Having morning coffee I’ve noticed the map of Venice they gave us on the trip to the Carnival in beginning of March. I didn’t have a chance yet to share those impressions being fully preoccupied during the Crysis 2 release. However Venice produced the strongest impression on me apparently for all the time I’m travelling in Europe.
As we used are to do, we ordered the trip by a Russian agency here in Frankfurt and departing in evening and next morning were in Milan. The city is pretty famous, though I can’t say I’ve been wonder-struck. Sforza Castle is nice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castello_Sforzesco), but feels absolutely empty inside. Old-fashion trams on the streets look like just old worn-out ones, besides the neglected terrible public toilets. La Scala (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Scala) has a nice museum inside, but to appreciate it fully, one must be a true fan. Though that all doesn’t apply on Milan Cathedral (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duomo_di_Milano). The story runs: that was built to praise holly relicts of The Three Kings moved from Milan to Cologne. It seems they were not allowed in Milan to build a cathedral bigger than Cologne one, though they made it definitely fancier.
After Milan we moved to Verona. The city doesn’t feel to me so romantic as it known, but anyway that’s a cosy place to visit. For the night we stayed in Vicenza. Thus this city we could discover only in the night darkness. That only left a feeling of missed ancient beauty. Next day we had a little halt in Padua. Prato della Valle is especially nice in very morning as a spot of majestic calmness among immense churches, hidden by tremendous ancient city walls. But everything faded away as we approached to the end point of trip –Venice.
As any other tourist group travelling by a bus we arrived to Parcheggio. It feels like you’ve been crossing typical Italian plain landscape and suddenly you find yourself among the water surface outgoing somewhere beyond the horizon. A narrow road leads you to the port where you switch to the boat. Venice appears before you in the entire its peculiar beauty as probably ancient seamen saw it. Moving in Canale Della Giudecca you start realizing that you are really entering the legendary Venice glorified by Carlo Goldoni and by Giacomo Casanova. The Venice which has found its place in works of Dante Alighieri and William Shakespeare. At the Bacino Di S.Marco you see Church of San Giorgio Maggiore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_San_Giorgio_Maggiore) in one direction, the Basilica of St Mary of Health (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_della_Salute) of astonishing baroque is in another direction and right before you appears fabulous Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Square (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piazza_San_Marco).
We landed near St. Zacharias church. It felt like you leave reality and step into some wonderful imaginary world. Insanity of colours, endless fantastic masks and enormous crowd and all that on the background of marvellous sights. The guide led us by ancient alleyways (you know there are no streets and cars in Venice, but canals and boats). It was absolutely crazy and amazing. You can’t focus on anything. Every moment you see new stunning Carnival costumes greeting you, new lanes which preserved so much you stay expecting to meet Truffaldino, new squares with imposing churches and, of cause new freaking romantic bridges across the cannels with gondolas gliding. It occurred to me I’ve been led with open mouth, occasionally recalling to shoot something on cam. Maybe the cam was also shocked, it spoiled all the photos I made J. And when you think you are dazzled enough to forget of everything, you are getting to S.Marco square… Ok, it was nothing like shock before in comparing with what you have after. I can just say that I came to myself more or less only at least 1 hour later on. We were walking with my wife by narrow lanes crossing those numberless beautiful cannels. It was getting dark and city became in places almost deserted. That was the time to feel Venice, to breathe by it. Leisurely walking, occasionally meeting late costumes, observing all those ancient building with threshold ending up straight into water and linen ropes strained between buildings. That is absolutely unforgettable feelings. The only regret was we had so little time for that. So later on the boat moving by the Grand Cannel in the lights of majestic fronts it felt a little of farewell regret, a bit of tiredness and big deal of fondness to this amazing incredible city. I’ll be always keen to visit it again.

As for Lukashenka has his 101% of votes once again, that’s a problem of Belarusian people, their mental attitude. But, why all this performance every time? Police beating people, Internet blocking, 99% of broadcasting time for only him being a national hero. He would get his 70% without all this. But whole the country should work to please his childish ambitions. So ridiculous and so true for Belarus.

