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Fri, 05 Sep 2008
New Metallica album: Death Magnetic.
Although it will be released only next week, good people shared it with me.
What can I say: I did not buy previous one, I think after
"Garage Inc" and "Symphony Metallica" they made real crap, including "St. Anger",
but "Death Magnetic" is better. Much better.
It sounds somewhat similar to "Reload", but unfortunately there are no killing
songs like "Fuel" and "The Unforgiven 2", which, in my opinion, were the best songs on that album,
although there is a song with piano intro. Called "The Unforgiven 3".
Nevertheless "Death Magnetic" is a good album. Not the best, not something new and exception,
just good.
Recommend.
Wed, 20 Aug 2008
Ebooks are just toys for simple formats.
I listened so much pride words about how ebooks look and that they allow
to replace the whole your library with single flash-drive.
It can not. It does not know about PDF and DJVU formats. Sony Ebook reader,
Lbook V3, Amazon Kindle - all of them can see it as a picture at best. And it could
be probably not that bad, but neither supports scrolling, so there is virtually no way
to read PDF or DJVU formats there. The whole my library cotnains only that formats.
I naively thought that we live in the 21'th century, when we can flight faster than speed of sound everyday,
look into the deepest corners of the universe, taste Mars' salt, search for Higgs boson and convert from any text representation
format to another one. Obviously I was so mistaken...
Will use old-school paper books (I love it much more than electronic ones anyway) and printed
stack of paper for various articles.
Fri, 25 Jul 2008
Do you like when you are photographed?
I do not, so there are no photos with me on this site
(if you would see my passport photos...). But I like to make
them and sometimes I create really interesting ones.
People even print them and give me presents for it, and since photos were
made in public, I think I can publish them.
Although I frequently make photos of people when they do not expect it in public,
and this ones are really the best (never look at photographer!).
I sometimes make them to laugh on someone, this is of course a private data,
which I only send to the 'model' if not delete immediately.
My theory stands on the matter, that all people are very interesting from the photographer point of view.
This just has to be found. I'm trying to do it, and sometimes I succeed.
I do not know, if it is good or not
to publish such photos. I only save pictures which are definitely interesting for me.
Of course it's just a matter of taste.
So, I'm thinking about creation of the new tag in my blog, where I will post photos made by me.
Not that much, one or so pictures per week. So if you do not like the idea, you can always
read development tag only.
Thu, 17 Jul 2008
"The Gun Seller" by Hugh Laurie.
Just finished to read this excellent
detective novell (at Amazon,
electronic version in russian).
People call it the best english humor novell for reason: it indeed is fun and interesting,
although I suspect lots of its witty satire was a bit lost in translation, but nevertheless
I do recommend it for easy reading.
And of course if you like House M.D., you have
to read this novel, and you will not waste your time for sure.
Wed, 16 Jul 2008
New toys: Korg AW1 tuner.
I believe I can produce enough sounds out of my trumpet,
so I need to have tuner, which will tell me how bad that sounds are.
So, now I'm starting to seriously tune my sounds.
So far I hope think that I can play at least two octaves, actually I mean not to play,
but to produce a sound, it is still not that simple and not always very clean. But since
I 'play' (or better say rape ears study) my trumpet only couple of months and never played any instrument (not counting
couple guitar riffs in the university) before and do not play with a teacher, I think this tuner will
be very good addition.
Sun, 06 Jul 2008
Vodka drinks.
Vodka itself is very interesting drink, but depending on
situation it can be either the cheapest way to become very drunk,
or possibility to have long and fun time in a good company.
Frequently (and likely most of the time) vodka is used for the first
case only, which is sad of course.
I do not know, when and how vodka became popular in Russia, but
I think it is always associated with my country now. Actually
every nation has some kind of vodka in its own history of drinks,
and likely still has it. For example UK/Ireland has whiskey, which
is effectively vodka, but drawn in an oak barrels. This brings very
interesting taste, which allows to use it as a kind of long drink
(especially with ice). After having a whiskey shot one can start breathing
air in (especially via nose), which brings aftertaste directly into the brain
to the every piece of the body. I do not know any coctails based on whiskey.
In my opinion, Irish whiskey is much more tasty and interesting than
(probalby originals of) Scotch, although the former has much more labels.
USA also used to drink whiskey, but most of the time it is its own
labels, which I did not try yet. USA does not have own popular
drink though, or at least I do not know it.
