Windows within windows

Saw this while standing at the bus stop tonight and couldn't help but blip it - although I already had 2 good blips, but they can be blipped some other time! Am finding the new Blip a little odd so far, lots of nice wee things, but will be sad not to see the NZ/Aussie blips early in the day, they made me smile at the weekends. Wonder what it is they have in store for us! Outside the bliposphere, it was a busy day, think this week will be like that all the time, so I'd better get used to it! Hope you guys survived Monday okay!

Am sitting listening to some rather haunting folk music someone I know posted on Facebook, it seems to be one of these celebrity competition things, I'm not a huge fan of (with one exception), but this song is very interesting. The song is a mixture between a Russian folk song (what he's singing) and an Armenian one (what she's singing), I don't know what hers means, but his is about the Russian countryside - the expanse of the steppe, the Volga. I really rather like it.

I've no idea who the girl is, the guy is an actor, Dmitrii Pevtsov, and a pretty decent one. He's done plenty of rubbish, but he was in a wonderful adaptation of Solzhenitsyn's 'The First Circle' (if you've never read it go and get it immediately, amazing book - but I do warn you, not light reading) a few years ago. The series was approved by Solzhenitsyn himself - he did voiceovers on it. He originally got the book published by disguising what he wanted to say within a kind of detective story.

A Soviet diplomat has informed the US Embassy that the USSR is about to steal the atom bomb secret, but the call is recorded by the KGB and the rest of the book is about them working out who it was (remember sound quality then wasn't what it is today). Much of the action is in a 'Sharashka', a kind of prison camp for extremely intelligent people. The idea was that out of boredom scientists would stop trying to outdo each other and keep their work secret from each other so no-one steals their ideas, so that instead they would work together and invent new things. (Historical note - it worked!) One of the projects the prisoners are working on is the beginnings of voice recognition technology. There are two heroes of the piece, one is the diplomat, who is played by Pevtsov, who is singing here. The other is a prisoner who is largely modelled on the author (Solzhenitsyn spent some of his GULAG time in one of these places, he was originally a mathematician) and was played at Solzhenitsyn's request (more like demand, it was one of the conditions of making the series) by an incredibly talented actor, Yevgenii Mironov (he's not done much internationally, but you can find things if you look hard, I've seen him twice in theatre - fantastic!). Hmm got carried away again. Anyway, read 'The First Circle'!