Kostya's Boring Codec World

Although it’s no good to kick a dead horse discuss the work of governmental establishments, I still want to cry about total ineffectiveness of our customs.

Today I’ve received stored value card from Google sent on May 27. They have also sent a book. On May 15th. And it’s still not here.
Here is the log – see for yourselves: .
And something stops me from believing custom officers take their time reading that book.

Last year package sent by Mike took a whole month rest. Not mentioning $10 fee for those 12 recorded DVD+Rs.

Surprisingly, x86 box I’ve recently got was delivered in a week by Express Mail or something similar.

Good system architects optimize system performance by removing the biggest and most probable delay. If delivering a package takes a week and clearing at custom takes at least two then what makes the weakest, slowest and ugliest link? Where can I submit a patch to this process?

P.S. For those who don’t know the title origin – look here.

I consider subtitles to be more of evil. Why? Because they steal precious screen space, create a distraction and usually of a bad quality. Also external subtitles can create a lot of problems with synchronization, especially when movie is cut into parts. Our television channels have extremely small subtitles translating Russian speech into Ukrainian but nobody reads them anyway (and I don’t watch TV at all). Those subtitles can provide some amusement though because of very crooked translation (I’ve heard that “Vienna ball” was translated like “Vienna jumpings”, it’s hard to translate that word back).

I know, newer container formats like Matroska and OGM (both are not good) have support for subtitles and there are ‘advanced’ subtitle formats designed for them (like ASS) with a lot of features — font family/size/style selection, placing text in different parts of the screen, etc (backscratching is not there yet). Well, one day they will achieve what DVD subtitles already have – information overlay over moving picture.

Another issue with subtitles is the quality of translation. Well, usually translations are bad, especially low-budget when they don’t even have money for dub (fansubbing is a different thing). Personally I’ve found that neither Spanish, French nor Italian subtitles had helped me with understanding Wagner operas. And Chinese subtitles are hard to read (and impossible without the dictionary or Chinese man).
It’s better to learn language instead.

And now for something completely different – good examples of subtitles.
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Well, this is not development-related in any way but worth mentioning anyway.
I was overoptimistic choosing UPS instead of diesel generator. There is no electricity at home and whole block for at least 22(twenty two) hours and not sure they will finish fixing power line today. Please don’t ask naive question “Don’t you have backup power lines?” – obviously we don’t.

Update. No power from about 9:00 April 22 to about 14:00 April 23. Not an experience I want to have again.