Alexey Smirnov's blog

I read this book because I am trying to educate myself in the area of web technologies. As some people mentioned in their reviews of this book, it bridges important gap between pure mortals and web designers. It is nicely written, in a fluent and ironic style. Still, the book maintains a logical attitude toward art of web design. From the very beginning, I liked the fact that table of contents includes only 5 parts, which makes it possible to keep global picture in mind as you make your way through this book. They are:

• Layout and composition
• Color
• Texture
• Typography
• Imagery

Roughly speaking, these parts correspond to steps one needs to make when building a new web site. Being organized is essential to making it through such a complicated process as building a web site. Each chapter describes some techniques professional designers use. But the explanation is simplified as much as possible, so that people of various backgrounds can easily follow. The downside is that the book sounds way too elementary every now and then. For example, it spends a fair amount of time describing some CSS properties. There are tons of CSS guides on the Internet, you really don’t have to write a book about it. The good thing is that each step is illustrated by screenshots of web sites that author belives are good representatives of certain technique.

A collection of links is provided in the end of each chapter. Many tools that facilitate web development have been developed. So if the reader wants (s)he can start exploring them right away. In paritcular, I found the following two examples to be very interesting:

• 960 Grid System – a framework for building grid layouts. I did not realize that most commerical-grade web sites use 12-16 columns in its grid. I thought that web page has 2-3 columns.
• Color Scheme Designer – a tool that helps you select a color scheme based on theory of harmony (which color pairs with which). Then you can grab the resulting palette and colorize your web site.

So, I found the first few chapters to be rather interesting, but the rest of the book to be rather dull. The good thing is that you can treat this book as a potpourri of essays which you can read in any order. If you don’t want to read about Textures for example then you can easily skip it. To summarize, this book is a good example of recreational reading for a computer geek.

This is another model that I have built: Church of Transfiguration in Pereslavl Zalessky. It is a very interesting building due to a number of facts. First, it is the oldest stone church in Russia that survived intact. It was built in 1150 and during the 900 years it exists it submerged into the ground by almost 1 meter. But it still looks gorgeous. Second, it is located near birth place of Alexander Nevsky.

I have never been to this place, but this town in fact belongs to the so-called Golden Ring of Russia – a collection of old cities known for their heritage. I checked Google Earth briefly and found out that most of those monuments are not present, which is just a shame. Many people spend a lot of time modelling concrete skyscrapers, which are ugly, and pay no attention to the truly gorgeous Old Russian architecture.

This church is pretty simple. It is mostly composed of archs and spheres and there are no polygon-shaped surfaces which can have lots of tiny twists. And those archs and spheres are what makes this church really beautiful. The more I look at it the more I realize the true value of Old Russian architecture. To me it looks like all the parts of this church are very well inter-connected, in other words, one side naturally flows into the opposite one. There are no disjoint parts in this architecture, and this is what makes it beautiful. The building that brings together every part of itself should bring together people around it. Sometimes I think that architecture reflects what is on peopleʼs minds. During those old years, Russians desperately needed unification, and this is what they were craving for.

During later centuries, buildings started to have sharp corners, attachments, and fewer spheres. Thatʼs because poor people became attachments to richer compatriots. But I don’t complain, I do not say those buildings are not beautiful at all. They start to provide different functions to different people: this part is for nobelity, this one for ordinary people, this for men, that one for women, etc. Only that old church unifies everybody coming inside under its archs.

I went to sleep at 4 AM on the New Year day. However, I woke up rather early at around 9AM. After spending some time at home, I went to the office. It was Sunday, still, there were some people. This is funny. After making Skype call to my parents, I finally got a chance to do what I really like, but for what I have virtually no spare time: 3D modelling.

This time I decided to build a model of a new church in my hometown Dzerzhinsk, Russia. Here it is.

I spent around 6 hours building this model. I enjoy Sketchup modelling so much that sometimes it seems to me I can do it during entire day without feeling tired. Anyway, with this exercise the day went by surprisingly quickly. I wonder if the whole 2012 will also create this kind of feeling. We will see.

