Authors of LiveCD's blog too

Today my lovely girl and I are together for eleven years. She seems to still love this big fool, so I keep grinning. It's going to be a foolish and crazy year :)

Location: Home

Today my lovely girl and I are together for eleven years. She seems to still love this big fool, so I keep grinning. It's going to be a foolish and crazy year :)

Location: Home

Interesting, I think I'm exactly 27.5 years old today (27 years 21 weeks and 4 days to be precise)

Location: Work

I visited Exploratorium with the idea that this is yet another science museum with a bit more hands on approach. I was very positively surprised to discovered that it’s far from that. Instead of being classical museum it’s a giant ‘playground’ where each exhibit offers you an interactive experience around some concept, mostly from physics.

Exhibits are designed to be interacted by and you soon find yourself touching everything around you and just trying to learn by feeling and doing things. There were lots of super-excited kids running around which further hyped up the whole experience.

Two interesting things to note about the whole experience:

• Some exhibits were video taped in order to be able to optimize the exhibits. I find this very refereshing as it shows that the staff here really cares about the experience and that they’re willing to go that extra mile to make it really enjoyable for the visitors. They also nicely solved the problem of privacy as they’ve clearly marked the times when the exhibit will be under video survailance so you could come later.
• They build the exhibits themselves. Their workshop is part of the scenery and while they don’t actively work on the weekend, I imagine it has to be very interesting if you’re there during the week.

Example view:

There are also a few elements that are a nice touch, like this piano with an X underneath:

Overall, a very fun thing to do in San Francisco and you should check it out next time you’re around.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Scout’s Honor: Exploratorium Promises Not to Hurt Animals (sf.curbed.com)
• Totally Irresponsible Science (nonfiction) (planetesme.blogspot.com)

Interesting links of this week:

[Flash movie] De tweede kamer op twitter

Damn funny! Our House of Representatives on Twitter (with a twist). Use the pause button if the conversation goes too fast ;)

Location: Server

I’m not sure how big deal is death of Michael Jacson back in Slovenia, but here in the states it seems quite a big thing, with all the news talking about it all the time while internet keeps generating more content and links to YouTube videos that have something to do with Michael Jackson.

As I’ve written before, Friday Night Skate has a big music element and today most of the songs were from Michael Jackson, mostly older recordings. There is also traditional Thriller dance at the Union Square, San Francisco which attracted quite a crowd and made everyone really hyped up and dancing!

I tried recording a video of it, but you unfortunely can’t see much. I’ll try to figure out something better for next week:

In short, lots of hype around MJ’s death and an interesting way how a group of people reacted to it. A bit bigger crowd this time – 40+ skaters.

Here are some of my notes from the Social Media Club panel discussion that happened tonight:

What is influence?

• Influence is a capacity to have some people do something. Actionable influence – influence as a strategy, as a process. You don’t master the outcome but you have a feeling what’s happening and where it’s going to end.
• Influence – facilitating conversations between and with customers. You have to be within the context of the conversation.
• Brands are today presented in many different worlds and the question is, how to manage all the influence there.
• Influence – the art of successfully levering what you can’t control.
• You are more influenced by the person that looks like you. What are the ethical and legal ratifications of using such technology?

How do you measure influence? Is the technology really the solution for this problem?

Technique 1: Mapping out all the people that are interesting to us, and then we converse with them (Twitter/Blog/etc.). Then we measure how often they talk about us, and what % of that is positive. After you identify a few thousand people like that, then we measure how many of them we can reach (phone, mail, etc.). Then we measure the reach of their blog and how many people connect through that.

Technique 2 (@Get Satisfaction): Asses the customer satisfaction level: where they are contextually in the conversation (are they angry?) and where they are going.

The role of crowd-sourcing and how does it impact the influence and how does that connect to “Web 2.0”?

• Twitter is not very influential, because it’s just another broadcast channel. Until we have threaded @replies, we don’t really have conversations.
  Get Satisfaction is a “Social CRM”: There’s a lot of value in deanonymizing your personal data.
• If you enable your customers to talk to each other, they’ll get value in that and you’ll get value from eavesdropping. But to get real value out of that, you have to engage in conversation with them.
• Twitter is a lot of time used as a broadcast tool, but there are true customers on there and you can reach out to them (not spam them) and engage in deep conversations with them. Too much focus on the tool is dangerous path to go down so you get too focused on the technology.
• 140 characters – going back to basics, the value of headlines. They’re teaching us to write short and teach us how to be concise.

Does Brand matter anymore?

