sergeisergeievich (aka ssr)

Readers in US, Russia, Germany and India are the most pleased with Wikipedia Article Quality

2011-11-12T19:33:00.001+04:00

Read the story "Readers in US, Russia, Germany and India are the most pleased with Wikipedia Article Quality" at http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/11/09/wikipedia-quality/

GNOME woes continued

2011-11-09T15:36:00.001+04:00

Oh my gosh... Now, I am close to conclusion that KDE is, finally, better than GNOME 3. KDE beats GNOME... Voilà!

More Alina Bashirova

2011-10-25T11:43:00.000+04:00

Two more amazing songs by Tatar pop singer Alina Bashirova (Алина Баширова, Алинә Бәширова). She is very talented, I like her very much!

Ялган (Yalgan)

Sin Ber Elmaysan (Син бер елмайсан)

And also one extra GREAT song, without a video: http://prostopleer.com/tracks/5081279QMDj

Akademichesky residential zone

2011-10-20T19:56:00.000+04:00

Akademichesky is an innovative residential zone being constructed in Ekaterinburg, Russia. See the photo album by clicking the picture.

GNOME → XFCE (Unity woes)

2011-10-18T17:06:00.000+04:00

God is the witness, I honestly tried to adopt Unity desktop environment for Ubuntu Linux, two times, and failed (Ubuntu forces Unity instead of older GNOME which now doesn't work with fresh 11.10 release). Unity is very awkward to me, and I suspect heavy Macintosh influence in it, and in my opinion Apple Corporation is a greedy sect worse than Microsoft. While I am in favor of Open Source / Wikipedia help-each-other principles (known in South Africa as Ubuntu). After all, I've found that XFCE environment works, possibly, even better than GNOME, so I'm gonna be an Ubuntu XFCE user from now on.

Ekaterinburg Expo 2020 bid blog

2011-09-05T05:45:00.001+04:00

Watch the new blog!

http://expo2020-ekaterinburg.blogspot.com

Yes!

2011-08-02T17:00:00.001+04:00

Russia to propose Yekaterinburg as Expo 2020 venue

16:33 02/08/2011 Russia will propose the Urals city of Yekaterinburg as a candidate to host the World Expo 2020 international exhibition, presidential Aide Arkady Dvorkovich told reporters on Tuesday.>>

Other news of the day

Alina Bashirova

2011-04-05T08:20:00.001+04:00

I have discovered another excellent Tatar Pop Music video, "Sin, sin diep" by Alina Bashirova http://kiwi.kz/watch/wnw7ovtssr42/

Mapping the Russian Blogosphere

2010-10-13T13:40:00.005+04:00

Read the announce of the upcoming report on research I participated in:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2010/10/russiaDC

Hosted by USIP’s Center of Innovation for Science, Technology & Peacebuilding, experts from Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Morningside Analytics will present their new research on the Russian blogosphere, while prominent Russia experts and notable bloggers will respond. The research team mapped this extensive social network, analyzing over 11,000 Russian language blogs to understand how politics is discussed, by whom, and if there is evidence of political and social mobilization in the blogosphere. The team also analyzed the blogosphere’s place within the overall Russian online and traditional media ecology, including discussion of top political YouTube videos.

update: Here's the permanent page for the project which now features Russian translation of the report (in PDF).

Хәния Фәрхи «Туган як» (Хания Фархи)

2010-10-05T18:53:00.000+04:00

More photos

2010-08-07T21:12:00.004+04:00

I have updated my photo galleries with several regional albums. Among the updates are:

Stavropol, Rostov-on-Don, Mirny, Yekaterinburg, Karelia, Sukhum, Delhi, Varanasi

and also the updated Phone Stuck Stock featuring Moscow smog photos; see the entire photo collection here

Myths & Facts

2010-06-19T15:42:00.006+04:00

While Russian President Medvedev tells world leaders at Economic Forum in St. Petersburg how modernized and civilized Russia is, see what is going on in Russia in reality:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Russia's_main_airport_faces_high_danger_from_dump_birds

Rostov-on-Don Wiki-Conference 2010 - Meta

2010-05-17T18:11:00.001+04:00

Rostov-on-Don Wiki-Conference 2010 - Meta: On May 8 and 9, 2010, the Russian-language IV Wiki-Conference was held in Rostov-on-Don city in the South of Russia. The first day location was Donskaya State Public Library and the second day discussions took place in the Artistic Photography School.

