Rest in Peace Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder and former CEO, has died at the age of 56. So sad :(

Rest in peace Steve ....
http://www.apple.com/stevejobs

Android HttpURLConnection improvements

This is awesome news , the Android team is finally fixing and improving the HttpURLConnection.


"Apache HTTP client has fewer bugs on Eclair and Froyo. It is the best choice for these releases.
For Gingerbread and better, HttpURLConnection is the best choice. Its simple API and small size makes it great fit for Android. Transparent compression and response caching reduce network use, improve speed and save battery. New applications should use HttpURLConnection; it is where we will be spending our energy going forward."
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/09/androids-http-clients.html?m=1

MacBook, the battery status check

Pick up this useful bit today. If you need to check the battery status on the MacBook you can use the command:
ioreg -w0 -l | grep -i capacity

On my MacBook I got:

    | |           "MaxCapacity" = 5936

    | |           "CurrentCapacity" = 1106

    | |           "LegacyBatteryInfo" = {"Amperage"=18446744073709549771,"Flags"=4,"Capacity"=5936,"Current"=1106,"Voltage"=10837,"Cycle Count"=356}

    | |           "DesignCapacity" = 6900

The 6900 is the designed capacity of the battery and 5936 is the max I can get at this point. This kind of gives some info how much the battery degraded over time.

Chrome on Mac OS X with Android User Agent

open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args -user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1-update1; de-de; HTC Desire 1.19.161.5 Build/ERE27) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17"

Michael Arrington interview with Arianna Huffington

I found this interview quite entertaining.

The key to life is running and reading

Very well said

Ref: Android UI: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

Just saving the pointer to this post here:
Android UI: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

This presentation video is worth watching if you are looking for the few tips on the Android code optimization and UI optimization in particular from the couple of the "founding fathers" so to speak :)
The guys do not go deeper on the subject but give a pretty good overview on things to be aware of. The more detailed articles are available on android developers web site.

Android - libs-for-android

Couple of days ago I started to list few quite useful Android open source projects to learn from.

Here is another one I forgot to mention:

libs-for-android

Slightly different approach to ImageLoader implementation, with the public API that binds image view the the url. Also it uses http API from java.net instead of org.apache, that I would probably change, cause I remember having few issues with java.net connections before.

Enjoy!

Odd Day

Today one colleague of mine and just a very good guy, that I really enjoyed working with, had his last day at the company after 12.5 years of service.
It's kind of sad to go back to work tomorrow and not to see him again, but I'm glad to see him happy about the new opportunities for him.
12 years at the same company is a long time.....

....And the things get "better" when you find out that there is another great guy that I learned a lot from is most likely to leave in 3 months from now.

Certainly today was not the most productive day.
So, the plan for tomorrow: regroup and try to get my mojo back.

Chromebook - first impression

Just got Chromebook today that was sent to every Google IO attendee this year and wanted to share my first impression.

Pros:

1. The start up and shutdown time is pretty fast.

2. The battery time is very good so far

3. It doesn't get as hot as MacBook Pro


Cons:

1. The Chromebook device feels flimsy. It's all plastic and it gets kind of annoying when the screen vibrates when I type on the keyboard. Might need to get used to the keyboard, missing some keys when I type fast and navigation keys layout is a bit strange.

2. The Wifi is the "corner stone" of this device is very mediocre. In the house where I have full strengh Wifi reception on my MacBook laptop the Chromebook shows just a half (two bars). It shows 3 bars out of 4 when I sit in just 4 meters from the wifi router. It said on the box that the device comes with 100MB/month 3G data allowance, and this is very limiting for the device where network presence is everything.

3. Touchpad does not feel like too responsive, probably I just might need to get used to it.

4. I do't know if it's a quality of the screen or the fonts, but the text doesn't look that pleasant for reading , especially the small fonts. Some fonts seem to be off from the fonts I got used to see in the browser on Mac or Windows.

5. Gtalk feels more limited since I can not resize the chat window or I can't pop it out, cause there is nowhere to pop it out to.

6. I still kind doubt that the browser-only OS will be sufficient for me and that I would like to keep everything I do in the cloud.

It feels like Android OS at this point has some advantages, cause one can still run web applications on it as well as the native apps.

Finally, I understand that I got the Chromebook for free and really should thank Google for this instead, but I kind of hope that my feedback would help to make the next devices and Crome OS better.

I will keep playing with Chromebook some more and maybe, who knows, will change my opinion or even find some positive aspects of this device.

So far I'm not impressed.

Update: One thing the full screen browser experience kind of lack is ability to see both browser windows side by side, it pretty much invaluable in situation when our small kid wants to watch some cartoons on youtube and I would like to read emails or news at the same time.

Android - some best practices with source code

Android applications development although seems to be quite simple, has few things that can be described as a best application design practices. I personally learned many things from my own trials and mistakes, but nowadays you can make few shortcuts and learn from experts.

There are some good code samples that show some good practices shipped with Android SDK. You can always get the Android source code (expect the latest Honeycomb 3.0) and explore how everything is done there.

Also I'm going to list few projects that one can use as a reference for some good practices or inspiration:

1. The Google IO schedule application: http://code.google.com/p/iosched/
2. The Romain Guy's application that he created for Google IO 2011, that has some tips on animation and images handling (LruCache): http://code.google.com/p/xlarge-demos/
3. The application created by Reto Meier that shows some best practices for location aware applications: http://code.google.com/p/android-protips-location/. The post about this can be found here: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/06/deep-dive-into-location.html
4. The Droid-fu library that contains some useful ideas and patterns: https://github.com/kaeppler/droid-fu . I found ImageLoader to be pretty useful.

These are just few recent ones (except droid-fu) .... more is coming.

Android devices stats

One of the projects I'm working here on is the framework of collecting applications metrics for Android, IOS and RIM applications. There is a bit of client code involved as well as the "big data" processing (Hadoop, Vertica) on the server side.

Recently I was asked if it's possible to get the applications usage report on Phone vs Tablet devices for the different platforms.
Don't ask me why, I don't know the answer to it, it's just needs to be done, period :)

The situation with IOS devices is pretty simple, cause you are pretty much limited to 3 devices:
iPod touch
iPhone
iPad


For android the situation is more complicated, especially since many early tablets are still running Android 2.1 and 2.2 and virtually indistinguishable from the phone with slightly bigger screen.

