Follow your bliss, not your blisters

Do Catholics remember the Pied Piper story?

2010-03-23T09:48:00.006+02:00

The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a legend starring a piper (flute singer), dressed in pied (multicolored) clothing, who leads the children away from the town, implicitly to their death. In the 16th century the story was expanded into a full narrative, in which the piper is a rat-catcher hired by the town to lure rats away with his magic pipe. When the citizenry refuses to "pay the piper" for this service, he retaliates by turning his magic on their children, leading them away to their demise [source: Wikipedia]. We dare say this plays on a common archetype, common in many cultures.

Recently the pope has come under siege because of a tremendous wave of child rape allegations from all over the world. Even after having been exposed to the utterly mob style “Crimen Solicitationis” act from 1962, we had not expected the recently surfaced letter the Rat Himself wrote in 2001 to all bishops, in his role as Cardinal at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Inquision). What was this letter about? This letter sets some rules and grounds for heavy crimes such as molesting a piece of bread but, among these “crimes”, it also deals with what bishops should do when confronted with information on a child-raping priest. Surely a hasty call to the police you say? Nay. The Rat commanded all bishops to COVER UP the rape under penalty of excommunication for 10 years after the VICTIM’s (!!!) reaching 18 years of age. Also, apparently His Retardness is a micromanager, according to one ex-man-of-the-cloth who served under the God’s Man on (planet) Earth. This kind of fucks up His Retardness’ excuse that under his “leadership” as an archbishop in his native country, Germany (known to Her Rat as the 3rd Reich…) he was not aware of the pedophile priests whom he routinely moved around from one diocese to another, after allegations of rape surfaced, probably so that the Holy Fathers could get ahold of fresh child asses and vaginas. This is proven by the last item of the equation, the extremist, child fucking holy man called Marcial Maciel Degollado who has had the privilege of being on Pope Paul the 2nd’s good side and who enjoyed a long child ass and vagina rape history, well known to the his congregation and to the Vatican. He was severely punished by his Ratzness by having him removed from active duty and by committing him to prayer. That had to teach him a lesson and had to be enough to repair the mental damage of those kids he raped… And what a respect for society and its laws, admirable…

Lets not even go to the whole genocidal stupidity of the “condoms are worse than AIDS” statements that is killing and maiming and torturing countless Catholics in Africa. Lets just stay with the Mafia story and we have tremendous reasons to throw his virgin Assness in jail, preferably in the Big Dicks In The Ass jail.

And Vatican agrees and it is sorry that … the church image has been soiled. What the fuck?? I remember a similar excuse from a well spoken, apparently mild, Islamic apologist, when confronted with the Mohamed cartoon murderous rage of thousands. Not that writing a novel or drawing a cartoon should never be equated by civilized people living in any modern society with murder and boycott and acts of war. Nothing like that. He was sorry that the image of the peaceful Islam has been tinged by these “extremists” who were only doing what the prophet told them, piss be upon him.

There will come a day when rape and murder and organized crime will no longer be excused for the “holy”, and Humanity shall grow free of self-torture and cast these dark figures back into the 1000 years night they came from. And we shall never look back, aside from reaching to learn the history lesson, never to repeat it again. And gods shall no longer harm us.

Unbelievable Waste of Funds by the Romanian Government

2010-03-16T19:25:00.001+02:00

The Romanian Government under the Enlightened leadership of His Highness, the prime minister Emil Boc, has just approved HALF A BILLION EURO for the “e-Romania strategy” which appears to be a slightly more complex web portal.

His Crassness, the Lord Emperor of Romania, Traian Basescu, is expected to again support the decent leaders of our people and to safeguard the future of all Romanians by completely agreeing with this enormous waste of resources. Next, I predict that the elevator filled, restaurants and shops adorned, Orthodox mega super church project costing an estimated of 400 million euro will be rushed in, just before total financial Armageddon sets in, Greece style.

From my calculation these 2 “projects”, even if full of non-repayable grants from the UE, will probably cost the average low salaried employee almost 1/10 of his YEARLY salary. All gone to waste, directly in the pockets of bastards that should be hung for high treason. Not to mention that the low end salary employees in Romania have by far the greatest numbers.