The event was organized with the support from Wikimedia Russia and gathered about 40 participants from different Russian cities. 9 reports were presented and 3 panel discussions held.

Russian language material on the meetup can be found at ru:Википедия:Вики-конференция 2010.

See information on other Russian Wiki-Conferences at Events#Wiki-Conference in Russia.

Did you also know

2010-04-26T18:27:00.001+04:00

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Image_with_pinkish_color_banned.jpg

"Description Image with pinkish color banned.jpg
English: en:Green Dam Youth Escort recognizes pornographic images by analyzing skin-colored regions. It mistakenly assumed this image of pink pigs was pornography."

Didn’t you know what...

2010-04-26T17:51:00.004+04:00

Moscow Sheremetyevo International Airport has a special warning http://svo.aero/en/flight-safety/brief/ at its website with a special plead for passengers to prevent them from jokes.

"While passing pre-flight inspection and answering questions of the Aviation Security Service personnel regarding your possessions and substances prohibited aboard an aircraft, make sure to refrain from irrelevant jokes, such as “It’s a bomb”, “This is acid”, etc. Such answers are treated as a statement that the passenger actually carries dangerous substances and items, and any such passenger may be deplaned and handed over to the transport police for further questioning and prosecution in accordance with the applicable laws of the Russian Federation, including institution of criminal proceedings under Article 207 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Fraudulent message of the act of terrorism”)."

English analysis of Runet reacting to terror

2010-03-29T15:39:00.005+04:00

Here is a brief English analysis of how Russian "blogosphere" is reacting to today's Moscow terrorist attacks: (link).

Aerial photographs of Russia

2010-03-11T18:44:00.004+03:00

I like this photo album very much!
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Aerial_photographs_of_Russia

Half a million for Russian Wikipedia

2010-02-25T14:43:00.007+03:00

Russian Wikipedia has just passed the milestone of 500 000 articles!

I have announced this in English Wikinews story: "Russian Wikipedia reaches half a million articles".

P. S. Coverage in Wikimedia Blog: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/02/26/half-a-lemon-and-15000000/

update2: another major coverage: http://en.rian.ru/valdai_foreign_media/20100227/158029606.html

The Buzz

2010-02-17T23:12:00.005+03:00

I have also attached Google Friend Connect to my website http://ssr.pp.ru

Google Buzz

2010-02-16T01:43:00.005+03:00

I think Google Buzz was forcibly developed when they saw the recent last-year enormous growth of Facebook. It has synchronization-wise flaws and is developing on the go (is this a beta?). The same for Google Friend Connect. (see also)

More India photos: Delhi Main Bazaar

2010-02-04T12:55:00.004+03:00

Another my friend, Nicholas Danilov, has also published his series of excellent photos from India. These photos are well worth looking at, and are also placed at LiveJournal with Russian captions but you also can ask for details freely in English using LiveJournal interface.

This is Delhi Main bazaar:

See rest at http://nl.livejournal.com/879266.html

Ancient observatory

2010-02-04T04:03:00.006+03:00

In a new Indian photo post by my friend Vladimirovich, he presents series of photos of an ancient observatory in Varanasi:

See the rest at http://vladimirovich.livejournal.com/268709.html and feel free to ask him in English about the details if you like.

Avatar overcomes Star Wars?

2010-01-25T15:25:00.000+03:00

I have a feeling it does.

