Being a professional skier is exceptionally difficult. If you've never skied, let me give you a brief description.

You start off in a steep slope and you try to build up as much speed as you can by pushing off with your poles. Not that you really need to, as steep as the slope is, you'll soon have more speed than you know what to do with. The path you have to follow runs through a series of gates, so you're not only going down the hill, you're also going back and forth across the hill, making hard turns at each gate. But here's the thing. You want maximum speed. You also want to stay on the path, you miss one gate and you're out of the race. Whenever you turn, your trade speed for rotation. The more you turn, the more you break. The less you break, the more speed you retain.

The secret to winning the race is a couple of things. First of all, you need superb positioning. You want to hit that gate at an angle that allows you to turn immediately, so that again you hit the next gate at an optimal angle (that is, the more you hit it from the top than from the side, the less speed you lose on the next turn).

To get that optimal turn, you need some serious muscle power in your legs. As long as you're going straight, you balance equally on each leg, but when turning you shift all the weight onto the inner leg. This happens at angle where the outer edge of the ski is facing upwards, so you are carving the snow with the ski, often in a lane well traveled by all of your opponents, making it metal vs ice. The turn is the race, the more power you have in the turn, the more control you have, the more you carve out an angle of rotation in a small distance of slope.

Then you have the element of concentration. Through these 2 minutes your body will exert more physical effort than you do in a month. Not only that, there is absolutely no respite, you have to be at your highest state of muscle alertness throughout. You're going at a speed of 100-130km/h. One tiny flaw and you lose, you crash out, or you crash to broken limbs.

Finally, you have to push yourself. To win, you have to take risks that you're otherwise not willing to take. [But don't tell the press that you ski drunk to have more courage like Bode Miller, even if it is a joke.] You have to ski with courage, otherwise you're not going to win.

And that.. is not unlike working through deadlines. Just that the 2-minute interval of the race is stretched to 6 months, and the 2-minute intensity of the race is split up into non-equal fragments over that same period.

You have to stay on the path, if you miss a gate you crash out of the race with consequences. After every deadline, you turn immediately facing the next one. They are coming at you so frequently that you're often not sure if you'll make the next gate. Sometimes they come as long stretches of slope that wear you out. Sometimes they come in quick succession, almost making you panic. When this happens, it's not enough to plan the next gate, you have to plan your route through the next two or three gates if you'll have any chance of navigating through them.

Positioning is crucial. Every late turn accumulates into a later turn at the next gate, lost time is hard to win back. Rather than the muscle power at the turn, it's the power to sustain from one gate to the next that makes the vital difference. Ideally, you want to be optimally positioned at every gate, but just as with skiing, it's impossible. Sometimes you have to make up for lost time, sometimes there's just not enough time.

Sadly, there isn't much to win by taking risks. If you're late at the gate, with a bad entry angle, there really isn't much you can do. The only way to prevent the same outcome at the next gate is to maintain your optimal state of concentration. It's not a willingness to work, it's far beyond that. It's a complete engulfment by the topic at hand, you eat and breathe that assignment, doing what you can until you reach the gate. It's so intense it doesn't even feel much like work. If you find that concentration, you have a good turn ahead. If not, it'll be twice as hard - you both need the work and the focus.

But once you pass that gate, it counts for nothing, the next gate means everything.

You know how evolution works, right? Survival of the fittest? But it doesn't have to happen according to nature's criteria, you can shape the process yourself!

Okay, technically you don't _have to_ intervene, it will run fine just by itself. But if you want to shape the future of the planet, here's your chance! :cap:

Here's what you do.

1. Pick the species you care most about.
2. Acquire 5 organisms of the species.
3. Put them through your series of physical tests.
4. Try not to kill all 5, because if one of them survives, that's the strongest organism that will carry the torch.

For instance, if you think cats aren't sufficiently resistant to fire.. Okay, that experiment may take some tuning (and possibly quite a few more than 5 cats), so maybe start with something simpler.

For instance, how lame is it that most plants can't survive under water? Take a cactus, for example. Pour a cup of water over it, not just to feed it, but to give it a real challenge. If it survives that, next week you add a cup. And so on. Eventually some of your cactii will die, but the one that survives is the most resistant to water! Now you plant your cactus back in the desert and hope it will reproduce. Hey, some things you just can't force.

