Virgo's Naive Stories

Moving out

2008-03-01T10:33:00.004+01:00

When my wife wanted to create blog with recipes I suggested Blogspot because I like it and it's Google corporate. I like Google products. But Blogspot is first case when I decided to move out. Continuation of this blog can be found here:

http://virgo47.wordpress.com/

Now - of course - it's time to explain why. Well, the reason is very silly. ;-) It's impossible to print properly blog posts from here without some effort. I don't care about my blog - but recipes are likely to be printed out. In Firefox you get first page nearly empty (only title) and second contains your post - but only what fits there. Anything else is not printed at all. Not to mention that sidebar is standing in the way narrowing print area. IE works a bit better but there are reported problems with it as well.

You can probably solve this with some custom styles, but whatever I tried it didn't work for me. HTML template consists of various blogger tags and I can't limit default style to be media=screen only which makes my media=print style to be effectively ignored. This makes a lot of advices (to be found in various Blogspot posts) from 2005 invalid because they worked with more plain HTML template.

Long story short: There is no easy solution to print and I decided not to continue on blog site that works in this status for at least three years now.

I work with many SW products and normally I just address authors and tell them. However Blogger is for free and I can't expect fix very soon when it's like this for many years. To contact Google (I mean normal written text) is not that easy because all those forms lead you in circles to various helps - which obviously can't help me now. And Blogger Google Group? You can find the same problem there - unsolved. I tried different layouts - that's also why I don't have my previous style anymore (and I don't plan to change it back because it's pointless now).

I'm staying with Google - but I'm leaving Blogspot. I'll leave this blog here and maybe sometimes I post here just a summary pointing out to my new blog. But I'm blogging elsewhere now. So does my wife with her recipes. :-)

Cesta (4): Hearts

2008-02-21T19:36:00.007+01:00

It's easier to produce 5 posts in the first few days than another 5 in a year. Whatever... today I'm back with Cesta series and so I switch to Slovak. :-)

4. kapitolka s pozadím pesničky Hearts (7m35s) od Yesákov je o najmä o hudbe a aj o jednej mojej veľmi starej pesničke. Napriek mojím veľkým trápeniam sa s blogom sa moja manželka rozhodla, že to skúsi tiež. Uvidíme, koľko receptov sa jej podarí publikovať na jej blogu Zuzkine recepty! :-) Držím palce. A teraz hŕ do ďalšej cesty.

Yes: Hearts

31/7
Spomenul som si na rozhovor z prvých spoločných dní našej cesty. Barbora vtedy prehlásila čosi o tom, aký som prieberčivý človek. Netušil som, čo tým myslí, a tak som sa akože urazil.
"No dovoľ!" začal som, "ja že som prieberčivý? A v čom, ak sa smiem spýtať?"
"Špatne si ma pochopil," usmiala sa. Vtedy na mňa jej úsmev pôsobil zvlášť odzbrojujúco. Mala fantasticky úprimný úsmev. "Prieberčivý si, isto sám vieš, že je veľa vecí, ktoré si vyberáš."
"Ako každý iný...," namietol som.
"Ako každý iný," prikývla.
"Hudba," napadlo ma prvé, ale vedel som, že čakala čosi iné. Zámer som však pochytil. "Knihy...," a po dlhej pauze mi došlo, "priateľov... tam si vyberám až moc." Teraz som sa tomu zasmial. V prvých pár dňoch sme si toho povedali veľa; prezrádzali sme si navzájom toľko vecí... Od prvých slov som aspoň ja zažíval samé prekvapenie.
Prekvapení na mojej strane bolo vôbec nejako veľa. Mladé a pekné dievča samotné s chlapcom na podozrivej ceste... ja na jej mieste by som asi nesúhlasil.
"Vieš," poznamenala raz (napadlo ma, koľko vyslovených viet začína slovíčkom vieš), "nie som až taká bezbranná, ako sa možno na prvý pohľad javím."
"Vážne?" môj hlas bol vážny, ale nechtiac sa mi tam irónia votrela.
"Ja si myslím, že by som sa ti ubránila," pokračovala nedbajúc drobnej provokácie.
"Keby čo?" bol som zvedavý.
"A čože ja viem, čoho sú chalani schopní?" zasmiala sa a pozrela po mne, ako keby ma z čohosi podozrievala.
"A čo keby som bol oveľa silnejší?" nedal som sa odbiť.
"Spoliehala by som sa na prvý úder, verím, že by si ho nečakal. A navyše si nevyzeral, že by si mi chcel akokoľvek ublížiť." Nevedel som si predstaviť, ako Barbora niekoho likviduje. Ale bolo to už v dobe, kedy sme si navzájom nič nepredstierali (ak vôbec bola doba, kedy sme si predstierali). Neskôr som sa ale dozvedel, že robila svojho času karate. Začala, lebo to bolo módne, ale nakoniec jej to dalo viac, ako očakávala.
"Zdanie môže klamať," namietol som, čím som nemyslel konkrétne seba.
"Lenže neverím, že by človek schopný veľmi ublížiť by mal nápad vypadnúť z civilizácie..."
Často sme rozoberali teoretické veci, hoc' aj v dvojhodinovom dialógu. S Barborou sa mi vždy komunikovalo dobre, vedeli sme sa navzájom prispôsobiť. Aj vo vážnych hovoroch sme občas prechádzali na naivný a hašterivý tón, ak bola dobrá nálada a protichodné názory. Rozoberali sme čokoľvek, až na jednu vec (došlo mi to až teraz - ale mohla to byť aj náhoda) a tou bola láska. Napadlo ma, že to je jav (nepekný prívlastok pre tak číri cit, nech je jeho podoba akákoľvek), ktorý sa obíde aj bez rozoberania.
Niekomu isto došlo, že som v mnohých polohách typ romantický.
Bol večer posledného júlového dňa, ráno sme vyrazili z ubytovne. Blato ale bolo neprehliadnuteľné, aj sme podľa toho vyzerali. Stan sme postavili pri malej skalnatej plošinke, bol síce problém ho ukolíkovať, ale všetko sa s trochou úsilia dá. Barbora varila čaj. Strašne sa mi páčila, už len pre to, že vykonávala klasickú ženskú robotu.
Vytiahol som gitaru. Hrám veľmi rád, hudbu aj texty si sám vymýšľam, páči sa mi, ak ich niekto počúva. S Barborou sme často moje výtvory rozoberali - ona kritizovala, ja som hájil. Vedel som ako tak hrať aj na klavír, ale na oboch nástrojoch som len samouk. Okolie si zavše moju hru všíma, často ale iba preto, lebo viem dobre improvizovať či vymýšľať melódiu popri hre. Barbora sa vždy smeje, keď nejakú pieseň spievam na neviemkoľký nápev. V tomto smere som obdivoval jej všímavosť a zároveň mi tým veľmi dvíhala sebavedomie, lebo málokto mi dá najavo, že sa mu čosi na mne fakt ráta, zato negatívna kritika je bežná.
Po večeroch sme spievali často - hlavne české skladby: Nedvědovcov, Ulrychovcov a podobne.
"Čo mi zahráš?" Barbore sa zaleskli oči žiarou ohna.
"Čo len chceš," usmial som sa.
"Čo len vieš?" zapochybovala naoko. A možno aj trochu oprávnene.
"Pre teba všetko," ubezpečil som ju.
"Tak teda Wish You Were Here," spomenula jednu z najkrajších balád od Pink Floydov.
"Tak to už teda hej," prikývol som a pokúsil som sa o nejakú interpretáciu. Na Floydov sa to trochu podobalo. Barbora potom doniesla čaj, a tak bolo chvíľu ticho.
"To si ho nemohla uvariť studený?" spýtal som sa.
"Nie, nenašiel by si si potom naň toľko času," odvetila. Vyzeralo to, ako keby sme to obaja mysleli vážne, no v skutočnosti sme už neraz nahodili naoko vážnu hádku, aj keď sme dopredu bez dohovárania vedeli, že je to len akože. Rovnako nás bavilo hrať sa na malé deti v akomkoľvek smere.
"Vieš čo? Teraz ti, ak môžem, zaspievam čosi, čo ma napadlo už pomerne dávno," pozrel som sa na ňu. Sedela ku mne bokom a rovné vlasy jej zakrývali tvár.
"Mhmm...," zavŕtala sa do deky.
"Nazval som to Obchodník a ty isto prídeš na to, o čo mi tam išlo," začal som hrať melódiu od Chris De Burgha, na ktorú som pôvodne túto pesničku posadil, a začal spievať:

Vlečiem sa dlho sám vyprahnutou púšťou, voda stále v nedohľadne.
A sám tuším, že už len pár dún v tomto stave prekonám.
Zrazu vidím muža isto na piesku stáť, ani neverím vlastným očiam.
Ale vidiac pred ním vodu doplazím sa mu až k nohám.
Prikladám suché pery k nádobe s čistou vodou.
No on mi na to hovorí: "Ak sa chceš napiť, tak zaplať!"
Okamžite som sa zbadal stáť - a kričím naňho:

"Nech ti tá voda vyschne, no ja ti nezaplatím,
nech ti tá voda vyschne,
ja tým okrem života nič nestratím!"

Ľudská hrdosť sa proti tomu búri, zápasí s potrebou života.
Bežného tvora napadne, jak môže byť človek tak podlý.
Jeden kupčí s bytím, bez peňazí nedá, len preto lebo má, čo iný nie.
Zatiaľ čo druhý sa len, aby mohol žiť, vrúcne modlí.
Vyblednuté kostry tu ležia všade okolo.
Od neho nepočuť iné jak: "Ak sa chceš napiť, tak plať!"
Začínam sa takých ľudí báť - no aj tak vravím:

"Nech ti tá voda vyschne, no ja ti nezaplatím,
nech ti tá voda vyschne,
ja tým okrem života nič nestratím!"

Čosi mi šepká: "Žltá žiara slnka ti nedá dlho rozmýšľať,
daj si radšej od toho človeka povedať,
zhodnoť si svoj život a radšej zaň plať!"
No ja dobre viem, že tu nemá cenu dlho ostať stáť...

"Tá melódia je taká známa," bolo prvé, čo na to povedala.
"Hej. To som šlohol De Burghovi, volá sa to Don't Pay the Ferryman," odvetil som, "bol to skoro veľký hit."
"No a text," zamyslela sa, "ak si narážal na dobrosrdečníkov, čo ti kľudne predajú aj možnosť dýchať... tak to potom bolo dobré."
"Iba dobré?" hral som sa na ukrivdeného. Usmiala sa všimnúc si mojej grimasy.
"Chcel by si byť spevákom?" pozrela sa na mňa, "alebo sa ťa spýtam: Čím chceš byť?"
"Vieš, ten hudobník by nebol na zahodenie, ale na to človek potrebuje mať známych alebo slušný finančný základ," ale samozrejme by som chcel byť hudobníkom. Môj výčet však bol väčší. "Ja mám ale nároky vysoké. Chcel by som byť aj spisovateľom, na to ani človek veľa prachov nepotrebuje. Neviem... A chcel by som aj mať programátorskú firmu. Taký solídny kapitalista, ale s ušľachtilými koníčkami."
"Nemáš teda bohvieako nízke nároky, to je fakt," pokývala Barbora hlavou. Má pravdu, asi toho chcem skutočne veľa. Ale pôjdem za tým, so snahou sa snáď aspoň niečo splní.
"Ale čo by si si vybral, keby si mal jedinú možnosť?"
"Asi toho hudobníka," usmial som sa, "chudák žena by sa so mnou vláčila po turné, alebo by zostala doma - dlho by sme sa potom nevideli."
"Mieril si ty niekedy nie vysoko?" zaujímala sa Barbora.
"Vieš si ma tak vôbec predstaviť?" zazubil som sa na ňu, "ak hudobník, tak najlepší na svete."
"A ak by si bol druhý?" dobiedzala.
"Asi by som skočil z okna, ale možno by mi to stačilo, ešte neviem," usmial som sa nemysliac to samozrejme zase tak vážne.
Ľudia asi neradi prehrávajú. Myslím si, že chuť vyhrať je prirodzená (ak sa nejde cez mŕtvoly). Suchý to človek, čo nechce ísť vyššie, aspoň podľa mňa. Každý musí čosi vyhrať. Aspoň sám nad sebou, čo nebýva ľahké, často je to ťažšie než všetky potýčky s okolím. Bez toho asi život nemá význam.

Utopia (13): Organized by respect

2007-12-15T11:29:00.003+01:00

I hope this is not first and last of my Utopia posts after such a long time. I have ideas, I have story, only lack of the will is problem now. Or a lot of other things in my real life for that matter.

Next day I was first time at my work. Many things were similar and - as expected - even more were different. While we are talking about Arto object platform (it is a bit more than language - although not that far from our Java) I am more or less feeling at home. I have to learn a lot of new things - but principles are the same. Usage, habits, all the rest - on the other hand - is much different. People around me were informed about my little indisposition. Most of the day I spent with Caren - this time really hard working. I was surprised how organized she was during the work. She was connected to some communication service and she also played some simplistic strategic game here and there - but most of the time she was focused on work. Not that we have no breaks - but work discipline was much better - and it was surprisingly all much more entertaining in overall.

Although I have a car I've started to travel by mass transport because I simply love to watch all the new people and fresh behavior patterns. In my previous life - in our world - there was a lot of mess when I compare it to this one. I'm still surprised how people acts when they are getting on the bus, how they are watchful when they interact, how organized their movement seems to be. Yes - you can see something similar in regimes that don't provide a lot of freedom. Yet people here looks generally happy and free - and still willing to adapt to each other on every step. I had to ask Caren about that in one of those first days:
- "Don't you feel sometimes like living in some... flock?"
- "No - why?"
- "Because of how organized are you when you're in streets! Because you're really walking on the right when you're in the mall. Because you all act the same."
- "Well... is that what you think? We're all that same?"
- "No, that's the problem. You know - when I saw you - as a people - in the streets, in public transport, going shopping - whatever! - it reminded me of sci-fi movies depicting some totalitarian system. But you're not that way - that confuses me. A lot of order with a lot of individualism and diversity. How you can keep that organized part in proper... proportion?"
- "Should we demonstrate our individualism thrusting into each other out there?" Caren waved with her hand towards outside behind the window.
- "Of course not! But it's not normal to be that... disciplined!"
- "It IS normal :-) - even if it's not common in your world. Look - I've been to countries where the system is not like here and I was quite shocked - have to say the least. I'm glad that we're educated to this from childhood."
- "Educated?"
- "Yes! :-) We're taught to take care, to be observing, to... not collide with other people. In a bad way I mean."
- "Educated..." that hardly could come to my mind. "Well... if I refresh my memories they taught us few things too. To look around when crossing street. To free the seat for older. But it somehow doesn't work in general."
- "Maybe we're taught much more - plus we have much stronger influence from our surrounding."
- "Influence?"

Caren smiled at me and pushed herself off the computer desk.
- "Coffee?"
- "Sure!" I always agree with coffee.
So we're both walking to the kitchen and Caren is saying:
- "Your questions are quite tough in one aspect."
- "Like... you never thought about them explicitly?"
- "Yup. Not exactly never... really. We talked about many things at school. However not every single thing was explained with whys. We had whys explained for most important or most typical. The rest was just... it just fit into scheme, you know."
- "Of course... explaining the same principle over and over - or even slightly different variant of that principle... it would be boring."
- "Like that. So - no one told me why we are so organized on streets that it looks to you like some totalitarian system. I can only try to construct answer based on principles I know. And I guess we were quite good equipped with knowledge in order to do that."
- "Go for it. :-)"
- "First thing is that we are very individual - every one of us. But if you want to be individual enough you have to have space - your domain, you know. And as much as we like to interact with each other we also respect each other's domains. And that affects our behavior on streets as well. It's not because we're stupid sheep - it's because we're watchful and respectful."
- "Fair enough. And surprisingly consistent."
In the meantime we're already in the kitchen and Caren is making ourselves some coffee. I'm looking outside the window and I see that "organized movement" in a slightly different light now.

- "Do you know what's the title of the first book by Ronan Reeves?" Caren is asking.
- "No."
- "Respect as a drive of Open Society."
- "Aha..."
- "It's quite significant - and emblematic as well - that he used word respect in the title of his very first work. And it's probably not just by coincidence. You might be mistaken that we're all good at each other here. I'm angry sometimes, people are lazy, we have our bad days, there is a lot of misunderstanding between us. But we tend to back off for a little while before we say something bad or ultimate. There is reason for many things and I always ask first. Or I try to ask first at least. ;-) I don't like everyone - far from it actually. But I have to respect them. Or ignore them for that matter. But I have to respect their way of life. If they affect my productivity at work I can go to have a talk with my boss and he's here to handle such matter. If I have nothing with someone I can simply ignore his behavior. If there is reason to interact I do so. People are reasonable mostly - and I can talk with them and share my thoughts with them. When it's no use I let it be."
I poured some milk into my coffee and we both sat down.
- "So... respect," I hummed.
- "Respect is important and it's very good that he picked this as the drive. It's not the only important thing. Open society requires open communication. If someone can affect many things we should know much more about him or her. And we have to have devices how to change the course of things if it's important. Good education. Not high grade one - good one. I mean - we're taught about OS basics on elementary schools. It's the cornerstone of this society. Respect, open communication, even some political background. Why taxes are important, what are the roles of state in the society - many things are open for discussion still. Especially how much responsibility should state have. It also changed quite a lot during those 90 years since World War. Reeves also wrote many books that were much more about politics - although he started with books that looked more like game theories. He was also involved into politics a lot - he was Wilson's adviser for instance."
- "Aha... now I'm thinking - when I want to see some of his book where can I find them? Do you generally use net for this?"
- "If you like reading electronic book - no problem. If you prefer paper I still have few of his books in my bookshelf."
- "Ok. In that case I might pay you a visit and borrow them. ;-)"
Caren smiled at me:
- "Deal!"

