Trip to Architectural Museum "Pyrohovo"

This weekend I spent in Kyiv. It was cool, especially because I had to relax a bit between current deadlines...
So, as far as weather promised to be fine we decided to have trip to Pyrohovo. We have been there once (1.5 years ago), but weather flubbed everything that time...
I took several interesting shots that can express my feelings and mood. As always, they are geotagged and uploaded to Panoramio.

Windmill


Ukrainian Building called Hata. "Pyrohovo" is divided to several segments and each segment belongs to particular region of Ukraine. As far as I haven't taken a map, I can't say what kind of hata it is... :(


There are ferny brakes too... It belongs to Carpatian region


Ukrainian Hata


One more...


Wildmills


Wooden Church. It can contain about 10-15 people


Suitable place and weather for... kiteflying

"Carpatian" lake

Yeah, Pyrohovo shows whole history of Ukraine -- from hatas to skyscrapers :)

My comment about Ukraine's results in Eurovision-2009

I guess that Eurovision-2009 has shown the only thing for Ukraine: Ukraine's lost all real friends because of its foreign policy. We had international friendship with some countries (e.g. with our neighbours), but lately we have lost it, and new "friends" are friends on paper only...

Who supports us? Russia (2pts)? Belarus (2pts)?
Or you say it could be Poland (5pts) or Portugal? I'm pretty sure the most part of that votes have been done by housewives and postmen from Ukraine...

Condole with Svetlana Loboda, the viсtim of this absurdity.

About 2008...

Almost all my friends who have blogs make posts about 2008 year. About main events and achievements... So... I'll make the same one, but very briefly.

• I degreed University and now I'm Master of Computer Sciences
• I became a freelancer
• I had ferst abroad trip. And... I had 6.5 abroad trips during 2008

As for my trips. I found out that I moved my extreme nothern, western and eastern points on map of the Earth.

Extreme eastern point was in Divnogorie, Russia (Дивногорье). Western point was in Germany, somewhere on road (given from my GPS logger) -- I don't remember that places -- probably I slept :)

It is strange that extreme nothern point was reached on December, 31. I didn't know that (I don't check my GPS continually), but when I found out that I was surprised -- I took a photo just at that place -- how could I feel that it's extreme nothern point? :) So... place near VDNH, Moscow, Russia (ВДНХ, Москва):

I've found a new job. In Cracow :))

P.S. It's pity there's no sound :(

Сar

Car. An interesting thing.

Formerly there were such places in the city.. it was romantic to get there... it raised some trepidation, had been linked with some deep feelings and experiences...

And now .. Now everything depends on the amount of gas that I have filled in the petrol tank. Goodbye, childhood...

P.S. On the way back I made a kind deed

My new european friends

As I've written, I had European trip this summer. Probably I'll write some more posts about it but now I wanna introduce my new friends :)

It's very good that I started intensive English learning before the trip. I listened to ESL Podcast every day, and finally had got enough skills to understand spoken English. I had understood only technical vocabulary before.

So, in Lviv, Ukraine (Львов), in hostel I met wonderful guy Phil Duval. It appeared he is teacher of English from Manchester, UK. He'd visited more than 50 countries in the world... When I asked him what does he do between his trips, he answered he works in UK Goverment... "Oooops!" -- suddenly I thought... "He is probably UK spy.. and perhaps he's gonna enlist me!!!" :))) He was the first person I had conversation about common (non-technical topics) with. By the way, he's searchin' for girlfriend from Ukraine! :)

Lviv. Me and Phil in Zolotiy Dukat (Золотий Дукат)

I became aсquinted with a big amount of people, and I really enjoyed to have conversations with Europeans. We have many differences, but it makes us more interesting!!!

I can't skip a few words about two drunken girls from Zagreb, Croatia. I and my friends met them in hotel "Duo" in Prague, Czech Republic. Funny girls... We had a good time trying to speak with them in English, then it was first time in my life when I used my German-language skill... and even we tried to understand their Croatian :) I forgot their names, but probably they forgot me :)

In Budapest, Hungary we became acquainted with one more wonderful guy -- Maurice from Germany. French name :) He will be teacher too, and now he studies in Budapest. He cycled there from Berlin!!! I couldn't believe... But they have another roads and another attitude to cyclists..