Europe also has lots and lots of different vodka kinds.
Frech drinks cogniak. I do not like it, and belive that it is only
coloured non-tasty vodka, even likely the best labels like Remi Martin and Hennesy
(although the latter is originated by irelands :), but it is only matter of taste
of course. Cogniak creation process is a bit more complex than
vodka, and it also has very different taste, which (for me) is very similar
to clean vodka. Cogniak is one of the most popular strong drinks. Culture of its
drinking is forgotten, but nevertheless it is very interesting. Cogniak should be
drunken only with special temperature (16 degress Centigrade) in glass of specail
form, which concentrate its airtaste. Cogniak is not swallowed immediately, but
'stored' in a mouth for a while to get all taste.
Frenchmen also created absinthe. This is very strong drink (upto 90 degrees),
but its main feature is thujone. History tells us that thujone was the main reason,
why absinthe was forbidden in Europe, and it was quite strong hallucinogen.
History also tells us that its concentration never exceeded 10%, so it is unlikely
that it had some kind of strong effect. Vincent Van Gogh liked it very much,
there is even a theory that it cut his ear during absinthe intoxication, but likely
it was some special absinthe, since 10% less-to-equal thujone concentration does
not have any significant effect. Right now absinthe is allows in most of the countires,
where it was forbidden 200 years ago.
Eastern Europe used to drink various kinds of vodka, which are called in local manner.
For example so called Cha-Cha, which is quite strong (upto 80 degrees) drink, but usually
very clear, so it can be drunken without dilution.
The New World (most of it is from Mexico) brings us very interesting vodka-like drink
called tequila. It is frequently called mexican vodka, although US also produces own labels.
There are also types, which are made using french cogniak barrels.
Usually it is drunken with salt, lime (sometimes lemon) and
mulatto female. Process is very interesting: you lick mulatto's hip, cover it with salt,
lick it, get tequila shot and eat a lime portion. Even without mulatto it is still very
tasty drink. Tequila is made out of special agave sorts, the more it has, the higher
is quality.
One of the very known vodka-like drinks from Carribean is rum. It is also quite strong
drink, but because of its oil-like elements, it is more sweet and very tasty.
Rum is likely one of the most widely used strong drinks for coctails.
I know that Koreans also very like own kind of vodka, which has smaller spirit concentration,
namely 20 degrees. It is made out of rice.
It is very popular drink to be mixed with beer. Drives you roof away
just after couple of shots.
Ukrainians have very interesting drink called 'Gorilka', which is effectively
vodka with pepper. It is very tasty, but never eat Gorilka pepper, or you are
risking to get a peptic poisoning.
There is several vodka mixes.
First and likely the most known, is 'Screwdriver', whcih is vodka mixed with juise. It
is not very tasty imho. One of the most strong roof-driving-out drink is so called
'ruff' or mixture of vodka and beer. Do not try it if you do not know what it is.
I also know one vodka long drink: vodka with Martini mixed one to one. Although it looks
quite strong, it is very tasty drink with excellent sweet and a bit dry taste.
Using my small cellar I created (at least tried first time) another long drink,
which consists of vodka mixed with 'Malibu' rum. It is also possible to add there juice
or cold tea.
Weekend...
Sat, 05 Jul 2008
Midnight creatiff. Casted by LHC start.
- Shit! There are no more M8 screw-nuts.
- What? Use M12, bozon should pass through.
- We all will be fucked this Monday!
Good night. Actually as a former physicist I can say,
that at least two out of four killing theories are really
stupid, but nevertheless its interesting!
Fri, 04 Jul 2008
In case we will die this Monday...
I've started a countdown...
Large Hadron Collider will be started in 3 days...
Sat, 28 Jun 2008
Listened how my trumpet can sound.
It was really interesting. Although it is very simple student
model, a friend produced very good sounds. He did not practice
many years already, but nevertheless it was not that bad.
My everyday half to hour exercises usually produce worse sound, although
sometimes I do find really cool notes. Unfortunately I still do not
know some magic bit about how to catch on that sound, it borns and
dissapears on its own, but I'm sure I will find it, and I think I'm close
to where it hides :)
Fri, 27 Jun 2008
0:3
That was really suck - yes, we played bad. Just like it was before.
It is not somewhat surprising.
But what was the fucking ubnormal week ago agains Holland? That
was new, was cool, was bloody great, but not today. Tired or whatever...
