Time Recursion

[SinglePic not found]Shoving aside the largely unsuccessfully propagated, mostly true and real prejudices about the dangerously low health factor of fast-food and similar mostly American “fat-food goods”, I was delighted to stop at McDonald’s last evening. Again. After a few days’ break though, to console the irritated uprising horde of readers flashing a mix of alarming reactions on their clearly shocked faces. Hey, I can’t help myself! A nicely packed, warm, tasty Big-Mac is still a Big-Mac, no matter the rampaging economic crisis. And surprisingly enough, an unhealthy meal at the said “restaurant” is still much cheaper and commonly affordable than it’s healthy equivalent of the same caloric composition served in a fancier ambient. And not to mention that it takes less time and effort to order and consume it!

[SinglePic not found]Whew, it’s over. The hectic days I mean. This weekend has been packed with various scouting events, preparations for the Day of youth in our local Catholic community, studying for an exam, and not to talk about the unexpected attack on one of the sites I help to manage. I really had a hard time locating all the compromised files and ensuring better security. And there are still things I have to take care of, but at least the schedule’s not so tight anymore.

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About a month ago, at the Nuremberg Toy fair in Germany, the new Rubik’s puzzle was officially presented. It’s called Rubik’s 360, and is in fact a sphere and not a cube anymore! To be more precise, this new wonder is composed of three spheres, that contain six balls, which you have to move all the way to the outer shell, and place them in their corresponding places. This new creation is less complicated, from the mathematical standpoint, than the original cube, and there are no mathematic algorithms involved in any of it’s solutions, but this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t represent any challenge. By the looks of it, and by what the demonstration video shows, it’s evident that it’s quite easy to spend a lot of time to solve this new puzzle.

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After the initial testing of the beta version of Windows 7, the forecasts and the first impressions were very optimistic. Although Windows 7 uses the same base core as Vista, even the beta version seemed to finally incorporate what we should already be using under Vista. Many testers and enthusiasts were very happy with what the new operating system had to offer and have already proclaimed it as the true successor to the most popular Windows of all time, the Windows XP.

With more time passing, it looks like everything is not so bright after all. Windows 7 has now started to lose his shiny title of the OS we have been dreaming about since the beginning.

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That’s right, the New Year will come one second later this year because the UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) needs to be adjusted. This is nothing new actually, such adjustments, or “leap seconds” were added quite frequently in the past, to reduce the difference between the mean solar time and the TAI (International Atomic Time) and are usually applied on the 31st of December or on 30th June.

But why are such adjustments needed? The reason behind this is in the way we measure time. From 1967, the second is defined as the oscillation of an atom of Celsium-133, which can be measured by an atomic clock. This is by far the most reliable and most accurate definition, and allows a precise measurement of time. The Earth’s rotation however, is not so precise and is constantly affected by tidal friction, glacial rebound and other unpredictable events. Because of this, the time needs to be corrected to stay synchronised with the actual mean solar time.

It’s Christmas, and with Christmas it is also time to make the Christmas crib. I’m the one responsible for preparing it at our home, and this year I started the whole preparations and crib making at the last minute, today, since I’ve been away for the rest of the week and had no time earlier.

But this hasn’t affected them in any way, and I think that the final result is quite good compared to the previous years. That is why I’d like to share with you, my readers, a few tips on how to make a unique Christmas crib, without much expense, that will not only make you proud when finished, but also give you some relaxation and fun in the process of making.

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Last week, we had a doors open day at my University (Faculty of Computer and Information Science in Ljubljana), when all of our laboratories, activities and projects were presented. I must say that I was quite impressed by what was shown, because I didn’t really have a clear idea about all the things my University is involved in. From projects on the field of the artificial intelligence, computer sight, projects and work with optimization of the DNA deciphering, and a lot of projects going on on the EU and international level.

All in all, the day was quite interesting, mostly because of the free to enter competition in retro computer games, free food of course, and because of the main event, the robot competition. This year’s task was to “catch or run”, or to better say, to make robots behave like mouses or cats and viceversa. Unfortunately I don’t have a movie from this year’s competition, but I can show you how it looked like last year, when the robots had to move along a line as quickly as possible and avoid various obstacles.

When choosing which food to eat, I usually prefer something I know about and what I can trust has the same taste as it had years back. I rarely try something new, though lately I started to force myself to lose this weird prejudice about unknown food. And although it may seem that I don’t like anything exotic, I really love the mix of tastes the European cooks didn’t ever dare to try out. I’m talking about Chinese food.

At first I was a bit sceptic, because I didn’t know anything about their food, and also because I liked the food I ate till then, and didn’t really feel any need to try out something new. But when I first tried it, it was like finding a new world of tastes! Why didn’t anyone before think about chicken with ananas, or peanut sauce? Or fried bananas with honey? They’re fantastic! And on top of that, I found a neat restaurant, with a self-service option, so I can take as much as I want, while paying the same.

Ahh, student life is great: everyday, lots of good food for little money (if you have enough time of course)… yummy