Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Today was my last day with FxPro Financial Services Ltd.   Looking back at how much I’ve learned and at how much the company changed during my time there, it’s really difficult to believe that I was there for only two years.  In that time, the IT infrastructure was totally redesigned, several major versions of the corporate web site were launched, MyFx.Pro was developed from scratch and much improved over hundreds of iterrations, the company moved into a new (and bigger) office, and the staff grew in numbers.  While internal changes are not always visible to the outside world, an accumulated effect is rather obvious – the company is now well established, known, and respected in the industry.

For me, this work was personal.  And how it couldn’t have been?  During the last two years I enjoyed working with and learning from a lot from a number of people.  Each and every one of them left a trace in both my personal character and professional career.  And for that I’m thankful.

As much as I enjoyed working at FxPro, now is the time to part our ways.  I wish good luck and all the best to the company as a whole, as well as to everyone individually.   It was a blust!  Thank you.

Looking at the calendar, I realize that the year 2010 just started, but considering all the stuff that I have done and was involved in just this month makes me wonder if time stopped or what else went wrong.  I barely have time to breath, but it’s all exciting.  That’s as much as I can tell you know. Hopefully more really soon.

Better late, than never they say.  I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year!

I totally missed the appropriate time for New Year resolutions and forecasts, so I won’t bother much.  But in brief, the year 2009 and was good to me.  I traveled a lot, learned new things, had quite a few interesting challenges at work, met a whole bunch of cool people, pushed quit a bit of paperwork that was lagging behind, got my mother in Cyprus and my dad on the Internet, and more.  It was a bit too difficult and challenging at times, but in a good sense.  In a way that I probably had too much going on for me, rather than not enough.

As for the New Year, I hope it will be as packed with stuff as the previous one.  I hope that I’ll continue my travels and shift a few things at work to get to new challenges and new areas that I wanted to explore for some time now.   Also, I still hope that I will sort out all the paperwork during this year (possible, but knowing me well, I have doubts on how realistic this hope is).  I have quite a bit of plans for this year, personal projects and such – I hope that they will starting turning real as opposite of being just plans.  But, the time will tell and we shall see.

Once again, happy holidays and best wishes to you and your loved ones.

Once again I’ve noticed that my blogging is getting behind.  Busy at work, lazy, and going through the mood change for the upcoming Christmas holidays – that all has a role to play.  But that’s not the major issue.

Thinking of what am I doing differently these days, I realized that my blogging activity got spread out all over the web, and therefore became less noticeable on my own blog.  I do more of Twitter, which is now integrated with the blog in the form of daily briefs.  I favourite more videos on Youtube, which now notifies the Twitter, and later still ends up in the daily briefs on the blog.  I do more bookmarks on Delicious, which also end up via Twitter in daily breifs.  And there is something else I do, which doesn’t come back to the blog – shared and commented articles in my Google Reader.

Actually, as far as writing goes, Twitter and Google Reader happen to be the only two places where I write at all now.  Once I realized that, I wanted to find a way to pull the comments and shared items from Google Reader into my blog.  But then I doubt if that’s the right approach.  The alternative being blogging and commenting about things not in the Google Reader, but in the blog itself.

I am still undecided on the matter.  Google Reader provides a really good interface for commenting and interacting with other people who read about similar topics.  On the other hand, my blog has more exposure than my Google Reader shared items list, and has better interface for discussions.  Perhaps, I should try and see how it goes.

What’s your take on comments in Google Reader vs. blog posts?

Some of you know the reasons why I have been more than quiet recently.  But for the rest of you, here it goes – I like to move it, move it!

Firstly, the company that I am working for is currently relocating to the new premises.  A brand new building up in Agios Sylas (on the way from Limassol to Paphos, pass General hospital, take Agios Sylas exit and go over the highway towards the mountains for about 10 minutes).  The new office has much more space, modern design (at least inside), free lunch, faster Internet connection, and more goodies.  And being a part of the IT team I was very much involved with the actual move of all the people and equipment.

