https://alexsavin.me/ Recent content on Alex Savin Hugo -- gohugo.io en Thu, 11 Jun 2026 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2026-06-11-living-on-token-budget/ Thu, 11 Jun 2026 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2026-06-11-living-on-token-budget/ Unlike a few lucky engineers enjoying tokenmaxxing, most of us are living within the constraints of a token budget. It might be small, it might be big, but it is likely there somewhere. As tokens are getting more expensive, ability to live and deliver within the budget will probably be the leading topic in hiring interviews. Here are a few hints, some more obvious than others, that help me month to month with minimising token usage while having some kind of a meaningful output. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2026-06-04-dns-over-tls/ Thu, 04 Jun 2026 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2026-06-04-dns-over-tls/ There are famously 3 stages of debugging networking issues. It can’t be DNS Surely it is not DNS? It was DNS DNS is not something we think of when browsing internet. It usually works fine, and is quite transparent. When connection is slow, it’s easier to blame on wifi / mobile signal, bandwidth issues, or server availability. DNS usually “just works”. It is however a crucial part of online networking. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2026-05-26-on-token-usage/ Thu, 28 May 2026 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2026-05-26-on-token-usage/ I’ve been catching up on AI engineering talks from all the conferences that are happening as we speak. Thanks, by the way, for posting all the talks online for free. Last year we went collectively from chats with LLMs to semi-autonomous agents. This year the push seems to be “let your agent loose”. Claude is pushing for looped multi-agents environments. They’ve also introduced a configurable bypassing of human permissions - which is actually a great idea. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2025-08-13-claude-code-for-a-week/ Wed, 13 Aug 2025 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2025-08-13-claude-code-for-a-week/ If anything, I welcome our new AI overlords. They bring joy to my life of a software engineer. Claude Code is great, but with some asterisks. Git and pull requests Claude is amazing with terminal, and that includes Git. Combined with the GitHub CLI gh tool, Claude knows how to check for recent changes, write a great commit message, push changes, and if that fails, rebase your changes. Then, create a pull request while respecting the PR template, add a relevant description, and open it for review. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2025-07-28-we-are-developers/ Mon, 28 Jul 2025 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2025-07-28-we-are-developers/ I’m calling this a conference, but with 15000 attendees and 500 speakers it wasn’t something I was truly prepared for. It was big, took a good chunk of a massive historical exhibition hub of West Berlin, and offered something like 15 simultaneous tracks in addition to 2 massive floors of exhibitions with their own mini talks and demos. I’ve been to a similar scale dev events in the US, but Europe would generaly cater to a much smaller scale of homebrewed events. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2025-07-21-agentic-development/ Mon, 21 Jul 2025 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2025-07-21-agentic-development/ If I had to pick one takeaway from the massive dev conference in Berlin last week it’ll be - adopt agentic product development or go out of business. It might not be that dramatic if you are a massive corporation with a unique know-how, or if you are in a unique business niche. But for a generic product company it’ll be exactly that. Agentic development, end to end, from product specs to implementation and deployment. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2025-07-14-bottle-deposits/ Mon, 14 Jul 2025 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2025-07-14-bottle-deposits/ I’m in Berlin this week, and one thing I want to write about is bottle deposits. See, in Germany when you buy bottled drinks, a deposit price is applied on top. By returning said bottle, you get your deposit back. Usually it is around 0.25€ for a small bottle, which is not nothing. This deposit applies to glass bottles, as well as plastic ones. Even thin plastic bottles of chocolate milk - all are covered by the same deposit. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-10-29-listen-to-engine-noise/ Tue, 29 Oct 2024 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-10-29-listen-to-engine-noise/ Sometimes getting your change all the way to production feels like crossing a finishing line after a marathon. Massive fanfares, you’ve made it all the way to the user. Time to get a cup of tea and pick up next JIRA ticket. When a company is small, or tech stack is young, or all of the above, pushing changes to live is a breeze. No one yet discovered Husky git hooks, or had time to set them up. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-10-18-uk-tech-startups/ Fri, 18 Oct 2024 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-10-18-uk-tech-startups/ Tom Blomfield is a bit of a legend here in the UK. In 2016 he founded Monzo bank - digital-first bank with iOS app and no website. Their very first offices were right around the corner from ours at Old Street in Shoreditch, and this is probably why I got my very first Monzo (back then called “Mondo”) bank card back in December 2016. Last week Tom tweeted the above - he has since successfully exited Monzo, and are apparently part of Y-Combinator now. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-10-06-oodi-public-library/ Sun, 06 Oct 2024 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-10-06-oodi-public-library/ I’m a huge fan of public libraries. This is one of the best things we’ve invented as a humanity - somewhere among the likes of sliced bread and cat memes. Oodi is of course a unique place that has been widely posted about, but only this year I’ve had a chance to visit it. So, without further introduction, let me give you a tour of Oodi. Oodi the central library of Helsinki is very central indeed - only a stone throw from the main railways station, and literally overlooking the classic architecture of the parliament of Finland. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-08-20-lp-driven-development/ Tue, 20 Aug 2024 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-08-20-lp-driven-development/ LP as in Long Play record. Usually 45-50 min long. Sometimes you need a bit of focus. At any given moment there are so many things you could be doing. But to do something well you need to commit to one of those ideas, give it your full focus and stick with it for a period of time. At this point usually you get recommended Pomodoro. Get a kitchen clock in a shapte of a tomato. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-02-08-programming-in-2003/ Thu, 08 Feb 2024 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-02-08-programming-in-2003/ My first job out of uni was working for the hottest company in the world. In 2003 FAANG was mostly AG - Apple was sort of around, Google was doing web search and not much else. And back in Finland, we’ve had Nokia. Nokia has been around since the 1800s and is still around today. But 2000 to around 2009 were undoubtedly Nokia’s golden years that it is remembered for today. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-02-01-slack-red-blobs/ Thu, 01 Feb 2024 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-02-01-slack-red-blobs/ Slack is the TikTok of your working day. Originally a simple chat client for work and hobbies (compatible with any alternative IRC client!) - today it can do way too many things. While we usually have detailed guides on how to review a pull request or deploy to production, there is nothing about how to use Slack daily and still love your job. I’ve been burned out by Slack in the past, so let me share a few tips on how to avoid that. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-01-18-post-office-horizon-learnings/ Thu, 18 Jan 2024 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2024-01-18-post-office-horizon-learnings/ They say when interviewing for a job at NASA you are asked to name as many mistakes as you can from a 1998 movie Armageddon. In the UK we could probably do the same, but with the Post Office scandal and the nationwide rollout of the Horizon IT system. And yes, Mr Bates vs the Post Office is a brilliant show, go see it. So, given the wiki article, the show, and the 300 pages long High Court ruling let me do just that. https://alexsavin.me/hire/ Wed, 10 Jan 2024 06:06:45 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/hire/ Intro I’m a UK based full-stack software engineer and a tech lead with over 20 years of industry experience. I worked in tiny startups, scale up consultancies, and massive worldwide corporations. My first programming language was Borland Pascal on a DOS machine. Let’s talk. Tech skills Programming languages and stacks Hands-on: TypeScript / JS / Node.js / Deno Python Ruby Aspirational: Rust Kotlin C / C++ Frameworks React FastAPI / Pydantic API interfaces REST GraphQL + Apollo client / server Cloud providers and app hosting GCP AWS Kubernetes Persistence layer SQL databases, PostgreSQL Graph databases, Neo4j NoSQL databases, MongoDB Queues: GCP PubSub, Apache Kafka, BullJS, Celery Current project I’m a senior full-stack engineer and tech lead at Ki Insurance - an algorithmic specialty insurance provider operating on Lloyds market. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-12-01-slack-apps-next-gen/ Fri, 01 Dec 2023 01:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-12-01-slack-apps-next-gen/ I’ve been playing with the new Slack SDK - based on Deno and Typescript. It’s good. Up until now you’d use REST API to build your Slack apps. Sure, there might be a library in your native stack, but under the hood it would still be the same http calls to the same API. Often, quite a lot of those. A complex app would be like building a ship in a bottle - bunch of requests and interactions via the bottleneck of this API. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-11-20-gptv-vs-selenium/ Mon, 20 Nov 2023 05:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-11-20-gptv-vs-selenium/ Most of software testing always been fairly deterministic. You’d expect a certain button to be in a certain spot, and behave in a very specific way. Given a very specific input, you assert on a very specific output. Determinism means fragility, and while it takes a lot of time to write such tests, they would also break easily, sometimes even when they shouldn’t. Have you ever written client tests with Selenium and Cucumber? https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-11-03-acorn-floppy-discs/ Fri, 03 Nov 2023 05:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-11-03-acorn-floppy-discs/ I’ve been gradually restoring a 35 years old Acorn Archimedes computer. Gifted by a friend, who used it in their childhood and then fathfully kept it safe in the attic - it is quite a piece of retro computing. The model I have - 440/I - features one of the original ARM CPUs, 4Mb of RAM, RISC OS, a hard drive and a floppy drive. It also has a built-in 8-channel sound and a speaker. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-09-22-a-case-for-rust/ Fri, 22 Sep 2023 06:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-09-22-a-case-for-rust/ For the past 10 years, I’ve been mostly writing JavaScript. Don’t get me wrong - it pays quite well. And yes, sometimes it would be TypeScript. Or LiveScript. Or ECMAScript. Transpilation became a trend. Abstract Syntax Trees became a hot topic. But it was always you, JavaScript. And the reason - you run in a browser. Other languages always existed, but none of them could be natively run in a browser. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-09-08-github-workflows/ Fri, 08 Sep 2023 10:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-09-08-github-workflows/ Github Actions are gaining more popularity, thanks to them being right next door to your repository. Lately I’ve noticed Github also actively suggesting workflow templates based on the contents of your repo, like “hey, I see you’ve got a NodeJS project going, how about we build it here too?”. It’s not a bad options, and my biggest complaint so far is about YAML - like with any other YAML driven project it’s fine in the beginning, but becomes this unwieldy monstrosity once you require any degree of advanced complexity to fit the needs of your project. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-08-16-sandboxes/ Wed, 16 Aug 2023 10:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-08-16-sandboxes/ One of the most important things you could be doing as a tech lead is making sure there are plenty of sandboxes. This is easily overlooked. After all, you won’t be shipping a sandbox to production. Sandboxes are for play, not for “real work”. When time budget is tight, you cut on play and anything that is not directly relevant for delivery. Having sandboxes however brings up one thing, which is rarely available on production projects - freedom to experiment. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-08-12-apps-made-in-ukraine/ Sat, 12 Aug 2023 10:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-08-12-apps-made-in-ukraine/ This is going to be partially an appreciation blog, and partially aspirational. Some of my favourite apps and games are made in Ukraine, and there are still plenty of software engineers doing work despite a raging war outside. And they make amazing products, used and praised around the world. Apps and games that I’ve used Grammarly I discovered Grammarly shortly after moving to the UK. It was short of amazing - English is my second language (or third? https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-08-04-python-virtualenvs/ Fri, 04 Aug 2023 10:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-08-04-python-virtualenvs/ Python is one of the most popular languages in the world - not the least thanks to its application in ever growing popularity of ML and data science. As there are a number of tools helping you with a local Python setup, I thought to share best practices and ways of dealing with things like multiple Python versions, libraries and virtual environments. All very much hands-on, and tested at the point of writing of this blog. https://alexsavin.me/about/ Thu, 11 May 2023 09:06:45 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/about/ Hello! My name is Alexander Savin and I’m based in Edinburgh, UK Current job I work at Ki Insurance where we build the future of specialty insuretech. If you are trying to insure a big space rocket, I might be able to explain how that would work. Zero tracking This website will not track your visit in any way. There is no Google Analytics or any other tracker attached. It will not save any cookies on your browser. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-01-17-tests-in-production/ Tue, 17 Jan 2023 10:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2023-01-17-tests-in-production/ TLDR: You can run tests on production. It’s the ultimate integration test, but there are a few rules to follow. Software delivery is always full of compromise. You either ship it (slightly) untested, or you don’t ship it at all. There are a number of practices that are considered good and increase chances of your uninterrupted night sleep. It is generally a good idea to write tests. It is also good to run them before shipping things to prod. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2021-12-17-chess/ Fri, 17 Dec 2021 10:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2021-12-17-chess/ I love chess. It might feel like a predictable game with a limited amount of choice. An average game is only about 40 moves. But thanks to math (and mainly to factorial function) there are more possible chess games than atoms in the known Universe. I had to check that. Apparently there is this thing called Shannon number, saying there are at least 10 to the power of 120 possible games. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2021-12-04-wales-pembrokshire/ Sat, 04 Dec 2021 14:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2021-12-04-wales-pembrokshire/ It’s been 8 years now since we moved to the British Island, and in all these years most of the island was sort of neglected by us. Life in London is full of downsides, but a major upside was always cheap flights anywhere in Europe and the rest of the world. Literally every country wants to have a flight to London for some reason. So when it was time to pick a holiday destination, it would be anywhere but the UK. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2021-12-01-slack-channel-namings/ Wed, 01 Dec 2021 14:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2021-12-01-slack-channel-namings/ I’ve been observing this pattern for a while. A company adopts Slack. There is a brief period of fun when default channels are used for general chit chat. Pretty soon an RFC is issued with rules for proper use of Slack for work. Specifically - what should be posted where. More specifically - how to name Slack channels. The rules are adopted with a huge aplomb and everyone starts making new, properly named channels. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2021-09-03-data-snapshotting/ Fri, 03 Sep 2021 14:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2021-09-03-data-snapshotting/ Let’s talk data. An average web app would likely have some sort of a frontend, a backend and a database. The frontend would display the form, the backend would receive the form contents, and a database would be a place to persist the form forever (or at least until a catastrophic failure of a particular region of your instance). Consider a scenario when a user buys a train ticket. We’d have a data model for a user, and a data model for a ticket. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-12-22-financials-best-practices/ Tue, 22 Dec 2020 14:37:10 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-12-22-financials-best-practices/ This blog is not about how to integrate Stripe or arrange payments. This is mostly about how to name your variables. As you know, naming variables is the second most difficult problem in software engineering. Money is a highly sensitive topic, and if you are tasked with the implementation of money related features, there are a few things to consider. This primer will apply to JavaScript-based apps, and we are going to look at both frontend and backend parts of the solution. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-12-14-upgrade-to-hugo/ Mon, 14 Dec 2020 18:01:30 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-12-14-upgrade-to-hugo/ It is time to migrate my self-hosted standalone blog to a more modern engine. This engine is going to be Hugo - a super fast static site generator, which is also super friendly and highly customizable. It might also push me towards learning Go, but we’ll see about that. The original engine this site was running on was a bespoke generator written in LiveScript language about 7 years ago. I’ve written quite a lot of functionality around it, so the whole site was pretty much homebrew LiveScript, running on Node 0. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-06-18-inline-business-docs/ Thu, 18 Jun 2020 07:14:00 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-06-18-inline-business-docs/ Code documentation has always been a controversial topic. You’ve probably heard “Code is documentation” mantra, and I 80% agree with it. As long as this is just about the code, and just for the coders. This mantra quickly breaks when you have business logic in your code, which needs to be read and understood by, well, business. A natural timeline of events might look something like this. A logic is designed and a JIRA ticket is created for implementation. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-06-03-idempotency/ Wed, 03 Jun 2020 07:14:00 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-06-03-idempotency/ “Idempotency is the property of certain operations in mathematics and computer science whereby they can be applied multiple times without changing the result beyond the initial application.” - Wikipedia This might not sound particularly exciting, but it is one of the fundamental tools when building fault-tolerant systems. I believe the very first time I’ve heard about idempotency was when reading through Stripe API documentation. Stripe is dealing with financials, which is a very sensitive topic. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-05-28-atomicity/ Thu, 28 May 2020 07:14:00 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-05-28-atomicity/ “But is this database atomic?” This is the most common scenario when someone would remember atomicity. However, this is one of the core concepts which is incredibly useful when implementing fault-tolerant systems. It’s good to keep it handy and use when reviewing pull requests. In some cases, it might also be very hard to plan ahead. What is atomicity? Atom is a definition of the smallest indivisible particle. An atomic operation should perform as a whole or not perform at all. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-03-13-remote-work/ Fri, 13 Mar 2020 07:14:00 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-03-13-remote-work/ My current company - a UK energy startup - has always had this ongoing remote work mindset. I thought I’d share a thing or two how we made it work for us. In short - although we are mostly a traditional “work from office” company, for a software developer there’s nothing that would stop you from being 100% productive while working remotely. Step 1: No meetings Wednesdays This was a tiny idea that quickly became integrated into our culture. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-02-27-instagram-open-web-alternatives/ Thu, 27 Feb 2020 07:14:00 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2020-02-27-instagram-open-web-alternatives/ “What, you’re not using Instagram? Where do you post your photos then?” This question came up a few times recently in conversations with my friends, so I thought I’d write a more detailed explanations. I’ve been an active user of Instagram for a number of years. Daily logins, thousands of posts. Never became a proper IG celebrity, or even a micro-influencer - but I’ve had my fun following a significant amount of users posting pics from film cameras. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2019-10-04-shadow-testing/ Fri, 04 Oct 2019 07:14:00 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2019-10-04-shadow-testing/ What is your release pipeline? It probably looks something like this. You write some code, add unit tests, maybe an integration test. Run it on your machine, then push to a CI and see if the build is green. Maybe test it on staging if you have one. Then - deploy to prod. What usually happens next is that real-world users break your app. Not deliberately, of course, there’s no pre-meditated evil intention. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2019-03-27-current-state-of-things/ Thu, 15 Aug 2019 15:53:00 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2019-03-27-current-state-of-things/ I wonder if my blog publishing pipeline still work, as the last blog post was about couple of years ago. Time flies. Since then I’ve started a micro blog: http://alexsavin.micro.blog/. This is effectively my replacement for Twitter, as it is still maintaining open Web ideology, and is a nice place to be. Do subscribe, and let me know if you also have a micro blog - I’d be happy to follow you. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2017-11-12-reactive-conf-takeaways/ Sun, 12 Nov 2017 07:14:00 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2017-11-12-reactive-conf-takeaways/ Some of my highlights and notes on the recent conference in Bratislava. 3 days, 2 tracks, lots of cake and some Angular. @swannodette on Datomic David Nolen of Cognitec and Clojure gave a good overview of issues we’re experiencing today when implementing mid to large scale apps, before explaining how Datomic database might solve some of them. Some of my thoughts here inspired by his talk. If you have a choice of investing into tests vs investing into a simpler system, latter is always better. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-09-16-daily-vlogging/ Fri, 16 Sep 2016 11:18:37 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-09-16-daily-vlogging/ I should probably explain why there are no fresh blogs here. The reason is daily vlogging. For the past 43 days I would film an episode, cut it, and publish. YouTube is my primary platform for now. Every day a small short film is finished and revealed to the world. This takes a bit of dedication, concentration, passion and self organising. Latter one is probably the most important. Editing, rendering and publishing of an episode takes anything between 2-4 hours, each day. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-08-10-vlog-live-from-russia/ Wed, 10 Aug 2016 21:26:47 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-08-10-vlog-live-from-russia/ We’re off to the epic trip in Russia, and I’m implementing a new season of the daily vlog. 5 episodes released so far, much more to go. You can follow our adventures on this YouTube playlist. All new episodes are being added there daily. This is the longest stretch of daily vlogs I’ve ever done. Expect Saint-Petersburg, Cherepovets, Vologda region, small villages, countryside, trains, metro, super fast boats from USSR times, lots of coffee, vintage soviet arcade video machines and hunt for rare vintage film cameras. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-07-29-freedom-of-movement/ Fri, 29 Jul 2016 07:14:00 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-07-29-freedom-of-movement/ It’s early summer morning. I’m 15 years old. I and my mum are standing in a long crowded queue outside of the embassy of Finland in Moscow. The consulate reception is not opened yet, but the queue is already impressive. Tourists, businessmen, travel agents. Our case is somewhat different - a couple of months ago I was picked as an exchange student to be sent to a foreign country, together with another dude from our college. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-07-14-agfa-flexilette-35mm-camera/ Wed, 13 Jul 2016 22:56:14 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-07-14-agfa-flexilette-35mm-camera/ TLR means twin lens reflex. Unlike SLR:s, TLR features 2 lenses and a mirror. Most TLR cameras are made for medium format film. 35mm film TLR:s are a rare breed, Agfa Flexilette being one of those. Flexilette itself is a rare find. It’s been manufactured in 1960-61, succeeded by Agfa Optima Reflex camera. Agfa struggled to compete with the growing range of SLR cameras and gave up after producing these 2 models. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-06-21-brexit/ Tue, 21 Jun 2016 22:34:36 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-06-21-brexit/ There are so many words written on the topic of Brexit that I was going to just ignore the issue and move on. Especially since I have no vote on the matter. However, I live in the UK now. I pay taxes. And I genuinely love this place. Well, mostly London. But also rest of the country, the bits I’ve seen. The reason I live here is my Finnish passport. I was born in Russia, but then moved to Finland when I was 15. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-06-19-gov-ux-proof-of-address/ Sun, 19 Jun 2016 18:15:55 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-06-19-gov-ux-proof-of-address/ One of the basic needs when dealing with governmental services for a person is to prove your current place of residency. It may sound trivial, but there are multiple approaches to solving this problem. In the UK it is called “proof of address”. It is always required when you want to: Open a bank account Register with a local surgery Change your address details with a bank Apply for a travel visa What is it? https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-06-14-oculus-cv1-review/ Tue, 14 Jun 2016 23:19:00 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-06-14-oculus-cv1-review/ I’ve got my CV1 order now about 2 months ago and been playing with it semi-actively. It’s a solid piece of experience, it works, and there is good selection of content. Ordering In January Oculus did that famous announcement of a pre-order date for a consumer version. They had a countdown on a site. I think it was around 4pm in the UK when it stroke 0:00, and the whole Oculus site went down. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-05-19-foldable-bike-impressions/ Thu, 19 May 2016 23:09:25 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-05-19-foldable-bike-impressions/ This post was not sponsored by Brompton. I bought it with my own money. Brompton is a locally made brand of foldable bikes. They are praised for easy folding and tiny amount of required storage space. They are also very well built and suppose to last for years. I’be been biking all my life but never owned a foldable before. You can see Bromptons everywhere, often with well dressed people riding them around City. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-04-24-vlog-netherlands-season-guide/ Sun, 24 Apr 2016 21:25:37 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-04-24-vlog-netherlands-season-guide/ We’re back from the Netherlands. Our base was in Amsterdam, but we also managed to get out of town and travel to a few locations around that beautiful country. For one week I also made daily video log episodes, all of which are now available for watching. As usual, everything is filmed, cut and released during the same day. Day 01: Gatwick to Amsterdam We get through the morning rush hour in London to catch a train to Gatwick, then hop on the plane and land in Amsterdam Schilpol airport. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-04-20-cycling-in-amsterdam/ Wed, 20 Apr 2016 10:33:31 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-04-20-cycling-in-amsterdam/ We’re back from Netherlands. Me and my wife Stanisla spent a week in Amsterdam, occasionally getting out of town. For both of us this is first visit to the Netherlands. I generally read Wikitravel before and during the visit. Amsterdam is regarded as a heaven for cyclists. However if you read Wikitravel carefully, you might suspect that something is not right with the kingdom. Cyclists do not have the right of way even though it might appear so when observing the typical Amsterdammer’s cycling behaviour https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-04-09-polaroid-black-and-white-film/ Sat, 09 Apr 2016 22:59:54 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-04-09-polaroid-black-and-white-film/ I never heard of black and white Polaroid films. I also had no idea about the peel apart films. Polaroid of my childhood is the good old type 600 cassette cameras, which spit out the print and you shake it in the air to speed up the development. Turned out this is a “modern” generation of Polaroids. Before that they had something called “peel apart films”. What is that? Polaroid Land cameras are the ones requiring a type 100 peel apart film. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-03-27-stereofinland-post-mortem/ Sun, 27 Mar 2016 21:57:48 +0100 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-03-27-stereofinland-post-mortem/ StereoFinland dot com has been a fun project to do on a spare time. I’ve started it 6 years ago in the early 2010, while still living in the town of Tampere, Finland. That was the year when suddenly all digital cinemas became 3D capable, and things actually started to change. I made my own stereoscopic SLR rig and decided to learn proper 3D photography. Hence, the website. It was suppose to be a source and a platform to learn things, spread news, publish pictures and receive feedback. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-03-21-using-revolut-and-mondo-in-usa/ Mon, 21 Mar 2016 16:28:38 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-03-21-using-revolut-and-mondo-in-usa/ For my recent trip to California I decided to try something new and not bring any cash across the border. Instead I’d bring Mondo and Revolut cards. Latter promised no fees when withdrawing cash from ATM:s across the world. In case you have no clue, both Mondo and Revolut are London based fintech startups. Mondo is generally based around the idea of slick mobile app and instant notifications, while Revolut is a multi currency card, again, with a nice mobile app and Google-grade exchange rates (meaning - you get same rate as if you’d Google it). https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-03-15-vlog-for-a-week/ Tue, 15 Mar 2016 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-03-15-vlog-for-a-week/ During our recent trip I’ve tried making and posting short video logs every day for the whole duration of the trip. It turned out to be 8 days long, and hence 8 episodes of the vlog are now available online. In a way this felt like a filmmaking hackathon. There is only one basic rule - every night you must cut and release new episode whatever the cost. On average post production on each episode took about 2 hours, which often meant I had 2 hours less for sleeping. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-02-11-honest-guide-virgin-media-fibre/ Thu, 11 Feb 2016 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-02-11-honest-guide-virgin-media-fibre/ Don’t get me wrong, I (mostly) enjoy new fibre broadband from Virgin. Last week I got it installed and working. The process however was slightly different from the Virgin’s 5 min installation guide. So I wanted to put it all together, here. The honest guide. It took 2 hours and 2 calls to the support. Then it worked. Not to worry, here’s how to avoid those calls. Pre-requisites Box from Virgin Media arrived with Super Hub and cables. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-02-07-moving-to-walthamstow/ Sun, 07 Feb 2016 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-02-07-moving-to-walthamstow/ Couple of weeks ago we moved from Bethnal Green to Walthamstow, and it was our first big move inside London since we moved here 2 years ago from Finland. E2 to E17. All post indexes are indicating direction from the central London, and in a way by a greatness of number you can tell how far it is. Prehistory I remember the original plan when moving here was to find temporary small place, cheap but not too far from the City. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-01-17-70mm-panavision-hateful-8/ Sun, 17 Jan 2016 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-01-17-70mm-panavision-hateful-8/ London is a dream place to be if you love cinema. Not only you get to stumble on film sets while biking to the office in the morning, but also there are all sort of events and places to watch films. Last year Christopher Nolan released Interstellar in IMAX 70mm 15 perf format, which is considered biggest frame size resolution-wise. It is rather awesome, but most of cinemas including IMAX are not equipped anymore to project such stock. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-01-10-two-years-in-london/ Sun, 10 Jan 2016 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-01-10-two-years-in-london/ Moving from Finland to UK and London in particular was one of the biggest changes in my life. Comparable events probably include my initial move from a small town in Russia to Finland when I was 15, and then much later my move to Helsinki. London is practically a separate country living by its own laws. You can tell that rest of UK is very different. London is a huge beast, which requires certain ways of taming. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-01-03-one-second-every-day/ Sun, 03 Jan 2016 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2016-01-03-one-second-every-day/ It’s been another year now, and a new chapter of one second a day film project is finished. Check it out here. Mainly London, but also bits of California, Corfu, Germany, Barcelona and various spots in England. Title picture for this post is made by capturing a snapshot of the video every second and transforming it into a vertical strip of colours. Horizontal strip effectively represents the whole year, with vertical strips being days of that year. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-12-22-barcelona-film-fest/ Tue, 22 Dec 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-12-22-barcelona-film-fest/ Last week me and Stanisla spent 3 beautiful days in Barcelona. Sunny weather, blue sky, amazing vegetarian food and 3D film festival. London Timescapes was selected for the competition, which was awesome on itself. Festival was held over the course of 3 days, we arrived on the very last day when they had screenings of the winning entries and awards. To a huge surprise they announced my film as a winner in a short 3D documentary category. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-11-29-cycle-scheme-explained/ Sun, 29 Nov 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-11-29-cycle-scheme-explained/ There is this moment in your UK employed life when your employer announces that from now on you are eligible for something called Cycle Scheme. It is something that promises you (hefty) discount for a new bike. “How wonderful!” you think at this point and immediately start looking into it. I’ve started now seriously thinking about owning a bike. Something foldable but relatively speedy and nice to use. City bikes are brilliant to some extent, but there are occasional moments of frustration when all docking stations in the City are full. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-11-15-barcelona-fallout-mamiya-graphql/ Sun, 15 Nov 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-11-15-barcelona-fallout-mamiya-graphql/ Barcelona London Timescapes short film is selected to participate in 3D Film Music festival in Barcelona. This is second time when I’m participating in this festival, and first time when I’ll be able to be there in person. No doubt Barcelona will be great in any time of year. The plan is to attend second day of the festival and spend the rest of the weekend shooting film and eating tapas. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-11-08-london-timescapes-film-release/ Sun, 08 Nov 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-11-08-london-timescapes-film-release/ London Timescapes is a short documentary film made of timelapses. I’ve been shooting them for the most part of last year, and then processing raw materials for the most part of this year. It took a moment to assemble everything together. It premiered this October in Karlsruhe, Germany as part of the competition programme of Beyond 3D film festival. Yes, I shot it in native stereoscopic 3D. Hence the trouble. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-11-01-batch-of-analog-cameras/ Mon, 26 Oct 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-11-01-batch-of-analog-cameras/ <img src=“https://alexsavin.me/photos/2015-11-01-35mm-cameras/IMG_0264.jpg" class=“featured” alt=“Zenit EM camera”> I’ve recently acquired a lot with 4 35mm vintage film cameras. Two of them were advertised as “likely functional”, with two more as “likely not functional”. This description was provided by seller based on the fact that shutter was clicking on some cameras, but not clicking on others. Last week the box arrived, and I started the archeological process. This usually includes: Checking camera around and pressing every single toggle / switch on the lens and body Rotating all rings on the lens Figuring out how to open the camera Giving up and finding a pdf with original manual on the Internet Winding the shutter and taking blank pictures. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-10-26-graphql-with-nick-schrock/ Mon, 26 Oct 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-10-26-graphql-with-nick-schrock/ During our recent London React meetup co-creator of GraphQL Nick Schrock did an hour long talk on how they came up with this idea (together with Lee Byron), and why you should use it too. This post will be mostly bulletpoints on his talk, with some pics and my thoughts mixed together. Full talk should be available soon online - Facebook AV team records everything in amazing quality. What GraphQL. Have you ever used SQL? https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-10-18-london-timescapes-beyond-fest/ Sun, 18 Oct 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-10-18-london-timescapes-beyond-fest/ London Timescapes short film was premiered as part of competition programme of Beyond 3D film festival in Karlsruhe, Germany. Me and Stanisla managed to get a glimpse of this presentation this Friday, and it was awesome. It’s my second time on Beyond 3D fest. First one was exactly 2 years ago, film was Helsinki 3D, place - Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie or ZKM of Karlsruhe. This time they’ve migrated towards the historical town centre, into a David Lynch looking cinema called Schauburg Cinema. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-10-15-basel-switzerland/ Thu, 15 Oct 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-10-15-basel-switzerland/ One of our stops during Black Forest adventure was a small village of Malsburg-Marzell. It is very quiet, with lots of stars during dark nights, and not much else. There was a tiny town of Kandern just a few kilometres away, and a 1165 m high mountain of Blauen, with huge antenna on top. Both of these places we visited on our first day. “Let’s go to Basel” I said on the second day, and off we went. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-10-07-clapham-south-underground-shelter/ Wed, 07 Oct 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-10-07-clapham-south-underground-shelter/ This shouldn’t come as a surprise - London is full of hidden underground history. Clapham South is one of these slices of history. Situated about 10 meters under the tube station with the same name, built in 1942 to provide shelter from the German bombs. Generally these sort of places are also hidden from the public. Once a year TfL arranges guided tours to a selected locations in London. One of them is often twin station of Charing Cross, stuck somewhere in 1990s. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-09-30-london-on-svema-film/ Wed, 30 Sep 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-09-30-london-on-svema-film/ Svema film is a curious unicorn. It used to be the film of my childhood - pretty much the only available film for photography in Soviet Russia. It was not great, but it was local, available and widely popular. It is also discontinued and no longer produced. But thanks to the miracle of Ebay, you can still find some expired stashes of hobbyists selling rolls of Svema. Few challenges apply. Firstly, the film is provided as a roll without a cassette. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-09-15-virtual-reality-london-meetup/ Tue, 15 Sep 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-09-15-virtual-reality-london-meetup/ Second VRLO meetup happened last week, and it was a success. More gear, more simulations, heavy weight companies, and highly enthusiastic VR crowds. Mind Candy was once again kind enough to host this madness in their colourful office just a stone throw off the Old Street. I managed to try quite a few simulations, two of which while being immersed into HTC Vive. So far my VR experience consists of Oculus Rift DK1 and 2, and Vive is a pretty good leap forward in terms of resolution - 1080x1200 per eye as opposed to 1080x960 on DK2. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-08-31-weekly-recap/ Mon, 31 Aug 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-08-31-weekly-recap/ It’s getting rainy in London, and tomorrow is the first day in school for local kids. This is notable since we’re living just next to one. Today is also Late Summer bank holiday, which occurs every last Monday of August for no particular reason. Radio Badger live broadcast Our podcast turned 1 year and in honour of this we decided to try something new. Not only we brought a new host on the show, but also last episode was broadcasted live as we were recording it. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-08-23-radio-badger-anniversary/ Sun, 23 Aug 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-08-23-radio-badger-anniversary/ It’s been a whole year now since me, Roisi and Robbie started a podcast titled Red Badger Don’t Care. Since then 21 episode of our show was recorded, edited and released into the world. It is something none of us done before, but I think we all loved listening to other podcasts and dreamed about one day making our own. I’m going to put a randomly organised list of thoughts on what I learned during this year of making. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-08-15-london-timescapes-update/ Sat, 15 Aug 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-08-15-london-timescapes-update/ Couple of things to announce regarding London Timescapes experimental short film. Firstly, it will be premiered at the Beyond 3D festival this October in Karslruhe, Germany. Same place where Helsinki 3D film got its slice of fame two years ago. For this special occasion I’ll be mastering a DCP package in the upcoming week. Secondly, I got my paws on the Oculus Rift DK2 kit for a weekend. This resulted in a few experiments and a special VR(ish) version of the film. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-08-03-pebble-watch-impressions/ Mon, 03 Aug 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-08-03-pebble-watch-impressions/ Got myself a new white Pebble watch. After a week of use here are a few impressions. Not in particular order. Screen is nice. I’m a huge fan of Kindle, and also one of my first watches was classic electronic Casio. Pebble screen is great when you shine light on it, and is ok with built-in backlight. Screen is indeed always on. Pebble is quite usable in the dark room studio with safe lights on. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-07-20-vrlo-meetup/ Mon, 20 Jul 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-07-20-vrlo-meetup/ Last week was notable for an inaugural Virtual Reality London meetup. I was lucky enough to get a ticket. Space - Mind Candy office in Shoreditch Organizer - Rewind.co Mind Candy was conveniently located on my bike route between home and office. Trickiest part was to get tickets - originally they released 50 of those, and I was way too late for that party. Then there was Tube strike day - and event got postponed for a week. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-07-12-london-timescapes-update/ Sun, 12 Jul 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-07-12-london-timescapes-update/ London Timescapes film is basically finished and looking for distribution. What is it? 9 min long audio-visual experience around London and time. Filmed in native stereoscopic 3D in 4K resolution. Properly color graded, with original music composed by Dominik Piatek specially for this movie. In many ways it is my personal exploration of this big city, places, people and rhythms. I think it’s stereoscopic aspect will provide viewers with unique opportunity to immerse into the experience and feel the beat of this place. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-06-07-week-recap/ Sun, 07 Jun 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-06-07-week-recap/ Weekly recap on important things. Podcast Not only we recorded a new episode of Radio Badger with Roisi, Viktor and Robbie, but also previous episode was finished and released all over the Internet. In August it’ll be turning one year, and Roisi had an idea of having live broadcast on that day in front of the audience. Sounds like fun. Blog on the episode 17 with shownotes and links is here. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-06-04-corfu-island-notes/ Thu, 04 Jun 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-06-04-corfu-island-notes/ My fresh travel video from the island of Corfu is available now on Vimeo. Enjoy, and give it a heart. First time in my life I did a huge mistake when planning my and Stanisla’s travels. Original plan was for me to arrive from San Francisco, sleep, and us together take off to the Stansted airport, and to the warm island of Corfu. What I didn’t accounted for is timeshift. Turned out time flies twice as fast when travel from west to east, and I ended up totally missing the flight. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-05-26-bitcoins-fastmail/ Tue, 26 May 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-05-26-bitcoins-fastmail/ I’ve been using Fastmail for a bit, and it’s amazing how fast webmail can be. Simple, nothing extra, shortcuts throughout the app. Current incarnation of Gmail feels like behemoth - takes ages to get it all loaded. Also Fastmail is not free. Are you ok being a product? Somehow it feels that dedicated paid service will always beat free ad-powered one. Fastmail comes with a number of different price points, and what’s best - they accept bitcoins. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-05-25-week-recap/ Mon, 25 May 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-05-25-week-recap/ London is a fantastic place to be, with one huge downside - there are far too many interesting things to do and places to be than you could ever manage. One skill becomes particularly handy - ability to balance work, hobbies, family and friends. This balance seems essential to enjoy life. Let’s see how I did last week. Events We did two events with Red Badger. First was React London meetup, part of Digital Shoreditch fest. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-05-16-personal-update/ Sat, 16 May 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-05-16-personal-update/ I’ve been away for some time. First week was in California, second on the island of Corfu, and for the next two weeks I was surviving the London flu. It was one resilient bug. Nevertheless, I’m back to blogging, and hopefully podcasting next week. San Francisco was pretty cool, although windy and cold. Despite that I managed to burn my face on both days when I wasn’t in the basement of the Mariott hotel, where O’Reilly Fluent conference was happening. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-04-16-worthy-stuff/ Thu, 16 Apr 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-04-16-worthy-stuff/ Read If you ever wondered what airport security equipment can do to analog unprocessed film - Kodak got you covered X-ray equipment used to inspect carry-on baggage uses a very low level of x-radiation that will not cause noticeable damage to most films. However, baggage that is checked (loaded on the planes as cargo) often goes through equipment with higher energy X rays. 70 maps that explain America. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-04-12-darkroom-experience/ Sun, 12 Apr 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-04-12-darkroom-experience/ Fascinating thing about London is that you can find anything here. As long as you’re looking for something, have ambitions and generally things to do (people to see), London is your place. Recently I discovered a local photography studio with darkroom, few minutes of walk from our current place in Bethnal Green. If you’re into analog photography, this place is truly magical. Yesterday I spent 8 hours (mostly) in the dark, sniffing chemicals and trying to distinguish contrasts on a negative black and white picture in red light. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-04-07-yubikey-no-password-required/ Tue, 07 Apr 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-04-07-yubikey-no-password-required/ Yubikey is a tiny USB device with a single button. Once you plug it into computer, it will pretend to be a USB keyboard. When you press (the) button, it will output a seemingly random string of characters into selected input field. It can also let you to forget all passwords and keep your memory cells occupied with more important stuff. Like birthday date of your spouse or when is the next episode of Silicon Valley. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-04-05-worthy-stuff/ Sun, 05 Apr 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-04-05-worthy-stuff/ Read I know none of my passwords - story how to use internet without worrying about security After Snowden, The NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge. NSA now competes with companies like Google and Facebook for bright minds of US citizens (and loosing this game) Amazon tests delivery drones at secret Canada site after US frustration. As if to underline the significance of the move, the test site is barely 2,000ft from the US border, which was clearly visible from where the Guardian stood on a recent visit. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-03-29-worthy-stuff/ Sun, 29 Mar 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-03-29-worthy-stuff/ Read Why giving basic income to even the richest makes sense - The Water Room Analogy An open letter to banks by creators of 1Password. The reason for this publication was tweet by one of the banks that “your password should be commited to memory rather than password manager”. In all the fairness, my current bank in UK doesn’t even support one-time passwords - access to the online account is protected with two passwords maintainer by user. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-03-22-worthy-stuff/ Sun, 22 Mar 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-03-22-worthy-stuff/ Read The Cold Rim of the World - The rise and fall of Pyramiden, a Russian mining town located in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard UK government’s styleguide on Git commits Roads were not built for cars: how cyclists, not drivers, first fought to pave US roads. Ano in related stories - The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of jaywalking. The National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, an industry group, established a free wire service for newspapers: reporters could send in the basic details of a traffic accident, and would get in return a complete article to print the next day. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-03-16-worthy-stuff/ Tue, 17 Mar 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-03-16-worthy-stuff/ Read How to bring up a baby in the Finnish way - special project by Yle Pi day flyer Exploiting the DRAM rowhammer bug to gain kernel privileges. Curious way of hacking software through the physical hardware of the RAM chip Bit flipping works when a hacker-developed app or process accesses two carefully selected rows of memory hundreds of thousands of times in a tiny fraction of a second. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-03-08/ Sun, 08 Mar 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-03-08/ Read Notes on watching Aliens for the first time with a bunch of kids. A grown up dude describes his childhood memories of watching Aliens on a big screen for the very first time. And then later on he suggests this very movie for a slumber party of kids in his house. Guys at the urinals were peeing as fast as they could because they didn’t want to miss another minute of “Aliens. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-03-01-worthy-stuff/ Sun, 01 Mar 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-03-01-worthy-stuff/ Read Understanding the Enigma machine with 30 lines of Ruby. Practical implementation of the algorithm that was exploited and (cleverly) brootforced by GCHQ and Alan Turing during WWII. How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is? Long read by Jeff Wise, revisiting mistery of MH370 flight, tracking airplane with Inmarsat satellites, and a theory how thing could end up. Proof That Oscar Voters Are Clueless About Animation (and many other things). https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-02-25-useful-browser-extensions/ Wed, 25 Feb 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-02-25-useful-browser-extensions/ Let’s assume for a second that it is perfectly fine to care about your privacy on Internet, filter out ads and in general have full control over the look of webpages. Here is a (short) list of my favorite browser extensions that help concentrate on a content, save on traffic, stay slightly more hidden from trackers and remove annoying things on webpages. I’ll provide links to the Chrome Store, but some extensions are also available for Safari and Firefox. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-02-22-worthy-stuff/ Sun, 22 Feb 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-02-22-worthy-stuff/ Read Marco Arment defends high-speed way of listening to podcasts Fair review of Hello Fresh box delivery service by Roisi. Something we got hooked on as well. Watch Helsinki from above photo post Fresh React JS meetup video, organized by Red Badger and this time hosted at Facebook London office. Expect talks and live coding on React Native iOS, Flux and some impressive show-n-tell presentations. Listen Episode of our podcast titled Badger Don’t Care About Exploding Diplodocuses in Kensington now available with shownotes and blogpost (and on iTunes as well). https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-02-15/ Sun, 15 Feb 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-02-15/ Read Poor unlucky people with green bubbles The freefall camera prototype development story Review of Cereal Killer cafe on Brick Lane How Canadian Spies Infiltrated the Internet’s Core to Watch What You Do Online. Fresh leaks from Ed Snowden. It’s actually pretty smart idea of creating signatures for patterns of packets. Such technology works by observing small portions of internet traffic known as packets, and matching the information describing each packet against a library of signatures—including known applications, protocols, network activity, and more. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-02-09-worthy-stuff-issue/ Mon, 09 Feb 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-02-09-worthy-stuff-issue/ Read Long read on designing recently released Twitter Video feature. I’d say it is a rare insight into how engineering at Twitter works, with lots of details, phases of the prototypes and pictures. One thing became clear — there was no good sense of feedback while using it. The culprit was the progress bar. With a 30 second time limit, that thing moves very slowly and it doesn’t reinforce that you’re recording. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-02-01-worthy-stuff-issue/ Sun, 01 Feb 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-02-01-worthy-stuff-issue/ Read The Duct Tape Programmer - good never gets old, and this write up by Joel Spolsky still very much relevant, although represents another extremity You see, everybody else is too afraid of looking stupid because they just can’t keep enough facts in their head at once to make multiple inheritance, or templates, or COM, or multithreading, or any of that stuff work. So they sheepishly go along with whatever faddish programming craziness has come down from the architecture astronauts who speak at conferences and write books and articles and are so much smarter than us that they don’t realize that the stuff that they’re promoting is too hard for us. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-01-25-worthy-stuff-issue/ Sun, 25 Jan 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-01-25-worthy-stuff-issue/ Read Long read on travel photography by @Stammy of Twitter I paid $25 for an Invisible Boyfriend, and I think I might be in love. On the same topic, don’t miss Ex Machina, now in cinemas. Dark Deep Web marketplaces research. How people buy things on the hidden side of the Internet. Google is going to disqualify SHA-1 SSL certificates and display warning symbol in Chrome instead of trusty green lock icon Interact The Dawn Wall - new media article by NYTimes, and a benchmark how to use WebGL in web storytelling Listen How to Think Like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos - fresh episode of Tim Ferris show podcast Personal notes Just finished editing interview with radio astronomy professor Oleg Smirnov talking about Universe and Square Kilometer Array project currently being prepared in South Africa and Australia. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-01-18-worthy-stuff/ Sun, 18 Jan 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-01-18-worthy-stuff/ Read A guy goes to Cineworld cinema and (allegedly) attempts to do a screen rip of a film. In 3D. With a custom video camera rig he constructed. Staff calls the police. Guy denies everything. Judge says there was absolutely no legal basis for the case. Watch 365 - one second of animation every day Trendy Cafe HTTPS everywhere Landing attempt of the Falcon rocket on a sea drone ship. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-01-11-worthy-stuff-issue/ Sun, 11 Jan 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-01-11-worthy-stuff-issue/ Read Top 10 strangest things in space Elon Musk doing AMA on Reddit last Monday, few hours before launching a rocket that was supposed to land its first stage to the drone ship few miles off the coast. The Mars transport system will be a completely new architecture. Am hoping to present that towards the end of this year. Good thing we didn’t do it sooner, as we have learned a huge amount from Falcon and Dragon. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-01-10-one-year-in-london/ Sat, 10 Jan 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-01-10-one-year-in-london/ Exactly one year ago I moved from a hospitable, quiet and snowy Finland to the island of Great Britain. It was sort of a bold move, a leap into something very unknown. This post is a brief list of reflections, which might (or might not) help someone else to get an idea what it’s like to live in London. General feelings It shouldn’t come as a surprise that being a tourist somewhere, and living in exact same place are two very different things. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-01-04-worthy-stuff/ Sun, 04 Jan 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-01-04-worthy-stuff/ Read BFI features a special article on Tarkovski’s Solaris and Stalker films Listen Radio Badger podcast New Year episode, with musings about space, stormtroopers, living in London and tales from English, Scottish and Soviet childhoods Accidental Tech Podcast - or ATP. Show about software dev that is actually interesting to listen. One of the guys is a developer of Overcast podcasting app. Watch Alternative posters to Interstellar Phone Home short animation by The Brothers McLeod Island of Dharma - short film from Sri Lanka My one second of video every day, year 2014 Personal notes Made it to the Shoreditch Old Station cafe, which is one of the few places around where you can spend your bitcoins. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-01-02-one-second/ Fri, 02 Jan 2015 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2015-01-02-one-second/ Here is my version of the one second of video every day of the year. It’s exactly what it sounds - every day I’d film some random stuff happening around, and later would pick one second that suppose to represent a culmination of a given day. In reality things turned out to be slightly different. Even with a modern phone in your pocket filming one second of video every day requires an effort. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-12-28/ Sun, 28 Dec 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-12-28/ Early Christmas morning is that rare moment when you can catch a glimpse of London without flocks of people around. Public transport is suspended, so only those owning a car or the most resilient tourists can make it to the downtown. And then you’ll find peace, and that unusual feeling when you can freely walk around major attractions and take pictures, without disturbing anyone else. Well, maybe a few other photography fanatics like myself. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-12-21/ Sun, 21 Dec 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-12-21/ It’s almost Christmas, time for reflections, time off the office and trying not to be flattened at the city center madness. Enjoy this fresh issue of the Worthy Stuff, and have a cup of mulled wine (or a hot cranberry juice with spices). Read They found 11 millions of cubic kilometers of the oldest water on our planet, deep within the Earth’s crust It’s time for a third HFR 3D film, although from the same series. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-12-14/ Sun, 14 Dec 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-12-14/ Read My summer vacation in North Korea - long read, full of rare details and pictures I glanced up from the paper at the airline safety video, which starred the exact same flight attendants who had greeted us minutes before. It made me wonder how many commercial planes there are in North Korea. Was this… the plane? Lost 1927 Disney Christmas film found in Norway archives You have to earn certain amount of £ in UK to keep your family in the country Independent think-tank the Migration Observatory said an estimated 43% of British workers did not earn enough to sponsor a spouse from outside the EU. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-12-07/ Sun, 07 Dec 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-12-07/ Read Alternative ways of launching things to the orbit London life: A day in a life of a bookie Story on VR documentary shot for Oculus Rift Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind Watch Blackout city timelapse. An experimental film on how London would look like in a night if the city lights would go pitch black. Wanderers, short film voiced by Carl Sagan Stereoscopic pictures from Inverness, Scotland Listen Christmas special episode of our tech / art / science podcast Radio Badger is out in the wild Personal notes Average size of Christmas trees sold on London streets seems to be half of what you’d usually get in Finland. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-11-30/ Sun, 30 Nov 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-11-30/ Read The Elephant’s Foot of the Chernobyl is considered to be the most dangerous piece of waste in the world This guy is going to spend 28 days in virtual reality, living someone else’s life Official Astronaut’s Photography Manual by Hasselblad It is impossible to have “perfect” exposure for the shaded cargo bay and sunlit earth at the same time. Since the cargo bay with the Orbital Maneuvering System burn is the more important part, the above image is properly exposed to make the best looking transparency. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-11-24/ Mon, 24 Nov 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-11-24/ Suddenly there is this moment in your life when you find yourself at the Node JS conference in Budapest. One day single track event named One-Shot, with bunch of speakers and a nice variety of topics, complemented with great Kenyan coffee and Hungaryan craft beer. Organized by the local Javascript shop Rising Stack. Some of the talks and slides are already available online, so I’ll just go through some of those, worthy of your attention. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-11-17/ Mon, 17 Nov 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-11-17/ Read Colonization of the Mercury is not so obscure idea as you might think. Yep, there is a scientific article on Wikipedia on this topic. Unlike the Moon however, Mercury has the additional advantage of a magnetic field protecting it from cosmic rays and solar storms, and a larger surface gravity of about 0.38 g, nearly equal to that of Mars. The dark side of the . https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-11-10/ Mon, 10 Nov 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-11-10/ Read Story by TheGuardian on Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, currently serving in Swedish prison. He is vegan too. David Graeber is pondering the phenomenon of bullshit jobs. It seems that people could legitimately work less in the year 2014, but for some reason this doesn’t happen. Watch John Cleese - How to inspire creativity within yourselves. This lecture is dated 1991, but still as brilliant as it was 25 years ago. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-11-03/ Mon, 03 Nov 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-11-03/ Read Reasons behind Facebook launching its Dark Web site. In other words - Facebook is now available via Tor Tripping through IBM’s astonishingly insane 1937 corporate songbook Subversion of business strategies has nothing to do with being illegal Watch Jason Scott: Confessions of the Angriest Archivist. Story of the archive.org project, which goal is to download and archive all of the internet Listen Fresh episode of our Radio Badger podcast is available, offering blabber on new perks at Google, Gaia hypothesis, multidimensional spaces and WebVR coding experience with Oculus Rift. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-10-27/ Mon, 27 Oct 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-10-27/ Our official Scotland road trip video is now rendered and uploaded to YouTube. Featuring views from the train window on the way to Edinburgh, rainy Inverness, then bus to Loch Ness, boat trip at Fort William, a bit of trekking at Ben Nevis, and discovering third oldest subway at Glasgow. Lots of hyperlapses included in the video. Half way though our journey I’ve discovered hidden dev settings of the Hyperlapse app, and that was the moment when resolution of those lapses got bumped to a full HD (from a decent 720p which you get by default). https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-10-17/ Fri, 17 Oct 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-10-17/ I’m back from 10 days trip to Scotland. Highlands are amazingly beautiful and unlike anything I’ve seen before. The closest could be Norway, but it has completely different feel to it, with all those spiky mountains and arctic chilly weather. Highlands were chilly too in October, but not freezing chilly. In the foreseeable future I’ll be processing and releasing stereoscopic pictures from Edinburgh, Inverness, Loch Ness, Urquhart Castle, Fort William, Ben Nevis track, and finally - Glasgow. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-09-22/ Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-09-22/ Read Hands-on with Oculus' new devkit prototype. Codename - Crescent Bay, now with built-in headphones, more tracking sensors and something they call “new display technology”. Also, here is a highly technical keynote by John Carmack on Oculus development, display technologies and action-to-photon time. Using smartwatches while driving is illegal in UK and in terms of punishment equals to <= £100. Same fine is used for drivers who are busy talking on mobile phones without handsfree. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-09-13/ Sat, 13 Sep 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-09-13/ Read Ever needed an argument on what exactly is wrong with Comic Sans? Here you go. The Curious Case of iPhone 6+ display. By now it seems that everyone is aware of the downscaling aspect of the 1080p display on the new “bigger than bigger” iPhone. Also, true 1px lines are over. If you ever decide to shout at the London Cabbie on the street, think about all the troubles he had to go through to get the official badge. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-08-31/ Sun, 31 Aug 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-08-31/ Read 25 years old enthusiast from Czech Republic tries his best at reassembling the very original versions of the classic Star Wars trilogy, without all those alterations and additional VFX. George Lucas thinks that modern versions of the Star Wars is exactly how he wanted to make them from the beginning, but fans are disagreeing. Engineering team at Instagram is sharing some technical details on how exactly Hyperlapse app works. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-08-25/ Mon, 25 Aug 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-08-25/ Read Incredibly detailed and illustrated TheVerge’s take on the subject of Virtual Reality. If you trust Gartner’s 2014 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, VR just made it through the Trough of Disillusionment and on its way to the Slope of Enlightment. I think so too. Pics taken by monkey cannot be copyrighted, or so at least was the verdict of the US court this time. Works produced by nature, animals or plants or purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings don’t count https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-08-17/ Sun, 17 Aug 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-08-17/ Read World’s largest model of the Solar System can be found in Sweden. The Sun is represented by Ericsson Globe in Stockholm, all the planets and asteroids are placed and sized proportionally and located all around Sweden all the way to the north. One of many R&D departments in Microsoft is actually doing amazing stuff - last week they broke the (hacker)news by coming out with the technology for stabilizing and speeding up video footage made during various sport activities - such as riding a bike. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-08-09/ Sat, 09 Aug 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-08-09/ Read Story of a man who wanted to make a web based game called Game Neverending, but ended up (accidentally) creating Flickr and Slack. The latter is a sort of corporate chat client, which we at Red Badger loved from the first day. If you ever used IRC, Slack is the modern evolution of IRC client. IRC commands actually still work in Slack. In April 2004 Stewart was scheduled to give a talk at an O’Reilly conference called Etech in San Diego on some pretty technical things found in Game Neverending—APIs, REST, RSS. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-08-03/ Sun, 03 Aug 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-08-03/ ####Read The most comprehensive guide on drone photography. Detailed instructions on choosing your first drone, extra parts, gymbal stabilizer, notes on the max time of flight and carried weight (aka how big camera can you attach to the drone without it falling back to Earth). The article is filled with pictures and videos of drones in action, explaining every intricate detail of owning and flying the camera drone. Last Kodak film factory is about to be closed. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-07-27/ Sun, 27 Jul 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-07-27/ Read Article by one of the Russian expats currently living in San Francisco. In light of the recent events he is having personal identity crisis and leans towards calling himself “euro-slavic”. The population at large is, statistically speaking, not very bright. Many are deranged from overuse of alcohol or drugs. A big number are simply aging elderly rooted in USSR-centric mindset who never adjusted to the modern world. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-07-19/ Sat, 19 Jul 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-07-19/ Story of the Graphing Calculator app for Macintosh. Two consultants worked for Apple. Their project got cancelled. They decided to push forward and finish their app despite the circumstances. With no pay, and at some point with revoked access to the building, they kept sneaking in and working (with no pay, of course). At 1:00 a.m., we trekked to an office that had a PowerPC prototype. We looked at each other, took a deep breath, and launched the application. https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-07-12/ Sat, 12 Jul 2014 17:36:28 +0000 https://alexsavin.me/posts/2014-07-12/ Gameplay video of the upcoming game No Man’s Sky. Small company based in London currently busy creating a small universe in the best traditions of Spore. Everything is generated. You can freely wonder around, exploring the world. When it gets boring, you hop on the starship and fly to another planet (taking a part in the starship battle on your way). Creators are also talking about storyline, so this game have solid chance not to end up being another sandbox.