Caught the empty train at 9:06; drank my coffee and browsed the phone, as everyone else on the train, instead of reading a book. I couldn’t read books for the past week; too much going on in my head; my mind is craving short attention span entertainment. Looking forward to my life back to normal. I get contended and bored; I open a book and focus on the line; the line follows a line, all becomes a melody, rhymed with the sound of the train, drawing a story, as I become engrossed in the book on the busy subway train, where everyone is sleepily looking at their phone. But not now: now I’m looking at my phone.

10am usual weekly standup. The big one, which is actually when everyone sits around the table. I said I’m waiting for code review. Will said why don’t we set a deadline for the first deployment for this on Friday. I said why not; it’s mostly ready. 

Then another standup, where I explained some intricacies with the GTFS-RT feed, when the train is removed too early, before it even arrived at the station.

Then an hour of work and we had a big team lunch with burritos. I ended up in the middle of a hot conversation about old computers like Atari and Apple 2. I brought up ZX Spectrum and turned out Ken has one. Ken is 22. He’s obsessed with old computers and programs for Spectrum on the weekends. He told me there is reversed reversed-engineered Spectrum from Russia called Pentagon that he wants to get in his collection. I said Russians now trying to acquire any chips from the West will be very surprised if he’s trying to ship Russian chips.

Then another standup with Sunny, Glen, Dave, and Ken. The agenda was to figure out how we deploy by Friday. Well, I don’t exactly get it: it’s mostly ready. If we fail, we should plan for failure, plan how we debug quickly and fix, and iterate. Everyone seemed too nervous. Was I too naive?

Then Sunny reported to Will, and they discussed it. They then invited Ken and me. Will was all over, gave Ken a test plan for 3 weeks at least, then jumped to discussing memory and CPU. Ken just nodded and said sure sure. So that was the fourth meeting in the day about the same thing. But I only got it the next day. The elections anxiety. I get it.

I worked some more, but not much with all the meetings. In the evening I went to watch some trains. Recorded the signal and the timing for stop and start. Then headed home.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5

I thought I’d go to the office on the election day since I voted early anyway, and since staying home on Wednesday after a sleepless night is more convenient. Will and Sunny were in the office, and T and S, and most people out. 

I focused pretty well during the day. Trying to set up a test bench with my recorded signal from another day. That’s a lot of data massaging. Claud.ai is so smart and helpful. Writing me scripts that I used to spend hours on. 

Around 3 Will came by and asked me about my conversations with EE last week. Then he just called him and invited me, and then he didn’t know what exactly his asking. I went to his table. Sunny showed me a diagram with plans. That looked like a great plan. Replacing GTFS. Feeding Itrac. Wow, that’s great. And then Will said: “We’ll place our system in the center of everything, so then we get a …” – he couldn’t find a word – “then we get …” – he pointed to me – “What do we get?” I said: “we get leverage.” (Only later I thought about the more interesting answer to this question) Will took a moment to think: “Yes, leverage. We get leverage.” But before that, we have to replace the beacons. Sunny was complaining about Cuomo: this stupid push to place displays at every station before the elections; it had cost this organization so much money, and so much tech debt. We started drawing trains on paper; trains arrive, there are trains behind, so many combinations. Will gave me a pencil and paper too and asked to take points; then he realized he didn’t have another pencil. I went to my desk and picked up a pencil. We drew a bunch of test cases; Sunny was good at it – what if there is a train behind and the train ends the trip and stays at the station, not leaving, and there is another one on the middle track. We came up with a bunch. I said that I’m thinking differently about it; I’m thinking in principle: a train, it can move, a track, it can hold one train, a signal, can come from anywhere. Then Will took away my page and said he had to think about it. I left and heard him cursing reading an email from Br. For months they delayed the project and couldn’t make buses send the pings every 5 seconds instead of every 30 seconds. We ask them for an update every couple of weeks. This time Br said they overloaded their inference servers and needed to test ARM-based AWS servers to see if it’s cheaper to maintain the load. Will was mad. What a boloney, indeed. 