Budapst. Me, Maurice and Dima from Kyiv

I support connection with these guys and ask them to visit Kharkov... But what do we have to show??? :-|

Ray-Elenovka

Ray-Elenovka (Рай-Еленовка). This wonderful suburban village is located in 15 minutes from my house. But it's quite difficult to get there without a car and maybe it is because of this place is so beautiful and clean...

There are two reservoirs. This is the first one. Heart spa is on background.

This is the second reservoir. It's quiet here. Nobody around.

Nothing around... except this beautiful villa.
It is a pity that this is not my house :))

Panoramio Photos -- Back to 2006

I'm going to post here my new photos uploaded to Panoramio.

Today I upload photos taken in 2006 in Kharkov, with my camera Canon A520 and with my cell phone Nokia 6630. By the way, now I use Nikon D80.

Winter was without snow but that day everything appeared in white...
Febryary, 2006. My street.

At the left - my house

That cold october morning I had to get studies in military department.
Out of doors it was misty and pictorial. Fortunatelly, I had taken a camera...
October, 2006. Nearby my street.
Then I decided to skip studies and use misty weather as much as I could...
Nearby my military department.
Small church at military department territory. I took photos through the fence (look at the previous photo, left side) and was afraid that officers catch sight of me... Finally I became bolder and started to make photos just at department territory :)
Tank T-72 "Ural" ("Урал") also known as "Object 172M".

A Day In The Life...

There are the days filled with usual events. But together these events make the day unforgettable...

Today it's 09/30/08. 1.5 years since the day when I met Mary.

It is a pity that today is workday.. I remember 09/30/07, one year ago. One of the most beautiful days in my life.

I had vocation, and I and Mary made trip around Ukraine: Kharkiv-Kyiv-Lviv-Uzhgorod-Kyiv-Kharkiv. 09/30 was the last day of the trip. We arrived to Kyiv early in the morning, autumn day promised to be grey and cloudy. We were a little bit tired after the road, we had already visited Kyiv in this trip before... so we just wished to relax.

I suggested to go after one's nose. I was interested in u-station "Post Square" (Poshtova Ploscha, Поштова Площа), there is funicular placed. And we went there. It turned out that there is also river-boat station on Dnipro. We went there and... saw a trip motor ship there.

I had never seen Kyiv from Dnipro. Day became sunshining. Our trip got second wind and we walked around whole Kyiv...
I can't explain all my emotions about that day but I'll remember it forever.

Сognac and pineapples :)

Kiev Pechersk Lavra (Києво-Печерська лавра)

Funicular

Mikhailivska Square (Михайлівська площа)

Sofiyska Square (Софійська площа)

House of Ukrainian Parlament (Верховна Рада), by the way, that day parlament evections occured in Ukraine

House of Ukrainian Goverment

Square near Franko Theatre

Interesting questions from interview

After interview (see prev post) I thought about creation of new blog in order to leave there some things and thoughts concerning software development. But finally I decided to add tag in my blog, no more. So, you're welcome :)

Some questions from yesterdays interview:

• What article astonished you for the last time? Interesting question. I found out that nothing I read about IT astonishes me... Probably, 'd better do not to ignore articles about IT because of lack of time. And great advantage of each developer/manager is to write own blog. So, I've got started :)
• What is "Lazy Singleton"? This question was for my partner. I knew answer (singleton with initialization of instance during first usage, not in static section). But I didn't know that it also should be synchronized...
• What is 1st normal form of database? What is its advantages? They called this kind of questions "killer-questions". I'm absolutely sure that these guys haven't ever implemented DBs with 1st form and even seen them. But... if do not take into account their freaks... I HAVE NOT listed advantages. It's my lack. Shame...
  

Other questions were less interesting and concerned my last project and my activities.

So, my closest target is to fill gaps in theoretical knowledge in DB, patterns and up-to-date Java technologies...

Plunging into software development...

I don't remember whether I wrote about my speciality... I'm software developer working in QArea Group, Kharkov, Ukraine. Since 2hd year of Univercity I work with software project based on Java. I've implemented applications on some other platforms, but I prefer Java. So...

Yesterday I had a few interesting events.
First of them was hiring interview. Software development company from Voronezh (Russia) searches for qualified Java developers in order to fill a gap in human resources. And they asked me about Java and not only. I don't know outcomes of this event, but it makes me to think about my value in software development at all and about improvement of my skills...