Last Sunday we went to Taipei to listen to Aida by Verdi. Fortunately, this time many of us managed to come, there were 7 people in total, me and Michael and 5 Ukrainian students. Whenever such a big crowd attends a concert I always recall being a graduate student at Stony Brook when we used to go to Metropolitan Opera sometimes. Those days are gone, but we still manage to get together and listen to some gorgeous music, and this is really really great.

We left with Michael at 2PM on Sunday, pretty early during the afternoon as the concert was scheduled to begin at 7:30 PM. Our plan was to go to some museum in Taipei. The rest of people were going to join us at the concert hall later in the evening. This opera was taking place in Taipei Arena, an in-doors stadium. I have never attended such concert before, one exception is Jarre’s concert and laser show, but this is not an opera. So I was worried what kind of acoustics they’d have in Taipei Arena. We were sitting on the 3rd floor, and surprisingly the sound was quite decent. We met one guy who also mentioned the good acoustics up there, and he was saying that it was much worse down there near the stage. He was there on some previous concert and he was saying the echo was coming from many directions.

Anyway, after we arrived to Taipei we took subway to Shilin station. When we arrived to the museum it was closed, so we decided to go to another museum – the Space museum, but it was also closing soon so we decided not to go there. Still, I did not have a feeling that I am wasting time as I still got a chance to explore Shilin district in Taipei, it looks gorgeous. Modern architecture in Taiwan is anything but concrete blocks of buildings. It is very creative. Every skyscraper has unique architecture. This proves that it is possible to design nice buildings from concrete and glass. Here is a picture of Museum of Space, I think this is a nice building.

So we did not get into any museum. Our mood was deteriorating. Then we dropped into a gift shop in the Space Museum and there was a nice set of stone gifts. In Taiwan they’ve got many kinds of precious stones. I found a diamond bird – a small statue made of precious stones.

I decided to buy it despite the heavy price tag, but I thought it is a perfect gift for my mom. After buying it I turned in good mood again, but Michael was looking pretty unhappy because of wasted time during this unsuccessful museum visit, so we decided to go to Food Court and have some gorgeous dinner. So we did take subway to the City Hall and went to the food court. After having nice dinner we went through a few city blocks to Taipei Arena and got there at around 7PM. Our Ukrainian friends were still not there, which is what I anticipated as the traffic is always pretty heavy in the evening so they were apparently stuck in a traffic jam. The opera began.

Before coming to the concert I did not know who was going to sing. I decided to go to Aida only because I never heard it before. I attended a few Russian operas, but never an opera of Verdi. Being unfamiliar with this kind of composer is a shame. I should have bought some CDs beforehand. Since I did not have time to do that I listened to a few videos on YouTube. Verdiʼs music is really gorgeous, he is a great composer. So, when I came to opera I only expected to enjoy nice music, I did not expect to hear beautiful voices. It turned out that the native Italian singers from La Scalla were performing on this evening. What a surprise! I was so excited to hear some real Italian tenors! Those voices are known for their beauty and power.

Initially, participation of an Italian star tenor Salvatore Licitra was planned in this opera. However, he died in a traffic accident 1 month before the concert. This is a huge loss for Italians as well as for all those people who like opera. Licitra was called the New Pavarotti, and he was still quite young. He died at the age of 43. The organizers of this concert found a substitution for Licitra, another very nice Italian tenor. So we still enjoyed this performance.

The music of Verdi was gorgeous. Below are a few most famous parts of this opera:

Gloria all Egitto

O patria mia

As I spend most of my time in Taiwan, I use every opportunity to travel in Russia during my visits. Together with my parents we have visited two prominent places so far: a town called Semyenov where my cousin lives and Moscow.

We went to Semyonov on a very special day. On that day the factory of khokhloma, which produces objects of traditional Russian culture had its doors open to everybody. When we visited this town last year we went to Khokhloma museum which describes history of khokhloma and also shows some of the best objects ever produced in khokhloma style. But it is a lot more interesting to see how these things are actually made, especially because the factory is open to public only twice a year. So we were very lucky that we arrived on that particular day. In addition, there was a local crafts fair in the town, my parents bought a few gifts there.

