Sergey Gershtein's blog

Saratov and Volga river

2007-08-09T11:01:00.001+06:00

It's been a long time since the last post -- over 3 moths. I almost quit, but now I'm trying to return to blogging.

Last week I was on a business trip to Saratov. It is a town on Volga river. We had a chance not only to see Volga, but also to swim there, fish there, spend a day on one of the many beautiful islands scattered all over the river. It is amazing to know that the width of Volga there is over 16 kilometers (which is equal to about 10 miles as suggest my online converter).

The places there are very beautiful. We traveled to Saratov by car (took two days with overnight stay in Ufa). The road was very crowded so sometimes we could not go faster then 35-40 km/h (20-25 mph). The total distance we traveled from Yekaterinburg to Saratov was about 1700 kilometers (about 1050 miles).

Explaining what 3G is

2007-04-27T18:33:00.000+06:00

Today I had to explain in written what was 3G and how it was different with 2G. The new interest in mobile network generations is due to the fact the 3 big Russian GSM operators finally got their 3G licenses. They are going to build the networks and commercially launch them in 2008.

Most people in Russia who ever heard about 3G think that 3G is a development of GSM. They aren't aware of the fact that 3G is a generation that include various standards, namely both UMTS (the one GSM operators are going to launch in Russia) and CDMA 1xEVDO that we've already launched with Sky Link.

I think the new interest of journalists in 3G is a good way for us to promote the fact that 3G is already in Russia and anyone can try it with our company.

The text of my explanations (in Russian) is available on mir66.ru.

New Phone

2007-03-23T09:42:00.000+05:00

I've changed my old Ubiquam U-300 mobile phone to the brand new U-520. The new phone looks pretty good, but I'll need time to get used to it.

The new phone is pretty slim and light, has MP3 player, video player, 2mpx camera, bluetooth. But what's the most important, it's dual mode -- can work either in CDMA-450 or in GSM networks.

The phone has a few problems, for example you can't switch to Cyrillic in the browser, there's no pc-sync utility yet. I hope they'll fix these in the next software update.

In any case so far I'm happy with the new phone.

Trip to Tyumen

2007-03-13T14:09:00.000+05:00

Last weekend we traveled to Tyumen. There are hot natural springs that are said to be funny to visit in winter. It was funny indeed. The weather was not very cold, but it was still pretty exciting to go outside dressed only in swimming shorts. Sitting in a small pool of hot water that was steaming and watching the snow outside was pretty cool.

It took us over 4 hours to drive to Tyumen from Yekaterinburg. The road was pretty good and not very crowded. We enjoyed the trip very much.

Listed in Live Search again

2007-03-06T10:39:00.000+05:00

In December 2006 our units conversion site was banned and unlisted from Microsoft Live Search (also known as MSN). The reason for being unlisted remained unclear for me. Our site simply silently disappeared from all MSN search results as if there were no such site at all. I tried to contact Microsoft to clarify the issue. Unfortunately I did not get any reply.

That was when I wrote about this problem in my blog. I put a link to my blog from www.convert-me.com and got quite a lot of feedback. I was very much impressed by the support I received. People contacted Microsoft and asked to re-include the site to the index. There was no reply however, so I thought it would not give any results.

However, the miracle happened. Something silently clicked again inside Microsoft and yesterday convert-me.com started to re-appear in their search results. At the time of this writing there are only about 120 pages of our site indexed, but I hope the number of indexed pages is going to increase.

I am sure this re-inclusion would not be possible without help and support of our visitors. I very much appreciate their help!

The winter goes to its end, ice town is being destroyed

2007-02-26T15:49:00.000+05:00

This winter was very strange. At first it could not start, the temperature kept unusually high in December and January. They built the ice town in the center of Yekaterinburg as always, and tried very hard to stop it from melting down. They decided to remove the ice town by the end of February. But here came the real winter with all the colds and its temperature of -25C. On the picture you can see the ice town being destroyed away in a real cold weather.

The first week after vacation

2007-02-19T13:04:00.000+05:00

Someone wise once said: "nobody needs rest so badly as the one who just returned from vacation". That's exactly true.

After 5 wonderful days in Prague full of beautiful sightseeing, good time with friends, and of course good meal with Czech beer, coming back to the office is really hard.

The first week in the office was fast and full of small tasks related to things that were missed while I was away. Finally I seemed to get up with everything, so this coming week should be more productive.

The number of daily visitors of Convert-me.Com dropped significantly last week. The site position in Google search results became worse. Looks like I need to investigate what is causing this. Being banned by MSN for unknown (well, unknown for me) reason, then loosing positions with Google is not very optimistic. Hope I'll manage to identify the problem and eliminate it.

Holidays were good, but short. Back to work!

