PiSquared Blog
Blog about geeky stuff, computers, physics and life.
Tag personal
"Catching" Panic Attacks
Tags: English, personalCreated on Thu, 26 Nov 2015
I am experiencing a panic attack right now. It's a second day in a row and I've promised to myself I will be observing closely as I know getting one is never the whole story. They come in bunches. It's a very irrational thing - my heart rate is elevated from seemingly unknown reason, you can actually hear it in your ears, I want to hide, isolate or run away somewhere. Fortunately I've experienced enough of those that I can deny the urge and explore...
Debugging
People don't come with debuggers. That would be a highly useful thing. Why?
When writing a computer program sometimes things go wrong. You have introduced a bug. Depending on the programming language and type of bug, the program might "throw an exception", i.e. understand that the program has run into an exceptional condition which is not the "normal flow". For example, when you see an error like this
it means that your Operating system enc
...moreThis post starts normally talking about interviews and transitions into a life crisis
Tags: English, essays, personal, lifeCreated on Wed, 05 Oct 2016
Job Interviews
I will be having interviews these days. I guess I am giving up my dream of starting a startup, maybe few years down the road when I get more experience. Don’t judge me. It’s hard. So let’s do some standardized interviews, that is good and stable. Get a job that you will be happy.
Algorithms and data structures. Binary search trees, DFS, BFS, Heaps - the regular stuff. You know, the stuff that you do every day as a programmer. Not debugging or refactoring, not testing or googling. A hackerrank ™ online test which shows your capabilities best, implementing things you haven’t done in years but hey - ADS must be important. I can’t possibly have 3 good programmers around me at the time of the interview that google like crazy and help me to pass it.
If I was the only one complaining, I would consider myself just plain uncapable of my profession. And maybe I am. Maybe the actual coding stars out there don’t complain on HN and can just breeze the interviews about AD
...moreWhy I got vaccinated? (part 1)
Tags: English, opinions, essays, personal, learning, lifeCreated on Fri, 04 Jun 2021
Edit: see part 2: what is True and part 3 - what would convince me NOT to vaccinate for progress on opinions in this article.
TL;DR: Because I care about myself, my parents and friends and I believe vaccination is the best way to protect myself and them, in order to resume any kind of "normality". I believe the risk of vaccination outweights the risk of not vaccinating, I trust the process of vaccination approval and testing by the various national and supra-national organizations, I trust the scientists and (even though I don't have to) I understood the relative simplicity of the idea of the vaccine and immune response generated by it. I find it unlikely that there is a larger conspiratorial picture for control, even if the vaccine has not naturally occured but it turns out it has been produced artifically on purpose for some geo-game or by accident by l
...moreI'm an average idiot
Tags: English, personal, lifeCreated on Wed, 30 Jun 2021
"What if YOU are wrong? What if you’re not a Galileo Galilei, but an Andrew Wakefield?".
(source)
This ^ woke me up. Andrew Wakefield is the dude that started the initial conspiracy of "vaccines cause autism" back in the 90s. This long (but deservedly so) video explains in more detail that you ever wanted to know:
On the other side, the argument about being "Galileo" (which I also referenced in my last post) is refering to this article by Heather Heying, who usu
...moreThinking inside of a box
Tags: English, personalCreated on Sat, 14 Feb 2015
Yesterday I experienced what is it to be thinking inside of a box. I did that so that you never have to. I also spun a bit around which was okay for a while, but it gets tedious, boring and very hot, very soon. The real world is much cooler once you get out of it with a fresh mind.
KIDS (and adults), NEVER THINK INSIDE OF A BOX!
...moreGetting back control of my digital life one bit at a time
Tags: English, technology, hacks, personalCreated on Thu, 29 Mar 2018
I have permanently deleted my Facebook account this week after the latest "scandals" around the "social" network. Of course I knew on some level what is happening with my data but I think it finally hit home. I've always hated Facebook, ever since I first made my account (post about it in Bulgarian) - and that hasn't changed for the 8 years that I used the service, it only got worse I think. It was not so much about the data that I have shared, it has been more about the mindset that it installed in me and in people around me. Being zombies, constantly scrolling useless content by people you barely know or not even know with pages you liked at some point, with no easy way to get out of it, a network hitting all weak spots in human psychology. So the latest revelations of which we were all well aware (in the hacker/techie community at least) got to me and crossed a threshold
...moreI change my mind all the time
Tags: English, Български, политика, politics, мнения, opinions, лични, personal, life, животCreated on Thu, 21 Oct 2021
I believe you should have the freedom to change your mind as often as you would like, especially when new facts come your way. But also if you would like to experiment with something, even if you think it's bad or wrong. That's part of the reason I now have an instagram.
Yesterday I wrote a blog post in Bulgarian that I deleted less than an hour after publishing. It regarded the situation around the certificates of vaccination becoming a requirement for certain amenities in my home country. It was quite emotional and I decided that it's not worth it to put more fuel in the already fiery situation (although IRL I usually like doing that).
But I also removed it because I realized I disagree with my statements. More accurately - I was pointed out by a friend that my argument may require a bit more thought about some aspects that my monkey brain didn't remember when initially writing the post. I usually don't delet
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