MPJ

A couple of months ago, in the middle of December last year, just before "Mayan doomsday" on the 21st, my favorite text editor asked me to approve its regular update. I clicked the link to see what's in the new package, and it immediately redirected me to the page describing new features and fixes. My fellow software developer of great Notepad++, Don Ho*, conveniently named the update "New release (v6.2.3)—End of the World Edition". It brought a series of chuckles to my face that simultaneously morphed into a big smile when I read the description below the title. Referring to the Mayan prophecy, he wrote exactly this: "Even though I don't believe this bullshit, I'm not against resetting our shitty world". Well, I don't know what exactly he meant with the word "reset", but certainly there are days when I can completely agree with him and describe our world exactly the same way. Viktor and his 6th Earth Day Anyway, today is...

I remember every little detail from that weekend trip. From the very first moment when we stepped into the bus that took us to the mountain base, throughout the rest of the first day when we climbed down into a small cave with narrow hallways toward the small chamber at its end. I vividly remember the glorious, endless, and hard-to-find second cave we stepped in the very next day, followed by an overwhelming feeling and little fear when we passed through cave chambers, cutting the darkness with handy tools and small flashlights. I will always hate myself for not having a camera to capture the surrounding scenery when we traveled by train later that afternoon, which looked like it came right out of the 19th century with wooden benches rolling the railways slower than Usain Bolt. All those rock formations and abandoned train stations were slowly losing their battles with nature and were looking exactly like a background from Sergio Leone's spaghetti western movies. Viktor at Ru...

Before I start writing about this amazing sea, first of all, I have to say that this story is equally about Greece, the oldest European country and the first known civilization in Europe. Surrounded by three seas, Greece is probably the most interesting place in the Mediterranean basin ever since it was formed and filled with water many millenniums ago. The Aegean Sea keeps the most important part in the history of mankind, being a natural barrier between civilizations independently developed over the west, east, and south. Once in those past times, today known as B.C., this was the center of the world. It was also the place where many amazing things were born that we know today as science, democracy, philosophy, mathematics, culture, and sport, along with all those "other inventions" like modern armies and wars, dictatorships, religion, divine beings... Aegean Sea Today, after two millenniums, looking at this part of the world from my point of view and my own relati...

I am watching my son grow up every day, and from time to time I can't stop thinking about how childhood occupies a special place within all memories acquired in everybody's life. I tend to think that this is not because we memorized childhood better than any other period of life; it's more that, compared to adolescence and later times, those moments are pure and clean, with not much tension, conflict, or seriousness of adult life. This is all about playing, learning new things, and enjoying pleasurable moments and events, and we are simply programmed to maintain nice memories better, while others not so pleasurable are stored deep in remote regions of our brains with a tendency to be quickly forgotten. Hairdresser Shop Today one small visit to the hairdresser triggered the extraction of some really nice memories from my childhood. This morning I took a walk downtown for some errands and decided to take some shortcuts through a couple of blocks where we lived most o...

In the writers' world, titles are extremely important. If they are strong enough, the stories are practically writing themselves. So to speak. According to MarketingProfs  research, more than 2 million articles, posts, and stories are published online every day, and lots of people read no further than the title. Opening lines capable of forcing you to perform the actual click are nowadays a rarity, and I am not talking about those behind daily politics and current worldwide affairs. It's about all those titles that don't expire with the next election or season. I am talking about all those powerful enough to coin new words. The one on today's menu is exceptional. Simply, "Déjà vu" has it all, with the potential of diving into the mysterious and unexplored world of the human brain. It always comes with a great glimpse into fabulous quantum mechanics we are still pioneering to understand, tons of speculations of various kinds, including spiritual experiences,...

Do you remember Sony's first cassette-based Walkman that was remarkably playing stereo audio magnetic tapes back in the 80s? Yes, everybody had it at the time, hanging on the belt with a pair of shiny wires playing music directly to both ears in awesome stereo. Compared to the 21st century, who doesn't like the iPod, right? Well, not me. I never liked it, and I always thought everybody was staring at me the moment I stepped out of the house. Even today I am not using any MP3 players, iPods, or smartphones for listening to music on the go. I simply want to think while walking; it relaxes me, and it's a great brain exercise. But let me get back to the Walkman of the 80s. I had a couple of those as well, but on occasions when I carried one from home to school, I wasn't listening to pop music. I had that one audio cassette with the complete audio track from the movie "Star Wars", and I am not talking about the soundtrack that accompanies the movies - it was...

When I was young, back then in my primary school, when I was more or less 10 years old, I remember my favorite part during working days was a special TV program for school kids broadcast every day in the morning hours with a mixture of great educational documentaries and movies. After school we rushed home to watch those popular documentaries, giving us maybe even better knowledge enriched with colorful multimedia experiences than we could learn in school. I will always remember those days back in the 70s and later in the early 80s when the black-and-white TV era ended and color TV entered the homes in great style, probably comparable to what the internet added to home computers a decade or so ago. The most memorable and probably the most popular TV show about nature, biology, zoology, and science in general was "The World of Survival", a famous British documentary of the time narrated by various famous people and promoted by naturalists like David Bellamy. I still remembe...

The most memorable part of my life is, of course, childhood, especially the part from the point when I learned to read until the middle teen years - for me, it was the period of life when the empty bucket in my head rapidly started to fill itself with every piece of information it stumbled upon everywhere possible. When I look at that period from today's point of view, what comes to mind first is that it was a technology-free time. The state-of-the-art technology of the time was a color TV set with only two programs, with broadcasting ending around 9pm. Radio stations were at the peak of their popularity with small handheld AM receivers, and only a few owned an FM receiver with crystal-clear sound - that is, if you don't move quickly to avoid noise. The communication device of the time was a heavy pulse telephone set that required a hard table with a special place in the house. But I don't connect my childhood with the technology gadgets of the time. Not at all; what...

Ah yes, the year of 1981. 30 years ago. It was a time when the first commercial home computers arrived in stores worldwide. More or less. Importantly, that particular year I entered my teenage years, and I always wondered what would happen if home computers arrived a couple of years later and avoided my teen days, allowing me to have a different childhood with different options for life later. Would I be a different person with a different career today? Probably. I remember I was on the edge by choosing my professional career and was ready to go for science, most likely in physics or astronomy, as those two fascinated me at the time the most. They still influence me a lot, probably because of the same reasons computers hooked me - they are so mysterious and provide endless pleasurable time unlocking nature. Sinclair ZX Spectrum But no, computers arrived just the same year when I turned 13 years old, when I was the most emotionally disturbed by various hormones and other chemica...