The factory was built during 1960s, and it has not been improved since then, so it represents a Soviet-era factory. There are barely no machines, the labor is almost entirely manual. It is such a sharp contrast with modern factories which are full of robots or at least have some degree of automation. The process by which Khokhloma is made seems unchanged since 19th century. Visiting this factory is a trip to the past. People working in this factory are getting rather low salaries, probably around 200 USD/month, despite the fact that their jobs require lots of skills (at least a college degree in painting, many have advanced degrees), and they work long hours.

Well, compared to these people software developers have much easier jobs and they get much higher salaries. Making money in arts is so much tougher than in computers.

My cousin and his wife and their baby are doing rather well, baby is growing up quickly. We have definitely enjoyed this trip!

Our next trip was to Moscow. I needed to apply for a visa but that takes only 10 minutes. After that I have lots of free time as the train back is in the afternoon or even at night. So I decided to invite my parents to come with me to Moscow. Together we visited several museums. First, after we were done with my visa application, we bought tickets to a theater for that night’s performance. We watched some kind of English historical drama, which is quite popular nowadays. A similar TV series is shown on television these days. In addition to soap operas, historical TV series are hugely popular in Russia.

After that we went to the Christ the Savior cathedral and climbed to its roof. Gorgeous view opens up from there. After that we went to Tretyakov gallery to attend Holy Russia exhibition. We spent more than an hour there, even though the exhibition is not that big. But the artifacts shown there are very important to Russian history and art, so one can spend lots of time looking at them. This exhibition is very interesting!

Then we went to the theater to which we bought tickets earlier during the day. I was in a sleepy mood because we were located in the next-to-last row in the theater, but my parents definitely liked the performance.

Then we walked back to the train station and took the night train. Overall, my parents are saying Moscow looks polished and very rich. I can only add that there were fewer tourists than usual. Museums are half-empty, and in the Christ-the-Savior cathedral we were the only ones who wanted to climb to the roof.

While staying in Russia I did another 3D modelling exercise with Google Sketchup. The result is a model of a wooden church in my home town in Russia. I created a model of the other church farther behind some time ago.

So the image above makes it possible to compare models in Google Earth (or probably my skill in making such models) with real photographs. The models are on the left-hand side, the real photo is on the right hand side.

I have been thinking whether people should spend their time in Google Sketchup creating models, and if yes – which models? I think that everybody without any special training in arts should try to build some models. The reason is that trying to express things visually is just another communication skill, just like writing or presenting things. On the other hand, building simple models is not what people should spend their time on. They should attempt ambitious models. The reason is that latter brings a lot more satisfaction to the person who creates the model, as well as to people who view the model in Google Earth. I guess there are so many ordinary buildings on our planet that people donʼt want to see just another box-shaped house in your town. They want to see beautiful things. And luckily, in Russia we have many of them. This is why I consider modelling even more churches – they are examples of awesome architecture unique to Russia.

And here is the model itself:

When I was returning from Russia to Taiwan I had some time to explore Moscow. I decided to visit Museum of Old Russian Art and Culture n. a. Andrei Rublev, an outstanding Russian painter of icons. The museum is located in Savior Andronikov monastery. It is located near the railway station to which my train arrived, so I had a nice walk to the museum despite quite freezing weather with temperatures approaching -20 centigrade. I would like to mention that I rode on Sapsan high speed train from Dzerzhinsk to Moscow.

The idea is that these trains will run with speeds above 200 km/h, but nowadays they run at only 160 km/h outside of cities and with much lower speeds inside cities. The problem I guess is that there is no fence between the railway and the city, thus it is not safe to run at higher speeds. But they are building the fence, I guess the trains will speed up after it is completed.

Andronikov monastery is a prominent place. It is named after a pupil of Sergius of Radonezh. It includes two churches among other buildings. The location of the monastery is such that it is considered the end of center of modern-day Moscow. But earlier it was outside of Moscow and the story goes that even in 17th century it was still a village. This is a nice location – close to capital, but still country side. In fact, Savior Church located in this monastery is the oldest church in Moscow that still exists to date. It was built in early 1400s, or most probably re-built instead of an even older church.