2007-02-14T15:07:00.000+05:00

Our holidays in Prague were very good, but too short. We walked around Prague, consumed lots of meat and very good beer, listened to jazz music, visited Karlovy Vary and enjoyed our 5 days in Czech Republic very much. Now we're back to Yekaterinburg and back to work.

While we were in Prague, Yekaterinburg got another portion of snow. The picture displays Anna working hard to get the car out of it.

Off to Prague!

2007-02-06T19:42:00.000+05:00

We got our visas, flight tickets and hotel reservation from the agency. Our flight takes off in 11 hours. The things aren't yet packed, my wife has not yet come home from her office. But in any case we're going to be in Prague in 15 hours. And I'm sure we'll enjoy our travel.

Car bumpers tested

2007-02-02T15:48:00.000+05:00

In January I happened to test both my car bumpers. Surprisingly enough they both proved to be very good.

First time I managed to run over the car in front of me. We were crossing the road in a lane when someone all of a sudden decided to make a U-turn in front of us. The traffic was pretty heavy. All of our lane put the brakes on. Unfortunately for me, my car just happened to be crossing the tram path that was covered with metal plate. Not surprisingly it was very slippery so my brakes could not help. I caught up the car in front of me. It was only a gentle touch, but the bumper of that car lost part of its covering. After carefully looking at my car's bumper I could not find any sign of damage. I guess the other car was badly painted after its previous accident. However, my insurance cost for the upcoming 3 years now increased.

The second bumper test was just the opposite. This time I was caught up to my back bumper by a small truck. The hit was somewhat harder that the one before. However I was very much surprised when I again could not find any signs of the incident on my car's bumper. I could not believe it at first, but that was true. Since the truck had no damages too (not surprisingly), we just drove away.

So having tried it twice I can now say my Hyundai Elantra has pretty strong bumpers. That's good.

Acceleration conversion added

2007-01-31T17:48:00.000+05:00

I've just added acceleration conversion to convert-me.com. There are not too many units there, but some of them are pretty interesting. For example, I did not know there was a unit named after Galileo Galilei. I also added to the conversion car performance units: seconds to go from 0 to so many mph.

Let's see if the new conversion will be popular. So far the most popular measurements are weight, volume, length and area.

Congratulations to Eugene

2007-01-30T16:53:00.000+05:00

My friend Eugene who lives in the United States with his family for over 6 years yesterday got his green card. My congratulations! Now it'll be much easier for him to live there, in particular moving from one place to another and traveling abroad.

Three of my friends who I knew since we were in school are now living abroad. Eugene lives in the U.S., Vova went to Israel, Alexis is in Belgium. It's a pity they are so long away and we can't see each other and get some beer together. But it's so good the world became so small these days and it's so easy to use e-mail or ICQ for an instant communication with someone on the other side of the globe.

Going to Prague

2007-01-30T16:26:00.000+05:00

Our decision to go to Prague came just out of the blue. First of all our close friends Khorobrykhs told us they were going to visit Prague for a week in the middle of February. They asked if we wanted to join them and we refused. We though winter was not a good time to go to Europe.

A week later I got a message from my old friend Vova living in Israel. He wrote he and his wife Natasha were going to Prague to celebrate Natasha's birthday there. So they asked if we wanted to go to Prague too and celebrate all our birthdays together. It needs to be said three of us have our birthdays very close. My wife Ann's birthday is on Februalry 7th, then goes mine on February 9th, then Natasha's on February 10th.

The idea to celebrate all our birthdays together was too good to be refused without thinking. Besides we did not have a chance to see Vova and Natasha for over 3 years. So we though we'd give it a try.

That's how it all happened. Then we called our travel agent, learned that we only had one day to make a decision or we would not have enough time to get Czech visas. Without much time for thinking the decision came fast. We should go.

So yesterday I already paid the money and gave our passports to the agent. We'll be in Prague from 7th to 11th of February. And yes, Khorobrykhs will be there too! They'll come 2 days later then we and stay a little longer. Still we all will have 3 days in Prague together and I am very much excited about it.

I do hope the weather is going to be fine.

mithqal unit from Baha'i Faith

2007-01-25T18:13:00.000+05:00

A new exotic unit has been added today to weight conversion page. It is called mithqal and it was suggested by our site visitor. The unit is mentioned in Baha'i Faith texts.

I thought this unit deserves inclusion into our conversion page and put it just below Biblical units.

Paris, je t'aime

2007-01-19T19:17:00.000+05:00

We watched this movie "Paris, je t'aime" and loved it. I can't remember when I last time liked a film so much. It was wonderful. All 18 short stories were different, but they all were very interesting and full of emotions.

You know how people usually behave in a cinema. As soon as the last scene is over the screen starts to show the credits, people get up and go out of the theater. This time it was different. Everyone sat there in silence until they turned the light on. I think everyone was impressed.