In the evening I grabbed a wine and prepared for the election results. Everything was crazy outside. Lots of homeless out of nowhere. Lots of crazies. Is it what Pueblo excitement looks like? B was at home watching everything on YouTube. I said she needed to save the energy for late night. But she dozed off by 11. I stayed watching the nytimes indicator moving from pink to pinker. I was in denial. It was exactly like 2016. Dejavu. By 3 I finished the wine and watched Trump’s speech. I didn’t see him for at least four years. I watched the speech entirely. It started quite lively. Turned out this guy Vance is married to a desi girl. He pointed to his family and friends and put some of them on the spot. And then he started telling stories; those stories felt like an old man that gets you trapped and tells you stories, and you want to escape, but you can’t escape; but I could just stop watching YouTube. But I kept watching. Did it look like 2016? No. He sounded older. He sounded tremendously boring. They played YMCA. I went to bed.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6

Woke up by 10. B was up talking to her manager. Something about China and Texas, and she was talking and talking, and I thought wtf is she talking about it. I put my headphones in and looked in the chat. The chat was empty. 

It was empty until about 11. First Glen asked to confirm deployment on Thursday. It’ll be fine, I said. We’ll fail; we’ll fix it quickly; we’ll iterate. It’s fine. We’re not sending man to space, I said. Though I could send one man to space, I was about to say, but it was so-so kind of a joke and I skipped. Then nothing. I was talking to Claud.ai to make Python scripts, then opened them in Cursor to modify even more all the shit that Claud wrote. It’s like programming by code reviewing.

By 4 I got more than upset – I got hungry. The chat was still empty. I talked to AI. I finally decided to go eat something. The street was gorgeous. Nobody cared. It was 78ºF and sunny. Lots of people on the street. Life goes on. Is it always like that, or am I just noticing? Lots of kids running, lots of beautiful people. I walked back and forth. Ramen was closed till 5. I didn’t know what to eat. I ate a sandwich.

Then worked on a bench. Made my test replay all the signals and compute the error. That took twice longer to implement than I thought. Not too bad.

Then on the bench it finally hit me. All the doubts; all worries. Was it even worth it? Did I make a big mistake somewhere? This country is about simplicity. They want simple things. They will not understand anyway. It is all a waste. And why am I even bothering anyway.

I called G from the same bench. It was nice hearing him. He said if you know a person when they are 13, they don’t really change by 40; it’s funny – they are just the same as when you knew them when they were 13.

I went home and worked till 10, until I finally fixed the beacon sensitivity issue for tomorrow’s deployment.

Standup at 10 with everyone. Sunny was there; on his first day. Now the dilemma is how do we distinguish two Sunnys. I turned the last name "Ng" which is normally pronounced as "ein", but in Cantonese it would sound more like "uhh" as in an interjection.

Then meeting with Ken. I showed him how to run our project in IntelliJ, how he can debug his first project with tests, etc. He wrote a bunch of Python so far for exploring the data; now needs to bring the Python algorithm to Kotlin backend. We discussed a bit how to bridge those two works. In my mind I think of "converting," of course, Ken to Kotlin religion. But no rush on that. He's doing well.

Then lunch with the new Sunny and our team. We can't agree on where to eat anymore: some want to eat outside, for others, the weather in the 50s is too cold, for others the food court is "too bougie" (I simply say it's overpriced and not as good). We ended up grabbing food from different places and going to the tip of Manhattan overlooking the rivers and the helicopter landing spot. I always remember "Succession" when see those helicopters. But nobody watched it besides me; it seems nobody watched even "Game of Thrones."

After lunch, I tried to catch up on home tasks. B was finding us an attorney covered by her legal insurance, and a house inspector. The agent SH was freaking out saying the seller thinks we're having second thoughts and asking why we still didn't send an attorney, and that they may change the price unless we sign in soon. That didn't make sense to me: if we can't agree on the price and hold on to it for a few days, how can we trust each other to go through the whole deal? B suspected SH was just rushing us to go with the attorney she recommended. That guy gave us a quote of $3K for processing the deal; it was worth trying to save on it. So I called SH, and told her we needed to find an attorney; she tried to push this guy Sergey again, but I said we wanted to save money by using an insurance-covered attorney. She was telling me the seller will raise the price; if it happens the extra saved money won't matter. Saying things of that sort. I said if they're rushing us into signing I start suspecting what's going on; we still need to check a bunch of things and take our time looking into it. I told her firmly that we were talking time till 2pm the next day. She finally calmed down and said she would let the seller know; that she would do what I say, that she's just warning me.

