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As you might know, Macworld opened in SF today. From early morning me and Aidan were checking Apple’s website every half an hour to be the first to see new gadgets. I don’t know why now. It was still a night in San Francisco… So it was a bit silly of us, but still funny:)

Everything was pointing to the fact Steve Jobs was going to present much rumored and speculated iPhone. So we were very impatient to see it. After refreshing apple’s website a number of times I decided to play a joke on Aidan :) I made a screenshot of Apple home page, google for some nice picture of what-could-be an iPhone and mocked the page up in Photoshop, so it looked quite realistic. And then at certain moment I turned to Aidan, punched him and said with a certain excitement in my voice : “Oh look! It’s there! The iPhone!” The dude went crazy :) He just had a quick glance at my monitor and turned back to his computer straight away. Opened Apple’s page. Still old page. Refreshed. Still the same. But then, I guess, he thought: “Probably it’s just cached…” He was so excited that did not bother himself to double check it but wrote a quick email to send around in the company.

I was like “Errr, Aidan… ahh… listen… Can you stop doing this… Err…” But he did not listen. Email was sent, and then he finally paid attention to me. I saw no point of playing the game any longer and revealed to him my dirty secret that I had made it all up. Poor Aidan.. I have never seen so much disappointment on his face :) And then realizing he was fooled, and fooled so badly he became so pissed… But sure, me and guys around were having a good laugh. And Aidan did not know what to do. To laugh with us or to continue being pissed? Don’t get me wrong, I love my man Aidan. Actually everyone in the company loves him. Of course when he is not a moody bastard he can be and he is sometimes. He always messes around with me (especially mocking me for my accent) and other guys, so it was such a great chance to strike back :)) As a matter of fact he was so pissed with that, that could not do anything for a while :)

And then in the end of a day we finally saw it. The iPhone. Ironically, as it often happens, we were so tired by the end of it, tired with our anticipation and … just tired, so did not really care much of it anymore. Only when I got home and checked back Apple’s website I could truly enjoy what I saw.. Well, I was not disappointed at all. I guess, it was everything you could possibly dream of (oh sorry, no, it does not fly..). So well done, Apple, who are on the edge of the design and technology again. Man, this company is becoming really huge. And I am really impressed with their new stuff. Well done! So now I guess we wait until summer to able to touch and to feel that toy :) An may be even buy it…

P.S. Oh yes, Aidan is planing his revenge now. And I must be very cautious. This guy is very, very smart..

P.S2. Check appleiphone.blogspot.com, there are some really nice concepts of iPhone sumbitted by different people.

Gallery #5. New Year Eve 2007. I had no tripod with me that night, so was just leaning on a tree.. Actually quite happy with them, even with the blurry ones, cause I can still feel the spirit of that night. Hope you can too :)

If I had some spare time these last few days, I spent it all preparing new pictures for the gallery. The pictures from our xmas holidays in Edinburgh. A bit tired but still quite satisfied with the result. See them all here. Finest Edinburgh’s architecture, the Castle on the top of the hill, city at night, a few Scotts, some bits of us and a monument in the city center that was probably the most inspiring to my imagination (to me it was like a tower from The Lord of the Rings). So enjoy.

Ok, my ten day holidays are over. Days of not getting up earlier then 11 am, days of watching whatever is on tv, days of watching movies, playing Age of Empire III, days of being extremely, extraordinary lazy :)… Wow… In spite of my initial genuine intentions to do some freelance work during the holidays it turned out rather classic : the more spare time you have ahead the less will be accomplished. Or is it just me?

Anyway, it’s Jan 2 and I am back on track. I haven’t completely finished with my NY resolutions yet, but pretty much determined to have a massively productive and mind-blowing year. It’s gonna be very memorable. So got to go now. Immerse myself in work. Deeeeeep… Very deeeeeep…

Somehow it was quite hard for us to decide what to do on New Year eve, but then after having had such an exciting xmas holidays we found ourselves rather happy to keep NY celebration a low-key one. Still wanted to have good memories of this day, we opted for going to the cinema first. And not the regular one, but the cinema with the biggest screen in Britain :) IMAX cinema 3D experience, to be precise. Woohoo! We’ve just been to Camera Obscura Museum in Edinburgh and seen different optical tricks including 3D pictures, and this was going to be our first 3D movie. The Polar Express. A perfect film for such an occasion. A kind and soft fairy-tale made even more real with that third dimension. Needless to say it was fantastic :)

Then we returned home and prepared our festive food. Actually we prepared so much it’s going to be enough for another couple of days, hehe.. We even baked a cake, the first cake in our life :) Got dressed and sat at the table. Couple glasses of champagne, some bites of what we had prepared and we were on the go again: went to see the fireworks on the Thames. It was actually our second try to see New Year firework in London. Last year we were just too late and ended up seeing a little bit of it at a long distance. I’d say we only heard it, hehe. So this time we thought we were going to be smart and be there earlier.. Well I guess we still were not early enough.

We came out of the Embankment Tube station just to find ourself in the middle of sea of people. They said they were expecting around 200 000 people, well, I’d say there were half a million. I might be exaggerating, but it was like a flood. We were trying to get closer to the Westminster, but the crowds were all directed in the opposite direction, so it took some efforts and cheek to get to the… well, actually we only managed to get to the Trafalgar Square. At that point we had no chance go any further. Screw it all! How much earlier should one come to see the fireworks?? 3 hours earlier? 5 hours?

Ok, we still needed to get somewhere, so moved towards St.James park and not pushing our luck any further decided to stay there. There were not too many people around and the view were quite good. So fine, we can tick the London New Year firework off :)

Returned back home after a short walk we continued indulging ourselves in tasty things called food and watching all time russian New Year eve classic “Ирония судьбы или с легким паром” (does not say anything to you, right? :).

And then we just fell asleep. That’s it. The New Year has started.