So many nations live and lived in Europe, whence they come and why? It seems what made those nations is the migration period. That’s curious the migration season was opened by Germans (Goths) in 2dn century. They relocated Gotland island (Sweden) to the North of Europe and pushed other tribes. Though, it hardly was the major impetus to the migration. They just moved further till the Dnepr river and founded a state there. There is a version that it was on the place of Ukrainian capital –Kiev, but there is no evidences. The real migration started lately with Hun’s invasion and the Extreme weather events of 535–536 (BTW, a meteorite? Volcanic winter? In the light of global effect of recent volcanic eruption it’s scary. Though, it could be worse) . So, where am I? Ah, who where those terrible Huns who had shaken the whole Europe. Likely there were a part of numerous nomad tribe Xiongnu from north of China and south Siberia defeated by Chinese. Guess where from Hungary name came.

So to say my forefather Slavs settled wide in Europe. Huns dislodged part them to the East on the lands of nowadays Novgorod, Ukraine and Belarus.

Langobards filled in Italy. Angles, Saxons, Jutes populated the Britain. Frisians the north of Netherlands. And so on.

Here lies the story…

First I decided rewrite my old BlogSlideShow JS-class. In fact I have a plan to rewrite all of my old works gaining to update functionally and appearance regarding to nowadays fashion and make better their code. You can see what I got at the demo page. So, after I finished with implementation on fluent JS, without use of any external library I ported it on jQuery. After that I wrote also implementation on YUI3. I’m fond of both those frameworks and found that is a good practice top have the same task solved thrice in different ways. So here is my observations experienced the task.

 

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Eventually I reincarnated my personal site using alpha version of Sapid CMF 2. I’m still in progress refining the CMS release, but actually the only what I brought from old version is its name. So, what is going to be? First of all that’s a new explicit architecture. According to the request dispatcher finds controller. The controller using services prepares data for the view. Services access raw data via DAOs, which respectively use DTOs (Data Transfer Objects).( Read more... )

Watching Poland mourning on CNN, still in shock. Just have read  articles from Russian mass-media and they left us (me and my wife) confused. How could it happen to a presidential plain with the best pilots of the country? There was one article with interview to the Russian chief dispatcher from Smolensk. He claims Kachinski’s pilots didn’t give him report data to control the plain descending – the reason was they couldn’t speak Russian so far, especially were bad with digits. That’s absurd, in order to land safely in Russia everybody should speak Russian?!

Nothing happens on its own neither in Georgia nor in Ukraine, not in Kyrgyzstan. Russia runs the politics of Ekaterina the Great - to inflame internal conflict in neighbor country via propaganda, promise support to the most greedy politicians and keep troops ready to enter the target country when the fight blows up.
That's weird but Lukashenka has just earned some points of respect from my side. He has been flirting with Russia for 15 years, but managed not to lose independence so far in spite of Russia keeps trying to apply the same Ekaterina-sort of politics on Belarus as well, but fails in the case.

When getting in the Netherlands the first what catches you look is every piece of ground is carefully divided on squares by water channels. That’s weird and beautiful and apparently it’s paradise for ducks, gooses and swans. Closeness of the Northern Sea feels everywhere and it made the Dutch extremely inventive. Whoever came first (the Avar, the German, the Celt) on those lands were obliged to fight against the sea continually.  They built channel banks, water mills to move waters, and won their land from the sea. They joke “God made the sea and the Dutch made the ground”. I’m used to call the land as Holland, but that’s a wrong name – Holland is one of provinces of the Netherlands and translation for the Netherlands is Lower Lands. In 14th century they were under rule of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and also king of Spain and that was kind of first prototype of Benelux. And during Charles’ son Philip II of Spain time - part of provinces rose against. So part provinces stayed true to Spain (Belgium and Luxemburg) and part (current the Netherlands) won their independency. It was the real center of European trade. Every citizen who had a house lived on the first floor, kept a workshop on second one and goods on third one. That’s why you still can find every building on channels in Amsterdam is inclined toward the water having hoisting sheave. That was used to ship goods.

 

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That’s terrible. Wondering of what can make sense of it for the Chechen I’m coming to the idea – nothing so far. Then I think of nowadays Russian authorities and find these events bring a huge profit to their current politic strategy. It makes possible for them to speed up of armaments build-up and nobody can argue for spending extra money of nation budget inside or increase of military power outside – terrorism is a non-disputable argument. The possibility and, besides, the high probability of this makes me sad.