Then B arranged a conference with an attorney from the insurance, Paul. He was chill; told us that everything was covered by the insurance and that we should send his contact to the seller, and then he would get a bunch of financial documents and review them. He said that kind of buildings are often financially weak, so we should set our expectations pretty low; that may result in maintenance rise or extra fees. Everything took 10 minutes. 

Then I was coding for a couple of hours. Productionizing my debug tool. I didn't expect to use this code at all, so I wrote some shitty code, and so I was prettifying it now. Pretty chill and satisfying task; if it was someone else's shitty code it wouldn't have been as satisfying, but cleaning up my own spaghetti was fun. 

Danny, the loan guy, got back to me after I sent him the address and asked to confirm: he said the rate would be 5.75% instead of 5.25% as we discussed a month ago. Why, I asked. The Fed rate hasn't gone up since September 19, why did they raise it? He said we could bring it down to 5.5% if we use "credit points." What does it mean? He promised to explain in a call on Wednesday.

I left the office by 5:30. I was thinking of watching the trains for some time, but I was too tired. I went back home. B cooked Kung Pao chicken from Trader Joe's. In the evening, I meditated on the numbers and applied to two more loan providers to see their rates. Came to thinking of Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich; how he and his depressive family were moving to Petersburg, furnishing the new apartment, being busy it made them happy. A bright spot in his life before another depression.

    И теперь, когда все устроилось так удачно и когда они сходились с женою в цели и, кроме того, мало жили вместе, они так дружно сошлись, как не сходились с первых лет женатой своей жизни. Иван Ильич было думал увезти семью тотчас же, но настояния сестры и зятя, вдруг сделавшимися особенно любезными и родственными к Ивану Ильичу и его семье, сделали то, что Иван Ильич уехал один.

    Иван Ильич уехал, и веселое расположение духа, произведенное удачей и согласием с женой, одно усиливающее другое, все время не оставляло его. Нашлась квартира прелестная, то самое, о чем мечтали муж с женой. Широкие, высокие, в старом стиле приемные комнаты, удобный грандиозный кабинет, комнаты для жены и дочери, классная для сына -- все как нарочно придумано для них. Иван Ильич сам взялся за устройство, выбирал обои, подкупал мебель, особенно из старья, которому он придавал особенный комильфотный стиль, обивку, и все росло, росло и приходило к тому идеалу, который он составил себе. Когда он до половины устроился, его устройство превзошло его ожиданье. Он понял тот комильфотный, изящный и не пошлый характер, который примет все, когда будет готово. Засыпая, он представлял себе залу, какою она будет. Глядя на гостиную, еще не оконченную, он уже видел камин, экран, этажерку и эти стульчики разбросанные, эти блюды и тарелки по стенам и бронзы, когда они все станут по местам. Его радовала мысль, как он поразит Пашу и Лизаньку, которые тоже имеют к этому вкус. Они никак не ожидают этого. В особенности ему удалось найти и купить дешево старые вещи, которые придавали всему особенно благородный характер. Он в письмах своих нарочно представлял все хуже, чем есть, чтобы поразить их. Все это так занимало его, что даже новая служба его, любящего это дело, занимала меньше, чем он ожидал. В заседаниях у него бывали минуты рассеянности: он задумывался о том, какие карнизы на гардины, прямые или подобранные. Он так был занят этим, что сам часто возился, переставлял даже мебель, и сам перевешивал гардины. Раз он влез на лесенку, чтобы показать непонимающему обойщику, как он хочет драпировать, оступился и упал, но, как сильный и ловкий человек, удержался, только боком стукнулся об ручку рамы. Ушиб поболел, но скоро прошел. Иван Ильич чувствовал себя все это время особенно веселым и здоровым. Он писал: чувствую, что с меня соскочило лет пятнадцать. Он думал кончить в сентябре, но затянулось до половины октября. Зато было прелестно,-- не только он говорил, но ему говорили все, кто видели.

