Norse Valkyrie vs Slavic Vila

It is hard to pinpoint the exact period in human history when the religiosity we are all familiar with today emerged and started to form itself with all of the colorful myths, supernatural stories, vivid deities, and numerous superpowered entities. It happened probably at some point around 10,000 BC in the same period of time when humans slowly progressed from being pure hunters and gatherers into the next stage of civilization and started to build modern settlements with domesticated animals and cultivated plants. No doubt, religiosity, superstition, and spiritualism existed all the way from the beginning in history when our ancestors started to paint cave walls, but only the Neolithic revolution and the invention of agriculture gave us enough free time to start daydreaming and to think outside pure survival. If we compare all previous beliefs with vignettes, we can safely say that the evolution of religiosity after Neolithic revolution began to fill volumes of graphic novels.

According to the theory, slowly after the beginning of the Holocene period, the first large prehistoric population of Eurasia that spoke Proto-Indo-European languages was formed. They were the ancestor of Indo-European languages and the source of Proto-Indo-European mythology, from which all pagan religions arose in different areas of Europe and Asia. This is why we can easily compare different deities and see all the similarities they inherited from the proto-times. Take, for example, gods of lightning, thunder, and weather in general. The deity of these properties emerged in all different mythologies, and Norse Thor, Greek Zeus, Roman Jupiter, Slavic Perun, Hindu Indra, Hurrian Tar, Hittite Tarḫunna, and many others were no doubt based on a Proto-Indo-European deity called Perkwunos.

The similarities do not end with the deities but also extend to other colorful characters from old myths. Last week I stumbled upon one amazing piece of art in Churchill Park at Kastellet citadel in Copenhagen. It was a 114-year-old sculpture of a Valkyrie by famous Norwegian artist Stephan Sinding. It was probably the best 3D/live-action street art I have ever seen before. It reflects everything about what Valkyrie really is in old Norse mythology. The word literally means "chooser of the slain", and it is portraying a female figure guiding the souls of deceased Nordic soldiers either to Fólkvangr, Freyja's afterlife, or to Valhalla, Odin's immortality hall. Old Norse literature describes valkyries either as purely supernatural or as human maidens with certain supernatural powers. Both types of beings were associated with honesty, splendor, and gold, but also with bloodshed and brutality in battle.

In South Slavic mythology, a similar being, vila, represents a female supernatural being who is sympathetic to people, but she could also be vengeful and brutal. She is depicted as an extremely beautiful girl with golden hair, dressed in long, flowing robes, and armed usually with bows and arrows. She exists on a liminal plane between nature and culture, between gods and humans, constantly travelling between one realm and the other to interact with the heroes and villains of the epics. Even though both Valkyries and Vilas developed in different religious environments, it is hard not to spot various similarities between the two. The whiteness and glowing quality of the vilas is mirrored in the description of the valkyries, and both figures are to be found in the sky in most of their depictions with connection to lightning and thunder.*

The warrior aspects of the Valkyrie are unquestionable; they are "vowed to war", and their role is primarily on the battlefield. The mythical Viles are similarly portrayed and often described as wearing armor with bows and arrows and envisioned as powerful, supernatural warriors. There are convincing resemblances in regard to the connection between Viles and Valkyries and heroes in the epics. Most often this relationship is a warrior bond, but this relationship can become both sexual and malicious. Just as a vila can manipulate heroes or villains to murder those of her choosing, so too the valkyries are reputed to play deadly games with the heroes with whom they associate.*

Although the nature of the valkyries' flight is portrayed as a magical ride on horseback, whereas the vile most often fly unmounted with the use of bird wings, it is not uncommon for the vile to ride horses or deer. Both, Viles and Valkyries, are often described as gathering in groups within the epics and referring to each other as sisters. It is fair to suggest that the Valkyrie and the Vila are rooted in the same figure; their differences lie only within the cultural differences between the Slavs and the Germanic peoples. Perhaps the most likely attestable age of the two figures lies back to the 6th century CE, when the south Slavic tribes were still located in the North of Europe.*

From there, we could push the date back even further to the time of Proto-Indo-European times, especially if we extend this comparison to apsarā, beings with similar traits from Indian religion and mythology. The various trios of birth-fate-death-associated women in Greek and Roman folklore also appear to originate from the same source. The direct ancestor of Valkyries is most likely Proto-Germanic walakuzjǭ, which stands for walaz (battle wound) +‎ kuzą (choice, decision).

Historical origins of Vilas include the various traditions, especially Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore. The word "vilenski" was used as an adjective, meaning "enchanted", but also became a generic term for various enchanted creatures during the late Middle English period. Nevertheless, the proto-origin is no doubt the same as the Valkyrie's and South Slavic versions, especially in the Middle Ages. Serbia survived even Christianizing the old beliefs and ended in colorful epics and poems of the 14th century and later. Although, to be perfectly fair and precise, the mythological Vilas from the oldest myths and tales and the folklorized one in epics and poems are somewhat different in a way that folklore is centered on human affairs, heroes, and battles, and supernatural beings only serve as a side story, so to speak.

Always, when I am reading or writing about old myths and tales, I can't help but wonder what a comparison would be of a typical religious person from the old times and today. It seems to me that old stories were much more colorful and picturesque than the ones from the religious beliefs of a singular god. Even a small thing like a simple walk through the woods would be different for somebody in BC times for the simple fact that, from all they knew, not only natural plants and animals could be found there. For many, the forest behind the house could also be a magical gateway to the supernatural world, and even the smallest unexplained event of natural behavior (like a methane leak or weird animal demeanor) could be immediately linked to the supernatural. But this sounds like a nice topic for another story.

Image refs:
https://vrallart.com/artworks/milos-marko_i_vila/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Richard_Dadd...Yellow_Sands.jpg
https://www.saatchiart.com/...The-Valkyries

* A Treatise on the South Slavic Vila by Dorian Jurić 
https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/9407/1/fulltext.pdf
This article contains quotes/paraphrases from Dorian's theses

Goddess Zhiva (MPJ story):
https://www.mpj.one/2018/08/goddess-zhiva.html

Serbian Vampires (MPJ story):
https://www.mpj.one/2020/10/serbian-vampires.html

Fairies of Naissus (MPJ story):
https://www.mpj.one/2015/11/fairies-of-naissus.html

Refs
https://templeilluminatus.com/forum/topics/valkyrie?groupUrl=the-triple-goddess
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valkyrie
https://www.worldhistory.org/Valkyrie/
http://www.mcurtis.net/legend-of-keres
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vila_(fairy)
https://slavicmythologyandtales.wordpress.com/2020/08/15/vile-and-rusalki-part-2/
https://sr.m.wikipedia.org/sr-ec/ВилаРавијојла

Historical Fiction of the World War Two

The start of the second world war in the Balkans was known as the "April War", which lasted no more than 10 days in the operation called "Führer Directive No. 25". The swift conflict ended on April 14th in an armistice based on the unconditional surrender of Yugoslav military forces. My grandfather was a 22-year-old corporal in the former Yugoslav army when he was transferred to a war camp in Germany in mid-April 1941, along with 30,000 other surrendered soldiers. He spent the next four years in a Nazi military camp, leaving behind his young wife and 2-year-old son.