Travian intermezzo

2007-11-16T15:40:00.001+01:00

Well... it's been a long time, hasn't it? It's not healthy for a blog to be abandoned for such a long time - I realize this. And instead of publishing new Utopia instalment I dare to write about the reason (well, aside from laziness and other stuff) why I stopped doing many things - and blogging was among them.

Few days before Eastern Holidays my working mate showed me... "at last the game that suits me with its pace!" "What? Where?" I was curious because he'd never played game at work before. That was that ominous day in my life when I encountered Travian. To sum it up, yesterday we won the final "world wonder race" on speed.travian.com - meaning I was the member of the winning alliance - and that (hopefully) definitely ended my Travian period. Let's start with why I started to play this game in the first place. :-)

Travian is very catchy game and you definitely should try it - with caution though. ;-) If you have a lot of free time and you can check Internet regularly you might be successful in the game. I don't say that it's mandatory to play it 24/7, but there are players who do so - with the help of so called "account sitter" - that's mechanism that is introduced in the game itself. Now what's that game about? It's sort of real-time medieval MMO strategic game. You start with one small village and you can end up with tens of them (or even one hundred on speed server - which I cover later). First you have to choose your nation - either Romans, Gauls or Teutons. They all have their advantages and despite their descriptions (like "Gauls are defensive") good players can play aggressively with any of them.

Rule your Empire!

Whole game is controlled via few main views. You can see your village overview - and upgrade resource fields (lumber, clay, iron and crop). You can see your village center - and build/upgrade buildings or walls. You can click on various buildings and perform related actions there - build some troops in barracks or stables, train your hero, making deals on market. You can view map to check bigger players around which would likely to make raids on your village. :-) Or you can send troops on weaker players in order to steal their resources. Resource stealing - so called "farming" - is integral part of the game. It's hard to survive without resources, it's impossible to be on top without farming.

And that's the first issue I have about this game. You simply can't be good and nice. There are many naive players who enter the game (often lately after the server start which is even worse for most of them) and whine in messages "please don't attack me". Heck! I don't ATTACK you, I just RAID you. Whatever... it is attack indeed, but how to explain that I want his resources. "Sim City" is maybe the most often mentioned game within messages exchanged between players. Like: "This is not simcity, this is the war game!" Or: "Stop whine and go play SimCity!" It's written on the front page of Travian: "Build up villages, wage wars or trade with your neighbors." This is true, but it doesn't emphasize the most important - it's all about being aggressive.

You can also grow just fine only with upgrading and spending your resources (so other players can't steal too much from you). Talking about upgrading... there is very good balance here. Because as you have better levels of resource fields the production is higher - but the cost of another upgrade is higher as well - but the production gain from another level is higher too. Hence here is sort of positive spiral which makes the game interesting equally when you're working with numbers like 10 (whatever it is) and numbers like 10,000. This is very nice about it.

Be hard!

Back to the struggle! Yes, you can be merciful from time to time. I let live one player ... the result was that his villages were taken not by me but by the players around. So I didn't save him actually - and I was the one who suffered loss because I was stupid and mild. Not that I was so good to everyone :-) but in this case I wanted to appreciate his quite smart defense. I mentioned taking over villages. You build village and except your capital (that can't be taken) it is possible to take it with special units - that might be expensive but you can afford it later quite easily. Taking over village is quite tricky but with enough power and some help from your alliance members you can do it with no problem really.

So if you're unlucky you can end up with most of your villages lost in favor of bigger players. Especially if you're lone-wolf refusing to join (preferably strong) alliance. If they want you in the first place. ;-) Not that your capital is safe. You start the game with population of 2 in your first village, but any village can be taken to 0. The village then disappears. Even the capital is lost completely - only the last village you have can't disappear - but do you really care after 5 months of game when you have 1 village with 0 pop? I'm not whining now about myself, it was never my case. I just don't like this game because of this - because there is no way how you can "just trade with other players", no way how to play it and be nice. You mostly have to forget about human aspect and adopt aggressive mindset. This game is played by nice people as well, yet it's hard to find out - because they have to play without mercy for their own good.

What about units?

I should talk a little about units and their movement. Every unit has various numeric characteristics - attack, defense vs. infantry, defense vs. cavalry, speed, how much it can carry and upkeep - which is how much crop the unit consumes per hour. Every nation has 5 general units - three or two of them are infantry (they eat 1crop/h) and the rest cavalry (2, 3 or 4 crop/h). For your idea - you can host around 1100 "eaters" in a fully developed normal village. That means ~1100 infantry or ~400 horses - depending on their actual type. Units are quite nicely balanced. Then there are other types of units - scouts (name varies depending on the nation) that can "scan" other city (units, wall level, resources in warehouses) and if there are no scouts they are unnoticed. If there are some there will sort of fight between these scouts and you might end up with all your scouts being killed and you knowing nothing. Then there are two demolishing units - rams for walls and catapults for other buildings or resource fields. Walls are special because the higher level of the wall the higher % bonus to defense for the units in the city. Hence rams are important. Catapults are that bad thing that makes this game so cruel. ;-) Finally there are special unit for taking over foreign cities (persuading inhabitants to join your empire ;-)), then settlers that are here to build new city of yours and finally - your hero.

Hero is actually any chosen unit (in most cases either strongest cavalry or the fastest one) and it brings sort of RPG to the game - although it's far less personal than RPG. When hero levels you have some points to spread into attack, attack bonus (% to all units that attack with him), defense (his own), defense bonus (% to all units of this player in the city where the hero is) and finally you can boost his regeneration rate. You can imagine that +20% to attack (which is the maximum) can really make the difference in some cases hence the hero is important feature of the game. When he dies you can regenerate him but it costs you multiples of the original training cost (depends on level and it can be really crazy for high levels) and also some time (which might be even more serious than the resource cost ;-)).

...and their movement

Finally about "hyperspace jumps" in this game. Yeah, medieval game and hyperspace... you grin. It's like that. The map is 800x800 squares big and with typical infantry speed like... 6 squares per hour... do you get it? You can really fight only with your closesurrounding (at least at the beginning). If you send your first 10 precious soldiers to the other end of the map it will take SO MUCH time that the opponent can grow... well maybe even ten-fold. :-) You always see that there is attack coming to your town. Except scouts which are seen only after attack and only if you had your (or friendly) scouts in the town. But - when you send your army to other town this army literally disappears from your town and at the given (calculated) time it willappear in the target town (or at the gates, whatever ;-)) and there will be some fight and then they (maybe ;-)) go back. Again in hyperspace.

Why I emphasize the hyperspace when there is no hyperspace mentioned in the game principles - you ask? Well because if you send your troops and he send his troops (or her,really many good female players there... unless they are fakes, it's Internet ;-) (many are real for sure!))... ok, so armies are heading against each other and... they simply fight in the target towns and go back. No way how they can meet in the middle. No way how you can have safe city in the middle of your other cities. It's all event-based (programmers know what I mean ;-)) and you can reach any town you want. Space plays only one important role - that distance affects time and with more time to prepare defense you have better chance to crush the attacker. That's all. Or not?

Tricky strategies

Player can see that the attack is coming but he doesn't know how big it is. And there are two types of attacks - the normal one and the raid. When attacker hits the town both armies are compared and after one battle "iteration" there are some units left on both sides (unless the imbalance is that big that one side lose everything right away!). Raid ends here. Remaining attacker troops then take as much resources as they can carry (and can find in the town) and they take their way home. Normal attack continues until one side loses everything. You can catapult and ram the town only with normal attack and also persuade inhabitants to join you in normal attack only as well. Which makes it slightly harder but not that much and it makes sense that you have the town cleaned of defenders in order to take it.

You can only attack with troops that were build in that particular town - but you can defend with troops from other towns. You can send units as attack, raid or ... reinforcements. Here it is - you can join forces to defend but you can't do the same in attack. This brings at least some balance. Although it looks like it favors the defender it's not exactly like this. The game still runs - in real time. Many players are either on the other side of the planet and they attack while you sleep. Very often you don't have the chance to join defense if attack is in a few hours scope. If it takes day(s)... well, someone crazy can risk it. Or someone (over)confident. Or...

I said - you don't know how big the incoming attack is. Hence there is very popular tactics how to bring uncertainty into defender's lines. You attack ALL his towns from your main offensive town. Yeah, unless you have tens of them you have only one or few towns where you build your main offensive army. But all attacks are so called "fakes" (1 troop) - except one. Now how can defender know where to gather defense and what he might leave abandoned. And if the attacks are without catapults (you can judge by the time of the travel because "cata-attacks" are roughly twice as slow as infantry one) it's not so crucial. You risk nothing except resources, you can spend them, send them to defended city... whatever. Now if the attack is slow (catapults - or so called "catas" or "cats") you're in trouble. In this case those fakes are 1 catapult each - these are more expensive but you have to do it because otherwise it's easy to say what attack is the real one because of its slowness. Now - that's the lottery.

A lot of fun...

...but for not that many players. That's the thing why I stopped playing this game. It's good game, it's not realistic but it's consistent, it has balance, but it's just way to shallow and aggressive. For me. Many players enjoy this and I don't argue with them - of course. This game is spoiled by players who stop to play it when they are farmed and they forget to delete their account (dead farm). It's spoiled by weak players who expect something completely different (because Travian seems to provide more choices than mere war). At the end when few best players are building world wonder (which is ultimate goal in this game) they are supported by hundreds of other players who just send resources - and defend. This isn't exactly most exciting period of the game - at least not for most of the players. When the round is over it's rather a relief than a fantastic feeling (even when you're in the winning alliance).

There is also speed version of the Travian game which supposed to be thrice as fast. This relates to resource production. Unit movement is twice as fast (thrice might be really too fast for this kind of game ;-)). But with crop production three-folded you can also have armies three times bigger. And really big armies are held in so called "cropper" where most of the resource fields are producing only crop. These towns are very sought after because crop production is the ultimate limit affecting your army size. While in the beginning you're happy that you have 10 soldiers - at the end you can see attacks of more than 100,000 infantry + 30,000 horses + many catas - very often the army size exceeds 250,000 eaters. Crazy!

Your life will change

If you take Travian seriously you'll find out that sometimes you have to wake up in the night to ... send defense or dodge serious attack. (Dodge is another "trick" where you send your troops away when you know you'd lose - but you can cancel their movement first 90 s. So they will return right after the attacker merely visits your empty town. ;-)) You find yourself checking the Travian more and more. While at the beginning few clicks a day are just fine (because soon you're out of resources) later there is a lot of stuff going on. And if you lead your own alliance you'll write tons of in-game messages. This game starts affect your personal life. It's not the matter of will. Question is if you want to play it better than the rest or rather not play it at all.

Now I often sit at my computer thinking what would I do with all that free time. :-) But maybe I'll not sit at my computer that much. Maybe. And maybe I'll write some new Utopia posts, hm? :-)

Utopia (12): Hmm... Caren :-)

2007-05-20T00:12:00.000+02:00

Caren's dwelling was furnished rather simply but still it wasn't cold. I'm sitting down on the sofa and looking around. Appliances around are very similar to those I have in my flat - so in most cases their function is not exactly obvious for me (because I haven't tried most of them except computer).
- "This is all yours?" I'm asking. "I mean flat, and so."
- "Yes, mine."
- "Aren't you a bit young to be able to afford all those things - and flat in the first place?"
- "Well, most of things you see are mine and dwelling itself is mortgaged. I repay it in next 18 years."
- "Mhm, so it's kinda similar to my previous situation. Flats in our area were rather expansive so we took mortgage with my girlfriend but we were able to afford it with earnings in IT sector."
- "That your 'kinda'..." Caren is smiling. "First time you mentioned you have a partner."
- "Well... on the other side."
- "How is she?" Caren is checking the fridge. She seems to want to ask me what I want but then she obviously decides on her own.
- "Hm, hard to say. We were about to wed in a matter of months. I'm not good in descriptions. :-) What I like is that she has many male qualities and still she's a woman. She is sensible but also sensitive, she use to be calm, intelligent, smart, good party for me. :-) Plus I like to have few things on my own and she's ... let's say submissive in those areas. And I'm not talking about sex now. I mean real life... she somehow likes it that way. That I'm the one who has the final word in those things where I insist. She has her last word in other areas. Hm... it's funny, when I'm talking about it it seems that the best thing on our relation is that we do not collide in bad way. I like it."
Caren is bringing drinks and she's sitting down next to me.
- "What are those things you like them to be according to you?"
- "Hm... you see - I'm trying to tell you as much as I can so I'm talking on meta-level sometimes. I was expressing how I feel it. Also... funny is that we're not shouting on each other in normal situations, but I can cry to her when we're playing computer games. No problem with that. I simply like her - the way she accepts me."
- "Ok, I see that I have to find out on my own what must be done as you like it," Caren smiles. "Do you accept her the way she does?"
- "I think so. For me acceptation, respect and similar things are quite high on my scale. They are in some aspects more universal than friendship - because you can't be friend with everyone - I guess."
- "Yeah... you can't."

For a few seconds we're just sipping our drinks. Then Caren asks:
- "Are you faithful? You know I mean intimate life."
- "Hm... we have let's say open relation. I guess we both feel it is not less firm because of that. It's complicated in some points but I don't regret those problems."
- "After all it has some advantages. :-)"
- "Why you were asking?"
- "Hm... I guess that faithful partner wouldn't be so interested in me like you are. Or you're just extremely pragmatic and you realize that in this world you have no duties to her. Although it's just my construction and you could still feel it different."
- "I could. But no - I had the privilege of being allowed to flirt - and more than that - with women. While I can convince her that she's the most important."
- "Now I'm miles away from judging you. :-) As you can see me with Felix have open relationship too. And it's working. I just know that in ... more traditional societies - although for me it's bit euphemistic designation - couples have troubles leading life in more open manner. Most of them."
- "Most of them don't even want to - of course," I have to point out the real cause.
- "Yes, of course. Why you decided to live like this?"
- "Well... we both have some experiences with divorce - either our parents or - in my case - with previous wife. That doesn't mean that human shifts toward more liberal view of partnership - but I was always thinking like that. More or less. I lived with unsatisfying sex without being allowed to have it elsewhere. I didn't like that. Monopoly isn't good even in this area of life. :-) Not that I wanna say that feelings should be compared to market economy - of course."
- "Of course," Caren semi-agreed with some irony in voice. "Love is not ... institution :-) where you should change just because of better sex. Especially when making love with fresh partner is a bit misleading and you can easily misjudge your previous experiences."
- "Exactly!" I pointed to her. "It looks like you have some theory around this!"
- "Well, I do because we're taught in school in those subjects. I'm a bit surprised that you have your theory so thought out - when you say you came from society where monogamy is standard."
- "Sometimes I'm thinking too much."
- "Well - I bet!" Caren agrees with chuckle.

I'm looking at Caren and with all that alcohol in blood I want her more and more. Not that I wouldn't want her being sober - but you just know how it works. I have to smirk thinking about it all. Caren, drinking, tickling in my stomach...
- "What?" Caren asks tossing her hair... I'd swear it was in defiance.
I shook my head. "You know..."
- "I don't." :-)
- "Alcohol."
- "And?"
I shook my head again.
- "I just don't know. After few drinks I don't know if the things I see are real or only what I want to believe."
- "Aha." :-)
- "And thinking how it would be without that. When I was younger I felt it like 'using' alcohol was actually cheating. Now I just don't care."
- "While both of us don't care it's alright."
- "The other thing is that I can't imagine you backing off. Because so far you either just let me in in area I wanted or ... or I was fighting with myself if I want to do something."
- "And are you winning?"
- "I'm sure you're enjoying watching it."
- "As you are - more or less - enjoying talking it."
- "Aren't you really tired of myself?"
- "I don't know what to say. No - really - I'm not. But saying that is just what you need to hear for you to be assured. Whatever it is you need."
I'm looking to her eyes. For a while she looks a bit more serious - but that might be just my imagination because I realize that her face is still smiling. Just the impression from how she looked for a while.
- "Look, Gavin. Can you accept when I say stop?"
- "Yes..."
- "So tell me what's bothering you? Because - although I have no problem assure you million times - I just don't know why you need it."
- "Now... I don't wanna skip the answer - but do they teach you this in schools too?"
- "M'not sure what you mean, but no... you're just out of typical patterns so you're suspect. :-)"
- "Aha," I smirked. "So what's bothering me? Maybe my stupid past. Maybe I broke up with girl when I was 14 and she declared she didn't want to know me again. And again the same story later. First time because I wasn't able to kiss her for months and second time I have no clue. I just hate uncertainty."