What's the difference right now, we lose.
Yes, Spain played really good, my congratulations.
But our command showed, that it is possible.
That there is nothing impossible.
We can, when we want. You can, when you want.
Thanks a lot for the games!
Sun, 22 Jun 2008
3:1. It is fucking unbelivable, but we wooooon!
We won against Holland, one of the stongest football team!
There was blood on the field, rule breaks and other crap, but we made it!
3:1 against Holland. "Russia rised from the knees" as screamed.
We are in one half of the final. You have been warned, russians are coming! :)
Pivo and vodka, we will not sleep today!
We do not belive in penalti!
It is fucking unbelivable, but Russia plays with Holland
and score is 1:1. Not only its equal, we do play a cool football!
And Holland equaled score in a 87 minute, we were so close, but
it is not yet stopped. We can win. We will win!
I do not understand, how in the hell our team started to play that
good, we can. We fucking can, when we want. We play not for the goal, not
for the money, not for fucking anyhintg, we play just for the game.
And game wins!
Ended first half of the additional time. Russia vs Holland 1:1.
We can. Just because we can.
Mon, 19 May 2008
Russia Canada5:4
Yesterday Russia became a hockey world champion, first time for the last 15 years!
Final goal!
Sun, 04 May 2008
Tanks in the city!
Wanted to visit Moscow and look how we play balalayka, drink vodka and walk with bears?
Not now, we drive our tanks instead.
The Victory Day repetition, april 29 night.
Tue, 29 Apr 2008
New and old toys.
Real enlargement...
The only thing missing is photo skills...
But I work on it.
After I've spent quite a lot of money I suddenly decided that
it is a really good feeling - to have what you want, no matter what the price is.
I can not afford some things, but looking really closely I've decided
that having lots of smaller really cool stuff is better (for now) than collecting
for a (really) long time to get something really big. I already did that,
now its time for smaller every-day fun :)
So, no bike for now. I was torn between Honda CBR 400-600, BMW K1200 or around,
or classical chopper models, no Harley of course, but... Anyway I'm not
able to register it and get bike numbers, and I do not have a bike driving license.
The same applies to cars (what I already had I really do not want to get again, but what I want
requires some). So, my simple stuff.
Tue, 08 Apr 2008
Social hacking.
How to survive in office (in russian) -
report about office life seen by a reporter, who worked as a secretary several weeks.
A real social hacking imho.
Mon, 07 Apr 2008
A Theory. Antisocial theory.
Quite for a while a have quite interesting but very antisocial theory in my
mind. A hacker's behavioural theory.
Lets talk about male here (frankly, I never saw a female hacker with similar
behavioural aspects).
Main theory key is about the fact, that when person has something really
interesting for himself, he does not want to spend his (limited)
time with others. Just because he is so selfish (in a good meaning of this word),
that he just does not need any one near to spend time with, just because he can
create or get real problem for himself and devote all the time to it. There can be lots
of other people around, but eventually (if they are not a really good friends,
who understand that immediate timeframe does not matter) all they understand
that theirs time does not return back.
Such people do not really think about others, they think about the problem, which
lives in mind right now. This does not always mean that they do not like other people (which
actually can be true), but only that they are somewhere in another place with
another thoughts.
Maybe they will return back to usual life and devote theirs time
to other people not to some problems, or maybe not...
Such a theory... Created by looking around.
Wed, 19 Mar 2008
Temptation is over...
One man, 12 nights (13 days), one bottle of cuban rum and
little bits of scotch whisky, 82 'House M.D' series... feels good.
Meanwhile got three 2-way Xeon servers with 2-4 (I forgot) gigs of RAM and
gigabit link between them. Not bad for start.
Also gathered lots of power and inspiration, so, here is a plan:
- second filesystem contest, now I will test btrfs 0.13 and btrfs-unstable in addition to previous ext[234], reiser[34], jfs and xfs running for the first prizes in dbench, iozone, postmark, maildir performance bench and simple file creation micro-benchmark. Results will show need for the yet another local filesystem. Making bets?
- fix two problems in distributed storage: there is a leak in mirror resync and unability to start a storage if config contains wrong network addresses.
- rewrite core pohmelfs algorithms to make it not good, but really good. This change will make it first against CRFS and CacheFS :) POHMELFS is not where I want it to be right now.
- fix HIFN driver bug.
But nevertheless, stay tuned, lots of interesting stuff is coming!