And now when we are going to take our second chance in studying French, this movie was just in time. I felt that I miss only a little bit of vocabulary and practice to be able to understand what was going on without the subtitles. This gives me another strong reason to start studying French again. And maybe this time we'll manage to go further than before.

Weight to Volume Conversion

2007-01-15T15:41:00.000+05:00

That was probably one of the most popular questions on conversion forum. People wanted to know how to convert grams to milliliters, pounds to gallons, etc. It was pretty hard to explain the simple fact the conversion depends on the substance being converted, particularly on its density.

Now we finally made it. The new conversion page is called "Weight to Volume Conversion" and supports over 400 materials. The densities data was taken from SImetric.co.uk web site with a kind permission of Roger Walker.

Of course it should be noted that density of a particular material can vary greatly depending on its conditions (size of fractions, amount of admixtures, humidity, etc.). Thus weight/volume conversion which is based on an approximate density can only provide approximate results. However I believe it's still better than nothing.

By the way, any suggestion of additional substances for the new weight to volume conversion are more than welcome. Especially if you can provide the corresponding density.

Alphabetical List of Units

2007-01-07T22:20:00.000+05:00

The list of units has been in out plans for ages. Finally it's ready and I'm excited about it. The list appeared to be very long, I was a bit surprised.

In fact a long list of units is not a convenient tool at all. We need to make a unit search badly. But having the list is still much better than nothing for those who know the unit and have no idea what kind of measure it belongs to.

Hope the search will be there too some day.

Units Conversion Gadget

2007-01-06T19:26:00.000+05:00

I noticed Google gadgets some time ago and immediately thought about creating one for instant units conversion. I even put a note about it to my "to do" list. However at first glance the task seemed to be too difficult so I postponed it until the New Year holidays.

Finally the holidays came and I got enough time to dig into the task. I was surprised to learn that gadget creation was not at all that hard. Well, it took much time actually, but I was ready for something worse.

Finally today the conversion gadget is ready. You can see it in action on this page. This gadget can be added to Google personalized homepage, Google desktop (if you use one) and to any website or blog. Adding the gadget is as simple as clicking the button. For Google homepage and desktop that's all. For your site or blog there is one more step: copying a short code snippet and pasting it into the right place of the web page. Pretty easy, isn't it?

To add the gadget click the appropriate button:

You can read more about this units conversion gadget on www.convert-me.com.

Everyone Respects Christmas and New Year

2007-01-04T21:32:00.000+05:00

Do you know what real loneliness is? It is when you open you mailbox and there is nothing there. Not even a SPAM.

I guess convert-me.com should have been filling lonely lately. Not only the number of daily visitors dropped 5 times, but even the spammers ceased their activity on the forum. I was even a bit anxious for them. Fortunately (well, unfortunately), the holidays are over and everything is back. Both the good guys our visitors and the bad guys spammers.

Today I had to spend about an hour cleaning up numerous post with links to adult sites from our conversion forum. There are so many adult sites around. Looks like competition in their industry is very high.

I am now considering an option of prohibiting to include any http links in the posts to any forum user who registered recently (say, less than a week ago). This should make life of spammers harder yet. Unfortunately it'll affect legitimate users too if they want to post a link to some conversion resource. I'm not sure yet whether to implement this restriction or not. Any suggestions are welcome.

Problems with the car

2006-12-29T10:45:00.000+05:00

Yesterday morning my car refused to start. Actually it tried, the engine ran for couple of seconds and then stopped. When I tried to start it again (and than again), it did not.

What a pity to stay beside the car that refuse to start when it is 8 in the morning and you have to go to the office and you have plans for the whole day and it is 4 days before the New Year! I locked the car and took a bus to go to the office. Then I called the dealer and asked them what to do. They were almost certain the problem was caused by spark-plugs. I was not very sure of that since the car used to start just fine every day even when it was much colder outside. Anyway I bought new spark-plugs and changed them. It was not easy at all, considering the cold weather and the darkness of the evening. Did not help. The car did not start again.

This morning I brought the car to the dealer's garage. My father helped me and towed my car with his. We only had to go a short distance of about 3 kilometers (2 miles) but I was very happy when we finally got to the place safely. My car was cold, the windows were frozen and soon grew misted, the steering wheel and the breaks were tough. I could hardly see where we go. Happily the traffic was not too bad.

I left the car in the garage. They said they would most probably fix it by the end of the day. I hope they'll make it and I won't be left without a car for the whole new year holidays.

In any case I'm somewhat disappointed with the car now. I bought a new Hyundai Elantra in August 2005 and there were no problems with it for the first 1.5 years. Yesterday's problem though was very unexpected and unpleasant for me. I hope it is not going to repeat or I might need to start looking for a new car. I thought I'd stick with this one for 3-4 years...