- "Hey, Gavin... we work together and I want to have fair relation with you. I like you, you're even more attractive now with all the new stuff. It's even semi-funny to assure you that you're dealing well. I enjoy any flirt with you but now if you want something you're the one who have to press."
- "Right..."
- "And," Caren continues before I could say something, "of course if you do nothing tonight I have no problem with it. And yes - I will keep wanting to know you on."
I noddled with understanding.
- "Satisfied?" Caren asks.
- "Yes," we clinked the glasses to seal that. "I know I'm talking unnecessary things, you know that I want you, I was just afraid to make things worse - because even without touching you - or whatever more - I'm enjoying this moment."
- "You've already touched me! :-)"
- "Yeah," I smiled coming with the idea. "But it was just the dance!" :-)
- "Just the dance?! I'll kill you!" Caren was obviously in a previous good mood again.
- "Ah, I thought it involves some fight and some contact - but while you don't want to touch me it's hard to kill me."
- "Hey! Don't provoke me - you're supposed to be touching me - you're the active man and I should be your victim. I expect you to have the last word and you expect me to be submissive - or wasn't it like that?"
- "Well, you mixed it up a little but it sounds good." I put my glass on the table and I shifted myself toward her.
- "I really don't want to look so uncertain and so vulnerable - I just can't help myself," I noticed lightly. I put my hand on her shoulder and caress her nape looking into her eyes. She was obviously far from backing off and that is exactly the point where my doubts go away very quickly. I moved my hand down across her bosom - somehow testing her intimate zones - but she was already alright with the situation and I spotted nice sparks in her eyes.
- "I like you - even if it's rushed," I say to her.
- "I like it even if it's rushed," she replies.
I took her behind her nape again and pulled her closer gently. Our first kiss was a bit cautious - but definitely not cold. I was completely electrified.

- "You know what's funny?" I'm asking after a while.
- "You tell me. :-)"
- "I really do want to talk about some interesting things before it turns out like this. I'm not saying I don't want to kiss you - of course! Just that..." I stopped in a need of a proper word.
- "Gav," Caren smiles at me, "I guess I know. And after all - the mystery is gone - I want you. Whoever you are. I know your outside and I like your inside so far. And we still have hours to chat."
- "Now?"
- "Even now if you want, but I suggest to go to bed."
- "Ah... sounds good to me."
- "To sleep I mean," Caren chuckles. "We have a busy day tomorrow."
I nodded. "I bet. Ok... so that bed." :-)

Utopia (11): Way to Caren

2007-04-21T23:57:00.000+02:00

The evening passed by very quickly - surprisingly quickly considering my anxiety. But when I asked Caren to tell me something about Arto programming language we dug into topic we both liked. We also danced a lot. Suddenly there were only me, Caren, Paul, Martin and one little woman from Martin's team working as graphics artist named Zina Becker (well - that is combination). I danced much more than during any other fun evening in last few years and I was pretty satisfied - and tired already. :-) I was just hanging on because I didn't want to be the first one out. However... Martin stopped and said:
- "Ok, I've enough..."
And because we all shared the same feeling we all stopped with similar message and returned to our table.

- "So... one last beer?" asked Paul.
- "I'm pro," said I. Now I realized that Paul drove us here. "BTW: How are you driving home?"
- "Ah... no problem with that. I'm taking cab now and tomorrow I'll come along with Denis. I'll pick up the car during the lunch I guess."
- "Aha..."
- "Actually I planned to take you home."
- "I'll handle that," Caren entered the discussion.
- "A..." Paul's head went up during the moment of surprise. "Ok! :-)"
- "I hope you didn't want to leave him alone now," Caren smiled.
- "Yeah, that's right."
Zina was obviously uninformed:
- "Why can't be Gavin alone?"
- "Well..." Paul shrugged, "Gav?"
- "Well... :-) I completely forgot everything from my past prior this morning. To put it this way..."
- "Uff!" Zina didn't look exactly believing.
There was a silence for a few seconds and then Caren said to me casually:
- "I was wondering if you know what you'll be doing tomorrow?"
- "Eh," I smirked and after some tense second I answered. "No! :-)"
- "You want to say that you don't remember anything? No work, nothing?" asked Zina.
- "Exactly," I replied. "However - I have some Arto crash course accomplished. :-)"
- "Well... it really doesn't sound funny."
- "It isn't," I admitted. "On the other hand I'm rather enjoying it now. It's interesting to get know all the people... maybe again."
- "But... you're in a real trouble. You have to get know the others, you have to get know even yourself and of course also your work, your previous knowledge."
- "Yes, I realized that already."
- "But maybe you'll remember something," Zina tried to cheer me up.
- "Maybe..." although I was pretty much convinced that that won't happen.

Later in the cab... I'm sitting next to Caren on the back seat while Paul, who has similar route like us, is on the front one.
- "So I guess you'll make it to the work tomorrow," Paul is saying.
- "Well, I plan to," I have to smile. "At least I have some guidance."
- "We might be a bit late, but nothing extreme," Caren is in a good mood too - obviously.
- "If you are late I'll be thinking it's because of the drinking."
- "Yeah, my head suddenly starts to ache," Caren holds her head.
- "I'm a bit curious what you two plan tonight."
- "Paul, I have no particular plans... so far... I really don't know," Caren is dimpling.
- "OK," Paul's curiosity isn't satisfied, but there's nothing he can do about it.
- "Is there anything I should be worried about?" I'm asking.
- "No," Paul is tittering. "I really don't think so. :-)"
- "BTW: There are no problems with relations at work?"
- "Well," Paul sighed, "there can be problem, but generally - there is none. There are pairs in our teams. And it's also hard to prevent that something emerges between two people anyway. While you're doing your job I have no problem. There is also no legal framework that would cover such a trivial things. It's clearly everyone's personal matter and it's his responsibility to handle his work appropriately."
- "Right..."
- "Are there some problems in your world with such a thing?" Caren asked.
- "Well... some companies don't like to see couples within teams for whatever reason - but generally I guess it's bearable. And it's not legally forbidden either. Only in organizations like army and such..."
- "Yes, it's the same here, but there are reasons for that."
- "Maybe there is the difference that we take the couples with clemency," Caren chuckled.

Caren lives in a flat house - just like me. I was completely lost in the city when we get off the cab although I didn't care. Caren linked her arm with mine and guided me to the entrance.
- "Now I realized," started I, "wouldn't it be less risky for you to come to me?"
- "Well," Caren smiled, "yes and no, I guess. Now I risk that you know where I live - nothing more. You're easily traceable in this world so I'm not afraid of what you can do to me. And so far I feel very well in your company. On the other hand - if I judge you right - you're normal person and in that case I have more power and better control in my flat, you know. ;-)"
- "Better control?" I hardly can resist to laugh. "Of what? :-)"
- "It depends. I still don't know what I want. Yeah, I guess I'm still flirting with you - as you do with me - and I really don't know what I want."
- "Ok, fair enough. I'm rather... slower when I'm uncertain. So just keep me that way and you're in control."
- "I don't want to keep you uncertain just because of this. If I know something I'll tell you, ok?"
- "Ok."

And so we're standing in front of her door and she's opening (yeah, again, fingerprint) and I try to relax and not to spoon anything to myself and just let the things flow.
"Welcome into my kingdom, Gavin. Feel yourself comfortable - like you always did."

Cesta (3): Set Me Free

2007-04-03T00:10:00.000+02:00

Dlhšie som sa už nevenoval Ceste, a tak je načase, aby som oprášil jej tretiu časť. Je celkom sranda čítať ju po ... dnes už takmer dvanástich rokoch. Stále sa s ňou môžem vo veľa veciach stotožniť. A je aj celkom sranda porovnávať rozhovory z daného veku s dnešnými. Hoci som oveľa smelší ako vtedy, paradoxne už neoslovujem kočky v autobusoch. Ako keby to bolo okolo (blížiacej sa) tridsiatky tak trochu nemiestne. Netuším. Alebo už možno nehľadám. :-) Každopádne, tu je tretia časť Cesty - dnes je kúštik dlhšia a pesnička k nej trvá 6:55. Za tú dobu to ale určite stíhate. :-)

Chris Rea: Set Me Free

29/7

Barbora bolo jedno z najkrajších dievčat, aké som kedy videl. Nemusela sa páčiť každému - mnohí mi vravia, že mám trochu čudný vkus, ale ona mala v sebe toľko ženskosti, s ktorou vedela fantasticky prirodzene narábať, že po prvých chvíľach našej známosti som ju obdivoval.
Nedávno ma napadlo, že by som sa mohol pokúsiť "zbaliť" ju, aj keď by to nemalo dlhodobú perspektívu, lebo s koncom prázdnin sa asi naveky rozlúčime a vzťah sa na diaľku len formou dopisov udržiavať nedá.
Zaujímalo by ma, čo si v tomto smere myslí ona o mne; bohužiaľ, neviem čítať druhému myšlienky. Ani by som to vedieť nechcel, verím tomu, že každý má rád svoje súkromie a nie je spokojný s človekom lezúcim mu doň. Svedomie mi káže neliezť tam, kde si to ktosi nepraje (zrejme má na to dôvod), aj keby tu taká možnosť hneď bola.
Ako som sa s ňou vlastne stretol? Bolo to tretí deň mojej cesty. Z mesta, kde bývam, som sa dostal do okolia mesta, ktoré som dôverne poznal. Je tomu asi rok, čo sme sa odtiaľ odsťahovali. Nastupoval som do autobusu, aby som sa teda dostal na sídlisko, kde som býval, aspoň pozriem nejakých starých kamarátov (prípadne kamarátky).
V autobuse bolo pomerne málo ľudí, a tak bol aj výber voľných miest. Žiadne dvojmiesto ale nebolo voľné, zostávalo mi už len vybrať si, ku komu si sadnem. Zrak mi padol na pekné dievča (vyjadriť sa cudzou rečou: "dívka zasmušilé tváře" - taký krásny výraz moja rodná reč isto nemá) a bolo rozhodnuté.
"Je tu voľné?" spýtal som sa.
Letmo si ma premerala (dokonca sa aj usmiala) a prikývla: "Samozrejme."
Symbolicky sa zavrtela spôsobom, akým sa uvoľňuje troška miesta na lavičke, aj keď už pomaly nebolo čo uvolňovať. Prisadol som si k nej a premýšľal, čo teraz. Potom ma napadlo spomenúť si, čo robia moji kámoši v takejto situácii. Niekoľkých som hneď preskočil - majú len veľké a oplzlé reči a činy žiadne (napríklad srandista, ktorý povie, že sa s ňou v autobuse vyspal - to jest "zalomil to", isto ešte celý ochrápaný z včerajšieho pozerania televízie). Nechal som sa inšpirovať jedným svojím fakt dobrým kamarátom, ten si takto prisadol k jednej vyhliadnutej dievčine a od tej doby sú to veľký kámoši (ak nie viac). Po svojich prvých dojmoch mi povedal: "Musíš do nej stále hustiť, čo sa tam vojde." Jemu to vyšlo, navyše ja nemám čo stratiť.
Bol som vyzbrojený odpozorovanými vedomosťami (ešteže na školu dochádzam asi dvadsať kilometrov - cesta autobusom je dlhá, a tak som toho vedel teoreticky dosť).
"Smiem sa ťa spýtať, ako sa voláš?" obrátil som sa na ňu čo najprirodzenejšie. Prinajhoršom to bude drobný trapas, na ktorý si ona za hodinu ani nespomenie - a ja to s týmto vedomím nejak prežijem, pomyslel som si. Aj keď som vedel, že by som sa tým chvíľu zožieral.
"Smieš," usmiala sa nenútene, ale nebol som si istý, či ju náhodou neotravujem. Táto istota asi nikomu v takejto situácii doprianá nebude.
Hlavne do oslovenia za žiadnu cenu nedávať slovíčko prepáč, znie to trápne, zaprisahal som sa, mal som tendenciu robiť to. Po zlomku sekundy mi došlo, že odpoveď je celá. Ako duchaplné, mala aspoň zmysel pre hravosť, má to aj v očiach. Odvrátila sa síce na pol tváre, ale isto vyčkáva, či sa spýtam. Zdalo sa mi, že naberám na istote, nevyvíja sa to až tak zle.
"Ako sa voláš?" spýtal som sa. Ak mi odpovie, isto nebudem vedieť, čo ďalej.
"Barbora," odvetila a opäť sa tak odzbrojujúco usmiala. Aha, Barbora... a ďalej? To je asi nepodstatné. Preboha, toľká nádhera vedľa mňa - čo s tým budem robiť? Zapojil som všetky mozgové závity do premýšľania, na akú tému nadviazať rozhovor. Možno sa oplatí vyjadriť jej svoj obdiv, ktorý isto nie je bezdôvodný.
"Vieš, zaujímalo by ma," začal som pomaly, "či sa ti stáva častejšie, že ťa ktosi osloví v autobuse. Myslím... so zámerom spoznať ťa."
"Nechodím moc často autobusom," namietla. Ksakru, už zase nejasná odpoveď, trochu ma to štvalo. Ale že som bol pri tretej otázke, ešte to stále nebolo také zlé. Keby sa ma chcela zbaviť, urobí to už dávno (dúfam).
"Tak dobre," pokýval som hlavou a začal sa nevedomky šibalsky usmievať, keď nič iné, aspoň sa pobavíme, "tá istá otázka, len bez toho autobusu."
"Zavše sa to stáva," prikývla. Už som mal na jazyku otázku: Smiem sa spýtať, kde vystupuješ? No po predchádzajúcej skúsenosti som to preštylizoval.
"Mimochodom, kde vystupuješ?" uprel som na ňu nekompromisný pohľad, už som sa cítil celkom isto. Minimálne tá jazda utečie rýchlo.
"Asi v ***," odvetila po dlhom zvažovaní, ktoré sprevádzala kývaním hlavy. Udanie mesta ma potešilo. Aspoň máme spoločný cieľ a ten je ešte dobrú pol hodinu cesty. Spýtať sa jej znovu na čosi by mi už pripadalo ako výsluch, ale iná možnosť tu nebola - uťať to teraz by bola neodpustiteľná hlúposť.
"Robíš nejakú školu?" to bola vec, ktorá ma fakt zaujímala. Pozrela na mňa skúmavým pohľadom (za poslednú minútu aspoň tretí raz), z ktorého som nebol schopný zistiť, čo znamená. Ani odmietavosť, ani súhlas, ani nadšenie, ani ľahostajnosť. Nečitateľný pohľad. Na tvári mi skamenel spýtavý úsmev, ako reakcia na to, čo produkovala ona na mňa. Čomu sa hneď zasmiala.
"Gymnázium," a ďalej sa mi pozerala do očí, "to nie je dosť dobrá vizitka, čo?"
"Prečo?" odvetil som tolerantne a aj to tak myslel, "na môj vkus len trochu všeobecné."
Po chvíli ticha som zaútočil znovu: "Do koľkej triedy chodíš?" A v tichu dodával: Už sa len, dievča, konečne rozkecaj! Neviem, čím by sa dalo pokračovať. Privrela trochu viečka, ani keby čosi zvažovala.
"Mám šestnásť rokov," odpovedala napokon. Zdalo sa mi, že odhalila skutočnú podstatu otázky. Možno to ale povedala len tak, pretože boli prázdniny, a tak sa do školy nechodilo. Mohla teda ísť do druhého, ale rovnako dobre aj do tretieho ročníku.
Spýtal som sa jej znovu na podobnú otázku, lebo ma predsa len ten ročník trochu zaujímal.
"Teraz pôjdem do tretej," odvetila. A už po neviemkoľký raz sa mi pozrela do očí. Po chvíľkovom "súboji" sklopila zrak. Nerobila to často.
"Mimochodom, tá prvá otázka bola vystihnutá, skutočne ma zaujímal vek," poznamenal som.
"Ty si zvláštny," usmiala sa. Rýchlo jej však úsmev vylietol z tváre a zatvárila sa veľmi vážne, ako keby nad čímsi premýšľala. Ten výraz som ani potom u nej nikdy nemal rád. Viem ale, že aj ja, keď premýšľam, vyzerám trochu smutne. Alebo aspoň bezvýrazne. A to je často ešte horšie pre dojem toho druhého. Veľmi to mätie.
"Len mi toľko nelichoť," situácia sa mi dostala pod kontrolu, aspoň ako tak som ju upútal, čo mi zatiaľ stačilo. Maličkú chvíľu nik neprehovoril. Napadlo ma, že v tichu sa nasadzujú chrobáky do hlavy lepšie. Nech prehovorí prvá pre zmenu ona. Ak ale mala veľkú hrdosť, moc sa toho isto nedozviem.
"Aký je cieľ tvojej cesty?" spýtala sa však napokon. Ak jej odvetím sucho, nebude s ňou zase dlho reč, napokon aj pravda môže zaujať. Usmial som sa ako vždy, keď zvažujem odpoveď.
"Dlhodobo žiadny, z autobusu ale asi... teda isto vystúpim tam, kde ty," možno ju ani nebude zaujímať, čo znamená dlhodobo žiadny, ale vysvetlím jej to. "Vieš, na prázdniny som vypadol z domu a vlečiem sa na staré kolená len tak po horách."
"To ťa vaši pustili?" zisťovala po chvíli. Keby si ty len vedela, koľko som ich ukecával - sám som neveril, že sa sem dostanem. No pousmial som sa, ako keby som s našimi nemal väčšie problémy, ale podľa pravdy skromne odvetil: "Išlo to, síce ťažko, ale predsa."
"Vieš," pokývala hlavou, "ja som na tom podobne."
"Ako podobne?" potriasol som nechápavo hlavou, myslel som si, že som jediný šaľo toho schopný. Aspoň v mojom veku.
"Som na ceste bez cieľa, ako ty hovoríš," skúmavo sa na mňa zahľadela, "neveríš, čo?" Na tvári jej začal ihrať šibalský výraz. Presne ten, aký som mal len pred chvíľou ja.
"Sama?" nechápal som. Nemal som nič proti tomu, ale u dievčiny sa mi to predsa len ťažko verilo.
"Zatiaľ...," pokrčila s úsmevom ramená. V tej chvíli by som odprisahal, že má aj ona chuť to zmeniť. Tón hlasu... neviem prečo, ale veril som tomu. Nezdalo sa mi síce, že by sa nejaká kočka pridala k chalanovi, ale radšej som nad tým takto nepremýšľal. A aj keď som reflexívne krútil hlavou, vyslovil som zo srandy svoje náhle tiché želanie: "Dvaja sú viac ako jeden..."
Ani to nebola ponuka, ale vyšlo to...
Mal som v živote šťastie na všeličo, ale náhoda, aká ma vtedy stretla, bola asi najväčšia od chvíle, čo vnímam poriadne svet okolo. Stretnúť dievča s podobným úmyslom... to snáď boli nejaké vyššie sily. Lenže na tie ja moc neverím. (Respektíve... pripúšťam, že čosi také je, ale z bezpečnostných hľadísk nad tým nepremýšľam.)
Často ma napadá, že je to len dobrý sen; a stojí teda za to. Bežne u seba pozorujem, že pekné veci obvykle pokladám za sen, akokeby som si myslel, že práve mňa to nemohlo stretnúť. A pritom som založením vyslovene nezničiteľný optimista (preto sa to paradoxne občas so mnou nedá vydržať). Aké by to bolo fajn, keby sa snami stali skutočnosti zlé. To by som ale asi chcel veľa. Ja len dúfam, že sa nestane nič katastrofálneho na tejto ceste.
Jediná nevýhoda celého podujatia bol psychický pocit nátlaku všeobecného nepriateľa všetkého živého - času. Aj keď u nás to vyzeralo, že sa peniaze míňajú rovnomerne s časom, čiže prázdniny tak či tak vyťažíme asi presne a naplno.
Teraz do konca cesty ostáva tak dvadsať dní... podľa všetkých predpokladov. Budem potrebovať rezervu na cestu domov (samozrejme už osamote). Ešte nie sme ani zďaleka u konca, ale už teraz si dovolím tvrdiť, že nám to vyšlo super. Možno by som išiel aj o rok, ale ktohovie, čo sa dovtedy porobí. Toto ale rozhodne stálo aj za tie prachy, čo sme do toho investovali...
Pochodujúc bielim oparom hmly, v ktorom som Barboru idúcu predo mnou sotva videl, mi napadlo, prečo hrajú peniaze v dnešnom svete tak dôležitú úlohu. O dôležitosti týchto papierov sa môžme presvedčiť už len tým, že aj také svinstvo (slabším sa ospravedlňujem za výraz), akým je vojna, sa posudzuje z ich hľadiska. Čo je finančne výhodné, je takmer spravodlivé. Tak to bolo, tak to bude... Ale uvažovať o tom, čo by sa dalo spraviť uvoľnením sumy určenej na zbrojenie napríklad pre medicínu, je asi zbytočné.
Dnešné dopoludnie bolo mimoriadne chladné. Síce nie ako v zime, ale na júl sa to nepodobalo. Boli sme vo výške asi okolo tisíc metrov nad hladinou mora. Včera konečne ustal takmer dvojdňový dážď, ale mokro bolo všade a navyše naprosto dokonalé. Po troch hodinách tichého šlapania sme vyšli nad inverznú oblačnosť a naskytol sa nám pohľad na tyrkysovo modrú oblohu a teplé, žiarivé slnko. Ani sa nečudujem, že staré civilizácie ho mali ako božstvo. Prefukoval nás ostrý vietor, čo bolo znamenie, že sa oteplujú vrstvy atmosféry. Panoráma hôr utopených v mori hmly a oblakov sa nedala opísať.
Ak nič iné, tak toto je voľnosť...

