My favorite things
Most of all I love music and books, I watch movies rarely, anime more often. I rarely play video games.
Fitness, yoga, and hiking
I'm a big fan of walking 20-30 kilometers in the forest (off-trail), riding a bike for 80-120 kilometers (not on asphalt), which is greatly facilitated by the hiking club "Podsnezhnik", where I help out whenever possible.
I also love the gym, the pool, and yoga so much that I go there every day.
Cinema
On imdb you can check out what ratings I gave to various movies. If a movie isn't there, it either sucks, or I haven't watched it yet.
Music
On https://web.archive.org/web/20080210024353/https://last.fm/user/vladekk you can see what I listened to and how many times.
I prefer modern music because I like a juicy sound with electronic tricks and a high-quality recording. Wickedly produced for the needs of the broad music-loving masses.
And no matter how much older music lovers claim that "cucumbers used to be greener", music is evolving, and not only in terms of recording quality, but also in terms of new ideas, which I especially like.
During the 80s and 90s, a lot of interesting things were created (or developed). Like, you know, Trip-Hop or Ambient
There is also an opposite trend - the rampant cloning and copying of successful techniques, fads, and a bunch of cookie-cutter pop stars, identical as mannequins, devoid of individuality, and faceless.
Oh, and I want to note - I try to avoid snobbery, including in music. Snobbery means listening to this or that band solely because it's not mainstream. This is done to feel special. You can also do the opposite, going after well-known bands, complaining about their popularity, like, whatever is popular is bad by definition.
And the only thing I hate is chanson (the one Makarevich rightly sings about: "They christened blatnyak as chanson"), for example, Krug and his buddies. Also, the most vicious pop music, like britneyspears, nsync, slivkis, strelkis, viruses, bilans.
Books
Sci-Fi:
- "Hyperion" (tetralogy ) by Dan Simmons
- "Schismatrix" by Bruce Sterling (not for everyone, but I like it), also "The Difference Engine" is a decent book (the translation of the title is crooked, correctly it should be "differential calculator")
- "Brothers in Arms", "Barrayar", etc. (around 10 books, a series) by Lois McMaster Bujold. She also has fantasy, which is also alright
- "A Fire Upon the Deep", "Marooned in Realtime" by Vernor Vinge (and everything else too, he's really cool)
- Neal Stephenson - "The Baroque Cycle", "Cryptonomicon", and practically all his other books
- "The Many-Colored Land" series by Julian May (6 or 7 books)
- "Uplift" and others by David Brin
- Orson Scott Card - the "Ender's Game" series, etc. - a lot of whining, but overall alright, the early books, the later ones are bad
- The "Golden Classics" of sci-fi - Harry Harrison, Isaac Asimov, Clifford Simak
Fantasy
- "The Lord of the Rings" by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. I want to read it in the original.
- "The Chronicles of Amber", "Donnerjack", and other works by Roger Zelazny
Anime
You can find out what anime is on anime.ru
The ratings I've given to various anime can be seen on anidb
Games
Fallout 1,2
Warcraft 1,2,3
Space Rangers 1,2
King's Bounty + Heroes Of Might And Magic 2,3
The Incredible Machine 1,2,3, Contraptions
X-Com:Apocalypse
Aquaria
rocks'n'diamonds
Portal
Actors
- Sean Connery
- Gérard Depardieu
- Kevin Spacey
- Johnny Depp
- Mira Furlan
- Hugh Laurie
- Lisa Edelstein
Other hobbies and interests
- PC - I like Windows as a desktop and Linux as a server, without a GUI
- Sometimes I edit and encode video using my computer, in the past by creating DVDs or cassettes, now everything is online. I pay special attention to the music in my creations
- In the summer I don't mind playing some badminton
- I used to play Magic:The Gathering, but dropped it
- A little bit of the Russian and English languages, linguistics and philology, translations
- Traveling - every year I try to visit 2 new countries
- The Internet - I read various RSS feeds, sometimes write comments
- Programming - I love the .NET platform, the C# language