Saiga's Notes

A good rain can’t spoil a good mushroom hunting. My wife and I were all wet after getting caught in the shower on a far bike trip in the forests, our backpacks full of porcinis, russulas, and parasols. She was leading the way, pushing pedals hard, evidently focused on a soon shower… a different shower, without pants on… and then dry clothes. I was dreaming of the same but when passing a convenience store, pushed the brakes and let her go farther alone. I recalled that this morning my darling mentioned how much she missed citruses, absent in our kitchen for a string of days – she loves them dearly. And I love surprises as much so I had a plan. I was waiting in line, imagining how I’d put three oranges on the nicest dish and handle it to her when an annoyed voice broke into the dream: „You didn’t count money before leaving home, did you?“ A little girl before me did not have enough cash to pay for two icecreams. The ticket was issued already so the cashier took a phone to call the mana...

Working at my standing desk, I hear voices of my wife and son through the open door. We live in a very compact apartment where privacy is a scarce luxury so I got used to this background noise just like tickling of a clock or humming of a vent. Murmuring goes up and down, colors of voices swing from warm to cold and back to warm, now and then out breaks of laughter or tears happen at difficult or funny tasks. This time, though, I notice voices grow louder making me lose concentration, air smells with anger. Both the teacher and pupil are rapidly losing temper and a major storm of quarrel is coming. My sweet curator Looks like time for a weatherman to step in. I close the netbook's lid and walk into the “classroom”. Sitting silently on the couch and watching the scene, I choose among several peacemaking plans. Mint tea probably? Yeah, that’ll work. I lit gas under the kettle and, while it’s hissing, sit down on the couch again to observe more. According to an old reliable...

In the first year of my journo career I was welcomed by a fitness glossy editor to pitch in some article ideas. So I did, and she replied with, Your angle is quite enticing so I commission you this article. Being a novice in journalism, I jumped with joy as a puppy. In the following days the editor regularly dropped me letters showing interest in the work. Finally I pitched in the article and an immediate answer was, Having read the material I’m about to say that readers will gain nothing from it. What’s more, it all looks like a non-systematic fact list, compiled through a two-minute search on the Web. No interpretation, nor systematization, nor fact checking provided. The magazine is not interested in such an article. Thank you. I felt dizzy to loss of orientation. Ten minutes later I had restored ability to think and feel, and anger came. For all my hard work I now receive this??? Fine, I’m gonna sell the damn article to some other edition and through with this lady! But I m...

So why do people get married and raise children? When my bride tortured me with the question "why do YOU need kids" I could only murmur and growl in reply, failing to explain. Sometimes it seems children are all troubles and no pleasures. But sometimes is merely sometimes. I had found my answer. Thanks to my son, I keep on growing up myself. My child and I, we both learn from each other how to enjoy life. We learn how to live. He is a teacher and a friend.

I've got a call from Greenpeace asking to donate money on the rescue of orcas and belugas imprisoned in the Russian Far East . I transferred a moderate amount although I wasn't sure I was right. Why? I was feeling completely right when making similar donations to the AdBlock and the Guardian. I recall one of my days in school. Once another boy came to me between lessons and offered a newt. I paid, got the newt and ran home to put it in water. I was late for the next lesson and the director caught me in a hallway. I honestly told her why I was out of school. She said: "Don't you realize that this boy makes money catching animals and selling them to naive kids like you?" Thus I faced poaching for the first time in my life. The boy made buziness on freshmen and sophomores. Almost all the animals he sold eventually died in the children's hands. The pond was loosing amphibias. That's how it goes. We sympathy to animals. We buy them from poachers, to give...

Maybe you have already heard about „The Keys To The White House“, a system invented by Allan Lichtman that fantastically predicted the  nine last  presidential election results. In 2016 the author himself didn’t believe that Donald Trump would win. But the system said „yes“ ... and he won. (c) CharismaNews.com In other words, Lichtman's forecasting system overcame the author’s own subjectivity, the hardest quest for any system. So it really is a system. And I think that politics and publishing have much in common. Readers do vote too with their wallets. Then a crazy idea came to transform Lichtman’s system so that it would predict success for a new book. So I did. Check out. My system consists of a fourteen-questions poll (original one had thirteen). If ’yes’ answers dominate, the book wins. If ’no’ – drop your plot to a bucket. Contest. There were no bestseller books in the category recently. Sector Mandate. The book gets good promotions from respected persons i...

I'm trying to find a writing tool more convenient than a usual text processor for a writer. A wide choice of software is offered in the market, but many writers had attempted and got back to Microsoft Word and its alternatives. My case with ApolloPad is one of the kind. After an initial brief study of about 15 programs and online tools, I had sorted out four of them to give a try in real work. Apollo was one of these four. After two hours of using it, I decided to quit. So, what is ApolloPad, why it tempted me, and what had gone wrong? Its developer Dave Child describes ApolloPad as a „distraction-free writing environment for budding authors“. I can add that it works online, with well-known pros and cons of online tools. ApolloPad is not a finished piece of work, it runs as a beta version. Else, it is free to use – the main advantage before Scrivener. The developer promises that „you will be able to extract your work quickly and without a fee after the beta“. The „after“ is a...