Go or not to go? I organized an it-community in my city five years ago. I have made tens of conferences and thousands of meetups about various themes. Of course, I was a speaker at my conferences and I traveled to other conferences as a speaker and a visitor. I still make speeches. Although, I seldom give speeches these days because I do not have much free time due to work. Anyway, I've never thought that I am a famous person or that my speeches are very interesting or useful. I have enough self-criticisms. Yesterday I received a message from a man who organizes it-meetups in Tumen. He invited me to go to Tumen and make a speech at a local it-meetup. He said that many locals programmers know me, have listened to my speeches at other conferences and would love to hear me again. There are two problems. The meetup was planned on March 27th, a Tuesday. Tuesday is a very uncomfortable time for traveling anywhere because it is in the middle of a work week. I work remotely, so I can rearrange my work hours, but it's not that easy. The second problem is that my girlfriend's birthday is March 28th. If I go to the meetup, I will come back by the end of her birthday. I know that she understands me and won't get angry, but I want to spend this day with her. It isn't an easy solution. Maybe I just take her with me in Tumen. :) PS: Do you know that Tumen is a city with some of the best standards of living in Russia?

I think about moving to another city I am from Siberia. Siberia is a huge territory in the center of Russia. It is a really great place. There are great mountains, borderless forests, and fast and cold rivers. Siberian nature is various and amazing. I live in Krasnoyarsk. Krasnoyarsk is one of the biggest cities in Siberia. It is an industrial and cultural center. There are cinemas, theatres, cafes and restaurants, gyms, pool, a zoo, a downhill skiing complex and many other interesting places in Krasnoyarsk. Beautiful hills surround the city. The city is placed on both of the riversides of Enisey. Enisey is one of the longest rivers in the World. It is a very beautiful place. I work remotely for a company from the USA, so my salary is much bigger than the average salary in the city. I have no limits because living here is cheap. I love Siberia, I love Krasnoyarsk, but sometimes I want to move out. As I have written before, Krasnoyarsk is an industrial city. There are many factories that produce heavy metals. For this reason, the city ecology is awful. Time by time, you really can feel a strong chemical smell in the air. This happens because the factories don't use modern and ecological industrial equipment. Citizens make protests meetings, but nothing changes. The bad ecology is the main reason why I want to move to another place. The second reason is poor location. It is too hard to travel from Siberia to another country. Most of the flights fly out of Moscow. If I want to travel to Australia I need to go to Moscow and then I can fly to Australia. It is a big waste of time and money. I like to travel, I want to view new countries and meet people from another culture. So poor location is a serious disadvantage for me. Move to another city or stay here. It is a difficult choice for me and I still think about it.

Just about my cat Couple years ago I bought a kitten. Actually, I didn't want to buy a pet because I feared that to live together with a pet is too difficult for me. If You have a pet, You can't just go somewhere for a long time. You should care about your pet. Cats break your stuff time by time. Actually, cats like to break something and of course, they like to frolic very much. All of this irritates. So I didn't want to have a kitten, but my girlfriend used a trick. She told me "Let's go to a pet shop and just look around. We won't buy a pet." I agreed and She caught me. We went to near pet shop and of course, we came back home with a small Scottish fold kitten. Now I can say that it was the best deal in my life. I paid something about 100$ but I got thousands and thousands of happy moments in my life. My Cat so funny, he always does something crazy or cute. My cats' name is Loki, like the God of slyness from Scandinavian myths. This name is suitable for him because he uses a lot of tricks when he wants to steal extra food or to avoid punishment after. I love my cat very much.

What is wrong with blockchain? Hi everyone. I am a professional software developer. Recent few years I work at a financial technology startup. And I have disappointed looking to current situation around blockchain. The blockchain is an amazing technology and a simple way to build great stuff like as an independent and full trusted election system. Just look at smart contracts. It really can change the world. Smart contracts can help to combine together smart devices and digital services as a new intelligent environment. It very similar to sci-fi books. But the society is interested mostly in cryptocurrencies. Everybody try to create new cryptocurrencies or to mine existing crypto-coins. A cryptocurrency has too many problems. The most important problem is performance. Most part of cryptocurrencies can generate about one or two blocks per half an hour. Real performance is depending on the number of transactions per block, but anyway it loses to swift and other traditional methods for a transaction processing. Attempts to improve performance decreases protection in common case. So I don't believe in future of cryptocurrencies in the current state. At the current time, it is just speculative instrument without any collateral. As result, we observe a lot of swindlers around it. They try to create a dirty ICO or sell false coins and etc. The society wants to earn free money, so spends too much effort on cryptocurrencies and so little on the perspective technology. It disappoints. I hope this situation will change. Thanks for reading. I hope you had fun.

My thoughts about how to improve my English Hi to everyone. I study English a recent few years. Actually, I study English recently fifteen years or maybe more. And I still can't speak without big problems. This fact makes me sad. I thought about it a lot and I have decided that only two things are reasons for it. There are it. First reason. I study words and grammar, read books, but I didn't improve speaking skills like pronunciation and listening. So I have many difficulties with communication to another people. I understood it clearly when I first-time traveled to English speaking country. It was awful. I asked something but I didn't understand an answer. Any conversations were awkward. Second reason. I didn't use English often. I didn't study English regularly. So I forgot English faster then I study it. I understood it and I am very happy. If you know your problems' reasons, you can fix it. I am going to use English at least a two-hour per day. I am going to watch Star Trek TNG and other series with subtitles, to listen to podcasts and to write small texts. I will continue to learn new words and improve my grammar, but I won't do only it all time. Thanks for reading. I hope my thoughts will useful to you.