Volodymyr Obrizan: personal website - 27

A Key Difference of a Professional

2018-03-27T04:24:00+03:00

One of the key differences between a professional and a nonprofessional is that a professional works just as well without internet access as with it. A professional doesn’t need Google, a tutorial, or a reference manual. The first sign of a nonprofessional is the phrase: “Everything is on the internet.” A professional knows that there’s nothing on the internet and that you can rely only on your own knowledge and your own experience.

A very simple experiment: turn off the router in the office. You’ll hear the first shouts after just 5 seconds — that’ll be the juniors yelling — they’re blocked without the internet and can’t do anything. A professional will find out there’s no internet only an hour later, when he comes to the kitchen for a cup of coffee.

A New Word: Softogenic

2017-11-27T22:25:00+02:00

I’ve coined a new word:

softogenic (software + -genic) — being the consequence, the result of using some piece of software.

The word programogenic can also be used in this sense.

In English: softogenic (software + -genic).

For example: a softogenic disaster — a disaster caused by errors in software.

Write it down, you’ll be needing it soon. :)

An Incident in the Verkhovna Rada

2016-02-27T09:05:00+02:00

Speaker:

— Honorable people's deputies! The question being put to a vote is to give each deputy a salary of one million dollars, present them with a big house on the ocean shore, and give them a personal motor pool of ten cars. Please vote. Voting! 450 in favor, 0 against, 0 abstained. See, and they say we have a political crisis, that our coalition is falling apart, that we have no parliamentary majority. We can vote unanimously after all!

Richard John’s Book “The Big Eight”

2016-01-27T21:54:00+02:00

I recently read Richard John’s book “The Big Eight” (112 UAH in electronic form).

I love books that lay out the formula for success without any beating around the bush. The author interviewed hundreds of successful people, like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and others, and distilled their successful experience.

To save you 112 UAH and 2.5 hours of reading, I’ll publish the formula for success — the “Big Eight” — right here:

Passion: successful people love what they do.
Hard work: they work very hard.
Focus: they focus on one thing, not everything.
The ability to overcome themselves: they make themselves take action.
Creativity: they generate new ideas.
Self-improvement: they are always improving themselves and their work.
The ability to serve people: they offer high-quality services.
Persistence: they move steadily toward their goal, regardless of the time spent, failures, and twists of fate.

The secret of any formula for success is that there is no secret. Each of you has just read this and thought: “So what, I already know all that.” The difference between a successful person and a loser is that the successful person just gets on with it.

Print out this list, hang it somewhere visible, and take action. And then, maybe in 20 years, they’ll write about you in a book like this too.

I recommend the book to those who are just about to do something great but are short on inspiration.

Tyahnybok’s Car

2013-08-27T10:58:00+03:00

Oleh Tyahnybok on the line:

"Society, this is already just ridiculous. I am the chairman of a political force, a major political force, a political force that has 37 deputies in the Ukrainian parliament, a political force that made the decision that the head of the party should ride in a safe car, the chairman of the party should ride in a car that will allow him to travel all over Ukraine," he noted.

Journalists report that Tyahnybok rides in a Toyota Sequoia SUV.

What decisions will the party make when Tyahnybok, God forbid, becomes president? What car will Tyahnybok ride in? What motorcade will accompany him? For how many hours will they close streets in Kyiv?

Review of Jiří Toman’s Book “The Art of Speaking”

2011-01-27T23:23:00+02:00

I recently finished reading Jiří Toman’s book “The Art of Speaking.” As the title makes clear, this book is about how to speak beautifully and competently. Communication is a very important skill. You need to communicate a lot and often: with family, with friends, with colleagues at work; some people have to give lectures, and some have to defend theses. And only a select few will get lucky enough to zombify the electorate from a high rostrum. So this topic ought to interest a wide range of readers. A couple of years ago I read a book by the well-known TV host Larry King on a similar subject, and I was very pleased with it. So Toman’s book also promised to be useful.

The book was published in Prague in 1981. It was translated into Ukrainian and published in Kyiv by the political literature publishing house in 1989. Which means the book was written back when many of us weren’t even born yet. You sit there and marvel: how is it that people knew all this ages ago, and I’ve only just now thought to read about it. In the Soviet Union they knew a thing or two about books.

