Railways in Australia

"The New South Wales government - at that time New South Wales still included Port Phillip - agreed in 1848 to accept the Stephenson gauge, but two years later the Sydney Railway Company asked the Colonial Office if the Irish standard might be adopted instead. The Colonial Office offered no objection, and the Australian plan - this time with the approval of Victoria and South Australia, by then separated - was approved. But Sydney then unilaterally decided to revert to the 4 foot 8.5 inch gauge, and began construction of its system. Since the other two colonies had already ordered engines and rolling stock on the previous basis, furious dissension was expressed. London did its best to persuade New South Wales to stick to its agreement, but could hardly interfere in the domestic concerns of independent colonies; New South Wales therefore went one way, South Australia and Victoria another.
The Issue became more complex when in 1870 South Australia decided to construct feeder lines, some of considerable length, connecting the 5 foot 3 inch main line to a narrower gauge, of 3 foot 6 inches. Goods or people moving between Sydney and the South Australian back country would therefore have to transfer twice, adding considerably to the costs and time taken for the journey. When Queensland, prompted by Robert Herbert, pressed ahead in 1864 with their own rail system on a 3 foot 6 inch gauge, followed in 1879 by Western Australia, the complex jigsaw was completed." - "Great Southern Land: A New History of Australia" by Frank Welsh

Technology Review

I have been reading TR for 6 months - subscribed to Kindle edition. It feels like everlasting chewing-gum - they always write about stem cells, fossil fuels and renewable energy also looks like never-ending story. But from issue to issue - little really new and fresh information is added. There are only few features which tell something really new and interesting - Photo essay (example) (but lack of color makes it much less valuable in Kindle edition) and To Market; it was also a good read about TR50 (50 most innovative companies).

It seems that I would better just follow their website for more frequent updates (rather than 1 issue every two months) and it looks like they still publish some of the articles online for free.

Thunderstorm over Kharkiv

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How to fix broken firmware of E-MU 0202

If it happened to you that you see a power led always blinking or blink only once (my case under Mac) - try holding "direct monitor" button while powering-on the device. It helped me. Under Windows people report that nasty software will still try to update firmware automatically every time but somehow they manage to prevent it from doing that.

Since I got this device I used it only with Mac, and everything was fine, well, almost fine. Then I gave the card to a friend of mine for him to try it. He never got the card working. I suspect that in Windows it had automatically upgraded firmware to a broken one.

Good hardware. Bad software.

Solution that worked for me is partly described here.

Here is the summary:
1. Download and unpack drivers archive with firmware version 5.02. EMUU_PCAppDrv_L6_1_10_13.exe should work (google it because it's no more available from the emu website).
2. Turn the device on. Clicks in speakers, "Power" blinks. Card seems somewhat dead.
3. Turn device off by "volume" knob. Turn it on again, by knob. When "power" starts to blink, press "Direct monitor" button. If after 1-2 seconds after 0202 appears in system, can play sounds etc, then goto 4. Else try off-on again, hold "direct monitor" for second, etc.
4. Run Updater.exe from \Audio\UFU folder. And proceed with an update. (Screenshot)
5. When it's done the card will automatically reboot.

Machine Head building X11

One day I was watching an official video for a song Halo of Machine head and at the end noticed something very familiar what I couldn't not believe can be seen in such a video. Things totally unrelated, a well-known metal band and a listing of X11 build process. Yes, X11 build process. Somebody decided to include what you usually can see while building an XFree86 or X.Org Server into a music video for a basically anti-religion song. I wonder if the original idea was to include Unix with all it's daemons and stuff into opposition to religion.

Below is a screenshot from the video (watch it on YouTube, around 4:51 - 4:52).

Marmorosy - Chornohora (2009)

Last year I've visited wonderful world of Transcarpathia (Outer Eastern Carpathians) three times - in Spring, mid Summer and late Summer. All three trips were amazing, each gave me a special and unforgettable feeling of immersion into the world of Nature, the world completely different from what I am used to in my every-day life. Freedom, Fear, Sounds, Smells, Winds, Pace. Everything is different. You're rethinking many basic things, you have time and place, at last.

1st and 3rd trips - Marmorosy - Chornohora. The route is about 80 kilometers, at first we've been trying to make it together with my friend. We were unsuccessful in our undertaking - both first time ever in Carpathians and mountains of such scale in general.
Here are some photos from related album:

We decided to return there some day and finally go through the full route. Surprisingly we've got an opportunity to do it pretty soon the same year at the end of Summer with two more friends. But unfortunately the friend who was with me the first time has broke his foot and we had to go in all three. It was very, very exciting to go same paths for the second time, to see same trees, streams, and pass the part where we got lost last time. Traditionally, find some pics below or see the full story in photos with commentaries.

Bioshock 2 SE

After Bioshock 2 SE was announced I've been searching for a way to buy it, unfortunately none of online shops was shipping Special Edition to Ukraine. I believe it is corporations and copyright laws to blame. The last chance to get it was using shipito service.

I'll skip the details and show how another one Bioshock 2 Special Edition looks like:

Yes, I know it was released about 4 months ago but who cares)