How to stand sub-tropical climate in Moscow?

Hi there, fellow runner. It’s summer here, in Moscow, Russia. Climate have slightly changed recently and we have some sort of sub-tropical weather conditions. You know, when I say sub-tropical, I mean it: hot and wet. Physical and mental activity makes your body sweat as sweeping broom. Running is cancelled for the rest of us who suffer even from tiny overweight, weight lifting feels like swimming. Sport aesthetics? Forget about it. Hot. And wet. What to do now, you may ask. What to do to stay somewhat fit physically and mentally?

generic png to make your eyes notice the text

As usual, there is no simple answer. There are plenty of options for those, who are lucky enough to live and work in suburbs, preferably near clean local river or pond. If you are one of such guys then shut up and get off. You are not welcome here for now.

...Physical and mental activity makes your body sweat as sweeping broom...

The other obvious option, long walks instead of short, powerful runs hides danger: due to harsh sun your skin suffers a risk of damage when exposed for long periods of time. Sun burns and chance of skin cancer are not our options. Use skin protection if you’ll take this path.

There are always other sports for people in such circumstances: you can do yoga or play chess but face the truth -- you won't gain muscles with yoga or chess. You won't loose weight. You’ll even won't get smarter if you are stupid :) Not an option, then.

...you won't gain muscles with yoga or chess...

So you might want to invent some sort of activities fit exactly for your needs -- you may choose to modernize your transportation habits adding some bicycle here or there and shifting your schedule to cover more fresh parts of the day, earlier in the morning and later in the evening. You may review your food choices and and it will help you find more willpower and just power to fulfill your running plans.

So by fixing your overall unhealthiness where it still present you find great capacity of health in your day-to-day life and discover sport in unexpected areas of your typical day. Cheers!

By all means, never stop struggling with obstacles between you and goals you set, wether they are laying in the field of sport, health or just wellness. Combine, try and win. Life is a bit more complicated then simple gambling, but there are still lots of similarities.

Or you may choose to skip and take a flight to some other country for a moment :)

Sharpen and unsharp mask for bored designers

P.S.: Everybody love these letters!

Hi there, fellow designer. Running is boring and walking is extremely time consuming. What should bored designer suffering time shortage do in such circumstances, you may ask. Of course he or she should sharpen stuff.

Looks like you’ve done great job planning and designing another website layout and it’s final outfit. Your mighty developer friends are working hard cutting your pixel perfect templates in beautiful pngs. And then you find out that your beloved client childishly provided low resolution, bloody small and blurry as hell images for, let’s say, team page. Set of, speaking truthfully, shitty company leaders portraits.

...your beloved client childishly provided low resolution, bloody small and blurry as hell images...

Imagined? Yeah, it’s a pity, that client ruins your design this way. Sure there is no universal cure here and extremely bad images will still be bad and even can transform to a nightmare in spite of all your efforts but you still can try.

Here are your options. You can apply sharpen filter, unsharp mask and a combination of other/high pass filter and blending modes.

• First option seems nice if your target image is free of jpeg artifacts due to sharpening will affect entire image, including areas you’d better don’t show anyone.
• Second option is much better because it’s not so destructive nature -- it increases low scale acutance of predefined in radius value amount of nearby pixels. It won’t add new details, just increase contrast of this neighbors.
• Third option is just a hand crafted variant of unsharp mask, but playing with it’s values you can achieve both sharpen and unsharp mask results.

So, now it’s not exactly that boring to take off for some running, isn’t it? See you soon, dear designer.

...there is always one more option -- hire freelancer or contractor...

By the way, there is always one more option -- hire freelancer or contractor. You might think that creativity is your field and you don’t want to put your hands deep in this nerdy mess. There are always lots of guys who know how to do messy stuff and eager to help.

Mark Chagall. Plus confession of a walkaholic

We've almost missed this event, but here it is:

la Maison bleue. Marc Chagall said no to skeuomorphism when Sir Jonathan Paul "Jony" Ive wasn’t born yet

Hi there, fellow walker. Surprised? Me too, a little. Never thought this way about walking, but if you dig deeper it become extremely obvious. Walking is a tool for better procrastination. There are plenty of quotes about how good walking is. How it helps with one’s health improvement and how good it is for organizing thoughts and clarifying mind. It’s only better face of truth. You waste tons of time walking and counting steps. Even more: you participate in endomondo contests for those who walk.

It’s time to confess for me. Late during this winter i’ve found myself quite overweight. I’ve discovered this fact walking from office back home. For sure, this walk was somewhat healthy exercise: it took about two hours and was about 15 kilometer long. And of course it was full with trouts and building of world control plans. Total domination))

So one evening it was icy and windy and I fell down, barely injured my back and was zero as an athlete for a couple of months. Looks like start of a bad story? Sort of, so let’s find a shortcut. That’s what i’ve found out for myself from this long walks in winter and early spring. One absolutely should do things for fun or money only: life’s too short for other things. One shouldn’t walk too much due to awful statistics: more walking -- more chances to break your back during doing extremely stupid thing. Walking delays everything: you walk, time passes by.

You walk and plan things while you should just do things. And some more things to confuse you even more: walking is fun? Then walk, but don’t stick to it. Think twice before choosing walk instead of any other possibility. Walking is addictive. And yes, walking consumes time.

Do more with less: run instead or work harder. Sorry for inconvenience, dear. But you’ll find this out for yourself sooner or later, so why shouldn't I tell to this truth right now? If it seems obvious for you, you’d better shut your mouth since we all of rather different mind power and it took me this long to realize walking myth due to your silence beforehand. So why should anybody speak now? )

We need more fun!

Hi there, fellow runner and/or designer! Here is another travel post, you might have noticed already that our blog came out to be true travel blog recently. Never mention that recently can not be applied to this composition of words for sure, due to me being lazy, absent and stupid ) Let's fix this crap for now and on.

So, let's talk about Sri Lanka and find out our common level of knowledge in this area of geography. All you might know already is that Sri Lanka is an island. You also may be educated enough to find it on the map -- it's somewhere in the south. You might be confident enough to consider that Sri Lanka is situated in one of southern seas or oceans and you'll be correct -- it's in the Indian ocean. Why, if it’s located in the Indian Ocean, shouldn’t it be close to India? For sure it is, brilliant!

View of Sri Lanka from space by http://www.flickr.com/photos/59513227@N08/5441487304/

What is Sri Lanka famous for, not speaking about it’s geography? Of course it is well known all over the world for it's marvelous tea industry. And they dig gems, they are great miners be sure. When we are not talking of bitcoins ) In Sri Lanka they produce natural rubber, kauchuck. And they have interesting situation with religion, Sri Lanka is real cradle of multiculturalism. They have plenty of cultures living in peace now. Muslim, Buddhists and Christians with Hinduists.

Claudius Ptolemy's map of Ceylon, 1st century AD in a 1535 publication.

So. Let’s talk about disadvantages of Sri Lanka for typical stupid tourist. First of all is weather in summer. Due to it’s geographical position, lankians have their rainy winter when we, hardcore northern men have our summer. So the weather is floating around 29 Celsius and heavy showers with lightning bolts from time to time. Without further delays I should say: I am going to visit this island soon. Wish me luck and you’ll get lots of pics in a couple of weeks.

By the way, what do you think about HIIT and fast weight gaining or loosing programs? Know some good ones? Or know something wrong there? Share your knowledge, please.