Peter's Blog

I’m reading, rather listening as I have an audiobook, “Gottland” by Mariusz Szczygieł. It’s about interesting people and facts from Czech Republic. Unfortunately, despite it has been translated into many languages, English is not one of them. Really good read. I’ve learned about many things from Czech culture I’ve got no idea before. First story from the book is about Bata’s family and begins with description of life of Tomas Bata. Great entrepreneur. And as I don’t like people of business, I found them shallow and greedy, Mr. Bata and his family is really interesting. He was not only a businessman, but also a visionary and patriot. Thanks to him and his successors Zlin flourished and so did people of Zlin, and rest of Czech Republic as well.

So I’ve decided to make a trip to his hometown and to see what survived from his empire after WWII and Soviet’s occupation. There is still this big shoe store with walls made of glass, quite impressive. And there is Bata’s museum. There is one story in the book about Bata which I don’t like very much. Bata had big factory and was producing shoes on mass scale, so many shoemakers gone bankrupt as they couldn’t compete with Bata’s prices. One of such people when lost all his money committed suicide along with his wife and child. But before he did it he sent his workshop to Mr. Bata with a letter that he has ruined him. Tomas Bata wasn’t very touched apparently and ordered to place this workshop in the museum with description “that’s how shoes were made before me”. I think I’ve found it in the museum and you can see it below.

There is another story about Bata which I’ve learned when I was studying Management at University. He sent two employees to Africa to find out if there is market for shoes. After some time two telegrams came. First said “Nobody here wears shoes, absolutely no market”, second was “Nobody here wears shoes, big opportunity. Send shoes asap!”. It was real pleasure to see the place where he operated.

I was checking a book I would like to buy on Amazon – How Risky Is It, Really?: Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts. As delivery from US takes long and is expensive I’ve wanted to check price for Kindle version. It’s easy as Amazon is providing you with such table:

As you can see Kindle (electronic) edition is almost 3$ more than hardcover. Yes, let me say it again, hardcover. Not even a paperback. I don’t see great future for the forests as paper is so cheap that even bits are pricey in comparison. I don’t get it, really. But it was probably some big marketing head who devised this “clever” pricing plan, so I’m for sure not seeing some great idea behind it. Or maybe Amazon decided to support post office. Don’t know. It would remain complete mystery to me I’m afraid.

Today I’ve read article on Polish security portal Niebezpiecznik.pl about a guy who was searching for information about his debtor and accidentally found a file with list of over 1000 debtors of PKO BP (Polish bank), more here (unfortunately only in Polish). First he was accused that he obtained this file illegally by breaking into bank’s network, but police found no evidence for that and file was indeed indexed by search engines. So after charges have been dropped bank’s spokesman informed general public that this file was, as he called it, “deep hide” and was indexed just after 4 years. Nice explanation. I believe this “deep hide” was some complicated folder structure like teenagers are using to hide porn from the eye of their parents, example below:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\Document Parts\1033\hot_teenage_girls

Yep, this is indeed security at its best:) And let me use nasty comparison here, this time bank performed deep… throat.

I was reading some stories today (as every day) and on some picture I saw Gerardo Medina as infant. From the title one can read that till the age of 10 he thought that girl (Lina Medina) next to him on this picture is his sister. But she was his mother, she gave him a birth when she was 5. Below is the picture I’ve found and you can learn more from article on Wikipedia.

In such occasions I really wonder if world would ever stop to surprise me. And disgust me as well.

I’ve read about new service provided by GameCrush which is opportunity to play online with real girl, so you can chat with her while enjoying your favorite title (only on Xbox360 right now), more here. You even can choose between “flirty” and “dirty” mode when playing with beauty, interesting. I’ve decide to check it out, but failed. There is so big interest in it that I’ve got this page instead:

Are there really so many lonely men out there? Good advice, leave a console and get out. It’s better way to meet somebody.

UPDATE:
From GameCrush website:
“The GameCrush Public Beta is temporarily unavailable due to the incredible user response (more than 10,000 inquiries in five minutes). We are adding new servers to provide players with the best PlayDate experience possible. Games with GameCrush PlayDates start at $6.60 for ten minutes.”

Cartagen is web service which allows you to embed maps on your website using single line of code. Result is visible above and is quite cool, you can even zoom and navigate on this map. To achieve it on your page, simply put this in body of your page:

<iframe height='300' src='http://cartagen.org/find/brno,-czech?fullscreen=true' style='border:0;' width='500'/>

And here you have map of my city of residence:)

Do you know that you can use any suffix with your GMail address as long as it’s preceded with “+” sign? So if your address is johnsmith@gmail.com, you can tell people to send emails to johnsmith+friends@gmail.com and it would still reach your mailbox. Now you can create several filters using “To:” field and your mails would be in order. When you’ll be signing to some online service, for instance a forum, you can use johnsmith+forum@gmail.com and filter all spam using single rule. It’s really useful. Try it!

Most famous Urban Legend for Mac computers is that there aren’t viruses for Mac OS. Wrong! There is at least one and it’s pretty cool actually:)

But seriously there are viruses for Mac, maybe not so common as for Windows systems, but still. So don’t bet on luck and install anti virus program.

Today finally, after three weeks of waiting, I’ve received my Magic Mouse. Christmas gift from my lovely wife. I must say that I’m impressed. It takes a while to switch from MacBook’s touch pad, but it’s worth it. It’s pretty accurate, but it’s not surprise as it’s laser based. At last I have a mouse which is wireless, blue-tooth. My previous mice were wireless, but always radio based, so they got often jammed by other media. Here I got very decent connection and it’s fast. Now I can move precisely and quickly around Mac OS, everything takes less time and is more enjoyable. What is a little bad is the fact that you have different gestures for mouse than for touch pad. It’s not very convenient as I must remember two sets of gestures, but will live. Also for minus is the clicking sound when hitting one of two “normal” buttons, it sounds like in very old mice. I hope I would get used to it. Scroll is amazing, very fast. No problems with gestures, I have a feeling that Magic Mouse is more responsive than touch pad. And of course now I can easily select multiple files and drag and drop them wherever I want, it wasn’t so easy without my rodent. I like it, a lot.

Again thanks to my wife, she always know how to make me happy:)

TechCrunch published interesting article about Boston’s Route 128 and why it lost with Silicon Valley, more here. I haven’t heard about it before. If I had then I would definitively tried to see this when I was there. It’s maybe not so surprising as MIT is there, so it’s normal that many of these bright people would want to stay there, but still. Second Silicon Valley, well how would you know:)