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Beyond the Screen: How “Gone Girl” Manipulates Us Differently in Book and Film | September 09 2026, 19:56

Finished Gone Girl!

Yes, I’ve seen the movie. Yes, I knew the ending. And yet—the book is a different beast. The movie shows WHAT happened. The book shows HOW you’re being fooled: half a year of dated diary entries that you believe because the other narrator, Nick, admits he lies to the police. Flynn buys your trust in one liar at the expense of another. The camera can’t do that.

And the finale—it’s two competing manuscripts, his and hers. The one who writes better wins. Film simply can’t show this because it’s a book about books.

Read, don’t just watch, especially if you can do so in the original—it’s worthwhile. I’ve written before about bad translations. In the English version of the book, it’s very evident how the author changes the style and vocabulary in Amy’s chapters compared to Nick’s. Amy’s vocabulary is richer, sentences longer, more rare words used, the whole diary written in present tense, with exclamations and flirty remarks in parentheses. Nick, on the other hand, writes like a fired journalist (which he is)—short, past tense, “said”, “shrugged”, “poured”—that kind of protocol instead of feelings. This nuance gets smoothed over in translation, completely lost in film—there, both just talk. It’s interesting when the author metamorphoses into a hero with a narration style specific to each chapter.

Turnspit Dogs: The Forgotten Kitchen Helpers of Britain | August 24 2026, 01:18

It turns out that for several centuries in Britain, they kept a breed of dog with exactly one job — to serve as the drive for a kitchen mechanism. Turnspit dog, a cooking-jack dog. Short-legged, long-bodied, bandy-legged, yet surprisingly powerful. On the kitchen wall, a few meters away from the hearth, hung a wooden wheel nearly a meter in diameter—like a squirrel cage, only larger. A dog was put inside, the wheel connected to the spit by a shaft and chain, and the dog would tirelessly move its legs for hours to rotate the roast over the fire. The first recorded mention dates back to 1576: in John Caius’s treatise on English dogs, they are classified as a separate type, Turnespete. In the 18th century, Linnaeus even gave them a taxonomic name — Canis vertigus, “spinning dog.”

The wheel was hung higher and further from the hearth, so the dog wouldn’t overheat. Not out of sentimentality: in early designs, where it stood right by the fire, dogs hated this job so much that they would run away as soon as they saw the kitchen boy with a piece of meat. A reduction gear — the dog runs fast, the spit turns slowly, perfect for an even crust. In large kitchens, they kept two dogs and rotated them: one spins, the other rests. Hence, according to a persistent legend, the English saying every dog has his day—though etymologists, admittedly, debate this. There was also stimulation, unpleasant to read about: a hot coal could be thrown into the wheel to make the paws move faster.

The breed was doomed by the smokejack—a chimney turbine that spun the spit with the free flow of hot air. Cheap factory mechanisms (clock jacks, a spring with weights, like in floor clocks) and the Victorian cast-iron stove, after which the open hearth completely disappeared from kitchens, delivered the final blows. By the mid-19th century, turnspit dogs became a rarity; by the end of the century, they were gone entirely: no one kept this dog as a companion, they weren’t valued for their temperament to begin with. From Canis vertigus today — only a stuffed specimen named Whiskey in the Abergavenny Museum in Wales and a few rare prints remain. It is written that their bloodlines can be found in Welsh Corgis and Glen of Imaal Terriers, but, as far as I know, this has not been seriously genetically tested.

Nostalgic Business: Selling Websites on CDs in the Early 2000s | August 18 2026, 16:31

In the early 2000s, I had a “business” selling the internet at retail – on CDs. I would make agreements with content providers – websites like algolist, openbsd, and cooking recipes to place a “buy this site on CD” banner on every page, and in return I invested time in creating a static version with search functionality and recording it onto discs. Links from the pages led to .nadiske.ru, where there was a large order button and upsells from other projects, related and not. A percentage from each disc went to the content owner. Delivery was done by cash on delivery through the Russian Post (meaning, I sent the discs without prior payment), and I collected the money at the post office. The site effectively had two pages – a product list with checkboxes and an order form. However, there were as many sub-sites as there were partners – on each of them, the main product was listed first, and the rest were upsells. The idea was that since we’re already ordering, let’s get something else too”.

So, several interesting problems arose back then. How to match the money received with the orders posted? For each order, I dynamically formed a price – adding pennies so the price was unique. For the end customer, it made no difference whether they agreed to a price of 150 rubles or 150 rubles and 12 kopecks, but for me, it was convenient for matching. Together with the date, it was quite reliable.

The second problem was where to manage orders with statuses and the like. In the end, I chose Microsoft Access. It pulled XML with new orders from the website. I developed the whole system on Access in a couple of hours. It was ideal. By the way, has Access died out yet?

Interestingly, the top sellers were discs that I had produced just to expand the selection – Unixes and Linux. Understandably, there weren’t any links from partner websites to these, but they were bought as add-ons, and ultimately they topped the sales and were the easiest and cheapest to produce.

Also, I developed a search engine for the CD to search through this content. I don’t remember how, but back then it was possible to embed executable code in the browser that opened index.html from the disc. Either there were ASP inserts and DLLs, or something of that nature.

I closed the project when it became clear that decent internet would eventually reach the regions, and the demand for discs would someday wane. Plus, everything was heading in that direction. Additionally, the disks required updates, and it was a pity to invest more effort and time, especially considering the first point.