I bought it, so you won’t have to. ‘blood, sweat and pixels’ is book of Jason Schreier - kotaku fame. and to set record straight - it’s very, very bad book. to further add to insult, one of the chapters is focused on our very own ‘witcher 3’. let me shorten your torment, and save 30 PLNs by summarizing the diagram that Jason uses to describe the process of creating each of the games: ...
another trilogy worth reading, rightly celebrating popularity as part of the (weak, and painfully crippled) Netflix screening. it consists of Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies. they all cover adventures of a single hero, however because of the “altered carbon” specifics, it’s almost like three different books. Takeshi Kovacs is single character, former Envoy, but given he’s constantly using different bodies, books are fast paced and interesting. ‘broken angels’ keeps ‘altered carbon’ tempo and adds some interesting twists, and ‘woken furies’ in my humble opinion is weakest of all three, but still written well and keeping the level overall. ...
all three books are great, and whole trilogy - delightful. they’re refreshing in style, and for me personally very similar to writings of Stanisława Lema (well, at least there where it’s close to intergalactic travels and technology) and Asimov. everything embedded into chinese cultural environment that i studied recently for professional reasons). some of that can be seen very clearly in long term (really long term) strategies mixed with tactical execution. ...
for the first time in a few years I took three weeks of vacation. …and this is starting to catch up with me :) i took few books with myself, but only some of them are worth mentioning - like ‘Hit refresh’ by Satya Nadella (though I have not read it yet) and ‘Now. The physics of time’ - I am in the process and it is fascinating to read. the remaining two positions will remain in the shadow of oblivion. ...
it was not built for US military. it wasn’t even built to enable survivability of US military infrastructure after nuclear war. there’s a myth in the “internet circles”, that i’m fighting for couple of years already. recently, i was reading great book - Dream Machine. it’s as good as (at least) Dealers of Lightning or 747 - but maybe even better. you probably heard the story already - US gov ordered RAND to check if they could built survivable comms system. that system could have survived almost total annihilation - including nuclear war. RAND asked one of his consultants - of Polish origin - Paul Baran to do the job. and he basically prototyped with his team network capable of packet switching, not circuit switching. it is said and repeated, that Paul work was in effect ARPANET. almost everything here is true, apart from last sentence - ARPANET was neither inspired or created thanks to Paul work. ...
140 characters at most, 5 minutes, sandwich you catch up while on the run… and then silence at around 2am and wake up call at 6am… this is how life of most of us looks like. daily. I had a chance to get back to book I’ve read too long ago - Rays Bradbury 451* Fahrenheita'. just take a look at following dialogue: ...
ARPA, established in 1958, was first and only space agency at that time in United States. to this day it drives fantasies and is unequivocally identified with the emergence of the Internet, but did you know that ARPA (before it became DARPA in 1972) was responsible for underground nuclear testing (as seismology allowed to determine whether other countries somewhere on Earth were conducting their nuclear tests), guerilla warfare (ARPA reps travelled to and stayed in Vietnam, Thailand and Laos long before US under falsifed “proofs” attacked North Vietnam), or development of machine rifle that became what is today known as M-16? ...
we are herd creatures, naturally social. we have created many tools for remote communication and although the echoes of the electromagnetic wave of our radio transmissions travel fainter and farther into space, today one of the most used tools is the good old e-mail. it was born in around 1971 so already 47 years ago. contrary to the bigots shouting radical slogans louder and louder, i believe that humanity is created for an open exchange of ideas. without borders and difficulties. instead of building physical and digital walls, archaic and testifying only to a narrow mind and limited imagination, as societes we should focus on solving much simpler problems. ...
6:51 AM, 30 APRIL 1975: SWIFT 22 IS OUTBOUND WITH 11 PAX ON BOARD INCLUDING THE LZ COMMANDER. ALL THE AMERICANS ARE OUT REPEAT OUT. this traditionally short message from NSA signals intelligence, was everything that was needed to confirm that all US citizens left US embassy in Saigon. Saigon changed name to Ho Chi Minh a day later, taken over by North Vietnam army. signals intelligence changed significantly from that time, but the book i’m writing about right now was published way before Snowden era. James Bamford Body of secrets describes in amazing details last 60 years of NSA backstage operations. ...
jeden z moich znajomych zauważył bardzo celnie, że mam często ‘krótki lont’. nie mogę się nie zgodzić - czasami tak po prostu jest. zrozumienie i opanowanie tego to katorżnicza praca, która w dodatku wymaga codziennego szlifowania umiejętności. każdy kto próbował - wie. na wielu poziomach ten temat dotyka zagadnień dominujących dzisiejsze tzw. szkoły biznesu - jak zbudować zespół, jak jego członkowie powinni wzajemnie się uzupełniać, motywować i jednocześnie - zachęcać do wartościowej pracy. ...