I am sure it was not easy for him to cope with the entire time of imprisonment and captivity, especially in the beginning, but considering all the horrors of the most cruel encampments of Nazi Germany, the unconditional surrender of the entire Yugoslav Army came with negotiated terms and an agreement of fair treatment of all the prisoners during captivity in various labor camps in the following years. Perhaps the main trauma for all the former soldiers came in the second part of 1945, after the fall of Hitler's Third Reich, when all of them, along with more than 7 million displaced people, ended up for several months in the chaos of the immediate postwar traumatic experience of trying to find their way home. After his return to Serbia under a completely new regime, life treated him pretty well, and the post-war time is perhaps best described with his own words: "Although I was not a member of the communist party, I think I was respected in society; I became a councilor of the municipality of Nis and a member of the council of the electronic industry. Above all, I was proud of my family and 50 years of marriage."

Doing hard labor in the fields and machine workshop helped him to pass through the war relatively undisturbed, and, if we exclude the short April war in the beginning, I am sure the bullet holes in the car he used to maintain were his only reminder of all the horrors of the war. He was pretty quiet about all that happened to him for years, until one of our family gatherings about thirty years ago when he opened his soul and told us most of what happened in those four years, and especially a couple of those last months in 1945 when he headed back home on foot. 

I only found two of his photos that appear to be from his imprisonment, and I was genuinely surprised that there were any at all. The one with the notebook is the most interesting, and knowing him is also not surprising. Who knows, maybe out there somewhere is still waiting to be found that very notebook, which possibly contains one extraordinary journal along with a couple of potentially untold stories he may have taken with him to the grave and not told to anyone.

Anyhow, what reminded me of my grandfather and inspired me to write all this was the latest Mark Sullivan novel, "The Last Green Valley", a historical fiction following a remarkable story of one displaced family and their unfortunate and, at the same time, amazing adventure from the last year of the Second World War. It really was one great novel with an astonishing feeling composing after each page turned. It simply left me speechless after the last one. 

While we are at historical fiction, I warmly recommend two more titles in the genre: Mark Sullivan's "Beneath a Scarlet Sky", with a similar heartbreaking story from the same period in northern Italy, and Ken Follett's "Hornet Flight", with war adventures based on real events in occupied Denmark.

In the Footsteps of Pino Lella:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UJfEaFiMK4

Fairies of Naissus

In pre-Christian mythologies of the western and northern tribes and their pagan beliefs, female deities were not uncommon. Take, for instance, old Gaul's Matres or Valkyries of the old Norse mythology and, of course, all the goddesses from the history of all polytheistic religions around the globe. But perhaps the most interesting of them all are, you guessed it, the fairies. They are not actually deities per se and rather belong to the spirit realm of the afterlife and dead, but still you can find them, in one form or another, in almost all religious legends and myths. The city where I was born, the valley it resides in, and the river that splits it in half are no different. The history of this area is, metaphorically speaking, very colorful and full of wonders, all the way to the beginning of the Neolithic era, and over the centuries this valley literally saw lots of different cultures and deities. One of them dates way back to the Celtic Gauls and their tribe named Scordisci, who lived in this neighborhood almost 24 centuries ago. They were the ones who named the river and the first settlement Naissa/Navissos, which pretty much means 'the river and town of fairies'. Whether or not this area in BC was flooded with fairies, or perhaps the geography of it resembled their beliefs, or even the very "Celtic Otherworld" was pictured and portrayed like our own neighborhood, the name survived for centuries, and despite numerous conquerors and different cultures, the fairies stayed in the name and the 'spirit' of the town all the way till today. Perhaps the first document that 'officially' coined Celtic's name was published in Alexandria by the famous Claudius Ptolemy in his masterpiece 'Geography' (around AD 150), in which he mentioned Ναϊςςός (Latin: Naissus) as 'first among the four largest towns in Roman Dardania'*.

Kristine Opolais in Dvořák’s 'Rusalka' - The Met Opera***

When I said the town inherited not only the 'fairy tale' name but also the spirit that it is still living in legends and myths, what I really had in mind was one particular spot on the northern hill named 'Metoh' and the outskirts of the town where, almost throughout the millennium, stands a ruin of an old temple built on that particular spot by one of the Byzantine emperors in the 11th century. The official name of the temple was 'Holy Trinity Church', but over time it earned the prefix 'Rusalija', which pretty much originated from old Serbian folklore and, no doubt, connects the church with Rusalkas, mythical water nymphs or female spirits from old pagan Slavic mythology. In some Slavic languages, Russian included, the word 'rusalka' translated to English literally means 'mermaid'. This variation of immortal creatures from the spirit world is completely opposite from the 'Tinkerbell' kind of fairies; instead, they could be very malevolent and dangerous young undead girls who died in or near a river or a lake and spent eternity haunting the waterway. With their long red hair and beautiful appearance and singing, they lure young men into the depths to their deaths. In Serbian stories, even hearing their song results in immediate deafness. They are the most deadly for an entire week, 50 days after Easter, which comes in late May or early June every year. As it seems, legends say that they are only afraid of wormwood and garlic, so try to have them with you if you are a true believer.

'Holy Trinity Rusalija' - abandoned temple from 11th century

Well, we didn't have any garlic in our pockets last November when we visited the church, and I truly hated my curiosity when I read about Rusalkas before we drove there. Sometimes it is extremely wise to read about horror myths after you visit the spot where these malicious fairies live. Firstly, the site was eerie—the church is abandoned, and to get to it, you have to drive through the old graveyard. People seem to visit the place only once a year, during 'Holy Trinity' week. Secondly, the weather was way too windy and spooky, and I had to engage all my driving skills to enter the churchyard; the car simply didn't want to enter due to the poor quality of the stone entrance and kept rolling backwards. Thirdly, it was almost sunset, part of the day usually identified with 'twilight hour'. When we finally got inside, my wife refused to get out of the car, and in a couple of minutes of intense bravery, only Viktor and I went out to take a couple of photos. Needless to say, the feeling was truly cheerless, and the only bright part of the site was the view. The location was perfect, and we glimpsed the entire city with a large orange sun on the horizon, and I finally took one of the best sunsets in our collection along with great shots of the little temple itself. Confidentially speaking, if Viktor didn't bring his plastic gun toy, we would probably stay less time listening to that spooky Rusalka's songs... or heavy wind whistles... or whatever it was. Although I would be feeling much safer with a couple of garlic cloves... Ahem ...

