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John Lennox in Cluj

John Lennox speaking in Cluj

This week, Edictum Dei invited another one of my favorite Christian authors, John Lennox to give a pre­sen­ta­tion in Cluj. Unlike last year, for the N.T. Wright conference, I found out about it soon after it was announced and I im­me­di­ate­ly reserved a ticket.

John Lennox is an Emeritus Professor of Math­e­mat­ics at Oxford, a philoso­pher of science and a Christian apologist, having written many books about the existence of God, the re­la­tion­ship between faith and science, and also having debated many famous atheists such as Christo­pher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins.

The pre­sen­ta­tion was related to Professor Lennox’s latest book “Can Science Explain Everything?”. He goes into the kinds …continue.

Better than Us

Better than Us poster

Добрый день. Меня зовут Роланд!

It just happens that in the last month I’ve discovered two mas­ter­pieces of Russian art: one is the Red Army Choir, the other one is Better than Us, a TV show about a family living in 2029, which somehow becomes the owner of a very advanced robot.

Robots are common in this world, but they are quite dumb and can’t go beyond their pro­gram­ming. As someone who works with machine learning, I find it quite puzzling that the robots have excellent natural language un­der­stand­ing skills and are able to follow human commands (both of which are very difficult to do today, just try to talk …continue.

Ad Astra

Ad Astra poster

Another space movie came out, so of course I went to the cinema to see it, just like I did with Gravity and In­ter­stel­lar. It was a very spon­ta­neous decision, seeing an article about it at 7 PM, watching a trailer at 7:10 and at 8 PM being at the cinema with my friend Calin.

The movie's main character is Major Roy McBride, who is part of the U.S. Space Command (SpaceCom). He is a very calm person, his pulse never going over 87. No matter what’s the situation, whether it’s being in freefall after an explosion in the upper atmosphere, or being shot at by pirates on …continue.

Digging myself a hole

As I mentioned in my previous post, con­struc­tion has started on my house two months ago. Things are going pretty well, despite being behind the first estimated schedule. But that is something that everyone told me to expect, that initial estimates are wrong. That is possibly the only thing pro­gram­ming and con­struc­tion work has in common.

But my con­struc­tion team is only doing the actual con­struc­tion part, meaning foun­da­tions, walls and roof. A modern day house has a lot more components, part of which is the water drainage system for the foun­da­tions.

This system is supposed to be a weeping tile that goes around my basement, ac­cu­mu­lat­ing all the …continue.

Breaking Radio Silence

I don't think many people noticed, but I haven't written a new post in almost three months and my last post was not too meaty (a campaign poster and a call to action).

Was ist los mit Roland?

The biggest thing that happened was that con­struc­tion on my house finally started at the beginning of July. This is by far the most time consuming project that is going on for me right now. I’ve had to make countless calls to con­trac­tors, materials suppliers, engineers and su­per­vi­sors. I’ve researched and studied various materials and methods for building, plumbing, insulation, wiring, ven­ti­la­tion, heating and vacuuming and how they might interact …continue.

Vot 26 Mai

This post is about the eu­ropar­la­men­tary vote and a referendum in Romania

Votez Peter Costea

Și votez Da la ambele întrebări de la referendum, din motive similare cu ce expune Adrian Papahagi.

HackTM Oradea

Me and Catalin presenting on stage

Catalin and me presenting on stage

Last weekend was HackTM Oradea, a hackathon that started in Timisoara. Last year they went to Sibiu and this year they came to Oradea. In Timisoara it's quite big (over 700 par­tic­i­pants last year). Here in Oradea it's smaller, around 100 people, most of them being from out of town.

I haven't been at hackathons in quite a while, so I decided to try this one, mostly for meeting other people and also to code something new and learn something fun. When I got there, Catalin, who has attended my pre­sen­ta­tions I did at my university, recognized me and we started talking. …continue.

Old Man's Cave

Me

The next target for our hikes was Peștera Bătrânului (Old Man’s Cave)1, which is close to where my parents-in-law live. We knew the cave was closed to tourists, but the views on the way there were supposed to be pretty.

We left on foot on a Saturday morning at 11:00 from Vadu Crișului, on the blue line trail. We passed by the Peștera Caprei (Goat’s Cave), the three Devenț Caves and Poarta Sărutului (Gate of Kissing) The path quickly turned quite steep. Because it had rained until 10:55, the soil was muddy and slippery and I often had to turn on the 4x4 traction (aka use …continue.

Backing up 3: Syncthing

Main screen of Syncthing

The main screen of the Syncthing GUI

A while ago, I mentioned how I back up my valuable data to my NAS. In the mean time, I added one more thing to it: a UPS1 so even if the power goes out, it still says up and more im­por­tant­ly, it can shut down safely. This is important because if the power cuts out while hard drives are spinning, the head can damage the disk and you lose the data. The UPC can tell the NAS when it's on low power, so the NAS enters standby safely.

But I said that there is another component to backups, which is …continue.

Boardgames Party: Splendor

Splendor game cover

One of the games that we recently played a lot is Splendor (Amazon link), a game with some really neat tokens, rep­re­sent­ing precious stones, and where the rich get richer (almost like in real life xD).

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The objective of the game is to get 15 prestige points. You get prestige points from some cards and from visits from nobles. You buy cards with precious stones. But cards also represent mines, traders or jewelers, which give you more precious stones. So the more cards you have, the easier it is to buy other cards.

There are some con­straints on how many precious stones you can have and …continue.