The subject says it all. It’s fine to buy domains from them, but if you want to host your site or app, don’t do it. Everything that is more complex than a “Hello, world!” plain text page will be a trouble sooner or later. Even simple Wordpress with custom permalinks is almost impossible to configure. And if you are lucky, they will Upgrade your account to break it.

To make it worse, the moment it happens, you won’t be able to fix it because a simple change to disable their ugly File Not Found page is reported to take from 30 minutes to 24 hours, but really takes more than 3 days (it is still in progress, so I can’t give you the correct time). Maybe it’s because they are using Microsoft IIS? Probably.

Now check this cute “Page Not Found” message. What a style, don’t you find?

… image went missing over time …

To reiterate, DON’T DO IT. Save your time and nerve cells.

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Recently I’ve been thinking, when we learn a language (those who never tried, stop reading :) ), we pick up constructions and turns of phrases from native speakers. Usually, we choose someone we like and model ourselves after them in speech. I find that frequently do I use constructions that do have equivalents in my native language, yet that I would never use, like “no-no-no, …” which I can easily shoot in English, but would never utter in Russian.

Is that a personality switch? Is that an OPPORTUNITY to change (for the better)?

It’s curious, but when I wrote that, it gave me that feeling of vast opportunities you get on a fresh start. It literally gives you a chance to start from scratch since what we say is almost everything that people use to make an impression of us. It’s a chance to defeat your bad habits and migrate them later to your other personality. Meta-physical…

Opinions?

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You have to see it. I’m quite used to technological “miracles” with magnetism like that, but let’s face it — it’s absolutely gorgeous.

What adds some oil to the fire is that it wasn’t developed in super-secret laboratories by an army of rocket scientists. It’s the artwork form of a mere mortal like you and me. To me it proves the concept — far not everything is already invented and, what’s more important, a single mind matters.

Thanks to Sachiko Kodama for several minutes of aesthetic pleasure!

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Today, I decided to give Twitter another try. I know many people who use it and some use cases look quite reasonable. Many topics may not deserve a post on a blog or an article on a site, but will fit nicely into a short twitter message. Many posts on a blog may not get as many comments from your friends as on twitter since saying anything on a blog implies careful crafting of a message. Twitter, on the contrary, aids almost chat-like experience and quick response times.

Another important aspect is that many people and organizations start to take Twitter seriously as a source of public opinion on products, events, people. They build comprehensive data mining systems around Twitter public streams and that’s basically is a good thing since the information you publish gets to a wider range of people in one way or another rather than to your direct followers only. Give it a thought, and let me know what you think.

In a mean time, here’s my twitter page — spyromus.

Feel free to say hi. :)

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Yesterday I received this from Flickr:

Hi Aleksey Gureiev,

You have 197 photos stored on Flickr. Once you hit 200, you’ll need to upgrade to a Flickr Pro account or you’ll only be able to see your most recent 200 photos. Nothing will be deleted, and if you upgrade, you’ll have unlimited space for all your things.

Perhaps you’d like to purchase a Flickr pro account? Its unlimited and you get video and stats too!

You’ll even get 3 months free for purchasing before 30 September 2008!

Quite a surprise isn’t it? It’s a dishonest one. I started working with Flickr when there was only a limitation on the number of named sets and the monthly upload volume, and published links to my pictures in many places (forums, sites). Now there are two choices — upgrade or leave. Which one do you think I will choose? There are too many places on the internet including my own site where I can have a gallery of images to stick to their sick greediness.

I’m working on the personal gallery right now…

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Last year we had a bicycle trip to Mangup that I covered with Google map routes, bells and whistles. This year we had the same trip but in a different company. Nonetheless, it wasn’t less interesting. I took less pictures as the nature of that region was already covered, but focused on the trip, the air and views.

See some interesting stuff in my Flickr photostream.

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