The sunset from the 'Holy Trinity' church (Metoh hill)

However, besides city and river names, the history of this area in BC is not very well documented, archaeologically speaking, and even though there is plenty of evidence and finds, before Ptolemy's reference, nothing is certain. But the names are always interesting, and as they survive millennia, there are many speculations of their origin. Celtic 'Navissos' is no doubt related to fairies; I mean, even the word 'fairy' was coined by ancient Gauls in what is nowadays France, and the root is in the Old French word 'faerie', which means 'enchantment' or 'under the spell'. However, even before the Celtic invasion of the Balkans in the 3rd century BC, this land was populated with various forms of societies and civilization. It lies on the crossroads between north and south and west and east, and as I described in post Constantine & Naissus, it was always under siege or some sort of raid. Due to this geographic misfortune, one tribe never managed to rule this area for, relatively speaking, long periods of time. Before the Celtic tribe of Scordisci, who stayed here after the Celts retreated from the invasion of Greece, the land was occupied by people of Dardani, who originated either from an estranged Illyrian tribe or, as some scholars suggest, directly from the ancient city of Dardania, located next to the city of Troy, as described in Homer's Illiad, who moved to the Balkans millennia before AD. Even before Dardani's rule, at some point in the 4th century this area was raided and occupied by Triballi tribes, and if you add Greeks and Romans and constant threats from Goths and Huns from the north and far east, you'd get the picture of how unwise it was to settle around here in ancient times. Anyhow, the point is that almost everybody managed to spend some time here and to contribute a little in those violent times. Or, to be precise, to contribute to everything but changing the original name that stayed the same from the very beginning.

Niš downtown by the old fortress and Nišava river

So let's try to summarize the names from all those conquerors over time: Navissos, Ναϊσσός, Naissus, Nais, Niş, and Niš, all of them related to fairies in different languages. Perhaps the most interesting connection with the name is during Greek rule, especially from the golden prosperity times of Macedonian expansion at some point centuries before Christ. In Greek mythology exists the famous mountain of Nysa, which was the traditional place where the rain nymphs (Hyades) raised the semi-god Dionysus, who was one of those bad guys from Olympus—the god of wine, ritual madness, and religious ecstasy. And to quote Wikipedia, Dionysus represents everything that is chaotic, dangerous, and unexpected, everything that escapes human reason and that can only be attributed to the unforeseeable action of the gods. I guess there is no need to add that one hypothesis of the location of Nysa (which is still unknown if it's not made up) is within ancient Tribalia or, pretty much... this neighborhood again. Tribalia and triballian tribes were located entirely in what is nowadays Eastern Serbia, which borders the Niš Valley and its northeastern mountains. By the myth, and just like their half-sisters, sea-nymphs Pleiades and rain-nymphs Hyades were transformed into a cluster of stars that was afterwards associated with rain. So if you look up on a bright starry night and see the Hyades in the constellation of Taurus, which is the nearest open star cluster to the Solar System, remember that their five brightest stars might have been living just around within my north neighboring mountains in their... fairy existence.

Ivan Kramskoi, Русалки (Rusalki), 1871

Of course, Greek mythology doesn't end this story about the origin of the name of my birth town with fairies. Even in Scandinavian mythology, there is a 'Nis', a dwarfed male fairy in Danish Jutland (Nisse god-dreng, Nisse good lad**), who offers his help to run households if, of course, he is pleased by a treat (groute) every evening. In the end, I am sure that Niš, or old Naissus, if you will, is one of the rarest cities on the planet with a real fairytale in its name origin, and I would really like to see a tribute to fairies, even to the evil Rusalkas, in the form of some sort of street art or museum or something that could show a modest traveler, tourist, or web surfer not only the history of one town's name but also a hint of how once our ancestors pictured the spirit world and their interaction with people. If this happens anytime in the future, this post will definitely get its sequel with hopefully great photos and more stories.

Inage credits and direct refs:
*** https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/arts...rusalka.html
* http://www.poesialatina.it/_ns/greek/testi/Claudius_Ptolemaeus/Geographia_(lib._1-3).html
** http://www.celtic-twilight.com/otherworld/fairy_mythology/scandinavia3.htm
http://www.guideforthearts.com/renee-fleming-to-star-in-the-title-role-of-rusalka/
http://celticruins.blogspot.rs/2014/06/fairies-haunt-springs-wells-and-rivers.html
http://www.niscafe.com/grad-nis/

Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusalka
http://www.timelessmyths.com/celtic/faeries.html
http://celticruins.blogspot.rs/2014/06/fairies-haunt-springs-wells-and-rivers.html
http://celticruins.blogspot.rs/2014_06_01_archive.html
http://www.panacomp.net/serbia?mesto=srbija_sveta%20trojica%20matejevac
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scordisci
http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0350-7653/2006/0350-76530637007P.pdf
http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/AnatoliaDardania.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nysa_(mythology)

Scientific Copenhagen

Do you have that strange feeling when you are about to visit a new city abroad and are a little afraid of what you will stumble upon when it comes to simple things? Like how to use the metro line or how to buy a bus ticket or how to identify your next destination? Or how to book your flight back to your home? Or how to handle a simple dilemma: should you exchange the money to the local currency, or is it wise to put your card in every ATM or any other 'slot' machine on your way?

Hello™ at Microsoft Campus Days, 2014

Ericsson, a Swedish multinational provider of communications technology and services, has the answer for you. And me too. Last week, I took my entire family on the trip to Copenhagen for both business and pleasure hours in the Danish capital. During my previous visits I didn't have much time for tourism or any off-work activity for that matter. So I did a little research this time, and Ericsson's "Networked Society City Index" helped a lot. With the well-developed ICT infrastructure, economy, and social development, as well as environmental progress, Copenhagen is located in the top five within the NSC index, among 31 well-developed worldwide cities. After our visit we left Denmark with a feeling that everything, or most of it, went perfectly smoothly and the applied IT was extremely helpful, simple, and useful. Unified communications (UC), integrated into people's business life from within smart gadgets and laptop computers, were also a big part of it, and I can proudly say that, in a way, I took part in the active development of Rackpeople's* Hello™ for Microsoft® Lync®—UC software that integrates with Microsoft's Lync and Exchange and presents video conferencing within a single click on a wide variety of screens and devices. The business part of last week's Copenhagen trip was to visit Microsoft Campus Days, where Hello™ had a big feature presentation and successfully presented what it can do in the current edition. From the developer's point of view, I have a good feeling that this project will have a long life with plenty of room for more versions in the future, especially if Skype and Lync integrate and create space for non-business users as well.