Utopia (10): Innocent proposal

2007-03-29T00:17:00.000+02:00

Ok, I'm still not dead - but still working on something completely different. But I'd like to write more during April because I should have some time to do so. Or not? With some wedding on the horizon it might be a bit worse with my free time than I expect. However - here's another part of Utopia. This time not so philosophic.

I'm letting us just dance for a little while and then I started again:
- "When I was younger I was very ... unsure how to treat a woman... or girl. That made me think much more about things and again it complicated my access to them again. To girls I mean. And I'm still thinking too much - I guess it's TOO much sometimes, really. Although every single hour here I'm less and less concerned about this - like it's not real issue here."
- "So far it's more cute than a problem, really," smirked Caren.
- "Well. :-) My problem had some consequences. I had some friends who can simply pick up a girl and dance... while for me dancing was very serious. Now I don't mean that dance is serious thing for me - it's fun in the first place - but when I'm dancing with somebody, I'm thinking about a lot of stuff. Body, warmth, splines... Then those friends told me: 'It's just a dance!' But I never could feel it like that. For me dance like this - body to body - is intimate, at least for that moment. Of course I was more or less forced to dance with girls I didn't like... you know, some social stuff. But when I danced with someone nice and cool I was always a bit restless."
- "It sounds like you're worrying too much with some things."
- "Definitely thinking too much."
- "Thinking per se is not the problem, I like your in-depth analysis - although original Gavin was quite similar, so you're not that shocking for me. For me dance is always something. Because there is that contact. I guess we're both talking particular about close dance now. There are people I like and I prefer to dance with them, of course. I guess most people feel it just the same. You just sound not really comfortable while dancing."
- "It's not exactly 'uncomfortable' because I like it - so I might say I feel comfortable. It's just... restless, unsure, whatever."
- "Well, I have no problem with this. I like dancing and for me it's comfortable without any 'buts'. Although I haven't tried for someone in quite a long time. Who knows how I felt when I was dancing with you for the first time. :-) Maybe a bit shaky. But the result is good - I always like dancing with you. :-)"
- "Ah," I can't resist to smile.
- "Yeah," Caren rolled her eyes chuckling. "Yes, I like you... still. You don't seem to be damaged so much after all. :-)"
- "Ok," now I can't resist to laugh. "Is it even possible to see some differences in the matter of those few hours? You know, would he do something I didn't or so?"
- "Well... I never explicitly focused on his behavioral patterns although I know him very well. That's interesting question, really... how much could he change without me noticing it? :-) I really don't know now. You have many questions that would be pointless for him and I have to deal with them now so there is no field to watch your other changes. And you're still in the same body which is very solid connection to him, you know."
- "Mhm, I see."
I squeezed her just a little stronger for a second and she returned it.
- "And now it's time for that quiet part," twanged I into her hair.

We're returning to our table and one man I wasn't able to recognized noticed with smile: "You two again working together!"
Caren spotted a place next to him and pulled me there while replying to him: "Henry, Henry... I hope you're not exactly surprised... again! :-)"
- "No, I'm not... we're just missing your part of fun here," said Henry and he turned to me, "although today you seem to be much more talkative. Even more than Caren. :-)"
- "Oh, yeah - let's call it life revision," I grinned.
- "Gosh, Gav... I hope you haven't underwrite another life insurance with some dark visions."
- "Don't worry, not this time," I signaled two more beers to waitress passing by and I looked back at Henry. "At least I hope. :-)" I blinked at Caren. I wasn't sure who knows about me and who still doesn't. While Henry is sipping his drink I'm asking Caren quietly:
- "Do you think that all our people here know about me?"
- "I doubt it," she replies on the quiet too.
- "And must everyone know?"
- "There's no need for you to go through the same set of questions here and right now."
- "Right..."
- "Simply admit it when it's too obvious. After all - you're the Gavin now, there's hardly anything you should not know if anyone is talking to you. :-)"
- "Mhm, right..."
Henry tactfully let us to get to the conclusion and when he noticed we're done he asked me:
- "I've heard you have some problem when you missed work today - something serious?"
- "No, not exactly - just some strange feeling I really wasn't used to."
- "Ah, so you're with us tomorrow..."
- "You bet I am. Although I'd rather not think about work until tomorrow."
- "Of course!"
Caren entered our conversation - I guess to save me:
- "You see... Henry, I wanted to ask what's new with your dwelling?"
- "Well... it's going slowly and quickly in the same time - I hope you know. Many new things - but we're still not at the end..."
I let those two chatting about Henry's new flat and problems related to bathroom tile choice (mainly when Henry is not exactly agreeing with his wife) and I decided to watch the life in the pub a little. They brought us our beers in the meantime. I was still listening Henry with Caren, bringing in a few notes that could not hurt anything, but I was also watching what is going on around the table. It would be boring to describe it, but for me that semi-quiet moment was interesting because I realized that there is so much new stuff I have to learn... and I still can't know for how long I'm here. After some time Henry moved to another group where Martin and Paul were discussing something with a few another people.

- "Thank you for taking over the chat," smiled I at her.
- "No problem at all."
We both sipped from our beers and I started:
- "You know... there's so much I'd want to ask. At least before. Now I don't know what's really interesting for me. I feel comfortable right now. I just feel stupid to be quiet, I also don't want to move around the table and just to chat with everyone - even if it could be interesting. Funny thing is that after that dance I'm thinking much more about you." I could not resist to smile.
- "Ok, Gav, point for you," now she smiles too (she smiles most of the time, but now even more).
- "You know," started I... again with the same words.
- "I know," she interrupted me. "Maybe I don't exactly know what you wanted to say just now - because you always say something fresh tonight. Not really new information. Just that way is ... I guess men don't always like to hear word 'cute' - but I hope you can take it from me. Gav would, so you should understand it too."
- "Mhm, I guess I know what you mean with 'don't like to hear cute', but I can easily take it from few women. And although I really don't know nothing about you, I feel very well with you. So you can call me cute at your will."

- "Gav, I was thinking... don't you want to be with me tonight?"
- "Uff," I was surprised. "The only thing I can say... yes, I want!" There was really no need to hesitate.
- "I mean to be with me... to talk and so. I don't say that we will be doing anything together. :-) Although now I'm also pretty far from decision not to do anything with you."
- "Yes, absolutely... I hardly can deny that I'm not thinking about something else, but to talk is just fine!"
- "Ok," Caren smiled at me. "Now I have to handle something."
She used her comdev on voice and I could hear only her part of talk:
- "Hi, darling... :-)"
- "Yeah, fine, there's some fun here... Felix, I hope it will be no problem if I wanna stay with Gavin tonight...?"
- "Aalll right. :-) ... yeah, don't worry I will recompense you somehow. :-)"
- "Mhm... thanks you, honey... love you too... bye."
Caren put away her comdev and smiled at me again:
- "Ok, I can."
- "Well," I shook my head. "I have to tell you that I had quite a liberal relation in my previous life and I tried to communicate straight but sometimes I simply wasn't able to treat it like you've showed me just now."
- "Maybe you should practice more. :-)"
- "Ok, I was limited by the feeling that my love will not like it. I mean not in the neutral way but more like dislike or so. And that lead me few times into really stupid situations where I wasn't able to choose ... so called 'right time for the message'."
- "Hm... I'm not sure what you mean, but I have some idea. It's really a matter of customs and some practice - after you pretty fuck up some situations you'll learn what to do and when to do it. And always that you actually should do something."
- "Yeah, I see you know what I mean. :-)"
There was a silence for a while and then I noticed:
- "Well, now - god knows why - I wanna this part of evening to be behind us. :-)"
- "Forget it, Gavin... you've danced very little to really deserve the next part," teased me Caren.
- "All right. Dance... that's maybe the best way how to bridge over."

Utopia (9): Interrupted by a dance

2007-02-07T23:50:00.000+01:00

First... if anyone still reads my stories... I wanna apologize for such a long pause. I started to work on some UT2004 project (game, mapping) and it completely engulfed me for a time being. However - I don't wanna give up with my Utopia! Because there is still a lot of talks waiting for Gavin (and not only him) plus there are some tickling situations in his future too I guess. :-) Don't expect another part very soon, but for now - here's that ninth.

- "Well, Paul..." I'm starting another round of questions. "That privacy stuff..."
- "Oh no," Caren interrupted me with a smile, "stop it for a while. I know you have the whole ocean of questions, just... wanna dance now?"
Now that surprised me a little although I'm pretty satisfied with the music that is playing here. I just couldn't realize that the music was intended for dance. "Dance?"
- "Yeah, now we have some space to dance there," she pointed out to the tiled floor space obviously dedicated for dance - I just didn't notice it so far. "You can about our privacy later. Maybe even in more private ... or intimate? ...situation."
I really don't know what to say to that later... suggestion? So I'm just asking: "It's kinda empty, don't you think?"
- "Ah," she tittered, "that your 'kinda' word... c'mon if you're not scared."
- "I'm not so scared," replied I firmly.
- "You see... I don't know how... or if our new Gavin likes to dance?"
- "I don't know your styles, but we can try it."

Music was far from familiar however they obviously know what the electric guitar is and all the instruments were similar to us. It was joy-full rhythmic tune with a lot of syncopated drums and percussion. If I should pick up the style from our world - it would be funky - and that was very good option for dance in my case. On our way to the dance-floor I have to clarify few things.
- "Are we suppose to dance together or solo?"
- "You can choose actually."
- "Ok, but how would we dance if I were old Gavin?"
- "In that case... but you're not obviously," she's looking to my eyes for a while as we stopped on the dance floor. "Look, Gav, I hardly can act like you're different person because I can't simply switch my mind when I see Gavin. Whatever... you know. I know what I've learned when you said that news to me. But I can't ... act like that just because I know it. I can't explain it to you but I feel with you like before. I just don't want to do everything like before - give it a while ... while I can see the difference." She shook her head. "If there is any... but there must be I guess. At least in your knowledge. Now... dance as you want. You can dance with me, I have absolutely no problem with you. You can dance solo, we used to do that so because you loved to express yourself on you own from time to time." It really looked like dreamy smile what gleamed through her face. "However... dance. :-)"
- "I'm..." I don't know what to say... or how. "Thank you - for your direct answer."
- "I use to answer directly. Most people here do."
- "So... can I ask anything when needed?"
- "Absolutely! :-) Now dance at last." And she spin herself into the rhythm. I started with my moves tuned down a little just to watch Caren for a while before I adapt.

I was quite surprised how many things were similar like in our world. When I realized that our worlds started to diverge 90 years before I could expect much bigger differences in all that new stuff. Computers, their environments (we'd call it operating system) and interface was a little bit different - not to mention that mouse and keyboard is not that dominant interface like in our world - but it was no problem to adapt after a while. And other differences was even more subtle. Modern music instruments - fairly the same like ours. Cars... still dominating here - like in our world. Architecture - well, nothing that would really surprise me.
Perhaps I expected some bizarre dance features by Caren - like you can see in some funny pseudo-sci-fi series. Now I'm a bit disappointed but I also start to feel more comfortable when I see that Caren's move was quite normal from my perspective. I had to laugh a little about my mislead expectations.
- "What?" she asked. I repeated my ideas to her and she had to laugh with me for a second. "Don't expect now me to dance crazily just to satisfy your silly ideas. :-)"
- "I like this much more, don't worry," I assured her.

And so we are dancing both on our own and I'm trying to adapt to Caren's move. Sometimes she's pressing me (without actual touch - that makes it even more tense for me) and I'm going back and sometimes we switch our roles - everything is like I already experienced except all those little facts. Like being in other world with a girl I've never seen before - yet we act like two people who suppose to know each other for...
- "For how long do we know each other?" asked I. I like that the music is not too loud and we can communicate without shouting to each other.
- "I came to company two years ago while you were there already ... about another two years before. Then we met for the first time."
- "And we're working together?"
- "We're in the same office and we're working in pair quite a lot... depends on the task."
- "In pair?"
- "Yeah, pair programming... quite a popular approach."
- "Ah, we have a few methodologies for software development with pair programming idea too. Although they are considered ... let's say extreme."
Caren giggled: "Well, I like things that are a little extreme... at least in this case. There is a lot of socializing in it plus we're productive a lot too. Great combination."
- "Indeed..."

We're dancing on for a while when Caren suddenly stops in of her back-walk figure - and I collide with her unexpectedly.
- "Ah!" she actually points to speaker like nothing happened. "This one is slow one." They mixed songs quite seamlessly although I could recognize one from another after a while of course.
- "You know them?" asked I.
- "Of course! Grieves is one of my favourites!"
- "Grieves... like grieve?"
- "Well... that name doesn't fit, that's right... however - don't you mind some close dance?"
- "Well... definitely not," I have to snicker. "I could hardly refuse it convincingly. :-)"
- "Right," she put her arms around my neck and I wrapped my arms around her waist.

