夜の散歩

私は今日は7月1日だと忘れていました。

そしてぴったり午前1時で私のインターネットと携帯電話が動作しなくなってしまいました。
私は料金を支払っていなかったので, プロバイダがサービスを停止しました。
それで真夜中には, payboxを探すため地下鉄の駅へ行きました。

色々な人達を見て, 夜の街の経験を受けて, 面白くてちょっとだけ恐ろしい夜の散歩になりました。

どのような人達を見たのかは後で話します。

on html and css

Sometimes when I read something like this:

.arrow-left {

width: 0;

height: 0;

border-top: 10px solid transparent;

border-bottom: 10px solid transparent;

border-right:10px solid blue;

}

I think that some people got nothing better to do.

Ok, this example is primitive, but I saw a demo of multicolor icons done via css 3 transformations and pseudo elements.

The question is... what for? To show off? We came to era of advanced graphics just to get back to drawing in primitive shapes?

Ofc I understand that they implemented all those transformation possibilities not just for people who dislike pictures in their designs, but also to make some tasks simpler, but ... BUT.

I prefer to take it as in: 'if they don't show off the features nobody would use them and they would occasionally die'.

Ofc html 5 and css 3 were implemented for people to use them. But I hate to think how long it would take at least countries like USA to switch to full support of them. By that time I guess html 7 would be out ^^. And here... in a country where majority of office workers with win XP still use IE6 >.<

I can't afford using any of it. That's why I didn't learn many 'new tricks and ticks' yet. What's the point in knowing how you COULD do it when you know you WON'T?

Though I patiently wait for IE6 to vanish. Slowly learning new things...

----

I just checked. Statistically (my sites only though) 50% of users who browse the net using IE use IE6.

Strangely enough since the last time I checked (about 3 months ago) Opera is now the most common browser (though it beats firefox by 2-3%, which is nothing really). Next is Firefox. Then IE.

Now the chart looks like this:

Opera 30(-33)%

11+ 85%

10.? 15%

Firefox 30%

5.0 35%

4.? 20%

3.? 45%

IE 20%

6.0 50%

8.0 35%

7.0 10%

9.0 5%

Chrome 15%

Others  …

Meaning at least 10% of our auditory uses IE6. Some would say 'it's not much'.  

Tough it depends. Ask anyone - having extra 10% visitors and potential buyers is better than having 0% extra visitors and potential buyers.

Usual scenario: your contractor himself uses brand new or almost brand new notebook, while his workers use XP and IE6 to work. And since they will have to work with site and know nothing new, want nothing new, etc. you should optimize for IE6. And they heard it all can work in IE 6 as well. You just have to work on it, but that is what you are here to do, right? To work?

Each time it happens I struggle not to send them to hell. But hey - I'm still not in the position to choose too much. At least not for reasons like this...

Ok, that was spin-off. I admit it. But this time I'd be building a site that works in IE 7 or even 8 and Firefox 3.5+ which is a change. Time to be glad? Though I'm not... not too much.

On Russia and Ukraine

The main reason why you shouldn't bother with Russia and Ukraine is not only crime rate - which is constantly rising - and minority problems.

The main reason why I am ashamed of being Ukrainian with Russian ancestors is mentality of *our* people. There's even a joke that says sth like: 'If you toss Americans, Jews and Russians into a deep muddy pit, one American would crawl over heads of other Americans and wouldn't bother helping others; if at least one Jew would get out, he would help other Jews out; and if one Russian would get out over heads of other Russians, he would make sure none would get out after him'. Sadly, it is too true regarding most of population of Russia and Ukraine.

People here do not give a damn about each other, even friends and often relatives. The only thing that concerns people here is making money(for rich)/surviving(for poor) even if it means walking the bones.

Thus never-ending political and social instability: rich too busy squeezing money from poor no matter the cost; poor too busy making money on other poor people to survive.
People care less than shit about anything that doesn't concern them directly.

Examples? Well...
When I was a schoolgirl my friends and I saw a middle-aged normally dressed man collapse in the street near the entrance to underground station - a very busy place. But people kept walking by, some were cursing 'damn drunkards', some were making fun of slumped figure. When I started to move towards the man to see if he's ok my friends tried to stop me saying 'why do you bother? you wanna get involved in it?', but I went anyway. When I squatted near the man to feel his pulse and see what's wrong some woman started yelling that I was trying to rob a man and that I was a 'young whore'. I tried to tell them that a man here had a stroke or something and that they should help, but people started yelling at me to get hand off him. That yelling attracted attention to me and a policeman appeared from somewhere in two or three minutes (from the underground station most likely).
He first asked me what I was doing and if I was the man's relative. After I said he just collapsed and no I wasn't, he told me to go away if I don't wanna spend the whole day filling in blanks and that he will call the ambulance. Nobody bothered until then.
That's something about how people treat strangers here.