Sun, 16 Mar 2008
Struggle against a temptation.
I can not win in a fight with some issues (or better
call theirs real names: temptations), so... there is
an old method to solve this problem:
if you can not win against some temptation, just fall for itThat is what I'm doing for the last couple of days: I already watched 2.5 seasons of "House M.D." series and expect the last ones to complete soon...
That is why I do not write about real hacking problems I work with, but... stay tuned, I'm just accumulating a
Mon, 10 Mar 2008
Touching someone's ego.
There are two ways to point to mistakes made by others:
tell them "hey, you have an error :)" and "you have error here and there".
This can be ended up with
"yeah, that's a good fix" and "you do not know the things, stops doing this things".
It looks like there is no difference in the first messages, but results
will be very contrast. If you do not care
about communication with the person who made a mistake, but only cares
about things got fixed, there is no difference on how to point to the error,
but be ready (although you do not care) that person will reply to you
quite aggressively and can resist to make a solution if it is not vital
for the things being discussed. It is of course wrong and kind of childish,
but that is how people very frequently reply. If you care about communication
with the person in question, then speak like you want to be spoken back.
It is not very simple actually, but do not expect an easy solution with
teaching tone.
This reminds me how kernel maintainers reply to people who make some contribution.
There are very good people who start a discussion friendly even if patch
or question is really wrong, this can end up with sending to mail archive or faq.
There are persons (we all know who) which only replies: this is wrong,
you have a race. Sometimes a race places can be pointed.
So, be cool with others and do not pretent to be the smartest one.
That of course touches me too... I'm frequently a hard one to talk with.
Fri, 07 Mar 2008
Just a random though on photography.
I believe that photographers which only make black and white photos
are not as good as those who do not fear to make coloured photos.
BW ones almost every time are good, while coloured are usually not that
interesting, and changing them to BW frequently fixes the shot.
Just a humble opinion...
A gentle hint.
I am antisocial. Not always, but frequently. And never in a good known company.
Got a number of whiskey drops (solely for cure purpose) and made this creature.
A gentle hint: officially.
Fri, 29 Feb 2008
A music created solely from Windows 98/XP system sounds.
Enjoy.
Should be filled under 'boyan of the day'?
Thu, 28 Feb 2008
Yellow bus eats your brain.
Or flying bus model.
And cutter.
Wanna one? Get it here.
Fri, 15 Feb 2008
Richard Stallman in Russia and related problems.
Here are number of interesting moments in this miserable
melodrama
(got via Linux Today News).
Stallman wanted to visit Russia this March, and parliament member Viktor Alksnis
promoted his visit and wanted to help with 'administration issues'.
Then LOR (www.linux.org.ru, one of the most popular linux sites
in Russia) moderator Sergey Udaltsov (who lives in Ireland)
sent a letter to Richard, where
pointed that Alksnis is not a good man, he also noted about Alksnis'
"fight against the independence of the Baltic countries" in late 80s.
Stallman then said that he does not want Alksnis to organize his visit.
Well, my couple of points about this stupid situation.
First, Alksnis is really not a very smart person in IT, and it looks
very much like he is a usual careerist, since I do not know about his
work at all except stupid idea of creation of 'national OS',
probably using 'nanotechnologies' (it is a modern trend here :).
Second, step of Sergey Udaltsov is very well braindamaged - while it is ok to
describe who Alksnis is, but pointing to Baltic independence is even
more stupid than 'national os' idea.
So, my simple point is that both Viktor Alksnis and Sergey Udaltsov just
wanted to make some self-advertisement profit from Rishcard Stallman's visit
and do not really do it because of open source. Although
self-advertisement is not a bad idea (you read this blog :), such movements
are stupid.
If Stallman got problems with visa (I'm surprised if it takes more than two weeks),
then it means he does not really want to
visit Russia, for example I got kernel summit invitation more than two month
ahead of the meeting, which was enough to get visa (it required two (!) visits
to the UK visa office just to give and get back documents,
it took two (!) days to check documents, and it was
possible to order a courier,
although previous year time frame was shorter). If he does not want,
why would we care?
If someone wants to visit a country, he can find a way to do that himeself
and do not wash own brain with stupid rethorics.
I think it will be a cause for Richard not to visit, since it really
looks like he does not want to do it :)
Tue, 01 Jan 2008
Happy New Year!
2007 was very interesting year for me, I made and started
so many cool things and 2008 will be for sure even better.
