Alexander Mamchenkov – Page 83 – Blog of Alexander Mamchenkov

Google and Mamt?chenkov

Small background: some of you may notice that sometimes my family name appears as \”mamtchenkov\” and sometimes as \”mamchenkov\” (without \”t\” in the middle). This is because my (as well as my brother\’s and others\’ members of my family) passport translation. In the beginning it was with \”t\”, but when recently we changed [renewed] our passports there were no \”t\” in the family name (have something to do with English and French I beleive, although not very sure). Anyhow, I am not very used to the change myself so sometimes there is \”t\” and sometimes there is no.

Today I was playing around Google (actually Google Suggest) and found that if \”mamchen\” is entered in the input field, than Google shows only one auto completion option \”mamchenkov\” with 14,900 promissed results. After, if \”mamchenkov\” is entered, Google asks \”Did you mean: mamtchenkov\” :)

The most interesting part for me was \”Why do Google offers \’mamchenkov\’ as an auto completion option and does not offer \’mamtchenkov\’ [no metter what I enter, even \’mamtchenko\’ won\’t work], but when results are displayed, it recognizes \’mamtchenkov\’ to be more correct than \’mamchenkov\’?\”.

Tricky… ;)

Getting cold

As some of you may know, I am staing in Cyprus which is really kinda hot [in terms of weather].

The whole summer I was dieing from the high temperature, but finally it is getting cool and what I \’ve noticed was that sometimes I am even getting freezy. This is the time of the year I like a lot, because afterwards it will start raining and that\’s what I really dislike :(

So, just caught the moment :)

On Remote Controls Usability

After reading this nice article about remote controls and the way they suck (too many, too different, too complicated) I thought that possibly, we should end up with a separate box at home which knows all of the devices (along with their remotes), has one touchscreen remote (to use one remote for any number of any kind of equipment just by changing buttons on the touchscreen) which can control all of the user devices as well as provide some additional features like possibly:

– reorder the buttons displayed on the remote
– display only specified buttons (or better have profiling system, which adds another plus like at home, different members of family can use different profiles according to their needs and habits).
– whatever else.

I believe that this is not a very complicated thing, but I also believe that it will make life much easier.

Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe

Occasionally found out that one of my favorite computer game is now open-source :) Moreover it can be installed and used not only on Windows, but on Linux, Mac OS and other.

If you feel like you wanna play a nice, calm strategy (in SimCity style) – this is right the game you need.

BTW.: it is a now a multiplayer as well :)

Moved to new apartments

I\’ve been living for 2 years in apartments near the Four Seasons hotel in Limassol and finally I had to move from there. Too many reasons pushed me to do this while main ones are: great rise of price, low service from landlords, more and more bad neighbors…

Unfortunately I didn\’t managed to find something as cheap as I expected to find (even after looking through local news papers with my Cyprus friends and calling a lot of people) but at least I found an apartment for which I feel more or less reasonable to pay this amount of money.
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