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.

On a lighter note, I’ve upgraded my blog to the latest wordpress version, and fixed the commenting system which was causing some trouble lately. Oh, if you haven’t noticed yet, we’re no longer using the SezWho plugin. They’ve been acquired by JS-Kit, which uses a similar system, which is richer in functionalities, even a bit too rich if you ask me. And since it offers so many options, it makes the commenting interface too complicated and bulky, complicated to a degree that I feared it would do more damage than good. And it doesn’t support Gravatars! How could they forget about them?!

If the release dates advertised can be trusted, we will be able to try it out sometime in August this year, and then find out if it can really be crowned as the true successor to the legendary cube. Until then, enjoy this demonstration video:

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.

In an attempt to protect the rights of the music authors, Microsoft has degraded the functionality of your sound card through his software in order to prevent you from recording any quality music. This however makes your hardware useless and directly questions you, why bother buying something that you can’t even use? Furthermore, the software denies you access to your own files, and renders them inaccessible and completely useless. And it doesn’t stop here. From now on you’re not allowed to interfere and change your installed programs any more. If you attempt to change a file that is essential for the operation of a certain program, you’re instantly sealed off from that section and unable to access your Local Settings folder anymore. You can’t even move those files and examine them somewhere else, no matter what privileges you have on that computer.

What they’re trying to achieve through such limitations bears a positive message, because they’re trying to fight piracy. However, in my opinion they’ve started at the wrong place. Limiting access to something you own is not the answer, instead they should take more care in the way they redistribute paid software and find other means to prevent people to copy it without permission. After all, who doesn’t want to have full control of something he or she paid for? With such actions I’m more and more of the impression that even after I paid the price, I’m still not the one who owns that software. And that’s not right! I’m not prepared to simply watch how my computer restricts me from my own property!

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.

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.

So, what are the things that we need? This mostly depends on the landscape you have in mind, but if you’d like to make something more traditional, then you’ll need moss, stones, some old newspaper paper, duct tape, lights and emballage boxes.

First of all, you have to cover the spot you chose for your crib with either some newspaper paper, an old table cover or something else that will ensure no damage will occur to your flor (or excessive humidity by the moss… and anyway, it makes your life easier when it comes the time to clean up everything). The next step is to model the landscape. This year I haven’t got much time to be too inventive, so I just made a hill with a cave out of the box, but if you take more time you can use the paper to make hills, valleys, or anything that comes to your mind. If you’d like to place some lights, or if you have a small water pump and would like to make a river, this is the ideal time to place them into your creation.

When you’re satisfied with the relief of your landscape, you can start placing rocks and forming the entrance of your cave (if you have any). You don’t need any glue, or anything similar, you just have to place the rocks in the way they fit together, and you shouldn’t have any problems. Of course, if you have small kids that like to play on the Christmas crib, gluing the rocks together is not such a bad idea, otherwise you’ll end up with an unrecognizable scene after a few such events.

And now for the final step. Placing the moss and the figures. At this point I’d like to point out, that it is best if you collect the moss at least a week before you plan on making the Christmas crib and leave it spread somewhere on fresh air to dry up. If you don’t follow this suggestion, you may find yourself with different insects coming out from the moss, or even mould, because of the higher indoor temperatures. With the moss on your crib, all you have to do is to place the sand or gravel for the road and the figures. And that’s it!

Now all you have to do is to sit back, power up the lights and enjoy the view on your own Christmas crib.

Here’s also a later addition. My younger brother made a little forest out of small plastic Christmas trees, which came out really nicely.

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.

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