Here is the link to the official communicate:

How much does a barrel of tar and 10 bags of feathers cost these days?

Complain here:

Researchers awarded patent for hydrophobic, corrosion-resistant coating

2010-03-03T03:12:00.000+02:00

Sergiu M. Gorun, PhD, is an associate professor of chemistry at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Credit: New Jersey Institute of Technology

Sergiu M. Gorun, PhD, associate professor of chemistry at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), was awarded a patent today for a novel composition of matter. "Functional Coating Compositions of Perfluoroalkyl Perfluoro-Phthalocyanine Compounds" (US Patent Number 7,670,684) discloses a new self-contained subclass of molecules. These new materials are comprised of organic scaffolds with metal centers, which can be applied as either an opaque or transparent hydrophobic coating.

See more here.

Scientific Research in Romania seen from inside – cont’d

2010-02-24T12:19:00.000+02:00

I was promissing you a continuation of the previous blog post about Romanian Science Research. Raul Muresan has followed up his "part of the deal” with four more exciting articles / opinion pieces in the Ziare.com publication that you should read if you are interested in the state of Romania’s science research:

Raul Muresan is a founding member of the Romanian Institute of Science and Technology and he conducts a research lab at Coneural (Center for Cognitive and Neural Studies) in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He holds a PhD from the Technical University in Cluj-Napoca Romania. Between 2004-2007 he was a visiting student and later a postdoc at Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Check his home page at RaulMuresan.ro.

Technorati Tags: funding,leader,problem,research,Romania,society,goverment,competence,science

Interesting people – Marius Ghenea

2010-02-12T20:52:00.007+02:00

I am starting today a series of articles about people I find interesting in the world today.

Marius Ghenea is a Romanian entrepreneur come Angel Investor and a good general source of business advice which is being tapped into by organizations that contain words such as “leaders”, “new media”, “young”, and “people” in their names. I guess that makes pretty much a good description of what he has become over the years, during his leadership of a new kind of company, the rise to fame in the “Dragon’s Den” of Romania, and the sharing of knowledge with young entrepreneurs, with his presence at a converence denoting a good talk, not to miss. From entrepreneurship times with Flamingo Computers, which he lead to a top position in the Balkans with a revenue of over 50 million USD (2001), he then invested in and founded companies such as Fit Distribution and PCFun, and a ton of smart ideas from the Dragons Den (called The Lions Arena in Romania).

My only personal face2face contact with Mr. Ghenea happened at a business conference I had been invited to participate by a mentor of mine (about whom I may write in the next articles of this series). Marius, as he permitted me to call him, seemed to me like a bright and friendly interlocutor as I stood there, taking a bit of his already overbooked time to present him my Mobile Television software. Useful advice and a quick, and do I mean quick, “let’s go to the root of the issue” type of assessment on my not-so-well-finished business idea and he was off to some other engagement.

I really wish there were more business people like him in Romania, people who are not connected to politics, who do not siphon out State’s money, who had not been rich during the communist regime, but who are regular, bona fide, successful entrepreneurs that rival, at our smaller Romanian scale, successful entrepreneurs that we so often hear of from the western civilization, the USA in particular.

You can watch here his latest video web interview: 1001case.ro @ blog.

Scientific Research in Romania seen from inside

2010-02-10T14:41:00.003+02:00

Raul Muresan, a Romanian Neuro-Science researcher from Cluj-Napoca and a dear friend of mine has a series of “inside scoop” articles about how Romanian science research works (or not) and how well funded (or not) it is and what struggles the Romanian researcher must go through in order to be able to simply do his/her job:

Thorium is the NEAR future of our electricity

2010-02-10T13:47:00.003+02:00

Thorium is a Uranium like substance that promises to be extremely interesting for us because of several particularities it has when used to built LFTR (liquid Fluoride Thorium reactor):

Safe, no danger of nuclear reactor meltdown
Does not produce stuff terrorists want (bomb grade plutonium); this is the main reason USA and others centered on Uranium research almost to the extend of forgetting about Thorium
Way less expensive than conventional nuclear reactors (2 million USD / megawatt)
Abundant in most countries, enough to last us over 1000 years at ever increasing demand for electricity; also makes it less attractive to some capitalists who would prefer global monopoly on the substance and, consequently, the know-how
Consumes waste from already build Uranium plants

Subscribe to Thorium Alliance:

And check out their main site: International Thorium Energy Organisation

Lastly, I wonder if we could build in Romania such reactors instead of the planned Uranium one, probably based on not quite the best technology and handled with the new “it’s not my job, I won’t fix it” mentality that we Romanians seems to have stuck into the last few years during our transition towards a true capitalist and democratic state.

