If it wasn’t obvious to some people before, it’s painfully evident now that there is something awfully wrong with these youngsters, and our society as a whole, which permits riots like this to happen. I wouldn’t say anything if this would be a protest against a dictatorship, or against a law or some other kind of enforcement that would hinder our human rights, or in any other way endanger our rights and lives. But this? This was a protest against a law that would actually benefit many students (both life/injury and payment insurance, recognition of work experience, earlier start of pension accumulation) and allocate more money for scholarships! Yes, it has it’s downsides, but they mostly affect the Student organisations of Slovenia and those that are now reaping big profits from the field of the Student work. And what’s more, the law hasn’t even been wrapped up yet and sent into the National Assembly for vote! The talks with the Student organisation of Slovenia were still open!

Going out, shouting “f**k the government”, littering Ljubljana and throwing objects at the police and the Parliament and even setting fires for something like this is just insane and stupid. It throws a bad light on the student population as a whole, discredits those that try to make some progress with peaceful protests and talks and renders all the previous efforts meaningless. Not to mention that now everybody is talking only about this shameful event and not about the very issues the protest was organised for.

And seriously, making so much damage to the parliament? For Christ’s sake, it’s only 19 years since we’ve achieved our independence, and kids of those who fought for our freedom go and deface the very symbol of it?

Enjoy!

Initially I had some thoughts about whether or not should I go, but in the end I grabbed the opportunity and departed. And this was, without any doubt, one of the best decisions in my life. I had so much fun, met many new wonderful friends and scouts from all over Europe. It was a week filled with various captivating activities, interesting discussions and chats, and many great moments spent together with other scouts. Simply an amazing experience.

It’s only a few days since I returned home from IMWe, but I’m already filled with sadness and sorrow for not being able to be with my new friends. Now I understand why people keep returning to Rieneck for years and why aren’t many new faces at this event each year.

This is such a fantastic experience, that is much much more than just a plain international scout gathering. IMWe is a family, which I feel being part of now as well. That’s why I’m already impatiently counting the days towards IMWe 2011, which is sadly still far in the future. Well, let’s hope there will be a reunion somewhere in the vicinity, which I’ll be able to join.

As it happens, there was an occasion last week, when I suddenly felt (out of boredom) that I need to write a poem about a guy that likes to watch the stars. Since the title might imply that this song is boring, I must disappoint you, this is not the case (well, at least I laughed when writing it), and I feel obliged to warn you, that it’s not a song to be read to children as a lullaby.

Uncle Tony watched the stars

Uncle Tony watched the stars,

while out shopping, or stealing cars.

Looking up with an intensive gaze,

his voice was clear, his eyes ablaze.

Uncle Tony watched the stars,

drinking whiskey in classy bars.

Racing ’round in his pickup truck,

with loaded guns, and explosives packed.

Uncle Tony watched the stars,

shooting people, starting wars.

Walking around in his Cowboy attire,

leaving mayhem and a ball of fire.

Uncle Tony watched the stars,

chased by the police in their fastest cars.

With two helicopters right behind,

a ray of hope for the humankind.

Uncle Tony watched the stars,

from his cell, through iron bars.

Heavily guarded in his prison,

will he change and see the reason?

Uncle Tony watched the stars,

his mind unchanged, still wishing wars.

Until the end of the great debate,

to decide upon his sorry fate.

Uncle Tony watched the stars,

on a spaceship, bound for mars.

Where he could see the stars up-close,

he shed a tear, and blew his nose.

He finally got for what he craved,

everyone happy, our existence saved.

Well, looks like you safely battled your way through this unusually large page. Congratulations! I guess you’re probably wondering who uncle Tony is? The answer is quite simple, no-one. At least no-one from the real world. And why uncle? Because it sounded better than “some guy Tony”. Now who is uncle Tony in my fictional world, well… that is to be discovered in some future song.

But it really makes you think, how is such a disproportionate ratio between legitimate comments and spam even possible? Especially when you take into account that most of those spam messages (approximately 60% in my case) are not made by bots, but from real people that try to bring traffic to their own website. I understand that my website is quite attractive for advertising through comments since Time Recursion is a do-follow website, but guys, come on! At least write something that’s related to the post you’re commenting! If you’ll insert your website address in the Website field, you’ll still get the PR juice and if the content of your comment is related to the article I’ll approve that comment without hesitation, you can be sure of that. After all, I’m always eager to get some feedback on what I write.

