The Circus is Comming to Town:Russian and International Politics

понедельник, 13 февраля 2012 г.

What Will Happen after Mr.Putin Gets Elected?

Putin's victory in the March Presidential elections is a fait accompli. The official mass media keeps pounding the electorate with clear messages to support Vlad. On elections day on March 4 government employees will be summoned to vote for Vlad. However, little, if anything, will change after Vlad Putin becomes president for the next 6 years. Russia cannot produce anything but raw materials. Even with the high oil prices, the finance minister keeps saying that there "is no money in the budget". Any attempts at "modernization" will be stifled by rampant corruption.

понедельник, 6 февраля 2012 г.

Who Will Be Russia's New President

In my opinion, that does not really matter. The opposition to Mr.Putin, currently prime-minister, cannot be taken seriously. Vladimir Putin will be, no doubt, elected President in March 2012. It may take a second round of elections, but his reign for the next 6 years is virtually secured. The problem is that neither the beloved Vladimir, nor the opposition will be unable to solve the country's problems. Russia is heavily dependent on oil and gaz exports. Other then the energy source for other countries, Russia does not fit into the world economy. It cannnot produce anything that can compete with the products of other countries.

вторник, 24 января 2012 г.

Why I Used Blogger.com to Create this Blog

Is the obvious always the right choice? If you are set to start a blog you should carefully consider not only what it will be about, but how exactly are you going to place it on the web. Whether you are going to use one of many blog-posting services like Goggle's Blogger.com or a stand alone blog. If you want the latter, first think whether you have sufficient skills to build it from scratch, including a unique design, test how it works and download to a hosting provider. Many folks think a pre-built content-management system like Wordpress is the fastest and easiest option if you do not have the required technical skills, but want a nice-looking stand-alone blog at little or no cost. But before you dive in you should consider some important issues.
Many newcomers into blogging would start with a blogging platform, like those already mentioned or many others available on the internet. That is by all means the easiest option. You can set up your blog in minutes without any knowledge of HTML. Squidoo and other blogging platforms even make it possible to monetize your blog in a nice way. But at a certain point you start thinking about a stand-alone blog, complete with your own domain name and unique design. By far the most popular solution is a Wordpress blog, although there are other web-based solutions available on the market. They are called Content Management Systems (CMS). Many hosting companies offer special software that greatly facilitates building your own blog. There are many usefull features called plug-ins that you can add to your blog like a photo gallery, audio or contact form for your readers. You can choose among thousands of templates for the design of your blog, many of which you can download for free.
Among various CMS platforms Wordpress is probably the most popular. It offers truly amazing possibilities to customize your blog. A significant number of so-called plugins are available to suit your needs. Best of all is that it is an open source software meaning that you do not have to purchase anything, unless you want to add something fancy for your blog. Although you would have to purchase a domain name and a hosting plan to place your blog on the web.
However, you might think twice before choosing between a ready-made blogging platform and a Wordpress blog. To begin with, many specialists suggest that you first build and test your stand alone blog on a local server. A local server is software set up on your computer to imitate how your blog would look like in the internet and test it before uploading to a hosting provider. This would most likely require some guidance and support from a programmer unless you find an appropriate tutorial and learn do it all by yourself. Then you would be faced with an issue what plugins you really need and configure the "engine" of your blog. Not an easy task unless you are familiar with Wordpress software. What makes things even more complicated, is that there new Wordpress releases pop up frequently and it is not guaranteed that a desired plugin will work with the release that you are using.
According to many advanced users Wordpress is really very demanding on hosting resources. Without going into details, this means that your blog pages in some cases may open up very slowly and there is perhaps nothing that can be worse that that in tems of getting your internet audience to read your blog. Many of them would be turned away if they had to wait too long to open up a new page of your blog. Relatively high demand on hosting server resources also means that you would probably need an expensive hosting plan for your blog. This is especially true if you use many plugins and complicated design for your blog. One of my friends has built a superb blog in terms of contents and popularity, earning him about 1000 dollars per month but now he is faced with the dillema of moving it to a virtual hosting, which is much more expensive and requires special skills to manage it as compared to ordinary "shared" hosting.
At first, you would be overwhelmed by the sheer number of free Wordpress templates available on the internet. But very soon after getting started you realize that they look too simplistic and maybe are not what you really want in terms of design. Of course, you can purchase a more complicated theme for your blog from a professional web design studio with more "bells and whistles". Be prepared to pay 50 or 60 dollars for such a theme. Some Wordpress themes would even cost you hundreds if not thousands of dollars if you want to purchase exclusive rights to use them.
One option may be to purchase a Wordpress template or use a free one and hire a web designer to make some changes in it to look unique. Such services are not cheap and the result might not satisfy you. The "face" of your blog would still look like a template.
Installing a theme may not be as simple as you might think. You could run into trouble in the process and need a lot of tweaking before everything works as it should. Unless you have someone to help you, you might need some knowledge of PHP programming and HTML coding to do it.
All the above suggests that the issue of how you choose to blog (a blogging platform or a stand-alone blog) is more complicated than it seems. In this article I touched upon some technical issues. Of course, the most important ingredient of your success as a blogger is the contents you want to share with your readers.

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понедельник, 13 февраля 2012 г.