Currently we use Build.PRODUCT as the main device identifier, that, for example, has "htc_supersonic" value for HTC EVO phones. Now the problem is that we have more than 2000 different android "products" values reported, and every day the new devices are getting announced. So somebody would have to maintain manually the mapping between the device product name and some commercial product name and the type in order to get the kind of report we are being asked for, something like htc_supersonic <=> HTC EVO, Phone.

I wonder if there is such mapping is readily available and also it might be convenient if Google could open the API for that, since the kind of do the final certification for Android devices as far as understand.

Anyways, if you stumbled upon similar problem and have a solution to it, please share.

How to leave the running process on Linux after SSH session is disconnected

.... I had to use this pretty often recently, to kick off the script on the remote machine and exit SSH session while leaving the process running.

Here is how to start the process:
nohup ./myscript.sh > /dev/null 2>&1 &


This post is mostly for myself so I don't forget ....

Richard Feynman: "Fun to Imagine"

Stumbled upon quite interesting and entertaining videos by Richard Feynman:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PLC351CC566C21C884

Google IO 2011, here I come!

Having early flight tomorrow morning to San Francisco, will stay in Palo Alto for the weekend, meet friends, drive around, visit few places (Napa Valley? ;) ).
Then off to the city for Google IO conference, can't wait. Should be very interesting :)

50 years of space exploration

It's been 50 years since the first human journey to outer space.

I can't say that I'm completely happy with the pace of the space exploration.
There is no doubt that a lot was done there, but it feels like there is more that could have been accomplished during these years.

It's amazing to remember how much enthusiasm towards the space we had when we were young. I pictured future to be a bit different back then after all the sci-fi books I've read after all the sci-fi movies I watched.

It's amazing that after 1972 we never visited the moon anymore or any other planet.

Nowadays it looks like the next generation of young people is more interested in all kind of gadgets/gizmos (iPods/iPads). They either want to be some kind of celebrity and/or own bunch of "stuff" or/and be rich.

I hope that I'm all wrong about this, we will see.

One more day till vacation ...

... looking forward to enjoy this weekend and the next week in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
Just went through all my scuba gear, packed it all up and ready to go.
...one more day, yeah! :)

Running Man

About 5 month ago I started running.

Our company built one mile trail around the campus at that time and I had to try it. Also my daughter signed up for "Girls on the Run" 5K (km) marathon for December, so I really needed to get in shape in about three months.

I'm quite fit person, but never was a good runner. The most I even run before was when I was at school and we did 3km (a bit less than 2 miles) timed runs in the physical education classes. My work days are full of sitting behind the desk, working on the computer type of "activities", and this doesn't really promote healthy well-being.

My first run I barely made 1 mile, the pace was very moderate, but my heart was racing fast (165bpm+) and I felt really out of breath at the end of the run. This was quite motivating experience. After this, I was even more determined to run 5k marathon by December and I knew that I would have to push harder to reach that goal.

So I kept running about 3-4 times a week and slowly increase the distance. I started to notice that it becomes easier and easier to run once I find the rhythm. By December I reached 5 km (3.2 miles) distance. The first time I run 5K I was like, WOW(!!!), I did it, I never run more than 3K in my whole life and now I did it. There were few other positive changes that I noticed: my running heart rate dropped from (160bpm+) to 130bpm range, the stairs do not cause such a spike in the blood pressure anymore, I forgot when I had a headache last time and I started to feel better overall.

I've read many discussions online where people are complaining on all kinds of running injures they start getting once they start running more. Initially my knees started to bother me sometimes as well. Don't make it stop you from running. You have to listen to your body of course, and if your body starts to "complain" you are maybe pushing it a bit too hard, especially in the beginning, give it more time to heal and recover, but do not stop running, just push a bit less. Instead of increasing distance or time by a mile a week/month, try half a mile or quarter of a mile or maybe even less than that. Try to change the technique how you run to avoid unnecessary injures, try to land softer on the balls of your feet, right under your body center, open up your posture, relax more.

I've heard many people who run actually say how much they enjoy running. For me running is continuous struggle with myself and my laziness. But I found one interesting thing for myself: I really like the feeling after the good run (has something to do with natural biochemistry and metabolism), and the feeling of "victory" over myself (no matter how much I want to stop and rest on the last mile I just have to keep going).

This week I run four days so far, two of them were 4 miles (6.4km) run, the best time was around 32 minutes, maybe it's not that fast, but I'm pretty happy about this accomplishments. If I keep up the pace I hope to be able to run 10K marathon (10km ~ 6.2 miles) in around 50 minutes.

Hope this short post will spread some motivation around.

Keep running, keep pushing! :)

Android "Gingerbread" SDK - first issues

I downloaded Android "Gingerbread" 2.3 SDK with the new tools the same day it came out, and started to get nuch of errors with the string resources that were using formatting flags: SDK 2.3: Get "Multiple substitutions specified in non-positional format" error.

So the issue was that with the latest SDK tools the absence of positional identifiers in the resource string ends up flagged as errors. Here is a little bit more discussion on this problem:
http://groups.google.com

The solution is to change the resource strings to look like this:
Hello, %1$s! You have %2$d new messages.

Jeb Corliss wing-suit demo

One word: WOW !!!!

Jeb Corliss wing-suit demo from Jeb Corliss on Vimeo.

tips on working with disk images

Just wanted to share a useful tip for working with disk images on Mac OS X.
I had to work with custom android builds recently and as you might know it requires case-sensitive partition or disk image to be able to compile it.

The following couple of functions added to .bash_profile make the mounting and unmounting the disk images easier from the command line:

function mountFroyo { hdiutil attach ~/froyo.dmg -mountpoint /Volumes/froyo; }
function unmountFroyo { hdiutil detach /Volumes/froyo; }

Now you can just type mountFroyo or unmountFroyo, for example, to mount/unmount your custom disk image.

How to compile Android 2.2 (Froyo) on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

How to compile Android 2.2 (Froyo) on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

Once upon a time I needed to do a custom build of Android OS with some changes to the core components for some custom devices.
The instructions how do get the source and do the build can be found on the Android Developers web site:
http://source.android.com/source/download.html
Everything went smooth, I took the latest code and compiled just fine, but.....
.... later I found out that I needed to have my build done based on Android 2.2 (Froyo) branch instead.

