iG.STUDiO: Ilya I. Gerasimenko

My main site gets a facelift (about half-a-decade overdue). Due to a chronic caching issues with iPage, I have to model everything on CodePen , and then FTP files to iPage, where, for some mysterious reason, html gets updated instantly, but CSS and Javascripts marinate somewhere for at least half an hour, before starting to render, which makes it impossible to model anything in real time. Annoying. Oh, well. At least I finally got to re-doing the site. I still do not have a concept for the galleries, though, and a main navigation menu is really primitive, but the new site is HTML5, CSS3 and what not, and I am not ashamed to refer people to it anymore. Yay. P.S. Resolved the cache issue with .htaccess file: FileETag None Header unset ETag Header set Cache-Control "max-age=0, no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate" Header set Pragma "no-cache" Header set Expires "Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT"  everything now works a lot livelier. P.P.S. Why is Blo...

In no particular order: You can safely skip the detailed description of the food being served. It rarely has anything to do with the way people consuming the food will die. Besides, there are only two cuisines in Westeros: Northern, where everything is glazed with, braised with, or dipped in honey, and Southern, which is a hot snake stew. The rest of the world eats horse and puppies on a stick. You don't have to try to memorize ancestral lineage of every character in the books. Most of them will die soon enough, and the rest will talk about their fathers, grandfathers, and grand grandfathers endlessly, so you will learn anyway. Regardless of how carefully and meticulously somebody plans something, that something will never come through. Once you embrace this simple concept, you will save yourself a lot of disappointment, because everything always goes terribly wrong. Strangely enough, all that does happen is commonly a result of an elaborate plan of some shadowy character, o...

It looks like I haven't posted anything for a year. Apparently, nothing to say. How about some music, then? Leaving Manhattan —bossa-nova @ 130 bpm, by yours truly, written sometime in the fall of 2010, after we stopped pretending being rich and moved out of the shoe box size studio on West 95th Street. Technically we didn't leave Manhattan, just the Upper West Side, but the new neighborhood feels quite different... miss the easy acces to Central Park dearly, so the tune is a bit sad. Like 99.9% of all my tunes, really. This particular version came alive with the help of Pat Felitti (piano), Ian Pellow (bass), Raul R. (drums, percussion), all @ kompoz.com. I play tenor sax and EWI. Leaving Manhattan by iG.STUDiO

I do hate the annoying gnome, but that's not the reason. We (my wife and I) just had a very strange and unpleasant experience with online booking through Travelocity. It started in a pretty normal way—on Friday she booked a flight for her father, who doesn't have a computer, so she usually does it for him, I printed the e-ticket, put it into an envelope, mailed it to Cincinnati, where he resides, and we went on with our life. That wasn't it, though. Next day, in the evening, my cellphone starts ringing, I cross the room to pick it up, it stops. Missed call. From... let me see... a person named "0050". Not that I know anybody by that name, and no voicemail message left. Whatever. Back to dinner. Three hours later I go to the computer to check email, to find three messages from memberservices@travelocity.com First message - at 6PM (about 24 hours after original booking): 1."...For the protection of our valued customers, all reservations are subject to review by...

I seriously think that LOST is a phenomenal show, being made by the group of individuals who have balls of the size of melons. The latter is the only explanation of the confidence they exude when faced with necessity to further develop the convoluted story lines of the plot which a) never existed b) collapsed several times already during previous attempts to develop what never existed to start with and c) still not coming together (really? alternate reality is the cheapest cop out there is, next to the person waking up and realizing that all of it was a dream...). I can only admire the commitment of that team, and extend my deepest sympathy to the writers who actually have to put words on paper, and make them sound natural without conveying any sense (which looks more and more like a policy of the show, like "no direct question should be dignified with an answer, ever" or "if in doubt, make a character tell a random lie or cry")—amazing writing indeed. ...

There is no US Embassy in Minsk, Belarus. As a result, people who need to go through an interview for a green card, like my mother, need to go to the nearest city which has one. In good old communist times it would be Moscow, the capital of the whole USSR. The trip there would entail overnight train Minsk-Moscow, spending a day in a city, and overnight train back. No visa required, naturally. Today, despite the fact that old Soviet Union fell apart and old Soviet Republics are separate states, the trip to Moscow would go pretty much the same way. But the wizards at National Visa Center came up with a different plan. Everything my mom needs is done in Warsaw, Poland. Why? NO IDEA. May be it's closer. So my mother had to pay for Polish visa, go through the medical exam they require, wait for ten days to get the visa, go to Warsaw, and all this just to find out that the medical form for her green card is not in a correct format (which was never specified, by the way), and—this is my ...