However, Copenhagen, besides the business side of the medal, has plenty more to offer. History, arts, sport and music events, amusement parks, museums, royal and naval sites, shopping streets and malls, restaurants, walks along the canals, sightseeing from the sea, and many more, but this time we chose to glimpse the city's unique scientific side. With a seven-year-old boy in our small family, along with me being a big fan of science and skeptical of society, our stay was really special. If you add last week's Black Friday hysteria, which brought an enormous smile on my wife's face all day long, I can safely say that we spent one of those memorable times you never forget.

The Rundetårn, a 17th-century astronomical observatory**

The very first day we went to see Rundetårn, an almost 400-year-old observatory built by King Christian IV after the first major success of naked-eye astronomical observation of planetary motion, performed by famous astronomer Tycho Brahe. His incredibly accurate measurement of 6 planets motion at the time was used by Johannes Kepler after Tycho's death in 1601, and for the first time in astronomy, three laws of planetary motion were established, including the one that all planets in the solar system move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at a focus. Even though there are still suspicious thoughts about honest relations between Brahe and Kepler and even uncleared circumstances related to Tycho's death (traces of mercury in hairs from his beard were found in the 1901 autopsy), these two colorful characters of the early 17th century made crucial contributions to our understanding of the universe, including the discovery of Newton's law of gravity, which was a direct outcome of Kepler's laws.

Anyway, the Round Tower in the heart of Copenhagen is still active and one of the oldest functioning astronomy observatories. The dome is 6.75 meters high and 6 meters in diameter and contains a refracting telescope with 80–450x magnification with an equatorial mount. Without an elevator or stairs, walking up and down its unique 209-meter-long spiral ramp that spins 7.5 times is something special I never saw before. Not to mention we had the opportunity to look through the 'scope with two very friendly astronomers who warmly welcomed us and patiently answered all the questions we had.

Apollo 17's moon rock

The next stop in our astronomy tour was the Tycho Brahe Planetarium. It is located not too far away from the observatory and hosts 'The Space Theater' with a 1000-square-meter dome-shaped screen, and seeing a giant 3D Earth rotating in front of you or 30+ meter high mammoths in "Titans of the Ice Age" is the experience you don't want to miss. They also hosted an "A Journey through Space" program and permanent exhibition with meteor specimens and one of the largest moon rocks from the Apollo 17 mission (in the above image).

Science is not science if you don't experiment in the lab, and to have at least a feeling of what scientists do on a daily basis, you have to visit Experimentarium City. The main exhibition last week was "The Brain", with tons of posts waiting to be explored and played with. Needless to say, my favorite was the game with the cool name "Mindball"—in which you have to push the ball only by using brain wave sensors. The more you are relaxed and focused, the more it will get into your control and move in the desired direction.

Mindball—moving the ball with brain activity

If you like to have your brain scanned and to see which part is activated when you move fingers, or if you want to see really cool optical illusions, or to learn more about scientific facts and how stuff works, or to play memory games, or... simply to experience a great family time, visiting Experimentarium City is mandatory.

Finally, no trip to Copenhagen would be allowed to have the adjective 'scientific' in the title without visiting the national aquarium and the zoo. Opened last year, Den Blå Planet, National Aquarium Denmark, located near Copenhagen's airport in Kastrup, is something you would need to see to believe. Especially if you came from a continental country like Serbia. Equally interesting was the zoo, which went viral earlier this year when they decided to euthanize Marius, the young giraffe, because of a duty to avoid inbreeding, approved by the European Breeding Programme for Giraffes. Right or wrong, it is not mine to say, but we humans are responsible for the health of the animal life, and at least it is a good thing that there are scientific organizations that are taking the breeding of animal species seriously. Anyway, perhaps the best impression in both the wild animal and fish exhibitions, to me, was their climate-controlled environments—in the zoo their "Tropical section" with jungle climate conditions, and in the case of the aquarium, it's the "Amazonian region" with tropical plant life, strange-looking fish, and lots of piranhas.

The Little Mermaid

Finally, I want to thank all my coworkers at Rackpeople for having a good time on and off the office, especially Lasse, who invited us for a visit and gave me the opportunity to spend my yearly bonus in Copenhagen. Trips like this are also a great opportunity to learn more about the country and region you are visiting, and I mean not just about the sites, history, monuments, and other attractions, but also about people, hospitality, and friendship. Sometimes, the result is more than you hope for... sometimes less. Perhaps the best advice when you are visiting abroad, no matter if you are doing it as a pure tourist or within a business agenda, or both, is to leave high expectations at home. Nevertheless, Copenhagen is one great corner of the world, more than worthwhile to visit, and this scientific side I wanted to show in this post is something not many cities in the world can offer.

Image references:
Scientific Copenhagen, 2014

References:
* http://www.rackpeople.com/
http://www.ericsson.com/res/docs/2013/ns-city-index-report-2013.pdf
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rundetårn
http://www.rundetaarn.dk/en/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/17/was-tycho-brahe-poisoned

Schrödinger's Cat and Intelligent Movies

In short it goes like this: "There's a cat in a box... That has, like, a 50/50 chance of living because there's a vial of poison that's also in the box. Regular physics would say that it's one or the other. That the cat is either alive or dead, but quantum physics says that both realities exist simultaneously. It's only when you open the box that they collapse into one single event." This quote is me paraphrasing James Ward Byrkit, writer and director of the movie "Coherence", which I've just watched. Although Erwin Schrödinger, back in 1935, when he first wrote his famous thought experiment, invented a pretty complex radioactive trap for the poor cat inside the box, I think that "vial of poison" and James' full description in the script is one of the best interpretations of the quantum paradox there is. The quantum weirdness is one of the most intriguing areas in science that has been buzzing our minds for about a century now. I wrote about it a little last year in the post Quantum Weirdness, and when it comes to science, it was one of the posts I enjoyed writing the most in the past.

About 90 years ago, Niels Bohr, the greatest Danish physicist of all time, described quantum mechanics with perhaps the best explanation ever since. He said something like this: "A quantum particle doesn't exist in one state or another but in all of its possible states at once. It's only when we observe its state that a quantum particle is essentially forced to choose one probability, and that's the state that we observe. Since it may be forced into a different observable state each time, this explains why a quantum particle behaves erratically."* Well, describing the quantum behavior has been a challenge ever since, and because of Bohr, who managed to do it first, all other explanations combined we call today "The Copenhagen Interpretation". Schrödinger's cat is just Erwin's metaphorical attempt to put it closely into our world of big, which we should understand better. But we will get back to the 'cat' later.

