tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37903903233968722852024-03-13T11:14:18.773-07:00Not Fully-Formed Thoughts of Vlad HrybokVlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-13529569234108528432016-04-27T21:24:00.000-07:002016-04-27T21:31:04.478-07:00Antarctic Peninsula Trip Photos, December 2015In the second half of December 2015, Olga and I went on a trip of a lifetime* to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica">Antarctica</a>. It was an adventure cruise on board of "Akademik Ioffe" research ship, operated by "<a href="http://www.oneoceanexpeditions.com/">OneOcean Expeditions</a>". The trip lasted 9 full days, or 11 days if one counts departure and arrival days. Both the ship crew and the expedition crew were at their topmost level of professionalism and dedication, and we can't thank them enough for making this trip incomparable to anything we've experienced before.<br />
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Quick Links</h2>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/ph1QyYxVG4WUtuan6">My Favorite Antartica Shots</a></span></td></tr>
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- <a href="https://goo.gl/photos/ph1QyYxVG4WUtuan6">Favorite pictures from the entire trip</a><br />
- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2sP-0UOpuJKWTLbjwulMscKuYW9_7g8q">YouTube playlist with trip videos</a><br />
- <a href="http:/#daybyday">Day-by-day, outing-by-outing pictures</a><br />
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There are no superlatives that could even start to capture our complete and uninterrupted feeling of amazement we had during the visit. Although we did a fair amount or regular tourism in the years past, the beauty of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Peninsula">Antarctic Peninsula</a> during austral summer is nothing short of overwhelming. Huge rocky peaks covered in glaciers rise up to two miles all around you from the water, the surface of which is sometimes lake-like smooth, reflecting everything around you. The sun does not set in the end of December, instead making long sunsets turning into sunrises, creating colors that cannot be described. Wildlife in Antarctica has virtually no predators on the surface, except, of course, humans, and therefore is indifferent to proximity to people and most of other creatures. All of this, together with the very good weather and smooth crossing of the Drake Passage, amounted to an absolutely incredible experience.<br />
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It's hard to do anything in Antarctica, other than watch, watch, watch and then watch some more. Each day we spent up to seven hours away from the ship, either making landings on the islands or the continent itself and exploring on feet, or cruising among icebergs on inflatable "zodiac" motorboats. Even when on the ship, we spent every minute we could spare outside. Eating, sleeping, resting and anything else feels like an unforgivable waste of time, because whenever you look out of the window, there is either an absolutely breathtaking view outside, or whales blowing, or penguins purposing, or iceberg shining cyan blue all over, or an albatross soaring, or something else out of the million of wonders from what Antarctica has in store every second of every day.<br />
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Thinking of this insane beauty rapidly changing due to the global warming adds a ton of heartache. Humanity with all our achievements in art, architecture, literature and technology, would still amount to a total joke if we let this wonder get destroyed on our watch.<br />
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We made thousand of photos and took hours of 4K UHD video footage. I spent weeks culling and developing them, bringing the number of posted ones to something resembling manageable. Links to videos and photos are organized in three buckets: first, the single photo album where we put all our favorites pictures; second, a link to the YouTube playlist where we posted first couple of videos and where we'll keep adding them - yes, editing videos is just starting; and third, photos organized by each trip day and each landing or "zodiac" cruise.<br />
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Day-by-Day, Outing-by-Outing Trip Pictures</h2>
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I start with pictures taken after our arrival to the Antarctic Peninsula area. Pictures from Drake Passage, going to and from, as well as Ushuaia pictures, are at the end.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/7XppQv7L5p4qFS7x5"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I3b5ggQgshM/VsUe1__BycI/AAAAAAAAWdU/RHCFNB2eVfg2-dvrmw6S9vVrRarrXOQSQCKgB/s320/IMG_4511.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/7XppQv7L5p4qFS7x5"><span style="font-size: small;">Gerlache Strait</span></a></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/7XppQv7L5p4qFS7x5">Gerlache Strait cruising pictures</a> is also a separate album comprising shots from multiple days. I find myself looking pictures in this album most frequently. These pictures are taken from the ship, mostly while being out on the deck, but sometimes just out of the window. Glaciers, peaks, icebergs, whales, as well as penguins and seals on ice and in the water.<br />
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December 23, 2015</h2>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/zr19y7Vx1xjYoTLn6"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2-jKtLXr444/Vt4FN6SIcCI/AAAAAAAAWLw/OUG4SqvojTY8kJn_9QMpEA4uA6AWsbj1ACKgB/s320/IMG_4184.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/zr19y7Vx1xjYoTLn6"><span style="font-size: small;">Orne Harbor</span></a></td></tr>
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<b><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/zr19y7Vx1xjYoTLn6">Orne Harbor</a></b>, our first landing on the Antarctic continent. First penguins, first blizzard, first real taste of Antarctica.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/kTN2ndowWmXMSSg8A"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C8WOUshrbcE/Vt4GiVsIo-I/AAAAAAAAWRI/CroTURtf2W09qO4UMx9NibXNyjNoSxSnwCKgB/s320/IMG_4426.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/kTN2ndowWmXMSSg8A"><span style="font-size: small;">Cuverville Island</span></a></td></tr>
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<span id="goog_1289939370"></span><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/kTN2ndowWmXMSSg8A">Cuverville Island and "Zodiac" Cruise Among Icebergs</a>. Close encounters with penguins and whimsically-shaped and surreal-colored icebergs.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/4QLRhJt32z2mTPy28"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-abu1sDGYoeI/Vt4ImKbq5xI/AAAAAAAAWZE/oFn5Vn_IVVAVDEfLT1tuut_JaUYda6FpACKgB/s320/IMG_4840.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/4QLRhJt32z2mTPy28"><span style="font-size: small;">Lemaire Channel</span></a></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/4QLRhJt32z2mTPy28">Lemaire Channel</a> Cruise. Arguably the crown-jewel of the trip sightseeing. We were lucky that Lemaire got free of ice just one day before our arrival. This place is simply magical.<br />
You may also watch the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcUBpiW3HM4&list=PL2sP-0UOpuJKWTLbjwulMscKuYW9_7g8q&index=1">4K UHD time-lapse video</a> of our passage through Lemare.<br />
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December 24, 2015</h2>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/asBfkQ7Fw5tXcL1C7"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uVOYWKGsRdI/VuUTcUh_TEI/AAAAAAAAWtM/arZAcT0PtB4HElJ0Xjkb9dCjsHtGYFFFgCKgB/s320/IMG_5003.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/asBfkQ7Fw5tXcL1C7">Waterboat Point & Gonzalez Videla Station</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/asBfkQ7Fw5tXcL1C7">Waterboat Point & Gonzalez Videla Station</a>. An Emperor penguin, a female Elephant seal, leucistic Gentoo penguin, and hundreds of regular Gentoos producing incredible amount of guano.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/LtKjcn3PJtrhHNca6"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fIDo9kA8vxo/VuUSflo-fZI/AAAAAAAAWpE/I7m9VXheuwkUdlXem2Wb2wat8auY5ekOQCKgB/s320/IMG_5141.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/LtKjcn3PJtrhHNca6">Useful Island and Short "Zodiac" Iceberg Cruise</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/LtKjcn3PJtrhHNca6">Useful Island and Short "Zodiac" Iceberg Cruise</a>. There you'll see an Adeli penguin - an extra-cute, melancholic and pretty rare in such high latitude, no less cute and funny Chinstrap penguin close-ups, petty-crime-minded White Sheathbill, and other wonders.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/iLqeCytYTeZjdTYk9"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EF6B425NEes/VuURjxfIleI/AAAAAAAAWjw/Ym0ftJmXNVwFhjlG00KtbVbuR5c56OPEgCKgB/s320/IMG_0872.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/iLqeCytYTeZjdTYk9">Danco Island Camping Night</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/iLqeCytYTeZjdTYk9">Danco Island Camping Night</a>. Yep, we spent our night before Christmas 2015 sleeping on the snow in Antarctica. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sARYkDG3yB8&index=2&list=PL2sP-0UOpuJKWTLbjwulMscKuYW9_7g8q">video</a> of us going to "bed" is no less fun.<br />
