MPJ

While the short tale about famous actor is itself a small historical record especially for him and one little Serbian village half an hour away from my current location, I have to say that this post is a little bit mistitled even though De Niro's story has several connected points with what I want to write today. Instead, it will be about my grandfather and his war stories I listened yesterday for the first time. Actually, my mother told me all this before, but yesterday, during our annual dinner, he was in a great mood to tell them himself and this is my attempt to write them down while they are still fresh in my memory. But, for a moment, let's get back to the title story. Not too long ago, I read in a newspaper article* about Robert De Niro and his European travels he did about 40 years ago, more or less in the time where I was about to be born. Back then, these kind of tourist destinations were extremely popular among young Americans - if you were young and adventurou

I read a little while ago an article by one of the pretty well-known Serbian filmmaker, which was also known by couple of rewards from Cannes and other European movie festivals from the past. His article was titled with "How's gonna start the third world war" and even though I hinted what it might be inside I started reading it expecting something rational and smart. To be honest, I couldn't read it to the end due to the feeling that my intelligence was started being insulted not too far away from the intriguing title. You can find the link below if you are really eager to read it, but in the nutshell, this is one of those stories made by the guys who lost their compass on the way and think they know everything better than the others. In the article, when he started accusing Hollywood industry in general for taking the role of new cold war propaganda machinery, I couldn't get rid of the image from the past when he was wearing a tuxedo on several occasions eagerly

Moon travels around the Earth in elliptical orbit and logically there are two points in its path where it is closest and farthest from us. Today it was in "perigee-syzygy" of the Earth-Moon-Sun system or simply called "supermoon". Coincidentally, it happens that today it has the power to fully block the sunlight in northern Europe and made the biggest shadow one can do on Earth. In Serbia it only made partial eclipse covering somewhat less than 50% of the Solar disk. These are 12 photos I took in intervals of approximately 10 minutes from eclipse start at 9:40 until it went away around 11:58. The biggest shade was at 10:48. We were pretty lucky today since the nature gave us clear sky with just one stubborn cloud that covered the Sun-Moon kiss around 11AM. Above image is the composition of those 12 photos which I took through our Sky-Watcher telescope with solar filter. I still don't have proper camera or adapter for taking astronomical photos so I used

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 t

This year and especially during the next one is one major anniversary - 70 years after the second worldwide war ended. In the second part of 1944, third Reich ultimately started to collapse and German soldiers with their allies began to withdraw from occupied territories, toward the last days in April back in 1945 when Hitler committed suicide and toward officially surrender of German army week later. In the aftermath, couple of months after May 8th, the War finally ended with devastating and completely unnecessary dropping of two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear weapon test at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, on 25 July 1946. Looking to it from this distance, these very two bombs, immediately after the war, initiated the race between major developed countries in fast developing technology in both military and civil environments within various sciences. Especially within military. If we look into the history of wars and even before 20th century, the winner of any war w

In the past couple of years, every now and again I was uploading video clips to the YouTube that I made either for the blog intentionally or for some other "publishing" reasons and I've just realized that they piled up to the number big enough I can safely pronounce almost two dozens of them today to their public status and officially publish them. It's not really that big "contribution" to the video community but still here they are. Hopefully some of you would find them inspirational and interesting. If you do, following is the home page of the official channel where you can subscribe for the future or contribute with new YouTube community social features. Milan's Public Journal YouTube Channel Similar to the blog's threads and for better classification of all videos within the channel I created several playlists and filled them with videos of mutual theme or place or event. One of latest video files, the short movie Viktor and I made this su

Approximately 15 years ago I was working as a lab assistant in the programming department of micro assembly and object oriented languages within " College of Applied Technical Sciences " in Niš, Serbia. I was engaged with all five semesters and was teaching students from their freshman year to the graduation and every now and again, along with board of professors, I was asked to attend their final exams followed by sort of social celebration in form of small festivity with table full of food and drinks. On one such occasion, student who came from Pirot, one of the biggest cities of eastern Serbia, asked us if we ever tried before a sausage called "vitamin bomb" which, he said, was one of the oldest delicacies from the region he came from. I spotted that one of the professors, who was actually known that he tried almost everything when it came to food and drinks, started nodding his head but it was clear that the rest of us heard it for the first time. Stude

It was May 20th of the 1883rd year of AD when people living in Dutch East Indies, back then in 19th century, started to feel more intense earthquakes and to spot first steam venting out of one of three volcanic cones, just above the powerful caldera in today's Indonesian archipelago of Krakatoa. In the following days of May eruptions started from the one of volcano peaks and after a week or so calmed down only to issue a warning for what would come in following months. What started happening on June 16th and culminating in August 27th is now well known as the most massive and powerful volcano eruption in the documented history of mankind. William Ascroft's pastel sky-sketches* The eruptions were so powerful that the most intense explosion was heard all the way down in Perth, Australia, which is almost 3000km south of Krakatoa. On the west, across the Indian ocean, people located almost 5000km on the islands not far away from Madagascar thought it was cannon fire from n

Original post date: May 2013, Update: September 2017 "When I think about everything we've been through together, maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey." This one-liner belongs to Harry Kim, a character from the Star Trek Voyager show - probably the episode when they all realized the ultimate truth about how far Earth is from their location and that even the lifetime might be too short to reach it back. It was one great show I swallowed in just couple of weeks back then in the beginning of 21st century. I remember I was watching up to 6 episodes every night and now looking to it from today's perspective perhaps the most memorable line I still remember is this one about famous journey-destination quote. So, what is your ultimate answer? Is it Journey or Destination? For me there is no doubt, it is always the journey. Even for travels as small as 50km we do to escape city on weekends and go to the mountain village I mention

If you were reading my blog in the past you probably noticed that on several occasions I mentioned inner fight in all human beings between rational and emotional mind. More or less we all 'suffer' from this conflict and this post is, again, going to be tailed by it. Okay, now, you read the title and already hinted about the content, so let's get to the story. But before diving into topic, let me start with a revelation and for the first time since I started this blog I think this very title finally would allow me to go more personal than usual. Actually, I decided to reveal everything about me in this post and finally you are about to learn who I am to the bone. Are you ready to read further? Okay, I am ready. Here you go ... I am ... Wait ... I hate these second thoughts ... Darn it, I can't take it back now, can I ... Okay, here it is ... ... I am Scorpio. There you go. I said it. Phew. What a relief. Now you know everything about me. Who I am, why