And relax, this is not going to be a scientific post or some nerdy brainstorming and (usually) utopistic ideas of mine. Instead it will be about movies. Yep. Just a short glimpse of one of my favorite directions within the sci-fi genre of movies. The one where, just like with reading books, you don't need any big productions, fancy and state-of-the-art visual effects, expensive sets and VFX, or famous actors to create great entertainment. This is a genre I like to call sci-fi for the brains. Like in the movie "Coherence", the plot is placed down to the real people, or to be precise, into familiar settings. There are no spaceships or vividly animated aliens or any villains for that matter. All you need is your imagination and a little background knowledge, and that's all.

I will show you now three movies. I recommend them warmly and without spoiling the films too much for all of you who still didn't have the chance to watch them. A couple of days before "Coherence", I saw the blockbuster "Edge of Tomorrow". I liked it a lot, of course, but still, even with a great cast and effects, the story is nothing exclusive or new. It also provides expected closure and leaves no room for too much thinking or brainstorming over the story. On the other side, "Coherence", with its relatively anonymous cast and script that can easily fit within the set in some small theater or school gym, tried to exploit the very cat of Mr. Schrödinger's and provide one more Copenhagen interpretation, only this time with people in main roles and our own personalities instead of "a vial of poison". It all started with a simple dinner party and with ordinary people who eventually realized what might happen when you open the box. Is the cat alive or dead, or, to be precise, what is really happening when different possibilities emerge out of the box at the same time? Try to find out at the end of the movie. It's not what you might expect and what we got used to in regular movies, but not every story has a happy ending. I guess in this one, the ending is like in quantum mechanics and like the cat from the century before, "Coherence" has both a happy ending and ... not. You have to see it to understand. That's all I will say.

The second sci-fi jewel in the same subgenre is "The Man from Earth", written by Jerome Bixby and directed by Richard Schenkman back in 2007. The science behind this one is biology and how, in its most divergent (and also on the edge of impossible) path, it might affect the very history of mankind. Or to be precise, explained it. The story focuses on John Oldman, the man who, due to some biological anomaly, hasn't aged ever since he was born in Cro-Magnon tribal society 14000 years ago. Like any other science fiction, the movie doesn't try too much to explain the reasons for his presence and instead portrays his struggle to fit, ability to learn throughout time and adapt to different parts of the world, and his everlasting craving to tell somebody his story. And this film is exactly what it is about—finally, the "old man", Oldman, currently a university professor who's about to leave and start another loop, decides to share everything with a group of his peer colleagues. Well, he will learn that impossible stories like his one are not possible to be accepted that easily or at all. But the audience behind the screen will get great entertainment and possible solutions for some parts of our own history, and especially religiosity and its main figures during the eons. Including Buddha and Christ. Oh yes, and don't expect the sword fights, mad scientists, or any action at all, like it was in "Highlander" and its almost stupid plot with cutting heads off for the "prize". The set of this movie is only one small living room. The only thing you have to do is sharpen your brain cells before clicking the "Play" button.

Finally, the last one is "Primer", an extraordinary film written, directed, and produced by Shane Carruth. Shane was also playing the main character in the movie, and the entire project finished with only $7,000. It's hard to say what science is behind this one. Probably the best bet is to use the word "fringe" for this, as the main theme and background technology is "time travel". The script is based on one of the oldest time travel paradigms. The one that doesn't include parallel universes, and instead the time traveler is ending up in his very own universe where the danger of the "butterfly effect" can ripple the time stream and change everything. This is the most intelligent script and movie I have seen so far, and before I watched, I read some reviews and remember this one: "Anybody who claims they fully understand what’s going on in ‘Primer’ after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar". Well, I am not either, and to be completely honest, I didn't manage to follow the entire story and understand it after the first (and last) watching, but more or less I got almost the whole picture from that only session.

The key point in understanding the science (fiction) behind "Primer" is to comprehend what is happening with the guy who enters the time machine and, when he does in the first place, why his major concern is to make sure that his parallel copy enters the box no matter what. The problem with this is well speculated in the article from Discover Magazine I read once, and in short, if time travel into the past is possible, nature must have some mechanism in order to prevent inconsistent events like in this case, the non-entering of the box by the time traveler after the loop is initiated. Confused? Maybe to better understand this paradox, take a look at this image***:

The hazard is obvious: if the "original" in its own blue timeline didn't enter the box at 6PM, the green parallel timeline would not exist in the first place. In other words, if "double" meets "original" and stops him from entering the box, the paradox is obvious, and we can only imagine what happens if that "butterfly" occurs. That's why "the science fiction behind time travel" in recent years actively rejects this approach and involves another universe being the destination for time travelers instead of the origin universe, which would explain the consistency of traveling into the past. Of course, we might ask what would happen if ALL "originals" from ALL universes decided to time travel? Whatever universe they arrive in, the copy of them will be needed to enter the box in the destination universe, and we have the same problem again; let's call it the "Multiverse Butterfly Effect"... Anyway, if you didn't see "Primer" or want to watch it again, try to comprehend this image first. It will help a lot.

These three movies, even though from the same genre and subgenre, differ in the background science used, and I can't truly compare them with each other. So I can't favorite one of them, but these are the movies I like to give thoughts to again and again... They are not really made for just entertainment and, for me, are more memorable than regular sci-fis.

Images and article refs:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schroedingers_cat_film.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat
* http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/.../quantum-suicide4.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/
http://coherencethemovie.com/
** http://www.amazon.com/Wanted-Schrodingers-Magnet
http://manfromearth.com/
http://www.primermovie.com/
***http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)
http://www.myvisionmyway.com/the-man-from-earth-minimalist-poster.html

Celestia, Campfire and Astronomy

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 Rundetårn observatory, Copenhagen

But what I will remember the most is the first camping night between the caves. It was an extraordinary experience only a campfire can provide.

It was the hot middle of the summer, and the forest was mysterious and kind at the same time. I don't remember the exact year, though, but it surely was during my late teenage years, most likely in July or August of 1987. Along with a couple of my peer friends, I was lying down in the middle of a forest clearing on top of my brand-new sleeping bag, hypnotically staring toward the nightly sky. I glimpsed the watch and saw that midnight passed just an hour ago. The campfire was vividly glowing around the small glade surrounded by dark trees. It was the perfect time, and soon it was about to begin. As planned, the first one came on schedule, leaving a straight line in the sky for a millisecond or two. Shortly after, another one fractured the nightly sky, then another one and another and another...and then it was a shower. The Perseids. The icy fragments entering the Earth's atmosphere every summer are body parts of the comet Swift–Tuttle, which travels in this neighborhood every 130 years, providing lots of meteors for our camping TV. That particular year we planned our adventure by the moon's motion, or, to be precise, we wanted to go on the trip when there was no moon in the sky most of the night during its crescent phase. Without light pollution from the Earth and the Moon, the sight was amazing—perseids, thousands of stars, nebulas, galaxies and planets, the Milky Way in the center of our view, planes, and artificial satellites passing by throughout constellations with their leader of the time—the Russian space station "Mir", which was probably one of those brightest moving dots we saw that night. If you didn't see such a sight, you would be surprised how the night sky is actually dynamic. If you add to the scene strange sounds coming from the surrounding forest made by sleepless birds and wild animals, you get perfect entertainment for the big portion of the night. It was our first camping trip, and the fear of the unknown a little spoiled the event, but in our defense, without any experienced guides or team members, I can assure you that every suspicious sound that came from the forest sounded like the ultimate wild predator hungry for young humans. Anyway, little because of the fear and much because of active heavens, we finally fell asleep a little before dawn and successfully slept for an hour and a half, ready for the next day.

