Rabbit’s hole

Dansezi ? Noooo, prefer sa meditez !

Aparent am ratat la mustata specializarea care mi se potrivea cel mai bine :

- preluat de la Raluca

La multi ani, mâţule !

La multi ani, fericire deplina si indeplinirea tuturor dorintelor ! Iti urez numai sanatate si bucurie - a, si te iubesc !

All kinds of bugs

While playing a little Heroes 5 last night and battling a generously cheating computer oponent I encountered a very frustrating bug.

Before I explain it, here’s the deal with Heroes - in case you aren’t really interested in computer games or programming, you can skip the entire post - it is a fantasy turn based strategy - you have a few heroes (duh!) and try to conquer some land. The battles are in a chess like manner - on a grid you can use the creatures your hero calls an army and fight the opposing hero’s army.

The bug was a very frustrating and at the same time very weird - I had almost won an incredible 40 minutes battle involving my best army - and as a final desperation act the computer casts “Revive” on one of his creatures - whose remains happen to be under one of my creatures ! And here it goes weird - the spell DID work but my creature wasn’t touched. Instead, his newly revived minion is now COMPLETELY invisible ! I can’t see it, my units can’t see it, practicly nobody can attack it but altough ALL the computer’s units are distroyed (along with 90 procent of mine) the battle still goes on. This means the computer can still attack my remaining forces (a 1K skeleton) and slowly distroy it.

At this point I will like to thank the producers of the game - no matter how much I have searched I couldn’t find a way to end a fight defending a castle ! So now I’m stuck with either AltCtrlDeleting it and losing all my progress from my last save (quite a few turns ago) or by waiting and witnessing the agonizing death of my hero and consequitely losing the game.

After another ten gruelling minutes (and 300 skeletons fewer) I get THE idea - what if I would put my unit next to the spot his invisible wonder was resurected ? Well, it works - now the computer AND an invisible unit attack my feeble army ! However the beauty of retaliation shows to brighten my day - after a few turns his unit is dead and I finally win the game after an entire hour spent defending a castle !

Besides being annoyed, I still don’t really understand how they coded the main loop - even my automatic driven units couldn’t detect the little aberation, but it still functioned correctly - it attacked, it had a correct number of hit points and it died

And on the subject of bugs - I found Saturday the first ethernet bug - it had crowled in a switch port and died lonely and miserable while trying to go online.

Merita … nu merita …

Ma tot gandesc de ceva timp la un startup - motivele sunt evidente si frumos romantate - sa muncesti pentru tine pe ceea ce iti place, realizarea unui lucru bun, un return mare pe investitie (nu vorbesc de timp), posibilitatea de a realiza ceva. Destui au incercat sau incearca (bafta multa, Alex!) si mult mai multi stau pe margine si dau cu banul.
Initial ma gandeam la o comparatie DA / NU pentru un startup. Dupa ceva scris am inteles ca practic faceam o comparatie DA - in strainatate / DA - in Romania. NU-ul este usor de inteles pentru noi toti - risc limitat, return sigur (desi nu neaparat foarte mare) si trai relaxat.

Practic tot Romania este candidatul nr 1 - tara mea, cunoscuti, prieteni, colegi, eventual relatii. Ceva mai ieftin traiul, legislatia nu e chiar atat de rea (cel putin in momentul asta nu e foarte respectata, ceea ce mi se pare echivalent), exista unele masuri de ajutor din partea guvernului - parca lipsa de impozite, daca imi amintesc eu bine.
Iar la avantaje mana de lucru suficient de calificata si mai ales invatata cu munca serioasa pentru rezultate - din nefericire, ma refer mai ales la studentii de la specializarile de calculatoare pe care ii cunosc, nu la intreaga populatie. Legat de restul populatiei si de tara in sine apar si problemele.

Continue reading Merita … nu merita ……

Before I go to bed …

here’s a little photo I got a few days ago, on the European Union’s birthday (or at least that’s what I think it was).

PS - I didn’t change the colors in Photoshop - it really was blue !

“Some things - not many ! - were better there!”

Wow ! That’s the best word to describe this flick. Usually I’m not very enthusiastic after a movie, but the 2+ hours of uninterrupted action and twists really were worth it.

Great acting from Walker, Cameron and Vera (main characters) with a simple and very direct script. I stood up when Teresa Gazelle called 911 “I heard shots from the 303 appartement …” - for me it really made the movie “Pulp fiction” kind of real.

