For a long time I wanted to take up touch-typing and increase my typing speed. I tried some training programs, but it was hard to find proper amount of time to spent eating alphabet monsters. As an every learning process the touch-typing requires taking lessons repeatedly. However, usually it could be hard to follow this proven rule because of meaningless nature of such programs, when you have to repeat many times a boring character sequence like ’sd jk as jk’. When I had some spare time at home I had to make a choice between writing an e-mail to a friend using the well known ‘two-finger’ method or to make one step towards the ‘ten-finger’, usually I chose the first one.

Some times ago I was given a bright idea how to combine the learning process with pleasure of writing to a blog or posting to a forum.
The main idea was to use a keyboard without any written captions on keys. It makes learning the key layout inevitable. Using this kind of keyboards brings you a great opportunity to beat the bad habit of constantly looking at the keyboard while typing. Actually, there is a good implementation here, however it will cost you pretty much sum of money.

As I was advised, I made the analogue thing from my old simple keyboard which probably costs now about 2$. Using a piece of emery board I erased all captions on the alphabet and punctuating keys.

This post was written using this keyboard and it took more than 2 hours. But, now I can remember all keys locations. I can’t afford using this magic device at work because of great time losses, but I definitely will use it at home.

Update:
I found a good implementation:
Quick and Dirty Das Keyboard (Blank Keyboard)

Few things I’ve done this week:
After returning from Kamenec I published some photos from there.

I wrote my first perl script which generates sql inserts/updates that are build according to specific patterns. It was simple and cute. I discovered a Eclipse plug-in EPIC and used it together with ActivePerl - perl distribution for Windows platform.
I joined a Java programming competition of virtual creatures Electric Jungle.

Where do people usually celebrates their birthdays? Common places are flats, cafes or B&Bs in the forest. Some people prefer spending time at bowling clubs or doing another activities with friends at public places.

Tonight I’m having a trip to the ancient Ukrainian city Kamyanets-Podilskyy to celebrate a birthday of my wife’s close friend. It will my first “remote” party. She invited there about 20 person. I know only few of them, but I’m sure there will be lots of nice and friendly people. We are going to spend there 2 days celebrating and sightseeing.

Kamyanets-Podilskyy is an ancient city located in the south west of Ukraine. My grandfather was born there, so I can say that my origins are there too. I have full-charged batteries of my photo-camera, and I’m going to take as many good pictures of the great town as I could.

I consider myself as a romantic person. Today I was asked by my wife to cook banana pancakes for the dinner. And, of course, to prove my romantic skills I have to complete this impossible task. As a real geek I googled for a while, and found out quite a simple recipe of Banana Pancakes. Also I found a funny song with the same title.
What’s about cooking, I’ve got everything except of bananas in the kitchen. Buying right bananas is a piece of cake for me. Since I have a recipe and all ingredients, tonight I’ll try to employ my cooking skills and wonder my honey.

P.S. The biggest problem - is a lack of time, because I’ve been invited to have a beer party with my former colleagues. I have to be there only for a short time.

Every Wednesday’s there is a movie-watchers day in the “Kiev” cinema. It means that all tickets are sold for 15 UAH all day. So, if you are lucky to book it in advance you can choose good seat and suitable time.
Tonight I’ve been watching Scoop directed by Woody Allen. Also he is starred there. I would say that I’ve got a real pleasure watching a great play of actors and enjoying fascinating English humor. Frankly speaking, I’ve got annoyed by junk-food like “American pie” or another dummy film for youngsters, and it was essentially a breath of fresh air for me.
Besides relaxing I got a chance to improve my English since the movie hadn’t been translated.

I’ve recently noticed that all my posts that include tags have been modified. All tags such as code snippets has been completely vanished. I suppose this inconvenience has been caused by “smart” WP tags treatment. OK, its too late now to investigate something, but I definitely will do it tomorrow. c ya.

I always liked an outdoor activities, especially backpacking or mountaineering. Actually, I used to take part in such trips quite often during the first tree years studying in university. During that time I got around almost all Ukraine. I took up it seriously at 2001, when I and my friend Tema decided to enter a local tourist club. Before we joined the club, I had been looking for any convenient one through the Internet, but there were not too many of them. We arranged an appointment with the leader of the club the very next day after we found his mobile-phone number on one of the outdoor forums. One shiny spring day, we met a dark-haired blue-eyed wide-smiling stocky guy. His nickname was Sema. I hadn’t known his real name nearly a year, but in tourist environment having a nickname instead of real name is a common thing.