The "Froyo" build is not officially supported on the Snow Leopard and it didn't work right out of the box.
So, I had to spend a little bit of time to figure out how to make it work.

Here are the steps I had to go through:
* Follow the steps on http://source.android.com/source/download.html to get the source code and setup your build environment.
* Make sure you have XCode installed with support for Mac OS X 10.4(!) development.
* Install Java 1.5. This one a little bit tricky, since Java for Mac OS maintained by Apple and the older versions are pretty much not available to download. You have to download Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 7 http://support.apple.com/downloads/Java_for_Mac_OS_X_10_5_Update_7. Then use for example something like unpgk tool (http://www.timdoug.com/unpkg/) to exract the Java 1.5 from there. Replace the 1.5 and 1.5.0 symbolic links in
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions with the Java 1.5 from the package.
* I checked the Application->Utilities->Java Preferences as well to make sure the Java 1.5 is the first one in the list, although I'm not sure if it is necessarily. It worked and I didn't bother to try different settings.
* In order to start the build you would go to the root folder of the android source code tree and call "make".
* The first problem I stumbled upon was the problem with /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/include/stdarg.h file it could not be found, while it existed in that directory. I found the solution that worked here: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5000
Basically just coping the file : cp /Developer/usr/lib/gcc/i686-apple-darwin10/4.0.1/include/stdarg.h /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/include/stdarg.h
allowed me to proceed further.

* The next problem was a error during compilation of google V8 javascript engine. I went ahead deleted the external/v8 folder and took the latest stable version from google repository: "svn checkout http://v8.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ v8". As long as V8 compiled and run I was fine with this change in my tree.

* The next error that you would get is
host C++: libacc <= system/core/libacc/acc.cpp
system/core/libacc/acc.cpp: In member function ‘bool acc::Compiler::acceptStringLiteral()’:
system/core/libacc/acc.cpp:4611: error: cast from ‘char*’ to ‘int’ loses precision
system/core/libacc/acc.cpp: In member function ‘void acc::Compiler::unary()’:
system/core/libacc/acc.cpp:4691: error: cast from ‘char*’ to ‘int’ loses precision
system/core/libacc/acc.cpp:4697: error: cast from ‘char*’ to ‘int’ loses precision
system/core/libacc/acc.cpp:4785: error: cast from ‘void*’ to ‘int’ loses precision
system/core/libacc/acc.cpp: In member function ‘void acc::Compiler::globalDeclarations()’:
system/core/libacc/acc.cpp:5904: error: cast from ‘void*’ to ‘int’ loses precision
make: *** [out/host/darwin-x86/obj/STATIC_LIBRARIES/libacc_intermediates/acc.o] Error 1

replace cast from int to size_t in these lines


* After all these steps I was able to built the whole tree fine.

The fix for the last problem I found on:
http://wisevishvesh.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/building-eclair-on-snow-leopard/

* And here is some more of useful information I found on that blog:
Creating and Extracting files from System Image
There are two executable that are needed for creating system image and for extracting the files from the system image. mkyaffs2image is for creating and unyaffs is for extracting files. mkyaffs2image is created when Android is built, We have to build unyaffs separately.
The source unyaffs for is available here
Compile the file
gcc -o unyaffs unyaffs.c”


Hope you find this post helpful.

Good Luck!

What different sorting algorithms sound like

This very nerdy :)

Guillaume Nery base jumping at Dean's Blue Hole, filmed on breath hold by Julie Gautier

Very cool video:




and here is his blog:
http://guillaumenery.over-blog.com/

Play

2-3 USA-Canada hockey final at Vancouver Olympics 2010

Last Sunday I was watching the hockey final game of Olympics between US and Canada. It was pretty emotional. When the US team scored a goal on the last minute of the 3rd period making the score 2-2, I yelled: "Goooaaal !!!".
The funniest part was when my little boy, seeing all this excitement around, yelled after me: "Goooaaal!"

Intersting TED talk: Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy?

Stumbled upon interesting TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html

"...natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted
and the synthetic happiness is what we make when we don't get what we wanted

In our society we have a strong believe that a synthetic happiness is one of the inferior kind... why do we have that belief?....well it is very simple
.... what kind of economic engine would keep turning
if we believed that not getting what we want could make us
just as happy as getting it ....
a shopping mall full of zen monks is not going to be particularly
profitable because they don't want stuff enough to make it profitable ...."

"...our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown because we
have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity (happiness) we are
constantly chasing when we choose experience"


"Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling."
~Margaret Lee Runbeck

Enjoyed being at the meeting with Saul Hansell

He recently came over from NYT to work for our company.
I really enjoyed the energy and passion that he has as well as the vision for the future of our product. Hope he will not get burned out too soon and will have enough leverage to implement his vision.

Following him now here http://saulhansell.blogspot.com.

Enabling PHP and SQLite on Mac OS X Leopard

just a bookmark for myself

PHP the Easy Way: Enabling PHP and SQLite on Mac OS X Leopard

Florida Trip - passing Georgia

On a way to Florida while driving through Georgia there are some places where the sulfur smell from swamps is quite strong. My daughter quickly learned this and on the way back, after 6+ hours driving through Florida, she started to ask me if we are in Georgia now or not. I answered, No.
While driving around Jacksonville, FL we hit the spot on the road where the sulfur smell from the swamps got pretty strong and I hear her voice from the back: "I told you, this is Georgia".

I was LOL :)

Android fun :)

Today was playing with all kinds of UI controls customizations. One thing I needed to do is to be able to draw the background shape around image where only right top and bottom corners are rounded.
After some research and trying different things (because that part of APIs pretty much missing any documentation), I found out that it looks like the left and right is messed up in the API. Here is what works :

<corners android:bottomRightRadius="0.1dp" android:topRightRadius="8dp"
android:bottomLeftRadius="8dp"
android:topLeftRadius="0.1dp" />

As you can see I had to use the bottom left radius to make the right corner round and for the rest of the corners I had to use 0.1dp , because 0dp just didn't work and made all corners not rounded.

