blinnov’s blog

Ладно. Белые львы как-то еще умещались в моем представлении о мире хищников, но вот с красными пандами произошел некий конфликт.

Панда – это же такой то ли медведь то ли непойми кто, черно-белого окраса, промышляющий поеданием бамбука в Китае. Откуда же у него взялся родственник жгуче-рыжего цвета?

Оказывается, эти ленивые мордашки едят в основном бамбук, как и их монохромные родственники. Подсчитать популяцию красных панд в Mogo мне не удалось, так как живут они там в четырех разных вольерах.

Дальше тоже интересно…

Among many things I like in Australia there are some that I just excited about. For example, native Australian fauna. At first, it seems to me that the biggest and most widely spread Australian predator has a habit to laugh very loudly on mornings and is only dangerous to some insects, small lizards and stuff that people try to burn on BBQ (well, this is on ground. In the water things are not that great and it is not necessary to dive in the ocean in search for the main character of “Jaws” movie, on the north of the continent even fresh water ponds may be contaminated with something very alive and not less toothy than shark; I will come back to them later). At second, animals here still have not picked up a habit not to show to humans what puts a big question mark on the idea of going to the Zoo in order to satisfy the obsession to see Australian natives – possums nightly pass through even in areas where population density is very high, kookaburras laugh at 4am right next to the open window of bedroom, even koalas can be spotted while you are doing the bush walk. Moreover, rare spices from of rare kind of monotremes – Echidnas – still can be found in one of many Sydney’s national parks.

But let me talk about kangaroo. After a short lunch at Cambewarra lookout, we headed further south with an intention to have a dip at the famous Pebbly beach, which is situated in Murramarang national park near Ulladulla. Hope this information is sufficient should any traveler have an interest in visiting this place. In the meantime, I will try to explain what is it so special about this beach.

One famous once said something like “a picture worth thousand words”

Read more about Pebbly Beach…

I just love big creations of engineering minds. Mad minds, sometimes. At least I still can’t really understand how did they manage to build such enormous thing as Sydney Harbor Bridge in 1930′th. Of course, I have read its history and seen archive photos, but the amount of the work they did still looks enormous (and it really was enormous!) to me.

But, as it happens, Australia still has something not that gigantic but not even a bit less exciting monument of engineering genius. Before we stopped for a lunch at Cambewarra lookout, we passed Kangaroo valley, where we did not find any kangaroos (and we did not really look for them, actually), but we have found something very spectacular. That was Hampden bridge. If you follow the link, you may find that the bridge was build in the end of 19th century and it is still in use, and RTA regularly checks its condition and it is still safe. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Read more…

Part 1.

I love traveling. Especially in a car. And it gets best when there is no any time constraints, no appointments, and, especially, no strict timetables of a kind “2pm-3pm- Muesum, then 30 minutes – group photos at a fountain, then lunch and accommodation in the hotel”. Yes, the latter acts as even better torture than compulsory study of something epic like “War and Peace” or complete works of Shakespeare on literature classes in high school, which usually develop untreatable allergy to all classic literature in persons being tortured. I am not talking about not having a plan for the trip at all, indeed it is good to have rough schedule on paper or at least in your head, but it should be something pretty abstract like “We have 5 days, want to get to that nice place and visit this museum, that park and a nice little cafe. And, if have spare time, climb that bridge”.

This was my first vacation since we moved to Down Under. I felt very tired at work and decided to take one week off, turn the computer off and escape. Just to get that nice feeling of being tourist again.

Our plan was as simple as it gets. We wanted to spend from four to six days away from Sydney and, ideally, get to Victoria, stopping everywhere where we see anything interesting as hidden gems appear much often than we usually imagine. For example, consider this spectacular view from Camgewarra lookout (it is not that far from Berry or Nowra, I will write about these little towns in a next few posts). Note – large panorama opens in a new window.

This lookout alight a little bit aside from busy roads and someone who has just to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible have very little chances to enjoy this view in real (picture above can only reflect a little fraction of landscape magnificence that is visible from 678 meters above sea level), which definitely deserves special mentioning.
Continue reading…

Неоднократно замечал странные подковообразные куски прозрачного желе на пляжах. Вчера потратил весь вечер, пытая гугль, ничего путного не нашел. В общем, вот фотография

Это точно не то, что вы подумали, это вряд ли медуза, не похоже на акулью икру (хотя, может какая-то другая икра?). Какие будут предположения?

Это просто феерично!

Продолжение

Сегодня за порцией утреннего RSDN наткнулся на пост полуторагодовой давности:

Держите меня семеро. Короче, моего терпения больше нет. Гребаное наше валютное “законодательство” и люди, поставленные его якобы контролировать, меня просто выводят из себя

Кратко. Второй перевод ИП-шнику. Превышение 5К. Оформление паспорта сделки. Требование договора и его принос. Круглые глаза и требование договоря с печатЯми (это еще в первый перевод) и подписЯми. Ок, Плимус с третьего раза присылает договор — наша !@#$%!@ почта заворачивает два письма потому что якобы неверно указан адрес. Приношу его сегодня. Очередные круглые глаза и слова, а не @$^@# ли ты мол.чел.? А где в договоре РЕКВИЗИТЫ? А где срок действия договора? Я сползаю по стенке со словами А КАКОГО… ТЫ МОЛЧАЛА ОБ ЭТОМ ДО ТОГО КАК Я СЮДА ПРИНЕС ПЕРВЫЙ ПЕРЕВОД, а она меня добивает — и еще нужно ПОДПИСАННЫЙ ОБОИМИ СТОРОНАМИ акт о выполненных работах?

Мое терпение просто окончилось на этом моменте. Говорю — давай я нарисую от руки и заверю своей подписью. Она мне — мол.чел. ты имеешь дело с ВАЛЮТОЙ. Я говорю, так это МОЯ ВАЛЮТА! И мой договор! Она — да иди ка ты в детский сад со своим заверением и своей подписью! Говорю — отсылай обратно перевод. Я с другим банком разберусь. Она мне — а c транзитного счета не положено!

Вообщем, отцы! Что делать-то? Юристов у нас тут в деревне грамотных по валютному законодательству считай что и нету, ну по крайней мере не знаю я где их искать. Как козулю эту победить? Меня всего просто колбасит от ТАКОГО ИДИОТИЗМА! Это называется упрощение работы малого бизнеса и развитие ИТ отрасли в стране? Да это @$^@&# какое-то!

Если честно, то за время пребывания в Австралии детали российских реалий слегка позабылись, так что отквоченное привело меня в состояние слегка легкого недоумения, ибо выглядит как сценарий для квеста класса “на юг идти нельзя, пока собака не понюхает колбасу”.

What a great thing! See here.

Sometimes in the evening we go for a dip to Narrabeen rock pools. Just like today, but today we saw it. There is nothing unusual for ship to stay at anchor somewhere nearby except this one was too close to the beach and I even thought its crew was seeking Pasha Bulker’s fame. Hopefully, it was close, but not that much.
Unfortunately, I did not have DSLR camera with me.. actualy, I don’t have DSLR at all, but this time the only I had was mobile cameraphone Nokia N95. That’s what I got:

Some more photos…

Well.. it seems to me that they will soon ask about anti-patterns than proper patterns at job interviews. At least there are some books available.  Can’t even imagine what comes after that..