a bonus – the strong desire to have … Continue reading Relaxation | Continue reading
The fall is coming. The flowers are being replaced by falling fruit. It’s less blog-worthy. The previous generations didn’t imagine a situation in which fruits will rot on the ground. | Continue reading
Within the family, I believe that arguments should be resolved before going to bed. Regarding non-family, it’s more complicated. Holding a grudge means punishing yourself for mistakes others did and unfairness outside of your control. But then, how else do we respond to the negat … | Continue reading
By distance, it has to be Kauai. It was a company meetup, one of the most epic I’ve attended. 12.9K km, 24+ hours of travel one-way. Our lead wanted to organize the best meetup ever and did one that’s very difficult to beat. It remained a good lifetime memory. Imagine you have a … | Continue reading
The AI ad generator outperformed me in Blaze. Blaze is WordPress.com’s internal ad system (Tools > Advertising). I decided to give it a try and ran 2 campaigns. The first was for a random Book post with an AI generated ad, and the second was for one of my best long reads with a h … | Continue reading
An adventure gamebook in the shape of a comic book. Best of both worlds 🙂 It has 5 sub-stories, each with 100-ish episodes. September starts strong with a 5/5 book that I would not dare to review. It’s Deadpool. I hate superheroes but Deadpool hates them too, so I think i … | Continue reading
Okay, maybe not cheese but close enough. Somewhere in the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. | Continue reading
I read 9 books in August. Pretty happy with that achievement, although two of these were very short. Best books Worst books | Continue reading
Found this gem on Facebook. Fresh humor on yellow pages that barely hold. I enjoyed it very much. Not sure if it can endure another read without starting to fall apart. But the book was cool, well written, short, and brought me good memories. I finished the monumental Six of Crow … | Continue reading
I’m pleasantly surprised that things can blossom despite the dry summer. North of Sofia Tech Park, no irrigation anywhere close. This is in the park, irrigation everywhere. | Continue reading
I didn’t have a good angle to capture the vast number of stage trucks parked near Arena Sofia, but they were at least 50. So many that they made me want to visit Armin van Buuren’s show this week. What did they bring with the trucks? So curious. I may settle with reading a book … … | Continue reading
Jane Harper’s trilogy about Aaron Falk concludes with Exiles – the opposite of an epic thriller. 3 people died over the last years in a small but flourishing Australian town. It’s all written off as accidents but a body is missing and Aaron Falk will start digging. Most of the bo … | Continue reading
I walked today alone with my thoughts. I was upset about something and was thinking about ways to resolve the problem. After 30-ish minutes of walking, I saw this reassuring sign. It says “It’s cool to care”. It is indeed cool to care, but it is not cool to act under the influenc … | Continue reading
The natural trend of everything in life is a decline. Health, relationships, skills, happiness – it all needs effort. You’re either working to improve it or it goes sideways, south, or just vanishes. I’ve been trying to improve my health by walking 10K steps daily. Last week I ac … | Continue reading
Roger Wilco is a Bulgarian fantasy gamebook writer who published exactly two books sometime around 1998. He was inspired by the more famous writer Michael Mindcrime, who he met on a tram. However, he started with the other book and ended with this one, and there’s no trace of oth … | Continue reading
My younger kid made it to Cherni Vrah today and discovered the raspberries and the blueberries. We did a relatively easy path (+510m, about 5.6km one way) but it took forever, given the obstacles. This is a major milestone for anyone living in Sofia. I think I reached it when I w … | Continue reading
When I write book reviews, I often mention the level of realism. Imagine a scale from 0 to 10. 0 is complete BS, things that can’t happen, heroes that can’t exist, and a path from start to finish that’s like a fairy tale. 10 is a boring autobiography by a boring person who doesn’ … | Continue reading
Brutalism and socialism in one photo from my neighbourhood. This bridge goes to Sofia Tech Park where we recently held the WordCamp. | Continue reading
Drought is hitting hard in a small Australian town. The livestock is dying, the river is empty, and people are losing their minds. A man kills his wife and one of their children before turning the gun on himself—or at least, that’s what everyone thinks. But his childhood friend, … | Continue reading
It’s very hot here these days. Made all of my steps for the day in the morning and upset some kittens. | Continue reading
Bansko was full of life this weekend. I’ve never seen more people there in the summer in over 20 years of frequent visits. Prices were adjusted accordingly. It was nice and rained, unlike everywhere else. Sofia is like a hot brick in comparison. | Continue reading
When All the Girls Have Gone is a crime thriller by Jayne Ann Krentz. It’s flagged “Romantic Suspense” on Goodreads but there’s not much romance in it. There’s some in the continuation “Promise Not to Tell”. I picked the book primarily for the good name and wanted to learn what h … | Continue reading
My most common positive emotion these days is the sense of accomplishment when completing a todo item. Walking outdoors, blogging, and reading books are related to that feeling. I count my steps and the number of books I read. I keep a blogging streak and enjoy every comment. Als … | Continue reading
Here are some cool blogs to follow: Do you have a nice blog? Let me know, happy to follow good content and kind bloggers. | Continue reading
I only see a point in preparing for small, family-level emergencies. The big stuff I’d leave to the government. We stocked up some toilet paper and Fusilli during the early days of COVID-19. That didn’t work well. My lifestyle includes playing football and doing weekly hikes. Thi … | Continue reading
I bought this book because I wanted to read something like Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams. The book wasn’t that. It’s a very serious epic fantasy, closer to George R.R. Martin than Pratchett. Gorm Ingerson is a dwarf and a fallen hero, who abandoned his mission years ago. Once … | Continue reading
The Free Electron blog post was written by Michael Lopp 19 years ago and later published with additions to the book Managing Humans. It tells the story of extremely productive engineers and how to use that force of nature from a team lead point of view. I look back to it whenever … | Continue reading
It was peak season for blueberries today. We did a five-hour hike to Cherni Vrah. The sun was strong, and the berries were hot. For a second time in a row, couldn’t pay respect to Cherni Vrah’s bean soup. This time the queue was too long. Felt easier to skip it, eat later. | Continue reading
The path from Hotel Moreni to Aleko Hut is so good these days that I saw a baby in a stroller on this bridge. Babies are usually carried in special backpacks by their parents. Was too shy to take a photo so here’s the bridge sans people. You can get there by taking bus 66 … Conti … | Continue reading
A pedestrian underpass in Sofia was painted over the stone. The stone itself was covered with 50 years of graffiti. I saw the public criticism and decided to walk there during my lunch break. Here’s how it looked before: It’s not perfect but I like it painted. You have a surreal … | Continue reading