Ilyia Kaushansky

This saturday I went to see house legend Danny Tenaglia spin a 12 hour set at Ruby Skye nightclub here in San Francisco. I have to say that I was entirely unimpressed. The guy is over rated. The best part of the night was the fact that the bar was reopened at 6AM.

Today I realized how poor are my writing skills when it comes down to writing with a pen on a piece of paper. I was trying to write an address on an envelope, and it turned out to be surprisingly difficult. I might even say it was irritating and frustrating writing those few lines of text. Then I thought to myself: how often do I get to write using a pen these days? The answer startled me: virtually never ! Is writing on paper becoming obsolete ? The second skill( first is reading ) that we are taught at school is turning out to be useless ! I wonder how long it's gonna take before writing with a pen is no longer taught at school ?

First it was Apple offering downloadable copies of past TV shows($1.99/episode), and now it seems that TV networks CBC and NBC are following up , and offering past shows for $0.99/episode(those aren't exactly downloadable, but instead can be viewed on Comcact On Demand.) I think this is a great step forward ! While currently they only offer recent show, I can imagine that sometime soon we'll be able to download pretty much any show that ever aired on TV and this really excites me !

Halloween - what a great holiday ! I wish people were wearing fun costumes everyday ! Not only is it extremely funny seeing supermen, witches, policewomen, pirates, etc., but also every everybody looks different. Anyways, I think Halloween is my favourite holiday right now...

I've just finished watching first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm , a popular sitcom produced by Larry David(who is most known for being a producer of Seinfeld). I have to say that I was pretty impressed. The show is really funny, not as funny as Seinfeld, but somewhat more realistic. A+ !

So this weekend I went to Seattle to see my friends Alex and Diego , who I know from the good old times at the University of Waterloo. Seattle turned out to be a better city than I expected (excluding the fact that there are way too many Microsofties in there, sorry Diego). The nightlife in Seattle is vibrant, with a great selection of clubs, lounges, and social pubs(ala Bomber at Waterloo). Recently I became more of a lounge fan, and I think Seattle offers a little more choice in that respect than San Francisco. During daylight hours we've explored the city, visited a nice park, and checked out a Boing museum, which was the highlight of the trip. It's been a while since I've been to a museum, let alone a very interesting one. This one was definitely great; it houses a lot of different airplanes from different times of the century - it was very cool seeing them from up close.

I'm going to Settle this weekend to visit my friends, who have recently moved there from Canada. Should be a very fun weekend !

Unbelievable, Absolutely Unbelievable ! This year's Love Parade was even bigger, more fun than last year, and the weather could not have been any better! Tens of thousands of people dancing and going absolutely nuts to the variety of musical styles(all electronic), anything from House to Trance to Drum'n'Bass. The parade started at 1PM at 2nd and Market St, and then proceeded to the Civic Center. As last year, during the parade I was following the Psy Trance float with an Indian DJ. That was the float to be at - crazy beats and people did not hold back when it came to dancing, jumping, smiling and just enjoying themselves to the fullest. Great energy ! The parade concluded at the Civic Center around 3PM, and turned into a giant party. So huge, in fact, that I don't even think we ever covered the entire ground. (lesson learnt: never try to meet-up with people during such big parties. It's nearly impossible, especially considering the fact that cell phones practically...

YES. YES. YES ! If Love Parade 2004 was any indication, this year's one should be off the hook ! With DJs such as Carl Cox, Paul van Dyk, Above & Beyond, Ferry Corsten and many many others the DJ line-up is absolutely phenomenal by North American standards. I recommend everyone to attend this. Fun times are guaranteed !

I recently bought Joel's Spolsky's latest book Best Software Writing, which is a collection of software related essays written by various authors over the past few years. It is a pretty good read, though not as good as Joel's earlier book . One essay that has I especially liked is called Closing the Gap, Part 1 , by Eric Sink. It is available online free of charge, and I highly recommend reading it. It is an easy read, very humorous, and highly educational.

Went to my first Russian party in San Francisco yesterday. I have to say that I was impressed. The club was really nice( which was a surprise - many nightsclubs in San Francisco look like dumps compared to clubs in Toronto ), the music pretty good( mostly Russian dance and house ), and there were lots of great looking women. People were well dressed, and smiling which couldn't be said about Russian parties in Toronto. I got the impression that Russians in San Fran have adapted much better to local lifestyle than Russians in Toronto. Overall I really enjoyed the night, and I think will be attending more of these parties in the future.

All I can say is WOW . I'm not generally a big fan of house music, but this set has not left my playlist for the past month or so. 2.5 hours of dark, dirty, electro house; incredible ! Here is the tracklist: 01. Pastaboys - Tribute 02. Audiofly - Science Fiction 03. Vintagent - Rock N Roll 04. Dj Marbrax - Freakin 05. Tiga - Louder Than A Bomb 06. ID 07. Beginerz pres Def E - Wipe Those Tears Away (Vocal mix) 08. Steve Lawler - Illectronic Music (Vocal mix) 09. Mark Knight + Martijn Ten Velden - Acid Test 10. Mylo - Destroy Rock N Roll (Tom Neville mix) 11. Motel - Feel The Rhythm 12. Trophy Twins - Anarchism (Disciples of Sound & Kid Lopez mix) 13. Funky Green Dogs - Reach For Me (Steve Lawler mix) 14. Tommie Sunshine - Head To Toe In Drag 15. T-Total - Give Me Funk 16. Didier Sinclair and Chris Pie - Heavenly (Sharam Jey Club mix) 17. Max Linen - Flashback (D Ramirez mix) 18. Boombox - The Slam 19. Live Element - Dont Bring Me Down 20. ID 21. ID 22. God...