So many people know Anrei Rublev because of his Trinity (Andrei Rublev) icon. But as I learned in this museum, Anrei Rublev worked on large-scale installations as well. His Last Judgement fresco occupies walls and ceilings of Uspenski Cathedral in Vladimir. In this museum a set of copies of this work was presented. I was deeply impressed! To me Anrei Rublev looks like Michelangelo who is known for his frescos. But I guess there is a difference between Rublev’s and Michelangelo’s frescos. The former are simpler in composition but they are more expressive. The faces of angels on Rublev’s paintings have so much thought! Try to imaging what they are thinking of during the Last Judgement! Who is in front of them? – a sinner, a prophet, and what is the outcome of the last trial?

The museum has icons collected from all over Russia during 12-16 centuries. Most often, the icons come from churches of small villages. But they look absolutely amazing! What a striking difference with modern times when all good art is concentrated in big cities which can afford buying beautiful things. This only means that in older times lots of gifted people were inhabiting Russia, they were the descendants of great Byzantine culture. There is lots of criticism of Byzantine empire for its dictatorship, but the art was one of the best in human history.

The museum presents another interesting artifact. It is a recently discovered book of 15th or so century describing life of Basil of Caesarea. It has very nice pictures and contains nearly 100 pages. A very accurate description of ancient history.

I spent a few hours in this small museum. It is an absolute must-see for any tourist, either Russian or foreigner. Its cultural value is the same as of Tretyakov gallery, Kremlin, or Museum of History. I only wonder why I did not attend this museum before, I have been so many times in Moscow. To me it seems that few people know this place, I discovered it by chance from a news article.

So, while I was in the museum the temperature increased from -20 to -10 centigrade which felt just summer compared to chilly morning. Then I had a brief walk in the center of Moscow. So many people! Then I picked up my visa to Taiwan and went to the airport. In the evening I was flying to Hong Kong, which I decided to visit on my way back to Taipei.

On the previous weekend I did what I wanted to do for a long time – I swam in Pacific Ocean or in the sea that is adjacent to Taiwan. Swimming in ocean is quite different from swimming in a lake or in a river. The waves are much bigger especially on a windy day.

As usual, I went to High Speed Rail station in Zhubei. As I am still impressed with the beauty of HSR here is a panoramic image taken from the platform. As you can see, Zhubei is a modern town and the building are much taller than in Hsinzhu.

By the way, as I am starting to learn Chinese I thought it would make sense to present a brief introduction to the geographical names in this neighborhood. The few essential words are:

• 竹 (zhu) which means bamboo.
• 新 (hsin) which means new
• 北 (bei) means north
• 東 (dong) means east

The combination of these words gives you the name of most of the cities in this part of Taiwan, including Hsinzhu, Zhudong, Zhubei, etc.

Indeed, there are lots of bamboo trees in this area as you can see in this video which I have shot on my way to Tai-BEY (meaning north-Tai)

There are lots of travel sites dedicated to Taiwan, but they are mostly in Chinese. However, after searching the Internet for a while I was able to find an online guide to north-east scenic area. Beautiful website available in English also. There I found out that there is a beach where you can swim called Fulong (at most places it is prohibited to swim). So I went there on a local train from Taipei.

Riding in a local train was easier than I thought in particular because the announcements are made in English as well. Initially I was a bit scared because during almost half an hour the train was riding under the ground. So I thought I might have gone into subway instead of train station. In Taipei the transportation system is very complex yet very convenient even to a foreigner. But eventually the train has risen to the outside world and I found out that we were already far beyond Taipei.

The weather forecast was not very good meaning high probability of rain. Indeed, while I was in the train a rain began. So I was disappointed and was thinking of only having a lunch in Fulong and then going back to Taipei immediately. Luckily, when I arrived to Fulong there was no rain! The beach is located 10-minute walk from the train station, quite opposite to beaches on Long Island in the US which I also liked to go to. But those beaches are very far away from LIRR (local railway).