- "I hope you don't mind talking," started I after a few turn-arounds without a word.
- "I have a feeling that you're stressing too much about what I mind or not. ;-) Don't worry, Gav, you can hardly worsen it with talking and hardly worsen it being quiet. Of course, you COULD possibly go bad saying something reeeaaaally wrong, but somehow I don't expect this. And I can handle a lot when it comes down to talk."
- "Great. :-) I feel relief hearing this... sometimes I just take things maybe too serious. Like I could mess up anything with any step, still worrying. Plus I don't actually know you and I don't want to start wrong in your case. Not only because you're my workmate but also ... you know ... fine woman. Maybe someone can quit that later fact, I just never can when it comes down to pretty face - however it can sound."
- "Hm... I don't know if you expect me to be surprised - I'm just a bit surprised that you mention it explicitly. It's quite unusual - although it's nice when you put it in this way. You know - I know I'm a woman - and I wanna be treated as such. I mean - I don't need hot touches all the time - and especially not from everyone. Or... hm, I don't know why I started with hot touches... let's just say a light flirt... even words only. But now I'm out of work, I'm dancing with a man I like... or at least his body ;-) sorry for putting it this way - but you're reminding me that thing all the time too. :-) And I'm not sure if I exactly want you to press on me... but I feel comfortable just to chat about it. Really."
- "I simply don't know if I wanna believe in all this - it sounds too easy with you. :-)"
- "Maybe it shouldn't be tough..."
- "I mean talking in the first place now."
- "That was what I was talking about, of course! :-)"
I actually wanted to talk about the other things too - but this was good intro to the topic that came to my mind when I asked her about that talking as we got closer. And that was dancing itself. For me dancing with someone is more than just performing some moves in a close proximity of other person. I heard people saying "it's just the dance". I guess it's just another thing I overrate in some of its aspects, but for me dance is always something more. And I was curious if Caren will be another "it's just the dance" person.
Although I have already serious doubts about it.

Utopia (8): Can bribery work in open Open Society?

2006-12-22T00:49:00.000+01:00

I started to drink third beer when I asked what new brought Karl Popper into the Open Society model.
- "Hm," Paul was obviously prepared. "Popper was thinking about the OS in a more political fashion. For him OS was political model. Democracy is open society by his definition. Reeves was already dead when Popper became well-known philosopher yet his pupils or followers didn't agree with Popper terminology. And yes, we're educated in world of Reeves' Open Society world, not in Popper's one. But both were important - of course. Now - the differences. Reeves defined OS model as something for people in any scale and on any level of society. Of course - it's hard to talk about open society between two people. There were many friendships that already satisfied rules of Open Society model. But that's not enough, small group is not the proper scale for OS to show its potential. It's about talking the truth, about communicating a lot, about creating communities - and of course also about respect when you don't like someone. Tolerance or what." Paul took another sip of beer.
- "Ok, I might not understand it fully," admitted I, "but I think I know what you mean. Now that Popper versus Reeves difference."
- "Yeah, so that was Reeves. Popper focused more on a political model. And he defined it like that when you can change the government without a blood-shedding it's more or less open society. Democracy is open society for him. There's nothing wrong on that. For him open society is better than a closed one. That's good. Democracy is still the best known type of government. We - however - divide democratic countries to those with OS model adopted and those without it. Sometimes it's called 'closed open society' and 'open open society' with some irony involved of course."
- "Mhm, I guess I understand," I nodded. "In our world Popper said more or less the same. Now I can't know if there was some Reeves - but he just didn't become famous - or there was none."
- "Yeah, hard to tell now. :-) We mentioned Russia moment ago - it's a typical democratic country - constitutional monarchy - but with closed society. They have some problems with bribery, not so low criminality and so... but their direction is right and they will adopt Open Society I guess. They just need the time."

- "And here is no bribery and criminality?"
- "Hm, hard to tell. :-) You might just not know it, right? But I guess that bribery is not working here. At least not in that scale. You know - you can give someone a chocolate and he might be better to you in the future. It's not problem to be better. Problem is if you can achieve your goals only with bribing. That's bad. Ill society with ill motivation for people. About criminality - yes, there is some here. You can't stop it completely. You just can do the best for those who are better to the other people."
- "Why do you think that you can't bribe someone here?"
- "Well, you can! I didn't say you can't. It's just quite useless. Tell me those examples when bribes become handy."
- "In our world... in my country the health care is awful. If you want to be given better care, you have to pay someone. Or there is a chance to test some new medicine (you know - when you can test it on people after all those tests before) and director tells you that you have to pay in order to be allowed to do it in his hospital. Although it's absolutely no burden for him."
- "Ah, yeah, I've heard about such things... again, it works like this in Russia - and many other countries around the world. Problem is that when you say a word about it, it ends like word against word, right?"
- "Exactly! Sometimes it's even better to say nothing, because you would be forced to communicate with police with the expected result - nothing!"

- "I understand. Here the presumption of innocence is not useful, right? :-) But don't worry - we guarantee the presumption of innocence here. Now tell me one thing. Why that man that is accused of accepting bribe (or at least of requesting them) still works in his office?"
- "Hm..." easy question, difficult answer. "Well, there is that presumption, right? I can't accuse him just so easy. I have to prove it or unsay it. In that moment the guy is clear again."
- "And if another similar case arise?"
- "Then the situation repeats if the other people can't prove it too. :-) Ok, they can tape him, but that's not legal too. We use a role of 'agent provocateur' for this also. Some cases are solved after all."
- "Ok, that's better. But there are many other that are not solved - that were not even solving because you didn't call the police, right?"
- "Right."
- "Well, here the accusation itself is not exactly delict. I never thought about it - but it's quite important when I look at it now. For me it was just the fact. I can say something about you - and you can say something about me. Now that's the word against word - and we are where we already were, right?"
- "Looks like... :-) Where's the point?"
- "The point is that if there is another word against word where you are involved - again - you are in trouble. Can you see it?"
- "Not exactly - not in our world."
- "Not in yours but you are here. I said you wanted to bribe me, he said you wanted to bribe him. You reject both accusations. Well - it's not good for you. :-)"
- "Well, but you can ruin one faithful man with two false ones... ?"
- "Not exactly - this is just a minimal model. It's up to you to read your environment, you can check what people say about anybody. On the net for instance."
- "Ok, so if the two were wrong?"
- "If the two are really wrong and many people know you as the right man you might be still cool. If they try to accuse more than two other people, the math is suddenly against them."

- "And is it just the question of math?"
- "Not exactly. It's even possible that you have credit in some groups and you are not trusted in others."
- "Well - I thought I can understand it, but I'm getting lost now. :-) Where is the difference then? What about politicians and that aforementioned hospital director?"
- "There is too much information widely known about you when you're a politician or hospital director - and that makes the judges about you more precise, more useful and that's enough for most cases. If you're not trusted by enough people, you can't lead our country, you can't lead no hospital... in smaller scale it's the question of smaller group than. You can't be squad leader, you can't... you know, but this world is not about what you can't. It's about what you can. Just be good to people and they will support you. You can damage things, you can do bad things not on purpose, just be straight and honest and it will pay off."
- "That sounds easy."
- "It IS easy! It is supposed to be easy after all!"

We all know how sensitive is the question of privacy in our world and I was pretty curious about that. Because to know a lot about someone might be taken as an interference with one's privacy. I noticed before that Paul indicated that the privacy is not so overrated here because they don't need to hide so many things we like to keep secret. So now I'll finish the third beer and I ask him about this right away.

Iceweasel, Firefox 2 and the others...

2006-12-18T19:31:00.000+01:00

Ok, this will be nothing long - just few semi-angry lines. ;-) I was pretty surprised when I saw Iceweasel first time in the title bar of my updated Firefox. Then I recalled that I heard previously about dispute between Mozilla Foundation and Debian. You can read about it here (Mozilla's point of view) or on InternetNews.com or you can check Iceweasel on all-encompassing Wikipedia. Ok... this is not a problem, right? Fox or Weasel - who cares?

After that I noticed that most important difference for me - close button on every tab. "Why?!" I cried. I remember some browser (was it Galleon or some older Mozilla?) that used the same solution and I never liked it. However - it's not just the decision made I don't like. I especially don't like that it's change from A to B and I couldn't find "use A style close button" anywhere in the configuration. Not to mention another "feature" - and that's Backspace malfunction!

Now I remembered that great fast light weighted Galeon browser again. Because of its story. It was amazing until one special moment. When Galeon was updated for GTK 2 (Galeon 2) it somehow lost all the magic, half of the functions and I stopped to use it completely. No - Firefox (or IceWeasel when I'm in Linux ;-)) is not in this position. I need to say that I never realized how good is to write blogs. Or at least to read them and Google from time to time - but I started to Google my problems just because of this post. ;-)

Well, now it's time for unravelment. I found out that I'm not the only one with Close button problem (I was sure of it after all). And I also found the solution... and yes, it's blog again. Actually - I also found the solution for my backspace problem (and learned that it actually worked somehow but I never realized because I was still on the top of the page when I used it ;-)).

I promised semi-angry short post... and now it's kinda happy-end semi-short post.

And so I became happy Firefox user again! (I know - many people made it without need to write a blog post.) I even discovered that Firefox 2 has great Undo Close Tab feature - what gives me good argument for another time when my colegue will try to convince me to switch to the Opera. Great! :-)

Cesta (2): The Ecstasy Of Flight (I Love the Night)

2006-12-17T08:58:00.000+01:00

Chris De Burgh: The Ecstasy Of Flight (I Love the Night)

29/7
V svetlách veľkomesta sa stáva noc jasnejšou. Letné noci sú krásne kontrastné - tmavomodrá až čierna obloha a jasne žiariace hviezdy. Svetlá noc také čaro nemá. Noci sa nebojím... ak je tmavá. V tme totiž nik nič nevidí. Tma je bezpečná. Noc veľkomesta isto nie. Doba pokročila, napadlo ma, či už nie je "zajtra".
Zotrvačnosť mnou trhla - stojíme. Vystúpili sme na nástupisko a zistili, že okrem nás a ľudí z autobusu tu žiaden život nie je. Barboru striaslo, noc bola chladná - noc pred dažďom. Nechcel som sa v meste dlho zdržať, ale na dážď sa lepšie pozerá z okna budovy ako zo stanu kdesi v horách, ktoré sa rysovali na obzore, aj keď ten sa teraz dal len tušiť. Keď sme bývali neďaleko, chodil som práve do tohto mesta na školu. Ale nevyznal som sa tu až tak dobre, aby som vedel, kde sa nachádza objekt, ktorý sme hľadali.
"Prosím vás," oslovil som najbližšieho seriózne vyzerajúceho človeka, "neviete náhodou, kde je ***?"
"Nie som síce tunajší, ale náhodou to viem," dotyčný sa na chvíľu dôležito odmlčal a dôležito sa popritom aj tváril. To som si mal koho vybrať, napadlo ma. Ak sa čosi dozvieme do rána, budeme isto spokojní. No tváril som sa trpezlivo. Konečne sa chlapík rozhýbal a dlhými vetami nám opísal vskutku zložitú trasu (dve stovky metrov a dve zahnutia). Vo výraze jeho dôležitosti som si spomenul, že som sa stretol s podobnými pedagógmi, preto viem, ako ťažko sa s takými ľudmi vychádza.
Izba bola malá, ale na prespanie stačila. O tom, že budeme spať v jednej izbe, rozhodla Barbora. Išlo o finančné dôvody, samozrejme. Na pravú mieru uvediem fakt, že som do nej zamilovaný. Nebol som do nej v pravom slova zmysle "buchnutý", ako sa sluší na šestnásťročného chlapca, bolo to čosi iné. Nedalo sa to nazvať platonické. Stretol som ju náhodou, bola to čistota charakteru sama, aspoň sa mi tak zdalo, ale nepoznal som ju tak dobre, aby som ju mohol jednoducho "zbaliť". Iný na mojom mieste by to isto urobil, ale iný na mojom mieste by tu s ňou takto nebol. To mi nedávno sama povedala. Mal som ju rád ako dievča, ktorému som mohol zatiaľ povedať čokoľvek a vždy to bolo pochopené a neprekrúcané, ako dievča, ktoré si sebou bolo dosť isté, ale nikdy to nezneužívalo, ako dievča... skrátka ako žiadne iné.
Celá cesta bola šialeným podnikom, ale stála za to. Sú však dve veci, ktoré limitujú všetko - čas a peniaze. Blížil sa koniec júla; takže hodnotiac to podľa času, sme v polovici. Po stránke peňazí, na ktorých ale až zas tak moc zavislí nie sme, je to podobne.
Tma v izbe sa postupne zmenila na až moc svetlé šero. Rozpoznával som v okolí každý detail. Digitálky pípli celú hodinu, isto bola jedna. Vedel som, že Barbora nespí, zvykli sme si po nociach ešte chvíľu rozprávať. Pozrel som sa von oknom... tam niekde za svetelnou clonou a za všetkým tým smogom isto boli hviezdy. Aj keď schované za mrakmi, vedel som, že tam budú. Hviezdy - to je jedna z vecí, na ktoré keď pomyslím, hneď mi je lepšie. Ak mi totiž nad hlavou svietia, stále je prečo žiť. Ja mám svoj život až moc rád, ale nebojím sa oň. Myslím si, že prílišné lipnutie na ňom je skôr nebezpečné.
"Ako len ten čas letí," ozvalo sa z tmy. Nevedel som, ako to myslí, a tak som bol ticho. Keď to trvalo trochu dlho, zamumlal som čosi ako "mhmm", aby vedela, že som napätý a pripravený ju počúvať.
"Vieš, ten ani nie celý mesiac ubehol dosť rýchlo," prehodila akoby mimochodom. Ženská ti v živote nepovie, čo vlastne chce, napadlo ma. Často si žena uvedomí, že hovoriť narovinu by nebolo tak zaujímavé. Aspoň si môžme vybrať, čo robiť, aj keď je takmer isté, že to nebude "to, čo som práve chcela". Ale fakt je ten, že je to takto lepšie. Jeden môj známy prehlásil, že "ženy sú potvory, od Evy po dnešok", ale nemyslel to zle. Zaujímave však bolo, že jeho priateľka mu to smrteľne vážne odsúhlasila. Neviem si predstaviť poriadnu ženu, ktorá má viacej logiky ako emócií. Isto by nestála za toľko, čo napríklad Barbora.
"Ale bol vychutnaný," poznamenal som na jej skeptické konštatovanie.
"To hej," súhlasila, "bol to krásny mesiac. Taký som asi nezažila, a aj keby - žiadny nemal taký charakter. V tomto smere to bolo čosi... jedinečné."
"Pamätáš sa na začiatok našej cesty?" spýtal som sa, aj keď som ešte len slabo tušil, čo tým dosiahnem. Ja som si osobne všetko vybavoval veľmi podrobne, ale prišlo mi to, ako keby ma od našich prvých chvíľ delili roky. Čiastočne aj preto, lebo sme sa k sebe viac priblížili. A ten posun bol pomerne veľký.
"Na tú chvíľu, čo si ma oslovil dokonale, ale inak len tak hmlisto," odvetila váhavo.
"Takže sa ti to zdá dávno?" otázka bola skôr sugesciou, viac konštatovanie než otázka.
"Fakt je ten, že mi to pripadá pomerne dlhá doba," usmiala sa, mohla tušiť, že som to chcel počuť.
Zdalo sa mi zaujímavé, že občas hovorila o veciach relatívne. Nerobila to vždy; znamenalo to, že dôkladne vyberá slová. Isto nie nerada nechtiac priznala, že vlastne máme ešte dosť času.
"Myslíš, že aj ten druhý bude taký?" opýtala sa. Najprv som nevedel, čo myslí, až potom mi došlo, že sa pýta na druhý mesiac.
"Ten bude úplne super," odvetil som jej, lebo som si bol istý, že to bude stáť za to. My to ešte roztočíme, len počkaj. A to som sám netušil, ako.
Na vonkajší parapet zabubnoval dážď...

Utopia (7): Their amazing history

2006-12-06T00:53:00.000+01:00

- "So as I said, I see first War as a history split point," I'm starting next round with their history. "So tell me some outline."
Paul looks at Caren with question who would start. I noticed that Brian (or whoever is that guy next to Caren) and two people across the table are listening our conversation too.

- "Well," Caren starts. "I'm no historian but I can handle the outline. ;-) Our Western civilization is strongly influenced by Open society model which really got some twist after the War. It wasn't elaborated into its current state though, however it was great time to gain new people. And because leaders like Wilson, General Pershing or Lloyd George were Open society advocates it was quite easy. They did not educate us in OS principles on their own, but they promoted those who were behind Open society from the start - mainly Bergson and Reeves. Many contributed to OS theories - either on the political field - like Karl Popper - or on the field of math theory - like von Neumann or Nash. However Reeves is the key person I think."
- "Well," I used a pause in her talk, "I know at least Popper, von Neumann and Nash. At least if the first one wrote something about democracy and open society, the second one invented that computer architecture and the third one was that schizophrenic who worked on game theory."
- "Yes... that fits."
- "At least something. :-) However I know nothing about Bergman or Reeves."
- "Bergson... whatever... :-) Reeves was the most procreative in his times. He wrote many books from ... I'm not sure, but let's say from 1900 to 1930. It was very inspiring for many politicians - especially in the America. Reeves was English by the way, he was a Cambridge professor. But now the main history line, ok?"
- "Ok, I'm curious to death. :-)"
- "Wilson took the major role after the War was over. France and UK supported Wilson, because he helped both them a lot during those three years America was in war."