     В сущности же, было то самое, что бывает у всех не совсем богатых людей, но таких, которые хотят быть похожими на богатых и потому только похожи друг на друга: штофы, черное дерево, цветы, ковры и бронзы, темное и блестящее,-- все то, что все известного рода люди делают, чтобы быть похожими на всех людей известного рода. И у него было так похоже, что нельзя было даже обратить внимание; но ему все это казалось чем-то особенным. Когда он встретил своих на станции железной дороги, привез их в свою освещенную готовую квартиру и лакей в белом галстуке отпер дверь в убранную цветами переднюю, а потом они вошли в гостиную, кабинет и ахали от удовольствия,-- он был очень счастлив, водил их везде, впивал в себя их похвалы и сиял от удовольствия. В этот же вечер, когда за чаем Прасковья Федоровна спросила его, между прочим, как он упал, он засмеялся и в лицах представил, как он полетел и испугал обойщика.

    -- Я недаром гимнаст. Другой бы убился, а я чуть ударился вот тут; когда тронешь -- больно, но уже проходит; просто синяк.

    И они начали жить в новом помещении, в котором, как всегда, когда хорошенько обжились, недоставало только одной комнаты, и с новыми средствами, к которым, как всегда, только немножко -- каких-нибудь пятьсот рублей -- недоставало, и было очень хорошо. Особенно было хорошо первое время, когда еще не все было устроено и надо было еще устраивать: то купить, то заказать, то переставить, то наладить. Хоть и были некоторые несогласия между мужем и женой, но оба так были довольны и так много было дела, что все кончалось без больших ссор. Когда уже нечего было устраивать, стало немножко скучно и чего-то недоставать, но тут уже сделались знакомства, привычки, и жизнь наполнилась.

Woke up after 11 – good sleep!

I read a chapter of The Power Broker about beginning media coverage criticizing Moses' housing projects (Lincoln center, etc).

Organized notes about apartment search: put our viewed apartments from early October and September; then added two number to each listing – down payment and total monthly payment (maintenance + principle).

SH got back and said our offer of $515K was rejected. "The agent called me and said the number is too low and they refused to counter back." Asked me what to do. I proposed $531K or $545K, she said "We can start at $530,000. Let me know your final thoughts." I said okay. Then I was confused if she proposed to go with 530K or she just picked up my number.

I went to bike around 5. Stopped by a new cafe in Harlem: big and spacious and empty. I wrote some more notes there. Then I went to Trader Joe's at 125th. It was big and spacious again, and the line was short. 

In the evening we cooked soba with salmon. Then I played some video games and smoked weed. I baked cornbread. Played some Valhaim, but got a base raid with bats, and didn't know how to fight it, so I stopped. 

I slept by about 2am.

Woke up at 7:30 – easily, then I snoozed the alarm for 10 minutes, then for another 10, and it was 8:20 already. I brewed some coffee, picked up a cookie, then headed to the train. As it turned out there were delays on the subway; the wait for 8 minutes, then getting on the crowded train. The train was crowded, but some seats are still empty, with inconsiderate people taking more space. I kept standing for another couple minutes, then squeezed in on a seat between a relaxed dude and a lady in a dress without sleeves; backpack put on my knees, finally, trying to to bump people with my elbows, I pulled my iPad from the backpack. I continued reading Kotlin in Action; not much new in the book, but refreshing Kotlin idioms, and somewhat enjoying the structure of the book; it’s a good book.

By 9:25 I realized I’m not making it to the standup at 9:30. So I got off Christopher St, exited the subway and ended up on a bench at Stonewall park. I called to the meeting. Everyone was working from home, it seemed from the videos. I promised to get started on reading the bus GPS feed. The temperature was about 65ºF, nice and sunny, I didn’t wanna leave the bench, dreaming of how cool it’d be to live in downtown. I went back to the train.

In the office I started reading the code related to buses; a few data feeds, a few components parsing and merging it. What were I gonna do there I still didn’t know. 

At 11, I got invited to a meeting about project transfer to our team; the beacons train tracking on the B division. That went pretty interesting. The train on Flushing and Canarsie lines are tracked with inches precision (great), but the servers that push the data to us are old and do it only every 30 seconds. They were telling us we have to wait till those servers upgrade next year.