Good luck ! :)

Busybox

Busybox is pretty useful set of tools for Android development as well:
http://www.busybox.net

Running Android tools on Windows 7 x64

Here is a link how to make it happen
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3917

Simple Things

Today I went to Halloween swim meet with my daughter. She participated in three different kinds of competitions. It was her first time of any kind of the "competitive" swimming.

The funny thing was that I was worrying, how she would do, and that she might get disappointed with results. etc., while she was just having fun swimming with her friends and not caring too much about results. She was excited and smiling after every race, no matter how she did.

I saw the happy human being today.


Happy weekend ! :)

Firefox strikes back

no comments :)

The power of positive reinforcement

...and the rest is here :
http://www.rolighetsteorin.se/en

Microsoft SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard

Recently I needed to migrate the database from MS SQL 2005 to MS SQL 2005. By the way, it's not as straight forward as it might look like.

After a little be of searching for solution I stumbled upon the
Microsoft SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard

This tool is pretty good at scripting the whole database structure with data. The name of the tool is not really intuitive. So, I'm saving this link for myself as well on this blog.

How to get the list of installed Android root certificates ?

Today, needed to get the list of trusted root certificates on Android phone to verify which ones are available out of the box.

Here are the easy steps how to do this :

1. get the certificates file
adb pull /system/etc/security/cacerts.bks cacerts.bks

2. download http://bouncycastle.org/download/bcprov-jdk16-141.jar and place it on $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/ext/

3. run the keytool utility
keytool -storetype BKS -provider org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider -storepass -keystore cacerts.bks -list -v

Enjoy !

Incredible, amazing, awesome Apple

After watching the original Apple presentation I was left with the same feeling of audience being programmed with constant repetition of thee words : "Incredible, amazing, awesome" ....
Today I found this video:



Enjoy !

Gourse

Stubled upon:

Gource
software version control visualization



Pretty cool stuff :)

Snoop - WPF Spy

Today found pretty useful utility for the WPF development:
Snoop - the WPF Spy.

The best part that it comes with the source code.

Enjoy !

Nokia N900 on Maemo Linux

Nokia announced their new N900 smart phone that run Maemo Linux. The specs are pretty good. Looks like more mobile devices run the different flavors on Unix/Linux : iPhone, Android, Nokia ....

Here is a link to developers pages for Maemo platform :
http://www.forum.nokia.com/Technology_Topics/Device_Platforms/Maemo.xhtml

Wedding & Divorce :)

Wedding :)



... and 6 months later

Social Networks

The text under picture says:
"Social Networks
We all are so different here"

North Carolina Buoys - Weather

Stumbled upon the pretty useful web site, that shows all the date from buoys in the water off the North Carolina shore:

http://www.pdfamily.com/weather/buoy/SEbuoy.php

and the one I'm interested in particular the Oregon Inlet Buoy:
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=ORIN7&unit=E

Currently it shows:
Air Temperature (ATMP): 80.1 °F
Water Temperature (WTMP): 77.4 °F

Memory leak detection for WinCE

Good write up on the Memory leak detection for WinCE:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/mobile/ce_crtdbg.aspx

Since the standard crtdbg.h is not available on the Windows Mobile, the author provided his implementation of _CrtSetDbgFlag to track the memory leaks.

Snooker: 14 year old boy makes a 147

Stumbled upon BMW video

BMW definitely knows how to get customers to become emotionally attached to their products.

Тенис и Бильярд

Сегодня играл немного в тенис и собирая мячики поймал себя на чёткой визуальной ассоциации между катящимся по зеленому покрытию корта тенисным шариком и билярдным шаром на зелёном покрытии стола. Наверное переиграл в бильярд.

36 мне 36, у меня всё впереди :)

No Vegas for You ...

Today we played Las Vegas Qualifiers 8-ball pool matches and our team lost.
So, no Las Vegas this year.

Google I/O 2009 - The Myth of the Genius Programmer

A must see video in my opinion:

The Myth of the Genius Programmer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ


and the year old presentation:
Google I/O 2008 - Open Source Projects and Poisonous People

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F-3E8pyjFo

Lewis Carroll once said

"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop."

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

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.

Интересная закономерность:

тот же самый отрезок пути проезжаю за меньшее количество времени, если времени много и никуда спешить не надо. А когда же времени в обрез, то как правило, либо пробка которую приходится объезжать по мелким дорожкам, либо во все красные светофоры попадаешь, либо какое-то чудило перед тобой плетётся 25 миль/час, там где лимит 35 а все едут как правило 45. В результе время из точки А в точку В уходит раза в полтора больше и если не делать поправку на подобные "неожиданности" то непременно можно опоздать.

What would it cost to heat Dutch Springs ? :)

The Dutch Springs, PA is the closest local quarry where we dive, with pretty good visibility (usually 50ft+). The only down side there is the pretty cold water, especially in the beginning of the season, and if you really want to "get wet" early in the season prepare the double layered wetsuit insulation or the dry suit if you have one.

Here is a quite interesting post on what would it cost to heat the Dutch Springs:

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/dive-ny/281104-new-plan-heat-dutch-springs.html

Enjoy ! :)

Social Networks - beware !

Stumbled upon pretty old article on social networks:
http://www.cheezhead.com/2008/09/11/ved-background-checks-on-social-networks/

Couple of interesting points from there:

* Another question raised is whether or not the profile would even be an accurate representation of the candidate. Morris said, “One can’t guarantee that the profile they are looking at even belongs to their applicant. I can create a Facebook profile on anyone and use their picture.”

* Our courts are already faced with making some big decisions, including one in this case in which a person sued a “friend” on their social networking site for posting an incriminating picture of him that allegedly cost him a promiment job on Wall Street when the company researched his name on the Internet. Although a reader did point out that this was intended to be a spoof, it still foreshadows what could happen (and will happen) if information culled from the Internet is misused.

* So if you are applying for a job and are concerned about a company judging you based on your slide-show of last night’s debauchery, it’s better to play it safe and keep your pictures private. Do not give your friends access to your unflattering photos, keep your profile private if necessary, and delete any explicit comments made on your “wall” - at least until companies realize that many of us don’t sit around at night sipping apple cider and reading a Bronte book by firelight.