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December 25, 2015</h2>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/HA1HymDQDeg4X3zn9"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JRXzlJUH6bM/Vw8EsWBqiRI/AAAAAAAAX0M/N7B4tC9uMyIf4Y-gGBNlV4GR6PuPLwS1wCKgB/s320/IMG_5409.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/HA1HymDQDeg4X3zn9">George's Point</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/HA1HymDQDeg4X3zn9">George's Point</a>. Nothing special really, just a regular insane and incomprehensible beauty. Besides funny critters, some lichens can be seen, dominating the plant life at the place where there is no grass, shrubs or trees.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/X4N8MDKE3e4QfQF56"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lh-eWu7paXw/Vw2mTCmtwMI/AAAAAAAAX1Y/jX-_EOAI5ZQR0t1JUShauA5OlfdDxs4QgCKgB/s320/IMG_5493.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/X4N8MDKE3e4QfQF56">Neko Harbor</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/X4N8MDKE3e4QfQF56">Neko Harbor</a>. The most photographed place in the Antarctic Peninsula, we were told, and deservedly so. A massive glacier descends into the water very close to the landing point. A short hike up, and the entire harbor and surroundings open up in one of the most magnificent views one can experience. A few shots of an avalanche, and panting penguins on the nests experiencing 60°F, 16°C heat. It's our second continent landing.<br />
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December 26, 2015</h2>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/Lh1UdRvfbo2yie2G7"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yPwgu9p6quI/VxlbSJQP90I/AAAAAAAAYgQ/cgCVdp8sh4wQmicZ5XhiC3ozJ2yq-hoJwCKgB/s320/IMG_6013.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/Lh1UdRvfbo2yie2G7">Cierva Cove "Zodiac" Iceberg Cruise</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/Lh1UdRvfbo2yie2G7">Cierva Cove "Zodiac" Iceberg Cruise</a>. Icebergs so complicated as almost artificial, like movie set props. And tiny islands where a handful of birds of various species get together, as if a few dudes who got away from family responsibilities gathered to play poker.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/HjbTDPhHoRVPYXoW7"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qqxP6gFgC94/VxmgZZpC-KI/AAAAAAAAYM8/LUZENHN4HccShDaMf1AcQICfRIBc3nX4gCKgB/s320/IMG_6116.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/HjbTDPhHoRVPYXoW7">Mikkelsen Harbor & D'Hainaut Island</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/HjbTDPhHoRVPYXoW7">Mikkelsen Harbor & D'Hainaut Island</a>. Lounging Weddell seals, solemn remnants of whaling boat right next to whale bones, contrasted with the optimism and cuteness of brand new Gentoo chicks.<br />
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December 27, 2015</h2>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/Crye6wkUiJtpqhue6"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iYQET8Q3Zhs/VqRl4wtXONI/AAAAAAAAVrE/G9hcDA8eIi8hlhm6TZxnDasvgsS3EfGUQCKgB/s320/IMG_6421.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/Crye6wkUiJtpqhue6">Deception Island & Whaler's Bay</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/Crye6wkUiJtpqhue6">Deception Island & Whaler's Bay</a>. As if drawn in pencil or chalk, the views from the deck of ship slowly cruising inside the crater of "dormant" volcano, were so unreal, that getting up before 5AM to see this was absolutely worth it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/BmNm3hDZejfwxdT49">Half Moon Island</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/BmNm3hDZejfwxdT49">Half Moon Island</a>. Birds: shags, skuas, Antarctic terns, penguins, with the requisite high drama of skuas trying to steal penguins' eggs, and penguins circling their wagons and yell at the top of their lungs. Blue-eyed shags, looking as if they were born after a duck fulled around with a penguin. And skuas are essentially falcons with webbed feet. A dense snowfall at the end to refresh the scenery.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/KyYdpPbqUW1HFqDQ8"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-W69YNtj62Y8/VqRm5onXLKI/AAAAAAAAVoc/Jpi-imK68esAN2Mkz4nDEN_0XMYoBl74QCKgB/s320/IMG_6885.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/KyYdpPbqUW1HFqDQ8">Barrientos Island</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/KyYdpPbqUW1HFqDQ8">Barrientos Island</a>. Another hike to a vantage point overlooking a bay with a large iceberg that ran aground resembling flat iron. There was rapidly changing weather, largely disregarded by seals and penguins. Skua flying through the snow while looking you straight in the eye, is quite a memorable moment.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/yVgwcAzsk2c4qS4a6"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WQtgC7GHlh4/VqRmGI67YLI/AAAAAAAAXMY/isPIbRxiVSIXcezRHmUXQg7AJWXFA3XdgCKgB/s320/IMG_7025.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/yVgwcAzsk2c4qS4a6">Leaving South Shetland Islands</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/yVgwcAzsk2c4qS4a6">Leaving South Shetland Islands</a>. Final hours of the last day in Antarctica: last whales, last islands, last icebergs, and a lifetime to remember.<br />
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Getting There and Back</h2>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/MyC58ybw8dXwTwpc8"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V0J-wTgP2Fg/VsUyXYUDBiI/AAAAAAAAXMU/l9ULMkqt86U12GXMdX6Rhrzr37ILnzWmQCKgB/s320/IMG_3692.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/MyC58ybw8dXwTwpc8">Beagle Channel and Drake Passage</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/MyC58ybw8dXwTwpc8">Beagle Channel and Drake Passage</a>. Crossing Drake Channel takes two days, each way. If weather cooperates, as it did in our case, spending time outside watching and photographing albatrosses, petrels and occasional whales is all one can ask for.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/rRGgN9nAkybaTF1S9"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6MxS-uLxZ_c/VrfgNZVyQfI/AAAAAAAAXMQ/ccQRAfbbTGgf8zaW5xmcCVYq9iqX7iw_ACKgB/s320/IMG_3161.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;"><a href="https://goo.gl/photos/rRGgN9nAkybaTF1S9">Ushuaia, the Town at The End of The World</a></span></td></tr>
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/rRGgN9nAkybaTF1S9">Ushuaia, the Town at The End of The World</a>. A charming a slightly neglected town where spent a little bit of time before the trip.<br />
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Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-77610187083465782482016-02-22T19:22:00.001-08:002016-02-22T19:28:09.050-08:00PCIe (NVME) SSD drives add manifold performance benefit compared to SATA SSDsI got my first SSD drive back in 2009. It was in fact a pair of 60 GB OCZ Agility drives, which I ran in RAID-0 (striping) configuration. Each <a href="http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/ocz_agility_ex_ssd_60gb_review,7.html">OCZ Agility drive delivered about 200 MB/s writes and 300 MB/s reads</a>, which amounted to about 4-5 times(!) the performance of a regular consumer spindle hard drive. In RAID-0 the performance boost was insane. Two drives back then cost me $360, but I never looked back and never bought a spindle drive since, except for NAS to store media.<br />
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Now it's time for another similarly-unbelievable permanent storage performance increase. Long past the time it should've happened, the outdated SATA storage interface is giving way to PCIe 3.0 x4 with NVME protocol, in the form of the M.2 physical connector. As you'll see below, that's again, a 4-5 times performance gain compared to the SATA SSDs of yesterday. And for M.2/PCIe it is only a beginning. Storage capacity and performance increases based on Moore's law promise truly incredible gains in performance of computers and other devices, while shrinking in size and getting much less power-hungry.<br />