We went for lunch with Kenny. Talked about projects, bus tracking – he works on the buses tab on the client, gossiped a bit about Sunny. Sunny is a character; the way he speaks can feel at times offensive. But knowing him – it’s just Sunny, – that’s how he speaks; that is nothing personal. 

Then I read some of the bus existing code, gathering questions for Sunny. Sunny was interviewing someone. I couldn’t tell if it was going very good or very bad. Turned out it went very well. 

Then I talked to Sunny about my bus tracking project. Take the GPS coordinates from the queue, updated every 30 seconds, and merge with the slower feeds, so we get more fresh locations on the client. The plan is for the buses to send us pings every 5 seconds, but the team that is working on it says it’ll run only next year. How does it work now? Now, it turns out, it’s the same 30 seconds + refresh within 20 seconds, depending on how lucky it gets. So I’ll get read of those random up to 20 seconds delay for now, and later the queue will be more frequently updated. Okay, seems fair; that is not as much work as tracking the trains underground. 

Then worked on the parsing part. Cursor didn’t work with Kotlin that well, so I switched back to Intellij; CoPilot was too dumb compared to Cursor, so I ended up just coding myself. I went home by 6. Kenny was still in the office; it was unusual. I forgot to ask him how 1:1 with Will went.

At home, we warmed up our moghrabieh, and ate it with salad, drinking tomato juice. B had some good news about their film script with Y. Then I read something light (wars, word affairs, Indian trading sanctioned tech to Russia [another day YouTube was recommending me something from WION, Indian television – the picture they paint there is only comparable to Russian propagandal showing bravado about big bombs, etc]).

Then worked on merging GTFS-rt and CBCT sources. Most of the time spent on the test: I tell it to ignore the estimated time, but it won't. Ended up just removing it from the objects before comparing. AssertJ, this thing is called, compares deep objects; otherwise, pretty nice library.

In the evening we watched "The Sound of Silence" (2019) on MUBI. I think it's full of very subtle and hard-to-trace humor, but most people probably don't get it – the rating is below 6 on IMDB. The guy's invention is to tune the ambient sounds of houses, which he tries to publish as a PhD thesis, but fails – cause he's a musician and not a scientist. The authors imply, that if he wanted to make it a commercial "product", he'd be rich and successful, but the guy hates the word "product," hates commerce, and ends up in depression instead of being rich and happy. Very real story, it seems, if read between the lines. I gave it a seven.

Then played Panzer Corps 2; still trying to understand the war – on the tactical level. I was never curious about it, but now the times are calling for it. The battle of Paris; (my) German Panzers capture Paris and its surroundings. I thought it was easy – I just had to be swift. Somehow, it's not. French tanks are just too powerful, and my artillery seems completely useless. I thought war was dumb, is it now? I should probably read something about the tactics. Somewhere I read recently that what Hitler had done on the western front took a militaristic and diplomatic genius; was it indeed? 

Slept by 2.

In 1926, public bathing beaches in America fell into one of two classifications: ill-equipped huddles of shabby, unpainted wooden bathhouses that contained nothing but toilets, showers and lockers; or "boardwalk beaches" such as Coney Island and Atlantic City, which had surrendered the beauty of their seascapes to roller coasters, weight-guessing games, blaring funhouses, bawling barkers and other carnival concessions. But Robert Moses wasn't thinking of unpainted wood or carnivals.

(...) As the little group of men stood on the vast, empty expanse of sand, Moses began pointing.

One bathhouse would be over there, he said, and the other over there. But then they would be almost a mile apart, the men with him pointed out. 

