Ilyia Kaushansky

If there is one place I'm going to miss in Waterloo, it's the Revolution Nightclub(or simply Rev). I've been going there for almost four years now and that place just keeps on getting better and better. I generally hang out in the Purple Room, that's where trance/techno/house is being played.

What's interesting is how crowd has changed in the Purple Room over the years. When I just started going there it was mostly ravers in baggy pants, lots of people high, few girls. These days it's almost 100% typical clubbers, people are just drinking and, surprisingly, there are many good looking women.

Over the past 3 years I've been primarily going there on Trance nights, which happen once a month. The resident DJ is Dennis Hahn. It's always great Trance/Tech-Trance when he is on, and the crowd is going nuts !

I rarely step outside of the Purple Room, however. The music in the mainroom sucks, and the crowd is very thuggy-looking(makes me wish they had a dress code or smthn). Lots of great looking women in there though, so it could be a good place to meet somebody if you can tolerate the music.

Overall, the club is really nice and very very big. I'm gonna miss it !

Amazon, Froogle and I'm sure others have what are called Wish Lists. Wish List is nothing more than a list of items that a user wants to have. Wish Lists are great, but unfortunately if a user is using both Amazon and Froogle he needs to maintain two separate wishlists which is clearly inconvenient.

Thus, I think it would be awesome if some independent company would host the wish list, which could then be shared(with customers permission) with various online retailers. IMHO, this would be convenient to both customers and retailers. Consumer's convenience factor is fairly evident. But why should retailers be interested?

Well, consider the following scenario. Retailer A contains product X, and retailer B doesn't. Clearly, since B doesn't contain X, customer cannot put X into his wish list while browsing B's website. He can; however put the item on the list while browsing A. Now, a month have gone by and B has obtained X. Customer has returned to B's web-site, and B is now aware that customer wants X. B can display appropriate ads.

Note - that's just one example of how this would benefit retailers. There are others.

Additionally, the user should be able to set a price watch on an item in his wish list. A price watch is a price at which user is willing to buy the product. The company that hosts the wish list, would crawl retailers and notify the user if an item in user's list is found at specified price or cheaper. Wouldn't that be cool ?

Hence I think such Wish List would be beneficial to both customers and retailers. I wonder if this idea will ever see the light of day ?

They say cigarettes are addictive. They also say that about drugs, coffee and various other things. But for some reason nobody mentions VI. Yes VI, VI: a text editor originally created for UNIX, but now available for pretty much any operating system out there.

When I was first shown VI, I laughed. I thought it was a crappy editor, a remnant from the 70s, an era when the mouse was still unknown to the masses. I had trouble exiting the damn editor, nevermind successfully editing a file. Nevertheless, I forced myself to learn it. Partly because I wanted to look cool among my classmates, and partly because I wanted to see for myself what all the VI hype was about.

For the next month my working productivity was nearly zero. VI turned out to be surprisingly difficult to learn. The biggest problem was the number of key combinations I had to learn. Additionally, it was very difficult to accept the fact that navigation was now done using 'h', 'j', 'k', 'l' instead of the familiar left, down, up, right keys.

It's 4 years later. I still haven't fully grasped VI, yet my current knowledge is sufficient enough to edit any file a lot faster than if I was using another, more modern, editor. Not only that, but I've gotten so used to the VI keystrokes and navigation keys that I'm almost handicapped when it comes down to using another editor.

A natural question then is Why use another editor at all ? Use VI all the time. Well, as much as I'd love to, unfortunately VI is not suitable for all purposes. Sometimes I have to use Microsoft Word, and these days most of the Java development is done in either Eclipse or IDEA. There are VI plugins for the latter 2 editors, but it's not the same.

The point is. I somewhat regret I've learned VI. It's an amazing editor, possibly the best out there. Unfortunately, once you get used to it, it becomes inconvenient to use anything else.

It is a well known fact that Soccer (or should I say Football?) is the most popular game in the world. It is also a well known fact that US/Canadian TV channels don't show nearly enough soccer.

What I want to know is why aren't there websites dedicated to showing highlights from the games. I'm not even talking full games, just 5-7 minutes of highlights would be enough!

For example just today was an amazing Real Madrid - Barcelona game, the result of which was 4-2, and I have no way of seeing the goals. I would even pay a monthly fee for an online service which would show the highlights, and I'm sure I'm not the only one !