Fulong beach is located on an island which is connected with a bridge. I was swimming for half an hour there. The water was very warm, quite surprisingly. Then rain began again so I went back to Taipei on a local train. On the train station I found out that it was possible to take express train to Hsinchu directly. Another surprise because I always thought that trains from suburbs go only to the capital but not beyond. This express train only makes a brief stop in Taipei.

After arriving to Taipei I decided to go to Taipei 101, the famous skyscraper. It was visible from the train station so I thought it was not far. But I was wrong – it takes almost an hour to get there by foot. Indeed, a 400-meter building can easily appear closer than it actually is. On my way there I saw an iPhone 4 advertisement and because I am a user of iPhone I thought I should take a picture of this gigantic ad. Here it is:

While I was walking it became dark. So I was able to take a few pictures of Taipei 101 with lights on. A greenish building during daytime, Taipei 101 becomes pink during night time. It gets mysterious look because of that. It shines so bright that the sky near its top looks as bright as during the day.

This building was the highest in the world for a while but soon an even taller building was consturcted in Arab Emirates. But the elevator of Taipei 101 is still the highest in the world. So it quickly delivered us to the height of 388 meters where three floors are open to public. The topmost contains an open viewing area.

On one of the floor a gem museum is located. There is a similar museum in Tampere, Finland called Kivimuseo which I have attended when I lived in Finland. In Taipei museum it is actually possible to buy many things but the price is pretty high, there are things that cost nearly 1 million NT dollars (or Russian roubles as the exchange rate is the same). In Tampere Kivimuseo people did a smart thing – they cut a big stone into pieces and were selling these pieces for a couple of Euros. Thus, one could build a gem collection by buying those small samples. Anyway, in Taipei 101 they have a few really beautiful things, take a look.

Of course I should have gone there as early as possible. Taipei is famous for its 101 building – a huge skyscraper. However, I did not make it to Taipei 101 during this trip. Instead, I went to National Palace Museum, one of the most important museums in Taiwan.

Early Saturday morning I biked to the High Speed Railway (HSR) station which is located approximately 10km north of ITRI. In Taiwan there are two systems of railroads: traditional and recently built high-speed. Quite contrary to similar networks in other countries, HSR is built as a totally separate network. For example, Pendolino trains in Finland run on the same rails as common trains.

The Taiwan HSR is located approximately 10 meters above the ground. Therefore, when you ride a high-speed train you feel as if you were actually flying on jet. The landscape that you can see through your window is changing so fast! The trip from Hsinchu to Taipei takes only 30 minutes. The train arrives at a station which is combined with a conventional train station. In general it is a very big station, similar to Penn Station in New York. One of its biggest advantages is that it is a very new building, clean and convenient. The prices on HSR are of course higher than on the conventional rail but the quality and speed is also higher. I would say that HSR resembles airport.

Anyway, after I arrived to Taipei I bought an EasyCard according to advice of Steve, a student from Stony Brook who is visiting ITRI as well. This card works in metro (called MRT in Taipei) as well as in buses. The funny thing is that you have to swipe it twice in metro – when you get in and out and on your way out in a bus.

During this trip I proceeded immediately to National Palace Museum. Previously I looked at its web site and got very interested in Chinese painting. After reading book of Ilya Glazunov I could use my knowledge to distinguish Chinese art from for example European art very clearly. The main difference is that Chinese paintings are shape based, there is little volume in them. And the Chinese language is also shape-based. If you cut one part from a Chinese character then it can get a totally different meaning. And so are Chinese buildings. If you take a close look at a Buddhist temple you will see lots of curves and curly things at the roof level. I think that without them a Chinese building looses half of its beauty. In other words, the beauty of a Chinese building is in its silhouette.

Another interesting fact is that Chinese paintings do not have background such as sky, clouds, stars, sun, etc. Only mountains are depicted sometimes. Besides paintings the museum has lots of statues of Buddha – they are so amazing! Most of them were created in 1400s-1600s and they have astonishing level of details! I cannot think of any other sculptures of that period that could compete with Chinese sculptures. For example ancient sculptures are dedicated to human body which is typically naked, whereas Buddha status are vividly decorated in cloths and jewelry.

