Month: March 2006

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?

Daily del.icio.us bookmarks

Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user tvset on 2006-03-20

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.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.0.2

Ok, guys.  I’ve been planning to do this for about three month now. WordPress 2.0.2 is way too sweet (I know this from using it for my other projects) for me to use 1.5.2, so here it goes.

I’ve upgraded this blog.  It was easier than I expected (I tried it on another, simplier installation o’mine).  The secret was in the cleanup of unused plugins.  Since I’ve tried a bunch of things, there were cluttering up in my plugins/ directory.  As soon as I removed all unused ones, I had only a few plugins to check for compatibility.

Sadly, not everything works after the upgrade.  One of the plugins that I heavily rely on – phpexec – doesnt’ work.  I’ll fix it ASAP, but for now it means that archives and blogroll are out of reach.

If you’ll notice any other strange behavior, please let me know.

P.S.: The WYSIWYG editor and AJAX admin interface are so shweeet…

Cyprus road tax online. IT gone wrong.

A couple of weeks ago, Vladimir mentioned in his blog that he managed to pay road tax online. I have to agree, this is a technological breakthrough in functionality offered by Cyprus government’s websites.

While paying the tax is now possible, the website is still very confusing. It provided practically no information or instructions on what to do. Now the site looks a bit different though. Notice that ‘Here’ icon that blinks as fast as your computer can render it?

So many people wanted to do it online, and so many failed. Some of them even posted comments on Vladimir’s blog, providing their information (ID numbers and car registration numbers) in hopes that it would somehow work.

Technology gone wrong…

P.S.: As sad as it is, it’s also very funny. Hilarious even.