Andy's Mind

After a few months of experience I have to say that developing a business in Poland is akin to trying to run in a swamp. You can start fast, but no matter how hard you try the mud will slow you down. The mud in this particular swamp is composed of two main ingredients – people and bureaucracy. (more…)

Two days ago as I was on the train to Warsaw. Too tired to work I just looked out of the window at the scenery moving slowly outside. As the train left the city and made its way through the green hills north of Cracow I admired the sunset. When the sun is so low over the horizon the light is magical, with a golden tone. Immersed in it the trees and bushes, the walls of buildings and people’s faces appeared nicer, richer and more sublime – everything looked more harmonious than usual. (more…)

I just upgraded my blog to the new version of WordPress. It was fairly easy, but I must say that though the admin interface is a bit nicer there is not much new functionality. However, there is something called Akismet which is a spam fighting solution for blogs. In fact, the surge in comment spam my blog receives prompted me to finally upgrade from WP 1.5 – in the last three days I had more than 800 comments – all spam of course. I hope most of that will be caught by this new plugin.

The late American astronomer and writer, Carl Sagan, wrote this in his most famous book – “Cosmos“:

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person – perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.”

I always loved books and in this passage Sagan managed, I think, to pinpoint this magic connection between the reader and the writer that attracted me to read so many of them. And it is true for any form of writing, including a blog. I speak now to you, in your head – even though you don’t know my voice and probably never met me. Yes, this is a proof that we can work magic – and Internet, which despite Flash animations and video streaming remains largely the world of text is a new incarnation of that magic.

Let’s spread it, let’s upkeep the ages of tradition, let’s keep these silent voices – let’s write.