Interview With an Expert

Have you ever thought about the most common software application installed on your computerized devices in your home? Is it some super tuned operating system you can't live without? Or is it some sort of office application you use to write, make presentations, and connect with your friends and business acquaintances? Maybe it is your favorite browser you are using on a daily basis to connect to your social network? Or some photo gallery application with tons of your digital photos and video clips? Perhaps it is some Skype-like communication device that is always within reach? Whatever it is, and depending on who you ask, I am more than positive that there are no unique answers.

Microsoft's HoloLens

I am sure everybody knows (?) why they are so fused to computer screens these days, but in our case there is no doubt. In total sum of our digital home appliances that can be found on various desktops or fit nicely in our backpacks or pockets, the most dominant cross-computer application is Minecraft. That includes a couple of Androids and Windows Phones, various personal computers, and one Xbox console. Not only that, we tried the most of Minecraft installations, maps, and mods, but we are also hosting a small server with our own growing world. Well, by 'we', I surely include myself with a teeny-tiny share in the plural meaning of the world, but the majority of the 'we' belongs to Viktor, who is our in-house expert for Minecraft affairs.

But before giving some thoughts on the Minecraft game, I asked our expert couple of questions in hope of understanding why one not-so-graphically demanding application and one not-so-typical game that requires not-so-much-of-real-gamer skills when it comes to quick interaction between the characters and other players is so popular and truly became a worldwide phenomenon and won so many awards over the years.

In-house expert for Minecraft affairs in action

Following is a short interview with me asking questions and Viktor answering them. To be honest, I am not really that familiar with all the Minecraft world; let's face it, over the years it grew into a full internet movement with MineCon and everything, so I hope my prepared questions are not off-the-topic or old, rusty, and non-interesting.

Anyhow, I will be taking that risk, and here's the full interview between father and son and more than 30 years of generation gap in between:

When did you learn about Minecraft, and how did you feel playing it for the first time?
At first I didn't like it that much, but later, after I watched "The Asian Guy Gamer" and their Minecraft videos on YouTube, I bought a Minecraft disk for Xbox 360 and started making my own worlds. I am playing it almost every day ever since.

Why do you like Minecraft so much and how is it different from other games?
Because I can build things and make my own worlds. Also, there are so many worlds out there, and every game can be different, and I can do whatever I want.

What do you like the most in the game?
To search and mine diamonds and make armor, swords, tools, etc. To build large houses and castles and to play within online servers.

How would you rank Minecraft installations and why?
1. PC 2. Xbox 3.WP 4. Android. PC version is the best, simply because I can play in multiplayer mode with my friends online. It also allows typing commands and cheats. And I have a server of my own with my IP.

Who are your favorite characters and skins in Minecraft?
Hulk and Foxy for skins and Ender Dragon for characters. Horses in Xbox are also great.

What is the most complicated structure that you ever built?
Roller-coaster in PC and large, eight-story house in Android game.

Who are the best Minecraft gamers you are following online?
Definitely Pat and Jen, Channels: PopularMMOs & GamingWithJen. Also Think's Noodles, The DiamondMinecart, and Stampy.

If you could, what would you do to improve Minecraft in the future?
I would like to see portals between servers somehow. So I can make a portal on my server that ends on some different server. Also more interesting machines.

Which one do you prefer: Creative or Survival mode?
Survival.

Is Herobrine real?
Only in some mods.

Well, there you go. I can't be completely sure, of course, but it is pretty certain that if you asked any other seven-year-old Minecraft gamer, you would get the same answers. More or less. However, this game attracts players of any age. I was no different. I remember when I turned it on for the first time, and after spending half an hour in the tutorial, my first reaction was "What's this?" followed by "What should I do now?". And then I realized. This is not the ordinary game. Like most of the other games, where you clearly know what to do and what your goal is. No, here, there are no goals and there are no levels. There is no ultimate ending you are reaching toward. The only thing Minecraft is giving you is the environment. The rest is all yours.

