None of the arts – literature, painting, music, or even cinema – touch me in the same way as photography does. Photographic images for some reason go deeper into my brain, heart, and soul, and calm me down or, on the opposite, stir me up like no other form of art.
Music amplifies my mood. Movies shake me sometimes, give me food for thought. But photography gets inside, and changes me. And these changes can’t be undone. After looking at pictures like this one, I’m not the same person anymore…
Cyprus web sites seem to be very sensitive about the weather. Most of the web sites have an “About Cyprus” page, which often says something along the lines of “Cyprus has more than 300 sunny days a year“. I do agree that Cyprus is pretty well covered with sunlight through out the year, but I wouldn’t go to any exact number of days. Whatever. That thing is just marketing.
But then, most of the same web sites have a weather forecast widget somewhere on sidebar. What? What for do you need one? If it’s 300+ sunny days a year, the question of “What weather is it going to be today (or tomorrow)?” is not one of the frequently asked, is it? It’s like asking “Is it going to rain today?” in UK. The answer is always “Yes”.
And then, if you look closely on those weather forecast widgets and actually count the number of sunny days, you’ll get … what will you get?
It is sometimes amazing how people behave. Especially when they buy something and they get a choice of what they can get for their money. Given the freedom to “get anything they want”, they often won’t stick with what they need, they won’t usually know what they want, and so they’ll go for as much as they can carry. This might be a worthy technique for a supermarket, but it’s a bit different with web sites.
Yes, we (at my job) build web sites. We do design, programming, hosting, promotion, maintenance, and many other things. And, yes, we can stack a web site with pretty much any technology or interface there is – forms, dynamic menus, AJAX, you name it – we can do it. Can’t name any? Good! Because practice shows that if you can name something, you want it on your web site no matter if it needed or not.
It’s amazing how difficult it is to convince people to stick with the KISS principle or make them understand that “less is more”. Make your web site functional. Put only things that you’d want yourself to use. Study your statistics and see what people use and what they don’t. Remove things that they don’t use. Improve things that they use. Stay focused and specialized – your web site is not an endless trash bin which you can throw everything into…
One argument that I often use, is of Google vs. Yahoo. When asked which company is number 1, Google’s leadership is never questioned. When I confirm that Google is the authority, I go for examples. How do you want your web site to look and feel?
Like this:
or like this:
If these examples don’t convince, they at least plant a seed of doubt. After these, it’s much easier to bend the conversation.
Two thirds of the students at NYU would give up their right to vote in the next election for a full scholarship. Some would be satisfied with an ipod. A few would be willing to give up the right for the rest of their lives for one million dollars.
With elections coming up in both Russia and USA, it’s interesting to see sometimes how similar a few things are.  I’ve heard something similar to the above quote about Russian youth too. In fact, I have to say that I feel pretty much the same. The simple reason for it is that my vote isn’t worth anything. It affects nothing. And eve if it did, I am to vote for one choice of those that I would rather not have at all. And those for who I’d run to vote for either don’t make it to the candidate status or don’t even try to.
Slashdot discussion has a few insightful comments on the subject. Here are some quotes:
 Theoretically, if we had candidates that represented us instead of the interests of corporations and special interest groups, our right to vote would be worth a great deal.
According to our forefathers, the right to vote is worth your life. My how times have slipped. But I do agree. I can’t blame the voter when you have the choices you have today.
Logically, you’re not capable of voting if you’re dead – your statement is patriotic but makes no sense.
 The article didn’t surprise me much either. I think many people feel the same way you do. Many people don’t use their right to vote, so they actually give it up for free, so why not give it up for an iPod?
 You could have far more influence over the government with that $1,000,000 than you ever will by voting.
Yes, I’ve heard it all before and it wasn’t always coming from the Americans…
Via Google Blogoscoped post I learned it is possible to search for messages in Gmail based on what language they are written in. The operator is called “lang” and can be used like so:  “lang:ru“ or “lang:russian“. The operator can be used both in regular searches and in filter conditions.  As noted in the comments, this might be useful for sorting out spam messages (label with “Spam“) written in languages that you don’t understand (Chinese, for example, – “lang:zh“).
For me personally, this comes very useful, since most of my friends and family (at least those with who I communicate via email) speak both Russian and English, and sometimes it takes too much time going through all the messages instead of picking just those in one language (for those cases when I remember the language).