the-shrike.net

A quick consideration before leaving to take a flight (off-duty) to Mombasa to be repositioned in order to operate the inbound flight from there to Milan on Wednesday. Actually: my first time on a long-haul intercontinental route as a passenger. And the first time on a B767 too! I’m excited.

Back to the consideration. Indeed, there are actually two of them.
Last 10 days I’ve been in Maldives for work, on a long shift, and like it’s my common habit there, I literally devoured 3 books (from start to finish).
Two of them are definitely worth a quick note each.

[Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya]
I loved it. Well, not in the common sense of the term. It’s a sad book, especially for someone like me that is so fond and so fascinated by the fate of Russia.
Very revealing and reading it while following on SKYNews TV the poisoning spy-game that was going on in the UK (and in Italy too) has been a little strange adding more and more thoughts on the “whole” status of the Russian life/system now.
I am usually not very “fond” of the all against books or movies, always a little suspicion about they telling the actual truth, but even taking in mind a little “dramatization” due to hate towards the person (President Putin in this case, take President Bush for Moore and it’s the same…), the stories narrated there are more than just scary, are definitely tremedously scaring!
Looking forward to read also A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya as soon as possible, I suggest Putin’s Russia as a must read to anyone who would like to take a look in the present of Russia.
It’s probably not the whole story, but a lot of it for sure, and well written too.

[The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond]
Shame on me! Shame on me!
Still, up until 10 days ago, I haven’t read what could be considered one of the many pages of a possible bible of the Open Source community. In my defence I can say I had in the past already read the on-line version of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, so what I was really missing was the other essayes published with it by O’Reilly.
I know have filled that missing in my Open Source history culture, and I’m feeling better :p
Right now quite outdated in its examples (due to publishing date) but a must read for everyone interested in the subject!

…what I could have never thought was that this blog would have seen so much almost-book-reviews like it’s doing. Oh well, maybe it’s just because I love reading.
Now I go back to pack things, to play with my new Samsung SGH-Z560 and to get ready to leave.

This has (of course) not been taken by me, but I found out about it some times ago (mid of May, I guess) on Livejournal with a random pictures fetcher. Actually, the author of the picture itself takes very nice pictures (something that can be easily find out by looking at his livejournal).

I don’t know what captured me of this picture, but the more I look at it, the more I love it.
Maybe it’s because, in part, it shows Moscow as charming as I remeber it to be, or maybe because here is pictured what most amazes me of that city: it’s incredibly regal decadence. There’s something magic about it… even inexplicable that attracts me so much!

Anyway, my personal thanks to kopen-zla, and enjoy the picture! ;)

Here follows something that I strongly suggest you to take a look at.
A fantastic column by Robert Bridge on Moscow News. I’ve been in Russia only one time (in May 2005) and yet I must confess this is how I perceived that so distant world, completly new to an Italian like me. And I’ve no doubt about the fact that this was exactly what captured a piece of my heart… probably forever.

“It was during a walk through my American hometown with a friend from Moscow when I first felt the wide chasm separating the Russian and Western mentalities. During our suburban stroll, we came upon an old vacant house that had been up for sale for months. The owner had died and apparently there was nobody in the family to take care of the property. The lawn looked more like a wheat field, with crazy weeds and wild flowers sprouting up in strange places. Continue reading…

“At a time when Russia is reviving the Cold War the EU pretends to be seeing positive signs, as if there is no conflict neither in interests nor in values.”

I haven’t followed or covered the Belarusian election some times ago, but lately I read quite a lot about it, especially for what is (or could be) concerned about possible influences on it coming from Russia. Tobias Ljungvall reports an interesting point of view on this matter.
I think it’s worth taking a look.

(source: Global Voices Online & Tobias Ljungvall on Belarus)

NOTE: as I’ve seen some google research pointing here, I’m updating this, even if it’s coming from the deep past. Tobias’ blog is no longer active. I then nullified the link. (2008-Sep-06)

These two were definitely too gorgeous to be left unposted on my hard drive.
It’s incredible how much I like (and miss) that charming city.