Yes, he said, and they should understand at once that he wasn't talking about ordinary bathhouses. These were going to contain ten thousand lockers apiece. In addition to bathrooms and shower rooms, they were going to contain wading pools, diving pools and swimming pools, and the swimming pools were going to be large enough to accommodate hundreds of bathers at a time. There were going to be canopied terraces above the pools so people could sit in the shade and watch the swimmers, and there were going to be other terraces on which people could dine at tables set beneath gaily colored umbrellas. The bathhouses were going to contain solaria. They were going to contain restaurants in every price range. Although they were at a bathing beach, they were going to be constructed not of wood but of stone and brick, and the stone and brick were going to be of the finest quality. They were going to be surrounded by landscaped lawns, hedges and flower beds. And he wanted the bathhouses designed with as much care as the finest public buildings in America. With this difference: most public buildings in America were too heavy and stodgy, designed only to impress and awe. The bathhouses would have to be quite large, of course, but they were buildings for people to have a good time in; the architecture must encourage people to have fun. It must be airy and light, gay and pleasant. There must be a thousand little touches to make people feel happy and relaxed. And he didn't want the bathhouses to spoil the panorama. Let them be designed to complement it, not dominate it. The panorama was long, low lines of sand and dunes and the sweep of the ocean. Let the lines of the bathhouses be long, low and sweeping, he said, horizontal rather than vertical. One other thing, he said. The bathhouses were going to have at least one innovation never included in any public or private building in America: diaper-changing rooms. He had designed them himself, he said. They would be divided into cubicles and each cubicle would contain only a diaper-disposal basket, a washbasin, a mirror and a shelf for a mother to lay her baby on. And the shelf shouldn't be table-height, he said. He had watched mothers changing diapers and higher shelves would make it easier. (...)

Yanking an envelope from his pocket, Moses began to sketch on its back: Two X's to represent the bathhouses, lines to show how they would be connected on the beach side by a wide boardwalk (...)

One of the famous architects standing around Moses said, "Are you crazy?" The others knew what the architect meant. As one was later to put it: "It was the scale of the thing—nothing on a scale like this had ever been done in public recreation in America. Here we were on an absolutely deserted sand bar—there was no way even to get there but by boat—and here was this guy drawing X's on the back of an envelope and talking about bathhouses like palaces and parking lots that held ten thousand cars. Why, I don't think there was a parking lot for ten thousand cars anywhere in America. And landscaping? Landscaping on a sand bar? We weren't even sure anything would grow on a sand bar. We thought he was nuts.”

What else can I say? The beach today is clean (compared to Coney Island, for example) and stays cool. The parking lot goes over the horizon, but that Saturday was easy and not too crowded. The train ride from Penn Station to Wantagh was easy, and the bike trains beyond that are gorgeous. The wetlands of Long Island are pleasant to bike along after the city's heat. Glad they built it, but I wish the train station was built closer!

Для этого мы арендовали палатку, спальники, спальные надувные дорожки, и Теслу (они у нас самые дешевые стали); купили дешевую коробку-холодильник, фонарики на голову; и захватили давно купленный в МОМА для такого случая фонарь-светильник с USB, сделанный в форме старого фонаря-светильника на масле. Забили на шатер для тени. Весь этот купленный и арендованный инвентарь у меня когда-то был, и с котелками и горелками, но все это я зачем-то оставил в Калифорнии, думая, что куплю новый, и теперь с трудом вспоминал, что нужно взять с собой по минимуму; так и провозился, собираясь две недели – все кажется немного, но в пятницу я, получилось, практически не поработал, бегая и собирая всякие мелочи по квартире. Давно я не ездил на такие мероприятия; кемпинг с музыкой я это называю.

А Бао так и совсем на фестивалях не бывала. Начал расспрашивать – оказывается и в спальном мешке по настоящему не спала. Ну, это фигня, да сейчас и погода за 30 градусов – спального мешка и не надо, на самом деле; я по привычке, что надо. Что еще ей рассказать? Музыка и кемпинг; будем слушать музыкантов и спать в палатках; интернета не будет, а будет речка (и в ней, может случится, будут купаться нагишом, и кто знает чего еще может случится) – и весь этот фестиваль как бы русский, или как бы славянский… или бывше-советский (славянская категория ведь не включает центрально-азиатские элементы), или как это все еще назовешь. Она «за» – ей вообще на Брайтон Бич нравится ездить; я говорю это не Брайтон Бич, это “cool Russians”. Ну, сама увидишь. Еще думал чего-нибудь предупредить в культурном плане: люди могут быть под кайфом, или вайб может быть странный – и не обижаться, но потом, в суете, забил – пусть сама разбирается, а я помогу, чем смогу, если нужно. 