...and here is some more:
http://crabbyolbastard.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/the-seven-deadliest-social-networking-hacks/

Here’s a look at the seven most lethal social networks hacks:

* 1) Impersonation and targeted personal attacks
* 2) Spam and bot infections
* 3) Weaponized OpenSocial and other social networking applications
* 4) Crossover of personal to professional online presence
* 5) XSS, CSRF attacks
* 6) Identity theft
* 7) Corporate espionage

I agree with author: "Gotta love the “social” engineering!" :)

Ещё про Апрель

Жена только что позвонила на работу, сообщила что Сашка (наш пацан, 6ти месяцев отроду) сам встал. Сидел рядом с диваном, ухватился за него и встал и сам порадовался своим способностям.

Как то быстро время летит прямо таки.

Что меня радовало в Апреле.

Апрель оказался весьма насыщенный событиями.

* Приезжал Роман с супругой в гости в конце Марта, настроение улучил до самого Апреля, поэтому записываю в Апрельский отчёт.

* Съездили отдохнуть с семьёй на Кайманские острова (Grand Cayman).
Порадовало практически всё: расслабленные аборигены, солце, море, песок, фирмернные кексы с ромом, ныряние с маской, обилие подводной жизни, ныряние с аквалангом, рыбы, черепахи, омары , скаты под водой, просто сказка, можно перечислять очень долго. Скорее всего напишу отдельный отчет по поездке, если дойдут руки, может кому пригодится.
* Там же на Кайманах установил личный рекорд погружения с аквалангом, опустился до 104 фута (31.6 метра). Опускался вдоль стены на встречу черепахе которая поднималась с глубины наверное 130 фут. Удивительно как глубоко эти существа ныряют фактически на одном вдохе.
31м в глубину может показаться и не так много, но для примера на такой глубине на тело человека действует давление уже 4 атмосферы и на этой же глубине начинается эффект азотного опьянения.

* Отпраздновали годовщину свадьбы: 9 лет. На следуюший год будет уже десять, летит времечко.

* Пацану моему Сашке исполнилось пол года. Вылезли первые зубы, сразу два. Начали потихоньку давать пробовать кашу. Пока плюётся.

* Отпраздновали День Рождение супруги в семейном кругу а так же после с друзьями.Благо погодка на улице стала налаживаться, было +25С, посидели на заднем дворике.

* Отвёз велосипед после зимовки на обслуживание и регулировку, надо будет открыть сезон.

* Нашёл кучу старых знакомых через linkedin.com, прикольно, мир тесен.

Водителям на заметку :)

По дороге на работу навеяло.
Перестраиваться в плотном движении в соседнюю полосу проще без сигнала поворота, сразу, как только появилось место для перестроения. Если показываешь сигнал, то водитель позади в полосе куда перестраиваиваешся, как правило, придавит на газ и закроет место. Есть в этом что то территориальное.

Удачи на дорогах!

SSL Diagnostics

Today I was updating the SSL certificate on one of the web sites. I don't do this very often and this time got into problem. After I deleted the old certificate and installed the new one I could not get the HTTPS URLs to work on the client machine. The Firefox just could not connect to the secured https pages without giving too much specifics why. I checked and double checked the certificates installation and it all seems to be installed fine including the whole chain to the root certificates.

I spent some time searching online and found quite useful tool SSL Diagnostics. This tool gave me a little bit more useful information on the problem. In the output there was a warning: "#WARNING: You DON'T have a private key that corresponds to this certificate". It looked like the either the problem with the supplied certificate or the association between the newly installed certificate and the private key.


Here is the final piece that helped to solve the problem: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=889651 .

"When you delete a certificate on a computer that is running any one of the following versions of Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), the corresponding private key is not deleted..."
"To assign the existing private key to a new certificate, you must use the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 version of Certutil.exe"

"
# In the Certificate dialog box, click the Details tab.
# Click Serial Number in the Field column of the Details tab, highlight the serial number, and then write down the serial number.
# Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.
# At the command prompt, type the following:
certutil -repairstore my "SerialNumber"

SerialNumber is the serial number that you wrote down in step 17.
# In the Certificates snap-in, right-click Certificates, and then click Refresh.

The certificate now has an associated private key."

Installing IIS on WinXP SP3

I run into a problem today: for some reason could not install IIS on my machine with Windows XP Pro SP3. I was pointing installer to the correct i386 files location and was getting error saying that the files where not Windows XP Pro SP3 files and they sure were.

I searched online for the solution and one of the suggestions was to rebuild one of the system databases with the following command:

esentutl /p c:\windows\security\database\secedit.sdb

The IIS installed just fine after this.

Good Luck!

Mini Trick Shots

I found this video kind of fun to watch. The guy manages to make pretty amazing shots including jump and masse shots.



Enjoy!

Про Бильярд

Приходит мужик в бильярдную. Подбегает к нему мальчишка:
- Дяденька, давайте на деньги в бильярд сыграем.
- Ну давай.
- Только можно я разобью.
Мужик соглашается. Мальчик тут же 8 шаров кладет, не давая ему опомнится и предлагает еще партию. Мужик соглашается. Мальчик разбивает и опять партию с кия заканчивает. Мужик охреневает и говорит:
- Парень, ты мне хоть какую-нибудь фору дай, что ли.
- Дяденька, как же я вам фору дам, я же не знаю как вы играете.

Alex Pagulayan vs. Steve Davis

Interesting game: very strong pool player Alex Pagulayan against snooker professional from England Steve Davis. I still have some pretty vivid memories of watching Steve Davis playing snooker on Eurosport channel almost 15 years ago.



In this game Steve Davis was not in a good shape in my opinion. Although they both made mistakes, Steve Davis was a little bit less fortunate with positions and made a little bit more mistakes.

Enjoy!

The Job :)

Here is some fun video :)

Увольнения в АОЛ

Сегодня у нас прошли увольнения. Поэтому этот пост не совсем соотвествует общей теме блога. Хотя опять же как смотря как к этому относиться. Для кого-то это трагедия, а для кого-то новые возможности самореализоваться.