• The brand matters, but it’s changed. Brand has to work in so many more contexts. You have to understand how does the identity form itself, how does the brand act in a funny situation, how does it work in a serious one? You have to allow and understand how it works in these contexts in order for brand to be part of the conversation.
• We can count on the large portion in B2B that want to be part of conversation that are not ready for that.
• Conversation is still the same, it just moves faster from one medium to another.
• Creative marketing can’t cover bad brands and products anymore.

How can companies become more comfortable in the social media space?

• The conversations are happening whether you’re participating in them or not. You can be afraid of them and hide from the information that’s out there, or be part of it.

What are the things that can be controlled?

• What does the technology really change? Technology changes the circumstances in which the crisis happens. It changes who the influencers and important people are. But it also gives you more tools to refine and change your message.

• The tech that allows you to target your message to a right group of people. If you talk to people about their experiences about social media:
• Ads for women are very different. It’s increasingly the case that women get very different messages then men.
• Search engine bias – there’s a big fight right now about the algorithm for search. They’re really important things from the influence point of view.
• Personalization is a bad influence in Facebook.

What’s surprising about influencing patterns today?

• The media and analysts doesn’t matter that much anymore. The buying influence is coming from the peers. When it comes to lead conversation and getting involved with them – it’s not for sales team but for the whole team. If you’re not willing to expand your role and engage in the peer to peer conversation, you’re not giving your full potential to your company or a client.
• The user interface matters. Like the recent Facebook redesign that made the user status much more prominent. You can do a lot with cue’s and prompts.

How do you develop your own influence (as an individual?) – personal brand

• Let people see who you are and what are your interests and just go with it.
• There’s something in seeing vulnerabilities in people and companies that makes you trust them a bit more.

Related articles by Zemanta

• There’s That Facebook “Everyone Button” We Told You About (techcrunch.com)
• Social Media Club – Higher Standards for a Growing Industry (wordspring.ca)
• How social media and search can reach the pickiest audience … (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
• Social Media Camp #IWNY Wrap-Up (socialmediaclub.org)

It’s easy to see San Francisco and Bay Area as the Western hub of hi-tech technology. The theory goes that one should be able to fully navigate and organize their day with a smartphone and a bit of change for the transportation. Which works pretty well for the most part.

You tell the phone to use GPS to figure out where in the space it is, you tell it where you want to go and decide on transportation mechanism: Driving, Public Transport and Walking. Google Maps then sends all this personal data to the big machine in the sky and gives you back directions. Pretty nifty as it knows most of the public transportation options.

That is also a catch for unwary traveller new to the area. It turns out that while there are plenty of transportation options during the day, the bay area public transport is tricky at night. It seems that Google Maps only knows night transportation within the San Francisco and gives up if you’re somewhere else, in Oakland for example. While 4 hours of walking are always an option, it’s not something you want to do at 1 AM. With a bit of luck you catch a cab and a bit of cash later, you’re home.

There’s a bigger lesson here. Blindly trusting the technology in corner cases such as late night trains, buses etc. is not very smart. Always check everything online three times to ensure that if you leave the party late, you’ll know how to return home and have a Taxi phone number with you, just in case ?

What a better way to kill time on a sunny Sunday then to go visit a local Zoo. San Francisco Zoo is just around the corner, and since their penguin feeding has its own upcoming.com event, I even knew how to time it

The Zoo is not too big and I really enjoyed the time there. Lots of penguins at their little Penguin island.

You can see all the photos in the San Francisco Zoo Flickr Set.

One of the positive things that happened during my visit, was that @sfzoo found my Tweet that I’m going see penguins there and Tweeted me their feeding times. Very positive experience and the fact that someone was listening on Sunday afternoon:

Dorkbot is a group that describes themselves as – People doing strange things with electricity. I was lucky enough to be able to go to their 7 year anniversary party that involved obscene amounts of electricity surrounded by geeks that actually knew what they were during so not to get anyone killed.

Event took place in blacksmith’s warehouse, that’s owned by the host – Jon Sarriugarte, who also ran the show. The first thing that you noticed when you arrived were mutated cars:

.. and of course lets not forget the ultimate geek mobile, engineering (debug?) version of Tesla Roadster electrical car:

The most interesting aspect of this car, at least to me, is that it’s totally quiet. They’ve moved it from one part of the yard to another and the only thing you could hear was the sound of the tires.

There was also the two 15-feet (4.5m) Tesla Coils, which I somehow managed to forget to take picture of in the day light. Here is one of them in action:

Inside the Kraftworks was even more fun, with food and drinks and the main scene:

Lectures of the night involved a talk about how to build your own electrical car and the pitfalls possible pitfalls, 1928 Hogan Tesla Coil, Mike Winter’s Interrogation by Robot and Omega Recoil – Wireless Transmission. Full announce.