– If you see a drunk man then just (…) – я услышал пацана лет восьми, разъезжавшего на велике, как он предупреждал прятеля, пока я пытался найти место для нашей палатки в темноте на поляне. “I told you it’s a Tesla!” – спорили другие два пацана на великах. Кружил я вокруг групп этих детей на великах; куда это я заехал, я думал интуитивно, надо бы подальше от этих детей с этого района. 

А что меня на этот фестиваль тянуло? 

There will be no political demonstrations or displays near Festival production areas, stages, or workshop spaces. This includes, but is not limited to, flags, banners, and signs. Such displays distract artists and audiences from the main focus of the event—music. This policy is in place to maintain the festival's emphasis on cultural and artistic experiences. 

(из правил фестиваля – фестиваль вне политики, короче переводя)

С этим пунктом правил о запрете политических демонстрации я совсем не согласен, с одной стороны. Музыка всегда о политике. Более того, политика влияет на музыку – важно кто слушает музыку. Вот: классная музыка под которую тащатся толпа «идиотов»; и дурацкая музыка: которая собирает любителей покопаться в дурацкой музыке, и у которых оказывается еще гора совместных хобби. Музыка это не про музыку, в общем. Это про политику, в широком смысле, про социальное. Как человек – животное политическое. Прямо или косвенно, ясно или двусмысленно, но музыка и арт всегда несут политический смысл и глупо это отрицать или запрещать. 

Но, интуитивно мне кажется запрет флагов имеет смысл. Проведи мероприятие с русским уклоном в наше время, и прибегут эти утопленные в вене русские, обвешанные украинскими флагами, вместо того, чтобы попытаться более глубоко разобраться; в себе разобраться прежде всего. Выставить на показ украинский флаг это довольно простое занятие, ведь, а вот в себе разобраться – творческая задачка. Так что может быть не так глупо это правило, хотя и можно было бы получше написать. Флаг это примитивный атрибут бессознательных масс. Вспоминая массовые демонстрации где все идут под одним флагом и там где люди делают плакаты сами, кажется, что может быть примитивнее толпы под флагом? 

На фестивале было три сцены: южная, центральная, и северная – они делили зрителей по демографии, и в целом получился интересный бленд народу. На центральной сцене была всякая всячина, с трубой, как в ска, пианинами, гитарами, погремушками, и чем только. Мы жили возле центральной, как новички. На севере – электроника, с экспериментальным каким-нибудь панком или doom; или psy-trance. А на юге – совсем новая для меня группа – барды; КСП их тут называют. Какая интересная смесь получилась: грубо говоря, 20+ -летние на электронной, 30-50 на рок-сцене, а потом 50+ тусят у бардов – так сцены поделись. А между всем этим катаются дети 5+, которым все это пофигу, а энергии туда-сюда бегать только позавидовать. 

Но помимо основных сцен было куча сцен "самодеятельности" – от диджеев устанавливающих sound system в тематических лагерях на севере, до толп вокруг костра поющих под гитару у бардов на юге. Эти малые сцены мне как-то больше понравились, и людей на них больше было. На севере проходил рейв – диджей с Берлинским техно, диджей с EDM, где-то транс, где-то амбиент. Когда я прошелся на юг до КСП – там было совсем по другому: поколение 60+ пили водку, дружно чокаясь большими компаниями; барды пели под гитару какие-то неизвестные мне песни с замысловатыми словами. Что-то было из БГ, что-то из Чижа. В центре мое поколение пели что-то из русского рока 2000-ых.

Кто виноват и в чем секрет

Без поражений нет побед

И равен счет, чтоб дать тебе

И чья вина, что ты один

И жизнь одна и так бледна

И так скучна, а ты все ждешь

(из услышанного под гитару у костра)

В субботу мы сходили на Михаила Щербакова у бардов. Философ и поэт – было написано в программе. Мне понравилось слушать слова на русском; так я там оказался. Щербаков пел по гитару:

То-то сегодня впрок я себе помогу:

приберегу к ненастью я себе табаку.

В чёрные дни утешусь, голову отвлеку.

.

Многих ли ждать ещё радостей на веку?

Приберегу к ненастью я себе коньяку.

Будет по меньшей мере в чём утопить тоску.

.

Память имеет срок — может угаснуть вмиг,

но сохранил обширный с юности я дневник.

