No English version, I’m afraid

7:08 PM on 20 July 2008

Sorry, but this post is not available in English.

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If I were Shepard

7:13 PM on 14 July 2008

Face-generator in Mass Effect is no better than any other usability, attached to the epic project of Bioware. But it does give a chance to create something extremely beautiful.

Read further »

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How Do You Motivate Yourself?

4:27 PM on 17 June 2008


napisal.ru/smotrite

Slogan says: “Write a cool novel and win a Nobel Prize in Literature!”
Amazingly motivating.

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I write

2:02 AM on 13 June 2008

We have a deal: posts that I write are translated by Darkroom, and her posts’ translations are all mine. Therefore, each post is an absolute disaster.

From one hand, there’s a temptation to talk slang, to throw smelly language garbage all around. To imagine voluptuously how will the opponent take this dare.

From the other hand, there’s no use in blogging together at all if these thoughts even just enter my mind. [Okay, let them enter, but don’t let them pass &) - D.] So I have to watch out for any culture mismatches, for connotations, for unobviousnesses [oh my, that is heck of a word. - D.] — I do want to make each text truly universal. And, of course, I remember about difference between being understood and being foolproof, it’s not about that. I see a hole in the universe when phrase can never be in another language, that’s all.

So, whenever I write an untranslatable piece of text, I must fill the gaps, as I do now. Explaining why my post cannot be converted would be fun, I know. If it was not so damn boring.

And tags for such improvisations will be a little bit… you know. As a compromise we established a tag for all not-Russian-to-English and for all not-English-to-Russian.

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Portion of D

9:26 PM on 10 June 2008

I honestly don’t get what is so amazing about parents. They’re not different from us at all.
Mom’s eyes, dad’s long thin fingers, bright chestnut-coloured hair — simple mix from blonde chestnut and brunette chestnut. Psychic tic from mom, dad’s habit to joke with a serious look on the face and his self-assurance. Though I learned from mom to give up my mistakes too easy (yes, it’s somehow strange in our crazy, crazy world) and to be indifferent to anything other than the atmosphere. Dad’s wit and mom’s modesty cause snorting under my breath, that is sometimes obscure even to initiates. Manner of quarreling without arguing and manner of answering by asking. Secretly cherished love for football (not that american-rugby-like thing) and soap operas. Rationality growing into boredom — and low threshold for accepting on faith at the same time.

Of course, they’re different. But they’re still the same.

///

Euro is entertaining already: compared to dull Swissczechs and Frenchromanians Portugal and Turkey were looking just awesome. From the opening game I rememebered only crying Frey and true internationality of Switzerland. Portuguese were singing their hymn altogether (with the Figo on the stands), were running like the wind and playing with ease and passion, excuse my English. Pepe, who scored first, wrinkled his nose so funny &)

And, of course, Ronaldo. I didn’t see much of England Premier in last season, but in comparison with WC-2006 he was a completely different person. The only time he fell on the grass was after the final whistle, I believe. (That is a good thing, my football-altered friends.) And he gathered, gathered Turks around himself, pulling them away from other Portuguese attakers. I did enjoy.

///

We decided to follow the good tradition: upload three tracks in a time (instead of one) so that you can evaluate the artist in general. Been there, done that: I went nuts about “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”, got George Michael’s discography… and found it absolutely disgusting.
The last song-in-its-own: Lynn Anderson - Rose Garden.

boomp3.com

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GUI Bloopers 2.0

12:52 PM on 3 June 2008

Jeff Atwood wrathfully criticizing design of Windows Vista (the only thing it could be proud of) must have shown an antithesis as a blogger-with-100,000-subscribers. And he did.
“GUI Bloopers 2.0” in his opinion is “great platform agnostic primer of UI consistency and design guidelines”.

Everything went fine, I managed to google up a PDF in no time and it is waiting for you: direct link, no joking.

Main target audience of the book is “developers who develop software or Web sites with little or no guidance or feedback from UI professionals”. But UI-designers and young PMs are intended, too.
As I take to heart only the latter, here’s a quote which shows that author didn’t forget about managing all this staff who is making bloopers all the time, poor idiots. Ghm. Anyway, the quote:

For software managers, the chapter on management bloopers is the most important. <…> You can probably skip the chapters on GUI control, navigation, and graphic design and layout completely. You can just tell your programmers and designers to “read those sections and do what Johnson says.” :-)

For those who was not convinced by me and Atwood the book has a Web presentation at gui-bloopers.com, where you can find samples, additional chapter about Web bloopers and checklist for the most pedantic ones.

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Lack of luck

8:57 PM on 24 May 2008

If it wasn’t for bad luck,
I wouldn’t have no luck at all.

