Kindle 2.5 is on the air

Kindle Version 2.5 Overview

We're excited to announce that a new, free software update is now available for Kindle and will be automatically delivered to your device. The features included in this update are:

• Collections: Organize your books, audiobooks, and personal documents into one or more collections. Subscriptions such as newspapers, magazines, and blogs cannot currently be added to collections on Kindle. Learn more. -->

• PDF Pan and Zoom: Zoom into PDFs and pan around to easily view small print and detailed tables or graphics. Learn more. -->

• Password Protection: Password protect your Kindle when you're not using it. Learn more. -->

• More Font Sizes & Improved Clarity: Enjoy two new larger font sizes and sharper fonts for an even more comfortable reading experience. Learn more. -->

• Facebook & Twitter Posts: Share meaningful book passages with friends on Facebook and Twitter directly from your Kindle. Learn more. -->

• Popular Highlights: See what the Kindle community thinks are the most interesting passages in the books you're reading. Learn more. -->

via amazon.com

Social component is clearly the most interesting. Can't hardly wait to try.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

My watches crowns post

By the way, for those who had bookmarked the link to my watches crowns post, the address has changed.

Instead of:

http://live.prokhorenko.us/2009/08/watches-are-all-about-crowns.html

it's now:

http://live.prokhorenko.us/watches-are-all-about-crowns

Unfortuntely, I don't know how to make this post "sticky", like people do with future-marking the posts on LiveJournal, to make them always visible on the top. Hopefully Posterous guys will tell us what's the best way to do this here.

P.S. And you can also find it on my Blogger at http://prokhorenko.blogspot.com/2009/08/watches-are-all-about-crowns.html

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Moving the domain name to Posterous

Finally I came to the point that I do not see much sense in keeping up my Blogger account any longer.  

Posterous became a great replacement, I found myself using only it, with broadcasting everything to all other points of presence, so why keep it secondary, while it's the deal maker.  And it keeps much more history in it, comparing to Blogger, which keeps only its own story.

I would keep my Blogger (prokhorenko.blogspot.com) account anyways, but it's not going to be serving my live.prokhorenko.us domain name anymore.

Have fun and don't be angry of some posts reappearing again in the feed - shit happens.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Getting back on the track

It looks like I got off the track last month.  Almost no blog posts, only passive Twitter streaming, sounds like nobody is here.  

Well, not the real truth is here though.  I was quite busy with some stuff.  Adium has broken support for Twitter now, I don't know why, but yesterday's fresh snapshot and build couldn't authenticate me still.  So probably this explains my only passive reading list there, but no active tweets, other that occasional mobile shouts.

My blog was keeping silence mostly because this is the way it is.  It looks like my blogging activity is mainly sinusoid, or something similar to a sine wave with very relatively slow ups, sharp peaks and quick drops.  Maybe it's because I don't blog much about my day job anymore, I'm doing a lot of tech stuff that is pretty custom tailored and I don't feel like sharing it (probably because of too tiny or lack of auditory for this posts at all), and my product management ventures didn't reach those stages when I'd start seeing a lot of value there to share with others.

But I'll put my wheels back on.

Whatever, but life is going on.  I had a chance to attend Percona's new one-day training in San Francisco, which was about Developing High Performance, Scalable Applications.  That was a pioneering one, but very good. It was a training course aimed at developers building applications with MySQL, and while I'm not 100% hands-on developer anymore these day, I do build applications with MySQL.  The training covered the topics on how to optimize queries, common design mistakes in MySQL, case-studies on how to solve various theorhetical application problem and  briefly on architecture decisions that should be made in applications.  I'm pretty happy with what I spent a day for.

I also read the Deploying Rails Applications book and almost done with Designing Social Interfaces.  I liked them both, and I can probably suggest both of them, so let me put some stress on what I didn't like instead:

Deploying Rails Applications:

1. It's a very great overview of the things around, but feels like too much of them.  Getting a better idea of what to apply and when with a good structure would probably do a better job here.
2. It's a little bit light and hard at the same time, probably the wrong mix of content.
3. If you do have an administration skills, you probably find the book more like, "okay, okay, got it, okay, cool - I'm done with it, what's next?".
4. I hate to repeat myself, but once again, it felt to me that too much stuff that probably doesn't need to be mixed together.
5. I still recommend it.

