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They are everywhere. And I started noticing them :) I don’t know their meaning. Yet. Well, maybe I shouldn’t or I might just get crazy trying to solve them.

Here’s the first one. Do you think aliens left it? What are they trying to tell us? Or me? I hope it’s not ‘A’ for Apocalypse :)

And now the second one, a bit more controversial, I guess :) This time I didn’t even want to decipher it. And don’t worry, I am not a psychiatrist, this is not an inkblot test, and you are not a sexual maniac. It is exactly what you think it is :)

If you think it is some sort of graffiti, think agan. I wouldn’t even be bothered to take pictures of street vandalism. This is something more subtle, something you can only see at certain time of a day and with only specific type of weather. I’ll give you a hint. You need sun :) I believe you got it by now. It’s a shadow from a bridge rail. And you will be even more surprised to learn that it is not some dodgy bridge in town suburbs, but the Westminster bridge, in the center of London, next to Big Ben and The Houses of Parliament.

So now I wonder who the designer of the Westminster bridge was, for I refuse to believe the it was a design mistake. After all, it’s a British design :)

Few days ago I finally registered my limited company. And I am very excited about that. Such a good feeling! :)

As a matter of fact, I should have done it quite a long time ago, like some of my more dexterous friends did when they were in the same situation, but I could not do it earlier because of one small, but very important thing: the name. I did not have one yet. I knew that choosing one wasn’t going to be easy, but who could expect it to be SUCH A pain! :) And the lack of decent and half-decent domain names also did not help.

I literally spent 2 months thinking and brainstorming, hehe. I ran through many many names and variations, but still could not choose the one. Even on my holiday, during not so frequent moments of lying on the beach I tried to come up with some good name, but still no results (I don’t know, actually I am not so good at brainstorming when I am on holiday, hehe).

But once I came back to London, the next morning while sitting on the tube, I had that ’snappy’ moment. I was playing with the name in my mind during that day and decided to go with that. That night I registered the company. SKRINSHOT Ltd.

So now I am involved in all sort of formalities and paper work : getting an accountant, opening a bank account, registering for various services, etc. Quite busy, but enjoying it so far (I mean, this legal, ie boring part). Well, I am excited, for it feels like nursing a baby, and actually it is one, my new-born baby. And I am a proud father, ie Director of my company:)

Good luck to me. Extremely busy times ahead. And.. we are open for business! Pretty much 7 days a week :)

P.S. Here are some names I came up in the process (they might look a bit random, but each of them had a history; oh, who am I am kidding, some of them are random indeed) :

• - totally unkool
• - bad hair day (love this one, but it was already taken)
• - prosto (means ’simple’ in Russian. Absolutely loved loved loved that one. But to be fair it sounded a bit like ‘prostate’, and though possibly catchy, but still not sure if I like the association :) Again, this name was also taken, even the domain in .co.uk belonged to some, surprise, surprise, Russian IT company)
• - zeppelin (my favorite dish of all time, but no one cooks them better than my mom)
• -stereotype b
• - uncommon sense (great name, but a bit complicated, and taken)
• - Bigfoot
• - less ordinary (naaah, sounds like I am trying too hard)
• - in constant use
• - whysoserious (well, too obvious reference)
• - smena 8m (childhood nostalgia)
• - freshly painted (too arty ;)
• - simplocity (well, not that simple, I guess)
• - creatively challenged (why not? I am still not a design genius :)

Today. In the London underground. Yes, even ultra-rich and famous use public transport sometimes.

Well, kind of. It was his lookalike, or maybe fake Steve, or maybe his brother, apparently less harsh version of Apple CEO.

Usually I hate taking pictures of people in the public places, but could not resist this time.
Why so blurry? Taken with iPhone…

The day has finally come. After almost 2 years and 9 months of my employment with pod1 I said goodbye to my employer.

These years were truly great for me. I was lucky to work with other people, who were smarter then me and I could learn a lot from them. It was also the time when pod1 was the fastest growing agency in the industry in UK, so, as you can imagine, in many ways it was a fantastic experience. I also made a lot of friends (I believe) whom I am going to miss, again a lot…

So what’s the plan? For the next few month I see myself doing contract/freelance work. At pod1 I was the head of Front End Development team, so will happily continue cutting up HTML/CSS templates, as well as carrying on freelancing as a web-designer and developer, something I was doing in my spare time during the last few years.

I have always been enjoying being involved in the creative side of things, not just technical, so it is something I hope to be doing a lot now :)

My leaving party was great and I just want to thank everyone who joined me. See that night photos below, I picked the nicest, the funniest and probably, the least controversial ones, hehe :) And I think it was KJ, who did the most of the job of picture taking. Can’t credit myself for that :)