- "Three years?! America joined the War in 1917!"
- "Nope... Wilson brought America to War in 1915 and many told him he did it for nothing but I guess it was great move. He went to war only with volunteers and professional soldiers - that gave him some credit in public and the opinion was clearly with him. Not to mention the famous talk about the need to interfere with foreign affairs - even with European ones."
- "Yeah, you mean Concerns Do Matter speech," added someone across the table.
- "Yes, that one. Thanks. :-)" Caren continues: "Then there were Versailles where Wilson put through everything essential - he offered huge help to Europe to prevent victorious powers to rape the Germany after the total war. Not to mention that Germany was torn during the last two months of the war because military took the power. In the meantime Wilhelm and the government were negotiating about peace with Allies."
- "Wilhelm II, thou," corrected the man over the table.
- "What about Austria-Hungary?" asked I.
- "Hm, they finished a little bit sooner if I recall correctly... Martin?" Caren asked that man against me.
- "Yes, they signed peace in August of 1918 agreeing with the idea of successive states based on nations. However Hungary broke away and continued with Germany for the next three months. However... very important for the outcome in Versailles is the first meeting of Allied leaders - the Iceland Conference. Here Wilson introduced his 14 points, Atlantic Charter was signed and George, Clemenceau and L'vov agreed about the need of democratic changes in the area controlled by Central Powers. Wilson, Clemenceau and George had similar goals and even similar ways - because Open society ideas were quite 'in' and it was also time where some change was really needed. L'vov - as a representative of fresh Russia - wasn't so rush for the Open society, however he agreed with the points. Now Germany was not to be humiliated and US promised some financial help in order to assure this. Wilson claimed that Germany can't pay reparations and that Allies should not humiliate the country because public opinion in Germany would be against the Allied Powers to no good for everyone."
- "When was this Iceland Conference?" I was lost because either I didn't remember it from school or it was different in our world.
- "Iceland? 1917, but I'm not sure about more precise date," answered Martin.

- "You mentioned fresh Russia - what was that?" I knew really only a little about Russia/Soviet Union history during the end of World War I.
- "Well," Martin took another breath, "in 1916 Tsar Nicholas II compromised with Wilson and George and he nominated interim government. In 1917 there were few important things - Russia adopted its Constitution and there were free all-nation ballot - that was most important. Tsar advocated for Russia's share in the war and he - and the other representatives - they convinced the public opinion of this. However on November the revolution burst out and Russia split into the reforming one - leading to democracy - and the red one where Lenin was the leader. There were several important things in all of this - Mensheviks for instance supported reforming Russia which might be the key factor that Lenin couldn't take over the whole Russia.
However Tsar had to leave Sankt Peterburg and East front was seriously weakened because Russia had to solve internal affairs. Tsar achieved assurance of help from Allies on the East front - especially when it was clear that Lenin wanted to sign peace treaty with Central Powers. In the next years Russia split virtually into two countries. Reforming Imperial Russia took back Sankt Peterburg and they were holding Far east part, the Crimea and few other territories - while Soviet Russia controlled the central part of the country and Siberia with Moscow as their capital city. Russia civil war continued until 1945 when Imperial Russia definitely retook whole country during the World War II."
- "Whow," I was speechless for a while. "No eastern bloc? No Soviet Union? No communism ruling the east Europe for over forty years?"
- "Well," Martin was obviously unsure what to say. "I'm not aware of such a scenario. ;-)"
- "Amazing..."
There is a break in the conversation for a while - it looks like they let me to realize those things just being said. Although I was lost in that new history anyway. It was just overwhelming to hear about it, I know that I'm not able to remember all those things. Except those key messages.
- "And Russia is Open society now?" asked I at last.
- "Well... not so open, however it's democratic country for many years now. And they still have their Tsar." Martin grins. "The new one of course. ;-)"
- "Of course," tittered I.

So I learned few glimpses of this history and I really can't process more now. However there are still questions about Open society. The mentioned Popper - although he wrote his book about Open society more than forty years after Reeve's first one. At least in my world. And I never heard about some Reeves. So now I want to ask more about this.

Utopia (6): Our unbelievable history

2006-11-28T10:04:00.000+01:00

It took me a while til I was prepared to write this part. Of course - they could discuss something different. History divergence is a mere background for my thougths - however I decided to specify the split point of our and their world.

Now I want to know something more about the society I'm suddenly living in. I know that I'm in England, that's clear now. I also know that most of the history is the same like in my world. Everything started to diverge some time between both World Wars. Actually - the second one in this world was completely different from ours.
- "Well," I wasn't sure if I want to ask questions right here and now, "I guess that now I start with that aforementioned merging. :-)"
- "You can," nodded Paul. "However now you're the main attraction - at least for me. But I don't wanna push you now. I guess you don't know what to do anyway."
- "Maybe that's why you might push me into something," proposed I. "Anything, actually."
- "So if you want to tell me about your previous life... anything."
- "Well... I might and I will - I promise. But now I'd rather to know more about this world. I might have a lot of time to tell you about my one later."
- "Uh, so ask something."
- "Ok. I can't decide if I wanna know something from history or something about your society. I found something in Object World, but I had more things to investigate during this day, you know..."
- "Object World?" Paul's voice is full of doubts.
- "Well... that... tool or application..."
- "I know what's Object World," Paul interrupted me. "Just no one calls it like that. Except the tool itself - that's Object World browser, that's right."
- "Ah, I thought..." then I realized that even we don't call our web by names of our web browsers.
- "We call it just Net most of the time," Caren stepped in.
- "Ok, I see," on the other hand I was technical type too, "but I noticed that some objects were considered to be local."
- "Oh, yes, some objects are on your computer - that's true," agreed Caren, "however - they are still part of the network, so we don't distinguish between local and remote objects. Of course, except in cases where it really matters. And this is not the one. ;-)"

- "Ok, so just Net. And now that history part. Because my and your world have very similar time line til the World War I."
- "And where is the difference?"
- "Well, our World War II started in 39 and actually Germany was aggressor again."
- "Germany as aggressor... you said 20 years later?" Caren was obviously surprised. "How that could be possible?"
- "Well... now I don't know why in our world it was possible when it wasn't in yours. ;-) However the allies were quite hard on Germany after the War and they were hardly touched by the Great Crisis..."
- "...Great Depression you mean... 1928?"
- "Well... yes, depression, 1929 to 1933 actually. This was one of the reason why Hitler took power in Germany that time, because his populistic talks just worked in the situation."
- "Hitler?"
- "Yes, Adolf Hitler, one of the most know person in modern history, I guess."
- "Never heard of him," Caren shook her head and Paul did the same.
- "Well," I was struck dumb for a while, "no Hitler here?"
- "No... but tell me how could Germany possibly start another war?" Paul is wondering. "Because here their army was cut to one third if I'm right."
- "Yes, one third," Caren agreed. "At least it was still applied around 1930."
- "Well," now I'm not sure how it was in our world exactly, but... "Germany was actually disarmed and humiliated somehow. It was in very bad shape when it was hit by Depression. But Hitler ran out weapon industry, hence he gave people work - and that was most important for them. Then he started with all that race purity, antisemitism and so - and people followed because they were given the work, maybe some guarantees for living and after all - they really could feel that the situation is caused mostly by allied powers who decided so badly after War."
- "In this world, Germany was revitalized - mostly thanks to Wilson who was able to convince his allies about this. Actually, Wilson was strong advocate of Open society model and he saw that after such a cataclysm event (like WWI unarguably was) there is free space to spread this thoughts."
- "Open society?"
- "Just the name for the society model, nothing extraordinary. But there were more persons believing in Open society in some way in high politics that time - and that could make a difference."
- "Well and... how big is this open society?"
- "Currently? Most of the Europe and North America. That time it was much smaller groups of people. Open society was well established here in Britain and it started to gain some twist in USA. It might count well... few tens of thousands people. Mostly intelligentsia however. Politics, philosophers, academic sphere and so. Also - shortly after War the Open society was not adopted in such a scale - either horizontal or vertical."
- "Scale?" now I'm a little bit off.
- "Well, Reeves wrote his crucial work about importance of communications in Open society later after War," said Caren.
- "Yeah, something like Why is open communication mandatory or so, it was in 1925," added Paul.
- "However - open communication was long run. But many things were fully adopted and many Open society thoughts were fully developed during the War. That to take care of your surrounding is important, that you should care of it, that you should interfere when necessary, that you should concern about things and people around you," explained Caren.

- "I still don't get that Germany thing," Paul looks contemplatively. "If allies were hard on them and they started to arm themselves so much... there was no reaction?"
- "Well," I sights, "modern history of Europe is the history of naivety. They - and I mean mainly UK and France - thought that when they do some compromises Hitler would do nothing extraterritorial."
- "Ah... I don't know how was Hitler... but it looks naive indeed. And stupid. How long took the second War?"
- "World War II? Well... September 1939 to May 1945... September actually if I should count Pacific war. 6 years."
- "Pfu," Paul nodded. "I know nothing about its scale, but it must be much worse then the first one. Longer and with more modern weapons."
- "However... that compromises thing is not everything. UK and France even signed a treaty with Hitler and Mussolini about Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia and Czechoslovakia resigned next day for this land. With UK's and France's blessings."
- "Uff, I hardly know what's Sudetenland... was it big part of the country?"
- "One third I guess?" I'm not sure, but I know I'm not far from the truth.
- "One third of Czechoslovakia?!" Paul can't believe.
- "Oh, sorry. One third of Bohemia. And one third of Slovakia was given to Hungary. I'm not sure if that was the same treaty... however it was around the same time. Not to mention that Munich agreement (called Munich betrayal in Czechoslovakia) was signed after the Austria was annexed to the Reich - I mean Hitler's Germany."
- "That sounds impossible," Caren obviously couldn't believe.
- "Well, tell me," I grinned. "We have it in our school books. During the course of War Germany reached even Moscow. France was occupied... well, three years at least? Heavy battles were also in Africa."
A short moment of silence follows - at least between us three. Because in Baldoria the rush goes on, of course. ;-)
- "However," I started. "After this war the Germany was divided and the western part was revitalized and it was treated as a normal country. That helped I guess. The rest with Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia... that all became part of the Eastern block lead by Soviet Union with Stalin as a leader. Countries were independent officially... but..."

- "Well..." said Caren.
- "Well..." added Paul. "I guess that there are some differences in our histories after all. :-)"

Cesta (1): There's a Road

2006-11-22T11:48:00.000+01:00

Well... now a little of Slovak language for a change. Don't be mislead by titles, they are just names of the songs. I wrote this 21-part short story in my 17 years and it was revisited few times. It's too sweet and maybe too romantic - but still it is one part of my life. My Way of one holidays in 1996... IIRC.

Jon Anderson & Vangelis: There's a Road

28/7
Oblaky sa kopili jeden na druhom, len občas ich narušovala trhlina, ktorou práve zapadajúce slnko pohotovo posielalo život na lesy hôr niekde v strednom horizonte. Mám rád takéto oblaky, nie je to tá anonymná šeď olovenej oblohy. Tá nás však pri tvári, ktorú nám obloha ukazuje, isto onedlho prepadne. Nebo hralo všetkými možnými farbami a badateľne tmavlo.
Aj vo vnútri autobusu sa všetko ponáralo do intímneho šera, vodič nerozsvecoval ani na zastávkach, ktorých ale ako expres neabsolvoval veľa. Krajinka sa predo mnou hojdala v závislosti na kvalite cesty, po ktorej sme uháňali - a tá bola mizivá. A že sedíme vzadu, kde to húpe najviac, ani som sa nečudoval, keď Barbora za tú chvíľu zaspala. Isto ju ukolísal aj monotónny zvuk motora.
Oprel som si hlavu o Barborinu, tá si ju opierala o moje rameno, a zase mi napadla otázka, na ktorú tak trochu poznám odpoveď. Prečo som tu? A čo tu robím? Nech sa deje, čo chce, je isté, že by mi nevadilo, trvať to tak večne. Ak viem, že práve teraz som šťastný, nechýba mi vôbec nič. Je mi fantasticky...
Na ceste, ktorej pánmi sme len my dvaja - najšťastnejší jedinci ľudského pokolenia. Šťastní sme a šťastní budeme, kým sa na to cítime. Ak nič iné, tak to dievča na mojom ramene je zárukou môjho neuveriteľného šťastia. Isto by som tu nebol, nestretnúť ju - dáva tomuto bláznivému podniku šťavu, akú žiadny podobne komorný príbeh nikdy nemohol mať.
Ak si človek celý život opakuje, "toto sú najšťastnejšie roky môjho života", nemôže si žiť zle a na okolí záleží pramálo. Na druhej strane si často vravím, ako ten čas letí, a som len zvedavý, čo si budem vravieť v sedemdesiatke. Ale práve tento štýl môjho myslenia mi dáva záruku, že si život vychutnám bez ohľadu na dobre mienené rady okolia.
Cestovanie autobusom bolo pre mňa vždy niečím zaujímavé. Keď som si sadol k nejakému človeku, začal som si predstavovať, kto to je. Vymýšľal som si malý príbeh so zložitou zápletkou, ktorá mala isté osobné dobrodružstvo. Niektorí ľudia boli zlí, iní zase dobrí, podľa toho, ako sa mi ten ktorý človek rátal (väčšinou od pohľadu). Autobus mi pripadá byť trochu indiskrétny a to je to, čo sa mi na ňom páči. A je pre mňa mäkší za jazdy.
U vlaku (ktorý tiež využívam pomerne často) je tomu naopak. Aj interiéry našich vlakov mi prídu "tvrdšie" ako autobusy. V druhej triede sa výnimočne stane, že sa zveziem vozňom, ktorý má osemmiestne kupé. Vtedy je cesta vlakom ešte viac indiskrétna ako cesta autobusom.
Ale viac ako na prostriedku mi záleží na čase cestovania. Rád cestujem večer alebo v noci. Za tmy. S priateľom na blízku. Vtedy sa krásne vedú reči o všetkom možnom. Práve v takej chvíli rozhovor väčšinou najviac odhaľuje osobnosť toho druhého.
Aj keď sme sa kedysi na sídlisku bavili s dievčatami vo vchodoch (a dával som prednosť "duelom" pred skupinovými akciami), preferoval som prítmie. Vtedy totiž človek začne viac vnímať hlas toho druhého a nedbá toľko jeho výzoru. Je samozrejmé, že u priateľov to tak je bežne, ale je krásne si predstavovať, ako sa ten druhý v daný moment tvári, nechať odpočinúť zraku a rozbiehať svoju fantáziu na námet hovoreného.
Na sídlisku (aj keď to slovo ma nezaplavuje príjemnými pocitmi) bolo fajn, lebo som mal okolo seba pár správnych ľudí, ktorí mi vždy mali čo dať. So spomienkami na nedávnu dobu, keď som ešte býval na Slovensku, som sa už ale pomaly začal prepadávať do snov úplne iného charakteru...

... Všetko zrazu bolo akési hmlisté. Ktosi ma pevne chytil a kamsi vliekol. Krátko na to som sa ocitol v miestnosti, ktorej tmavosť mi nedovoľovala vidieť toho práve veľa. Mal som strach ako nikdy v živote, ale nemohol som sa voči nemu brániť. Pripadalo mi, že ak by som sa bránil, porušil by som pravidlá akejsi hry.
"Ak sa ti to podarí," ozval sa akýsi hlas, "si voľný..." Hlas nepripúšťajúci prevahu súpera. Objavil sa tu stôl s akýmisi krabicami, nič tu nebolo isté... Vedel som však hneď, čo robiť. Vedel som to naisto, stačí, aby tie krabice zmizli. Napadlo ma, že som to isto už niekde zažil.
Pustil som sa do práce. Spôsob si už ani tak dobre nepamätám, ale išlo to fajn. Strach sa stratil... Vrátil sa zase, keď som mal odbaviť predposlednú. Teraz to predsa nemôže sklamať...
Zrazu sa všade naokolo ozvalo syčanie a ja som vedel, že je koniec. Ako dobre podťatá veža z kociek sa zhrútilo celé moje sebavedomie, akokoľvek bolo malé. Nemal som sa čoho chytiť, nebolo tu nič, nič konkrétne - okrem jednej veci. Tá tu zostala vo veľmi konkrétnej podobe. Zostal tu strach...