I didn’t understand most of the first talk about electrical cars as they were talking a lot about torques, different voltages and power involved. It will probably make sense once I go out and try and build one of these.

1928 Hogan Tesla Coil is a machine seen on the picture above. The idea was to use electrical shocks to cure people with. Jon managed to find one and beautifully restore and made it work again. At the end of the night, they were also curing people with it on the stage. Jon’s blog post with more pictures and scary user manual.

And yes, it makes sparks:

Interrogation by Robot is an autonomous robot that can question the suspect and assess (with a bit of help of author) how big of a threat the person is. A fun project and another scary insight into how easy people will surrender their liberties to a robot that blinks and yells at them.

The last talk coupled with the giant sparks was about transferring energy across the space without using any wires. By using the Tesla Coil, the authors managed to light a small light bulb with wireless electricity over the 30 feet (~10 meters) distance:

The event was really fun with lots of other interesting tidbits and it’s clear that there is a passionate community here that invests a lot of effort into organizing these events.

Make sure to check out great Flickr photo set from k0re with more photos and even a few videos.

Interesting links of this week:

Axod's Hack: Revenue / Browser

This sort of went against some of my assumptions. I imagined that IE would be the top revenue generator, as you sort of imagine IE users as being less tech savvy, more 'used to' clicking on adverts etc.

The other interesting point to note is that you should never believe the extremely vocal minority who tell you that all firefox users have AdBlockPlus installed. They don't. As you can see Firefox users are the 2nd best revenue generators.

Location: Server

San Francisco looks like a city where one could really enjoy roller skating, if one didn’t mind hills, and can venture on the road once in a while because of the busy streets. It’s not surprise that Friday Night Skating started here 20 years ago! and they’re still continuing with the weekly events. Their page – California Outdoor Rollersports Association – talks that 300 – 700 people come to skate every week. In the end it turns out that they’re about 50 now, but still a big group.

I’ve only participated on Ljubljana’s Night Skate events, so I don’t have much to compare this to. It’s quite different in format in execution. Firstly, the group meets at 9pm, when it’s already fairly dark. It’s also quite cold, about 12 degrees Celsius and windy. But you dress well and it’s not a problem.

Once David “D” Miles arrives with his beat box, the serious fun starts. The whole group moves down the Pier to the first stop, where you have a really nice view of Alcatraz. There are also people with normal skates, as well as guys on bikes. The most fun was probably the soap bubble bike, full for lights that was making bubbles along the way. Lots of fun skating behind her in cloud of bubbles

The whole event lasts for three hours and it feels more like a moving party on roller skates then the sporting event that I’m used to. People dance at every stop, often random people from the street spontainiously join the fun. They even turn Union Square into one of their stops. Everyone takes the whole event in good spirit and even the random police that you meet tries to help and make sure everyone is safe.

The lenght of the circular path is about 20km and it’s not trivial, mostly because of hills and of pretty quick moves between stops. You skate a while, then have a 10 min stop for everyone to catch up and move on. While it doesn’t seem much during the skate, you can feel your legs at the end of the night.

To learn more, you should check their page: San Francisco’s Friday Night Skate that very accurately portrays the path and the events that happen, down to the tricks on the escalators.

Also check out skysurfer87’s Flickr set, to see more pictures.

Overall, the feeling is amazing. This was the most fun and intensive way to get a feeling for San Francisco, while skating by the pier, through the tunnels, across the hills and between the office buildings.

It’s something you need to experience, next time you’re in SF and can skate well enough.

Tech support is something that you have to do as you build and distribute a product or just provide a service. Most of the time, having support email address in form of support@companyname.com and startups like UserVoice and GetSatisfaction make great tools for creating positive environment where discussions and support can happen. These are all very passive forms of support, you sit there and wait for somebody to come by and throw a problem towards you.

Good news is that Twitter allows you to be proactive in your support efforts as you can monitor/eavesdrop on different conversations and engage with these users, providing helpful suggestions and answering their questions.

This requires a lot of effort on a part of support team, as they need to actively reach out to the people that mention you brand and find the right balance between helpful and annoying or even creepy (a lot of people don’t realize their Tweets are public and searchable).

A few reasons why you need to actively search Twitter, instead of just waiting for support emails:

• It’s much easier to write a quick Tweet with a rant than write an email
• You can ask people to send you email with further description of the problem, so you can catch much easier weird problems
• Honest feedback because they’re friends are listening.
• If you manage to help them, their happines/satisfaction will be visible to their followers.