Сама практика увольнений для АОЛ не нова. Каждый год с того момента как я начал работать в АОЛ проходили увольнения, сокрашения и реорганизация. Можно представить как это деморализует личный состав. Много хороших специалистов которых я знал и знаю лично, были уволены и много ушли впоследствии сами.
Пожалуй самый неприятный момент что сокрашения проводят зачастую люди не отягощенные знанием и пониманием того кто чем занимается, поэтому не раз уже получалось так что команда или проект лишалась каких-то ключевый людей или полного состава и впоследствии чтобы продолжать равзвитие АОЛу приходилось нанимать этих людей обратно.

В этот раз было объявленно заранее о сокрашении состава компании на 10% или около 700 человек, в "целях сокрашения расходов". Нашу команду уволнения затронули особенно сильно в этот раз. Уволили порядка 40%+ состава команды вместе с моим прямым менеджером и его менеджером. Похоже что, то чем ме занимаемся , мы уже не сможем поддерживать в том составе который остался на данный момент, какие-то проекты прийдется закрывать, а оставшихся людей расформировывать по другим командам.
Уволили одного моего русского коллегу с которым я работал до этого в предыдушей компании. Там он тоже был при мне сокращен.

Сам процесс увольнения не отличался оригинальностью. Вчера поздно вечером выслали емайлы тем людям которых уволили, сообщаюшие о том что им надо прийдти на обязательное собрание в 11:30 АМ. В 11:30АМ уволенных собрали в отдельной аудитории обяснили ситуацию и дали 2 часа чтобы собрать свои вещи и покинуть территорию компании. Большинство людей получило выходное пособие в размере 2х месячной зарплаты ( у некоторых это после более 10ти лет работы в компании), некоторые менеджеры высшего звена (по слухам) получили 4х месячную зарплату.

Не может не расстраивать тот факт что политика экономии компании имеет какую-то выборочную, зачастую необъяснимую, природу. Например в этом году компания купила социалную сеть Бибо. Многие даже не знают от такой. После общения с одним человеком из нашей компании из отдела занимаюшегося статистикой и репортами я узнал что перед покупкой никто похоже не делал никакого исследования бизнесса Бибо, просто покупка социальных сетей была популярна, и то что клиентами Бибо являются дети от 5ти до 12ти лет и им просто нельзя продавать тот контент который продает АОЛ похоже никого не заинтересовало. В результате на этой сделке компания потеряла столько денег (и это опубликованный факт) что вполне могла бы выплачивать зарплаты в 5 раз большему количеству специалистов (чем были уволены) в течении 2х лет. Это значит что не только не нужно былоб сокрашать людей сейчас, но можно было бы ещё инвестировать неплохую сумму в действительно грамотное развитие бизнесса. Одним словом логику тут понять трудно, если она вообще есть.

В общем денёк был сегодня невеселый. Завтра на работу в ещё более опустевший оффис.

Scuba Divers' fun :)

Came across this photo online.
The Russian writing on the scuba tank says "Propane".

Billiard Pro

Of course you can always say that these shots are staged, but the kid is executing them very well. I'm speechless :), watch for yourself:

Про демократию понравилось :)

Время от времени заглядываю на http://vladimir.vladimirovich.ru. Задорно автор пишет.

Вот и сегодня заглянул и в очередной раз порадовало высказывание Владимир Владимировича™:

"Демократия, брателло - она только для демократов. Для всех остальных ничего не меняется."

Вот так и живём :)

6 balls on a break ...

... by Alex Pagulayan



... and too bad he could not handle such luck ....

Mosconi Cup 2008 Mika Immonen vs. Earl Strickland

Just wanted to share with whoever might read this blog and "bookmark" these links for myself as well here.

Mika Immonen - the Team Europe's pool player from Finland, shows very nice game against Earl Strickland at the traditional Mosconi Cup last year(2008). Not going to tell what the score was, see it for yourself, you will be surprised.:)

Earl was somewhat unfortunate, maybe a little bit sloppy and very rude at the end as well. Instead of congratulating and acknowledging very nice game of his opponent Mika, Earl referred to him as being just lucky.



Mika Immonen vs. Earl Strickland pt.2/3

Mika Immonen vs. Earl Strickland pt.3/3

Enjoy !

Symbian OS Programming: Descriptors

Some aspects of software development for Symbian OS with native C++ API can be confusing at first. The API documentation is not very generous and sometimes ambiguous.

One of the new/different concepts introduced there are the descriptors - the safer replacement for the C/C++ strings (chars arrays), that can handle binary data safely as well. There are many kinds of them TBuf TBufC, HBufC, TPtr, TPtrC, RBuf and probably some more. Some of them are stack based, the others heap based, some of them constant, some are not.

Most of the native APIs expect descriptors for parameters and when you are porting C++ code to Symbian OS the first things you have to figure out is how to provide interoperability between C/C++ strings and the descriptors, what types of descriptors to use where and how to do it more efficiently.
The following blog contains a nice set of articles on this subject and might help you to answer the remaining questions on Symbian descriptors: http://descriptors.blogspot.com.
I find the style of explanation to be different and more interesting that just digging around Symbian SDK documentation.

А Новым Годом Всех !!!

Вот прошли Рождество и Новый Год, а впереди православное Рождество и старый Новый Год. Зашёл я на свою страничку, а про поздравления ни слуху, ни духу. Исправляю сие упушение и поздравляю всех с Новым Годом!

Всем всего самого наилучшего в новом 2009м году.

Ко всему стандартному набору пожеланий хочу добавить от себя. Желаю вам побольше (не знаю даже точнее выразиться) осознанности в предстоящем году.

Дела и заботы повседневной жизни зачастую делают каждый наш день похожим на предыдуший: не успел оглянутся а уже месяц прошел и год пролетел. Попробуйте, можно даже с завтрашнего дня, по-новому взглянуть на все что вас окружает, в каждый момент времени жить в первую очередь этим моментом , а не мыслями о предстояшей пятнице. :) Я понимаю, что сказать гораздо легче чем сделать, но можно хотя б попробовать. Кстати в этом нам есть чему поучится у своих детей: посмотрите сколько нового и интересного они находят вокруг себя каждую минуту.

Каждый новый день - это подарок, как говорил один мой знакомый. Дарите этот подарок себе и своим близким. :)

Удачи!

Freediving new year party

Today I was doing some research on the scuba diving destinations. While browsing some of the scuba diving videos on youtube.com I came across some of the videos on how people have fun under water, here is one:

Freediving new year party



I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that these guys are russian divers from Estonia and some of them even from Tartu, you can find more information from their web site: freediving.ee.

