Month: October 2023

Good coffee is when they don’t ask you what size you want, medium or large. I always remember this when it’s mentioned that software quality requirements are formulated by a customer survey. And there’s no I’m feeling lucky! button there.

Mashenka, happy birthday! I can’t write better than Nadya, so I’m joining in 😉

Today, while riding the metro, I was studying the map. Some station names really stand out in an odd way.

For instance, the station called max catches the eye. It’s spelled with a lowercase letter. In Arabic, there are no uppercase and lowercase letters, but in English there are, and for some reason, it is written exactly as max. And the translation into Arabic is also literally “max” (ماكس). It turns out it’s named that because it’s a sponsored station by the Max Fashion store chain. In Dubai, it seems you can buy a station for yourself. (In our parts in Virginia, you can sponsor a section of a bike trail, but not to “rob caravans” as you might think, rather to oversee its cleanliness and condition)

The same explanation applies to stations like ADCB, ONPREMISE, equiti, and others.

Yuki sends them from home. He probably dreams that he is an astronaut

Or cucumbers

this morning

What the heck kind of news. LE VENDEUR DE NOUVEAUTÉS À PARIS translates as “the novelty seller in Paris.” Repin lived in Paris for three years from 1873 (actually, the year the painting was written).

https://my.tretyakov.ru/app/masterpiece/77855

Look at these clever guys. I live in a hotel styled like a castle. Well, there are old wooden frames, rusty grills on the windows, somewhat crooked walls, beamed ceilings, etc. And I noticed that when you open a window, the air conditioner turns off. Right then and there. And it turns back on when you close the window. Just like magic. Probably how some people marvel at the escalators in the subway.

I roamed around there with a flashlight, and not without some difficulty, found it! Everything was almost “overgrown” with something like cobwebs, and I managed to take a clear picture only at the second window.

It turns out, a sensor is embedded in the window frame. Just a reed switch with a little magnet. When it opens, it sends a command to pause the air conditioner.

I would replace any metro in the world with Dubai’s. It seems to have no flaws at all

I could never understand why hotels place telephones next to the toilet. Is this a “cultural” thing? No one uses the room phone anymore, except maybe to call the reception. It’s hard for me to imagine a use case where this is done from the toilet.

I found out – apparently, those odd structures are not just for aesthetics, but they actually have a functional purpose. They are called barjeel, or wind towers. I see there are scientific papers claiming these towers reduced indoor temperatures by 10 degrees Celsius. Sticks protrude from the barjeel. Why? They were used to attach sails for better wind collection. Now, it’s merely a tradition. And of course, nobody uses them for cooling in the age of air conditioners anymore. But many stylize their villas to resemble a desert home.