Remember to find a balance and that not every Tweet that mentions your company or product should be answered.

What are your experiences with doing tech support via Twitter? Too much effort for the output?

I've been neglecting my blog for some time, so this is my attempt to at least give a gist on what had me interested this week in tech-land.

I'll have to finally admit it: it seems as if Twitter actually can be used for more than inane blurbs on what people had for breakfast (and where that breakfast went). While Twitter is anything but revolutionary, it is being put to an interesting task of communicating events from and within the burgeoning revolution in Iran. Of all sites, Fark and 4chan especially have been instrumental in helping Iranians overcome the hurdles of government censorship to get the word out.

Naturally we shouldn't give Twitter and Fark too much credit: in the end it is up to the people in the streets. Even so both have made insightful compilations like Tatsuma's possible.

I've been looking at the HTML5 canvas tag. There are a couple of interesting articles over at Opera (introduction, Wolf 3D using canvas), and Mozilla with Bespin and Thunderhead are also actively investigating (they have an interesting canvas tutorial up here). Google has given us excanvas so the road is open to cross-browser, plugin-less graphics, games and possibly even applications.

Despite all the great JS frameworks, I can't help but think application-style programming in HTML/JS/CSS is a kludge every time I do it. Will canvas be able to give us proper web applications and leave the HTML/JS/CSS-combination to sites? I don't know. It would be pretty awesome to design an interface in a Glade-like UI designer and handle the callbacks in pure JS. Then again HTML/JS/CSS are more easily made accessible and canvas is still a moving target so it is not without difficulties, but a web without the need for Flash or Silverlight would have me smiling.

Speaking about Mozilla, I've been using the Tree-style add-on for firefox for a while now. I decided to switch it off, but I simply can't stand normal firefox tabs anymore. It does take up more screen real-estate than conventional tabs, but it saves time scrolling and/or guessing. Especially when you have 20+ tabs open, which I always seem to have.

I've also been fooling around with Google's Wave designs, seeing how far I can come up with a Django/Python implementation. I often code up small prototypes around things I find interesting, it helps me understand the problems (like why and how OT works) and think about ways to solve them. Most of my prototypes don't go anywhere though. We'll see.

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It’s just over a day since I arrived to San Francisco, and it’s time to write down some initial reflections, to prevent me getting too used to them:

• starting off with the weather. It’s actually kind of cold. Around 14C throughout the day, even though reports are optimistic and claim 22C high. It’s also bit windy in some areas, making this climate even more annoying. It’s no bad, it just means I can’t walk around without a jacket.
• hills are fun. Terrain button in Google Maps actually makes lots of sense now. You actually have to consider elevation when moving around.

• I’m still afraid of getting lost. It’s not that hard once you figure out which roads are connecting ones, but from the map, it looks like something from an ant farm:

• Solution to getting lost is of course – Google Maps enabled phone. Luckily @alpheus1 borrowed me his Google I/O Android G2 phone with powerful SIM. With all those apps on your phone, that use locational services (like where’s the closest cinema, shopping and what is the best public transport route from “here” to “there), you suddenly see the Future of Mobile. It’s very bright and I can’t wait for it to come to .si
• Lots of Chinese take-away/restaurants here, the other half are hair saloons and spa’s. There’s also a place where you can legally buy medical marijuana (if you “need” it). Economy of local business development in neighborhoods has to be fascinating.
• Lots of Hybrid cars on the road, together with very big cars. Think like SUV .si, just bigger.
• People are much nicer here. Joggers in the morning actually greet each other.
• Units here are just wrong. I wanted to buy 1kg of apples in the afternoon and realized I have no idea how to explain in local language. If you are wondering, you want to get about 2 lbs (pounds) of apples.
• Working with people from all timezones is funny. My Dashboard looks currently has 5 clocks, so I don’t have to think:

• For now I still care for weather at home, so I can follow local chatter in chat rooms:

• Don’t let the weather report mislead you. It’s 14C all day.
• I have yet to try roller skating over these hills, but it seems that they’ll be at least useful for weekend sightseeing tours around the city.

I have yet to connect with local scene so the report on that follows a bit later, but just looking at events list for next week shows some very promising things.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Road test: Google public transit maps on the iPhone (gadling.com)
• Google giving small businesses local search data (news.cnet.com)
• Kicking off 2nd annual Google I/O developer gathering (googleblog.blogspot.com)

A pizza with the radius "z" and thickness "a" has the volume pi*z*z*a

Location: Work

I’m back from WWDC 2009.  What a wonderful time!  Sorry I didn’t update much about it, I was just too busy with my head buried in all the Apple goodness.  Oh my, do they have some good stuff in the pipe for you.