NOTE: Beware of the Plant- and Animal Cruelty people, they will accuse you of all kinds of nonsense. These hippies simply don't understand that nature is brutal and science can't but follow the rules.

What on Earth is the point of that??? Isn't it all about making it as disgusting as possible? I really don't see how you could make it much worse, maybe you could collect dirt in there, and dead insects. "Look, it's my dirt collection."

Do smokers actually see it any different? "Oh my god, what a beautiful clean ashtray, let me foul it up immediately." Or "what a disgusting ashtray, let me use it right now."

It doesn't really add up, because if you're concerned about keeping your house nice and clean, then the polluted air from smoking and consequently the residue of ashes mixing with the air makes it so disgusting that your house is never clean. It's like shoveling snow while it's actually snowing, completely pointless.

It's been an above average productive week, so I feel like making a note of it.

1. Standing in line at the ticket office I took a ticket from the machine and the guy ahead of me realized just then that he hadn't taken a ticket. He got one for himself and looked at me as if he was feeling hard done by. I offered him my ticket, he gave me his.
2. Donated €25 to FOSDEM (got a t-shirt).
3. Donated €21 to the FSF (got a t-shirt and a keychain).
4. Donated €5 to Fedora (Erik is in for a surprise).
5. At the supermarket they were handing out these little football collecting cards. As I was walking out, half a dozen little kids were standing by the exit with piles of them, asked me for mine, which I happily handed over.

Interviews are a curious thing. You see that there's an interview with a person you find interesting and you're thinking "I'm gonna read this". I feel the thought process there is a little lacking. Even if it is an interesting person, you're not going to be dazzled by the answer to the question What's your favorite color?, or What book is on your nightstand?. Unless it's with an expert in color theory or a literary critic, but those people never get interviewed.

One question from How to conduct an interview that appears on page 7 in bold face with a big red ellipsis around it is What do you do in your spare time? Every interviewer asks this question. It's the epitome of "I've run out of crap to ask about", it gives you a chance to bounce back from the favorite color and end the interview on a high note.

Almost everyone gives the same answer to this question. "Free time? I wish I had some of that." Yep, no one has any free time. It almost makes your heart sting. There's no time for free time in our crazy, hectic lives. But *we* have free time. Those of us reading these interviews. I mean don't tell me that reading an interview is part of some planned activity.

Except it's not true. It's a big lie. It's what we say to make our lives seem more meaningful. "Between my career, my health club, my night classes of Japanese, my political activity and Saturdays at the soup kitchen, I barely have any time left for my family, let alone free time." Well I got news for you. Your health club? That's free time. Your political activism? Free time. Photography club? Free time. Company softball team? Free time.

It's all free time. Most people work, so having a job is not really optional. Taking care of your kids isn't either. But everything else is. Whether it's curling or curing cancer. Just because you planned in advanced what you're gonna do in that time doesn't mean you can't cancel in an instant if you wanted to, it's *your* time, *you* decide.

When I was a kid I didn't have as much free time as most kids. I had after school Polish classes once a week and music lessons once a week. That was a real hassle too, the violin teacher lived across town so I would have to take the bus from downtown up there, wait an hour until it was my lesson, have my lesson, have orchestra, then it took me an hour to cross town and get home again. My whole afternoon gone, I would get home at 8pm. I also used to do [organized] sports, never anything for a long time, but I played football for a year and a half, ju-jitsu for 2 years, volleyball for a year and then basketball for a year. I never really fit into organized sports, so I actually played a lot more sports "disorganized". Anyway, violin was a hassle, my lesson was only once a week, but I had to practice an hour everyday, and I didn't like practicing. Finally I quit violin after 5 years. That really freed up my time. Suddenly I felt like I had a lot more free time. That doesn't mean I spent it productively, though. More free time to play computer games, that's where it went.

But in both cases it was *my* time, so if you don't have *any* free time, that's because you've decided you don't want any. If you plan 7 different after school/work activities per week, then you're not interested in free time. Free time is for pragmatics. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it." It's not for obsessive planners. Because it's really a matter of definition. If I played football in a club, I would call that my free time. "Yeah, that's what I fill my free time with." Or developing software, yep that's free time. If you don't want to call it that, that's up to you, but it is what it is.