What can I say ? Go watch it ! It has a few quirks - a little convoluted sometimes, deceiving start and ending - but it has the makings of a block buster !

Hristos a inviat !

Sarbatori fericite, sanatate si fericire in sfintele zile de Paste !

A trip to Athens

Or how to get sunburned in one day .

Last weekend me, Irina (my girlfriend) and Vasile (a romanian colegue) went on a Murex organized trip to the old civilisation’s heart. Impressed as we were of the well known monuments we stood in awe of the likeness between Bucharest and Athens - same people, same atmosphere and same crowds.

The usual turist stuff took us half a day (Acropole and the likes) so we were happy enough to dedicate the second day to the beach - I really appreciate a town that’s less than 20 minutes urban transportation time from the sea

So, what can I say more ? Perfect time (a sunny 24+ degrees Celsius), great food (best fish plate I ever had) and a lot of boats - a recommended weekend !

A, and by the way, I strongly recommend getting the metro to the Pireus port after which the tram to one of the beaches in the southwest region (metro map).

Here are a couple of photos I shoot (against Irina’s and Vasile’s wishes, which always seemed in a hurry ).

… and a history lesson

Continuing my history idea, let me really present myself - I neglected to do it before and now I feel kind of silly (well, at least there were no comments genre “who are you, dude ?”).

I was born in Alexandria, Romania (the only town where all the angles between streets are 90 degrees). I lived for 18 years there, trying to attend school the appropiate amount while following any other interests captured my attention at the moment.

One of these things was the computer, which led me to the computer science department of the “Politehnica” University (that’s college for our american readers). I spent the next few years learning about many things (including people, situations, humanity and such - maybe the most important part of learning) and left for “Ecole Polytechnique”, Palaiseau, France in my third year - 2003.

These last three years I’ve spent in France, finishing my studies in Romania and taking a masters degree in computer science, after which I got a job at Murex as a programmer. From here on, we’ll see !
I won’t bother you with more details for the moment, and to make up for the boring subject here’s one of the funniest web pages I have read : things my girlfriend and i have argued about

Sleeping in airports

I found an interesting site today, www.sleepinginairports.net, a sort of airport review place. Stories ranging from normal to weird and amusing reminded me of one of my own.
Well, my story could have been on the positive side if not for a few idiot security guards.

Everything started when my girlfriend had to take an early flight (about 7.30 in the morning, if I remember correctly). Because it would have taken 2 hours with the RER (the Paris’ open air metro), she decided to stay at the airport and I didn’t want to let her stay alone.

At 11 PM almost everything was closing up and people were pretty much leaving. We stayed in the open part of a self-service joint to play some Monopoly and around 2 am decided to try to sleep.

The airport had enough travelers, it wasn’t very cold and the bathrooms were open, so we didn’t have other problems that the stupid chairs : these seemed especially made not to let people sit confortably. After half an hour of listening to the cleaning crew go around us we left for a restaurant in the boarding area. This one seemed almost perfect - long sofas, comfortable, clean and without much noise. We weren’t the only ones, an older couple arranged themselves in a corner and wished us goodnight.

Everybody was almost asleep when a patrol arrived - they woke us up and suggested we move outside of the boarding area. Of course, a little sleepy, I protested and tried to explain that we weren’t annoying anyone. We also assured them the moment the bar’s personel were to arrive, we’ll be more than happy to quit (it wasn’t a closed space but let’s assume the bar had rented the area). This is the point it really got weird - the first guy started saying this isn’t something he cared to discuss indicating me I should take our stuff immediately and quit, while one of his collegues began to excite his dog in my direction.

I found myself trying to explain the first guy that it was only for a few hours (at this point it was already 4 am) while the dog went wild at my side and his “master” continuously letting it get a little close. Knowing a few things about trained dogs I realised he was signaling the animal to act out as to scare me - so I asked him directly what would happen to him if the dog were to bite me.

But, to cut the story short, I couldn’t reason with the two idiots while my girlfriend started to worry about the barking dog - at this point I couldn’t even hear myself speak - so we left the area, followed by the other couple.

The moral ? No matter how great the airport would be, the people working there may require some brushing up on the people skills. I still am sorry for not going to the airport’s administration and filing a complaint, as the older couple suggested.

Compare this with Singapore : “… they have a sauna with swimming pool and massage, but they just had closed. Missed the movie theater mentioned here, but found FREE (only at night so) Internet and TV monitors in the Intl Lounge. Just around the corner from the Internet terminal was a darkened and relatively quiet and deserted “SLEEPING AREA” marked as such! …”