2025 Goodbye 2025 Baby Liz! The biggest event of 2025 was, of course, the birth of my daughter. When you welcome your second child many changes in your life are the same as they were with your first one, but you also have to learn a lot of new things, because going from
music What I listened to, read and watched in 2025 The year is almost over, and so it's time to reflect on all the content consumed. Let's go! Music I mainly listened to the same stuff again and again this year, as I always tend to do. And it's getting worse - the older
2025 "Hey, what should I see in London?" I tried to put together my usual recommendations to friends visiting from abroad. The list is not exhaustive and is biased towards my own interests, but then again this is exactly what I tend to advise anyway. Art museums If you can only visit one art museum it has to
2025 Linux on desktop - first impressions As I have posted earlier about my decision to buy a Linux-first laptop, I also decided to follow up with my first impressions of using it for a couple of weeks. Hardware It's an OEM laptop shell from a Chinese manufacturer TongFang, model GX4. * Case - fully metal,
2025 Linux on desktop (it's the current year) It's been a while since I last bought a laptop. I've been using the same 2015 Intel i5 Macbook Pro for 10 years as my personal computer and honestly would have still been using it if its battery didn't suddenly swell marking the nearing
Things I recommend you buy and use #3 Reviving a tradition of recommending random affordable things that I have bought this year and didn't regret it (you can also see my older posts for 2021 and 2020). Film camera Last time I used a film camera (until this year) was 20 years ago. Then after watching
Visit Katowice We have recently visited Katowice, a city in Polish Silesia region where we have good friends (which is how we learned about it in the first place). It was my second visit, and realising I didn't feel bored despite that fact, I decided to put together a post
music I don't need nobody Thanks to another stupid viral tweet, yesterday I found myself watching old music videos, expecting no more that tickling my nostalgia. Then No Good by Prodigy came up, and even though I first watched it more than 20 years ago, this time it was like one of these stereoscopic pictures
2023 How I learned to stop worrying and love ChatGPT I've been actively using ChatGPT in my work for a couple of weeks now, and can say that it was a good decision for two reasons - not only it made me more productive and allowed me to focus on stuff I really care about, but unexpectedly it
2022 My theatres and museums of 2022 This year was eventful in a very bad way, and so this is an attempt to look at what still feels like good spots in it. I have written about books, music, films and video games on similar occasions before, but this time the physical experiences, for the lack of
2022 "What do you know about fear?" I have translated the last post of a recently killed Ukrainian soldier, who used to be a fairly well known restorer and photo blogger in Kyiv before the war. The original, written in Russian, is truly harrowing: What do you know about fear? The whistle of bullets overhead. The muffled
Things I recommend you buy and use #2 This is my second annual list of mainly small and usually inexpensive things that improved my everyday life last year (the first one and links to other lists like this are here [https://yakopov.me/things-i-recommend-you-buy-and-use/]). Keychain knife As someone who still misses my Spyderco Endura that is illegal in
boxing The unexpected story of a boxing pub I was cycling home from Forest Hill when the satnav led me (incorrectly) through Camberwell New Cemetery. When I realised the road Google Maps assumed was there didn't exist, I stopped for a little while to plan a new route and noticed this large black headstone standing out
personal Things I recommend you watch, listen to and play I enjoyed the process of writing about my best purchases of 2020 [https://yakopov.me/things-i-recommend-you-buy-and-use/], and so here is another consumerist post, this time listing my top 3 films, TV shows, musicians and games of the year. I previously used to post lists of books I read every year,
personal Things I recommend you buy and use (this post was inspired by other similar lists - like this [https://medium.com/@s8mb/things-i-recommend-you-buy-and-use-second-edition-457a8e7163f6] or this [https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/things-i-recommend-you-buy-and-use-rob-edition-1d7b2ce27d68] - which I also recommend you to read) This year was certainly an odd and difficult one, and even if you were lucky to avoid the worst
boxing Building a home boxing gym When I started turning my small garage into a home boxing gym, I was surprised to learn that there were no guides I could easily follow, and so I had to do more own research than I initially expected. While there was some fun in that, here is an attempt
homelessness Crisis at Christmas A few days ago I have volunteered for the first time in a day centre for homeless people - a site where everyone can have a lunch, a nap, take a shower, change their clothes, see a doctor and in general relax. While I fully understand that coming up with
politics Greyer day Grey Day by George Grosz - while I have seen the reproductions of it before, it was only a couple of weeks ago when I saw it at the exhibition. This is not word to word what the white museum label next to it read, but like pretty much any
immigration Thoughts on EUref Funny that it comes straight after the post on becoming a UK national, but that serves me right for not posting frequently enough. After a lot of panic-induced tweets and retweets today, here are some of a bit more detailed thoughts on the EU membership referendum that I think would
immigration On becoming a citizen So after almost 7 years, this finally happened: Strangely enough, it doesn't really feel huge because it's so stretched in time. Look, first you become a permanent resident, and there isn't much to celebrate because for everyone concerned you are still a foreign citizen.
books Books I read in 2015 - an update It's been about 8 months since I last posted, and also 2015 is now over, so it feels like a logical thing to finish with the list of books I have read last year. This update is going to be embarrassingly short, so I will compensate by elaborating
books Books I read in 2015 Apparently I have read 14 books so far this year. Below is very briefly what I think of each of them (in chronological order) along with a link to excerpts I highlighted during reading: * Homage To Catalonia [http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Homage_to_Catalonia/english/e_htc] by George
immigration One small step Just making another note that we have got our first British passport in the family last week. Here's the holder unhappy with the fact he is not allowed to tear it: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/yurri/16820610408] That marks almost 6 years and £9.5K in visa
links Programmer's resolutions - 2014 report As Matthew Might [https://twitter.com/mattmight] posted a traditional link to his 12 resolutions for programmers [http://matt.might.net/articles/programmers-resolutions/] again today, I remembered I retweeted it a year ago as well, so naturally I got curious about how many of them did I actually fulfil in