Space station Mir (1986-2001)

That really was one great summer, and this trip would stay on top of my adventurous history, from many perspectives. But it wasn't the one that triggered my interest in science and astronomy. I couldn't say what it was for sure, and probably, among many things, at the very beginning, it was one scientific toy my parents bought for me when I was really young. It was one toolkit box**—an optical set of plastic parts and various lenses allowing you to build different gadgets such as a microscope, binoculars, a spyglass, a kaleidoscope, a diapositive magnifier, prism tools, etc. It was my favorite toy for many years. The other equally important trigger is my failure to comprehend the word "infinite" and my everlasting desire to understand its meaning. It was bugging my mind ever since I started to look up at night. Even today, after dozens of courses of various mathematics I had to pass during my high school and university education, infinity is staying the biggest unknown, lying right there, far beyond my scope. There were years in my youth when I was convinced that infinity actually doesn't exist at all. I loved the idea that the cosmos is curved to 360° in all directions. I desperately wanted to believe that if you go with your spaceship straight up, eventually you will reach the same spot only from the opposite direction, just like the surface of Earth and its two-dimensional fully closed curve. Of course, today within the mainstream scientific thought there is much evidence that the expansion of our universe is real, but still it doesn't solve the infinity of it. At least in my mind. Even though the probable fact that our universe is just a part of a multiverse neighborhood where our cosmos is expanding into something bigger, to me it is only stretching the infinity out, only this time far beyond our borders. Maybe one day we will find the definite answer.

From the other perspective, if we are looking at the 'infinite' trouble only from our rational mind, we have to admit that the human race is extremely young, evolutionarily speaking. The real handicap is that we are living in a 'finite' world. Everything that surrounds us has its beginning and the end. At least it seems so, and even though we today learned a great deal about our position within the celestial realm, we only scratched the surface of it. We only managed to set a foot or two (or 12 to be exact) on the Moon, and we only started to explore our own solar system. Due to our own limitations in the form of our unwillingness and hesitations to deal with the unknown and/or our own animosities for each other in the form of militant behavior throughout our history, this is still a very slow process, but inevitably, one day, in the not-so-far future, the time will come when, lackingenough energy to sustain humanity as we know it, we all will have to start looking up, not for searching for the divine but for our own pure survival. Then our own evolution will speed up and skip some gears toward answers to many inconceivable questions.

Night Sky and Perseids by Brad Goldpaint (Goldpaint Photography)*

Anyway, astronomy is one of few scientific playgrounds simply because it contains many unanswered questions. There are plenty of proposed theories that will surely stay in their theoretical phases for many years until we finally get ultimate proof. It is entirely based on studying electromagnetic radiation we are picking up on the surface of Earth and several instruments in orbit. All possible frequencies within electromagnetic radiation are telling us many stories from its origin point and the path it is traveling through. Of course, studying full spectrum requires big and even large instruments in both size and money needed for their manufacturing. Especially if they require being lifted into orbit in order to avoid atmospheric disturbances. Secondly, it is amazing what must be done in order to look up one particular spot in the heavens simply because everything in the cosmos is in motion. We need to solve the rotation and revolution of the planet and, if posted in orbit, compensate for the extremely fast speed of the spacecraft carrying the instruments. As the monitoring object is farther away, the less amount of radiation is picked up by the sensors, so astronomy is one of those indirect or asynchronous sciences where we need to collect the data for some time, which could be years or even more time, and then for an equally considerable time analyze the data, compare the resulting images, and conclude science out. For example, take the Kepler orbital space laboratory. It orbits the Sun following the Earth in order to get a clear view toward the monitoring stars, and it is simply continuously taking images of 'nearby' stars (about 145,000 stars) and sending the data to the Kepler team for analysis. Over time, the team and their sophisticated software measure slight brightness changes during possible orbits of potential planets, and only by these small changes in brightness of the main star is it possible to roughly determine the size and orbit of the planet causing the dimming of the light from the star. However, in order to get all those facts out of the data, Kepler must take lots of images and cover the planet's full orbit. That means in order to confirm the planet, Kepler must take at least two images separated by time in order to confirm the revolution time of the planet. It's a slow process, and considering lots, and I mean LOTS, of received data, I am sure we will hear about more and more planets found by this technique.

Among all possible wavelengths within the full electromagnetic spectrum, the coolest one is the one situated between infrared and ultraviolet waves. The greatest visible light. The one we can see. Even though it is just a tiny portion of the full spectrum, this is the one we can enjoy with our own eyes. This is the one we see every night we look up toward the amazing heavens. Thanks to relatively cheap optical instruments, we are able to enhance the view and zoom it in and see further. Some time after I enjoyed my optical set toy I mentioned earlier, I got my own first refracting telescope. It was small without any tripods and fully mobile, but looking at the moon for the first time was something I will always remember. Discovering the fact with my own eyes that Venus, like the Moon, also has phases and seeing it in its crescent shape was the next best thing I experienced. I still have it, and every time I grab this small piece of optics, I can't help myself and instantly remember the times when I was fixing it on the ladder positioned on the top of our garage and spending hours looking toward the stars.

Transit of Mercury over Sun by Sky-Watcher 150/750

Today I have in my possession an educational reflecting telescope with a respectable mirror size and focal distance mounted on an equatorial tripod along with a motion tracking system capable of fixing the spot on the sky for hours. Unfortunately, amateur astronomy requires lots of free time, which I regretfully don't have enough of. In addition to a lack of free time, watching the heavens requires an unpolluted environment, and life in big cities is beneficial for everything but astronomical observation. Sometimes I feel like that character from the Michael Keaton movie—I don't remember the title now, but in the movie he found a way to clone himself in order to get finished various tasks in his life... Similarly, I would like to have one me for work, one for astronomy and science, one for family and writing... Simply, the day is too short, and to support the family and life, the work is always number one. But it is a good thing to have spare moments and spend them in the most enjoyable way. Even today, from time to time, I point the scope up and peek a little. Sometimes I take photos out, like this one of Mercury transiting the Sun disc.