Ak čosi naozaj neznášam, je to isto strhnutie sa zo spánku. A toto bolo veľmi intenzívne. Dvere autobusu sa medzitým so syčaním pneumatického systému dovreli. Taká prkotina! ...dvere autobusu... Zaspávajúce okolie sa pohoršovalo nad mojimi prudkými reakciami, a aj keď ma nevideli, isto si ma podozrivo premeriavali.
"Čo sa stalo?" spýtala sa prebudivšia sa Barbora.
"Prepáč," zašepkal som. Aj v tej tme som si všimol, že mala líce zamazané od čokolády... a v očiach odlesk hviezd. Tých, ktoré ešte chystajúci sa dážď nestihol zakryť svojimi oblakmi. V tej tme bola ešte krajšia ako kedykoľvek predtým, ale verím tomu, že táto myšlienka ma pri nej napadne často. Nie prvý raz je krajšia ako kedykoľvek predtým.
Barbora sa na mňa pozerala, ako keby mi chcela preniknúť do najhlbšieho kúta mojej mysle. Vyzerala famózne, vlasy všetko, len nie učesané, a práve o to bola krajšia. Zbožňujem prirodzenú krásu - čím myslím krásu neumelú.
Asi som veľký idealista, ale myslím si, že aj takéto chvíle majú svoju veľkosť - o ich nádhere ani nehovoriac. Byť na cestách s takou kočkou, akou Barbora isto je, bolo kedysi mojím snom. A čo ak aj teraz len snívam? Na to je ale potom teplo jej tela až moc skutočné.
Som úplne celý zamilovaný. Do Barbory, do tejto chvíle a vôbec teraz hoci aj do celého sveta. Na túto mikroskopickú krásu života sa zabúda, aspoň mne sa zdá, že málokto vie precítiť nádheru takéhoto momentu. A ona sa na mňa stále pozerá s tou naivnou hravosťou v očiach a za chvíľu sa ma isto spýta: "Na čo myslíš?"

Utopia (5): Truth with Caren

2006-11-11T01:27:00.000+01:00

We're entering the Baldoria - which is nice and large ground level pub where wood is dominating as interior material. Paul showed me our table and while we are moving closer I can recognize some people thanks to the materials found with the computer.
- "Seven out of ... well there aren't all sixteen of them," I noticed.
- "Well, that's not that bad after all... still Brian and Bob is missing," Paul replied.
- "Gosh, I'm sure I'd knew them!" I was exaggerating.
- "Yeah, I bet," confirmed Paul with irony in his voice.

- "Hello people," called Paul to outvoice ambient noise.
- "Hi all," added me.
- "Hey," Paul pointed at free place next to... well, I identified her as Caren candidate. "You hold place for us, great!"
- "Well, Paul - hard to deny such a claim!" but she smiles at us both.
Paul signed me to sit next to girl and he sat down around the table corner at my right side.
- "So..." started the girl, "what's up, Gavin? Fever?"
- "Oh yes, the Friday one. :-)"
- "Ah, you needed all day of preparation for the night, I see."
I turned to Paul: "Should I tell her?"
- "I bet you should, Gavin," Paul winked at her. "Does Gavin keep any secrets from you?"
- "Why?" girl looked a little bit confused. "I don't think so!" added she with smile.
I asked Paul: "Caren, right?"
- "Right. :-)"
- "Ok, Caren," I turned back to her. "Actually I have a problem. I remember all my life living in completely different world til this night. This morning I woke up in a house I've never seen before in a stranger's bad and so... I can say, that I'm not Gavin, but after some talk with Paul I feel like I have no other option than to be Gavin for the time being."
Caren is looking at me for a while and then she's saying to Paul: "Strange joke, isn't it?"
- "Well, it might be," tittered Paul. "But - believe it or not - I believed him. Or... he's playing it perfectly for the last couple of hours."
Caren was took aback for a little longer.

- "So you're not Gavin?"
- "Not really, but I'd like to be, believe me."
- "Hm," she was thinking about something a minute. "Well, I really don't know what I should think about this."
- "Neither do I, really," I shrugged.
- "Because if you're not Gavin, as you both claim, I should miss you somehow, but it's simply not that simple when I can see you right in front of me!"
- "I bet it's confusing."
- "And now I also don't know what to do with you... we can talk, of course. I guess you'll be working with us when you wanna merge here as Gavin..."
- "Indeed."
- "But..." she smiled and looked more relaxed suddenly. "Well, I'll see... So you simply don't remember anything from Gavin's life."
- "Nothing, really."
- "That's strange from my perspective," said she... and I started to have a feeling like I'm missing something.
- "Eh... was something between us two?" asked I. Now I can imagine how is it to experience real amnesia.
Caren and Paul looked at each other and I noticed that man next to Caren (it might be Brian Carter) was listening too and he chuckled shortly.
- "Yes, we're pretty good friends at least," said Caren. "Well, at least we were with the proper Gavin guy, you know."
- "Aha... friends at least."
- "You can say that we've had closer relationship."
- "Closer... are you Gavin's partner?"

Paul stepped in with grin: "How can you be Gavin and talk about him in third person?"
- "Well, I feel that in this case the difference between me and Gavin is kinda essential."
- "That's valid point," agreed Caren. "And no, I have stable partner next to Gavin."
- "Well, in that case it isn't so serious. :-)"
- "Well, it was for me. :-)"
I stopped for a while.
- "Now I don't know if I should ask..."
- "What you wanna know?" Caren smiled at me.
Now I'm thinking if it's appropriate to ask directly about slight possibility that we were something like lovers. But I don't know customs in this society. Although it looks pretty open - in communication at least. So I decided to risk a little and to be open too.
- "Ok, some sex involved?"
- "Yeah," Caren looked at Paul. "He's playing it really good. Too good. :-)" Then she continued to me: "I prefer 'making love', but Gavin somehow liked to mark it with that sterile word. Although it's still better to have good sex than nothing, right? :-)"
- "I guess so."
- "But since you're not Gavin, I should reconsider. Don't worry - no problem at work and we can stay friends because I believe you that from your point it's best to BE Gavin in - for you strange - Gavin's world."
- "Ok," I grins. "No sex in near future, I see. :-)"
- "I'm not so sure about this," Caren is obviously in a good mood - perhaps too good for such news. "After all you have that attractive body." She swatted me gently on my arm. "But generally yes, we should rather start at the level of good friendship."

And so I knew Caren and clarified my relationship with her just from the start. ;-)

My way to JBoss Seam

2006-11-05T19:39:00.000+01:00

If you're not interested in Java and its Enterprise Edition you should skip this article for your own sake. ;-)

I have to admit that I'm pretty lazy when it comes down to technology evaluation. On the other hand I know that I have to do it from time to time and I need to push myself further. Because last thing I want is to remain plain Java-coder. Do you wanna be proper valuable developer? You have to move ahead constantly. Sometimes I just learn things someone else is coming up with and sometimes I propagate something toward our team on myself. To learn something new was one of the most important motivation when we went to visit TheServerSide Java Symposium in Barcelona on June 2006. And there happened that moment in my life. ;-)

Name Gavin King was familiar to me - because of Hibernate, of course. On the other hand I managed to forget it again and so my boss had to remind me who is it when we were going through the presentation description. "And what does he have common with some web framework?!" I was surprised when I read about Seam talk. My boss just shrugged. We were at the room waiting how he would be. And then Gavin came at the stage and started to talk about current situation in information systems development - namely about those delivered to user via HTTP/HTML. I couldn't agree more because many things he mentioned bothered (or still bother) me from time to time. However it's not only the content what's important here (although it's most important I guess). You have to see Gavin talking (and walking and gesturing on stage) because that's really not so ordinary experience. My boss couldn't stand it and he also didn't like that Gavin hadn't said anything about Seam during first 20 minutes of his speech - and so he left to check another talk (and so we also split our forces in order to gain more info from the first hand ;-)).

However, Gavin - armed with his Seam - made an impression to me - and the strong one indeed. This speech was also mentioned on TSS News (Advanced State Management with JBoss Seam). During the TSSJS in Barcelona we noticed the obvious - the community is kinda split between Spring (or other lightweighted container solution, whatever the technology stack around is complete ;-)) and the Java EE. Gavin King identifies himself as EJB3 lover. And now I started to understand it. Of course I saw some EJB3 examples with annotations before. At last bean implements the EJB interface really, many XML things are gone and everything looks simpler. I also looked at JSF but there was no use for it in our ongoing projects. And now I saw something that glues these two technologies together and the examples really shows that business code is what really dominates here. At last.

One day later we were kinda lucky when Gavin sat down at our table in foyer where we were relaxing during lunch break. I made bold to address him and then the words were somehow going on. It was exciting talk (at least for us ;-)) and I knew that I have to look at this technology later. And so I did after we came back home. First thing I liked on Seam is the start-up. If you follow the instructions precisely (and it's not so hard) you simply have to finish with Seam examples up and running. I was also surprised that it already has reference documentation - and it is not so brief. Of course you can think about it something similar like critic in this blog post (October 2005) but I found it useful. If you want to change something in examples it's no problem and the change mostly does what you can expect. I miss some "stupid" example where only one bean and JSF is used (useless Hello world ;-)) because it's best minimal example for creating projects from scratch.

I also "enjoyed" Seam more than I wanted during first days because when I tried to create project on my own (not just "refactor" project tree of some example) it was a real pain. It simply didn't work every time. Of course, the problem was between the chair and the keyboard. I rushed to do something and documentation wasn't read completely. Biggest problem in my case (among the others) was to pack seam.properties into EJB jar - even when it's empty. :-) Tricky, huh? Just do it. If you want to avoid similar stupid mistakes just point your browser to Seam's wiki where you can find all important information - along with configuration files glossary. There I read that seam.properties must be in that jar (although I already found it out finally). It was also first time when I tried to use JSF/EJB3 for something real, so no wonder that it wasn't walk-over. However I made it after all and now I just have to create something big with Seam to see if it's so easy in longer run.

You'd may also want to check few others articles about Seam - few (older) TSS news: Gavin seems to really dig JSF and JBoss 'Seam', app framework for JEE 5, released in beta (causing some flame with Springers ;-)). See also this article on OnJava. There is also JSR 299 named Web Beans and it tries to make standard from something like Seam. And yes, Gavin is the spec leader. ;-)

I'm really happy to see all this work (among the other) toward simplification of Java EE development because I have few J2EE 1.4 experiences and it was more pain than gain. Now I'm starting with Java EE again. :-)

Utopia (4): The way to Baldoria

2006-10-30T00:19:00.000+01:00

I was looking forward to that party - and was afraid of it in the same moment, of course. Anyway, we discussed only the most important things during next half hour. Paul told me about my job - and checked my knowledge in the same time. He also told me about few people I should know - this was the part we were working with computer. I was impressed how much information is available about everything and everyone. Paul also made clear some terminology for me. So computer is computer. Cell phone is much more than that and they call it comdev in most cases. "Mobile" is not important difference for them - most things are mobile when they should be. In this moment it's clear that I'm really in some other world. It really IS Earth - Paul showed me the maps - and most of the big cities I know are exactly where they should be. The same names, buildings (as far as I'm able to judge it)... it looks like some parallel world. I guess that history lessons will follow some time later.

Paul also revealed to me that I have chip implanted into my hand - and most people have such thing too.

- "Isn't it problem for you?" I asked him.
- "Why it should be?"
- "I don't know. You know, that freedom stuff, move control..."
Paul was obviously confused. "Do you mean..."
- "I mean if your government can't control you?"
- "Ah, that!" Paul's face cheered up. "Well, no! They may know where I am. They may know with who I am. But nobody would simply dare to exploit it... I guess that your society wasn't so effective in ways how to control each other. We communicate pretty much with each other, share our thoughts, reasons, opinions - although everybody must make up his mind on his own in the end - of course. You hardly can exploit anything more than twice here. On the other hand I feel safe and it's very comfortable."
- "Why comfortable?"
- "Well... this -" he picked up my id card - "is formal thing and everybody has one. But the same information are actually in citizen registry somewhere out there." Paul waved his hand to the outside. "So there is no need to carry it with you all the time. You just need that chip because the chip contains your id number. Id number itself has no information value - it's just the key to those information in registry. And not only registry. You can use it for paying, entering objects where entry is controlled, anywhere! Specific organization can access information they need and you still have full control over such things so it's also pretty safe, don't worry. Common seller can't know who you are because there are mechanisms that provide always only those information needed for specific situation."
- "Oh, really?" it sounded like he's very confident about all those things said, but I wasn't really convinced. "And no problems with some unauthorized usage?"
- "It's hard to exploit it because chip really doesn't contain important information. You also have to confirm it in most situations - mostly with your finger print. That's first aspect of the problem. Another aspect is that many entries are simply public already. We have our privacy but I really don't care about many things that are publicly known about me. And finally - last reason why all this works - nobody wants to mess up with anybody's trust. It's very important."
- "Ah... like telling the truth to everyone. :-)"
- "Well, Gavin, you are not really forced to tell everything to everybody. Just - if you say something, let it be truth."
- "Aha, so I can conceal something..."
- "Conceal... well, you can have your secrets. Secrets are not bad," he giggles. "At least sometimes."
- "Ok, I nearly started to imagine that you all like each other and share all your experiences."
- "Oh no," Paul shakes his head. "It's not like that and it would be sick... maybe. I don't like many people but there is no reason to lie them. And there is also no reason to tell them everything. And - of course - there is no space to tell them everything because I don't talk to them because I can't say I like them. Who would like to chat with people with whom you have no special relation?"
- "Ah," I agreed, "right, of course."

Few minutes later we wrapped this lesson up and we were ready for the squad action. I should introduce Paul in this moment just for the sake of completeness. Paul Kashinski works as our squad leader. Using word "squad" for software development team makes me smile. "We use 'team' for project teams, not for stable groups of people working in particular area," explains Paul. "And our squad is designated as 'Information Systems' squad." I guess I will not talk too much about my job per se, however I should meet Paul many times later. Paul is 34 years old, married with 3 children. He lives in Rotherham but not in a flat (like me) but in the house in the outskirts. I wasn't sure what are the rest of the local people but I was really happy that Paul is my first contact.

The most important things were discussed already and so I dressed myself up and we left the flat. Yeah, locking was controlled by finger print. Well, I really can use to similar features and I was curious a lot about what will be next. Paul drove his car into the city center and we stopped near pub called "Baldoria".
- "How many is expected?" I asked.
- "18 with us - as far as I know."
So it's 16 new faces, new people with completely different mind-sets.
- "Ah, Paul, how is Gavin? You know I don't really know him!"
- "Oh yes, right. :-) Well, first - no stress on this party - Gavin wasn't a show maker or a focus of interest. Certainly not at such kinds of actions. So relax and watch and infiltrate somehow. You don't need to tell anyone right from the start. You can be confused and it's really too much for you. So relax. Now - how I know you... you're a little bit over-confident about software development and - I guess so - a very little bit less confident in your real life than you could be. That makes you look like modest guy although you told me more than once that modesty is only a side-effect in your case. ;-) And you're quite comfy. If you can skip some work, you like to. But nothing that hurts really."
We reached the Baldoria entrance in the meantime and I can here noise and hum from the inside. Paul stopped and now he's looking at me: "Don't worry - really. Relax and ... merge." :-)

Utopia (3): To play amnesia or not?

2006-10-24T23:40:00.000+02:00

17:36 the mobile is ringing with Paulie on display.

- "Hi, Paul!" I bet he can hear that I've anticipated this call. With hope.
- "Hi, on my way. Few minutes, ok?"
- "Right, I'm waiting."
- "Ok, see you."
- "See you."

Few minutes later he is standing on my doorsill. Fair guy, normal figure... well - I'm not description master.

- "Hi, Paul, nice to see you," I feel relief even I'm still not sure how to ask him for help.
- "Gav... well, how are you?" we moved to the kitchen bar.
- "Hard to say," I opened the fridge. "I'm going to the party, no problem there. Or at least I hope I'm going... Do you want something?"
- "Sure, but something softer to be able to drive."
Great, and what that should be like? I wasn't sure if there is permitted blood alcohol level here.
- "Well, name it!" I performed best smile I could in the situation.
Paul took a look into the fridge and says: "Ah, gin and soda... not so much of gin of course."
I performed the operation although I've never served this drink and chose beer for myself.
- "Eh, no gin today?" Paul was evidently surprised.
- "Not today." I don't like gin at all. "Well, and now my problem."
- "Fire it out."
- "Problem is that it isn't quite common problem and I'm afraid you'll not believe me."
- "Well..." Paul's face reflected glimpse of umbrage so I decided to go directly to my problem.
- "It sounds strange, but I woke up today and I remembered nothing."
- "Uff," Paul is naturally bewildered. Moment of silence follows so I decided to continue.
- "You know, unknown flat, unknown city, I never saw the computer system, I don't even know you..."
- "Well, ok, ok..." Paul's stopping me with his hands up. Again a moment of silence but I see that he wants to express something so I'm just waiting. "Well - you're right that it's hard to believe, because I've never met this phenomenon before. But at least I've heard of it. :-) ... However you were fine in the comdev so I really wouldn't say you don't know me."
- "Well... I was frightened a little, so sorry. I played it somehow but because you was the first person I communicated with and you sounded fine I wanted to talk to you - and so I'm doing now."
- "Is it like amnesia?"
- "Well - not really..."
- "...I hope you know amnesia."
- "Yeah, don't worry. I know much more. And that's the problem. I don't have missing memories by myself. I remember everything until yesterday's evening. I went to sleep and suddenly I woke up here."
- "You wanted to say you remember some different life?"
- "Completely different, yes... maybe except the profession because I was Java developer in my world before."
- "Java...?"
- "Ah, sorry - programming language - it's similar to Arto from what I saw so far."
Paul held up for a second in order to think it through.