One of the greatest things about WWDC is the fabulous music they play before each and every session to keep the devs jazzed up.  There was a thread about collecting the songs that were played before each session because Apple wasn’t posting a playlist.  Fortunately, thanks to the iPhone, devs were walking into the sessions with Shazzam running and collecting information on any songs that weren’t recognizable and posting it to the thread.

Well, that thread has now developed into an iMix.  If you were at WWDC 2009 and want to purchase some of the songs you heard before the session, your wishes have been granted.

Sometimes stars just align the way you want. In about 48h I will land in San Francisco where I’ll stay next 3 months with two big goals: take a bit of a break and mingle with the local community and spread the word of Zemanta.

Should be fun and I’m looking forward to meeting many of friends that happen to live nearby or already told me that they’ll too visit San Francisco during the summer break.

I also have another big plan, blog daily about the adventures there, tech scene and personal development on the way. We’ll see how that goes.

Is there an event/gig you think I should check out and report about? Let me know!

Interesting links of this week:

[Dutch] Nederland, individuen en minderheden

Interesting opinion piece on minorities and the way we in the Netherlands are looking at them. The 'solutions' suggested by Wilders and co just plain will not work.

Webkit2pdf

Nifty tool. The guy made a beautiful book with it from his girl's weblog.

Location: Server

Which should I get ? Vote!

Tremendously fun.  Globally upsetting at the fuel consumption.  I love the water… and ripping on it.

I know it’s lengthy, but so much fun and I just want to share instead of edit.  It was put it together and delivered it in a day or two turnaround time by a, totally in love with the sport, relatively new wakeboarder.  This one goes out to the Euro who recently blogged about his wakin’ experience.

P.S.  Can’t you envision wakeskating behind one of these?

Ever since I went to the hike around the wire (Pot ob žici), I’m wondering if it is possible to roller skate roughly the same path. Basic idea in creating this path around Ljubljana is to find 30km+ path that will get me to the starting point while still maintaining interesting and reasonably safe roads and walk ways. The quality of road is also taken into account as it’s one of the most important factors to make the whole experience enjoyable.

Before I write anymore, here’s the proposed path:

There are a few parts of the paths that go by the road but it’s not too bad. It’s basically the routes that we take at group skating, just stitched together to make it a circular.

The most strange part is around Rudnik (south-east), where I propose making a loop through the shopping area. That could be easily cut to save 2km. Alternatively the whole Rudnik can be cut off, saving about 5km and making the whole path under 30km. With a good speed the path could be then completed in a good hour.

Do you have a better path or idea what can be improved? Let me know as I’ve been working just with roads that I know as on such map everything looks fine until you actually go there.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Jure Cuhalev: Group Roller Blading in Ljubljana (Ljubljana Nightskate) (jurecuhalev.com)

I think a world would be a better place if we would receive more of these cute and happy spams. Unfortunately I can’t throw the image into Google Translate but I imagine they’re trying to sell me kittens.

Feeling uninspired lately. Anyone knowing how to get into a nice buzz again? It would surely help to get things done again :)

(I generally get psyched when discovering/using some interesting new technique, and I have some ideas for using multiple in a new project. However, I'd like to finish several of my current projects first... Also, it's a motivational issue. How do I get motivated for an older project again? Any tips?)

Location: Home

Yesterday, Lisanne surprised me by waking me up at 8am. On a Sunday. Naturally I was grumpy as hell, especially when she kicked me out of bed and told me to get ready as we were going somewhere within the hour without telling me where.

Next thing I know, I was 'boarding behind a motorboat:

The photos really don't do it justice: wakeboarding is frackin' awesome. Thanks hon'!

(We both were actually quite good at it for our first attempt. I even managed to keep my hair dry. Which might also mean I didn't try hard enough...)

Interesting links of this week:

Google I/O Intro Video (WTF)

Funny and interesting intro/demo of what's possible with HTML5. Also, great soundtrack.

tiltshiftmaker.com - Transform your photos into tilt-shift style miniatures

Discover the world in miniature. Awesome!

ATP PhotoFinder Pro: automagic geotagging of your digital images

Just make sure your cam's clock is aligned with the GPS geotagger and go make your pics. Afterwards, put your memory card in it (no CF slot though...) and have it magically geotag them all with the right coordinates.

Nugigeruli: great music

Site by a friend/colleague of mine with the electronic music he makes in cooperation with a friend of his (also making use of real instruments). I really like what they're creating, and they don't mind sharing with the world. There should be quite some of their work online soon, so be sure to check it out.