Campaign Worker: "Is there anybody from 13th district who is voting republican?... we, err... have a 13th district machine stuck on "republican", so if you are, you can just go ahead of the line and pull the lever... may be it will unstuck..." There were actually two brave ones who responded to the call... Made my day =), even though they sent us registration confirmation letters marked "district 15", and we are, as we now know, district 19 (we had to stay in line twice to find that out). Whatever, I voted in a morning, Eva had to return after work to cast her ballot. We did what we could. If McCain wins, we most likely will have to move to Manitoba.

May be somebody will stumble upon this post and save some time for him/herself. Apparently—it only become apparent after several hours of trial, cursing and error, as it usually goes with IE—, Internet Explorer (up to version 7) throws a runtime error, if you try to modify innerHTML of the dynamically created element under certain conditions. The conditions, as it always go with IE, are significantly lacking consistent logic. For starters, if you assign innerHTML to the element before you insert it into a DOM tree, the error may not come up at all, but will surface later, when you try to modify it. So far it looks like the error mostly comes up, if you change innerHTML of the block element inserted into inline element (which is not kosher in standard-compliant HTML, so it makes sense), and some nested block elements (like DIVs inside Ps—why is that considered wrong, too?—for instance). So, if one really-really need to insert a division into a paragraph, and w...

...you should pick up smoking again. Seriously, you might live longer...

Sometimes you just know what's going to happen, like, when flying Delta to Moscow (happened some years ago, flight was cancelled due to horrible weather, then they decided to send us there through Amsterdam, then changed it to Paris), at that vividly remembered moment, when we just checked in our suitcases to the Amsterdam flight and someone comes and says "no, they are going through Paris" and we are sadly looking at our luggage being slowly dragged by the conveyor belt to that Amsterdam flight we are not going to board anymore, and we say "what about our luggage" and they say "don't worry, it is going to be taken care of" and you just know it is not true. And it wasn't, and we landed in Moscow in a middle of a snow storm, and most of our warm clothes were traveling to Amsterdam and back and it took them three days to finally reach Moscow. Sometimes you just know, and now I am having another déjà vu moment, different curcumstances, same feelin...

Neither there is anything to do on the way there, and, frankly, not much to busy oneself with on the way back. And if not for the hurricanes, we wouldn't even consider going there on our 25th wedding anniversary—and we hadn't, we actually bought a cruise to Bahamas, and even booked two shore excursions—but NCL just took us to Bermuda instead. Well, things happen and people have to deal with them. It would be, however, much easier, if the overall cruising experience aboard Norwegian Spirit left nothing to wish for. Unfortunately, it did. When it comes to cruising, the entertaining elements of a trip normally fall under three major categories: food, drinks, and shows. Those are supposed to compensate for an imminent boredom of being trapped aboard 13-story floating hotel for several days without even being able to marvel at the occasional car wreck down below from your room window. I did expect a lot from all three, since Evelyna (and Dar) were on a cruise once, and came back...

Time and again, life presents me with another proof that for some absolutely unexplainable reason I am not allowed to have money. Once I have any unspent funds on any of my accounts, something comes up and clears the offending surplus. This time I just didn't have a chance to shovel the unexpectedly timely security deposit refund from our previous place towards the credit card I used to pay for our vacation. That resulted in a chain of seemingly unrelated events, which, in turn, helped me to get rid of the extra money. 1. It rains cats and rats on Saturday, so we cancel our trip to Long Island, but since there is a parking spot right in front of our building I leave the car on the street overnight. 2. I totally forgot to take my car to the state emission test, of which I am gently reminded by a bright orange envelope under my windshield wiper with a $65 parking ticket. 3. I am taking my Jeep to the closest (and only one) Jeep dealership in Manhattan, (Manhattan Jeep Chrysler Dodge)...

Something's telling me that there will be a lot of posts with this name, that's why I made up a special label for them. This post's issue is taxes, and the thing I don't get is: why if I dutifully put in all my dependents in my W-2 form, and then repeat the process in my 1040 form, I end up owing taxes? And I am not saying hundreds of dollars. I am saying THOUSANDS. The time for taxes is, of course, passed, and all I owed is paid, but why? I was naive enough to actually expect a refund this year, and that refund would help A LOT. Darn it, I am still not over. In addition to that my daughter's taxes, which I prepared with TurboTax, are proved to be wrong at least on the state level (the state of New York apparently disagrees with TurboTax on the matter of who can claim child care expenses as a deduction—long story short: my daughter and her son were both my dependents for the year of 2007, but she paid for the child care institution, Cassian goes to, and according to...

... the creators of LOST really decided to get rid of some characters—probably so they wouldn't have to develop their stories, for there is already way too many—and drastically change some of the surviving ones? C'mon, Ben is now growing surprisingly 007-ish, and the way he handled those two poor AK-armed nomads in a desert was very much Jason-Bourne-like; move over, XXX, we have a new action hero in town (in all fairness, though, the real spies and assassins probably all look like Ben, and not like James Bond)... nevertheless, fun to watch. I never believed that they will get out of the LOST storytelling maze gracefully, and so far I see no indications of the plot coming together. Oh, well.

