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.

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.

Why, well, those of you who know me a bit better, or have read some of my earlier articles, will quickly make the connection. I’m a science fiction, fiction and action lover and I love good movies. And this one was awesome! Not just because of the story, which thankfully, hasn’t changed much from the comics, but more because of the way it was filmed. Do you remember the movies Sin City, 300 or Kill Bill? The scenes are filmed in the same style and in my opinion, this adds to the overall quality of the movie not only from the visual perspective, but also from the point of the storyline. It’s really unbelievable how much you can achieve by smart placement and movements of the camera, to make details you want the watcher to be aware of, stand out. Moreover, the actors did a good job as well, especially Jackie Earle Haley in his role as Rorschach.

And now for a bit of history. It’s interesting to know, that the production of this movie started about 20 years ago and was accompanied with failures since then. Through past two decades, the production rights changed many hands, and even more directors and screenplay writers. Many have tried to adapt the story for the movie, but whenever they tried, they couldn’t come up with a satisfactory result. Until at last, Zack Snyder, the director of 300, took over what was left and decided to retain the original story and give it a go. But the troubles continued, with further litigation from other studios who tried to make this movie before and the story is far more complicated than this short description makes it look. Wikipedia has a short excerpt on this issue, further down, below all the other info on the movie. For comic enthusiasts, here is also some info on the original comic series.

After almost half a year of preparations, tests and calculations, they finally assembled their probe and sent it towards the sky with great anticipation. The probe was equipped with a GPS module, a photo camera and instruments to measure air temperature, humidity and pressure.

They set themselves a goal, to reach at least 10,000 meters of altitude, which is the height where most commercial airlines fly. But the probe, with a 4 meters wide balloon filled with helium went even higher. It flew all the way up to almost 30,000 meters where it lost its inflation and returned back to Earth. Luckily enough, the “crash landing” didn’t do too much damage, so the probe was easily located through it’s GPS signal and retrieved, along with the pictures that were taken during the trip.

More pictures can be found at Meteotek’s Flickr photo page.