Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

Reading an interesting book, BUILD by Tony Fadell, co-creator of the iPad and iPhone. The chapter discusses assholes, their types, and distribution in nature as well as their strategic significance 😉 a good read

I have already mentioned that my classes are twice a week, focusing not so much on English anymore but rather on art history and history in general. Although, of course, the ultimate goal is to improve my English along with increasing my knowledge on subjects that interest me.

Yesterday we discussed Repin and Kramskoy. I learned a very interesting story about the painting “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan.”

On January 30 (17), 1913, the painting was severely slashed by a visitor, Abram Balashov, who claimed he did it “in a burst of emotion.” Soon after, Repin himself arrived from Kuokkala (now Repino), where he was living at the time.

Repin was almost seventy years old at that moment. The artist agreed to restore his painting.

It is worth noting that long before this incident, Tretyakov had stopped allowing Repin into the gallery with an easel and paints. It was normal for Repin to take an easel, enter the Tretyakov Gallery, take down his own canvas, and add what he thought necessary or sketch out what he deemed unnecessary. Tretyakov, of course, disliked this, as he purchased the paintings in what he considered their completed form, and he had subsequently asked the guards not to let the artist in with his paints.

But this time, they called him, and even with paints. And Repin went all out. Grabar writes: “When I entered the room where the painting was locked up and I saw it, I couldn’t believe my eyes: Ivan the Terrible’s head was completely new, freshly painted from top to bottom in some unpleasant lilac hue, terrifyingly mismatched with the rest of the painting’s palette.”

In short, afterward Grabar and Bogoslavsky had to wash off all the new art and restore it to its original state.

When several months later Repin again visited Moscow and entered the gallery with Korney Chukovsky, he was overall satisfied with the condition of the painting. The old man wasn’t told that they had washed off everything he added and had trouble restoring it to its original state.

In the 1920s, Kuokkala became part of Finland (along with Repin), and he died in 1930 without seeing “the return” of Kuokkala after World War II.

In 2018, the painting was attacked a second time. A man named Igor Podporin seriously damaged the frame and canvas with a metal barrier pole. The restoration took four years, and the result was shown to journalists, but it will only return to the museum at the beginning of next year, if the Tretyakov Gallery figures out how to protect it adequately.

I believe the next step is meaningful animations generated from narrative.

Very sad news. Gabrielyan and I worked very closely together almost ten years ago. He was actually the one who recruited me into the division.

And this is the second time, ten years later, that I receive news that my former direct manager has perished during an extreme wilderness excursion.

That’s true!

In English, there’s a special word for this pose – splooting. It’s when a dog stretches its legs after a run. For Yuki, it’s a must-do.

Similarly, words like shrugging, commute, and background cannot be translated into Russian with just one word.

This time, during a walk with Yuki, we encountered an eastern box turtle. Its unique feature is that the plastron of its shell has a hinge, which allows it to completely close its “house” from predators.

Also, I was bitten by a tick for the third time recently. It’s the same type as before, romantically named “lone star tick.” Fortunately, it doesn’t transmit Lyme disease, but in rare cases, the bite can cause an incurable meat allergy (alpha gal). Every piece of pork, beef, or any other red meat in such cases can at least cause nausea, vomiting, pain, sneezing, and a runny nose, and at worst, can lead to suffocation requiring emergency assistance. I hope I’m lucky this time too and everything will be fine, and I won’t become an unwilling vegetarian.

(eng below) To save some money, I opted for a used iFetch on eBay at a quarter of the price instead of buying a new one. Turned out it had a burnt-out motherboard but still had working sensors, a motor, and relays. No big deal: I swapped in an Arduino for the guts, and now it’s got a USB tail. The ball speed is controllable, and there’s potential for adding all sorts of cool features. The Arduino script is in the comments (you can’t get simpler than that). It took about four hours in all. It will take Yuki even longer to figure out how to place the ball in there, especially the electronic parts.

I took a bit of a shortcut and bought a second-hand iFetch which turned out defective. The motherboard was fried, but the mechanical components, sensors, and motors were fine. I decided to replace the original board with an Arduino, and after four hours, it was up and running like new. The Arduino script and ongoing project details are in the comments. It will take Yuki some time to learn how to operate it, might even take a while to get the hang of the electronics.

#MomentsOfTheDay

Meow