Yesterday I was suddenly struck by an urge to grab my guitar and play some music. The thing is, my guitar’s at home, so I borrowed one from one of my friends for a short time. It’s funny though, I’ve never felt the need or such a strong desire to play this instrument before. It was always either because I had to practice, or because I didn’t have anything better to do. This time it was the other way around. And it still is, so I’m quite anxious to come home this Thursday and put my hands on my guitar. Might aswell take some time to learn to play some new songs.

And let’s not forget about the upcoming holidays! Oh, yeah, I foresee some good things will happen during the next week and a half. If nothing else, I won’t have much work for my university, and I’ll finally be able to go to a Magic: the Gathering session with my friends. I can’t believe it’s been more than a month since we last played MTG, plus, there’s a couple of stories I’ve been planning to write and publish on my blog since this summer, but haven’t got around doing it. Maybe I’ll finish writing them this time, we’ll see.

This is good in a way, since we have instant access to almost everything we need wherever we go, but what happens if we loose, misplace, or God forbid, someone steals our precious cellphone? In that case my friends, we’re on a roller-coaster that has a stinky pond as a final stop, in other words, we’d be better off losing our wallet.

But fear not, not everything is lost. Thankfully there exist programs that’ll help you find your lost/stolen electronic property and possibly even bring the thieves to justice. How do they work? Most smart phones have GPS technology, which can be used in conjunctions with the retrieval software to send information about the device’s location. If that’s not the case, it’s possible to define the phone’s location through signal strength analysis from the few nearest stations. It’s less precise, but nonetheless very helpful. But what about flash drives, cameras or even laptops? It gets a bit harder with those, but essentially, you receive the IP address of the computer they’ve been connected to, with which you can (usually it’s the police who does that), if you get a permit, obtain the postal address of the person it was used by at that time.

Most of such services require an annual fee to use their software, but there are some other alternatives you might want to consider as well. For example, JustStolen is a service set up by a group of police officers, that offers you a place to store your gadget’s serial identification number, which makes the process of finding the owner of stolen property quicker and easier.

On the bright side, I’ve finally sweeped off the dust off my guitar and started practicing again. After almost two years of hiatus I’m actually pleasantly surprised that I still remember all chords that I knew before and can find most of their scales without having to look them up. There is one downside though. My fingers aren’t used to the metallic strings of my acoustic guitar anymore, so the progress is quite slow. It’ll also take some time to regain my previous agility in changing chords and staying in rhythm, which is proving to be quite a pain in the ass right now.

The moving of mladi.net from lunarpages to a more reliable host is also something that is giving some variety and dynamics to this summer. Apparently it’ll be up to me to come up with a good design to replace the current one and to better reflect our movement to a completely new platform as well. I haven’t really done much web designing in my life, the one so far (planthefuture.info) sucks, and the promised redesign of Time Recursion appears to be stuck somewhere on an expedition in Himalaya, wearing only shorts, a t-shirt and some old, holey All-Star shoes. Though the concept I came up with so far, looks quite good in retrospect to everything else I’ve made up to now.

Oh, and there’s also “getting familiar with php-symfony” on my to-do list, so I can help my buddy with the new platform for the website.

Anyway, I’m at the University right now, just finished writing an exam, and am preparing for two more that are coming this Friday. My University appears to be outside the boundaries of my time bubble as-well, so I couldn’t anticipate the questions on the exam, which by the way had very little in common with what we’ve been studying during the year, which leads to my  diminished self-confidence about the forthcoming results of this test. But fear not! For there is still hope drifting through my veins, and I’m not ready yet to plead for mercy before the invincible and mighty number of doom (FYI, it’s 5). Have I already mentioned that I’m high on adrenaline right now? No? Well, apparently adrenaline is equal or greater than creativity, and leads to a fast incineration of calories, resulting in immediate hunger.

I’m out for a snack now, see you later.