April 9. The last blizzard of this winter

April 21. Yaroslavl outskirts, Zvezdnaya

April 23. The first bicycle ride of the year

April 24. The view out of the fire escape ladder (of my apartment block)

April 25. The view out of my workplace window

April 26. Another view shot from the east fire escape ladder

The winter is very long and cold this year. It’s almost april but the sidewalks are covered with thick layer of ice and compressed snow, the snow piles is everywhere and more blizzards are on their way. It could be even worse than two years ago.

We eventually reached the point that the most of our blog posts either had no comments at all or just a couple of comments. Overall the quality of the comments had been decreasing over the years to a point that the majority of the comments that people left were not adding any real value to the posts.

Another thing that was happening is that feedback on our blog posts has been moving to outside services, like Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. In fact on average we now get way more comments on our Google+ profile than we ever did when we had the blog comments turned on, and with Google+ the comments are higher quality, from more engaged commenters.

Social networks haven’t killed the blogosphere yet, they’ve just ripped quite a good chunk from it, stripped it from the notorious “comment section below”.

The thing is that the central column of the Snille chair has a screw-tread on it. You need to screw it down to the casters base to assemble and screw it more or less to adjust the seat height. This is what makes this chair simple, cheap and sturdy, but it also causes a problem. When you are approaching the chair from the right side on the say to day basis, approximately on the 40^th—60^th approach you are screwing the central column all the way down making seat height to be the lowest available one. So every two days or even every day you will need to unscrew the central column of the Snille to pull the seat up to the desirable level.

Fortunately, I found a solution for this problem.

1. Unscrew the central column completely.

2. Wrap the tip of the column with toilet paper. Put five—ten layers of toilet paper entirely covering the lower part of the screw-thread.

3. Screw down the central column. Applying some force could be needed on this stage.

4. Cut off the excess toilet pauper with a sharp knife.

5. Profit! Now the seat won’t be screwing down no matter which side you are approaching the chair to seat on it. However, it doesn’t turns Ikea Snille into the chair you can swivel on causally.

On the January 3rd the opportunity to acquire one of those ad sponsored $79 Kindles that Amazon is pushing hard in America suddenly appeared. Thinking of getting the nice and not at all expensive New Year’s present for myself I have paid $125 (yeah, international shipping is nasty) and got one on the next day.

Before that I was usually reading the paper books or ebooks on my iPhone in either Kindle app or in Apple’s native iBooks. The latter wasn’t particularly good experience. The 3.5” screen of the iPhone is just a way too small for the comfortable reading anything beyond the news, emails and twits.

I wouldn’t say that the getting the Kindle has changed my whole life or turned me into an avid reader (mostly because I actually was one before that and remained one after), but the Kindle has undoubtedly made my reading experiences much more pleasant. Also, I found myself reading if not more than more often. What I mean is that now I can squeeze more time for it. If I’m getting stuck somewhere waiting for someone or something to happen I am getting my Kindle out of the bag and putting that unexpected free time to work.

Reading myself to sleep is also possible now. The Kindle’s eInk screen is white and contrast enough to be easily visible being lit by the diffused light from the solitary nightstand lamp, and the iPhone could rest where it always have been—on the charger—to be sure that its battery won’t die before the alarm clock will go off.

I saw this splendid idea on the Reddit someday and I was so fascinated and excited by it that I decided to save the toilet paper carton rolls’ bases right away. Half year later (or more like four months later, I don’t remember it well, and, after all, this is a kind of a TMI) I had enough carton rolls to do the trick.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find the spare box with the inner height equal or slightly greater than the roll’s height, so I went on simply taping them together. It doesn’t look that great and accurate like in the original author’s pictures, but it works exactly as it was intended.

In any case, I am pretty impressed by the quality of this watch—the second hand is landing exactly on the seconds marks on the dial and the bezel isn’t that much stiff as on my Orient Black Mako, which is now occupying the Citizen’s watch box.

It comes with the pretty soft and comfortable rubber diver’s strap but, apparently, I’m not a big fan of the rubber straps—I prefer steel bracelets. And I found the best bracelet for this little Citizen. A week ago the small package from Australia with the Watchadoo solid steel engineer-style bracelet inside has arrived.

Watchadoo bracelet fitted my Citizen BN0000 perfectly. Together they have formed the perfect combo I’m wearing everywhere and even do not bother to take off before going to sleep. The bracelet has turned out to be significantly heavier than the watch itself and I think this is the thing that makes the watch to rest on my wrist as still as it was screwed down into it.

Vrykuls are funny. They scream “I need your heart!” so fiercely and so out of the blue that it makes this one piece of their battle cries sounds almost peaceful, as a part of their daily routine.

Like if the seven feet tall ripped guy with excessive facial hair and the outfit of a heavy metal band singer came into the grocery store to pick up some ingredients for the home made sausages. So he picked up whole intestines to stuff and the red meat, liver and spices for the sausage content, and already got in line to check all these things out but suddenly remembered his Vrykul girlfriend—a seven feet tall, badly combed valkyrie with the anger management issues and some prominent facial hair on her upper lip—ordered him to buy a heart for the sausages.

Damn dead caw's heart, he totally forget about it! Passing by the right aisle, he got the liver and red meat, but paid no attention to the heart lying on the same shelf of the freezer. “I need your heart!”—screams the Vrykul guy and rushes into the backside of the store where the freezers with the meat and liver are.

So I’m learning to use cmd+C & cmd+V instead of their Windows/Linux counterparts now, getting used to the absence of the Delete button, and searching Google for the tips and tricks new to me. The only disappointment I have encountered yet was that my Abobe Photoshop Elements license doesn’t work with the Mac version. However, it turned out that the bundled iPhoto suite is good enough to give me some time to decide whether should I spend $79.99 on a Mac version of Adobe PSE9 or should I look for a cheaper option.

However, this is Adobe’s fault. On the Apple’s part everything is awesome. Awesome like having SSH client and Python translator right out of the box, awesome like the lightning fast GUI, awesome like uncluttered desk, and a lot of other awesomenesses yet to be explored.

There are several pear trees growing right in front of my new apartments’ windows. During the cold winter nights their branches were hosting the flocks of magpies or crows (I can’t really tell them apart). With the Spring all the birds were gone, found the better trees to build their nests on, I guess. But now the pear trees are all covered with white blossoms, from the lowest branches to the tops. I can see nothing from my window but the sea of tender green and milk white.