Oleg's Big Party

Our Readers Read

A bunch of new questions came in (previous questions: February, March, April). But first, I have to thank Jay, 17 * 4.7 = 100+ of fun. Indeed :).

Broken any more bests on the Chess Club? Actually, I haven’t even logged in the last month (got other things to do). Speaking of which, during this time - my favourite chess player has played 5000 more games.

You still keep up that no coke-and-blog commitment? Sorry, no… lol: its too addictive. Oh well. Come to think about it, I am drinking coke right now, :).

Your friendly farmer, what happened to him? He is still sodbustering, refusing to admit that me and Ivan got 3rd place in the last DWITE contest. Speaking of computing, computers at my school still suck (and now with Script Logic 6).

Oh, a small update: right now, I am working on a special features section - to be filled with math problems and some of my best articles here, so stay tuned… more next month, which reminds me of another question:

What are you going to call the monthly reviews when you run out of titles? Badly formed, but okay. If something like that were to happen, I’d have to consult with Ben.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 03:04 PM /

An Extensively Spacious Party

The Bulldog is at it again. Contrary to previous predictions, the Bulldog has not gone out of business - and in fact, they are very much alive. Today, they even did an article about me. Even though they got just about everything wrong, they made me look all too cool.

Now, this is the problem. I don’t always publish the best things about people (read the disclaimer), so you might want to stay away from the archives, and only go to the history section. Oh, and of course if you are into tech, you can always subscribe to the linklist (RSS feed).

Now, for some of the things they got wrong:

I hear the advertising cash is rolling in.

Really now? Actually, we’re projecting profitability 1st quarter 2035.

Instead you get a deep, but not smothering pit of satire and insights on human condition - not to mention a few greatly amusing pictures taken around the city, check out the man sleeping on garbage bags.

When do I ever talk about human condition? All I do is criticize the TTC. And actually, the man is sleeping in garbage bags (won’t link to it).

In addition to his general all-around witty posts, are repertoires of interesting news tidbits from around the net, ranging from the mundane - Apple’s Panther OS Explodes” to true comedic classics…

I think he means the Linklist, and isn’t it Tiger?

If you are truly a like-minded person, you will find various articles on programming, and a set of challenging (in my opinion) computer chess games, as well as the on-line clients to match.

We have nothing of that sort here, no one to challenge here! I am sure reading my (fine) hypertext products isn’t that difficult… And if nothing of this sort exists, how can you even have an opinion on it?

Oh somehow I have seen this coming, thats why I fixed up a few things, and prepared this post in advance, hehe :) Oh well, in any case, everyone likes pictures: and so good ole’ buddy Arash has drew us a cartoon.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 04:12 PM / Comments (1)

Not Enough Color

Apparently, I am told, the site is lacking colour: its too white, blue and black. They also tell me, that there is not enough any images. Well, I have changed the sidebar a bit (so far on the main page only). We’ll see how this works out.

Sometimes I make too rapid changes without checking much for browser compatibility, or I leave broken HTML half way, so excuse me for that. I will try fixing errors when I can (sometime this month).

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 05:32 PM /

April Fools

You know, I didn’t make much use of today. Didn’t fool many people, dammit. What a bummer. At least my Google is doing well. The search engine has picked up on us, and we’ve become popular, and I became exceedingly rich. More info here.

Speaking of which, you will be seeing a lot of April Fools hoaxes on the linklist in the next few days. But I figure, if they are to be April Fools jokes, than they better be good ones.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 08:30 PM /

Linked Right In

A not-so-minor change now. The linklist RSS feed now links directly to the linked pages, rather than the Permalink (individual entry page, the one with comments). This is worthy of note, and thus makes the Big Party Key Dates list.

Finally, linkage done right. Some aggregators would require you to re-subscribe to mark those changes.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 06:19 PM /

Links and Chains

The Linklist quickly became popular after its introduction on Feb. 10. As of this writing, over 50 entries have been made, which is quite an achievement. I have made a few tweaks to the Linklist website to further integrate it with the Big Party. It remains to fix up the search page and add some more nav links on the side (this will take a couple of days). After this, is March Break.

Anyways, many articles come from News Feeds. What I didn’t realize before, and realize now is that many news sites (such as NewScientist or Wired) attach an optional suffix to the URL indicating that the article has been reached via a News Feed. Of course, you don’t need to know this, so I conveniently chop it off. This keeps the Big Party download file size low (joking).

Example: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7107&feedId=online-news_rss20

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 10:09 PM /

Big Party Key Dates

Every blog has a history, and this one is no exception.

• Apr. 18 - Linklist breaks 100 posts.
• Apr. 7 - 150 posts have been made. More to follow.
• Mar. 28 - Linklist feed made right (links directly to the pages).
• Mar. 9 - Linklist breaks 40 posts.
• Mar. 6 - Another site redesign. Very well accepted.
• Feb. 10 - Linklist established. Quickly becomes popular.
• Feb. 2 - Site redesign is well accepted.
• Jan. 13 - Adrian So joins the big party team.
• Jan. 4 - Tout Wang joins the big party team.
• Jan. 3 - Talk with Oleg established.