The story is not about that astounding time spent in the club, and not about hard but amazing hikes to the most picturesque places of Ukraine. The story is about the fact, that this weekend was a ten years anniversary of Sema’s leading different hiking trips and his training activities.

Last Tuesday, when I was debugging a piece of buggy Java code, my ICQ was knocked, and I surprisingly discovered announcement about Sema’s plans of celebrating this significant event in his life. In spite of the fact that I haven’t been to any place outside civilization like forest or lake during the last one year (I got married ) I immediately decided that I definitely come and congratulate Sema. I even wasn’t surprised about place and time of celebration which were 8pm on Saturday near Mrygi hamlet in the forest.

To be continued…

I haven’t write for a quite a long time. There were lots of amazing events since begin of the last summer. Not to forget everything I decided to write short notes on that. Perhaps it will be pleasantly to spent time recollecting that going through memoirs.

• Preparing my Master Degree thesis which involved research in Optics and Numerical analysis, writing good piece of robust software using Fortran and Java. It took a year of reading books, stating a problem and solving it. Before the defense moment, I left my work
• Short journey to Lviv with my beloved fiancee on May’s weekend. There I proposed her to get married.
• Preparing to future job interviews to get a position as Java Server Side developer. Reading articles and books about compiling successful CVs, writing Cover Letters and proper behavior at an interview. Recollecting all useful Java things I had used before and finding out new knowledge that would be useful during technical talks.
• I arranged eight interviews with the most established IT companies in Kiev which I consequently passed with success.
• Starting work for Sonopia
• Booking day at civilian registrar’s for my wedding. Preparing to the wedding which involved finding a restaurant and choosing a menu, renting cars, ordering decorations, catering, photo and video operators, invitation guests and other necessary arrangements.
• Visiting my grandparents in Khmelnitsky to introduce my future wife.
• Ivanka’s christening
• 23th September - Wedding Day
• Honey Moon in Egyptian five-star hotel Sea Star - Beau Rivage
• First time I played bowling
• I became a God Father of my friend’s daughter Veronika

Интересная идея начать вести журнал-сборник мыслей и идей наконец воплотилась в жизнь…Но идей никаких….Не то, чтобы вдохновения не было. Просто хочется написать о многом и в то же время свалка мыслей в голове не даёт сосредоточится на чём-то одном. Может это лень? Может погода? Одни отговорки……
Можно конечно отметить некоторые успехи в подготовке к великому торжеству-свадьбе, но разве празднуют победу на полдороги? С другой стороны, попадая в ситуации, когда нужно что-то узнать, о чём-то договориться, оценить рынок услуг - учишься многому полезному (в том числе и на своих ошибках), знакомишься с новыми людьми, оцениваешь, делаешь выбор, принимаешь решения… Попадая во взрослый мир, со всеми его проблемами, трудностями, ответственностью иногда хочется снова стать ребёнком, которого все опекают, думают за него, решают, не дают в обиду…Но это своего рода закалка, и она нужна. Так что, оставляем сопли и удивлённые глаза детворе на детских площадках, а сами учимся жить своими силами и мозгами. Главное-верить. Верить в себя, свои силы, красивое и светлое будущее. Любимого человека и Лучших друзей. Без них наверное мир выглядел бы совсем иначе - пресно, серо, эгоистично. Зная, что тебе никто не нужен и ты никому не нужен, наверное сложно жить…Хотя, не буду говорить за всех! Я ведь могу и ошибаться, люди бывают разные. Вот к примеру, как можно любить ужастики? Или пельмени? Или того, кто тебя использует и ты это знаешь? А кто-то любит.
Прочитав всё вышенаписанное, напрашивается один вывод: пора заканчивать с этой демагогией наконец! Наверное проба пера оказалась не очень удачной, неинтересной, похожей на смесь невкусных и ненужных мыслей, но всё же она состоялась! Правда не хотелось бы, чтобы начало всех начал было таким как вышеизложенный поток сознания…
Думаю, здесь есть над чем подумать!

This morning I attended my first job interview during last 2 years period. I hadn’t arranged it before because I was pretty happy working for my current (still or yet) employer. Actually, I’m working for a large nation wide chain of supermarkets. If your are so curious to know it name you can find it out from my resume.

My start point is:

E0 - my current employer,
S0 - my current salary.
My goal is: to find a new job with more opportunities to become a high skilled Java developer with higher salary.
[TODO: compose a short post about: why do I want to change my current work place, what I seek and what I expect]

To achieve the goal I decided to apply for a set of open vacancies in well established western companies, then attend a few interviews and choose an employer that fits my needs best. As I mentioned before, today was my first meeting.