Interesting little video about electric cars of the immediate future

2010-02-08T10:56:00.003+02:00

This is the future! I always thought that electric nutters forget about the fact that electricity has to come from some place, it is not free from the God of The Outlet. Therefore you simply move fossil fuel burning from the cars to the factory. This video has an interesting answer that I haven't thought about.

My first mobile game distributed by Zapp

2007-03-05T22:07:00.000+02:00

"Cluj-Napoca- 05 March 2007 - The Romanian excellence in IT is confirmed again in the video games for the mobile phones market niché through Zamolxis Interactive LLC. The Romanian company announces the launch of their first own mobile game with the Romanian mobile phone operator, Zapp, a game published by Global Instruments Romania."

This is how my press release started today. I am happy to announce that our first game has been launched because this game is just the first of the many to come and it also represents a gradual shift for us from the IT outsourcing industry to the video game development proper and to the publishing industry, for both mobile games and the PC/Console games.

Jeeky is a simple but fun game that brings the platformer arcade atmosphere to the mobile phones. It sports 10 colorful levels, tons of enemies, action, and bonuses to match. Any player can find this game easy to learn and phun to play. You can control it with only 3 keys and can choose from several difficulty settings that best suit your mood. Play the Jeeky character and help him find his true home! Combined with a superior graphics, this game aims to save us from boredom and provokes us to test our skills and determination.

This game is hopefully one of many games to come, both in the mobile and the PC/Next-generation console gaming worlds.

You can find more information about Jeeky and us at http://www.ZamolxisInteractive.com.

Bioshock, oh you pretty System Shock 3!

2006-10-03T15:59:00.001+03:00

If you like games, you should definitely watch the amazing gameplay movie that has recently been released by Irrational Games here. I can guarantee you goose bumps or zombie bumps on your skin. Absolutely amazing, this is the game that I am very impaciently waiting for.

Why creationism should at least in teory be right

2006-10-02T00:57:00.003+03:00

I'm back again to my blog and with a terrifying thought.

I was talking with a good friend of mine recently about the creationism issue. I was uttering my worries about it and my personal incapability of believing that people still believe that the sun rotates around earth. My friend said something to the effect: "I can't believe you, a smart man, can't believe that such people could exist. Don't underestimate stupidity. It reproduces easily". It was then when it struck me, oh my God! These thinking impaired humans could be right! Darwin talks about natural selection and all that which implies that the best adapted creatures survive and multiply. Hm, then how come there are so many creationists out there? They must have been created because you have to remember, God is an old man with a gray beard living in the cold clouds. And all old men tend to become grumpy. So I do believe creationists persistence on this supposedly civilized world could be the result of God's sick sense of humor.

2006 E3 cometh, what geteth for us?

2006-05-15T11:51:00.000+03:00

E3 Booth Babes
So, the days of the E3 convention are upon us.
Panic panic! Run for shelter!

The good news is that there is an explosion of good games this year,
like most good years, I'd say. Just look at: G4TV. No more comment on that.

The bad is that some games are missing from the show like, doh, Duke Nukem Forever,
or, sadly, STALKER has only blury presence so far.

Another sad story is that boo(b)th babes are supposed to dissapear, in some people's conception. Hell, Wonder Woman was denied entry or at least had problems entering the show.. Bloody puritanistical Sses! They had a very good article on a very respectable site which I will VERY NOT link upon that basically said: "They are supposed to grow up". Helou! We are GAME developers, you really DON'T want us to grow up. Trust me. It puzzles me that images of brains spluttered all over the place are very ok for the great unwashed masses (in the senator's opinion), but when a natural and God designed woman breast is inserted into the game play, all hell breaks loose. Don't get me wrong, pr0n is not to my liking any more than "anti-fornication-ishts". Well, actually porn is acceptable when it does not objectifies the people too much and does not play the "come to the dirty side" tune. Sex is GOOD, nomatter what the women want us to think. It's not good business for the women to allow us to "fly from flower to flower merrilly", at least then serious marriages happen. But should that become law, hm? I guess I'll be sued for attacking the husband-challenged human group now ...