Second event was less sad. It was meeting of IT-Talk community (Kharkov). I doubt I obtained something new or something useful.. but I saw a lot of interested faces. I'm sure some of them are more skilled than me and it provokes me to become faster, higher and stronger :)

Summer Summary

Absolutely don't have any time neither to make some posts about my summer here nor to publish by summer photos.

But I'd summarize my summer in a nutshell.

• June, 5: defend my degree work; -- successfully completed
  
• plunge back into my work after graduation; -- postponed until autumn :)
  
• self-organization, self-management, self-discipline; -- perfection has no limit
  
• improve my English skill; -- later about it...
  
• go on an European tour; -- successfully completed
• cycle races (everywhere, as often as possible); -- one time to work and back :(
  
• teach Mary to drive a car :) -- by straight road without other cars...
  

Thoughts about autumn are more complicated...

Solar Eclipse

Just now solar eclipse is happening in Kharkov...


You can see Moon on the right part of The Sun.

PERT and expenses for vacation

I have decided to calculate expenses for forthcoming vacation. Total sum approximately equals to all my private means plus forthcoming salaries. Probably, I made too pessimistic estimation and not enough economical... I'll try again. Will be more modest.
And I think PERT-approach would be very useful in these calculations. I'll try it also.

Keyboards

Lately I hear a lot of discussions about keyboards. Somebody prefers classic, somebody -- slim or flat, somebody -- noiseless. New feature is rubber flexible keyboards.

When I used desktop PC, I had spent a lot of time to choose the best. I'd wanted noiseless soft one. In my opinion, Logitec Deluxe (costs $8) was the best :) I think so till now :)

As for laptops, I've recently changed my laptop, and one of the most important characteristics was just keyboard. I prefer layout of my previous laptop (ASUS), and searched laptop with the same one.

You can see my keyboard in the pic. By the way, it is german layout, there are no russian lettes, and special symbols order differs from english :) The main feature is that places of "Y" and "Z" are changed :) Surely I use classic layout (EN, RU) and use touch-typing, but when anybody tries to type anything... he/she asks me "How can I do it?" :))))

Maybe it's not handy for somebody, but IMHO laptop is too private thing, and nobody except of me can use it...

Just nice car advertisements

I am not fun of eastern cars, but...

Waves in my life...

All day long I had pain in the stomach... ate too much strawberry... But in evening I became OK.

I decided to come back into the world :) I went for a walk... bought iPod Nano at last... :) Uploaded "Learn English" podcast...

Life seemed renovated... trees became more green and birds sang more beautiful (I felt it despite that I was in headphones) :)))

But some hours later I got a shock. New shock. New intolerable shock. Now I have 38.5̊C... And only my work rescues myself.

There was only one case before in my life when my temperature was risen. About 1997... I sat and played the piano and prepared to tomorrow's lesson. To left of me sat our neighbour Anna Mikhailovna. She was able to play the piano, and said me HOW I should play. To right of me sat my mother. She wasn't able to play the piano, but she could force me to do it :) ...and said me that I HAD TO PLAY. But I didn't want. It caused disgust in me. It seemed I was the most unfortunate child in the world. And... I felt bad... At some instant they found out I am hot... I had about 38... I had to stop playing and go to bed. I lay in a bed with 38̊C and I was on top of the world!!! :)

P.S. Memoirs make me feeling better :)
P.P.S. As I remember, in English "I feel myself bad" means "I jerked off, but wasn't satisfied". Typical error in Ru-En translation :)

Internet and my dreams

Recently I often find new interesting resources in Internet, more useful than "killers of time" (like social networks etc). And in my head appear too many different ideas... and new dreams.

So, I do not know what to do... It is necessary to systematise somehow dreams and... write down them somewhere :)

Polar Bear

Mary found polar bear on Google Maps :) Who sees it?


View Larger Map

Paul McCartney Independence Concert

I've just came back from Kiev. 06/14 I saw a real dream of my childhood, the most famous bassist in the world, a leader of the most popular band of XX century, the richest british musician... :))) Yeah, he's Paul McCartney!!! Independence Concert in Kiev. It was great!!! I can't find any words... In English, in Russian... I never understood fans who cry when they see their idols, but... when He sang "The Long And Winding Road" I was standing and crying... he was sending shivers down my spine.... I can't explain it... I can't explain it!!!!!