Creeperized Wallpaper for true Minecraft gamers

As soon as I figured that out, it was pretty obvious that in order to turn the game on, you have to deal with two switches. One is to click on the icon to start the game, and the other is in your head. The one that says "Imagination Power On". So I clicked on that one too, and everything started to make sense. The next thing I knew was that hours passed in the real world while I experienced a truly great and short entertainment inside. In a nutshell, Minecraft doesn't require some expensive VR gadget to render the world for you. It does all that with elementary graphics and ordinary three-dimensional programming. What it is extremely successful with is the interaction with that other switch in your head that makes everything possible. Very few games are capable of such things, and this is the main reason Minecraft has been so successful for so long. For that matter, I have fears for the direction of future Minecraft and the vision in Microsoft in order to use it inside of their version of Google Glass, called HoloLens. I surely understand the need for next-gen gadgets and that VR is always trying to get into gamer's worlds effectively, but in this particular case, it could destroy the very essence of Minecraft imagination. I am sure that HoloLens, when it comes or in one of it's future versions, will effectively merge the real world with the imaginary one and, in this case, perfectly render the Minecraft world into your living room. Imagine that.

But is this really necessary?

Maybe.

Perhaps not. Playing imaginative games like this one is just like reading books. You don't need extra help to render the virtual world. You have the ultimate gadget already. For free.

The little gray cells.

Scientific Copenhagen

Do you have that strange feeling when you are about to visit new city abroad and little afraid of what you would stumble to when it come to simple things? Like how to use 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 of 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 to 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 and any off work activity for that matter. So I took a little research this time and Ericsson's "Networked Society City Index" helped a lot. Within 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 smooth and applied IT were extremely helpful, simple and useful. Unified communications (UC), integrated into people's business life from within smart gadgets and laptop computers were also big part of it and I can proudly say that, in a way, I took a part in 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 wide variety of screens and devices. The business part of last week Copenhagen's trip was to visit Microsoft Campus Days where Hello™ had a big feature presentation and successfully presented what it can do in current edition. From developer's point of view I have a good feeling that this project will have 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, beside 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 seven years old boy in our small family, along with me, being a big fan of science and skeptical society, our stay was really special. If you add a last week's Black Friday hysteria, which brought 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, almost 400 years old observatory, built by king Christian IV, after 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 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 was found in 1901 autopsy), these two colorful characters of the early 17th century made crucial contributions to our understanding of the universe, including discovery of the Newton's law of gravity which was direct outcome from Kepler's laws.

Anyway, the Round Tower in the heart of Copenhagen is still active and one of the oldest functioning astronomy observatory. The dome is 6.75 meters high and 6 meters in diameter and contains a refracting telescope with 80–450x magnification with equatorial mount. Without elevator and stairs, walking up and down its unique 209 meters long spiral ramp that spins 7.5 times is something special I never saw before. Not to mention we had 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

Next stop in our astronomy tour was Tycho Brahe Planetarium. It is located not too far away from the observatory and hosts 'The Space Theater' with 1000 square meters dome-shaped screen and seeing a giant 3D Earth rotating in front of you or 30+ meters high mammoths in "Titans of the Ice Age" is the experience you don't want to miss. They also hosted a "A Journey through Space" program and permanent exhibition with meteor specimens and one of the largest moon rocks from 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 daily bases, you have to visit Experimentarium City. 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 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 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 aloud to have 'scientific' adjective in title without visiting national aquarium and the zoo. Opened last year, Den Blå Planet, National Aquarium Denmark, located near to Copenhagen's airport in Kastrup is something you would need to see to believe. Especially if you came from the continental country like Serbia. Equally interesting was the zoo, who went viral earlier this year when they decided to euthanize Marius, the young giraffe, because of a duty to avoid inbreeding, approved by 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 breeding of animal species seriously. Anyway, perhaps the best impression in both wild animals and fish exhibitions, to me were their climate controlled environments - in the zoo their "Tropical section" with jungle climate conditions and in case of the aquarium it's "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 opportunity to spend my yearly bonus in Copenhagen. Trips like this are also one 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

Serbian Chevapchichi

"Gently, he took her by the shoulders and turned her around, facing her back into the house. - Let's go have dinner. Vincent said he made us that Serbian cevapcici." - Eureka, TV Show.