To conclude with some short 'observations', if you want to do some amateur astronomy, you will need star maps. Before they were black and white and printed in the form of atlas books. Today all that changed with the speed of the internet and graphic tools on the average personal computer. They are all online, and you can access them with many apps. I recommend 'Celestia' and 'Stellarium'. Even without a real telescope, they provide endless fun.

Image refs:
https://amsmeteors.org/2017/08/viewing-the-perseids-in-2017/
* https://goldpaintphotography.com/

Kepler project:
http://kepler.nasa.gov/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54fnbJ1hZik

** Toolkit box (~1978):


Refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseids
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
http://www.stellarium.org/

The Little Mermaid

I am wondering if is it possible to combine, in just one blog post, a short story about one country, one modern IT business, several great friendships, air flights, professional challenges, and friendly people everywhere you look. I know the answer is probably no, but I will try anyway. Let's start with an easy puzzle: if you thought of The Little Mermaid and Hans Christian Andersen, quantum mechanics and Niels Bohr, the famous Hamlet's "To be or not to be" in Shakespeare's old play, and amazing cuisine with cookies, pretzels, Carlsberg beer, and Legos? The answer, for a very few of you who didn't guess, is, of course, Denmark. One of the top developed countries of the European Union. According to the United Nation's first-ever World Happiness Report from this year, Denmark has taken the top spot, followed by Finland, Norway, and the Netherlands. When I first read about this, I was skeptical since happiness is a relative thing and I am sure all people in the world are equally happy and unhappy from time to time depending on daily moodiness and events that drive us.

The Little Mermaid

However, now after my second visit to Denmark, I tend to change all the skepticism and maybe better understand the global happiness or social happiness, if you will. According to the study, one of the conclusions could be this (and I am paraphrasing the report): "While basic living standards are essential for happiness, and after the baseline has been met by the majority of people, social happiness varies more with the quality of human relationships than with income." Simple truth with no simple explanation, but if you ask me, I think that the history of any society is deeply embedded into everybody's DNA, and as long as it is not filled with lots of conflicts, wars, animosities, and hard times, the better human relationships become.

Several years ago, around the time of the birth of my son, I started outsourcing for a Danish consulting company within a team of developers providing coding in the Microsoft .NET environment for various purposes. A very big number of Danish companies are using Windows servers and other client-server solutions for their businesses based on the Microsoft environment, and according to my humble opinion, I fit in nicely due to my expertise and experience in the field in general.

The Rackpeople Team

Actually, contrary to most other jobs, being involved in IT development, more than having various degrees and initial knowledge, requires the ability to change and learn the new stuff. The technology is changing rapidly, and after more than five years of telecommuting, when it all started with simple web applications, we are currently involved in more sophisticated technologies like Lync and SharePoint development, connecting them with the mobile world and providing the right information at the right time. All those activities are followed by financial subsystems centered around Microsoft Dynamics C5, equally challenging from one developer's point of view. I remember the days back in the 80s and 90s when developing business software was completely different compared to the present day. This is no one-man show anymore. The complexity of the IT support, consulting, and development reached a higher level of understanding, and I mean for both sides, developers and customers. Even though I am outsourcing about 1600 kilometers away from the office, this would not be possible without internet, daily communications, reporting, solving puzzles, audio and video conferencing, brainstorming, and live meetings. The dynamic IT world is also affecting consulting companies, and five years is a very large period of time for all of us as well, so recently, as a result of last year's merger, the old/new company continued joined efforts within new surroundings and teamed up for future challenges.

Not so long ago I visited my friends at Rackpeople for a couple of meetings and some other on-and-off work activities in regard to future projects and also for simple socializing with the guys and some brainstorming sessions in a local brewery house (where else do brilliant ideas come from?).

Baltic Sea between Poland and Denmark

Of course, like any business trip, the best part came after work hours, where the office environment was replaced by the "Custom House" restaurant and an "ice cream" walk along with the brewery house in the 17th-century Nyhavn district at the end of my visit. This is part of Copenhagen you don't want to miss. I still can't choose what was the best: American classic steak, delicious ice cream in domesticated cones, or perfect draft beer. Regarding the whole event from a sightseeing point of view, what maybe impressed me the most was the sun still standing very much above the horizon while the local clock tower was showing 22 hours and a change. It was the cost of living on a round Earth so much north away from the equator. I enjoyed very much the sightseeing while driving through Copenhagen, visiting the famous Little Mermaid, and most of all our talks about lots of different topics. With this blog post I would like to thank Jesper, Claus, and Mark for an amazing evening.

I am not a frequent flyer, but every now and again I am using air traffic, and maybe now is my chance to write about my experience flying in a south-north straight line between Belgrade and Copenhagen. This last flight was pretty much smooth without much turbulence, probably because the weather was more or less the same during the whole 1600km long trip. However, two years ago I was taking the same flight during the hot summer, and the weather wasn't the same in the beginning of the flight compared to the last half hour and the descent itself. The moment the plane entered the Baltic Sea from continental Poland, the weather changed dramatically for the worse. I remember I was having a wing seat and saw the jet engine start seriously vibrating up and down. It was pretty scary, but the crew did not pay much attention, so I reckoned it was pretty much normal. The other travelers weren't so calm, especially one older lady that had to use the oxygen mask after landing, which was also a little disturbing, as the plane needed to take a couple of sharp turns at very low altitude in order to align with the runway. One more thing also attracted my attention, and this is how clean and spacious the Danish capital, suburbia, and small towns in the countryside are. Due to lots of rain over the year, everything is green and very compelling.

The Complete Guide To: The best of Denmark
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/the-complete-guide-to-the-best-of-denmark-1730450.html

The official website of Denmark
http://denmark.dk/en/

World Happiness Report 2012: Scandinavian Countries Are Happiest On Earth
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/world-happiness-report-2012_n_1408787.html

Rackpeople Hosting and Consulting
http://www.rackpeople.com/

The Little Mermaid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Mermaid_(statue)

Nyhavn/New Harbour
http://www.nyhavn.com/

Custom House
http://www.customhouse.dk/en/cosmopolitan-cooking-close-to-the-sea.html

DMV Processing

DMV Processing, in its current stage of existence, is a software development company and a legal base of operation for an individual independent contractor. If I would like just to state keywords that could be the company's and my own background, they would be (present and past): Azure Communication Services, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Azure, Node.js, JavaScript/jQuery, CSS, C#/.NET, PHP, Python, RESTful API, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft SharePoint, Web & Desktop/Mobile Apps, Office Apps Development, SSRS, SQL Server, and Cloud/Azure.

Apart from technical background, the way of working is determined to be described in words: freelancing, outsourcing, and coding. DMV Processing, from this perspective, is what I often like to call my own place, where I pay the taxes, with my office being my laptop in the most mobile meaning of the word possible. The turning point toward Microsoft business development came with business-fying the internet within fast enough protocols and coding environments, which pretty much happened around a decade ago.