And another example...
When my mother collapsed and was dying at her workplace (you might have read my journals earlier this year) everyone - colleagues, administration - waited for more that 10 minutes to call the ambulance. Why? Because if they call an ambulance to a enterprise it is a reason for future inspection and inspection means spending money. They felt her pulse getting weaker, but did nothing as administration hoped situation would solve itself. Some of the people that were present there worked with my mother for 20 years - and yet they didn't bother calling ambulance from their mobile phones, because administration told them 'no ambulance'. And only when her heart stopped, they understood they would have to call for help and started calling ambulance. It took them 15 minutes. Of course when ambulance arrived it was too late.
And when we tried to address police telling them that it was failure to render assistance situation they told us 'not to bother, because you wouldn't be able to prove nothing'. No one would be a witness that there really was a command 'no ambulance', because that would mean losing a job.
My acquaintance's mother died while private ambulance team was waiting for his father to fetch money to pay them; they didn't bother moving a finger watching a woman bleed out until they got their money. And again you can prove nothing.

Bottom line: you shouldn't bother with these countries and their population, because no good would come of it.

A Song of Ice and Fire #2

I have finished reading 4th book of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Impressions?

Too long. It is my main impression.
Many things that happen are just fillers, like 'this character would be useful in the next book, so he has to do something in this one. Many characters feel like fillers too.
Many things happen erradically.
Many choices characters make are at least illogical.

Also characters' images change from book to book, and change too drastically. People change, oh yeah.
But after Cersei is portrayed as ambitious and vile b#tch in first book you do not expect her to switch to stupid and shortsighted b#tch in fourth... And so on.


After you've read second book you begin to notice that story goes like this: 'slow slow slow slow slow slow ka-boom slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow slow ka-boom slow slow slow'. So you have to read tons of pages of fillers to reach something meaningful. And when you reach that meaningful, everything goes upside down.

Characters that move the story change in each book, but imho in fourth author had the worst combination. Cersei, Brienne, Samwell, Arya, Jaime, Sansa. Choose one that's the most interesting, heh? Or rather choose one that's the least irritating. My choice would be... Jaime. Arya's story could be interesting, if she wasn't just a filler for future use.

So overall A Song of Ice and Fire gets 6/10.
I thought it'd be better. And now having read these 7000 pages I get to think that maybe movie adaptation wasn't bad at all. It was shorter :)

Below you'll find visual representation (in tv series' terms) of main characters. Of course, as they appeared in Game of Thrones tv series. 
If you ask me why they made all children at least 4 years older I've found an answer: if they were showing with young actors WHAT those kids did in the book they'd get banned from tv :)

A Song of Ice and Fire

Recently (in a week or so) I've been reading George R. R. Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire'.

By now I finished reading 1st book and read about 2/3 of 2nd. [Update: I finished reading 4th book by now]

Still I have no idea why I keep reading it.

I hate to spoil your fun if you're planning to watch 'Game of thrones' TV series, but seriously... in TV adaptation there's almost nothing but boobs. Oh yeah! They occasionally show cocks too... Thus the rating yeah?

The book itself started to get on my nerves after I ruled out their little secret of 1st book (prince's) and read why Kingslayer is STILL alive. Or rather ... *why* king Robert's court is like it is. 

That was almost enough to make me stop reading.

I hate stories for children. 

I bore with it and waited for interesting parts to begin, because less than half heroes had interest for me. I bore with twisted balance between historically correct medieval world and 'magic'. I bore with children, yes, with children, who were either too old or too young for their young age. Meaning I didn't buy children's parts of the story. Except for Arya maybe. And Jon is not a child in a full sense of this word.

...but... 1st book lacks common sense more than anything.

I often had an impression that author sat in his chair and thought: 'we need an unexpected twist here, so he/she will do the least likely thing now'. There're times when you read something you didn't expect and think 'yes, I see it happening', though not in this case. Some events were planned as story turning milestones and have no logical connection whatsoever to other actions of heroes. Or so it seemed to me.

Well, that pretty much spoils it all. They story turns and twists, but I lost most of the interest in how it all ends in the first half of the book.

So I persisted on reading it only because we started watching Game of thrones and it had even worse storyline. I think scenarios for TV series were made by someone who never read the book. They took main event of each one chapter and filmed it, leaving most of the book behind the scenes. Motivations, secondary events that led to main events, etc. Also since series are low budget they cut out most interesting scenery.

And characters... became paper dolls that speak. 

Therefore an answer I posed to myself at the top of this post is... I'm reading it because I'm bored and I have to fill my head with something.

I can't cook all my free time.

Also... it is kinda educating to read something you don't like, but you know that it has commercial success. Makes one think.

Oh yeah... I laughed at a miss in first episodes of Game of thrones. When Jon speaks to Jaime near blacksmith's anvil he starts his speech with one beard and finishes with another one... makes one wonder who's filming it.