Ilyia Kaushansky

WOW - this is interesting: Based on my resent searches for "the end up" and "vessel san francisco" (both electronic music related searches) Google has recommended me to visit http://www.sfopera.com :)

Recently there has a been a large push towards clean, "green" energy, especially here in California. Lots of people are driving hybrids, many households are installing Solar Panels, etc. I've been pretty much oblivious to this phenomenon; however today, while shopping at Costco I finally made my first environment-conscious purchase ! I bought 10 fluorescent light bulbs (~75% power savings) for an incredible price of $1.5 ! (that's right, 15 cents per individual light bulb). I wish other opportunities for energy conservation were just as attractive financially. Until that happens, there is absolutely no way that we (by we I mean the entire world) are going to get any greener !

Idiocracy - watch it ! Great Movie !

Wow - it's been almost two years since I moved to California - Time flies !!!

Well known Moore's law, which states that computer processors get twice as fast every 18 months. However, there is another law, stated by Niklaus Wirth in 1995, that states the following: Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster. Fascinating, isn't it ?

Last weekend(Apr. 17th) I went to Montreal for a Bal en Blanc party. Bal en Blanc is an annual "rave" where everyone wears white. The party is huge, with about 12 thousand people in attendance. This year's DJ headliners included Armin van Buuren, Infected Mushroom, David Guetta and Deep Dish. Unfortunately, Armin van Burren sucked, his new style is slow and boring. Nevertheless, Bal en Blanc was a huge success, and I really enjoyed the party. I didn't have a watch with me, so imagine my surprise when I found out that it was 11:30AM when we went home(I didn't expect to stay that long). It was awesome seeing my friends from Toronto and Montreal, for some of whom it was a first big party. They weren't dissapointed ! This was my 3rd Bal en Blanc party, and the 4th year in a row that I party in Montreal for Easter. Let's hope this trend continues !

Wikipedia is great but I think it could be improved even further by having the following 2 features: Feature One : Make it very easy for a reader to ask questions about a particular topic, and let readers view and rate the questions. The motivation for the above feature is simple: many Wikipedia entries are incomplete for two reasons: 1) An editor omits a piece of information which he deems insignificant. 2) Information is not included because it is not known. Letting users ask and rate questions addresses the first issue because now the readers can explicitly state what kind of information they are interested in. The second issue is partially addressed as well. While information about a subject may not be known, it may be discovered. But something should motivate the discovery(which is often a difficult, or impossible). And what better motivator of discovery than curiosity ? If many people think that a particular question is important, it just might motivate someone to make an effor...

Here is a short review of various clubs in San Francisco that are known to play House and Trance music. Please remember that crowds come and go(one place might be popular this month, but dead the next), and clubs sometimes change their musical formats. Hence, the reviews below may not be accurate a year, or even a few months from now. It will be interesting to revisit this list next year, and see what has changed. Ruby Skye : Probably the most well known nightclub in San Francisco. It is a fairly big venue. Music is house (both fridays and saturdays), but since Ruby Skye often brings well known DJs, the music might vary depending on who is at the decks. I rarely go there on regular nights because the crowd tends to be too touristy and the vibe isn't all that great. Best nights are special events that sometimes happen on weekdays . These events attract "those who know" crowd and the vibe is crazy. Mighty : This is my favourite club in San Francisco. They play pretty decen...

Essential Applications - Mozilla Firefox - An alternative to Internet Explorer. Firefox is more secure, faster, but most importantly - it's plug-in architecture allows the browser to be extended in some very powerful ways. - Vim - Text editor for programmers. I still do most of my coding in Vim. It doesn't have as many programmer friendly features as many popular IDEs such as IntelliJ, Eclipse, Visual Studio and others, but it's blazingly fast. And that's why I still use it. - Miranda - Universal instant messenger. Why install MSN, AIM, Yahoo IM, Gtalk, ICQ, when you can install Miranda and talk to anyone who uses any of the above IM clients ? (To be quite honest, ever since Google integrated chat right into Gmail, I don't really run Miranda either. Most of the people I talk to have Gmail accounts, and so Gmail chat is sufficient most of the time). Essential Firefox Extensions - ScrapBook: Save web-sites on local drive for offline viewing - IE View Lite:...

First it was Leninade , and now it's Borsch : Google cafeteria never ceases to surprise me ! Borsch is a soup we often used to eat back in "the mother Russia", but it's not every day(or should I say every year), that you get to eat Borsch here (unless it's a Russian restaurant, your wife is fresh out of Russia, or you still live with Russian parents). So imagine my surprise when I come in to work in the morning, and see a fresh bowl of Borsch just waiting to be eaten. And so I did! Cool!

Lately, whenever I want to look up information on a famous person, a city, or any other known entity my first destination is Wikipedia . Gotta love that resource ! I just wish Google and other search engines would rank Wikipedia entries higher. Not only would the users be redirected to great information, but that would also spark more additions to Wikipedia. After all, Wikipedia is created by users like you and me (all information on Wikipedia is entered and edited by simple users), and so the more people know about it(and understand how it works), the more people edit Wikipedia, and so it becomes more accurate and bigger.

Last weekend(March 4th) I went to New York for a Paul van Dyk party. The whole thing was a little nuts: I arrived in New York at 8PM saturday, partied, chilled with friends, and was back in SF late Sunday night. Sleep wasn't on the agenda. The party was pretty good, though I think I'm starting to grow out of Trance. Paul van Dyk played a really good set(he was on for 6 hours), but I wasn't really feeling it. By the end the set, I actually wanted to leave, and that doesn't happen very often. Nevertheless, I thought the trip was a success. I got to see friends whom I haven't seen in a while(they made the trip from Toronto), so overall I'm very happy.

For those who may not know, you can now upload your videos for free to Google Video , and then "embed" them on your web page. Here is a short video clip that taken back in May 2005. Shortly after graduation, a few of us gathered in a park and burned our university notes. This is what came out.

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.