Category: *.BAK

Another reason I stopped writing for Russians was that during the first days of the war, Russian MoD was continuously reporting that “there are no casualties”.
Meanwhile Ukrainians were posting photos of Russian soldier corpses, including pilots (rare, easily identifiable), and videos of Russian soldiers taken captive.
I was reposting some of those. Thought it would change the attitude of some of my readers. Cause a cognitive dissonance between what they see and what they’ve been told.
It didn’t.
A year later, I see Ukrainians mourning people they never knew, but I don’t see Russians doing the same.

I’ve been carrying that thought through the year.
My family always spoke Russian. And I have been writing my blog in Russian for 20 years. But since the war started, it became obsolete.
What’s the point of writing about games in Russian, if most of those that stayed in Russia soon won’t be able to afford playing them?
Then, a lot of the people I spoke with during those 20 years turned into fascists. All that talk of “liberating Ukraine from Nazis” that I started hearing from housewives and amateur photographers that actively dodged army service made me sick. Even sicker made me some Russian speakers from the States, that “trusted only Russian MoD” and started claiming how Kyiv will fall every day now, and that Zelensky has already escaped to Moldova/Spain.
I knew those people were nostalgic about USSR, had half friendly banter with them about it for years, all that “tastiest icecream in the world” kind of stuff. All that talk that “USSR had to invade Finland to protect itself from Hitler”, “USSR had to invade Afganistan to protect itself from the US”, and “did you know jews in Israel even made a medal for Hitler before WW2 started”.
But I always assumed that if a real war started, if somehow USSR would ever come back, they would immediately understand.
It did, it did, and they didn’t. They happily embraced the war and “you should have kept the President we chose for you” narrative.
So, there’s no point in writing in Russian for me anymore. I’m not interested in that audience. So, that’s why for a year now, it’s English for me.

We have not one but three large Asian supermarkets in our neighbourhood that are extremely popular.
So today I tried Nongshim Chapagetti noodles that seem to be very popular. To me they tasted bland and not very special, despite all the praise.

Later I discovered that Koreans indeed consider them bland, and mix them with NeoGuri, which is another type of noodles from Nongshim.

Been dreaming about those for years. After the initial fiasco, a month and a half later, I find them quite comfortable.
Certainly need to get used to the weight, and also not to strain tendons too much. But feet feel warm and dry, which I certainly like.
High boots are certainly not as easy to slip in. And I wish there were mid waterproof option available.

A funny thing happened. I guess it came with one of the sneaky updates.
Now I have two keyboard layouts in my Windows 10, US and UK.
What’s so funny about it? That I cannot see UK layout installed anywhere.
But that means that I need to switch between two layouts, and UK layout has “@” in a weird place.
Managed to solve it only after proactively installing UK layout, and then uninstalling it.

Finally bought a Philips S9000 shaver I was thinking about for a few months now. And it’s is probably the last expensive shaver I’ll buy.
For some reason, they went with three angled petals instead of round ones. And angles means scratches.
The shave itself isn’t any better than S8000 I had for many years. The benefits are in the ergonomics, mostly: there’s a standing charge station, which is nice. And there’s a pressure indication light, similar to the electrical toothbrushes. Also, the shaving unit is now attached with a spring to the shaving head.
Funnily enough it also comes with a cleaning station, something I never really wanted, due to its bulk and limited use.

Found this to be fascinating, what difference the barrel makes.

Same alcohol, same age, just a different barrel.

Today I finally tried the British Wagyu they sell on the Borough market.
Turns out it’s a cross between Wagyu males and Angus females. Expensive, but good. Very smooth, and with a very distinct nutty taste.
Cost around 22GBP for 270g, so about 79 for 1kg.

This Friday we went to see the Frozen Musical.
Interesting details: support cast as nature elements. At the very beginning, they act as ocean waves. And at the very end they represent blizzard.
Also was impressed by the elk. There seems to be just a single person operating it standing on all fours, but it also moves its head and eyelashes. That’s some coordination.
Technically, it’s less impressive than Beauty and the Beast Musical. Maybe because the stage is more “general purpose”. There are a few objects moving from the left and right, like Elsa’s icicles, but nothing as complex.
Kids loved the snowman puppet. I was again surprised for some adult jokes, like during Prince and Anna song. But I guess you have to keep everyone entertained, not just kids.
Another surprise: Samantha Barks that plays Elsa is just 31. I was sure she looks good for her forties. But maybe it’s just the makeup.

Post-COVID life has some funny consequences. At some point, some sites stopped working on my old Note 8. Namely: Twitter and YouTube. I was simply getting “connection reset” error, and that’s it. YouTube app would sometimes work, and Twitter app almost never worked.
I attributed this to phone not getting security updates, and hence – no certificate updates. But jailbreaking it was too cumbersome, and would also ruin Work Profile, so I decided simply to wait for a new phone.
Imagine my surprise when I got a new phone still with the same issue. Sites working fine most of the time, but “connection reset” sometimes.
Then I gave it some thought, went into “Parental Controls” of my mobile provider, and found out I was on “kids” setting, which probably is just the default setting they give you. With my previous provider, Vodafone, they gave you an HTML page that would explain the issue, but new provider, EE, just breaks the connection.
Once I turned that to “adult” mode, both Twitter and YouTube came back immediately.
How come I never figure this out until now? I go out so rarely nowadays, that I manage to stay on WiFi most of the time, and when I’m off WiFi, the old DNS’ are still kept for some time, I guess. So when I went to the gym, I could watch a video or two on YouTube, before getting disconnected.

This Friday we went to see “Beauty and the Beast” Musical at London Palladium.
The tickets said that the show starts at 19:30, so I expected it to start around 19:45. But when we arrived at 19:25 they were already ushering everyone inside. And the show started just in time.
First thing I was impresed with is the actor that played Gascone. The guy had huge biceps, just like in the cartoon. Did they audition actors based on their bicep size? Did he had to go through specific kind of training for the role? Of course everyone remembers Christian Bale and Joaquin Phoenix for their transformations, but I didn’t expect something like that from a musical.
Belle’s role seemed very challenging to me as well. She has to act, she has to sing pretty difficult parts (I have zero understanding in music and singing, they just seemed difficult to me), and in addition, she also has to be able to dance can-can with others.
There were a lot of kids at the show. After all, it’s a Disney musical, right? But I’m not sure they much into can-can. And some other themes, like Lumiere’s infidelity or Madame de la Grande Bouche exposing herself playfully.
They invested a lot into different accents. Babette is clearly French, while Mrs. Potts and Cogsworth are very much British.
There’s a great tradition of selling icecream during the entr’acte in the UK. There’s usually a queue, and we end up picking between the flavours that are left. This time we decided to use the opportunity and order it ahead of time, so we get what we want. But how do we tell which order is ours? Turns out they just leave everything on the bar counter, with receipts telling which is which. Relying on the fact that nobody would steal someone else icecream.
Musical uses flashlights for some of its effects. You get a bright flash at the very beginning, when prince transforms. At the end of the musical there is another set of flashes when the prince transforms back. Some girl cried “Jeeesus”, in a very British tone. Don’t remember when I laughed so hard the last time.
Overall, it was absolutely spectacular. Maybe not as inventive as the Lion King musical, but somewhat more impressive in some aspects, like the pink curtain falling during “Be Our Guest” or the mug dance of “Gaston”.