Spa World, или о том как мы в баню сходили

На этих выходных выбрались с Серегой в баню.

Я давно уже искал здесь (в Washignton, DC окрестностях) хорошую баню и до сих пор не мог найти.
Всё что каким-то отдалённым образом напоминает баню это обычно парилка при спортивном комплексе с бассейном. Обычно температура в этих парилках позволяет только-только согрется после бассейна, но никак не пропарится до костей.

Влад рассказывал что его русские знакомые из Мериленда ездят аж в New York чтобы попарится. И буквально совсем недавно в 10ти минутах от места где я живу они нашли настоящую баню. И вот на этих выходных у нас наконец "дошли руки" (и ноги) сходить туда и все самим увидеть и попробовать.

Баня называется "Spa World" , вот здесь иx веб сайте : http://spaworldusa.com.
Баней владеют корейцы и открыта она уже пару лет. На самом деле это даже нечто большее чем просто баня где можно попарится и помытся. Кроме всеразличных бань и парилок там есть и массаж и помещения для отвисания между парилками, можно валяться , смотреть телик, перекусывать и так далее. Короче туда можно уходить на целый день, поскольку за четыре часа которые мы там были, всех парилок мы обойти не смогли. Больше информации можно найти на их веб сайте, особенно о разных видах парилок которые у них там есть. Что больше всего удивило, что все описаное на веб сайте действительно там есть в том же самом виде. Баня делится на общие экзотические парилки где ходят в банной одёжке которую выдают на входе и закрытую, разделеную часть отдельно для мужчин и женшин, где можно полностью обнажатся. В закрытой части есть забойные сухая и с паром парилки (190F и 130F) в которых можно прогрется до костей, всякие джакузи, бассейны и массажи. Особенно прикольно из горячей парилки запрыгнуть в бассейник с температурой воды 50F (+10C) и потом в бассейн (97F) со струями воды.

Культура бани не особо развита среди местного населения, хотя мы видели несколько американцев, но в основном туда ходят корейцы и русские. Встретили очень много соотечественников, одни ребята уже пару лет туда ходят, рассказали что и где.
Кто-то из соотечественников отметился в одной из "парилок", где стены покрыты льдом и сама она похожа на самом деле на холодильник, что позволяет охладится между парилками если надо. Так вот, на входе в парилку висит надпись: "руками лёд не трогать". А в углу парилки на ледяной стене бережно выведенно русское слово из трех букв. Это в какой-то степени не могло не расстроить, ведь по таким вот вещам потом складываются стереотипы.

В остальном же, очень неплохо сходили в баньку, попотели , помылись , чудно время провели. Думаю ещё не раз туда наведаюсь, может даже 31го Декабря, что бы встретить Новый Год чистым.

С Лёгким Паром и с Наступаюшими Праздниками ! :)

Mike Massey boot trick shot

Here is the beautiful trick shot performed by Mike Massey



Just imagine what are the odds of performing this, for example, with bare hand (even on the second try) and then add the cue stick and pool table into the picture. It's just amazing, how precise the shot should be.

Jimmy White Snooker-Close To The Wind

I came across one documentary about Jimmy White. I think he is one of the greatest snooker player of all times.

First, here is a fun short video with him doing nice screw (spin) shots:



The documentary about him can be found if you search for: JIMMY WHITE SNOOKER-CLOSE TO THE WIND. There are total of 6 parts.

Enjoy!

Understanding Modern Snooker with Jack Karnehm

Recently I was looking at some training materials online for pool/billiards and found quite nice video series on Snooker.

Just search youtube.com for: UNDERSTANDING MODERN SNOOKER-JACK KARNEHM

There are total of 18 parts.

The following are the parts I like the most:

Part 8 - nice line up position drill with 11 balls (at about 2 minutes of video):


Part 17 - nice finesse shots drill (at about 1:45 minutes of the video):


Have Fun,
Alex

Symbian: Destructor of a global object is not called

It's been a week since I started to port some code here to Symbian platform. The development for Symbian is kind of new experience for me. I did some Windows Mobile development before that is quite different and the porting was easier across Windows platforms.

Today I finished the first part of the code for Symbian and was looking into problem that was causing a memory leak in my unit tester application with ALLOC panic in the main thread at the exit in the Debug mode due to the __UHEAP_MARKEND; in the end of E32Main routine.

After some debugging I found that the application code was having a global instance and the destructor of the instance was never called on the application exit. This was quite odd and the only possible fix for this was to call destructor explicitly at the end of the program execution. The thread panic can be "fixed" by removing the __UHEAP_MARKEND; thus eliminating the heap check at the exit, but this just allows to hide the problem. Obviously the memory will be recycled after the process terminated, but if you rely on some code logic that needs to be run at the time the object gets destroyed you are out of luck.

I did some search online and found that this problem is known and documented:
http://wiki.forum.nokia.com

I like how the solution sentence was phrased:

Solution
No known solution. At the moment, it is advised not to perform any important operations using destructors.

To me this is kind one of fundamental thing to be able to rely on the destructors being called and at this point I'm curious if this was done intentionally or if this is just a bug. If anyone reading this post can shed more light on this , please let me know.

Best Wishes,
Alex

Arithmetic, Population, and Energy

I came accross the following lecture today. It is a little bit lengthy, but it is quite worth to watch it whenever you find some time.

I really like how the author presented his case and showed how the sustainable growth, that our society got addicted to, is pretty much impossible.

Arithmetic Population & Energy
By Dr. Albert A. Bartlett
Professor Emeritus
Department Of Physics
University of Colorado At Boulder


There are total of 8 parts, here is the first one:



and the links to all 8 parts:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LOBPNtupL_Q

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0GySmzLw3zs

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BFLgjbKfypI

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nN5ydw2C8oU

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-3y7UlHdhAU

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ezE7GMu1c

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GmXK2lQvs4k

Что меня радовало в этом месяце

1. Моему сынишке исполнился один месяц. Мальчик растёт богатырский, спит, ест, иногда даёт родителям прикурить, что, в принципе , естественно и, тфу-тфу-тфу, пока не болеет. Сестрёнка принимает маленького братика хорошо и всячески пытается помогать. Доктора сказали что старший ребенок может начать ревновать к маленкому , но пока вроде никакой ревности не заметно, что не может не радовать.