The book has 293 pages, covering a broad range of questions: what communication is, the ethics of communication, working with your voice and hearing. How to choose the right words, phrases, and style. How to work on posture, gestures, and facial expressions. Holding meetings, how to persuade people, bring them around to your point of view. How to prepare talks, what should be in them, how to deliver a talk. “The Art of Speaking” has the quality of any sensible book: the density of information is simply off the charts. There are no long-winded reflections or repetitions. The author mercilessly exploits the very principle he preaches: “Use examples from personal experience,” and gives lots of examples from personal experience, which fires the reader up even more.

The book ends with a 15-page summary, where the most important thoughts and advice from the nearly 300-page book are laid out in thesis form. A very useful section for quickly refreshing your memory after some time has passed.

All I know about Jiří Toman is that he is an ardent communist, a sociologist, and, judging by the context, a computer-engineering engineer, i.e., a colleague of ours. Toman also wrote a book called “How to Improve Yourself,” which should also be found and read, because it may turn out to be the same kind of napalm as “The Art of Speaking.” Ah, the communists wrote well!

I’ll separately tell how I got this book. As in any city, Kharkiv has a book market, the so-called “book ravine.” The market itself is a hotbed of counterfeit software and packs of toilet paper that, for some reason, have “Darya Dontsova” and “Paulo Coelho” written on them. And next to the market there is Klasychnyi Lane, where in the mornings citizens lay out various old and not-so-old books. One Saturday morning, after sorting out some business on Rymarska Street, I decided to spend the remaining time in that lane. It’s very hard to leave there empty-handed: there are lots of books, and if you haggle, you can get them cheap. That time I picked up two books on one subject: the collected works “On Oratory” and Toman’s “The Art of Speaking.” The second one cost me a ridiculous 8 hryvnias (one US dollar).

For the first time in my life I’m voluntarily reading a book in Ukrainian. By the way, I remembered why I don’t like fiction. I’d already had one attempt at voluntarily reading a Ukrainian book. About four years ago I deliberately bought Stephen King’s “Cell” (“Zona pokryttia”) in Ukrainian, to combine pleasure with usefulness: practice the language and read a good work of fiction. Surprisingly, the book by a big-name author turned out to be a drawn-out, dreary piece of shit, with a plot worthy only of the show “Battle of the Psychics,” though even that is sometimes more interesting. Somewhere around page eight I realized that “Cell” wouldn’t come within even a quarter of “The Shining,” and put the book on the shelf. If anyone needs it, I can give it away.

Separately, a few words about the quality of the book. The typesetting is good, but the paper, alas, has already yellowed. There are no illustrations in the text, but, actually, they aren’t really needed.

Jiří Toman’s “The Art of Speaking” is one of those books that, after reading, you think: “Damn, it ended so quickly.” You don’t want to put it away for long; you want to reread it again.

Verdict: strictly required reading.

New Design for the Metro Line Map

2010-11-27T00:18:00+02:00

The metro has a new design for the metro line map. Now every station has its own icon (a pictogram, that is). I dare say this is a kind of innovation. As far as I know, there’s nothing else like it anywhere in the world.

Proletarska — a hammer and calipers.

Traktornyi Zavod — a tractor.

Im. O. S. Maselskoho — a factory (formerly called “Industrialna”).

Im. Radyanskoi Armii — a shield.

Marshala Zhukova — a medal.

Moskovskyi Prospekt — the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin.

Zavod im. Malysheva — a tank.

Sportyvna — a soccer ball. Transfer to Metrobudivnykiv — a metro car.

Prospekt Haharina — Sputnik 1.

Radyanska — the city council building. Transfer to Istorychnyi Muzei — a museum.

Tsentralnyi Rynok — scales.

Pivdennyi Vokzal — a steam locomotive.

Kholodna Hora — a hill.

In my opinion, it’s become just a tiny bit better than the old map on a blue background with those ugly little circles. But it’s still a long way from a decent map.

P. S. So they’re discussing “and how do you transliterate it correctly”? The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved transliteration on January 27, 2010. According to that resolution, the stations should be called this: Proletarska, Traktornyi zavod, Im. O. S. Maselskoho, Radyanskoi Armii, Marshala Zhukova, and so on.

Daylight Saving Time

2010-10-27T23:48:00+03:00

The most important difference between Windows 7 and Windows XP is that the operating system’s user interface started turning its back to the forest and its front to the user. One interesting example is shown in the figure below. Windows, besides automatically changing the clocks, also uses the speech channel to remind you that daylight saving time will end at 4:00 at night and the hour hand will move back one hour.

And the standard question: so how is it on the Mac? And how does it work there on Linux?