Our Varanasi photos

2010-01-22T21:29:00.008+03:00

A friend of mine Yan has published his 1st series of excellent photos from our recent trip to India. I’m gonna give now a link to his Russian-language post, and if you don’t speak Russian please see the very photos nevertheless as Yan is a very good photographer and does much of work on each piece before publishing, and the resulting pictures are awesome. Here’s the one, click it for the others!

Varanasi, India, December 2009

Feel free to comment at his journal in English if you like, he will understand and will talk to you. You may also view other great photos at his journal of http://vladimirovich.lj.ru

My Indian photos at Parovoz.com

2010-01-14T03:34:00.002+03:00

Starting today, a series of my photos of Indian railways will be published on a daily basis on popular railfan website Parovoz.com. See the first 4 among other daily ones at this 2-lingual address. More to follow the next day.

Cycle rickshaw in Varanasi

2010-01-14T03:24:00.000+03:00

On VTB and Navalny

2009-12-14T22:55:00.004+03:00

I still don’t get how it came to be that still NO SINGLE English-language mass media (indexable by Google News) have written anything on the VTB-related suspected-corruption multi-million story unveiled by blogger Navalny. Loads of Russian media headed by prominent-famed flagshippers like Vedomosti paid attention to the case in one or another form.

Chuvash song: Пилеш кайăксем

2009-12-13T01:13:00.003+03:00

A great song! Is this a "synth-pop"?

On acts by Russian authorities

2009-12-01T21:38:00.006+03:00

Recently Russian blogger and liberal activict Alexey Navalny revealed a major corruption within the state-conlrolled bank VTB which involves hundreds of millions of dollars of stakeholders’ money which include people’s money drawn by IPO (VTB stocks recently dropped due to crisis). Navalny provides numerous written proofs filed as official appeals to the authorities. This caused massive reaction within Russian-speaking blogosphere and mass media. No Western media at the moment reacted judging by http://news.google.com/news/search?q=navalny

Good music for free

2009-11-17T11:17:00.002+03:00

Recently my favorite online radio — http://16bit.fm — presented the “chillout” music project called Planet Boelex. On-air listeners, including me, were actively asking for information on what was playing. According to project’s website, this is "Melodic ambient electronica. Originating from Finland, since 2004. All music featured on the website is available for free download, licensed under Creative Commons, for non-commercial use." The particular link is http://planet.boelex.org/music/suunta: you can either listen online or download, I’d recommend to start out with the album’s title song called Suunta. Other links may be found in the 16bit’s forum post linked above.

New Sheremetyevo English website

2009-11-05T23:21:00.006+03:00

English version of Sheremetyevo Airport website, which we released in Russian this April, has been made available to public now. See it at http://svo.aero/en/ (also see http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/svo/ — featuring Process!).

Update: the airport’s press release. Read it and see a mentioning of “the Runet” in the footer: if you don’t know what it is, google it and see the first result which is the corresponding Wikipedia article written by me.

My new public Google profile

2009-10-22T02:31:00.003+04:00

http://google.com/profiles/s.s.rublev ·

Compact Energy booklet

2009-10-11T01:37:00.004+04:00

See our recent release — the Compact Energy booklet!
http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/gazprom/sakhalin2-booklet/

(don’t forget to check the Process section!)

Echo Moskvy

2009-09-14T18:16:00.002+04:00

Yesterday we had a conversation on Wikipedia at popular Russian Echo of Moscow radio station. The conversation was in Russian and can be read as transcript, played back by audio or watched by video at this page (video version contain 10 extra off-air minutes!). Non-Russian speakers may anyway view the series of photos from the studio made by Alexey Yushenkov.

Russ-cyberspace

2009-09-08T02:28:00.006+04:00

This time I’d like to draw your attention to the project under LJ account http://russ-cyberspace.livejournal.com/ (along with related websites) — this is the joint effort of several academic groups from Western universities who routinely study our beloved Russian Internet commonly known as Runet.

