Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Trip to US, part 1 - general impression

It's the 3rd week of my trip to US. It's my first time to US and actually it's the very first time when I've crossed the borders of motherland. I guess I will split my story in a few posts instead of making one lengthy post. In the first post I'll write up about general impressions.

The first impressive thing is that it's very clean here on the streets - almost no garbage and no dust and it's the thing I really like here.

The second thing about streets - they look all the same! I've stayed at Fremont and all the streets look same here - same houses, building of the same style and color, roads and tjunctions all look the same, so it's not very easy for me to navigate here.

I've been in other small cities in CA and it's the same for them too. Well, landscapes might be different for different cities, but in one city it's very easy to miss streets.

There's no explicit borders between cities. You walk on the street, walk over the road and you're already in a different city! It's unusual, because in Russia if you want to get from one city to other you'll have to spend at least 30 minutes riding on a car and you will see very large signs like "city X ends here", "city Y starts here".

People here like to ask you stuff like "how are you doing?" and so on, while they don't really care and I dunno why do they ask that stuff, in Russia people just don't care about you and don't ask such things. It looks like that in small cities like Fremont people prefer to stay at home after work because there's few people on the streets after 6-7pm, though maybe they just ride somewhere or something like that, I dunno. I've noticed the same in Palo Alto as well.

However, there are a lot of people in San Francisco, a lot of freaks here as well ;) and it's nice. In the centre of San Francisco I've seen a slowly riding old american car (dunno the model) on large chrome wheels and loud hip-hop sounds and serious looking persons inside of it. Looked impressive, just like in a movies =)

Subject for the next post is food.

Friday, April 24, 2009

ubuntu gutsy sources.list

Decided to install some stuff on ubuntu gutsy server today and found that sources.list is outdated. It was pretty hard to find working sources.list and that's the one I've found that works fine:


deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-backports main/debian-installer
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-backports main restricted universe multiverse

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Bike, Health and stuff

I cannot say I was a sporty type from the childhood, but since the yearly age I've been spending a lot of time on the street and was playing soccer, basketball and other games all the time. It lasted until about 8th grade, then I changed school and a way of life a bit, I've started spending more time on computers and stuff and started to smoke and drink =) And I've started to attend gym as well. It's kinda strange combination and it resulted it gaining some strength and weight and decreasing overall stamina.

Then I've entered the university and my lifestyle didn't change much: I was still spending a lot of time with computers and other time I was drinking (have tried almost every alco drinks during uni years ;]), though I quit smoking. And I was still attending gym. I did pretty well for an amateur, I did a bench press with about 105-110 kg while my own weight was about 95 kg or so.

On the 3rd year of university I decided that I need more money than scholarship ;]. I've found a half-time job and was still attending most of the classes and gym, but it was kinda hard. Moreover, it turned out that halt-time job is really not very good due to various reasons, so I found other job, full time this time.

So I've started working full time and was still attending most important classes. I've gave up on the gym, because I almost had no free time. However, I consider that's because I don't manage time well and it was still possible to find some room for such activities, but time management is a totally different subject and I will probably write about my problems with it later on. Oh, yeah, so I've left the gym. Then I bought a car, so I even separated myself from walking. Now I realize it wasn't very good, however the car allowed me to have some more free time.

I've lived in such a mode for more than two years. I've started to realize that I feel bad without sport activities. I've gained some more weight (needless to say it wasn't a muscle weight ;]). The lack of physical activities made my stamina even more lower. Moreover, I was missing this wonderful pain that you feel after trainings.

Last summer I've finally graduated. First few month I was really glad that I have a lot of free time and had no exams, tests and other annoying stuff so totally forgot about sport stuff.

And just recently I've started to think about it. My first though was to start attending gym again. But then I decided that attending gym will just more increase weight (and I don't think it's good even it will be muscle weight this time) and lower stamina. I think it's possible to increase stamina by attending gym but it will be more effective to choose some more 'dynamic' physical loads.

So, I've decided to by a bike. I had a bike when I was a child, it was a very simple bike, but I really enjoyed it, so I thought that bike is a great tool to get dynamic loads and increase stamina. Norco Bigfoot has became my bike of choice: it's pretty durable like most Norco bikes, has nice breaks and other stuff.



First impression: it feels pretty good. My area is a slight downhill (or uphill, depends on how you look at it ;]). I prefer to start uphill, so as soon as I get tired I could just ride back. Currently, I can do about 2-3 km uphill and then my legs get tired I have to move back. I guess it's a payment for my not balanced lifestyle during last few years. Anyway, I think I will ride 3 or 4 times a week and will increase the distance a little each time. Will see how it will go.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Anthill Pro CI server is a really strage thing. The tutorial is very lengthy, there are sooo much various links and buttons and menus in anthillpro UI so I still cannot figure out how to add a simple project. Seems waaayyyy too complicated. Maybe it's very powerful, however. Anyways. Hudson seemed much easier to understand and manage.