2. Девочка наша закончила первый семестр хорошо и "пятерки" и "четверки" есть. Здесь система оценок другая , вместо оценок буквы (A, B, C) и то в более старших классах. Во втором классе это О-outstanding/ отлично, G-good/хорошо, S-satisfactory/удовлетворительно.

3. На выборах выиграл Обама. Хотя конечно же я бы больше был бы рад если бы выиграл республиканец Рон Пол (Ron Paul). По идеологии мне республиканцы ближе , единственно что настояших республиканцев среди самих же республиканцев осталось как-то очень мало. Рон Пол пожалуй именно тот республиканец за кого бы я с удовольствием проголосовал бы.

4. Сегодня поиграл MVP tournament (соревнование) по 9-ball pool (бильярд 9 шаров). Модифицированные правила сделали игру более тяжелой. В обычном матче когда играет 3й уровень , это игра до 25ти шаров. Здесь правила поменяли и игра была всего до 14 шаров, при том что столы были маленкие 7-ми футовые, с большими лузами. При таком раскладе любая ошибка или удача в игре очень быстро приводила к победе. Я сыграл всего 3 игры , первую выиграл и две проиграл, таким образом и "сошёл с дистанции". Почему меня это тоже порадовало? Получил очень полезный опыт , наглядно увидел что надо больше работать на контролем битка, позиционной игрой и работой в обороне (safety play). На следуюшей неделе буду играть MVP tournament по 8-ball. Надеюсь что получится лучше.

5. Google выпустил видео чат в дополнении к своему чату который работает в браузере. Поигрался с ним, пообщался со своим братом, в принципе остался доволен. Skype-у есть над чем задуматься. Узнать об этом побольше об этом можно здесь:
http://www.google.com/mail/help/videochat/learnmore.html

Obama elected 44th president

It's now official , Barack Obama is elected to be the next president of Unites States of America.
McCain called Obama to offer his congratulations.
Many people I know are very happy with this outcome. I'm happy with this result as well and just a little bit concerned that the House and Senate will have Democratic majority as well. It's always better to have some balance in the governmental structures. Hopefully everything will work out well.

The presidency, I assume, is very demanding job (the presidents are getting old for some reason really fast) , and with everything that is left so broken in so many places it will be probably ten times more challenging. In addition to all this Obama, certainly, will get some more pressure for being the first african-american president,and as a result he would have much less margin for errors.
It's going to be very difficult job and all I can wish to him is the best of luck!

America votes

One interesting thing I noticed that in many states (for example VA, NC, TX) people who live around big cities vote for democrats. My theory is that this might be a result of media and internet involvement and overall more politically active life style around the cities, while people outside of the cities get most of the information from more controlled sources and each other. Of course I might be wrong and if you have better theories on this subject, I would be very much interested to have your comments and feedback.

Obama

Barack Obama with his relatives, Nyang’oma Kogelo, Kenya, year 1987. Nice photo, shows more humane side of the presidential candidate. Don't forget to vote today.

Кандидат в президенты США Барак Обама вместе с родственниками – бабушкой Сарой, сестрой Аумой и мачехой Кезией (с ребенком на руках). Кения, деревня Когело, 1987 г.

Die Maus Alexander

Today I found a song on youtube.com and the irony is that the german title of this song kind of matches my name.
Although I don't speak german language , I can say that this is a children's song about a mouse with the name Alexander.
Enjoy :)

Reinhard Lakomy: Die Maus Alexander - Mimmelitt 4

2008 Summer Tri-annual Tier 1

I already mentioned before that our team won the 8-ball pool Summer 2008 season in our division and advanced to tri-annuals.

This weekend we successfully completed all 5 matches in the tri-annuals competition and advanced to the next round of LVQ (Las Vegas Qualifiers) matches. Besides the LVQ matches qualification we won the 1st place, got nice trophies and won some cash (the highest possible amount at this level of tournament).

During one of the Saturday's matches I came by our captain Rufus and asked him something like: "So, IF we win this match, are we going to play for the qualifiers match ?"
He answered: "WHEN we win it, YES ... "
I guess that's another way of looking at it :)

Here is the photo of our team with trophies.

The next round, the LVQ tournament, will be somewhere in June, 2009 and WHEN we win it , we will qualify to play in Las Vegas. That's pretty cool, huh :)

APA, Summer 2008 results, MVP

This Summer, the APA pool season was quite productive for our team in both 8-ball and 9-ball divisions. We won 1st place in the 8-ball and 2nd place in the 9-ball. We got into 8-ball "tri-annuals" competition and already won the first match. Next weekend we are going to continue playing "tri-annual" matches until we loose or win them all. As far as I understood if we end up in the top 10 list we might advance to the "Las Vegas qualification" matches.

Along with a great summer season for our team I got APA MVP (most valuable player) recognition in both 8 and 9 ball divisions, with nice MVP patches and invitations to play in the MVP 8 and 9 ball matches this November where one could win some cash and prizes. So, more pool matches are ahead, more fun and new people to meet.

"One game at a time" - I said once to our captain Rufus, and he replied : "One ball at a time".

Дети Говорят :)

Сегодня порадовал эпизод из жизни.

Сидим мы вместе вокруг спящего новорожденного Сашки: я, моя супруга и дочка. Надо добавить что дочке моей очень нравится её маленький братик.

Я, глядя на Сашку, почти с умилением, говорю:
- Это просто какое-то чудо....
Моя дочка кивает и добавляет:
- Ага, Чудо-Юдо ....

Ну просто хоть стой, хоть падай :)

Об Экономике

То что в последнее время творится с экономикой напомнило мне ломку которую испытывает наркоман после того как кончилась последняя доза: лихорадит неподетски.

Вместо того что бы лечить "кредитную зависимость" экономики, правительство и центрабанк увеличивают дозу и находят новые наркотики, чтобы как-то продлить состояние наркотического опьянения и всеобщей эйфории.

Насколько еще можно будет оттянуть решение проблеммы пока не понятно, но облом в конце он ведь все равно неизбежен, если лечить симптомы а не саму болезнь.