Designing Social Interfaces:

1. While I'm supposed to say bad things, I still want to say I really liked the book.  It's probably not the rocket science, but it's very good.
2. I felt like the author(s) got bored in the middle of the book, so did I, but it looks like he's recovering closer to the end of it (and so do I). :)
3. Too much of Yahoo, and particularly Flickr.  I love Flickr, but too much of cliches from it.
4. The books if pretty decent and I highly recommend it.  I still have few chapters to finish, but they'd probably not make it worse.

So basically that's it and see you around...

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Status update

Completed the Data Sufficiency section in the morning. Didn't actually do much. It looks like I lost some traction and need to get back on course.

Three days in gym so far. The only good thing is it's very close. I can put shorts and t-shirt, jump into the car or (better, but tougher) take a quick walk to it. Actually, 0.4 miles away and it's 8 minutes walk according to Google. Basically, that's the only good thing about it. ;)

Found a nice watches that I'm failing to identify. Here they are. Looks like german and a little bit steampunkish, but nice.

Today is a pretty warm day. It's about 85+ here in SF corridor to the Valley. I guess the temperature goes way up if you'll got south.

Progress on the move

I'm still out of the sync because of my move from Pasadena, CA to Millbrae, CA. While it's only 365 miles (~580 km, pretty similar like from Dnepropetrovsk to Kiev - the route that several of my Ukrainian friends use for commuting weekly) from my present place to the new apartment, it takes a huge amount of time to complete it. Hopefully, I can call it a day by the end of next week.

On other note, while I'm not a big fan of TV here in US - during last 3 years, I didn't ever pay for cable. I'm also not going to do this at my new place. However, I happen to watch some shows occassionally. In example, I saw few series of Wife Swap during my first days in US. I don't find this show to be interesting, but it can be an OK time-killer, just in case you need one. Lately, I was pointed to an interesting episode, which featured Stephen Fowler. Here is the link to YouTube of it.

I wasted barely 30 minutes of my weekend time, but I got fun instead, so I'm pretty happy with the result. And you know what, people can call him jerk, but I found him to be a pretty typical character whom you meet often in your life. And what can upset some of you even more, he's got grounds. From the other side, it does not save him from being called "pretentious, ignorant jerk". I don't know him personally, so I'd stay away from putting any marks on him. I used to never trust what you see on TV. It's never the raw truth, somebody has already edited that to some extent.

Somehow, I found that huge part of people who complained the most, are having troubles to understand British people. Well, they are tough. And pretty much rude sometimes. Unless you're ready to fight for you live beliefs, but not be a passive "proud citizen of some country" with a flag in hands, and waiting when somebody will do something to save your ass.

Having your kids overweight, accept that and say that "nobody wants to hear this anymore" was pretty much enough for me to become antipathic to the other-than-Stephen-family. You can do whatever you want to your life and your health. But acceptance of destroying your kids' life and health is the highest level of stupidity. Adding more idiotism on the top, just added some more juice to my criticism of "mid-western" point of view (however, I'm very concerned that this is a real mid-western style).

Фото и прочее

В этот самый момент сижу и закачиваю фото из iPhoto в мой Flickr, за который я не пожалел двадцати с чем-то долларов в год.

Удовольствие в этом крайне сомнительное. Уже залил больше 5К фото, когда понял что осталось тоже больше 5К.

И это не считая нескольких дисков (пары-тройки DVD) которые раскиданы где не попадя, и имеют много исторических фото до 2006 года. Мак у меня появился только в с апреля 2006, до этого времени все фото аккуратненькими файлами складывались на CD-R.

Но самое неприятно даже не медлительность процесса, а я его проблемность. Заметил неприятную особенность. Когда начинаю заливать большие файлы (Flickr, YouTube, Rapidshare и прочее гавно), а также когда в принципе долго заливаю — у меня все сдыхается, и по 80 порту идут connection timeout. Однако же почту удивительным образом читать могу, большинство IM запущенных работает (остальные походу может никогда и не работали), даже P2P может самоотверженно продолжаться. 80-ый порт однако же предательски молчит.

Помогает в этих случаях рестарт WiFi роутера. Причем рестарт типа — ну-ка попроси снова IP у DSL роутера (соединение держится на DSL коробочке). У меня старенький Belkin F5D8230-4, хотя исключительным гавном такое не назвать — гораздо хуже в промышленных масштабах.

Вопрос — что за гавно имеет место быть? Пенять на глюкавость роутера, неправильный MTU или плохую погоду — как-то некошерно. Хотя Apple Airport Express в wishlist добавил. Буду искать подвох - поиграюсь с VPN и какими-нибудь левыми проксиками на чужих портах.