2004 — Key Dates:

• Dec. 29 - Vlad Baranov joins the big party team.
• Dec. 27 - 50 posts have been made. More to follow.
• Dec. 15 - The big party moves to the Movable Type publishing system.
• Dec. 11 - 20 posts have been made. More to follow.
• Dec. 5 - Oleg’s Big Party up and running.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 07:09 PM /

Some changes...

Over the next few days, things will go terribly wrong again. I’ve decided to include the linklist on the side (I’ve got the MTMultiBlog plugin working), hence a new layout. I have updated the stylesheet, but not all pages (only the index page) reflect the changes. There is a date bug, I hope to fix it today. So if this page looks like crap now - crap enough that you wouldn’t want to continue surfing, come back later.

Update: Whats left to do? Fix up the three comment templates, the search bug search page, a few broken links and the headers, create monthly and category archives, post progress. Make a random thingy, make sure code works with popular web browsers. Fix up the category bug (newly discovered).

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 12:56 PM / Comments (1)

Highest level of recommendation

Okay, guys (and girls too, I am sure I have some female readers), thank you for making this blog happen. Today marks the 3-month existence of the big party. This is the 120th post. During the 3 months of existence we have hit a whooping 35,000 hits.

As part of my expansion policy, I have started recommended books and recommended websites lists. They are not finished yet (as of this writing), but I promise you, that in a couple of days, they will get real big. You should seriously check them out, a couple of gems there. If you have anything to contribute, email me or post a reply, and I will include your suggestion shortly.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 09:29 PM / Comments (2)

Recommended Reading

If you have a book that deserves to be in this list, go ahead email me.

• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
• Magazine Beach by Lewis Gannett
• Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays by Elwyn R. Berlekamp, John H. Conway, Richard K. Guy
• What is the name of this book? by Raymond Smullyan
• The Twelve Chairs by Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
• Mathematical Puzzles: A Connoisseur’s Collection by Peter Winkler

Suggested by our beloved readers:

• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Last updated: Mar. 17, 2005.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 09:25 PM /

Recommended Websites

If you have a website that deserves to be in this list, go ahead email me.

Tech News: Slashdot, Ars Technica, C|net News.com, Wired News, The Register.

Search Engines/Encyclopedias: Google, Wikipedia.

Math/Science: Math World, New Scientist, Planet Math, Turgor Toronto.

Chess: Chessclub, XBoard/WinBoard.

Mac Apps: Omni Web, Adium X, Transmit, Snapz Pro X, BBEdit, Unison, Graphic Converter.

Computers: Rinkworks: Computer Stupidities.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 09:22 PM /

Our Writers Read

When the month ends, the questions begin:

Why not much articles lately? Life actually got boring - not that much stuff to write about. Actually, I am taking a little break playing a good old RPG game, almost done, on the final level, beating the final guy. Would be finished soon. Actually, the Linklist is boiling fine, you should really check it out! :)

The bulldog people? They mad? Of course, not. I hear they will write an article about my blog. Speaking of which, the contractor - Arash Joushaghani, will be drawing a picture for us.

I miss Tout’s tales. He should write more often. You should ask Tout about this. I am sure he would be glad to be more helpful around here.

Ben, he showed up lately? No, not yet. But people are looking for him, and they keep not finding him. Maybe one day, they will actually find him! Who knows?

What articles are you planning to write in the future? Can’t say as of yet, you will have to wait and see. But I will be finishing off my drafts: Farming, Bucky and how he matters to you, Paranoia, Building an Opening Book, Hit and Fade tactic and a few more I don’t want to disclose as of yet.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 10:28 PM / Comments (1)

Our Readers Write

The gloves, what happened to them? Oh, I gave them back (accidents happen every other day).

You going to take revenge on Vlad? No, I officially gave up.

You planning a new party? How about a trip to the zoo? Maybe, after the IMO. Speaking of which, that was definitely the coldest day this winter.

How do you expect people to give you PayPal™ cash? I don’t, the amount is still 0, but you know: one day, I might earn a few dollars.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 05:00 PM /

Welcome to my blog!

Finally! My blog is up and running. It has everything which a blog has to offer, even an RSS feed (so syndicate away). I will post things, fun things, lots of fun things. About life, about programming, about math, about chess, about logic, about illogic, about my personal opinions, about random things. Isn't that what blogs are made for?

And you will read it. Yes, blogs need readers. And you are one of them. So why read blogs? For fun, for enjoyment, for knowledge, for discussion, for intellect, for procrastination.

Posted by Oleg Ivrii, 08:47 PM / Comments (1)