I’m eager to write down my fresh feelings and emotions because I’m afraid that after a while I forget it or become less interested in analysis of my mistakes. All names of persons and companies are hidden under faceless variable names.
I’m not going to show my attitude to any of employers I’ve dealt with. I’d rather like to investigate my own mistakes, to analyse my actions which potentially could be done in a better way.

What had been done before:

• arranged my resume
• reviewed OO basics, GoF design patterns
• reviewed Java core by reading Bruce Eckel
• have read a first part of the famous book about modern trends in interviewing techniques How Would You Move Mount Fuji?
• have taken a bunch of extremely useful advices from my IT friends (special thanks to Alex Getman)
• read inspirational articles about successful behavior during interview like Top 10 Interview Questions

In spite of great previously planned list, I honestly listed here only those items which I really managed to review.

On the interview

It took near an hour while I was talking with my potential team lead and project manager. To reveal my oral skills I was asked to describe my Master’s Degree thesis. It was my great mistake not to prepare for it. I was going round the mathematical problem and even didn’t said that I developed quite complicated Swing GUI application using Matisse and my custom Chart component. I didn’t touch on interaction through file system of GUI part with program which implemented a mathematical algorithm and written in Fortran. But interviewer swallowed it I was doing my Diploma for so long, therefore if I had been prepared for describing it in English today’s morning It would have been my star time. But I haven’t used this incredible chance.
After this tet-a-tet conversation with a project manager we were joined by an team leader. The team leader changed our topic into more technical one. I was asked a few technical questions: hash tables, transactional isolation levels, Ant, some theory like coupling and cohesion, RDBMS indexes (B-tree,…). But I wasn’t asked questions about lots and lots of my strong sides like multithreading, design patterns etc. I didn’t show my analytical attitude in problem solving and wide programming background. The only one reason of such a pity situation is that I didn’t capture their attention and didn’t lead them into my way.

To sum up, I’d like to say that as I understand (I haven’t received their decision yet) the overall effect that I’ve made is quite well. But it was from a point of view on a freshmen, a recently graduated student who are willing to start as a Junior Developer. And as long as I consider myself as an experienced Developer I must learn all my strategical mistakes and get rid of them. I’m feeling that I haven’t revealed all my good qualities. The total effect wasn’t as good as, of course, it could be, in spite of the level of my preparedness. I’m little bit disappointed.

And as a result of my analysis I figured out a few notes: (I suppose, this list as an incomplete and open for extending)

Strong sides:

• I made an appointed at 9 a.m. when it’s not too hot in the office, it isn’t overcrowded and people are fresh. I was on time, I hadn’t got troubles with transport and wasn’t nervous as I could be in case I was in hurry.
• I wasn’t nervous about my English conversational skills because I knew that I could more or less clearly explain what I think.
• I have got quite a lot of developer’s experience and read lots of smart books which encourages me

Weak sides:

• I hadn’t written a cover letter which would have positioned me as a mature Developer, not as a student as I was seemed afterwards.
• My resume was transferred via ICQ as a link to my Internet page, so it didn’t lay on the table to HR manager, and wouldn’t stay there. Moreover, it was in plain html what is good for the Internet and open source community, but not for an office manager who don’t know how to print it.
• When interviewer brought the printed resume, one major page was missed. I had got an extra copy with me, but I didn’t offer it. Probably I forget to do it because I printed it on a home level ink-jet printer.
• The resume was, mainly, copied from my academic CV. It caused overloading of information about my education and wrong order of paragraphs. The main part which is obviously interested to an employer was hidden in the forest of my diplomas.
• I hadn’t prepared a brief, clear and impressive messages about almost certainly asked questions: my diploma thesis, my current project, who am I and so on. You know, interview shouldn’t be an improvisation rather a well prepared acting.
• A big pause after I was asked about my salary expectations in a year period when I’ll probably become a Senior Developer and hilarious arguments to defend my position. It was something like this:
  

     based on current market affairs and on level of salary which I’m gaining now and on the offer of increase which I’d be offered by my current employer if I told boss about my
  decision to leave company, bla-bla-bla-… BIG PAUSE (I was trying to don’t make mistake and don’t say 8$$ instead of 9$$ )

Don’t rely on interviewer’s telepathic skills, when you are saying something, try to ask yourself what of your positive side do you try to show!