New announcement in the pointed journal tells us about the fresh thematic project from the Norwegian University of Bergen — which is intriguingly called “The Future of Russian”. They are nowadays launching some researches about Runet realms such as a “study of the linguistic and cultural features of the community formed on the website bash.org.ru”, which is being prepared by a former Lenta.ru employee.

Quote

2009-08-27T00:33:00.002+04:00

So the unwritten rules of the Internet weren’t built in a day, and nobody could shake them so far. The first rule goes: ‘This is the Internet, baby. Somebody can say fuck off to you’.

(Anna Vrazhina in Lenta.ru)

Дилə Нигъмəтуллина - Хатын-кыз бәхете

2009-08-20T23:30:00.000+04:00

See this great piece of Tatar folk-pop music

Two particular categories I arranged

2009-07-16T02:28:00.003+04:00

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Aerial_photographs_of_Russia

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Runet

I am not the sole one to work on them, but contributed a lot (e. g. created)

A couple of our new projects

2009-07-07T17:28:00.003+04:00

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/gazprom/sakhalin2-site/
http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/gazprom/site/

and earlier

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/svo/

(see "Process" pages also!)

On lags (what's on)

2009-06-03T02:21:00.004+04:00

Unfortunately, I haven't posted to this blog for long time, though I have intentions and some ideas. But they're not fullfilled by now due to some personal affairs and also due to "famous Russian laziness".

But that doesn't mean I'm out! I greatly hope I will soon have time to fulfill my ideas to post here. E.g. I have a lot of unuploaded photos of Russia, and there are new ones upcoming, but so far I haven't arranged them even in my Russian blog, despite going to do this long ago! So, one day I'll do this, will I?

But just for now I can only give an indistinct link to my Youtube page with 2 Russian railway videos of poor quality: http://www.youtube.com/user/ssrublev

Also, you always can check my contributions to Wikimedia Commons as well as to general Wikipedia. As well as to here, also. Also a bit here... looking forward to post here more!

See this particular spectacular masterpiece

2008-11-21T22:01:00.001+03:00

New photos of Russia

2008-11-06T13:44:00.003+03:00

I have updated my photo gallery with some new albums:

Onguday and its surroundings in the Altay Republic
Barnaul city
Novosibirsk city
Omsk city (uploaded using Mandriva Linux)

more albums to follow soon

Music guide

2008-10-15T09:00:00.007+04:00

Do you like Abakus or Shpongle? Do you like music at all?

I have just discovered 3 albums, they all seem to be the ABSOLUTE-MUST-HAVES, so here go the names

M-Seven - Activate (2005)
Index ID - Odyssee (2007)
Easily Embarrassed - Idyllic Life (2008)

Astonishlingly amazing! Embarassingly excellent! Fairly fabulous & Inexpressibly idyllic!

Go get it right away, don’t even try to miss it!

Studio’s 13th birthday

2008-10-15T04:41:00.000+04:00

That is how we’ve spent last Friday night: photos, video

2008-10-03T02:01:00.001+04:00

Wikinews are finally indexed by Google News!

2008-10-01T16:19:00.003+04:00

Do students in Western universities treat children of rich Russian corrupt officlals (or thief businessmen), who also study there, as morons (who they usually are)?

2008-09-24T21:33:00.002+04:00

A Japanese video showing Japanese children makes me suspect that they will begin to kill each other shortly.

That is because of overuse of theme of violence in Japanese culture.

Mass media

2008-08-23T12:59:00.002+04:00

I have now to say that many English language Western mass media such as CNN of FoxNews are extremely biased in terms of portraying recent Georgia / South Ossetia conflict (and most likely moreover). The notorious FoxNews incident with the girl called Amanda (link for those not familiar) confirms that: some idols of Western Democratic culture such as "freedom of speech" are quite easily ignored when some bodies such as American Government need that. I have to state that CNN purportedly erroneusly represented the warfare as Russian aggression whereas there was no actual Russian initial aggression in that case.

Russian mass media often are also biased, but that is not the subject of this post.