- "So you don't know if you're Gavin?" he asked finally.
- "No, I don't know - and I'm much more convinced that I'm someone else. I remember my name and also strange thing is that I know my picture in the mirror. It's like to be suddenly in his body."
- "Well... I really don't know what this can mean to anyone of us. You simply can't be Gavin if you're not... Oh, how stupid sentences can come out from such situation!" he tittered although it was obvious that he takes it pretty seriously. "Now - I really don't know what to do. I guess that you have something on your mind and you wanted me to help you... or something."
- "Yes, Paul - I hope you don't mind when I call you like that. I simply want to supply Gavin while... I really don't know until when. However, I'm here and it would be much easier for everybody if I can do what he could as best as I can. You could treat me as a foreigner - yes, I am foreigner - but please. I told you because I need to take foot in this world and I really need someone's help."
Paul started to think about the things just said.
- "More soda?" I asked.
- "With gin even..." he smiled sadly. After few sips he continues: "When you take it like this - then yes - you're stranger. I don't know what to do. You look right, still I might call doctors or police maybe but I'm not sure if it is for any good. So... you told me and you need my help. So let's presume that I have a reason to trust you. We will see what to do with you. Now - how should I treat you?"
- "Let's play - or how to call it - that I'm Gavin with a little - well, more than little obviously - amnesia, ok? Is it suitable for a while?"
- "For a while. Yes, I think it could be good for the start. And now the help part. I would help Gavin with anything." Now he smiled rather cunningly than sadly and it was fine to see it.
- "Well, I need a crash course in this world. And also - I'd like to know who I should know, how and if I should tell him amnesia cover-story or truth."
Paul raised his eyebrow and asks: "Why would you want to tell something other than truth to anyone?" And of course he got me with such straight question.
- "Well... in my previous life it was better not to tell the truth sometimes. Or not whole truth."
- "Gavin, Gavin... you really need that crash course. :-) I bet that you - and I mean old Gavin now - will be missed by many of us, but you - new Gavin - shouldn't lie. Not just because he never lied. Simply because you want to achieve something and you want to be someone. Never ... now I don't know if you use strong swear words sometimes..."
- "...go for it. ;-)"
- "...so just never fuck up with anybody's trust. Because even f-word can't express how bad it will be with your credit afterwards."

It wasn't such a difficult decision for me. "Don't worry, Paul. It's really easier to tell the truth for me. At least I can't fall into my own web of lies. I just didn't know... you know."
- "Well I don't know - I simply can't imagine the reasons for that question... but ok, you asked, I answered the question. Now you know."
- "So, first important fact is here" - I pointed at my head - "already. Now just the rest of that crash course."
- "Oh," he giggles. "Just the rest of the course! ... OK, do you mind if we continue on the party or do you want some part here? You have to say."
- "Right. Ok, few more questions here if we're not in time pressure and than the rest."
Paul checked the clock on the wall (17:59): "No, we're pretty far from time pressure."

And so I entered my crash course in my new world.

Utopia (2): Meet Gavin Poullan

2006-10-23T23:17:00.000+02:00

The question is if Paul is the help I need. Should I tell him about my problems? Will he believe me? I wouldn't do it by myself - it's really more than impossible to happen anyway, isn't it? However - still I have some time to the evening. Although - gosh - we should at least settle on a specific time. Never mind, I guess that mobile phones will solve this problem when it comes.

So - who is Gavin, where does he work, ...? Many questions - answers needed. Id card itself doesn't contain any useful information. Personal id, name, birth date, photo with my face on it. Well, I need something else. I returned to that drawer with documents. It looks like I live in a town called Rotherham. Never heard of it. Now the date would be fine. I went to the desk again and checked the computer screen. Yeah, there it is... it's simply the date after yesterday. Everything looks fine. So how could I get here without even noticing?!

Many things gave me a hint that I'm not on the Earth I know. Unknown computer environment, many unknown things and really more modern equipment in the house here and there. There is great chance that I may not know every technical devices in a foreign flat, but this was beyond the level of suspicion.

Work - Gavin (or me or whoever) has job. This answer took more papers to go through but after all I found it. Software Developer. Nice... I stop to believe in coincidences. Why I even have the same job? Well - not really - I never heard of the language. There may be much more what can surprise me in the job I guess. However at least the style of thinking should be the same. Whatever, I'll ask Paul later.

Computer applications were similar to ours for a first sight. There was some type of network browser - although there seemed to be no difference between local and remote resources in the way how they were treated. And it was more... well - object oriented from my professional point of view. Even remote objects (not only pages, far from it!) were very responsive. I found some chat application after a while. Hm, Gavin has really BIG contact list. It's even hierarchized. Well, no wonder when he has... unbelievable - 2474 contacts?! And not only that. It took me some minute to find out what's the semantic of the chat but then I can see that there is more than one hundred of unread messages. Stupid spam!

After another few minutes I can see that every message is really addressed to me and it has meaning and that senders obviously know me very well. Him-me... let's face it - I'm Gavin, so I'm quitting that "he" pose from now on. And here it is! Caren McKinley, my co-worker, age 26, some task list, generic contact identifier (eh, whatever that is) and also some personal notes. Nothing applicable right now, but there is new message from her few minutes old.

Caren: Hi Gav. I heard that you have some problem with coming to work. I hope it's nothing serious. :-)

Now what? I have no idea how I possibly could break this if I pay attention and say less then nothing specific. Let's try it.

Gavin: No serious problem when it comes to health or so. I'm just kinda dazed after the night - don't know why.
Caren: Kinda dazed? :-)))
Gavin: Well a little bit. ;-)
Caren: Kinda? :-) What... you started to invent new words or what?

Oh, gosh... write properly! It isn't the right time to study histories of Gav's chats right now - however I know that it's great idea at least. I decided to skip this problem somehow at this moment.

Gavin: Just dazed - now you can see it. :-)
Caren: So full day off today?
Gavin: Yes... rather.
Caren: Well, I'll try to go through it alone. ;-)

I stopped for thinking for a while. Go through what? Was it personal or professional? And how to find out without raising suspicion.

Gavin: I hope you're not so alone. ;-)
Caren: Oh, c'mon, I don't have mood to join other pair now. I can do something on alone, don't worry. :-) And maybe I'll see you in the eve.
Gavin: Right, I think that eve is no problem.
Caren: BTW: That problem with business message library is fixed at last.
Gavin: Great!

Really great, I have no idea what is she talking about. Caren is silent for a while so I decided to check other possibilities of that object browsing thingy. It has even name - World Browser. Oh, how original... I created class called WorldCotroller once - that was much more powerful designation, wasn't it? Ok, let's browse now.

I was working for company called Allied System Applications (I knew it from chat notes for Caren) and with this information it's proper time to find out how to search for things in Browser. And it is much easier than I expected - I can hit upon search feature on every step. Yet still it's not intrusive. Nice.

Allied System Applications is company based in Newberden (never heard of it either) with some branches in Kees, Archsta and Rotherham. 933 employees all around, 114 in Rotherham. Well, my new company is obviously larger than the one before. Strange thing for me is that I can find too many things about the company in that Object World (really hard to narrow it down to our Internet even after a few minutes experience). Full employee list, for example. Ah, my name - and link.

Gavin Poullan, 28 years old, Arto (that's the programming language name) application developer, 6 years in ASA, some projects I was working on were named too. Everything with possibility to navigate there for closer detail. It looks like the ASA is really open company. However this was some public record about the company. ASA has also their official portal (page?) and there were much more objects containing something about ASA too. There is even list of competitors! Eh... I really don't know what I should think about that.

I took a quick tour around the Object World (or simply World - as it looks like they call it so simply) and found out that similar information is provided for every named company. And I was more and more sure that I need a little help and explanation what I should think about this. Well, Paulie, call or come - and do it quickly.

Utopia (1): The morning in Utopia

2006-10-19T16:59:00.000+02:00

Note: You shouldn't take reality too seriously in this series. Nor it is sci-fi, no - these will be common stories from not so ordinary world. World similar to us - let's say it's parallel world or whatever - yet world quite different. Don't focus on a construction "how he's got there?" - I really don't know. Just presume that it was one morning - different from all his mornings before.

Something is wrong. I know it even before I open my eyes. Yet it's good idea to open them eventually and so I'm doing so. First look surprised me quite a lot - it actually surprised me too much to be shocked or scared or what. I woke up in a room I've never seen...

Everything is quiet around here, I'm alone in the bed (in a pyjamas I never saw) and well - I'm more then quite confused. No drinking yesterday, drugs are out of options for sure... what the hell is going on here?! Ok, some action needed. Let's check the rooms now. Furniture and equipment are all to my liking and this is nice large four room flat with everything I'd need for life. Still I have no idea how I've got here. I recognized myself in a mirror (well - except that pyjamas) and I can open the house door - so at least I'm not obligated to stay here. But the problem is that I don't recognize the outdoor. There is nothing like the town I live in. City in my view is completely strange. Nothing wrong with it - it might be even nice - but I'm not familiar with it at all.

Ok, let's examine the flat closely - I have to find something about its inhabitants and maybe even some information about where I am. I opened the drawers on the commode in the bedroom and there I found some documents. Bank account statements, insurance, something with health care. Everything was in English which kinda confused me - because it's not my native language and I'm really far far away from English speaking countries. Or - I was yesterday - at least. There is no surprise then that I can't recognize bank house names or proper form of those documents. What was obvious on the other hand - they all belong to someone named Gavin Poullan.

I moved to the office desk with computer screen on it - computer is apparently running so I turned the screen on. It wasn't even locked - eh, I recognized myself in such a stupid behavior. I'm not familiar with the desktop environment and it definitely doesn't look like Windows/Linux/Mac. Uh, really strange. However - let's move on. And there it is! Id card on the desk with...

Well, up to this moment it looked just like a bad joke or amnesia or whatever. But I have a bad feeling seeing MY photo on the card with name Gavin Poullan. That was the moment when mobile phone started to ring. No problem that I've never seen that model - a little bigger problem that I've never heard about "Akarmob" trademark but... display is showing Paulie calling, let's check it out:

- "Yes?"
- "Hi Gavin," male voice on the other side. "Here's Paul... just wanted to know if you're all right."
- "Kinda... thanks... is there anything going on?"
- "Eh, at this work? :-) Not really - just you're not the one with custom to come late, you know."
- "Late - oh sorry."
- "Well, no problem, I'm here to wake you up anytime." Paulie was obviously in a good mood. That wasn't my case.
- "Well..." I staggered for a while. "Paulie?"
- "Yes?"
- "Actually, I'm not quite in shape right now, but you know... I don't know..." I wasn't sure what to say. I wasn't sure if Paulie is my mate or boss. Or even both. Not to mention that I'm not really voluble in English.
- "No problem, Gavin. If you need few hours or even a day off - just tell it and I can handle. Nothing is in rush currently, you know it very well."
- "Well, I'd rather take the day off then if I may."
- "You may. No problem Gav. I'll handle it."
- "Ok, thank you a lot."
- "Ok, take care."
That was the moment I've got the idea - maybe insane but everything around was already kinda insane, so... I utilized that moment while Paulie waited for my good-bye or what and started.
- "Paulie...?"
- "Yes, Gav?"
- "Can I ask you ... well if you don't have anything today... can we meet somewhere?"
- "Eh, :-)" this made Paulie smile a bit evidently. "Of course if you want. Where?"
- "Ah... right question." I'm thinking about the best option but there is only one left anyway. "Well, can you actually pick me here? I can't really decide now."
- "Oh, Gav!... We have that squad action, I nearly forgot it because I couldn't imagine that YOU could forget!" Paulie was in a really funny mood - and it looked like I was part or the reason now.
- "Oh, gosh... as I said."
- "No problem, man. If you have something serious, I can make a stop at your home and I'll see if I go to the party or not."
- "Jesus... thank you. I think I can go there - no problem with that. But please, pick me up. I can tell you the reasons then, if it's not a problem."
- "No, it isn't. Nothing is problem... so far. ;-)"
- "Ok, thank you a lot."
- "You're welcome."
- "Ok, see you then."
- "See you, Gav."

Well, this was something. Now his voice has sounded very clear so I can expect that mine was clear too. So he must know my voice. So I have Gav's voice, Gav's shape and face and the only thing I'm missing now is Gav's memory. Or better my own flat (well, rented, but who cares now), my pyjamas and situation I can navigate in. However I don't know how and so I decided to let it flow. And I really should continue in investigation about myself at first.

And so I'm starting right now.

Googleized or Googlized?

2006-10-16T23:14:00.000+02:00

Doesn't matter really. Even Googelized can be found with Google - and every form has its foundation. I'll stick with Googleized - because it contains Google in its fullness.

Of course I used Google to find something on web before, but my full Googleization started when I decided to be invited to Gmail. I always had something against webmails - because they were not usable. I lost few mails because of session expiration and sometimes the service was not even accessible. Gmail got me. Auto-saved drafts, very strong usage of JavaScript that wasn't obtrusive - on the contrary - everything was aimed to make things easier, faster, better... googlish, you know.

From Gmail to other services

Reliable service (hm, I have to admit, that I found my Gmail inaccessible sometimes too - but only for a short while) is not the only thing that makes Gmail winner in my eyes. When I grasped the label system, found out that not single mail but conversation is what really matters and few other things that changed my perspective of emails - that was that moment when I realized that Google is more. And can be even more. When I grew together with my Gmail, I started to use it even for things it wasn't intended for. When I needed to write map review in English (that isn't my first language as you can see ;-)) I used drafts for it. Because of aforementioned auto-save feature and because of spell checking.

When Google Spreadsheets came out I thought to myself: "Now only some notes or whatever where I can create documents with auto-save and spell check." And guess what... few weeks later it's called Google Docs&Spreadsheets and I'm writing this post in this application. OK, now I've found "check spelling" icon in Blogger, but still I feel more comfortable with this wide window, familiar Gmail/Google look&feel - and after all - there is no problem with copy&paste into Blogger's post. At least I'm not aware of any. ;-) Maybe some problem will appear when I start to use more features and more text formatting.

Now I'm happy user of Calendar, I started to flirt with Photos/Picasa and - as you may notice - with Blogger too. ;-) And currently my fresh Google Desktop is indexing my computer. Well - how far this can go? And - is it only good? Well... I don't want to discuss philosophic questions here. I'm open human being and I kinda don't care what is known and what is not. I let you (anyone) to know things about me. And I know that when I really don't know something to be know, it's not to be discussed on Internet anywhere. I don't consider Google better or worse than other common services in terms of information security. Again - I'm not touching technical aspects of the topic - it's always up to your feelings to decide what can be said and what not. And where. I simply don't care in most things. And most of us is not so important anyway. :-P Ah... too much words for a topic I didn't want to bring here at all. ;-)

Can it be better?

Let's return to technical level - or at least to level of user's experience. Can this be better? Well - YES - obviously. It would be really bad if it can't be better, right? Now some concrete/specific things. Many services display cool "services list" (or how to call it) in the left top corner. When you are on yours docs index, you can see it. You can see it in Gmail, you can see it in Calendar - in these two applications you can even see it all the time (I hope) which is cool. I can switch to another Google domain anytime. Well - not really. Because right now - editing this text - I don't see this bar. And another magical thing is its content. When I was in Gmail I saw Groups, when I was in Docs&Spreadsheets I saw also Photos - but no Groups. I wasn't using any of this. Now I used Group for one post about my First Google Desktop experience and Groups are still shown only in Gmail. But when I used Photos today for the first time it started to appear in both applications. Strange.

I want this "service bar" visible all the time. With first link Google showing being not default Google, but personalized one. And I want it stable and customizable to some extent. E.g. let the Gmail link be pointing to HTTPS version instead of plain HTTP one (this is not my case, but I can pretty imagine such a wish). Maybe I should only wait few weeks like was the Docs' case. ;-)

Another thing is that you can enter any service with Gmail account, but it's not real single sign-on. I have "remember me on this computer" checked on - and so I have no problem with this. But my mate uses to log into the Google/Gmail (he simply doesn't have that habit to save passwords on computers) - and he has to log again into distinct services.

And let's go even further (and still not too much - we're not talking about sci-fi, only about things that my surprise us when Google made us so comfy before ;-)): Why I have to enter some profile on Groups when it wants to know exactly the same things like some services before?

Beware! It's beta!

Yes. It's true. Most things are claimed to be beta or even in Labs stadium. If I take this into consideration I have to be more patient - I know. It's really simple - Google sometimes surprise me with "oh, this is not working yet?" when so many things are working so nicely, intuitively, etc, etc... add your favorite superlatives. You can argue about policies (claimed vs. real one that you can't know anyway ;-)), you can discuss security or even crisis in global society - but you have to admit that Google is changing our world of information. Not so slowly and - that's for sure - with new perspectives upon these information. With technical innovations. And even if they are not really first, they are often first able to really deliver.

And that counts. And so I am Googleized and it's getting worse.