Archive · page 2

Yerevan Museum of Science and Technology, part 2: chemical industry and everyday life. A 'Kirov Chemical Plant' label, pretty mystery spheres, and a wave of Soviet-childhood nostalgia - the 'Nu, pogodi!' game, quiz cards, coffee grinders ('the youngest grinds the coffee'), and the ErAz electric car of the seventies, whose name means 'dream' in Armenian.

The story of the channel. It began with a website - and, digging deeper, with my training as a frontend developer. Half a year ago I vibe-coded a small bilingual static site (HTML pages, Tailwind) for learning the Armenian alphabet; over time the channel took the foreground, but the site is still online and there's an idea to modernize it.

An analytics minute: Titanic family ties. Continuing the SQL exploration of the Titanic dataset, we decode the sibsp and parch columns (siblings/spouses and parents/children) and build a GROUP BY query to compare survival rates by family size - they turn out to be telling features. Counting whole families comes next.

Yerevan Museum of Science and Technology, part 1: getting there and the general focus. A hard-to-reach museum on the Yerevan-Jrvezh border with awkward weekday hours - found only by ringing an intercom at a service door. Inside, a dense, free exhibition (with a tour from guide Kristina) of Soviet-era Armenian science: atoms, astronomy, semiconductors, computers, and familiar household gadgets.

An analytics minute: histograms. Why are these strange little bars everywhere - say, in a Kaggle dataset description? A quick read on what a histogram shows (min/max, shape, the mode, symmetry and tails) using the Titanic passenger ages, and why a long tail means you should watch the median, not just the mean.

Yerevan. Armenia. Pets. Barev, everyone! Spring has cleared the haze over the mountains - and meanwhile we 'suddenly' got a pet. Allergies rule out cats and dogs, so meet Fedya, our corn snake, joining a household that already includes a well-fed snail. A few notes on Armenia's snakes too.

Yerevan. A walk through Davtashen. Barev, everyone! A spontaneous sunny-Saturday walk through the non-touristy Davtashen district with friends and Loy the dog - the Hrazdan gorge from the bridge, narrow private-sector streets, a 'Colosseum', an unfinished chapel and a fence made of radiators.

Getting into analytics. Barev, everyone! An evening programming note - prompt engineering is great, but it pairs even better with analytics skills, which means Python and SQL. We take the tiny Titanic dataset and compute the average survival rate two ways: first in Python, then in a couple of lines of SQL.

🚇 Yerevan. Metro. I love Yerevan architecture. Here is the futuristic Yeritasardakan station in all its glory in the evening light. Bonus: the vestibule.

Sevan. Navigation (for the channel, not the lake) Barev, everyone! We have accumulated quite a few posts about trips to Sevan, so it is time for a navigation post. At Sevan it is always either cold or very cold…

Arabkir. Kentron. Spring has finally arrived in Yerevan. Morning Yerevan is very cozy and unhurried. The smell of fresh pastries drifts from every shop.

Hrazdan navigation Barev, everyone! We have accumulated many themed posts, so for convenience we decided to gather them by topic. Since the tourist season is close, we will start with the non-touristy city of Hrazdan…

Ararat is not visible today. Yerevan. Rain. The atmosphere in Nor Arabkir Park is off the charts today. Very much in the spirit of Burton or King.

Invisible landmarks: A Found (Lost) Dream Barev, everyone! Before bedtime we decided to recall another important aspect of Armenian culture - Armenfilm. You probably immediately thought of Robert Sahakyants…

Cultural program: "5 days in Yerevan" Barev, everyone! Here is a small plan, already successfully tested, for how to entertain friends during five full days in Yerevan. Visit the Yerevan Opera Theatre…

Sevan. Holiday mood. Warm wishes for the spring holiday from stern and snowy Sevan.

Barev, everyone! Friends flew in on Wednesday and, as promised, we’ll be sharing our cultural outings. Yesterday we visited the Yerevan Opera Theatre and saw Puccini’s La Boheme. It is a classic Italian lyric opera…

Morning Yerevan view with all main peaks visible: Aragats, Ara, and Ararat.

Final Orgov note: archive photos from the first trip three years ago, a rough mountain road, and a worthy reward at the destination.