Higher the altitude in a company, thinner the air, lesser the oxigen

2006-04-15T13:36:00.000+03:00

Very interesting post in Guy Kawasaki's blog about many things including how management in large companies (or other military-like driven management structures) seems to have very small contact with reality, feedback is blocked.

Goodies, point no #7

My guess is that it is hard to balance learned ideology with the advances of science as the hard earned facts and skills die hard. For a high ranking officer self confidence is paramount and thus leads to having a hard time accepting new information that can destabilize the status quo.

What I think the pointed article is wrong at is when it claims the manager should only rely on data. Wake up, people! Data belongs to the past. You can reason and crunch it as much as you want, visions to carry you over the next next wave will rarely appear from that.

Intel had a one page business plan from what I can remember. It probably said "Conquer the world!". Period. Give me the causing data to this vision! I am not kidding, if you have it, just give it to me :) I promiss to react to the feedback.

Interesting blog post about Software Patents

2006-04-14T13:05:00.000+03:00

Interesting article, I must say.

Feld Blog - Software Patents

My personal problem with patents in general can
be expressed by: "Though shall not patent the wheel".

To reader who do not know it already, the wheel has been patented
by an American (I believe), but thankfully he couldn't benefit from
it because the wheel has beed in use for a relatively long (!) period
of time.

Guitar dude makes pretty dormitory music

2006-04-11T21:59:00.000+03:00

I've been pretty swamped out these days so I haven't updated my blog,
but here's a piece of guitar play
that has brightened my day.. err.. my late night working hours..

Thanks dude! Just would like to know what guitar type that was.

Fishapod: the missing link? Again?

2006-04-06T12:42:00.000+03:00

Enlarge Photo

I'd call her: Hello Auntie... The missing link strikes (yet) again, this time it's the link between the fish and the humans, according to some news articles. What bothers me the most is not, however, the fact that they chose to apply skin to the fish to look nice, instead of providing the petrified remains with an explanation. Scientific guessing and smarketing is ok. News of a single scientific discovery yet to become widely accepted that are presented by media as breakthroughs and "widely acclaimed bla bla" scientific discoveries is not ok. And it's not an isolated incident either. Journalists yell fire from the top of their lungs but they lack either the professionalism or the capabilities to judge such discoveries. The result is what I call, the Ancient Martial Art of Bull-Shitzu! But on this type of art a blog shall follow later.

Einstein's twin paradox, aging, and nanites

2006-04-03T13:09:00.000+03:00

Was Einstein Wrong about Space Travel?

March 22, 2006: Consider a pair of brothers, identical twins. One gets a job as an astronaut and rockets into deep space. The other stays on Earth. When the traveling twin returns home, he discovers he's younger than his brother.

This is Einstein's Twin Paradox[...]
"The problem with Einstein's paradox is that it doesn't fold in biology, specifically, space radiation and the biology of aging," says Frank Cucinotta, NASA's chief scientist for radiation studies at the Johnson Space Center.[...]

While the astronaut twin is hurtling through space, Cucinotta explains, his chromosomes are exposed to penetrating cosmic rays. This can damage his telomeres, little molecular "caps" on the ends of his DNA. Here on Earth, the loss of telomeres has been linked to aging..

What captures my attention is the story about how DNA gets shorter with each replication, as a possible explanation to the aging process. DNA strands that get too short cannot replicate anymore and the cells die.

Now, let's leap forward a couple of Star Trecks in the future, when we have nanites (nano-robots) and when people store their DNA/RNA in cryo labs (fridges with labcoats around) early on, in their golden years.
As old age approaches, nanites enter each and every cell in their body and REPLACE the old, used DNA with conserved replicas, at the same time.