Location: Server

I like to do a non-sequitur on people now and then.

Location: Work

After a few weeks of work on-the-side, today Pervidet sees the light! Aperte Pervidet (to survey openly) is a free web survey/questionnaire service that has grown out of a number of different Aperte projects. I'm still tweaking it in various ways and working out the kinks but if you are interested give it a try and let me know how it goes!

Technically I've dived into various technologies to make Pervidet tick. jQuery is something I've dabbled in for quite some time and I've made decent use of it in Pervidet (it makes Javascript nearly useful!). Also I've taken an interest in the design of dashboards, which I'm fleshing out in the survey-building interface of Pervidet. Naturally PostgreSQL and Django purr along happily in the backend.

Pervidet has an about-page for the full story, but it came about mostly due to being annoyed about all the existing web survey platforms. Over the next few months I plan to look into setting up other kinds of web services, hopefully a few where my AI-background comes into play too. Nothing in your portfolio beats a couple of real-world tools that are actually useful.

In other news, I turned 27 today. Getting grayer by the day! :)

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Poking allows lowkey actions, which enables your users to interact with each other without having to engage in costly in-depth interaction.

Now please don't follow me on my account there or I really have to spend time on it. Time I don't have. Time I rather spend doing something fun, or even posting on this weblog. So why did I sign up again?

Location: Home

Interesting links of this week:

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party

Awesome time-lapse video

Alternative texts for 'Smoking kills'

These look a lot more effective

Russian Wall-E Case Mod (110 pics)

Someone has too much time on his hands. Awesome computer case though!

Going Dutch - How I Learned to Love the European Welfare State. - NYTimes.com

Story from a journalist from the US that has been living for over 18 months in Amsterdam now

10 Even Better Wolfram Alpha Easter Eggs

That knowledge base can do some cool stuff

The story of Mel

Maybe they do now, in this decadent era of Lite beer, hand calculators and "user-friendly" software but back in the Good Old Days, when the term "software" sounded funny and Real Computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes, Real Programmers wrote in machine code. Not Fortran. Not RATFOR. Not, even, assembly language. Machine Code. Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers. Directly.

Lest a whole new generation of programmers grow up in ignorance of this glorious past, I feel duty-bound to describe, as best I can through the generation gap, how a Real Programmer wrote code. I'll call him Mel, because that was his name.

The Mystery Of CSS Sprites: Techniques, Tools And Tutorials

Very interesting and extensive article on the use of sprites in webdesign

Location: Server

The new film Terminator Salvation is not just bad… it’s absurd, ridiculous, boneheaded and an absolute atrocity.  The producers of this film should be vastly ashamed for not just killing the series (Terminator III already started the slow death, this one just deals the final blow), but for making me lose all interest in any Terminator film or storyline ever again.

I had a hint that this film was in a sad state when it seemed that McG, the “visionary director” behind this enormous waste of time had forgotten that he showed the name of the film once in the opening credits.  It’s truly baffling.  It’s as if he was totally not paying attention or, as I said to my friend upon exit, he just wanted us to be really sure we wanted to sit through this disaster.  The opening credits have the typical summer blockbuster 3-D titles swirling about in the background… yeah, those letters that you know will eventually come together to spell TERMINATOR SALVATION.  But uhh, before that, a white font pops up on the screen to tell us that.  Then after a few more names, the letters finally do what you expect: they come together to form the title of the film again.  TERMINATOR SALVATION.  It reminded me of a flight attendant who starts every flight with an announcement of the final destination and advises that if this is not your final destination, you should deplane at this time.

Take my advice and deplane.

I didn’t, so I sat through the rest of this cinematic diarrhea with my expectations lowering with each passing frame until there just weren’t any left.  I’m not going to bother detailing the plot because A) I hate spoilers and B) there’s no plot to detail.  There is what seemed to be the germination of a half-baked good idea, but then when McG gets the budget from the studio and an A-list dramatic actor like Christian Bale he just goes to town in an effort to prove himself.  Someone please drag his punk ass back to Drew Barrymore’s house and let them spend inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out Charlie’s Angels III.

I mentioned Christian Bale, so now I must deal with him.  I read once that Christian Bale almost deplaned from this trip and I wish he had.  I have lost so much respect for this guy that I could care less if I ever see him again.  Jonathan Nolan should probably take note and start looking for a new Bruce Wayne.  Christian Bale is so full of himself in this film that he makes that cheesy growling voice from The Dark Knight seem like Oscar material.