Cream, “Born Under a Bad Sign”

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Cloud computing in action

8:56 PM on 24 May 2008

My heart is bleeding, when I need to delete uploaded music in order to make some room for new tracks. Hosting plan and our inherent laziness restrict us down to 400 MB, and this is so little as compared with endless resources of sites and social networks suggesting uploading mp3 to their servers. We’ll choose something nice and start to share music with this anti-file method. Diclaimer “ask if need to download” still works — as long as very few gonna ask :)

imeem.com puts useless and bad looking link. Lame. I removed the link so that our cosy blog would not take any style-damage.
goear.com cannot read ID3 tags. How did they even manage not to?..
boomp3.com cannot read tags either, but it’s so small and beautiful, that there’s no need. It also doesn’t have registration thus no profiles, but sends an email about each file. As long as we have Gmail we’ve got it under control.

Further googling gave only musicianhostings, so I pronounce the session over. (I hope that is the right words.)

Testing track: song “Minnie The Moocher” from compilation “The World of Jeeves and Wooster”, performer — Hugh Laurie, today he goes under the name of House, M.D.

boomp3.com

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Master of interpretation

9:02 AM on 21 May 2008

…he said, “If I were not Alexander, I should be Diogenes”; that is to say: “If it were not my purpose to combine foreign things with things Greek, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of Greek justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me, Diogenes, that I imitate Heracles, and emulate Perseus, band follow in the footsteps of Dionysus, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Greeks should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Caucasus. Even there it is said that there are certain holy men, a law unto themselves, who follow a rigid gymnosophy and give all their time to God; they are more frugal than Diogenes since they have no need of a wallet. For they do not store up food, since they have it ever fresh and green from the earth; the flowing rivers give them drink and they have fallen leaves and grassy earth to lie upon. Because of me even those faraway sages shall come to know of Diogenes, and he of them. And I also, like Diogenes, must alter the standard of coinage67 and stamp foreign states with the impress of Greek government.”

Plutarch, “On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander. First Oration”

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DRM

12:07 AM on 16 May 2008

Лицензионная копия «King’s Bounty. Легенда о рыцаре», которую все так хвалят, подмигнула словами «лицензионная копия» и установилась. За галочку «не сувать ничего в „Мои документы“» — отдельное спасибо.

А потом пришёл Starforce и всё испортил.

Я не выношу DRM. Не только то, которое встраивается в mp3. Мне тошно от всего этого понятия, «управление цифровыми правами» (Digital Rights Management, если лень гуглить) в том виде, в котором оно сегодня реализуется.
Есть пылесос. Я пришёл в магазин и купил его. Пылесос стал мой. Могу из окна выкинуть, могу выпилить в стенках цветочки, могу собрать и разобрать, могу подарить.
А Старфорс говорит: не вздумайте выпиливать, взбесится и убежит. Не вздумайте курить рядом с ним, он этого не любит. И не дёргайте ногой, когда пылесосите.

DVD — не пылесос, кто спорит. Но почему нельзя ставить Deamon Tools вместе со Cтарфорсом? Почему нельзя спокойно установить Висту на другой компьютер, без того чтобы беспокоиться, не запомнил ли кто-нибудь модель материнской платы? Потому что не всё коту Масленица. Почему mp3 можно слушать не всяким плеером? Чтобы карась не дремал.

Карась не дремлет, честное пионерское, у него божеский рейтинг 1.4 на torrents.ru. Есть жизнь без DRM. Но недоумение остаётся. Почему нельзя выпиливать по пылесосу? Почему платить хуже, чем не платить? За деньги получаем кошмарный Cтарфорс, который не нужен никому, кроме издателей, который потом нужно удалять отдельно. Без денег получаем отсутствие мусора в системе и рабочую программу. Не задавая глупых вопросов.
А, за деньги ещё в довесок пресловутое «чувство удовлетворения от высокоморальности собственных действий». Это ведь так высокоморально — заплатить за диск. Наверное, у покупателей DVD уже есть свой святой покровитель.

Я искренне надеюсь, что это переходный период. Флуктуация идиотизма. Этот синдром RIAA пройдёт бесследно и останется курьёзом, который выдумают школьники на башорге через двадцать лет.

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  • Друг о друге

    Pirim Karikaturkin
    Умный зануда в очках. Ошибки логические, стилистические и орфографические возникают там, куда обратит он свой взор, поэтому на себя смотреть не любит. И не любит дискотеки.


    Darkroom
    Девочка с плеером, веером и проч. Наибольшие части тела — глаза и уши, но об услышанном и увиденном предпочитает молчать, нагнетая таинственность. Любит плюшевые мебеля и виноград.

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