The very last decade of the very last century of the previous millennium was very exciting in many ways. It won't be remembered by all the meaningless Balkan wars flaming down here for many years, nor by the final end of the communist era in this part of Europe, nor even by the birth of the European Union idea or the rise of the new world order we are all living in today. No, to me, it was the birth of the internet, email, the World Wide Web, social networks, instant messaging, blogging, and everything we are using in our homes on a daily basis the same way we do with television or radio or... the kitchen and all its appliances. Although the internet network and its services were invented many years before, it was the nineties when all started to go real worldwide and accepted by the majority of people everywhere.

Serbian Chevapchichi

By now you are probably wondering what the connecting point is with "Serbian Chevapchichi" and the internet, right? Well, it's simple. Let's get back to the mid-90s—I vividly remember those years simply because, with the commercializing of the network, computers started to be interesting by adding a completely new perspective to the whole idea. The potential was so great that anything we could think of could be possible and easily transferred to the web. I remember my first web page was about Jupiter's four moons, their images, and short stories about Galileo and the history of telescopes. Sadly, this was not what was popular in those days. If we exclude all the educational content, IT, and science stuff, the whole internet, besides email service, was all about two things. Cooking and pornography. Even today I am making jokes about how half the internet in those days was about amazing worldwide recipes while the other half was filled with naked women. Regarding the latter, I remember earlier this year I was watching "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson", where Craig tried to analyze a couple of astronomy images made by Hubble and other space telescopes with blogger Phil Plait. If you didn't see it before, try not to miss it on the net, and you will find out how Phil commented on Craig's astronomy knowledge in regard to the other half of the internet. The same is true with food; with tons of websites, forums, social media, and blogs, the internet successfully replaced cooking and recipe books. The only problem now is how to cope with tons of different variations of the same recipe. There are no secret ingredients today. Everything's online.

With that said, I am done with the long introduction, and now I am ready to go with the main topic. The food itself. Let's start with the post title. Initially I wanted to name the post with one of the Serbian specialties, and for me it was easy. It was the meal of my childhood; I remember all the visits to different restaurants with my parents on a weekly dinner, and "Serbian Chevapchichi" (ćevapčići) was always there. Here in Serbia and all neighboring countries, they are extremely popular. There are also variations of the same meal in Croatia, Bulgaria, and especially Bosnia, but they are all descendants of the "kebab", the meat dish that, like "shawarma," originates in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the history of this part of the world was pretty violent compared to, for example, northern Europe, where big conflicts somehow avoided their people on a great scale. Here, ever since the Middle Ages, back in the 14th century, the Balkan Peninsula was more or less under constant occupation, first by the Ottoman Empire, which lasted for more than 400 years, followed by several Balkan wars, followed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, followed by two worldwide wars giving birth to 50+ years of dictatorship by communism and post-communism turbulence.

The history of the area is important to understand many things, but in this particular case, its imminent influence on Serbian cuisine. I am not saying that the Serbian national dish doesn't exist, just that the majority of the recipes suffered irretrievable change under the foreign influence over so many years. Like "Chevapchichi" sausages, many other recipes have Turkish and Middle Eastern flavors; others, on the other hand, 'suffered' changes, especially by German, Greek, Hungarian, and other influences. All the great recipes and flavors of all the foreign influences combined with all our Serbian heritage also gave the people here a very special culture related to food, preparation, consummation, and restaurant service. There is a story (and even a fork-shaped monument you can see above) wherein in the city of Niš, in southern Serbia (Roman Naissus), back in the 12th century, during the royal dinner in honor of Frederick Barbarossa, who was on a 'holy' crusade with his army, his host Stefan Nemanja, Serbian Grand Prince of the time, used forks, knives, and other kitchen aids, while Barbarossa, in a 'Robin Hood' style, enjoyed all the royal meal with his hands and fingers. Of course it is hard to tell if this was true, but this is what is mentioned in some old tales and stories, and supposedly the monument itself is shaped like the fork based on those old unwritten narratives.