Instant Aging Reversal, just add water? I'd certainly love to be able to get involved with a research for such purposes, either as a scientist, consultant or as a financier. And that time is not as far off as one might think. I believe we may be able to achieve software controlled nanites in less than half a century, if Moore's law continues to have its flaws.

"Nice autumns and more time to enjoy life on earth", that's a great mission statement for an enterprise...

Of poets and clients. Outsourcing seen from below

2006-04-02T16:38:00.000+03:00

What is the outsourcing as seen by the outsourcer, what is his/her dreams and nightmares?

I am going to try to answer these questions and provide a bit of insight on the IT outsourcing in general with the benefit of my brief involvement in the process as a Romanian coder.

We all know what outsourcing is, but just in case you, the reader, have not been active in the IT field for the past decade, here is my definition of outsourcing: accomplishing more with greater quality and no cost. Programs for free. Well, almost. The reality is that a high quality coder will set you back anything from 15 USD/hour to ... a holy shitake. I am going to let the pesky cat get out of the bag right now and suggest that if you can live with not such a great product quality or you have much time on your hands (and luck) to search for the right coder, you might be surprised to have your idea produced for less it costs your every day’s snacks. If you take a starving individual from an unnamed country that has over 1 billion inhabitants and holds nuclear power, that is... Beware of cheap deals however, there are in the same category as UFO's, Santa Clause, and smart blondes. Everyone's heard of them, not a soul has seen one for real.

Now on to the outsourcer herself. This guy/girl has the knowledge, sometimes the communication skills, and the abilities to have the weirdest ideas take tangible form. He/she dreams of a client that will value his/her work, time and advice so much that will give back payment at western standards. The idea of 35 USD/hour makes most coder’s eye's fill up with sparkling rain dust. Throw in amiability and decisiveness and you've got the image of a perfect client.

I personally have been blessed to work with and for high quality, honest people that have taught me a lot in the process. I never got a single client that wanted to turn the project around and make something else out of it, or a client that suddenly gets a "small" bright idea on how to increase the project's value for the same cost. It might be because of my luck, but like the great guy Arnold Palmer said:
It's a funny thing, the more I practise, the luckier I get. At communication for the purpose of choosing carefully the best clients and projects, in case you are wondering.

There are, however, Azkaban Dementors and Bloody Poets running around the outsourcing playing field like headless chickens (the comparison is appropriate, mind you). The Dementors are the ones guarding their precious gems of wonderful ideas with countless NDA's. Don't get me wrong, the NDA is a useful tool and I'll be using it gladly when appropriate. Asking me to give my unborn son to protect your piece of shitake is another question altogether. I am not kidding about this, I was indeed asked to sign an NDA that would have impacted my (unborn) children's ability to speak about the project. Strangely enough the client left gaps in protecting themselves from my other possible actions. For example, they did not cover my sub-contracting parts of their project to other people, protection in terms of what information can be released and what can not.

The Poets are a bitter and sour taste on the hungry outsourcer's mouth. They are the antithesis of a good client. A poet dreams of far away worlds and has no idea whatsoever what the reality is down here, on Earth. You don't need technical expertise to know when some stuff is plain wrong. Just use your god given common sense, man! The perfect example of such a walking disaster is a guy (or a consanguinistic Kelly Family type flock) who puts, from time to time, on the air projects like: "A complete OCR solution for less than 100 USD". That is, a complete working solution consisting of an Optical Character Recognition (scans documents and creates editable text) for, you guessed it, 100 USD. And he gets irritated when people dare tell him to reconsider (though some coders like myself do dream of telling him to flock off..) Hm, somethin' awfully screwy awaund here, doc! I strongly believe that the bloody poet's strain of thought goes something like this: "Ya’ takes 5 programmers to make a good OCR cow. That cow sells at the store for like 50 dollars. I should take just one coder and pay him 100, he ought 'ta be in the stinkin' cow's heaven for this!" Again, I am not joking about this guy. Just look on RentACoder.com, I'd bet you a cow that you can find him. Unfortunately, this guy is not the worst kind of poet, because you can gauge the unreality of his project quickly enough not to enter such a stinky enterprise. Coders and clients alike do get burned much more often on esoteric projects that turn sour in the later development stages. In general, however, it’s the coder’s fault for not having enough technical know-how, but sometimes it's just the plain fact that neither the coder NOR the client has given thought on the project from its beginning to its end. Clients, be careful! The coder is a creature of many habits. Thinking ahead or planning isn’t one of them!

