Quite extraordinary that after centuries, Shakespeare's words could still prick consciences in almost exactly the same way and for the same reasons.

Annapurna on the other hand has been climbed less than two hundred times in history, all of those people were elite mountaineers and further third of them didn't make it back.

To climb K2 in winter is extraordinarily dangerous. It's dangerous enough in season. But the Poles are the hardest of hard men in these situations - good luck to them!

So here's something to pop up a message box on Windows:

    local ffi = require("ffi")

    ffi.cdef[[

        int MessageBoxA(void *w, const char *txt, const char *cap, int type);

    ]]

    ffi.C.MessageBoxA(nil, "Hello world!", "Test", 0)

Compare this with the effort required to bind that function using the classic Lua/C API: create an extra C file, add a C function that retrieves and checks the argument types passed from Lua and calls the actual C function, add a list of module functions and their names, add a luaopen_* function and register all module functions, compile and link it into a shared library (DLL), move it to the proper path, add Lua code that loads the module aaaand ... finally call the binding function. Phew!

"Hackworth was a forger, Dr. X was a honer. The distinction was at least as old as the digital computer. Forgers created a new technology and then forged on to the next project, having explored only the outlines of its potential. Honers got less respect because they appeared to sit still technologically, playing around with systems that were no longer start, hacking them for all they were worth, getting them to do things the forgers had never envisioned."

“In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”