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Here's what it meant for me in practice. A few days ago I got an inexpensive and somewhat old <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K6JKRIA/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=as2">AsRock Z97 Extreme6 1150</a> motherboard to carry over my aging but plentiful 24GB of DDR3 memory. This $120 Z97 board has one little nugget: a PCIe 3.0 4-lane M.2 (NVME) interface, allowing connecting the first consumer NVME drive that hit retail shelves: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01639694M/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=as2">Samsung Pro 950 512 GB</a> SSD drive.<br />
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Here's the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01639694M/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=as2">Samsung Pro 950 512 GB</a> installed in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K6JKRIA/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=as2">AsRock Z97 Extreme6 1150</a> motherboard.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k_i9ancyv54/VsvNg_uGKaI/AAAAAAAAVyo/gkAzzgK-5HI/s1600/IMG_20160219_205214.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k_i9ancyv54/VsvNg_uGKaI/AAAAAAAAVyo/gkAzzgK-5HI/s400/IMG_20160219_205214.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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And here's the ATTO benchbark of two SSD drives connected to it: old <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-Inch-Internal-MZ-75E500B-AM/dp/B00OBRE5UE/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1456197445&sr=1-3&keywords=samsung+evo+840">SATA Samsung Evo 512 GB</a> on the left, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01639694M/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=as2">Samsung Pro 950 512 GB</a> attached as M.2 PCIe x4, running on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016YJX03O/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=as2">Windows 10</a>:<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q61Yz-_dVFw/VskDL-ld82I/AAAAAAAAVxQ/n7KWI2N-z_8/s1600/Samsung%2BPro%2B950%2BSSD%2BPCIe%2Bx4%2Bvs%2B840%2BEvo%2BSATA%2B6%2Bbenchmark.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q61Yz-_dVFw/VskDL-ld82I/AAAAAAAAVxQ/n7KWI2N-z_8/s640/Samsung%2BPro%2B950%2BSSD%2BPCIe%2Bx4%2Bvs%2B840%2BEvo%2BSATA%2B6%2Bbenchmark.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Behold the difference: 3 times gain in write and 5x gain in read speed for the new vs the old SSD, on 2-year old motherboard! It looks like it's time to stop buying SATA drives, everyone, and move on to Ultra M.2.Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-54910558393546052752016-01-14T11:11:00.000-08:002016-01-14T11:16:15.635-08:00Android Lollipop is Incredibly, Unbelievably BadThose who know me will attest that it takes a vary serious effort to rattle me to the point where I'd start saying things like "I hate X". I am even more tolerant to the shortcomings of software products. For example, I never shared majority's outspokenly negative view of Windows ME or Windows Vista (Starting with Vista "Start" menu has become moot as search was the quickest way to find and start a program or a document). I could easily deal with problems of those operating systems. In fact, I considered them rather minor, and the reaction of the public overblown. And, I started using computers when MS DOS was the main OS, then I switched to Windows 3.1 and used every version of Windows since then. I spent a few so-so years in the iOS ecosystem and about as much in the Android universe. I have never complained. So now that we've established the baseline of my pain threshold, let me get to the point.<br />
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Android Lollipop, you did it. I hate you. My wife does too. In my view, Lollipop is the worst OS, bar none. We used to have Google Nexus 4 phones running Kit Kat smoothly and dutifully. No complaints at all. One day they were "upgraded" to Lollipop, which made our handsets unusable. Not just very slow, but Lollipop terminating and unloading our apps was simply incredible. Podcasts that stop in the middle while running in the background? Check. Phone app that takes 45 seconds to show up while you need to make a call rather urgently? Check. Camera app that shows up a minute after the moment of interest has passed, and then holding your phone hostage for another 30-40 seconds? Oh yeah, all the time! Keyboard that draws letters in the virtual keyboard "button" squares at the rate of one per second? I saw that too.<br />
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After tolerating that disaster for a couple of months, we sold Nexus 4 sets on eBay and got LG G2s. It was a great hardware for a value phone, running Kit Kat simply beautifully: not a hitch, very snappy - just a joy to use. Then the terrible day has come - the day of forcible upgrade by LG or whoever is the overlord pushing "upgrades" to our phones. Now our LG G2s are almost as slow and unbearable as Nexus 4s were, except we can't justify buying another hardware less than a year after previous phone purchase. We are stuck in the Lollipop inferno for now.<br />
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I understand that this could have been phone manufacturer's fault, but eventually the buck stops with Google. Brief internet search shows that even most recent and expensive hardware is susceptible to the Lollipop slowness curse just as well. Sadly, our exit from Apple ecosystem few years before was precipitated by their very similar software update approach that made the experience of keeping up with hardware miserable.<br />
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There is simply no excuse for the Android Lollipop being so incredibly bad. It's really hard to fathom why and how thies disaster of an OS has passed the mesh of Google quality control. I will give Google one more chance with Marshmallow, but if it turns out anything like the experience with the Lollipop, the dreaded switch of the ecosystems might be the only way forward..<br />
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For shame, Google.Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-73532519890076076962015-09-18T11:02:00.002-07:002015-09-18T11:02:13.261-07:00The End of ProfitFinally I get to write my own "The End of..." piece, albeit just in my own blog. To not bore anyone with the requisite amount of text appropriate for the title, here's just the executive summary.<br />
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The never-ending quest of the business world to increase efficiency means increased commoditization of every product, with which margins become really thin, making it very difficult to turn any profit at smaller scale, which in turn would disincentivise new business formatiuon, which will depresses the economy and wages. Where did I make an error here?Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-86025278623064585412015-09-17T08:21:00.000-07:002016-03-18T12:21:39.992-07:00Amazon Fire TV 4K is Alright, Not Mind-BlowingAmazon has pulled ahead from Google by releasing the <a href="http://amzn.to/1gufic8">4K-capable version of the Fire TV</a> mini-STB. Google's Chromecast does not yet have a 4K game. Until recently it was only <a href="http://amzn.to/1Kjviqk">$200 Nvidia Shield</a> console (<a href="http://amzn.to/1gug74T">$225 with the remote you want</a>) that supported 4K.<br />
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So the question for 4K folks is: Amazon Fire TV or Nvidia Shield? Or, even, why bother with dongles and set-top boxes instead of just using Smart TV capabilities of your 4K TV set?<br />
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(Again, I am not a gamer, I am interested in high-quality media streaming, so my take on this reflects only media part of the equation.)<br />
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Here's the things: YouTube, as of now, holds advantage of the 4K content available. In order to play YouTube 4K content, your system needs to have hardware support of VP9 codec - 4K format used by YouTube. No all 4K TV sets support it. For example, <a href="http://amzn.to/1guhsIS">Vizio</a>, which combines <a href="http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-brand/vizio/m-series-2015">excellent features</a> with affordability, can't play YouTube at 4K - a major drawback, IMO. However, a <a href="http://amzn.to/1gui7dg">TV set that does run YouTube at 4K</a> with <a href="http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-brand/samsung/ju7100">comparable feature set</a>, will cost you about $800 more. Now, to me this $800 gap for just a couple of features I miss, main of which is 4K YouTube, is the space where 4K STBs come in.<br />
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Until today, just about the only 4K STB game in town was <a href="http://amzn.to/1Kjviqk">Nvidia Shield</a> console. But with today's announcement of Amazon Fire TV, we've got competition. And to me decision for which one to get comes down to this:<br />
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<tbody border="1">