Secondly, because the new office is so much further from my home and because my mother is coming to live in Cyprus, we’ve been looking for a new home.  Yesterday we finally signed a lease contract for a three bedroom house in Zakaki (behind Orphanides supermarket).  We are packing, cleaning up our flat, and moving to the new home slowly.  Roughly by Wednesday this week we should be completely there.

Needless to say, with two such big moves I am a bit tied on time.  And more to that – my Internet connection is going to be rather shaky in the next few days.  So, if you don’t hear from me for too long, you know why.

If there is one thing that my colleagues know how to do that is how to organize a party…

P.S.: Sorry for the blurred picture, but everyone was pretty drunk by that time, including the mobile phones and digital cameras…

P.P.S.: I worked really hard to finish all of them, but that was just impossible at that stage …

I finally saved enough courage to order some more stuff for my photo toolbox.  It’s been a really long while (more than a couple of years) that I wanted to get a new lense, which would have a wider angle view than anything that already have, and a proper flash unit.  And here I am, a proud owner of Canon 17-40mm f/4.0L USM lense and a Canon 430 EX II Speedlight flash, plus a bunch of new batteries, filters, hoods, and such.

As with any other new gadgets, there is a lot to read, learn, and try.  But I am already happy with how it fits and how it works.  Above you can see a self-portrait, practically the second image I took in almost fully automatic mode.  Georgeous!  This picture has all chances of becoming my new avatar or something.  And, of course, a few more images were uploaded to my Flickr photostream.  More to come.

This is a much delayed post about my tour of London.  It took me a whole week to download, post-process, and upload all pictures to my Flickr photostream, and I didn’t want to blog without all of them being up, so apologies for the delay.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

So here I am, in London, UK.

The journey took a bit more time than planned.  There were some heavy thunderstorm over Larnaca airport, so we had to stay on the ground.  Overall we spent a bit more than one hour in the airplane before the skies finally cleared enough for us to fly through.

The flight itself was pretty good.  Cyprus airways flight attendants were very nice and kept bringing us beers just when we needed them.  Plus the food was quite good – some sort of marinated chicken with rice, salad, and the usual stuff.  The only thing that could have been better – the movies.  I’ve watched “My Mom’s New Boyfriend” and “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and both of them were crap.  Better than nothing though.

Once in London, we took the tube from the airport to the center of the city and then walked a bit.  Risking to sound too grumpy, the tube navigation could have been better.  Colors and branch names are all fine, but they shouldn’t be used when splits occur – that makes it quite confusing.  Plus, anything except a straight line and a circle should be forbidden from the map.  Otherwise people have to rotate the map uncontrollably, trying to find some sense in it.  Anyway, that’s not a big issue.   The trains themselves are nice – clean, comfy (soft seats and elbow support), and technologically equipped (voice, displays, and such).

The check-in to the Hilton Olympia Hotel was fast and usual.  Surprisingly, they have a choice of smoking and non-smoking rooms.  The hotel itself is a bit dated, with oldish smells and a few details that reveal that it didn’t have a rennovation for quite a while.  Rooms are the smallest from all the hotels that I’ve seen.  But somewhat cozy.  Overall feels like a good 3 star hotel in Limassol.  But in fact it’s 4 stars.  Or so I believe.

Internet connection at the hotel is charged at extra – 15 GBP / day.  Once purchased, Ethernet connection is available in the room and credentials for wireless connection in the lobby are given.  So far I haven’t tried the wireless yet, but the Ethernte at the room passes the speed test with 3.5 Mbps up and 3.5 Mbps down.  And feels pretty fast too.  But that might be due to lower latency here in London than what I am used to in Limassol.

That’s about it for today.  I am off to bed to catch a few hours of sleep before tomorrow’s main event.

All the stars have aligned properly for yet another conference visit.  This time I am going with two colleagues to London, UK.  We are attending PHP UK Conference 2009.  It’s my first visit to UK, and I wont’ have much time around, but if you have any suggestions on what to see, where to go, or if you want to meet for beer, let me know.  We are arriving today around 21:00 and flying back early Sunday morning.

Tweets, blog posts, and pictures are coming soon.