Both the pictures are by Konstanti Leibovitch, and thank you to Chris for sending them to me. Of course, I have seen them on his blog :p

Anyway, I don’t remember if I already posted something about Moscow’s Seven Sisters, but if I didn’t, take a look at some informations about them (more turist-like informations can be found here).
They’re very fascinating, and trust me when I say that they are really very impressive when seen in person. Definitely one of the most amazing thing I have seen in the beautiful Moscow ;)

It’s not easy for me to being emotionally moved by something I see, but this is not completly true when it comes to sport.
Maybe it’s because of that little envy I experience whenever I watch someone (more and more often as old as me… or even younger) doing something particulary great or perfect or maybe because of that inner self I have (even if I try not to show it very often) that is still moved by this kind of amazing gestures just like a baby, I’ve to admit Evgeni Plushenko (Евгений Плющенко) almost made me cry.

Watching him skating like he did tonight in Torino is something I’m glad I have been able to see, and something I will not forget very soon.
That’s the real meaning of the word sport as I intend it.
At its very best, indeed.

Today has been a great sporty day, with another emotional moment for Italy’s second Gold Medal (bravi ragazzi!!!).

Almost everything is perfect for this Olympic game… if only we could have a good Television service here in Italy to watch this games seriously, without tons of commercial spot and other average-common-stupid-italian-junk!
But, hey, we’re in Italy: it’s like looking for the water in the middle of the Sahara!

I just came across (thanks to this post from Taking Aim) a nice interesting roundup of Russian related blogs written in English.
As a matter of fact, I’m studying russian (end enjoying it…) but it’s very nice to have some insight of Russia written in a 100% understandable way!

Here is it: Introduction to Russian Blogosphere.

Enjoy it, I think my bookmarks are going to become larger today! :)

I don’t know how many of you out there share with me the need to have an easy to use English-Russian/Russian-English dictionary, but I’ll share with you my little Opera customization anyway.

This is the dictionary page

What I wanted to do was to add a custom search key (and indeed also a menu) in Opera in order to use that easier. This is how my search.ini (usually located in ~/.opera and/or in /usr/share/opera/) came out:

[Search Engine 7]
Name=Rambler-RUEN
URL=http://www.rambler.ru/dict/scripts/…
Query=
Key=ruen
Is post=0
Has endseparator=0
Encoding=Windows-1251
Search Type=11
Verbtext=17063
Position=-1
Nameid=0

[Search Engine 8]
Name=Rambler-ENRU
URL=http://www.rambler.ru/dict/scripts/…
Query=
Key=enru
Is post=0
Has endseparator=0
Encoding=iso-8859-1
Search Type=11
Verbtext=17063
Position=-1
Nameid=0
Has endseparator=-1

The only thing you just have to be sure of, is the encoding for the Russian-English part, and that’s something easy once you found out what Rambler.ru is using.
The adress was too long to be shown correctly on the page, so I’ll link here to my full search.ini file.
Feel free to download it and to use it if you need :)

Ok, I’ll take this for real just because it’s too funny and too impressive not to be true.
Indeed, I took the link from here and I really don’t know what to say more about it, but it’s completely incredible!
Watch it, and watch it all!

Russian Roof-Jumper

Speachless, fake or not fake, I remain speachless.

I suggest you to read this as a appetizer before your dinner. Then, please, take a look at this amazing gallery about Moscow Metro system.
Oh yes, it’s not something new that I fell in love with that charming city, but one of the thing I definitely loved more was travelling around aboard its metro trains, and visiting the different stations all around the city. I’ve not been there enough time to judge it in terms of functionality (but it surely works better than Milan’s one…), but it’s impossible not to be amazed while walking in the underground of it.
Only in Prague I had seen something comparable in beauty.
Worth a visit, believe me!!!

You haven’t seen Moscow until you’ve taken the metro.
(Sean Guillory)

Have a good trip! ;)

This is something that I read in these past months, and that I’d like to suggest to you too. An amazing journey, nothing more to say about it apart… mhm… did I say READ it? :)

Now all I have to do is waiting for the book.
Thank you David&Lisa for letting us following you around Russia.

(other notes about this could be found here)

That city stole my heart.
I think I already said that before here, but the more I think about that place, the more I miss it.
Plus now the first snow can be seen there, and guess what, I love snow too!
So here we have a bounch of Moscow’s pictures (not mine, sadly… I should have been there in the past 2-3 days for taking them) which I happen to like a lot. A big thank you to who took them, and I hope you all will enjoy them as I’m doing!

…pictures!…

Repeat with me: “Have to wait until December to go to Moscow, have to wait until December to goto Moscow…” ;)