So I bought this book Monday night, thinking: “I need a book to read while I’m in the bus to the university”. I started reading it yesterday morning, on my way to school as planned. I couldn’t put it down after returning home, and by 11:30pm I finished it.
Fail. 
At least, “The Boys From Brazil” was a pretty good book. I still have three more books I bought along with that one. Let’s see if I can control myself a bit better this time!
I always wanted to grow a nice full beard. All the great Unix programmers have one. Lots of mad scientists have some too. Unfortunately, my portuguese genes will not allow that. Every time I start to grow one by lazyless, I will develop a half hearted moustache, a too big goatee, and a few lost strands in my cheek — a truly pitiful sight.
That sucks, I always wanted to sport a nice, dworfish beard.
This weekend I got “The Never Ending Story” for a friend of mine. This was the first “real” book I have ever read (or at least so I remember). And it is a pretty good one too. I read the portuguese translation, so when I checked the version I got for my friend (the english one), I noticed that the name of a pretty important character, the luck dragon, was different between versions: Fulchur, for the portuguese translation, and Falkor, for the english one. Now, Fulchur sounds much more mysterious, unique and fantasy-like than Falkor, which just sounds like “Falcon” with a few letters swapped in. At first I was wondering why the portuguese translator decided to change the name (since Fulchur does not sound any more natural than Falkor in Portuguese). Then I remembered that “The Never Ending Story” was originally in German. I wonder which of the two names is closer to the original one.
Also, my upper leg/lower right hip is hurting like hell since Saturday. It might be because of me being sitting for too long due to extra work this month. It sucks tons. I have a nice chair in my lab, but my home chair is not so conductive for sitting in one place for long. I’ll have to look into replacing it soon, and probably spending a lot of money in it. I didn’t want to make my decision before knowing exactly where I will be in the next 6 months.
But that is another story, to be told at another time.
So two days ago I was in the bus, and this elderly guy with this little kid (probably around 5 or 6 years old) gets on. They enter through the back of the bus, and the old man asks the kid to stay put while he go pay their fare. I tell the man that I can keep an eye on his kid while he pays it.
The kid is super excited (like all 5 year old kids are) talking about how he can be a water super hero, who can transform into anything. I play the kid´s game, and soon the talk goes to dinossaurs (kids looooove dinossaurs). The kid talks about the little plastic triceratops that he is holding, then about all other dinos he knows about. Then the conversation take a turn like this:
Kid - Hey mister, did you know? The dinossaurs, they all died!
Me - Really? That´s a pity.
Kid - Yeah, they died because of meteorites!
Me - You tell me!
Kid - yeah…
Me - Well, let me tell you something.
Kid - What?
Me - Did you know? Some dinossaurs are still alive!
Kid - Really?
Me - You know the birds? They are the great great great great great grandsons of the dinossaurs!
Kid - No way!
And then the kid was super excited about birds. We still talked a bit more about that and random stuff before I had to get off the bus. It was awesome!
I haven’t played in a while, but Dwarf Fortress is the best game in the world, bar none else.
Just look at this excerpt from the development blog:
We’ve decided to go ahead and add the ability to perform interactions as an adventurer now, whether they are a basic property of a modded adventurer race or something gained through a curse/secret, etc. Obviously this would have needed to go in at some point, but it was unclear if it was going to happen for this release. I suppose the current peak of this feature will be learning to be a necromancer and then animating your own severed arm as a permanent traveling companion. That’s going to be my test case, anyway. That’ll probably make your arm into a historical figure with its own entry on the legends screen. I’ll have to see how that works.
Since we are ontopic, here is a recent New York Times article about DF.
This week I was in a discussion on a web forum about whether robots would develop religion or not. During this discussion, I reminded myself of Isaac Asimov´s short story, ¨Reason¨, which is set in a space station where the robots had, in fact, developed religion. I wanted to re-read the story, but couldn´t find it ANYWHERE.
But I did find out that the story was published in 1941. That is 70 years ago. There is no reason for this story not to be in the public domain, spread far and wide, helping kids out there stretch and challenge their brains.
Shame on you, copyright laws.