Сведений в нём и сводок хватит на сотню книг.

.

Высыплется табак, выплеснется коньяк,

а у меня к ненастью целый сундук бумаг.

Будет, по меньшей мере, чем растопить очаг.

.

Это тебе урок, мой незнакомый друг:

всё изложи, что видел, и уложи в сундук.

Сделай обзор всего, что около и вокруг.

.

Хоть и пропасть ему в пламени и дыму,

всё запиши, что помнишь, наперекор всему.

Или ты зря учился грамоте и письму?

Из остального я мало понимал о чем он пел. Это надо как-то подольше прислушиваться. 

Днем было жарко, но очень живописно: горы вокруг, речка, деревья, ели, трава зеленая. Стрекозы и бабочки летали над зеленым прудом. Поскольку мне не привезли с собой шатер от солнца, то просыпались мы в 9, проспав часа 4, но солнце безжалостно пекло по расписанию, а дети бегали и чего-то кричали – давно я столько детей не видел всех вместе, может быть с самого моего детства, когда мы тоже так бегали и никто за нас не переживал. Я конечно знаю, что русские любят детей заводить, но позабыл насколько. Все вместе им кажется было очень весело. Из наблюдений Бао – нигде не было видно все-опекающих родителей беспокоящихся о своих детях; все были расслабленные и в гармонии. Я так свое детство вспоминаю.

Мы расстелили покрывало под деревом и провалялись на нем практически весь день. Чем мы занимались не очень понятно. Я чего-то порисовал, пару раз вздремнул. Подростки рядом с нами считали по сколько грибов они съели и разглядывали облака. Парочка на право задремала прямо на траве без покрывала. Пару раз я зашел в речку – вода была ледяная. После обеда начали играть музыку по программе, но музыкантом, было видно, слишком жарко. Может быть и не надо всех этих больших сцен с программами по расписанию? 

К вечеру засверкали молнии и загремел гром. Мы сначала не обращали внимания, а потом все же двинули в сторону палатки. Ливень оказался славный, но в палатке у нас не было окошка. Так мы видели только вспышки молний, но не видели где. Ливень шел долго, минут тридцать, так что стало казаться, что будет лить всю ночь. Но ливень закончился, люди медленно стали вылезать из палаток, и заиграл бум-бум-бум на севере, и запели барды под гитару на юге. 

Когда ты вернешься,

Все будет иначе, и нам бы узнать друг друга,

Когда ты вернешься,

А я не жена и даже не подруга.

Когда ты вернешься,

Ко мне, так безумно тебя любившей в прошлом,

Когда ты вернешься –

Увидишь, что жребий давно и не нами брошен

(подслушано у бардов)

I stayed home; we had the standup at 9:30. Angela already has Jira access and has started working on a ticket. That is too fast: I got my email working only on the second week. Jira took longer to add me to. Then another stand-up at 10. We have two standups on Mondays, somehow. My plan was: anything from Ryan’s code review, then SMS pumping, and then getting started on the new project. 

The new project is to read a low-latency data feed and bring some better data in our app. What to do with that I’m still not sure. Torrey told me to talk to Sunny about the details. Sunny said we should talk together with Will and Dan W. So I brought everyone together, and then they mostly talked by themselves, and in the second half, I barely understood what they were talking about. A bunch of keywords, and what that means I didn’t know. PA/CIS, ATS, PLC, and the like. I had no idea what it was.

In the evening, at first, I saw something dark moving by my side on the floor and got scared; then I saw a tiny mouse running near the heater. A very small mouse of the length of my little finger. The mouse ran kind of funny: sliding on the corner, as the fat belly dragged it from turning to under the heater, and it moved the limps fast, sliding on the parquet floor. The mouse probably was surprised by seeing me not less than I got scared by her. She looked kind of cute, but for the rest of the evening I had that fear of the dumb mouse just wanting to bite whatever came to it – I was afraid it would bite my toe if it got under my desk.

My app's shameless promotion is on Reddit.

It generates the table of contents for PDF files using on-device computer vision AI.

Give it a like! It's short of some likes.

I worked on it late last year and earlier this year, and probably made all possible newbie's home marketing mistakes. Including, editing the video by myself and matching the beats to the video instead of hiring someone.