SLEEPING HIPPIES MUSEUM

2008-07-10T14:03:00.002+04:00

Dm. Hajduk, the Ukrainian-Russian storyteller, tests out his popular "rastaman tales" in English, see here: http://ganja-jungle.livejournal.com/75752.html

Who's here?

2008-06-24T17:29:00.004+04:00

As a matter of goodwill, I'd be very happy if someone comments on this entry so I can see if anyone reads this (that doesn't mean I will stop writing if no one comments, I just want to, say, "measure").

Currently I do not promote this blog in conventional ways, but I keep it to have a place to write English language posts: there are no regular readers, but there do are occasional readers.

I believe any content in the Internet may be useful: if not immediately, then sometimes. True practice confirmed this so many times before.

2008-06-15T23:36:00.000+04:00

In IE7 Javascript on Home button is disabled — that's totally gay

2008-06-15T23:17:00.002+04:00

Pages that link to Hippie

Homepage tweak contd

2008-05-24T15:54:00.002+04:00

NOT ONLY When this string is set as homepage in a browser (FF2 and IE6 were tested)

javascript:location.href="/";

pressing "Home" button leads you to the main (root) page of a current site (domain)

BUT ALSO

javascript:location.href="..";

means upper level

you can also add such "buttons" as links on the link panel

this also deals with "?=" parameter "style=mine" in LiveJournal with considering "#"'s and other "?='"s

2008-05-23T15:35:00.000+04:00

Russian Wikipedia "a top internet community"

I have written just now

Homepage tweak

2008-05-04T05:11:00.002+04:00

When this string is set as homepage in a browser (FF2 and IE6 were tested)

javascript:location.href="/";

pressing "Home" button leads you to the main (root) page of a current site (domain)

Medvedev to visit RIF

2008-04-01T03:02:00.003+04:00

Newly elected Russian will-be president Dmirty Medvedev is to attend forthcoming Russian Internet Forum, according to what I wrote to the article.

English writings

2008-03-18T04:42:00.007+03:00

I write regularly in English to Wikipedia, one can watch my contributions live at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ss_r. Also I write at times to Wikinews, contributions page is http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ssr. Recently I wrote also Español a poco también, pero still muy poco (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Especial:Contributions/Sergei-sr).

My last Wikinews article is about Russian Wikipedia reaching 250K articles, see it at http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Russian_Wikipedia_makes_quarter_million_articles (later it was translated in Spanish (not by me) as -->).

My radio on Last.fm

2007-10-27T22:58:00.000+04:00

I have added the great Last.fm radio to the frontpage of this blog, see at http://sergeisergeievich.blogspot.com/

This is the free radio containing some of my favorite songs (those available to Last.fm for broadcasting) as gathered from long-term statistics in my Winamp. The player uses Flash so you don't need to install extra software; but keep in mind that it constantly consumes traffic while playing, if you care about it. You may visit Last.fm and learn about their numerous other great music services.

2007-10-26T06:39:00.000+04:00

Some will say Ananda Shake has many songs similar to one another. This is not a bug, but a feature I would say

Reading Wikipedia is a skill

2007-10-18T03:09:00.000+04:00

Many misinterpret what Wikipedia is because of lack of capability to read it properly. Unlikely what many see at first sight, Wikipedia is a complicated and sophisticated entity (and is popular moreover) so one must learn how to read it and not just take literally what is written. One must bear in mind that the text is multilayered and different pieces of it are written by different people at different times (reminder: all previous versions of each article are kept and can be read by anyone by clicking 'history'). It may be that an article has one main author and mixed additions of links, templates categories and so on. Sometimes it is clearly visible from the style, but there must be understanding that it can't be directly visible. That's how you may visualize it (different result every click).

