Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Via Web Worker Daily I learned about Blog 365.  That’s a nice idea which I heard and did before, and which I think is still valuable enough to bring attention to.

More and more people are joining the blogosphere every day.  More and more people ask the same questions over and over – “how can I improve my blogging?”, “how can I get more comments?”, “how can I promote my blog more?”, etc.  To all of them I answer – Blog 365.

You see, the hardest part of blogging is … actually, blogging – thinking about things, finding things, preparing content, and posting it.  You can have all bells and features on your blog, and it can be search engine optimized to no avail, but if you don’t publish any posts, nothing will matter.  Most blogs get lost and disappear because they don’t get updated anymore.

Now, if you are new to blogging, then posting every day may sound like a hard job to do.  I’ll tell you a little secret – it is, but for just a few weeks. The thing here is to make blogging into a routine.  Once your brain understands that it has to produce at least one post every day, it will start looking for and creating content by itself.  You won’t have to do anything, but pick the bits that you like better and write them down.

I did a “have to publish at least one post every day” experiment a few times myself.  The longest one was, I think, in 2004 and ran for about a year and a half.  My posts varied from thoughts, notes, and simple links to somebody else’s pictures and videos.  Eventually, I got it into my system.  I had no problems posting something every day.  Even better than that.  There was a period of time when I felt uncomfortable if I didn’t publish anything.

Sure, I did my share of polluting the web with crap that nobody cares about.  But that was all for the better.  Here are the benefits from the top of my head:

• my English got better.  Much better.
• my touch-typing  got better. Much better.
• my Google skills got better. Much better.
• my reasoning got better. I learned that if I say something, I might be asked for a reference, so I learned to check those references before I was saying anything.
• my blog got more popular (more incoming links, more and better search engine results positioning, more people coming in and staying, more comments)
• my understanding of many social (people, communications, other cultures) and technical (Internet, blogging tools, search engines) topics improved a lot.
• I found a few more friends (not as in “close friends”, but as in “people with who I enjoy talking a lot”) that I wouldn’t have met otherwise.

These are just a few.  There are many more.  Like all those archives that I can search through and cross reference now…

So, if you are interesting in blogging, the Internet, or communications, take my advice – join the Blog 365 project.  It’s much easier to do this with several other people, than alone.  They understand what you are going through and how tough it is during the first few weeks.  They’ll help you out with ideas, tips, links, and comments.  You’ll get more out of it than you can imagine.  We all will. Just give it a try.

Blogging is a skill.  It’s like tough-typing, programming, riding a bicycle, or driving – you can read all about it you want, but you won’t get any better until you’ll sit down and start blogging.  A lot.  So, here is your chance.  Take it!

I am back in Quake 3.  It all happened very fast and very unexpected.  I used to play Quake 3 about five years ago, and I have to tell you, we had plenty of fun back then.  But one thing led to another and I dropped out.  I haven’t heard anything about Quake 3, haven’t watched any demos, or haven’t even talked about Quake 3 in the last 5 years or so.

A few days ago I noticed a colleague of mine spending his lunch break chasing someone in pro-q3dm6 map.  I got a overwhelmed by a wave of memories and forgotten feelings and I asked him if I could play a round on his computer.  He agreed.  It turned out, he was playing against my own brother.  My brother, being a mean chap as he is, started playing Quake 3 too, with some guys from the college, but never pushed me to return.  Now that I was chased by him around the arena, I remembered that he mentioned his comeback once or twice.

Anyway, the quick match showed that my Quake 3 skills were gone.  All of them.  Even despite playing on somebody else’s computer, using half-baked configuration, and playing over 150+ ms ping, I still could feel how bad I am in the game.

In a quick chat after the game, my brother mentioned that my laptop should be fast enough to run Quake 3.  Of course, it’s not a gaming station by any means, but it should be sufficient to handle a game written a decade ago or so.  He was right.  I fetched a dusty CD-ROM and installed the game.  A quick Google search over my blog archives helped me to get back my old config file.  And I started practicing with the bots a bit.

Boy, was I ashamed.  Bots were killing me with any weapon on any map in any position on any level of difficulty.  It was almost unbelievable.  Everything was gone.  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t aim. I forgot the maps.  I forgot the controls.  My hands were getting tired after just a few minutes…  It was like I never played Quake 3 in my life, but worse.

Anyway, I got interested in getting back what I once had.  I was never by any means a top player or a particularly skillful one, but I could run around properly and kill a few people even.  I wanted my skills back.

It turned out I wasn’t the only one.  I quickly found another three or four people who wanted to play some proper Quake 3.  We played a few matches on our own server.  It was slow and laggy, but it felt good non-the-less.

I jumped on my connections to find out what happened to the old servers and old people that used to play.  Surprisingly, the server is still up, and there is another new one brought up just a couple of days ago, and there seem to be some interest – a few people play on a daily basis.  Wow!  That was much more than I hoped for.

Today I truly got back into Quake 3.  I played for three hours, and I played with some people who I haven’t seen for the last five years.  I was surprised to see that they remember me, and that they missed me and all that…  So, what have changed?  Here is a briefing:

• There are more maps and mods than I can remember.
• There are more servers around.  Back in the days we had like one or two servers with all proper maps and patches.  Now I have four servers in my bookmarks.  And most of them are faster and richer than those that we used to play on.
• People are more interested in the game.  Five years ago, Quake 3 in Cyprus was more of a fashion game.  Most kids were playing Counter Strike, and Quake 3 was sort of a “change of environment”.  Not many understood it, not many liked it, but many tried it.  With this, a lot of people were passing by.  Now, Quake 3 is a classic game.  Many games have been made since it was released, and most players moved on.  Only those die-hard fans are still around.  And some new blood, people who want to learn the proper game.

A few things changed.  But the main one is still there.  Quake 3 is still a lot of fun.   The years that passed by, the new technologies, the life changing experiences that happened, none of these changed the my attitude towards Quake 3.  And I feel that I am not alone… and it feels like Quake 3 is not just a game, but a lifestyle.

You will probably hear more about my Quake 3 adventures on this blog in the near future.  Until then, happy fragging!

Maxim is still learning one or two things every day. He progressed to the point when he can repeat pretty much anything we do or say. When he picks up a new move or a new word he repeats it over and over again until he forgets it.

Now he can easily manipulate items with both hands. Sometimes he would play the speed game. He would take an item, like a book or a small toy, with one hand than quickly pass it to his other hand, than back, and than back again, and so and so forth for about five minutes. That one is really fun to watch.

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Today I engaged in yet another discussion about the need of touchtyping for programmers with few of my collegues. My position on this issue is ver well known – I think that touchtyping is a requirement for a good programmer. I accept, of course, that there are few good programmers out there who can’t touchtype, but they are very few and they are only an exception that supports the rule.

While in said discussion, I was trying to come up with a good analogy from a non-IT area for a programmer who can’t touchtype. I know of two ways to come up with a good analogy.

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