Banned by Microsoft for no reason

2006-12-21T15:18:00.000+05:00

Live Search by Microsoft (also known as MSN) has banned Convert-me.com. I learned it only when I was browsing the stats and saw the number of site visitors from MSN dropped to zero. Before the ban (e.g. in October 2006) there were up to 1,000 visitors from MSN each day.

I went ahead and checked which pages of convert-me.com were in the MSN search base. There were none. You can check it yourself with a search query "site:www.convert-me.com". The similar query for my blog site "site:sergey.gershtein.net" shows that this one is indexed. So I re-submitted convert-me.com to MSN and then checked the results in a couple of weeks. Still nothing.

That's how I learned the site had been banned. However I still have no clue why. We never sent any SPAM. We never used any illegal search optimization. We never had any illegal content. Why did Microsoft banned us?

Unfortunately all my attempts to contact Microsoft asking to re-include our site to their search results or at least let me know why they banned us were in vain. No results. Not a single reply. They seem to be too big to bother.

If you don't think convert-me.com is illegal and should be banned, you can support us by letting Microsoft know about it. I am not sure it could help, but if you can spend a couple of minutes to fill in Windows Live Feedback form telling Microsoft know what you think I'd truly appreciate it.

Your comments on the issue are very welcome.

P.S. (added later) I am very much excited to receive so many comments from you all, thank you very much for your support! I appreciate it a lot. Even if you help does not remove the ban, I am very happy there are people who like our project and who are ready to help.

News Update. On March 5th, 2007 our site re-appeared in Microsoft Live Search. I am sure this would not be possible without your support. Thank you very much!

Ice town is being built

2006-12-20T19:55:00.000+05:00

The ice town in the central square of Yekaterinburg is being built. The builders work very fast, they have little time left. They could not start earlier due to the weather. December in the Urals has been unusually warm, all the snow in the city melted away. Two days ago the winter finally enforced its rules and the ice town grew up quickly.

Another good thing about the cold weather is cleanliness. All the dirt and mud we have been experiencing for a couple of weeks is suddenly over. Everything is frozen and covered with white snow. The lines to car washes are very long. Yesterday (Thursday) I tried to sign up for a car wash and learned they were only signing people for Friday. I could not wait that long and went to a wash service with a "live line". I had to wait three hours in the line (almost finished reading my thick Misima book) but now I have a bright clean car. It is so enjoyable to drive a bright clean car, I almost forgot about it!

Sorry, no terminals until 20th of January

2006-12-20T19:38:00.000+05:00

The demand for new EVDO terminals grew so fast, we ran out of stock in a week after we started our December discounts. Yes, I admit, we were not quite ready. We did not expect so many customers. We tried and get three more supplies from our terminal distributors, but they were not enough. We were trying to get more, but today they gave us the final answer. The answer is negative. There are no more such terminals available in Russia. The next supply can only be expected in late January.

And that's bad. I'm happy, of course, the demand is so high. But I'm really disappointed we can't fulfill it. And people do complain. Some say we intentionally created this deficit to provoke the demand. Others say we never wanted to sell many terminals on discounted price and the terminals will appear out of the blue as soon as the discount time is over.

In fact we did not plan to create the deficit or to limit the sales. We did not plan such a big sales, that was our mistake. When we saw we can't fulfill the demand, we even gave discount for one more model that we have in stock and that is available from our suppliers.

The bottom line for me is the thought that December is a crazy time for people. Sales can increase much more than it is expected and we'll need to take it into account when preparing the sales plans.

Law, morality and social responsibility

2006-12-19T12:42:00.000+05:00

Just a quick thought that I found interesting. Law, morality and social responsibility are the three different levels of the system that allows people to live in the same society. The law is the lowest level and the most formal one. Social responsibility is the highest and the least formal. Morality is in the middle. Lower levels require less thinking and less intelligence - one is required to obey to the rules. Higher level do require more thinking and do not provide ready to use rules.

This way more intelligent and responsible individuals can go with higher level of the system and exercise social responsibility while less developed people can not go further than only respect the law. Sticking to the highest level generally implies not only exercising social responsibility, but also enjoying the social responsible environment. Which leads us to a well-known idea that those who give much to the others are rewarded.

I love tomatoes

2006-12-11T19:51:00.000+05:00

I love tomatoes any time of the year. My wife does not agree with me. She thinks tomatoes can not be good in winter. She thinks in winter they taste like a piece of gum. So in winter I eat tomatoes alone.

I can't deny, the taste of tomatoes change during the year. They are best in August and September. They are probably worst in winter. The worst of the worst ones are winter tomatoes from Turkey. They don't have a taste at all.

In any case I prefer to have tomatoes with my dinner even if they don't taste quite good. If they have right color - bright red, it's just fine.

By they way, according to cooking conversion page, one liter of chopped tomatoes weigh 680 gram.