So, what is a guy/girl to do in order to maximize his/her results either as client or as an outsourcing coder? Well, that topic will hopefully be part of a future post here, so read on and pass it to everyone you know. A comment from you, my reader, would be very welcome and you don't even have to like what I say.

Follow your bliss till you get blisters

2006-04-01T00:34:00.000+03:00

I found my bliss a long time ago, when an old Romanian television show (the "TeleEnciclopedia") from the communist era first started to present space research programs and technology. Complete with Vanghelis's Alpha tune from the Albedo 9.39 album , the space bug entered my mind and is here to stay for ever. The science-fiction bug was lurking around the corner also thanks to the excellent books by Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov, and because of the great work of the SF magazines that brought those few stories to me. I'll be covering the SF bug in another blog soon.

The next biggest push in the right direction for me was when I first saw a Sinclair Spectrum 8 bit home computer, that beast of burden shaped similarly to a brick with keys. As my family unit consisting of one romantic literature critic/professor and one gymnasium teacher couldn't afford one, I started creating programs on paper, learning how things work from the few available books (no internet then was available for me, it was 1990 you know...). Soon I was creating assembler low level programs and when I did get to work on a borrowed computer the results were spectacular, from graphic design programs to complex 3D animations (a demo of a drop of liquid that splashes on a surface of a lake was my highest achievement). Oh yah, and there aren't any divide/multiply instructions supported by this processor, not even integer division/multiplication. That might even mean something to you if you are a programmer.

What consecrated the game development direction I am currently on for me, were not the games on that old Spectrum, but the DOOM game for the early PC's. Thank you Mr. John Carmack of ID Software for my moment of awe and illumination! I really love your work and I have the deepest respect for you. Another greatest moment I've been through in my gaming experience is "System Shock 2", a game from 1999 portraying a rogue Artificial Intelligence battling you, the hacker. This is the ultimate atmospheric game, with a graphics/sound quality only bettered by the very good plot. It was much better than Doom 3 at scaring the shitake out of you, and for a good reason. More about this later. In any case, the game development world has engulfed me and isn't ready to spit me out.

But blisters were soon to follow when I finally decided to create my own game development company, Zamolxis Interactiv SRL. Those blisters are not from the red tape long walks that took a great deal of my time, as someone might believe, especially someone of Romanian origin. Nope. Working 12-14 hours a day mainly in outsourcing, to manage to have only a very small portion of the time allocated to actually building games is what causes the blisters mostly. Realizing that leading a company isn't exactly a piece of cake and that the confusing law system is not exactly simple to master, even with the help of a Superior Minds Association is another reason for the blisters. Unfortunately, for Romania, the self-funded, or friends-n-family funded companies are just a fantasy and a really bad idea, since the cost of living and of paying the every day company expenses rule out the vast majority of Romanians even now, never mind the fateful January, 2007, our country's alignment to the Europe's rigid requirements. In perspective, I should have tried to make a fortune as an employee first, but alas, Ubisoft did not appear attractive to me (after I botched up the phone interview, that is), and there were not other viable game dev alternatives for me at that time either.

Blisters are, however, not a good reason to stop on or alter your path to greatness, especially when your intelligence and your natural abilities are somewhat better oriented than the average person's. I do feel that a smart person has an obligation to society and to himself/herself to create wonders for mankind with the best of his/her abilities and to never let go off his/her dreams. Blisters heal with achievements, not with time.

About this blog

2006-03-31T19:31:00.000+03:00

Hello,

My name is Tudor Tihan. I am a 27 years old game development
enthusiast and an entrepreneur from Eastern Europe (Romania).

This blog is all about science and game development and life when it ceases to suck.

I am going to write about interesting subjects, about great mentors (Guy Kawasaki, John Carmack, Napoleon Hill, Jose Silva), invention ideas, IT and game development, nanotechnology, and, most notably, about me and my very personal take on the world. I am modest too.

Until then, stay tuned.