Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

Watching the SpaceX launch to the ISS with live astronauts. For ten years, the US has asked Roscosmos to assist with sending astronauts to the ISS. If they succeed, Roscosmos will lose its biggest “client”.

Happening right now. Takeoff soon

How does it work, huh? I just made a prototype on my knees and posted on Facebook, then Facebook immediately started showing me ads for an app that can already do this https://apps.apple.com/us/app/onyx-home-workout/id1440639203

Walking in a little forest in Wilmington, South Carolina. The video features a whole family of Venus flytraps and other carnivorous plants. There’s a whole clearing of them here. The Venus flytrap is only found in the wild in these places and nowhere else in the world.

It would be interesting to make scales that you simply place under the legs of a sofa, and they transmit the weight of those sitting there via Bluetooth. Based on the measurements, it could then be possible to determine who sat where and personalize the TV for the person sitting. Kind of like a box with N sensors, one for each leg. For a family of three or four, you can relatively accurately determine the weight. Well okay, unless they bring along a pack of cola, a bucket of chips, or corn, which would spoil everything. But actually, this is also a challenge: you could collect statistics for weeks and, over time, determine quite accurately even with cola and popcorn. This would make a cool startup 🙂

We made it to the beach. Myrtle Beach at one in the morning was greeted with huge noisy crowds of people on the streets and balconies, police on every corner. Around the corner, it seems a nightclub has opened, all parking lots are packed. This is because Monday is Memorial Day. Some spend the day quietly drinking Black Label at the cemetery, while others take advantage of three consecutive days off and head to the beaches and national parks. These, as reported, were officially opened this weekend.

Last night we were the only ones wearing masks. It even felt somewhat awkward. It seems they are not popular here. Social distancing? No, never heard of it. The city was buzzing to its full potential. It seems that most visitors are from places where the coronavirus has not reached seriously yet.

By the way, I’m reading “Mysteries of Sleep” by Mikhail Poluektov. On the way here, we listened to the first five lectures of “Human Behavioral Biology” by Robert Sapolsky. Highly recommend both.

Sometimes just a hint is enough, and the brain completes 90% on its own. Passing through St. Petersburg. Here’s Philip Morris

A crane fly buzzed in. One leg – about five cm long. Let it fly on

I don’t know, maybe after five years of living in the USA, this design has grown on me, but darn it, why don’t they make it anymore? The first photo is the GM Futureliner design from way back in 1935. Almost a hundred years old soon!

We see all kinds of houses on wheels. The best, of course, are Airstream – a real dream. They also look vintage.

Video about Futurliner:

Last evening, I wondered how difficult it would be to create a program that counts push-ups, pull-ups, jumps, and abdominal exercises, just using the camera of a phone? Naturally, it’s hard to let go of such a thought and simply go to sleep. I quickly sketched something out using OpenCV. The video shows Masha jumping, and in the comments are some randomly selected videos from the internet of push-ups and pull-ups.

Nadezhda Shulga and I try to get acquainted with the local bike trails a couple of times a week. There aren’t that many, and they will run out in a couple of months, forcing us to cycle them again. Today, for example, we rode on the WB&A in Maryland – a trail next to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA’s largest and oldest laboratory. I want to visit it, but now it’s unclear when it will all open again.

A couple of days before that, we rode around Silver Spring. The second video is from there. A few more days earlier, we spent in Indian Head Rail Trail. A week ago, we were in Percellville. The plan includes another ten or fifteen places, after which we’ll have to start over.

Nevertheless, a bike rack for the tow hitch is a very handy thing. Just load up the bikes, and within an hour or two, you can find trails to suit any taste. True, many are more pedestrian than cycle paths, so you can’t really speed up much on them.