The action sequences in this film aren’t that bad but they feel very stitched together.  It’s as if the continuity person walked up to the director every couple of days and said, “Uhm, it’s only been 4 or 5 minutes of film time since we blew some shit up, so we should probably do something about that.”  The end result is action sequences when you least expect it and violence that goes on far longer than it probably should.

Kudos also to the cinematographers of this work who have taken great pains to come up with creative shots for just about every action scene.  Someone took some camera lessons from the Coen brothers here, perhaps.  Either that or they were trying to shoot a Terminator film in the vein of Raising Arizona to let film buffs know that they feel this movie is just as absurd as you do (in a subtle kind of way, of course).

There is one particularly exciting sequence involving a gas station, expendable humans and one seriously large, pissed off Terminator.  I highly enjoyed this scene and it stands out in my mind as a real hallmark of the film’s technical achievements.  However, after that scene, do yourself a favor and walk out.  The ending of this film is not only absurd, it questions whether or not anyone was thinking through this fertilizer at all.

To tell you the truth, even Danny Elfman’s score was forgettable.  Usually I’m a fan of Danny Elfman’s work but this was clearly not his typical, fast-paced orchestral tour de force that I am used to.  I scarcely remember a note.  It could be because there was just too much shit blowing up all the time, but who knows.

Christian Bale is absolutely pathetic as the “oh woe is me” John Conner.  Helena Bonham Carter is dreadfully awful as… some weirdo doctor who wastes my time.  Sam Worthington plays a character who could have had a decent impact on the mythos of the Terminator canon but he blows it just like everyone else.  Moon Bloodgood is the female side of the film who doesn’t talk much… probably because she knows it’s better that she just phone this one in and pick up the check.

I cannot encourage you enough to withhold your money on this one, folks.  As a matter of fact, I’m so outraged by this film and how bad it is that I simply had to sit down and write a blog post about it before any more of you go out there and give these idiots one more cent of your hard earned cash.  Stay at home and write a nice letter to James Cameron instead.  He’ll need the positive thoughts after seeing what these people have done to his baby.

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• Script swelled to match Bale’s ego (thestar.com)

FOREWARNING: SPOILERS.  IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN STAR TREK, STOP READING NOW.

While I’ve been on a trip for the day job this week in downtown Dallas, TX, some of us found time to check out of the action and head over to catch Star Trek a second time.  It’s purely logical that a few NASA geeks want to check it out again, yes?

We found an awesome theatre in downtown Dallas somewhere on Inwood St., I do believe.  What was so awesome about it is that all of the seating were mega-comfy couches and love seats.  We all tossed ourselves into a lounge seat and soaked up the movie for the second time.

This time around I was able to confirm some feelings that I walked away with when I saw the movie first.  While I absolutely love J.J. Abrams‘ work and I absolutely adore what he’s done for the Star Trek franchise, there were a few directorial errors that I felt were pretty glaring.  I hope he’s able to correct them in a director’s edition on DVD.  Just in case he happens to read this blog and care about my opinion (because it’s right), I’ll share it here with you.

• There could have had some very crowd pleasing moments at the end.  Kirk’s vengeance against Nero could have been exploited to rousing applause.  Why wasn’t it?  Don’t want to show Kirk as a monster?  You could have gotten away with this due to the character’s maturity level, I believe.
• Movie is far too short.  There should have been some exposition to explain the back story of a few subplots, but I feel like it was sacrificed either for A) pacing or B) to keep Kirk painted in a certain light.  For instance - I’ve heard that Kirk’s hack on the Kobeyashi Maru succeeded because he was seducing the green-skinned chick, who worked on the simulation.  That should have been left in.  Again, perhaps it wasn’t because it may show Kirk objectifying women… and again, due to the character’s age, I think that would have been acceptable and realistic.
• Overall, the Kobeyashi Maru scene was disappointing.  It would have been much more interesting if Kirk had played the simulation better and acted his part even though he knew the final result.  Having the computers flicker was also a pretty sad call.  I believe viewers could have figured out what happened if the previous explanatory scene regarding the hack had been left in.

Let’s remember folks - Kirk was a kid in this film.  Everyone knows that Kirk’s “I don’t like to lose” mantra always comes first, which is partly why we liked him.  Let’s also remember that he objectified every single female alien in the Federation even when he was older, so why couldn’t we have dealt with that in this new version?

Overall, great film - but at least you know what my version would have looked like too

If you stroll around Ljubljana in mid-week evening, you might have been scared by a bunch of people on roller blades speeding around the streets and screaming at people to move away and stop blocking the road!

While roller blading gets really fun when you’re skating in pairs it gets really wild when you are in a group. It becomes even easier to skate for longer time and a bigger group can protect itself better as the first person can stop the traffic and ensure others can cross the road more safely. Cars also notice you more and reroute the traffic accordingly.