As you may know I arrived in California on July 27th, 2005. But what you may not know, is that today, on August 13th, 2005 was the first time that I prepared food on the territory of the United States. The natural question would be - "What did you cook?" The answer is simple: a hot dog.

Yesterday I finally moved into my newly rented apartment in San Francisco. It is a small bachelor apartment(or studio as they call it in the US), but I think it will suit me just fine. The view from the balcony (I'm on the 27th floor) is absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately San Francisco is often foggy, so I usually can't see very far. I really like the place so far; and it feels great finally living in a place of my own. Surprisingly, I even feel motivated to keep it clean; this never happened to me before. Am I maturing ? Yesterday I also made a trip to Wal-Mart to purchase various products that are essential for living. It's incredible how much stuff there is ! Anything from forks and spoons, to shower curtain and garbage bin. I spent nearly $150, and will probably need to make another two or three trips. Right now the apartment feels somewhat empty. Out of furniture I just have an air-mattress, and computer desk. Not even a chair to sit on. Hopefully this will change over...

It's been almost a month since I've returned from Ibiza, and so I think it's time to post a few pictures. Unfortunately there aren't many, and even fewer that are suitable for public display. Tuesday night. On the way to Pacha nighclub, where Junior Jack is spinning house. It was our first club night in Ibiza. Pacha was fun, but I think we should have went to Amnesia instead(Armin was spinning Trance there) Wednesday morning. This picture was taken around 8AM, soon after me and Vlad returned from Pacha. We weren't done partying yet. After changing, showering and having a little breakfast we were on our way to party at Space nightclub, where we danced till noon. On Sunday night we went to San Antonio to watch the sunset at Cafe Del Mar. It was pretty cloudy and we got there late, so we didn't see much. And so we drank. A lot. Soon after I found myself singing Elvis Presley - Hound Dog at some bar in San Antonio. Taken monday morning. After singing Elvis, we went ...

And so, I have arrived in California. The first week here has not been easy. I arrived on Wednesday, July 27th and my first mission was to open a checking account at an American bank. That part was easy; the problems began when I tried to put my money into it. Back in Canada, I've decided that instead of bringing cash into US, I'd make a money order and then deposit it as soon as I open an account here. Unfortunately, Bank of America decided to put my money order on hold for a week, which has really screwed up my plans to get an apartment by the end of the weekend. Nevertheless I spent the next 3 days looking at apartments in both San Francisco and Mountain View(near work). What I soon realized is that housing in Mountain View is both cheaper, and better than housing in San Francisco. The downside ? Mountain View is BORING. And by boring, I do mean boring. There is absolutely nothing here. Finally, on Sunday I've discovered a fairly decent place in San Francisco. It is only...

Well, I'm about a month away from moving to San Francisco, CA and today I finally started looking for an apartment. To tell you the truth: it isn't easy, even with great resources such as www.housingmaps.com (merge of Google Maps and Craigslist) and www.apartmentratings.com . Basically I'm looking for a 1 room studio that is located within 10 minute walking distance of this location (Civic Station BART). There are many available studios in that area, however most of them either require a year long lease, or are really expensive (expensive as in $400-500/week). Normally a year long lease wouldn't be a problem, but since I can't visit the apartment(I'm currently in Toronto) before signing the lease, it might be a big gamble. Thus, after thinking about this for a bit I came to the conclusion that it's probably a better idea to pay extra for one month rather than commit myself to a year long lease. And so, my current plan is to live at Ansonia Hotel (thanks to...

Every once in a while a web application is released that is radically better than any existing competition. A well known example is Gmail . A slightly lesser known one is Flickr , which I want to write about in this post. Flickr is web based photo-hosting service, with some really neat features. You can get a free account, as well as a pro-account (25USD per year). The main limitation of the free account is that it is only possible to upload up to 20MB of pictures per month, which is still ok if you aren't taking that many pictures. With pro-account, you can upload as many pictures as you want and, of course, there are some additional not-so-essential perks. Here is a short overview of some features I love most: RSS feed for person's pictures. Basically you can subscribe to person's picture stream, and receive notifications when new pictures are uploaded. You can tag your pictures with multiple keywords. You then have the option of only viewing those pictures that hav...

As I mentioned in the earlier posting, I recently went on a 3 week tour of Kenya and Tanzania. At first I planned to write a very detailed overview of the trip but then when I started writing it, I realized that my writing abilities are simply not good enough to produce a detailed, yet interesting and humorous review. In addition to that, my friend Alex who went on the tour with me has already written a really good review here . Thus, I'm just going to write a few things in point form. Seeing all the animals living in the wild, in their own world with little or no human intervention is absolutely fascinating. Its one thing to see a lone giraffe in the zoo, but when you see a family of 5 giraffees, just walking around, minding their own business, not really caring for us humans - it's a completely different experience. Or take lions for example. I couldn't believe my eyes when we were driving in a truck, and there was a pride of about 12 lions sharing the road with us, wa...