English thoughts repository

2007-09-07T05:53:00.000+04:00

So it again seems to me that I have an intention to make this blog a place for my English posts. Soon I'll be placing links to it to some of my other-site profile pages. A list of them is placed at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ssr

Wikipedia definition

2007-08-28T04:16:00.000+04:00

I see the following conclusion nowadays. One of the major problems of Wikipedia is misunderstanding of the Spirit of the Project by large masses. The Spirit is in flexibility and actuality with possible presence of errors. Wikipedia (with Wikinews) is the Unifying kind of journalism (writing about life) with volunteer "civil journalists". Thus Wikipedia (in any language) can be seen as a mass media in an especial format.

It may contain information from any types of sources or comments with no sources (can be requested if needed). It may fail to contain what you want to see. It may contain untruthful information (report it). Information may be altered at any time (some data is altered regularly). Whoever doesn't understand this should bear this in mind next time reading Wikipedia. If you want to treat Wikipedia as an authoritative source and find a "nonsense" instead, maybe also wanting to "punish someone" for this, stop using the project (including using links to it somewhere) or change your approach.

An error in Wikipedia = error in press ≠ error in a sci-book

Traditional encyclopedia format couldn't withstand permanent actualisation. The format now can be merged with mass media format with weakened "authoritativity" featuring freedom of speech (and a right to have errors until they are corrected). Wikipedia is for reading by public what is written by public for free, not "authoritatively" written for basing "serious researches" or commercial reports on. Let scientists and accountants do their own work and find better matching authoritative sources (without rights to have errors). Wikipedia's "popularity" can't necessarily make some article a "serious" stuff.

2007-06-30T08:05:00.000+04:00

I have decided to publish posts in English here since now. Maybe, I will have to communicate in English via this engine.

2007-06-30T03:41:00.001+04:00

Перерегистрировался. Превед!

livejournal ЖЖ down implosion interruption лежит

2006-11-04T14:32:00.000+03:00

Всем превед!

Окончание истории

2005-01-16T12:03:00.000+03:00

http://lenta.ru/internet/2005/01/16/zhzhup/

Апач картинку нарисовал

2005-01-15T22:37:00.000+03:00

http://apazhe.weaponer.com/trash/lj_no_power_failure.jpg

Падение ЖЖ

2005-01-15T21:39:00.000+03:00

Я думаю (шутка), что это происки Microsoft или Google, которые испугались конкуренции со стороны ЖЖ после слияния его с SixApart. Microsoft в том же Сиэтле (где стоят упавшие серверы ЖЖ) вообще базируется, а у Google там есть выносной офис.

Комментарии Фицпатрика на Slashdot.org о ситуации с отключением света в ЖЖ

2005-01-15T20:35:00.000+03:00

(источник на Slashdot)

(примерное изложение по-русски)

They all came back up when the power came back.

But we intentionally don't have databases come back up on boot because if there was a blip, we want to do an integrity check first. (we run InnoDB, so it's ACID, but we're paranoid

...)

We have clusters of 2 identical databases in separate cabinets, separate switches, separate Internap power feeds... so normally losing one database in each cluster doesn't matter: the other one gets used. But when we lose every single database, in all clusters, all at once... that's the time to be paranoid and double check stuff.

...

At this point all my whiteboards are full of boxes of each database cluster, the machines in that cluster, which have passed their checksum tests. (innodb checksums each 16k page), which replayed their replay/undo logs, where in binlogs each was writing/reading/executing etc...

So lots of waiting now on the checksum validators. I don't want to put a machine back in and find out in a week there was a database page that was corrupt because the battery-backed write-back cache on the RAID card didn't work as advertised. (which happens on about 95% of RAID cards, in my experience, because they're mostly crap, even the most expensive ones...)

Also whenever there's any doubt about something's integrity, we backup or snapshot the potentially corrupt version before operating on it. That operation can take time too.

It's going to be a fun night.

upd: новости на /powerloss/:

Update #4: 9:12 am: We're back at it. We'll have the site up soon in some sort of crippled state while the clusters with the oldest backups continue to catch up.

Вкратце это означает, что совсем скоро всё будет хорошо, надо только ещё немного подождать.

Зарегистрировался

2005-01-05T12:55:00.000+03:00

здесь. Чтоб было.