My friend Lev is back online. Last time webbers heard of him was when his domain name expired. There appears to be a problem with regaining access to that domain, so he registered a new one, and guess what – it’s a shorter one!
Enjoy www.shuvalov.com with few updated blog entries of his. :) His email has changed too, but that’s only a good thing with today’s spam levels.
Congratulations, Lev, and welcome back for another two years. :)
Just watched “The Sweet Hereafter” on DVD. IMDB calls it a drama. The cover of the DVD calls it a “social” movie. I would call it a really slow boring movie without any point what-so-ever. The story is very simple – there was an accident in of the small towns, where a school bus, full of children of course, went off the road and on to the lake, broke the ice, and drowned. Most of the children died, except for just the few, and a bus driver (woman). So, there comes this lawyer who tries to get this people together to sue someone for damages. That’s it. The cherry is in showing how this people are sufferring over the loss of their kids. The lawyer himself has a problem with his daughter who is a drug addict.
The best moral out of the movie that I can make is: Lawyers are bad, because there life sucks. But everyone else’s life sucks too. That’s it. If you knew that already, then you can pass this movie. This is one of those times when I am glad I didn’t make it into the movies when it was showing.
Some people might not know that Massachusetts Institute of Technology (aka MIT) has started a very interesting program few years ago. They aimed at providing materials for all of their courses on the web and for free. If I remember correctly, it’ll take them about 10 years to complete the publishing of all prior courses. Until now, they are on schedule, and they have published about 700 courses from all of their schools and majors. Here is a list of all courses. Anything and everything you ever wanted to know from history, throught mathematics, to artificial intelligence.
Materials provided for each course include the schedule, syllabus, suggested reading, lecture’s notes, tests and exams, and virtually anything you’ll need to complete the course yourself. The only thing that MIT OpenCourseWare does not provide is the certification. Pure knowledge only. Check it out.
In this document I lay some of my thoughts on the subject of working during non-office hours (nights, late afternoons, etc). I’ve wrote all this (April, 2003) after working nights for some time in Network Operations Center of Thunderworx.
It seems that I am not alone feeling a lack of activities in Cyprus cultural life. I’ve been pointed to the site of Rockathon, which tells about a bunch of people helping youngsters to organize different music events (mostly Hard & Heavy, but all sorts). I’ve been pleasently surprised by the design and content of the site – nice photographs, bands’ pages with lyrics and sample music, event calendar, forums, etc. Unfortunately, there is nothing yet scheduled for this year, but the site mentions that activities will start again after May. I guess it has to do something with majority of members being students and May being the last school month. :)
Anyway, this is one of those resources I should keep my eye on for updates.