<tr><th align="center">Features</th><th align="center">Nvidia Shield</th><th align="center">Amazon New Fire Tv</th></tr>
<tr><td>Price</td><td align="center">$200</td><td align="center">$100</td></tr>
<tr><td>4K Frame Rate</td><td align="center">60fps</td><td align="center">30fps</td></tr>
<tr><td>YouTube 4K Support</td><td align="center">Yes</td><td align="center"><strike>??</strike> No</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Update:<br />
<strike>Yep, from its specs, it's unclear whether new Fire TV supports VP9 YouTube codec. Until I can confirm it's a "yes", for me Fire TV is not a contender. If the answer is yes, then I can imagine trading extra 30fps of Shield for a $100 discount.</strike><br />
According to <a href="http://4k.com/devices/review-of-the-amazon-fire-4k-tv-box/">4K.com</a>, YouTube 4K content cannot be watched due to lack of VP9 codec support by the new Fire TV. So I $100 price tag seems too high for this device.Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-35244632429606432082015-09-09T13:22:00.000-07:002015-09-14T07:30:34.918-07:00Entering 4K Video World: Hardware Upgrades and Process Changes4K video resolution is arriving - not really slowly, but in a somewhat weird way: 4K content is sparse, while consumer-grade hardware to produce and consume 4K content is getting affordable, from <a href="http://amzn.to/1FydJAD">GoPro 4 Black</a> and <a href="http://amzn.to/1O1Lcvj">Sony FDR-AX33</a> camcorders costing under a $1000, to plenty of <a href="http://amzn.to/1FyfA8x">sub-$1,000 4K TV sets</a>. This price point is a sweet spot where a video geek can get the hardware and not be overrun with guilt that must ruin the psyche of a real early adopter.<br />
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Watching raw 4K footage on a 4K TV is not something I can deal with - video has to be edited first, and in the 4K video case, it means your computer will have to move and process a whole lot more data. Which in turn means upgrades, and no matter how exciting it is for you and me, it means keeping costs down to make this all bearable for our dear sane family members.<br />
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Start with a monitor: your HD computer monitor will need to be upgraded to see the glory of 4K. I got <a href="http://amzn.to/1O1MsP5">Acer S277HK</a>. It's not perfect: backlight is bleeding over at the corners pretty badly, but it's 4K, it's IPS, it has HDMI 2.0 in addition to the DisplayPort so it can be connected not only to a computer in a pinch, it has built-in speakers so I don' have to waste desk space for speakers, and it's not ridiculously expensive. I am very happy with it, running on <a href="http://amzn.to/1O1MTc4">Windows 10</a>. Everything look massively more gorgeous on it than on a regular HD monitor.<br />
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To drive the 4K monitor, I got the least expensive video card I could find for the purpose, which is just about any GeForce 750Ti - it won't handle 4K gaming, but should be plenty for 4K video editing. I got <a href="http://amzn.to/1K8q8w6">the EVGA</a>, which worked out quite nicely. It also has a fairy quite fan, and I really like when my system is quiet. GeForce 750 (non-Ti) might have worked, but based on reviews it looked iffy, so I went with the Ti, which seems to be very much up to the task.<br />
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Now, here's something I didn't experience in a while: after copying 100 Mbit/s 4K footage shot on <a href="http://amzn.to/1O1Lcvj">Sony FDR-AX33</a> from an SD card on to the 2TB spindle SATA drive, I found that playing back 4K 100Mbit video from the spindle is all jittery as <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=heck">heck</a>. I felt it is 90's all over again. Now, how do you fight this? The largest 4K clip I have is about 46 Gig and I definitely will have lots of these in the future. A reasonably priced <a href="http://amzn.to/1K8rPtz">large-capacity SSD</a> that would provide adequate performance still costs about $250 on sale. At only 0.9 TB, it won't take very long to fill it up with 4K clips. So I got an idea: replace the spindle drive with the SSD, and to save the space, get <a href="https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/unlimited">Amazon Cloud Drive Unlimited</a>. At $60 a year, and assuming the price will go down in the future, unlimited cloud storage looks very attractive for anyone planning to edit 4K videos. As an Amazon Prime user, I have been relying on complimentary Amazon Cloud to backup my pictures for a while. Using Amazon Cloud Drive by itself is not a particularly polished experience: one has to use awkward Amazon Cloud Client to upload files, which is a far cry from, say, DropBox quiet syncing. So although in theory Amazon Cloud Drive Unlimited seemed like a good option, I still wasn't sure how the whole workflow would look like, until I discovered the <a href="https://www.odrive.com/">Odrive</a> - the syncing client Amazon Cloud Drive sorely misses.<br />
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ODrive is the secret sauce that made this whole thing come together. Now all pieces were falling into places: upload all your raw footage to the Amazon Cloud Drive Unlimited and using Odrive, unsync folders with massive raw 4K footage to save the space on the SSD. When editing video, sync only folder(s) that hold 4K footage you are working with. Once done, unsync to free space. Rinse and repeat. This way your large-capacity SSD drive will hold only your pictures and the minimum number of big 4K video clips. That can easily be managed with probably even a <a href="http://amzn.to/1O1RlHV">512GB SSD</a>.<br />
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Now if initial syncing of the 4k raw footage up to the Amazon Cloud Drive won't run into the ridiculous and dreaded 300GB data cap of the blood-sucking Comcast (Update: oh yeah, I did - see update below), I should be all set for editing my 4K videos on a budget, using <a href="http://amzn.to/1FyiOJ6">VideoStudio X8 Pro</a>, and not having nervous breakdowns due to fears of running out of disk space or slow hard drive performance.<br />
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Finally, once I finish editing a few 4K videos, I will stop memorizing the content of the awesome <a href="http://www.rtings.com/">Rtings.com</a> and get an actual <a href="http://amzn.to/1FyjVsx">4K TV</a> to enjoy the fruits of my labors.<br />
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<b>Update</b>: ODrive Windows client crashes fairly regularly. If it crashes in the middle of uploading a large file, it starts over. It crashed several times trying (and never succeeding) to upload my 46GB 1hr+/100Mbit/s 4K clip, which took my Comcast data usage to 670GB, while I never reached the 300GB cap before. Comcast forgives first three months of overages under the <a href="https://customer.xfinity.com/help-and-support/internet/data-usage-trials-exceed-usage">"courtesy months" policy</a>. I'll is that's the case when the bill shows up.Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-10252702672002773422015-05-27T20:22:00.003-07:002015-05-27T20:22:50.838-07:00Atlanta Botanical Garden PicturesI'll be adding decent ATL botanical garden shots here.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Smiley Face</td></tr>
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<br />Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-34124495035731611252015-05-03T17:33:00.000-07:002015-05-03T17:33:16.845-07:00The Search Is Over<a href="http://qz.com/180247/why-google-doesnt-care-about-hiring-top-college-graduates/">Google found out</a> that "When you look at people who don’t go to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people."<br />
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Dear Google, don't kill yourself: the search is over, I am right here. You are welcome.Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-74690355262296205162015-05-03T17:22:00.001-07:002015-05-03T17:22:23.290-07:00On Being RationalI got no well-structured thoughts on the subject. For now it's just a list of points for future elaboration.<br />
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<ol>
