It’s hard to find a nice coffee offering in Russia. The statement is sad, but still holds true. I’m a newbie in coffee drinking, but already have my own preferences about it, and apparently there is little to no understanding among the numerous fast-foods and coffee-houses of what a good cup of coffee should taste like.

This is my personal experience, though, I’m not pretending to sound/act as an expert, but here is the top 2 places I would buy a cup of Cappuccino at:

1. Starbucks. If you’re lucky enough to find a Starbucks nearby, then this is a nobrainer – go get it there! The best coffee one can find in Russia is served at this place.
2. Chockoladnitsa (aka Chocolateer). This is surprisingly good place to get a decent cup of Cappuccino. Even though the range of products is not as wide as in Starbucks, the taste still holds close to original.

Now, lets take a look at fast-food offers. Generally, you shouldn’t buy coffee there, it sucks! However, if there is no other place around, take a chance at MacDonald’s or Sbarro. And, please, never ever waste your dimes at places like ‘Rostiks KFC’, ‘Kroshka-Kartoshka’ (‘Little Potato’), ‘Teremok’ and such. You’ll get an over-burned, cheap, sometimes even chemically over-flavored drink, which has no resemblance to anything like coffee, and may be very dangerous to your stomach too!

So, if you want to drink a cup of coffee in Russia, find a Starbucks or a coffee-house, but not a fast-food. Happy Labor Day!

Here we go again. Hopefully, for the very last time!

It seems, I’ve finally found that very theme with the set of all the functions desired. Not more and not less. Let me introduce you to the Dyna Blue theme, which is free and distributed by WebDesignLessons.com.

It’s a visually appealing theme, with a feature I was searching for a long time. I’m talking about the ‘Featured’ section right at the top, where you can see some selected articles. Also, there is a block of ads (probably empty right now), where I can advertise with Google AdSense, or with any other program. There is also a banner space at the very top, it’s empty right now, but I’ll find a way to fill it with some appropriate information.

To say no more, I just also wanted to mention, that this shift was made possible by the newest 2.8 version of WordPress. One of the new functions is precisely the one, that allows to add new themes very easily, just like you’re installing a new plug-in!

Things happen in our lives with at a lightspeed pace these days, but the big problem people of all nations were struggling through is AI, Artificial Intellegence. Today’s pick looks like one of the steps towards figuring out the thing.

A week ago one of the greatest scientists of modern days, mathematician Stephen Wolfram, launched his ambitious project, Wolfram|Alpha engine. It’s not search, it’s rather analytics done with math.

WolframAlpha

As the project builds up its knowledge base, the answers will get deeper and much more diverse. This is mainly an English language based project also. But still, the results already fascinate! You can get information on stocks, weather, cities, famous people, and everything computable.

So, if you’re into trends, dynamics, economics, analytics, then it’s definitely your choice. Even if you’re not into all or any of above, just give it a try, enter your name, your birth date, your city and see how it all turns out for you. It’s fun!

I’ve downloaded the prerelease candidate of Windows 7, the version of Windows many tech-gurus claim to be the best Windows ever! I’m not a fan of Windows systems, though I’ve got used to it during all these years beginning with Windows 3.11, and tend to like it. Now it is said to be the most responsive (!), polished version; it’s Vista done right. And it’s completely free for one year! That’s a big change for Microsoft to make such a move in testing out new OS.

So, here is ISO of Win 7. Right beside it here is Virtual Box by Sun, a free and reliable virtual machine for Mac. There are also free versions for Windows and Linux too, but I’ve got the one for the Mac. That’s right I’m going to put Windows 7 on a free Sun’s virtual machine on my Mac Mini!

At this point I’ve installed Virtual Box, marked up a virtual hard drive, allocated memory, and… failed! The roots of the failure were hidden in RAM and video memory customization. I’ve given up too much RAM to the virtual machine, that my host OS (Mac OS X) just stalled!

My second try, however, was a complete success! I started from scratch, left the default options decide on how much memory the guest OS needed, and it was done in a matter of minutes! A few additional tweaks, like installing Virtual Box add-ons, sound support, etc., and I’m able to register the Windows 7 over the Internet, download updates, and have fun!

So far so good. To be continued…