In the museum I learned the introduction to Chinese history – which dynasties were ruling the country and when. It is so funny that in Russia we barely made it through two dynasties – Ryurik and Romanovs. And people of China made it through a dozen of dynasties many of which ruled a lot more than Russian Tzars. That means that in terms of historical self-consciousness Chinese are more advanced than Russians. Indeed, traces of Russian people are lost at approximately 7th century A.D. (there is still lots of discussion of what is the origin of Russian people) whereas Chinese history is going well beyond the beginning of our millenium.

There is a beautiful gift shop in the museum. I bought a painting, plastic mats, and a few books on Chinese painting and calligraphy. In that shop one could buy the paintings of traditional Chinese scenery. I thought that they were very similar to Russian traditional folk paintings – the same kind of horses, chicken, The colors used in those painting are the following: yellow, red, and black. These are the same colors that are used in Khohloma paintings. Look at the Chinese painting above – it looks like traditional Russian painting. Therefore, I think that there are lots of similarities between Russian and Chinese cultures or more precisely that Russian folk culture was borrowed from the East most likely during Mongol conquest of Russia in 12-15 centuries.

I spent three hours in this wonderful museum. I have visited halls dedicated to bronze artifacts and history of ceramics.

Then I wanted to visit Taipei 101, the primary reason why I was in Taipei but typhoon Fanapi was approaching with lots of rain. It turned out though on Sunday that the typhoon changed its direction and went to the south of Taiwan. So on Sunday we had no rain in Hsinchu, only moderate wind. However, there was lots of rain in eastern Taiwan.

I am planning on visiting Taipei again, it is such an exciting city. Both Hsinchu and Taipei resemble New York to me – they are multi-cultural cities with lots of fun going on 24 hours a day. I am looking forward to exploring other museums of Taipei. They are so different from European museums which I used to attend when I lived in Finland. Chinese museums reflect the long and prosperous history of this nation.

I have visited Moscow last week to do some business. Luckily I got things done at half past 10 in the morning and had plenty of time to enjoy Moscow attractions.

I have visited Christ the Savior Cathedral which happened quite randomly. I walked into a tourist booth and found out that a guided tour to the top of the church was just beginning. Because of the stunning view that opens from there I decided to join the tour. Taking pictures from above was free of charge and I used my iPhone to take pictures and Microsoft ICE to build a 360-degree panorama. Here it is:

In fact, the guided tour began inside the Cathedral with an explanation of the wall paintings. They are amazing! The name of the artist who painted many of those is Nikolay Muhin. The Cathedral contains many interesting icons and remnants of Saints. Then we used the elevator to get to the roof and enjoyed views of Moscow. Then we went down to the ground floor and visited a museum also located in the Cathedral. A number of old icons are located there.

Then I went to a museum of Ilya Glazunov located next to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Earlier I have read his book that describes life of his family over the last two centuries (19th and 20th) and how events in Russia were tightly intervened with lives of his relatives and his own. The museum is absolutely fantastic. It has four floors and many halls. Sometimes it seems that many people worked on those paintings, not just one person because they are dedicated to various themes: from Russian history to works of Dostoevsky to more or less modern art that depicts events in Russia in late 1980s.

I have bought a photocopy of this wonderful painting. After visiting the museum I went back to the railway station and left Moscow on an afternoon train to Nizhny Novgorod. I went in a sitting cabin which had 6 chairs but only 2 people were there so our trip was quite comfortable.

Also, in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior I bought a few books including life of Sergey Radonezhski. I want to read them but only after I finish reading History of Serafimo-Diveevsky monastery, an amazing book that describes life of Serafim Sarovsky and related events. Overall, it seems to me that Moscow is looking a lot more like Russian-Orthodox capital because of various events and exhibitions dedicated to Russian history and culture. I enjoyed my trip to Moscow.