<li>Being rational (having common sense) means being persuadable by evidence. Everyone will agree with with, but most people will firmly hold on to their deeply-held irrational convictions.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Majority of opinions we hold are prejudices, biases, and instilled dogmas, rather than tested assumptions that were proven to be correct. Our identities are largely based on these untested opinions. Parting ways with one's identity is an extremely traumatic experience, hence people often would rather die than admit they were spectacularly wrong, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Early-formed, quickly-formed and strongly-embraced identities are the surest way to becoming deeply irrational.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Rationality can be made more wide-spread if it's treated as a form of intellectual hygiene: compensating for own biases and stamping out fallacies in ones thinking is not natural, but also not terribly difficult: it can be learned, and the habit of questioning own assumptions can be maintained through practice, like washing hands and brushing teeth. To that end, rhetoric and logic should be taught, with spotting fallacies being the most important skill practiced in lab exercises. Ability to detect untrustworthy sources of information is not a natural proclivity either because it requires ability to adjust for own biases. But that too is a reasonably easy skill to acquire.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Historically, being rational was not the most advantageous behavior: proving that Earth is not at the center of the Universe could get you killed. Allegiance to the tribe was valued more than being right about facts. Repeating disproved theories as an article of faith is just a statement of allegiance to the tribe, to reassure identity, and to get protection and the status among peers. As tribes become less essential in providing security for individuals, mutants who practice rationality are free to use feedback loops for quickly iterating through trial and error in chasing larger status goals: having much larger scale of impact and acquiring more wealth.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Most opinions stated on TVs are not backed up by anything, and usually are pile of fallacies.<br /><br /></li>
<li>The most exciting word for a rational person is "because". Claim without proof means nothing.<br /><br /></li>
<li>In the long run, incentives inevitably trump culture. Aspirations and convictions melt away as compliance with incentives get justified even if incentives contradict views dictated by the culture. Structuring incentives correctly is more important than efficient day-to-day management of performance problems.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Being right in business was always more profitable, but few businesses until now were structured to separate clear performance data from the noise of subjective opinions about the contributor. Also, even if a business was successful vs the competition due to acting in a rational manner, until recently businesses didn't have the global reach to compel the competition to also adopt measuring performance. Current situation where self-measuring businesses get very decisive competitive advantage is the single largest contributing factor for increased rationality in the society in general.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Big Data dramatically simplifies and reduces costs of searching for evidence.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Problem: when measured criteria are too few and simplistic, incentives get narrowed down to focusing on passing the test at any cost, including taking on insane workloads and cheating. Another problem is negative motivational power of measuring one's performance: people get turned off if they fear they may score poorly, leading to the vicious cycle of "low performance => poor score => even lower performance".<br /><br /></li>
<li>Cooperation is more profitable than confrontation. It's obvious on the surface, but in evolutionary terms, humans had such a small amount of resources throughout the history, that someone's benefit almost certainly was somebody's loss, hence zero-sum mentality took hold and still dominates (sports, wars and border conflicts lasting well into the era of potential abundance). That's why it looks like humans programmed not to truly enjoy their success unless competitor loses. Most successful societies are those where trust covers widest possible number of people. That's not really natural, as evolution taught us to trust members only inside small social network: a family, a tribe, ethnic group, etc. That's why corrupt and brutal but familiar local leaders are routinely elected and stay in power as long as they can maintain the fear of the larger groups of outsiders even if the leader produces dismal outcomes for the group.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Adding value (working) has become more profitable than taking property of others (war) very recently in historical terms. That's another facet of the reasoning why humans are ultimately held down by using zero-sum thinking as a default route.<br /><br /></li>
<li>From evolutionary perspective, status among peers is the only important measure of success because it lead to reproductive advantage. Hence physiologically status is more important than wealth because wealth is only a proxy for status. Since status competition is zero-sum by definition, the question is "how much money does one really need" is moot: winner will be satisfied with one penny as long as everyone else got nothing.<br /></li>
</ol>
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If you agree with what I wrote above, you are in danger of being irrational as I made lots of claims without providing any proof or references. :-)</div>
Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-73001122045648638412015-05-03T15:20:00.000-07:002015-05-03T15:42:29.937-07:00A Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Just World Is Coming. Thanks, Big Data.The arc of history certaily bends towards rationality. Big Data revolution is making sure that few decisions will have to be made based on pure opinions and hunches, a.k.a. prejudices, biases and dogmas, which are also known as bad assumptions.<br />
<br />
Isn't that exciting that in the fast-approaching evidence-based future incompetent bosses will be quickly found out despite their self-confidence and charisma, full-of-it pundits will be exposed, hot-air-filled politicos will be voted out, and humble, talented and under-appreciated working bees will be promoted and rewarded accordingly?<br />
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The answer is easy, it's yes, which is why "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&field-keywords=moneyball&linkCode=ur2&sprefix=moneyball%2Caps%2C213&tag=vlsbl05-20&url=search-alias%3Daps&linkId=VKGB3NIGSZN4Q4IB" target="_blank">Moneyball</a>" is such a bestseller: a wiz-kid mined data to find a factor in player stats that has strongest yet non-obvious correlation with winning. The justice is served to multiple parties: lone wiz kid with proven track record has become an existential threat to the army of highly-paid scouts producing dubious output, the open-minded GM saves his career in the big way, and talented underdog players took their righteous place under the spotlight. Just world, here it comes, and although the road to a giant digital BS filter is going to be bumpy and winding, to me it's pretty clear we are heading in that general direction, and going there pretty fast.<br />
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I am also sure* that this just, rational world will turn out to be extremely unpleasant and disappointing for maybe the majority of people. See, right now, while working as a mid-level office drone or a retail sales clerk, or a barista, we all enjoy plausible deniability of being simply under-appreciated and thus we can maintain our self-esteem knowing than some stuck-up/suck-up got ahead simply because life is not fare and bad things happen to good people - us. Now, what if Big Data revolution shows that not only our mediocre bosses do not deserve telling us what to do, but we too turn out to be just as unremarkable as them? What if it turns out that there are people, who are so much more talented that they can add much more value than just about any one of us? What if majority of population is getting paid right now to simply slow down these remarkable individuals and drown their weak, nerdy but brilliant voices in the noise of millions of opinions? Well, even I turn out to be that brilliant individual, who is going to be shown <a href="http://qz.com/180247/why-google-doesnt-care-about-hiring-top-college-graduates/">objectively</a> better at doing my job, and many others will have to rush implementing my genius ideas, I fear most people will be so permanently and irreparably depressed that I won't be able to enjoy my new-found appreciation :-). Worse is, of course, if my track record, studied under the microscope of Big Data, turns out to be just "meh" and I will have to leave behind ranks of creators and idea generator and take the spot in the swelling crowd of implementors and assistants, or worse, to become a stipend receiver paid to stay home and not break anything.<br />
