Edson Arantes do Nascimento, 1940-2022 😢
RIP O Rei Pelé
Category Archives: Jogo Bonito
Soccer!
Spain vs Germany
Last match of the trip, and one would have thought best match of the first round. At the end it was a 1-1 tie in which Spain deserved to win.
Before the match, we went to The Pearl, the artificial island full of fancy things.
México vs Argentina
The main event. The match with the highest demand for tickets out of all 64 matches including the Final.
We stopped at Lusail Mall before the game.
USA vs England
This was one of the most attractive games for us. It was a good game but unfortunately not very spectacular: 0-0. Al Bayt is both the farthest (about 1 hour drive) and the most beautiful stadium we’ve visited. It’s made to look like a Bedouin tent, impressive.
National Museum of Qatar
Another incredible building. It was built around the old palace which still stands and can be visited.
We stayed to eat lunch at Jiwan, the restaurant at the museum. Both the view and the food were amazing so here go some food photos.
Brazil vs Serbia
Brazil looked very, very strong. After seeing them it’s clear it won’t be easy to knock them out.
3-2-1 Qatari Olympic and Sports Museum
Located next to the Khalifa Stadium, this is a brand new and very impressive museum. Like many other things – it was eerily deserted – but is a definite recommendation.
Next stop: Mexico vs Poland.
The best Panini stickers
It took an eternity to go through the extremely buggy app. And it took an eternity for them to arrive over mail. But we finally – and just 2 days before kick off – receive the very last and most important Panini stickers for our album.
They sell for a lot of money in the black market. Best of luck.
Polla Qatari 2022
With this post, I am proud to announce Polla Qatari 2022. This is the fifth FIFA World Cup pool / game / quiniela in a row I’ve organized and the sixth polla overall (since I did Polla América 2007).
With a little over 36 days until kickoff, I think this can be the best and largest polla ever!
I do this for fun and for learning. I find that it makes me enjoy the tournament, which is exciting on its own, a lot more. And my friends do as well. And I find that it forces me to play with corners of the software worlds I don’t get to use at work.
But it is a lot of work. The code is 100% custom written by me. Back in 2006 I wrote the original polla in a few coding all-nighters. Since then, every polla has started from the same codebase as the last one but goes through a lot of work and improvements on each iteration.
For this year, I had pondered a big rewrite using Python and microservices and other cool newer technologies (I do this for learning, remember?) but adulting (those pesky children! that pesky job) got in the way. I ended up reusing the same old codebase which actually required a lot of work to get back up and running with the latest versions of PHP and MySQL.
I set up Docker, Docker Compose, and hosted the code in a private GitHub repo. I’m using a package manager for dependencies. This is a nice improvement on my workflow and makes development and deployment a lot easier. It should make the code easier to maintain. And after getting it all working I made many small and big improvements both internal and external.
I am adding a few new features to the game: Winner selection, filters.
There are three things all readers should do right now:
- Register at https://fifa2022.kirsch.mx. Bookmark it while you’re there.
- “Like” the Facebook page so you can keep up with announcements.
- Invite your friends to join. Tell them to use your user name as referral and maybe you play for free.
Good luck!
2022 Panini World Cup Sticker album
Once again, the World Cup is coming. Qatar welcomes the world in a message of peace, love, and tolerance <ahem>.
It also means there’s a new Panini Sticker Album, and any self-respecting long time reader of The MKX® knows I collect them.
Unlike in previous tournaments, my kids are old enough to tag team with me. Fortunately, my kids don’t “like” things. They are either absolutely obsessed with something or they are completely indifferent. The Panini World Cup album fell into the first category.
So they did most of the work and they did it very quickly. As in: they’d wake up at 5 AM to work on it every day. Our album was completed with 2+ months to spare. You can read all about it on Ilán’s website, I highly recommend it.