≡ May 2006 - Current ≡

Perhaps the most productive cooperation in the latest decade was with Copenhagen-based company Rackpeople ApS and their projects within Microsoft Teams, Azure Communication Services, cloud systems, REST/API connectivity, SSRS, SQL, SharePoint, and various cloud, console, and web applications. The most beneficial feature of the unified communications is, of course, the integration of regular telephony and PSTN systems, which provided empty space for developing several unsupported features within client and server SDKs designed for simplification of audio/video conferencing in all possible ways. Cloud financial systems took over in the years around 2020, and the firm engaged in the development of various invoicing features with extensive use of RESTful API and coding of financial frameworks within Microsoft Navision and Business Central. Rackpeople's IT solutions and new ways of working have a major impact on the projects, and digital transformation is the foundation for the development regardless of the current technology in use. Before full engagement with Rackpeople ApS, in the first decade of the century, I was engaged with the Danish company Jarrels & Co. and helped develop various applications for industry-based network services, including GPS tracking and network connectivity.

≡ January 1999 - May 2006 ≡

In the dawn of the 21st century and until the second part of the first decade, most programming was connected to Makosch Media GmbH in Munich, Germany. My professional work within the company was in projecting, developing, and implementing regIEpult, web-based software used in conference meetings—interactive features between speaker and clients (intranet solution). It was probably the most exciting project of the time, which included two generations of the software. First, the most used one in live events was entirely written in good and old ASP with a database located in the MS Office Access suite. The second version we developed with the first appearance of .NET 1.1 and connection to SQL Server. The entire application was designed for specific hardware (all-in-one PCs) and for Internet Explorer with controlling parent window installation throughout ActiveX controls. Besides this project, in this period of time, I was involved in a couple more organizations and companies and with a couple of desktop-oriented applications designed for the shareware market, written entirely in Borland's Pascal and C++ environments, and also one more academic project within the 'Faculty of Mechanical Engineering' in Niš, entirely written in Java. There were also several solutions I wrote independently as freeware applications, like the one designed for automating radio stations and ActiveX library controls that added further functionalities into web clients. They were entirely made within projects named Zedplace Software, localized in my office, and Pufferfish Software Development, which a good friend of mine and I started in London, England, and despite all of our desires, they mostly served as a torrent of POC projects rather than actual businesses, even though they all ended with a small financial outcome and lots of experience.

≡ May 1995 - January 1999 ≡

DMV Processing wasn't a software development company from the beginning. Way back in the year 1987, it was funded by my parents and oriented in process engineering and industrial system production. With the final legal registration of the firm under my name in March 2002, I started to divert production toward software development. This date wasn't actually a turning point of the course change toward pure coding, though; it was the date of the latest structural and legal change of the firm in which I, due to my parent's retirement, took over almost the entire business and started to change the goal toward freelancing, outsourcing, and business software development. However, the production line kept working for more years, though, as long as all resources and stock were still not depleted fully. Also, there were a couple of old customers with already installed systems or with new demands, so the process engineering stayed intact until perhaps the end of the decade. For the history reference, the most successful products and microcontrollers of the DMV Processing 'all-time' sales were the Water Level Measurement Device MNV-1 (microcontroller device that controls the water level), Time Relay VR-8 (time-based three-phase engine operation control), Phase Asymmetry and Timetable Detector DARF-3 (control of three-phase power source), Level Measurement Device NVM-3 (control of pumping engine operation in wells), Microcomputer for Flow Measurement NIVA-4 (flow monitoring microcontroller), Utilized Power Control CORDON 32 (control of maxigraph in transformer stations), and Rotation Counter MBO-3 (microcontroller for engine rotation control). Visible on the left is a website screenshot of the DMV Processing's home page, and all product details can be seen in the latest catalog from 2006: DMV Processing's production line catalog in Serbian.

≡ September 1990 - May 1995 ≡

DMV Processing in the first half of the last decade of the 20th century operated in a couple of legal forms, with one long period of being a fully registered responsibility company that outgrew the main family's 'garage'-based small shop from the beginning. Unfortunately, this decade was not ideal in Serbian industrial history due to a heavy inflation process and political issues. However, despite the shaken market, it was the beginning of the 'prosperity' period in which we tried to expand the business and add more products to the production. My participation in this period was a bit limited as I was focused on finishing my university education, but even though the knowledge was carved in my bachelor's and master's degrees I earned within the 'Faculty of Electronic Engineering', true skills in the field I also owe to further work on projects in the company, especially within the CPU and MCU software applications like this one in the picture, which used the capacity method to measure water and fluid levels in wells and other industrial systems. Back in the time, we decided to replace the Zilog Z80 CPU and electronic circuits of ours with Microchip's PIC series of MCUs. MNV-1 and a couple of more projects were based on PIC16 with full RISC architecture, and at the time, they were state-of-the-art, very resilient, and industrial-friendly microcontrollers.

≡ September 1987 - September 1990 ≡

DMV Processing, even though registered as a manufacturing shop in the fall of 1987, was the very first instance of the small family company oriented in producing on-demand automated industrial microcontrollers and various systems in the production line process. The founders were my parents, Vinko and Dušica Živić, who dedicated their professional lives to this endeavor, which, in changed form, is still in progress until today. The name of the shop was made from the first letters in our names (including the letter 'M', which was the first letter of both my sister's and mine). 'Processing' stands for 'process engineering,' which described what we were manufacturing in the shortest possible way. My part in the firm was to develop the entire software running behind our prime project, Cordon-N, which was a Z80 CPU-based computer designed to save power consumption in big production lines with lots of electrical machines in the process. Basically, what it did was to monitor current consumption of electrical power and to predict the electrical bill in the next period of time. If this consumption was higher than anticipated, Cordon-N would start shutting down non-important systems in the manufacturing process. In the long run, this wonderful computer saved lots of money for the owner, including making worthwhile purchases of its own in a very short period of time.

≡ Origins and basic idea of family business ≡

The firm mainly operated under the small manufacturer association back then in the eighties and early nineties, which was both good and bad—with lots of opportunities to meet various customers in the industrial world but also with unnecessary bureaucracy and intermediaries. After a couple of years, DMV Processing had grown to the level of earning its own name, bookkeeping, bank accounts, and all logistics needed for an independent presence on the market, including the very first logo I designed back then in the early nineties. The alpha and omega of DMV Processing was, of course, my father, with his expertise in electronics and long experience in industrial process engineering and his connections with both customers and suppliers. My mother was the alpha and omega of her own in the business, unifying the entire firm, while my role was to add 21st-century to the way of thinking within the production of microcontroller-based systems such as Cordon but also with a couple of other similar projects.