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As they say, the factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog: the man will be there to feed the dog, and the dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment. The only question is are there enough dogs?<br />
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*This post will surely one day be mined and ranked by our robot overlords for how well my prediction worked. If I turn out to be right, I hope they will consider me for the dog feeder position :-).Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-25277987360303158842015-04-28T19:23:00.000-07:002015-04-28T19:23:08.545-07:00IaaS is Not a Real CloudIn my not-so-humble opinion, putting your client-server app on an AWS or Azure VM is no more "Cloud" solution than running DynamoDB and telling people you've got "Big Data".<br />
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To me, real Cloud and real Big Data start with using scalable <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service">PaaS</a> OS, like Azure or AWS. If you got no PaaS, don't talk cloud and big data.Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-11242386034237556472015-04-28T19:15:00.001-07:002015-04-28T19:31:19.537-07:00Learning Azure on Your Own Dime - Extremely ExpensiveOK, I am completely sold on The Cloud, and specifically on PaaS. I am ready to go use it, especially Azure since I like Microsoft stack and tools, despite AWS being more popular and having more features (we, <a href="http://vlad.hrybok.com/2015/04/doing-right-thing-for-wrong-reasons.html">artisans</a> ;-) develop stronger connection with our tools and techniques, than craftsmen or business people.) I started learning Azure, got the account, a VM, Azure SDK, developed an interesting testing-the-waters project - the <a href="https://github.com/vgribok/AzureQueueMulticaster">Azure Storage Queue multicaster</a>, similar to ESB topics.<br />
<br />
My first Azure bill, despite MSDN subscription was above $150. I run a 24/7 application server on a slow VM there, where majority of the cost comes from, but small experiments, like with the VPN for example, added $25 before I noticed that it's really expensive. That was unpleasant.<br />
<br />
Now, I want to experiment with something other than what I can run on local Azure simulator (Tables, Blobs and Queues). I would like to play with ESB, API Management, DocumentDB and just about everything else, but I am really concerned about how much cost I am going to incur by using each part of the stack, especially if I forget to power everything down on Azure for a night. The point is, my impression is that simple poking around and learning Azure stuff is rife with unpleasant and costly surprises. All these risks and impediments combine into a single big turn off for a potential Azure developer.<br />
<br />
With Azure lagging in adoption behind AWS, slapping down even dedicated fans like myself, means that Microsoft is very unlikely to ever catch up with AWS. "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE">Developers! Developers! Developers!</a>" indeed. I know it is possible to plan the cost ahead using complex Excel spreadsheet, and there is an almost-meaningless 30-day free trial (learn new enterprise OS in 30 days, really??), but all these impediments add up to one huge fogget-bout-it!<br />
<br />
Here's what Microsoft could do to make it easy for me to learn Azure: <i>create closed-off sand-box on Azure infrastructure, inaccessible from the outside, but make all Azure stack technologies and components available there for free to all MSDN subscribers</i>. Let us play with and learn Azure for free, and charge us only when our wares is made available public. That would be a huge differentiator for Azure.<br />
<br />
If you agree with the statement above, <a href="http://feedback.azure.com/forums/34192--general-feedback/suggestions/5966434-more-budget-to-play-arraound-with-azure-for-msdn">talk at Microsoft about this</a>.<br />
<br />
But while Microsoft is ignoring us, I decided to do my part, in the upcoming weeks and months will do public service so to speak, and will pay out of my pocket for learning Azure, and will blog about my experience, including costs. I will tag those posts with "azure" and "paas". Follow this blog to take pleasure in my future misfortunes on the path of conquering Azure.<br />
<br />Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-65951113739939517342015-04-27T19:29:00.003-07:002015-08-08T21:17:33.578-07:00Photography is EasyThe truth is, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0988263408/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0988263408&linkCode=as2&tag=vlsbl05-20&linkId=ISZSDNYO3CAMRUDI">good photography</a>, although not exactly trivial, still requires a lot less skills than, say, painting, or playing a musical instrument. Anyone with a modest doze of persistence can figure out basic relationships of ISO, aperture and shutter speed, effects of different focal length, white balance and tone curve. Then all it takes to make a few good pictures is to take thousands of whatever pictures. Here is the result of my cherry-picking a few shots I mined from my digital collection. Most of them shot on the modest <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZSHNGS/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003ZSHNGS&linkCode=as2&tag=vlsbl05-20&linkId=72NUA34XZEQMAWVB">Canon PowerShot S95</a>
and lightly edited in <a href="https://picasa.google.com/">Picasa</a>.<br />
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On a PC, hit F11 to put your browser to full-screen and then click on the picture to see it in the album.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seattle Skyline</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Savannah</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Niagara Falls</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Caminito, Buenos Aires</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yellowstone</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chicago</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ukraine</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Napali Coast</td></tr>
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Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-58481138015073244182015-04-27T16:30:00.001-07:002015-04-27T18:54:46.891-07:00Second Sun?<div dir="ltr">
What's the second bright spot in the sky? Are we on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006VIE4C/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0006VIE4C&linkCode=as2&tag=vlsbl05-20&linkId=4SMLOGPYPVSJ6XS4">Tatooine</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=vlsbl05-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0006VIE4C" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />
now?</div>
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Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-86211741817532536902015-04-27T15:14:00.002-07:002015-04-27T18:38:49.573-07:00A Little Help?If you are planning to shop on Amazon, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&tag=vlsbl05-20&linkId=V4MILATVRDXGHEET" target="_blank">please use this Amazon link</a> to get there - it will help me with, um.. being inspirated™ to maintaining this blog.<br />
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Thanks!Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-86619295511787345622015-04-26T11:52:00.001-07:002015-04-26T12:07:07.186-07:00But how long will it REALLY take?<p dir="ltr">Most  programmers, myself included, are notoriously bad at estimating how long it will take to finish the job. So after much research I am ready to <u>finally</u> make the estimates very precise and scientific: whatever number programmer gives you, use The Vlad Law and multiply the estimate by PI. Not by 3 - that would be just a worthless <u>guess</u>. No, multiply it by 3.1415 - that's the objective truth, I tell ya!</p>
Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-13371485742568946192015-04-26T09:43:00.002-07:002015-04-26T09:43:55.210-07:00What Is Good Software Architecture?<div dir="ltr">
Ask any software architect a question what makes good design, and you will get a good number of very valid criteria. The one I don't hear mentioned, and one that is critical for me when I design software, is <i>how quickly a mid-level engineer can start and keep following processes, templates and practices</i> I create as part of the design. If design is so sophisticated that it requires superstar engineers to deal with that, that's not a good design no matter how advanced are concepts and frameworks built into the design. It's already too expensive.</div>
Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-81705079657034448502015-04-25T20:13:00.000-07:002015-04-25T20:17:44.813-07:00Everyone, To The Cloud!A few years ago I joined a company that was in the process of selecting new ERP system. Vendors were usual suspects: consultants peddling SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and some other ERPs. I got to quiz vendors regarding different features and capabilities of the systems they were selling. I wanted to find how how costly integration with my company other enterprise systems would be, and asked every vendor whether their system exposed their functionality as web services. All of them did, of course. Then I asked them what I considered a very logical and simple next question. I told them, since we are going to orchestrate data updates across multiple disparate systems, I needed to know whether their web services supported transaction, like WS-Trasaction from the WS-* stack? I got blank stares and promises to find that out. I asked whether they were ever asked about this before by other enterprise architects, and to my huge surprise all of them said no. I asked how many ERP implementations they had under their belts, and all of them had dozens. Later all vendors got back to me with an astonishing information: none of their systems' web services supported transactions. That meant that garbage data were bound to accumulate over time and nobody even thought that was a problem.<br />
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That struck me as very odd and made me think: in my day-to-day life even mid-level developers usually have decent grasp of what transactions are for and often don't need supervision in applying them, as long as we are talking about SQL programming or writing data access layer of business applications. But as soon as people leave database world, somehow even professional enterprise software integrators become completely unconcerned about transactions. That matched my experience of virtually every enterprise system I ever encountered having lots of garbage data in it, requiring lots of effort/money to cleanse data. But the conclusion was inescapable: by and large, as a practical matter, corporations are pretty <i>comfortable with not having transactions guarding integrity of their data</i>. As a matter of fact, companies don't care about their data consistency.<br />
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Now, my thinking went like this: if people voluntarily give up transactions without getting anything in return, what can be gained if transactions are avoided not by neglect, but instead, by design? Well, if we believe CAP theorem, letting go of data consistency should let us gain high availability and partition tolerance, which translates into high scalability. And, ladies and gentlemen, that's what "big data" management systems offer: high scalability and high availability if you can deal with eventual consistency of data. And since lots of companies are not even trying to achieve data consistency, switching to NoSQL-based "big data" platforms becomes a no-brainer.<br />
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Now, NoSQL and "big data" have becomes such an incredibly abused buzzwords, that I need to stop for a moment and state that, for example, MongoDB, in my opinion, although a very fast NoSQL data management system, is not necessarily a *bit data* system, because it was not designed to be one - it was built for speed and sacrificed parts of CAP to achieve high performance. Then let's look at Hadoop. No question that's a big data management system. But the main problem is that it's not for on-line data processing - it's strictly batch processing using map/reduce approach. And if you want to set up Hadoop cluster, it's a pretty expensive proposition.<br />
<br />
All that said, I argue that first truly useful general-purpose big data on-line processing data management system was Amazon AWS DynamoDB. It has eventual consistency, no transactions, limited returned data set size, and other limitations, but it scales in a nearly linear manner. Then Microsoft came up with Azure Tables and now Document Database. Even though you may say that eventual consistency in not really what data online processing is, I say these systems latency is tolerable enough that these systems could be considered pseudo-online.<br />
<br />
Now lets review the landscape again: transactions are abandoned, non-transactional highly-scalable data management systems are available as a part of PaaS stacks from Amazon and Microsoft, so... there is pretty much no reason to have your data processing strategy depend completely on ACID databases. Moreover, if we, developers, train ourselves to deal with more complex DAL tiers underpinned by Azure and AWS eventually-consistent big data engines, there is no real reason to use ACID databases as a default position, which is equal to "everyone, to the cloud!"<br />
<br />Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-56182149316941812872015-04-25T18:38:00.000-07:002015-05-28T15:25:38.103-07:00A Few Pictures From Piedmont Park, AtlantaHere are the few shots I made recently with my new <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009B0MZG2/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B009B0MZG2&linkCode=as2&tag=vlsbl05-20&linkId=UMGOYVRKO2YY7Q32">Canon 6D with EF24-105mm IS lens</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=vlsbl05-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B009B0MZG2" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />. I shot RAW and did a relatively quick post work with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CH6ATMO/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00CH6ATMO&linkCode=as2&tag=vlsbl05-20&linkId=XBHRICUMST7K3MFS">Adobe Lightroom 5</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=vlsbl05-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00CH6ATMO" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />
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Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-24320477180859945352015-04-24T20:27:00.002-07:002015-04-25T08:08:54.917-07:00The IoC Framework FollyI've been around long enough to live through several Things That Will Save Us All.<br />
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First was the OLE. Look it up, kids. It was cumbersome and not well adopted, but we still have remnants of it in OleDB data access drivers.<br />
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Than there was the XML. It was for some reason to be used everywhere. I was thinking: OK, just another way to serialize data.. Why is it presented as revolutionary and adopted without much reflection? Recently Json was adopted with about as much fervor.<br />
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And today - I think it's fair to say the verdict is in - the Thing That Will Save Us All is DI/IoC frameworks. By now I saw a few projects making heavy use of IoC frameworks and all projects using them have the same basic setup: everything is an interface regardless of how many implementations are planned for the interface, and completely irrespective of whether the interface was ever planned to define a service (for both the provider and a client). Everything gets injected even if the instantiated real dependency dependency graph has no externalities like a database or a remote production system. In addition to that, polimorphism is murdered and inheritance is done via composition of the base interface. And so on and so forth.<br />
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And for what end? Testability, of course. Ok. I am very pro-testability. But, testability is only *one* of meany avenues of achieving high quality of code. Testability demands that more dependencies are exposed, to make code more unit-testable (mockable). But this is not a pure asset - it's a trade-off. It comes with a cost. More dependencies exposed means lower level of abstraction of the component or the API. APIs are lairs, say TDD extrimists, because API hide dependencies, which makes them not terribly well-testable. Fair enough. But that's exactly the point: APIs should hide as many dependencies as practical. Not hide all of them, which would lead to the very low testability, and not exposing all of them, making the API hairy and busy. For example Entity Framework hid too many dependencies until v.6, making it impossible to inject a custom connection string factory. That's where more exposed dependencies would be better. But then look at WCF, which, for all intents an purposes, is a specialized IoC framework, with tons of different interfaces, and where everything is pluggable (injected) and dependency declaration shifted to the .config file. As far as I can tell, most developers hate WCF because of its complexity. That is a fair criticism. But when I come across an engineer who loves IoC but hates WCF, I turn into Louis Black inside: an engineer should be able to understand that WCF and IoC frameworks have very similar architecture and share trade-offs.<br />