How to join? The best way is to drop by Kotalkališ?e Tivoli (next to Hot Horse) on Monday at 19h. You can also join Facebook group Nightskate Ljubljana if you want to get reminded. There are a few other smaller groups that have different days, but Monday group is the best to start with.

The routes are not difficult and the group really makes sure that the speed is suitable for everyone. We usually finish around 20h on Prešeren Square for finishing ice cream. The group usually has between 10 and 15 members.

That’s about it, just join us

Running forward and never taking the time to smell the roses or to reflect things that just happened. In order bo break this bad habit, here’s a bit reflection from someone who was present during most of Mini SeedCamp Ljubljana planning as well as second BarCampLjubljana.

Events are group efforts

Both #SCLJ and #BCLJ were organized by a great team of people who worked together and that made a world of a difference as there was less stress on the day and you can achieve so much more.

I do feel that groups organizing community driven events should grow or if that not, at least rotate some of their members to ensure that new perspectives get put in place and that the team is not limited by their networks and abilities.

Having a great team of people around and being just one of the many that is trying to achieve the same goal – have a great event – meant a world to me.

We need to grow the community

We did forget to ask the classical BarCamp question – “who here is a first-timer” but I did see lots of known faces. Almost too many and I think it showed. We’re still not reaching wide enough audience of thinkers and doers and are limited mostly to web geeks. While this means that we might have a good seed for SocialMediaCamp or WebGeeksCamp, we should be able to go broader.

One positive effect of having event on Friday at IJS, was that researchers working there could join us and a few of them even gave talks. The question is – how to attract them to the event, even if it’s being held on Saturday?

Lets upgrade the format

We held event twice at IJS now and I am extremely happy with the support from Nina and Sebastjan and the infrastructure that they made available to us. Wi-Fi that just works, enough space to talk and mingle, while still having enough tracks for the amount of people present.

At the same time, I do recognize that the venue leaves an important mark at everyone present. As such I would be interested in seeing ideas on alternative venues as well as maybe upgrading the event to 2 days with maybe a possibility of sleep-over. I do recognize that the second is a big step forward, but if we manage to attract wider audience – we might be able to do it.

I’m also missing more fun stuff from BarCamps – Werewolf, PowerPoint Karaoke, del.icio.us karaoke and many other events people play to relax after very constructive day. Maybe even group projection of latest episode of Dr. Who (in spirit of BarCampLondon). Right now we’re just focusing on networking and talks and this isn’t right. We should be able to provide space for more fun activities as well as space and opportunity for people to grab their computers and hack or just discuss things in pairs or small groups.

BarCamp inspires and is breeding group for big ideas

We heard some great updates on stories from #BCLJ1, how Pixna continued, the upcoming features of  Twitulater and probably several more that I missed. It would be great if we could track these things and show the real value of these events to skeptics and newcomers.

Conclusion

I have a few simple wishes for the next few months:

• Alternative BarCamps from other organizing teams organizing events, even if much smaller. BarCampKoper or BarCampLjutomer would be great
• Starting work on educating new parts of public on great new collaborative ideas
• Lets grow the event and mix in even more people!
• Make sure to followup on all the inspiring ideas and provide stories from participants at barcamp.si so we can enable them further

Interesting links of this week:

Google Sky Map Now Available In Android Market!

Now that's just awesome! A planetarium in your pocket... (Even `Hey, where's Venus right now?' *arrow pointing in direction so you can orientate that way* `Ah, there she is')

Location: Server

There is a really disturbing trend developing in health care.  I can sum it up thusly: the insurance company will decide the fate of a patient’s treatment.

One company in particular seems to know better than any medical professional that has ever taken a medical class: Aetna.  You see, Aetna thinks that because the doctor didn’t do a sleep study on me and there is no “official” diagnosis, then he has no right to request that I obtain a prescription to fight the narcolepsy for a month while they line up some time in the clinic.  Therefore, there simply refuse to let me have it.

Oh sure, I could pay for the prescription myself - but if a doctor wrote the prescription, why must the insurance company outright deny the claim?  Better yet, my doctors have to spend time calling and justifying their work and prescription recommendation… which, they did… and… well, Aetna still just doesn’t care.  No narcolepsy drugs for me.

This isn’t the first time Aetna has known better than any of my doctors.  I’m sure it won’t be the last.

I’m going to try to get the doctor to work through the appeals process on this one since the study is still the better part of a month away, but it’s pretty unnerving that health insurance companies, in the interest of the Bottom Line, can screw their custome