My mother is getting technical

While my mother was here, I was planning to dedicate some time to fight her computer illiteracy. As always, my bad planning and her sly (sneaky?) nature left us with about 40 minutes before her plane for all the teachings.

During those few minutes I only managed the bare minimum. Firstly, I installed Skype on her computer, registered her and configured her account, and made it to autostart in Online mode all the time. I gave her a brief lecture on what it is and how to use it (just the chatting part, no VoIP). Then we moved on to GMail. She had an account there for a long time, but never used it. I just showed her how to read messages, reply to messages, and compose new ones, and our time was up. No filtering, no labels, no archives.

While I was talking, she was mostly writing. With a pan on a piece of paper. She wrote almost a full page, re-drawing the icons and putting arrows all over the place. Too bad. When I came back from the airport, I noticed this piece of paper on my living room table, exactly where she left it.

After all these, imagine how surprised and proud I am to find my mother logged in to Skype every day for hours. She is chatting with me, participating in the conferences, and doing a terrific job. She also figured out the whole GMail thing. Probably not with labels and filters yet, but she does send emails. She even figured out the attachments, which I didn’t even explain to her.

I know that user interfaces are getting more intuitive with each year, but I still have to say – Ma, I’m proud of ya! Ya doing great!

Back to Gmail-USSR

(please, forgive my untalanted Beatles reference)

My email requirements have changed again. This time the changes are so significant that I am re-considering GMail. It looks promising.

Why so? Well, the nature of my email discussions has changed so that GMail threads conversations handle my load best of all. Also GMail is nicely integrated with Google Calendar, which I am using extensively lately. And another feature that I immediately grew into is multiple account management.

If you feel like dropping me a line, leonid.mamchenkov@gmail.com is my GMail address. Also, if you need any invites, let me know – because I have a few.

HP Compaq NX6110

HP Compaq NX6110Perhaps it all happenned somewhat fast, but I am still very very glad – I now have a brand new and shiny notebook – HP Compaq NX6110. Intel Pentium M 1.7 GHz, 1 GByte of RAM, 60 GBytes of hard disk space, 15″ monitor (not widescreen!), DVD-RW, and all the regular bits and pieces – USB, WiFi, soundcard with line-in, etc.

I’ve got all these for a special price of 600 CYP, thanks to my brother.

According to a couple of reviews from Linux on Laptops, most of the hardware should work out of the box, and the rest of it shouldn’t be a problem with a little push. We’ll see how it goes.

More thoughts on reorganization

Spring is here and, as always, it makes me think of reorganizing this blog a bit. Don’t worry, I’m not going to break it hard this time. I am happy with the software so far.

Instead, I will break the site into several more. I tried it before and, although not all parts worked very well, I’m glad I did. Reorganizations help me stay focused.

The reason for reorganization is that this blog once again turned into a little bit of everything. I write about everything – from technology to parenting – here and also do a whole bunch of pictures. That’s not very good. Looking closely at people who come here, I can’t find anyone who reads all of my posts. Some people read those, and others – read these, but noone reads everything, and that’s not right.

So, I am thinking about:

  • Creating a separate blog for my parenting posts. It will most probably be in Russian, and it will have all pictures of Maxim, Olga, me, and the rest of the family, when appropriate. Hopefully, Olga will join me in writing posts there. Maxim is getting more active and creative, and it’s a shame to leave all the fun that we are having out of the world history. The choice of Russian language, I think, is more appropriate here, as both Olga and I can describe things better in it, rather than in English.
  • Creating a separate blog for my movie reviews. Those are very well structured bits of data, and they are very specific too. These will continue in Engish and will use the same form. I am also considering the use of microformat to increase the audience, and to, hopefully, make a little bit of money via Google Ads.
  • Creating a separate blog for technology related posts, but this will be done (if it will be done) at a much later stage. There are too many things to worry about as things are.

As I mentioned, this is not the first time that I move things out of this blog. I did so before. Here are a couple of examples to remind you about:

  • XA-XA-XA – a separate blog for the Russian jokes. This one works pretty good. Postings are regular, resources are plenty, and my enthusiasm about it is pretty high. The audience is growing too.
  • Cyprus Scout – a separate blog for my Cyprus related posts. This one doesn’t do as well, as I originally hoped. My interests have shifted to other domains, and the audience wasn’t pushy enough for me to work more on it. I am planning to give a last try though, with call for editors. If one or more people will be contributing to it, I’ll be coming back occasionally to add my cents.
  • My LiveJournal – a place where I speak Russian. Rarely, and with no particular topic or direction. But I still feel pretty good about having it.

Anyway, I am still thinking about doing all these. My mind is not made up yet (although it’s heading there) and you can still influence my decisions. What do you think about all this?

Make your kids rich. Just a thought.

I had to visit the bank today.  Since I was on my way to the park (with Maxim), I decided to take him in.  While we were standing in the queue, one of the clerks stopped by to say hi.  She played a bit with Maxim and suggested that we open an account for him.  I thought she was kidding, so I replied in a Fargo-ish way “Oh, yeah.  Right”. Surprisingly, she looked at me very seriously and said that she wasn’t joking one bit.

Needless to say I got interested.  She said that all I had to do was to bring Maxim’s birth certificate, and based on this document she can open a bank account on his name.  Maxim will only be able to use this account when he is 18.  But until than, both I and Olga can transfer small amounts of money to that account – 10 or 20 pounds a month.

As a result, if we’d do that, Maxim will have a good sum of money to start the adult life.  (Calculations for the lazy ones: 10 pounds per month x 12 month per year = 120 pounds per year.  Maxim is now 1 year old.  That means that he has another 17 years to go before he can use the account.  120 pounds per year x 17 years = 2040 pounds + bank percentage.  4080 + percentage you’re willing to make it 20 pounds per month).

I understand that for many parents saying this outloud is like repeating that the planet Earth is round, but for me it was a completely new unconsidered idea.  I’ll be rushing back to the bank with Maxim’s birth certificates one of these days.