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Finally, if you ask me what I think about IoC, you better be able to clarify: the pattern or a framework. And don't say "both", please. Because IoC the pattern was popular ever since Windows Programmer's Guide told us to handle WM_xxxx events to write any Windows program, and before that a virtual function was introduced to masses by Bjarn Stroustrup, and before that the function pointer was gifted to the world by K&R, etc. And IoC frameworks have unfortunately become The Way We Do Things Today: often used mindlessly as a proof of engineering sophistication to the same extent Apple gear came to signify creativity. There is only one universally-valuable design principle: no pattern is universal.<br />
<br />Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-19125320980985461962015-04-24T18:50:00.000-07:002015-04-24T20:41:49.411-07:00A Single-Question Software Engineer InterviewAfter 24 years being at it and spending countless hours interviewing dozens of software engineers, I relatively recently realized that I can predict with a surprisingly high precision whether a candidate is a good programmer by getting an answer to a single question:<br />
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<b>How long ago did you create your most recent virtual function that was not prescribed by a base class?</b><br />
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If the answer is a blank stare, confusion, or more than a month ago, then the engineer is very likely not above average. If not more than 2-3 weeks ago, then the programmer is pretty likely a good one.<br />
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Here is why I think this is a valid test.<br />
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These days most devs are quite well prepared for the interviews and can competently rattle off main OOP principals and names and even usages of the most common design patterns. What I observed, however, is that this knowledge is more often than not does not really translate into practice - i.e. into the the ability of spotting a pattern or a potential extensibility point, which most commonly is expressed in a virtual function.<br />
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Truly good programmers are always on the lookout for the extensibility points of their components: such engineers are fluent in using virtual functions, events, callbacks, asynchronicity and other ways of inversion of control (a term I now use with trepidation after it has been thoroughly misappropriated by the DI/IoC frameworks, which have become the Today's Way of Doing Things, like the XML was 10 years ago). Average programmers can implement an interface, but can hardly recognize the place, or see the point of creating a virtual function. Average one doe not work with the polymorphism in mind.<br />
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<br />Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-86976937592444185622015-04-24T18:19:00.005-07:002015-04-25T08:16:50.967-07:00Doing The Right Thing For Wrong ReasonsThere are very few things I would do rather than programming. I discovered that back in 1987 and it is still as true now as it was then. I love the creative part of it for sure, but what I love the most are two factors: the objectivity of the result - it can be measured, analyzed and proven better or worse than an alternative; and (gasp) the aesthetics of the programming language and runtime design.<br />
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First is simple: I really need to be able to tell whether any given way of achieving a goal is the most optimal and efficient. The notion of different styles of programming as equally-valid means of achieving a given goal troubles me, because given the set of qualities: scalability, availability, maintainability, complexity, time to market, etc. - all collectively known as total cost of ownership (TCO) - your way of getting there and mine are guaranteed not only to be different in style, but also to have different TCO. See, I am suspicious of both natural self-promoters and nurtured entitled types (your output is precious before you've done anything), which is why wherever I see different approaches, I want to get an objective measure of the value of each approach, and programming is one of the few activities that allow for ways to tell a BS from a well-done piece.<br />
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The second - the aesthetics angle, is defined by how easily I can feed my obsession with finding the best way of doing things. I care a lot of how I get where I am heading. This manifests itself in my learning slower but deeper, achieving higher clarity of understanding, and improving my ability to articulate the net value (assets minus liabilities) of a given technology, approach, pattern, etc. If I sense that there is a better way of doing things, I want to find it now. If I find that I wrote code that is not most efficient (not just in performance, but also clarity, expressiveness, maintainability, extensibility, and so on), I feel embarrassed and cheated.<br />
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This leads to some of my idiosyncrasies in how I work. I loath going back to less efficient ways of doing things. For example, after I discovered C++ in 1991, I could never imagine going back to plain C, which I loved very much until then, ever since I found that C could be as much fun as Assembler with much higher productivity. When I saw JavaScript for the first time back around 1996, I gave it no more than one year before it would be replaced with something real. Boy, was I wrong about the staying power of a monopoly-holding programming language of the slowest-ever-evolving OS: a web browser. Same with how I now dread going back to TFS or SVN after experiencing Git, which I kind of didn't want to learn because in 2011 I felt TFS was pretty great.<br />
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At around 2001 I fell in love with C#/.NET 4.5. These days, with its LINQ and pseudo-functional veneer, async/await, extension method, IEnumerable + yield and deferred execution, beautifully-implemented Generics, phenomenal performance - C# and .NET stack are my absolute favorite, which, from a practical manager perspective can be both an asset, as I know them really well (I know what "volatile" is for and how .NET 4.5 has finally implemented claims-based access rights security management), and a liability. A liability here is that being the connoisseur of the Microsoft stack, I lack the "do what it takes" attitude so often valued in the corporate world. It all means that <i>my work is more artisan than industrial</i>. I think I'd rather build a beautiful thing than change the world. Sometimes I get lucky, and get respectable if not world-shattering number of installations of my <a href="http://ultidev.com/products/UWS-Cassini-Pro/">pet products</a> - 1.1 million as of now. Sounds pretty good, right? But it took me 1.5 years of nights and weekends work to get there. Sounds kind of expensive doesn't it? But the quality is such that my products average only <a href="http://ultidev.com/forums/">1 support request per 2-3 weeks</a>. Not bad again, I think, for a product that gets installed a few hundred times a day on every possible configuration of PCs ranging from Windows XP to 8.1. So you see, since I'd rather learn from Schubert or Picasso than Zuckerberg or Jobs, I am probably good for your team only if its values are such that it has more foodies than coke & pizza eaters.<br />
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I imagine observing me working could give a strange impression: a very quick delivery of large and complex, high-quality components (60% of <a href="https://github.com/vgribok/Aspectacular">this</a> was written in 7 days), offset by somewhat deliberate pace of learning, caused by the obsessive need to learn in-depth and understand motivations of people who created the subject of my study.<br />
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So there it is: I exist just outside of the "change the world while making the bundle" cliche philosophy and values of the Silicon Valley (the place, the TV series is laright). But if you run besides me while I take on my next obsession (today it's The Cloud/PaaS) you are very unlikely to be ahead of me in 3 years from now, even if you got 3 years head start.Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3790390323396872285.post-4463691284003207692015-04-24T07:47:00.000-07:002015-04-26T09:57:23.773-07:00The Requisite Uninteresting "Hi, I'm here!" Opening PostLook, ma, I got a blog :-)! Since it's pretty unlikely anyone will every read this, I'll have no problem posting my malformed and misconfigured thoughts here to later watch them taking shape and evolve (BTW, there's "love" in "evolve" if you read "evolve" backwards).Vlad Hhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15421054619069269218noreply@blogger.com0