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Ichi Umi – awesome sushi buffet in Midtown New York City

When I used to live in Brooklyn finding good sushi place was not a problem. Because majority of Russian immigrant population of Southern Brooklyn are fans of quality fresh fish over rice, I had plenty of places to choose from.

When I moved to the city a question of finding such place was left to Google and Yelp. But I was still secretly hoping that for the same amount of money I used to pay for fish in Brooklyn I will get the same amount in the same quality. Less of all I hoped for an ultimate treat such as sushi buffet, until friend of a friend told me about Ichi Umi in the eastern part of Korea Town.

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Tags: buffet, midtown, nyc, sushi

Hulu Plus for PS3 and Samsung TV – a sad review

After Hulu had announced their Hulu Plus Service everyone immediately ran for their invitation, eve though the service itself is not free like you'd expect it to be (well at least for the first 30 days?) Just like everyone else i was excited to receive an invitation to my inbox about a week after:

I had many plans as to where and how to use Hulu:

• enjoy it on my iPhone 4
• watch it on my Samsung UN55B8000 LED TV i just bought for $2400
• install an app onto my PS3

It worked fine on my iPhone 4 with a decent quality over lame AT&Ts 3G network, but when i tried to make my TV work with it i was unpleasantly surprised.

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Tags: hulu, huluplus, ps3, samsung

How to rent a cheap apartment in New York City

Just like this guy wrote - paying $2450 for a 500 sq. ft 1 bedroom in New York City is a fact. A fact that sucks, because being a New Yorker means living in the city, not some Spanish-speaking Queens borough or commuter-hell Staten Island. And by city, people mean area from downtown up to the 90's.

New York rental market is a pool of sharks when it comes to rental agencies. They are aggressive and greedy, posting new LUXURIOUS properties every day, which are in fact knock-offs. There are never real pictures, because they would make you cry. For most of the "midwest transplants" and "other creative types" something we call apartment causes a shock. Prepare to shed out $1800-$2500 for something that comes with a very limited living area, tiny bedroom and "kitchen corner".

But my story is not about greed of rental agents or stupidity of the "artist teens", it is about looking into the future of the city and especially the future of Chinatown. › Continue reading

Tags: chinatown, craigslist, nyc, rent

Killing inner creativity with full time job

I had a conversation yesterday with a friend of mine about all sorts of things and one in particular - his job. Somehow we have slipped into the issue of his boss being incompetent and at the same time insecure, controlling every step my fellow makes.

I have raised this topic once already, speaking about people slowing down company growth by taking positions they are not qualified for. This time it's rather about this and something else i realized while listening to this story.

Quite often we are limited in our creativity by the corporate culture. Process of approvals and many other factors make changes hard, if not impossible. Being a developer myself i contributed a number of times to process and many times my voice was not heard. However, when the project was launched all the flaws i talked about surfaced. As i am always striving for perfection in the code i write and solutions i deliver, i like to think about all the possible drawbacks before i actually start to work on the project.

Due to some circumstances i have had  experience of freelancing for some time and must say it is a best "job" i had. Freelancers / consultants have better (read higher) pay and are given challenging tasks. Solving client's problems gives you two things - recognition and a feeling of accomplishment. Best job is not the one which pays well, but the one giving you more satisfaction - and speaking about corporate cubicle culture i can only think of how many people are out there being unhappy with what they do, but afraid to take a step towards creating their own startup or a small biz.

Tags: freelance, job

Intermedia hosting outsources technical support to Russia

It has come as a surprise, when instead of an Indian person a girl with a russian accent answered my call to Intermedia tech support Tuesday morning. When i asked where they based, she said - St. Petersburg, Russia. Since i speak the language we quickly sorted out my problem and i was done, but a thought kept my attention this day. So after all outsourcing battles with selfish indians, lazy philipino and other countries, i won't name here tech companies have considered smart russians to do the job?

A few words about Intermedia hosting and my particular experience - don't buy it. For the shared hosting pricing they ask, you can get yourself a VPS with Linode and rule your own world on it, vs. being stuck with limitations of the shared box platform. In my case client's account had a limitation of MaxxClientsAllowed = 10 on his account. This is pathetic for a shared hosting for a $20 a month. Thus a sudden traffic spike of 6000 visitors from Groupon made the website non-responsive.

Olga from russian tech support team made a favor of upping this limit to a 100, which helped a bit. However after conversation with a client this account is now scheduled for the move to Linode's VPS. As to Intermedia's decision to have support team in Russia - the question about efficiency remains open.

Tags: intermedia, outsourcing, shared hosting

Thoughts about cloud hosting for Grails applications

A few years ago nobody probably heard about "cloud computing" term. Except maybe for engineers building customer access portals, people involved in design of sites like Facebook and Twitter and their alikes. But as more and more people get connected to the internet with high-speed access, traffic figures are going up for everyone no matter what you host - a small online store or a mainstream blog.

I feel sorry for some of my clients, who chose to have their websites hosted on shared hosting with providers known for their infamous overselling - Godaddy, 1and1 and others. As they put about 100-150 accounts on one server with web traffic increasing for one of the clients it negatively reflects for the rest and your website visitors start experiencing slower load and response times. Eventually users simply hit back button in their browser tired of waiting for the website to answer and web page to load. And this is how you lose your customers.

So what should you do to avoid this? What should you do, if you are a developer who designs an application and expects an overwhelming response to it? › Continue reading

Tags: amazon, cloudfoundry, grails, springsource