Pool/Billiard Spring 2009 Season

The Spring 2009 season ended with pretty good results for our team. We won first place in 9-ball and the second place in 8-ball in our league and going to play 9-ball Tri-annuals matches next weekend for the right to play in LVQ (Las Vegas Qualifiers) matches.
I got MVP (most valuable player) recognition in 8-ball among SL1-SL4 levels in our league and will play MVP matches in July.

Today I played the 9-ball singles qualifiers match and won, thus I will get another chance to go to Las Vegas in the singles competitions category after I win regionals in October.

Play pool, have fun :)

Google I/O

I didn't get a chance to attend Google I/O conference ... I sure tried .....

It was nice to be able to watch the
Google I/O 2009 Keynote on youtube:



I like the introduction video and music :)

The other amazing thing was Google Wave, here is the Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009:



Couple of my friends went to Google I/O, got free unlocked Android phone, the dev access to the Google Wave and lots of positive excitement :)

Всегда побеждает тот волк, которого ты кормишь.

Когда-то давно старый индеец рассказал своему внуку одну жизненную
истину.
- Внутри каждого человека идет борьба, очень похожая на борьбу двух
волков. Один волк представляет зло – зависть, ревность, сожаление,
эгоизм, амбиции, ложь… Другой волк представляет добро – мир, любовь,
надежду, любезность, истину, доброту, верность…
Маленький индеец, тронутый до глубины души словами деда, на несколько
мгновений задумался, а потом спросил:
- А какой волк в конце побеждает?
Лицо старого индейца тронула едва заметная улыбка и он ответил:
- Всегда побеждает тот волк, которого ты кормишь.

Drysuit scuba certificaton

This long Memorial Day weekend I spent with Sterling Silver Scuba friends at the Dutch Springs, PA.
I finished my drysuit certification and did some fun dives after that. Total of 7 dives in two days, 37 logged dives total.

Really appreciate the drysuit now. The water was 48F (~9C) at the 30ft (~10m) depth and I felt pretty comfortable and warm. Many thanks to my instructor Kevin Davenport, I highly recommend him as instructor and as a dive buddy.

Next step is Rescue Diver: more safety awareness and being able to help other divers in emergency situations. Looking forward to dive on Independence Day weekend of 4th of July.

Underwater clean up, SUDS fundraiser.

Today I did couple of dives with Sterling Silver Scuba as a part of Project AWARE beach and underwater clean up and a Soldiers Undertaking Scuba Diving (www.SUDSdiving.org) fundraiser. We did underwater clean up in the Mountclair lake and all the proceeds from the dive were donated to SUDS.

I was diving in the dry suit and was very comfortable temperature wise.

The first dive was quite a surprise, the new experience for me. The visibility was 1 feet (~30) at most, I could barely see my hands, and once I got to the bottom at around 15 feet (~5m) it became completely dark and murky, could not see anything. It was like trying to find things in the dark closet.

I tried to use the underwater light but it didn't help much and after about 20 minutes of frustration and not being able to find anything I surfaced, gave up the light and talked to our instructor Kevin. He said that in such conditions the only way to find anything was just to sink to the bottom, pick direction and sweep the bottom with hands. You can not see anything, but at least you can recognize things by touch.
It was fun, like the game where you pick up stuff from bag without looking inside, first you have to recognize thing before taking it from the bag.
Kevin's advice helped tremendously, I found a watch, a lighter, swimming goggles, couple of masks and bunch of other stuff that was not as interesting as these items.
Kevin was bringing bag after bag from the bottom: at least 5 pairs of swimming goggles, bunch of sun glasses, another watch and many more.

Overall it was great experience, diving in practically zero visibility, trying to navigate, keep the direction and recover things that people lost or left at the bottom of the lake.

Happy Diving!

Понаприходила молодежь ... :)

- Понаприходила молодежь со своих институтов, ни черта не умеют
- Да уж, раньше специалисты поматерее были
- Ага, Николай Палыч, например. Играл в тетрис на 9 скорости, пользовался клавишой "вниз", и постоянно орал "падай реще уже"

Google Chromium experience

I was researching the Google Chromium project (the source code for the Google Chrome browser).
I checked out the latest source code from Google's repository. It was packaged nicely with Visual Studio solution file with 173(!) projects under it. The build took around 1.5 hours, lots of stuff, lots of 3rd party libraries source code including WebKit.
The thing that I was pleasantly surprised with, that it just built right out of the box, I didn't have to do any configuration, I didn't have to figure out dependencies and etc, everything that is needed for the project under one source tree. Think about it, when was the last time you checkout out the open source projects as complex as this one and didn't have to spend some time first to figure out how to build it and then fight all the build and dependency errors down the road ?

The source code is all lovely familiar C/C++ with STL/ATL/WTL, love it. Now I'm running the debug build of Chrome on my machine, and with full access to source code I can change it as much as I like and even contribute my changes to Chrome project.

Google Chrome rocks! :)

Chromium Tech Talks

Interesting Google talks videos on Chromium and WebKit browser engines here:
http://blog.chromium.org/2009/04/chromium-tech-talks.html

Would you eat a stack of 16 sugar cubes?

A label can tell you there are 39 grams of sugar in your soda, but what does that much sugar look like?
http://sugarstacks.com

Ultimate iPhone App

"The Perfect Drug" :)

The mind tricks

The Teller, one of the guys from "Penn & Teller: Bullshit" show delivers quite interesting presentation. It's quite a lesson on awareness.