rolisz's site

Boardgames Party: Tokaido

Tokaido box

I've bought Tokaido about two years ago. I've opened it about a year ago, but I was quickly overruled by the others, who probably wanted to play a game they knew (coughDixitcough). But today, we did a spon­ta­neous board game night in our house and I took out Tokaido and we finally played.

Tokaido is a beautiful game set in Japan, where each player is a traveler along the eastern sea route connecting Kyoto to Tokyo. Each player can stop at different places along the way, such as farms (where you receive money), temples (where you give money), inns (where you have delicious meals), scenic views (where …continue.

Git tutorial - part 3

I wrote my last Git tutorial 6 years ago, but I guess it took me quite some time to learn some new Git tricks.

At work we have a mi­croser­vices ar­chi­tec­ture, with each service in a different repo. I work with around 6 of them on a regular basis and sometimes I have to make changes that touch more than one repo, such as changing the interface of one service and then changing all the other services that make calls to it.

We use the Azure Release flow for developing code, which means feature de­vel­op­ment happens on branches and we send pull requests (PR) to merge our code. Because …continue.

The iron path

On a bridge

After a half year break, the little band of hikers from our church decided to do some via ferrata routes, in the Vadu Crișului and Șuncuiuș area.

I’ve wanted to go on Via Ferrata hikes for a long time. I first heard of them when I moved to Switzer­land, but somehow I never got around to going on them until now.

We rented the equipment from Ovi in Vad and we went on our way. We started with the medium difficulty route from Vad. It took us about 40 minutes. For me, being a beginner, the first part was a bit …continue.

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.