rolisz's site

Backing up

Burned down computer

What can happen to your computer

In today's world, our data and our in­for­ma­tion is one of our most valuable assets. I have photos going back to 2008. My sporadic journal has digital entries from 2010. I have IM logs from 2009. I have a list of my monthly expenses since 2012. My blog goes back to 2010. I have loads of projects in various stages. Most of this in­for­ma­tion is ir­re­place­able (I'm never going to be 16 again, to take those photos once more :( ) and most of it is quite valuable, some having sen­ti­men­tal value (photos), some from a financial point of view, some pro­fes­sion­al­ly …continue.

Winter sports

From up close, it looks just like the wallpaper from one of the Mac OS versions

I've been in Switzer­land for almost two and half years now, but I haven't done the typical Swiss things (except eating Fondue). Last winter I was either not here or busy at work, so I avoided all winter sports.

But this year two op­por­tu­ni­ties came up when I could go with colleagues to do skiing or snow­board­ing. So I finally tried both. I had a little skiing experience from two years ago, but that was it.

One Friday at 8 PM a colleague asked me if I wanted to go to Laax for skiing the next day. I didn't really have any plans, so I …continue.

Sous vide with Anova Precision Cooker

Frontal view of Anova Cooker

Last year I bought an Anova Sous Vide Cooker. The name is slightly misleading, because it's not generally used to cook in a vacuum, but for cooking at very precisely controlled tem­per­a­tures.

The advantage of using Anova is that you can cook various foods at tem­per­a­tures below 100 degrees, for several hours. This way, you can avoid the degra­da­tion of certain proteins. For example, egg white starts to become solid at around 65 degrees, while the yolk at 70. If you cook the egg at just 65 for half an hour, you can get a perfect soft boiled egg, with really runny yolk, while the white is solid. …continue.

New year, old goals

Same same, but different, but still same

My attempt a year ago to set public goals was quite successful. I achieved most of them and the average completion score was 0.7. I took a break in the second half of the year, but now I'm well rested and I want to start again.

I learned some things that work and some that don't. For example, tracking number of books read is not too useful, at least not in Beeminder, but tracking number of minutes spent reading is much better. This way, if you are reading through a really thick book, you are not derailed as easily. Also, tracking pro­duc­tiv­i­ty can be done really well …continue.

2016 in review

Wow, this post is finally done on time! Yaaaay!

This year was the first time I had a goal for writing on my blog, at least for the first half of the year. In January I set up a goal to write 3.5 blog posts per month, for the first half year and I stuck to it. In the second half of the year I took it easier, so I posted on average only twice a month. In total I posted 33 times, which is more than the year before, when I posted 30 times.

The number of pageviews went down by 21%, from 46 thousand …continue.

Shalom from Israel

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem

Three jeeps, filled with mostly young and idealistic Westerners and driven by former Special Forces members, are going along the mine fields between Syria and Israel. They arrive to an abandoned Syrian hospital, with some soldiers in front of it. They go up to the rooftop, through the crumbling hospital, carefully going up staircases that have been bombed. Once they get up, their tour guide says "See that building 300 meters away? There's an Al-Qaeda sniper looking at you from there! Don't worry, if he wanted you dead, he'd have shot you a long time ago.".

That was just a short part of my trip to Israel. I …continue.

Noh hai la vot!

Me in a t-shirt with Che Olos On Sunday there are parliamentary elections in Romania, so I'm doing my civic duty of encouraging people to go and vote.

După cum probabil ați auzit, mâine, 11 decembrie, sunt alegeri pentru deputați și senatori. Eu o să merg mâine la vot în Berna, cum am fost și acum doi ani, la alegerile prezidențiale. Și vă rog și pe voi să mergeți să votați.

Ieșiți la vot, pentru că încet, încet, parcă lucrurile în România se schimbă. Și până acuma toată lumea știa că se fac mișmașuri peste tot, dar în ultimii doi ani și DNA a aflat și a și arestat oameni pentru aceasta. Deci, …continue.

Going places...

Old view ...but not too far.

Last month I exchanged the view that can be seen in the above image, for this one:

I moved from Langnau am Albis, where I have lived for two years, to Wiedikon, a district in Zürich. The old place has been officially the place where I've lived the second most in my life :| I'll miss it, I had lots of good memories there.

But I got bored of the long commute (half an hour by train), so I moved to a place 8 minutes walking from the office. And the week after I signed the contract, I found out that my team …continue.

Maltalavista

Malta

View from the hotel

Last week I was in Malta, on an offsite with the new (extended) team. It was possibly even better than in Nice.

Because I switched to this team "late", I couldn't find flights together with the rest of the team, so I went a day early, but I stayed at the same hotel. Several other people also came early, including the admins who organized it, so I wasn't bored there. Also, turns out that be­friend­ing the admins is quite useful! And they are super nice as well!

It was hot in Malta. During the day it went up to 28 degrees. It's nice to …continue.

Data and Goliath

Data and Goliath

Bruce Schneier is a well known American security researcher, who has written several books about this topic. Data and Goliath is his latest book about it. I bought it last year, but I only got around to reading it last month (one more win for the reading goal for the year \:D/). First ob­ser­va­tion: while the book is thick, with 383 pages, a third of it are notes, so it's not that long actually.

While I've heard about various privacy issues and about the mass sur­veil­lance revealed by Edward Snowden, I never really did anything about it. I had an adblocker installed, but that was just because …continue.