I'm having so good time now, and really like how it goes!
Thanks a lot for all my friends for theirs time and just for themselfs,
thanks to angels and daemons, which guarded me and created troubles,
thanks for everyone who are around so I made my life how it is.
Happy New Year!
Wed, 26 Dec 2007
CDMA (EVDO) vs GPRS.
Good people gave me SkyLink CDMA modem (model USB CNU-550 with EVDO support)
to test internet conection in Linux and compare it against GPRS.
Well, here are my conclusions:
- CDMA works always while GPRS really sucks in the middle of the day: well, it has to be proven tomorrow, but I tested CDMA modem at about 19-00 and it worked ok, while MTS (Mobile TeleSystems in Russia) at about 12-00 worked very bad (I connected quickly, but ssh login took enormously long time).
- CDMA speed is usually about 10-16 kb/s, while GPRS is usually can not be higher than 1-2 kb/sec.
More on this: I believe CDMA session can have higher speeds (pppd session requests about
900 kbit/sec), behaviour of initial login (I saw quite a few of them on different initial speeds
during usual work and userspace network stack testing)
shows there is some limitation on server or hardware side (i.e. SkyLink either because of
special tariff scale or driver limitations, I was told there is no 16 kb/sec limitation
with given card though) side (note on testing different congestion
control algorithms and develop own if needed: speed downgrades to less than 10kb/sec frequently
during download of the big file. SkyLink is a very interesting source of data for such development:
it looks like its RTT is quite high for default (new CUBIC) congestion control, at least low-traffic but
very-small-latency-wanted source (
muttover ssh on remote host without serious traffic shaping) works quite bad in this setup. Very likely it is just an empty speculation and problem is in hardware on the server (i.e. it has support for bulk streaming access at high speeds (16 kb/sec), but fails to work with low-latency applications, which work in small packets ping-pong environment)). - CDMA USB CNU-550 modem works ok in Linux (modulo above issues) with this peers/pap-secrets files without any problems.
Sun, 23 Dec 2007
GPRS sucks!
Even MTS one is so slow... Although it is enough to
read emails and check some news (you know, I have infinite patience
which almost never reaches its end), but I want a normal connection.
I know, there is no Ded Moroz (Santa Claus), so there will be no fast
internet until past New Year vacations (10 days in Russia),
when I will start kicking local ISPs again.
Wed, 28 Nov 2007
Teams make a business, individuals make innovations.
Sat, 27 Oct 2007
Decimal calculus.
It appeared when people started to use fingers to calculate objects.
I afraid to imagine how we developed fractions...
Thu, 18 Oct 2007
We won! Russia - England 2:1.
Although I did not belive that - I checked radio at clibming zone
after first half of the match - 0:1, so I lost the hope, but we managed to win.
Of course I'm very glad!
Sun, 14 Oct 2007
Meanwhile in Moscow ...
... there is a snowfall, a 100% humidity, an angry wind and killing cold.
And me of course... sitting and slacking at the office.
I would drink a bit and ate ravioli, I did not eat them for so long already,
but can not cook at home obviously.
I tried to cook when I was at Marina's birthday - but made a too salty meat - I'm forgetting
this bits already, so need to finish faster and start cooking again...
Anyway I will not (at least in the nearest future), so just sending you 'Hello' from
this bloody weather, Moscow, Russia (somewhere between Europe and west coast of USA).
I live in a great country.
Several years ago one of the former ministers of the tv/radio broadcasting
said following phrase (after big license price increase):
We get money not for the paper, but for nature resource usage during transmission of the electro-magnetic waves over the air.I talked with person, who make some business in that area, he has quite big notebook of such records.
There will be elections in Russia quite soon...
Sun, 07 Oct 2007
The whole country celebrates ...
... the birthday of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,
our president.
Or none celebrates and waits when he will move away, it depends.
Fri, 28 Sep 2007
Mindflushing flash game for boys.
I spent two days, broke the rest of my brain, but won. Very interesting!
Spend time!
Tue, 28 Aug 2007
[:||||:]
:)
Fri, 24 Aug 2007
Serious DNS outage.
Now it is fixed.
Tue, 21 Aug 2007
Monday is over.
My president.
Lightning without thunder.
Interesting, was it lightning or Google-maps took shots with a flash?
Wed, 15 Aug 2007
Road rules in Russia.
Yep.
Via Maxim Kononenko.