OK. I never had any significant luck when I order something with delivery. One way or another, something will ALWAYS go wrong. The following is merely a documented process of getting the item I bought on the web, delivered by UPS, no rush, regular 2-5 business days option. Tracking info from UPS website: US 01/10/2008 6:52 P.M. BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED KANSAS CITY, KS, US 01/10/2008 7:17 P.M. ORIGIN SCAN KANSAS CITY, KS, US 01/11/2008 1:31 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN SECAUCUS, NJ, US 01/14/2008 10:30 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN SECAUCUS, NJ, US 01/15/2008 1:37 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN NEW YORK, NY, US 01/15/2008 1:58 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN 01/15/2008 6:48 A.M. OUT FOR DELIVERY So far so good, right? I was smart, too—gave them my office address, just to make sure I won't miss it. Now, at around noon I go to the restroom, strangely located outside the office's backdoor, next to a freight eleva...

Well, to put it shortly—if the best number in your variety show is performed by the quick-change artists, and the second best is Chinese acrobats (and even they cheated and bailed out of properly dismounting from the top of the chair tower), there is something wrong with the rest of the people on the show. I rightfully expect Ellen's Really BIG Variety Show —if I remember the name correctly—in it's dreadfull boringness to be challenged only by the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Parade . Should have gone to bed at 9 p.m., but didn't. Shame on me.

I: (touch the Bluetooth headset button) Phone: (beeps ascending scale, then in a female voice) Please, say a command. I: Call Darya. Phone: Command not recognized. Please, say a command. I: Call Dar. Phone: Did you say (pause, then in a male distorted voice) Darrin ? I: No! Phone: (in a female voice) Did you say (in a male distorted voice) Dennis ? I: NO! DARYA! I SAID DARYA !!! Phone: (in a female voice) Are you sure? Because I'am pretty sure you said David ... Which is strange, since there is nobody by that name in your Contacts. Neither there is Darrin , nor Dennis . My battery is low. And I am tired. And you are nuts. Please, say a command. I: Fuck you. Phone: Command not recognized. Go fuck yourself. Please, say a command. Phone: Command timed out. (beeps descending scale) I: (sigh) ...

I must admit that I am severely spoiled, when it comes to public transportation. Having lived in Moscow for half a decade and spent nearly three hours a day commuting, I grew accustomed to the impeccable logic of the one of the world's largest cities' "metro". There are, as I see it, two major rules, which the builders followed through the whole process, and oh, boy, they work; they really do. Rule one: there is one line per physical track . If you got on the train in a hurry you don't have to worry about what train you are on, A, B, C, or E, and whether you have to get off on the next stop and wait for your train, because this one ain't the one you need. It always is. Rule two: the platform is always between the tracks . If you spaced out, fell asleep, or for any other reason missed your stop, all you have to do is get off, cross the platform, get on the train and go back. It is simple and it works like a charm. Overall structure is simple as well; one circu...

It's been raining for the last two days, and the glorious city of New Your smells like sewage and dog pee. And it's hot. The Internet connection in the office is very flickery, which really screws up my writing flow, but it feels like the events of these few days somehow should be documented or at least reflected upon. So... My desk is sterile with the exception of a few things I still plan on using today: headphones, Palm, half-pack of chewing gum and an antique* Maxwell House coffee mug. My ailing Windows box is cleaned up of all the stuff I kept in it during almost two years I had it. My coworkers are conspiring to take me out to lunch (I, of course, already bought one in the morning, because initially the gathering was supposed to be a short run for a beer after work). Darn. Will have to take it home along with the antique mug. The office of congressman just called. Apparently, my case is not showing up anymore anywhere in both organizations, so I have to re-file. I don...

It is kind of a fun assignment: to write your own job description. Nevertheless, worth trying... OK, soooo... after I leave this job, you, guys, are going to be looking for a Visual Web Designer/Front-End Web Developer with a minimum (well, and maximum, too) of B(F)A, schooled in both conventional (hard copy) as well as fluid layout (web) composition, with experience in image editing, web image optimization, typography, with strong hand-coding (no WYSIWYG!) skill set (XHTML/DHTML, CSS, client-side JavaScript) and basic understanding of .NET developing environment. The above professional should be aware of the latest Web design trends and principles, and be able to create standard-compliant cross-browser and cross-platform HTML structures and be able to (err... to see them being butchered by the developer team without spiraling down into a fit? no, not that...) oversee and ensure proper implementation of the aforementioned designs, as well as being able to maintain and troubleshoot (i.e...