To be only fair, historically relevant is that the meeting did happen and some treaty was signed, but Nemanja didn't join the German army to Constantinople and the crusade itself after that point, and Barbarossa never consummated this alliance as well. After all, it all happened in the well-known, dark, and religiously divided Middle Ages, which is very hard to understand. Nevertheless, and just because of the illiteracy of the time and not so much historically proven facts and texts, and especially because each nation writes its own truth in their own history books, I do like these times because of this hint of mystery, speculations, and old fairy tales. The old church where this meeting supposedly happened and where Barbarossa's army made a camp still stands, and its own history is full of mysterious stories as well. If you'd like to know more about it, hop to the story Fairies of Naissus with more old tales about the local neighborhood.

Meeting with Barbarossa in 1189*

But to get back to the worldwide dishes—as a Serbian, I can't be too objective when it comes to judging or comparing different cuisines to Serbian, but I know one thing—eating just one same food every day is not much fun at all. I am also far away from being some food fanatic, but every now and again, and again, and... again I really want to try something new. To satisfy this need, I do two things. I cook, and I order various different meals from the menus of domestic and international restaurants here and during my travels. To be honest, I am not a great cook simply because I always foolishly think that I can do better and never follow recipes to the word, and often my masterpieces end in the trash bin, but from time to time I get something extraordinary out of the oven, making me proud of myself, especially when the meal is a product of my own experiments. In addition, Viktor and I in recent years started one special thread for this blog and YouTube channel with our selection of food we liked and prepared.

Chevapchichi is one of the Serbian BBQ dishes we simply couldn't avoid, and finally, and in contrast to later commercial presentations of all Serbian food I embedded, what follows is our own small video with our own recipe and step-by-step instructions on how to make chevapchichi sausages in the shortest possible way and with our way to try and preserve all the Balkan's touch and taste. It's not little effort, I know, but the result is definitely worthwhile.

Besides five different meats, it's not that obvious what exactly goes into the mixture, so here is our own recipe that originated from Jana's Chilli Pepper Travels blog but with our twist. Minced meat includes beef, lamb, pork, turkey, and bacon. Combined, there was around 1 kg of the mixture, and for spices, we used 1 onion, 3 cloves of garlic, and 1 tbs of all of these: oregano, cornstarch, turmeric, paprika, salt, black pepper, and brown sugar. The quote from the beginning was from the sci-fi TV show "Eureka", which aired 2006-2012, and the central gathering in many episodes was in the town's great diner called "Café Diem", and its chef Vincent once selected "Serbian cevapcici" as a daily special. He made it from lamb patty, paprika, and garlic and literally described it as "a little hunk of Balkan heaven". However, and in a nutshell, for a dish so widely prepared, there is not just one recipe out there. Instead, different people and restaurants use their own (secret) ingredients, and little sausages can be very different from one place to another.

My blog is really not a promotional piece of any kind. This is not what I am doing here. It's just a public journal of mine, and I never intended to use it for some commercial purpose. However, this is my chance to break this principle with Serbian food. I have to admit that if I wanted to do research about all the Serbian national food, that would probably go far beyond this blog, but luckily, the guys from the National Serbian Tourist Organization last year did a tremendous job with their promotional video they called "Soulfood Serbia". I embedded it next on the post, and even though it is rather long (about 12 minutes), I am encouraging you to find the time to watch it. Preferably with an empty stomach—it will be good for your gastronomical urges later. Besides, the video is made in great quality, and it is describing the core of Serbian food history pretty well, and also it covers only genuine Serbian food, the kind that survived all possible influences over the centuries.

Well, at the end, all I can add is that enjoying food is one of those things that's occupying almost all of human senses, and remembering all the occasions, where and when it happened, has the power of bringing back all good memories of all occasions and people we shared all those dinners with. With me, Serbian chevapchichi have been very high on the list ever since my childhood and no doubt will be here and around for many years ahead.

*
Kosta Mandrović - http://staresrpskeslike.com/
Stefan Nemanja - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Nemanja