Rational Idealist

Every now and then in life, coincidences chain themselves up so, that it gets creepy and I start start to wonder about the faith. Not necessarily huge coincidences, a chain of smaller ones can be just as important.

The other day I was thinking about the regular geek’s special social status and thought about writing a blog about it.

The next day somebody proposed an interesting way of deescribing the core product my company is developing: “relevancy engine”.

The next day I spent with my friend, and was feeling a bit confused after I had to catch an airplane again.

While waiting at the gates, I heard an announcment that everyone should find their way towards gates and everybody else should get lost from the building. An interesting way to handle a bomb threat I must admit.

In the meantime I decided to do something useful and was browsing the web for ‘relevancy engine’, to see if it already exists. The very first hit was an article about geek relationships. I got to know quite some new things about myself.

I arrived home late, and only had time to read the latest blog entry from my favourite Wanderer, and went to sleep. The first song played at random from my iPod this morning was ‘the Wanderer‘ b U2 & Johnny Cash – a fantastic piece I heard for the first time, even though I am a fan of them both.

   Yeah I left with nothing

   Nothing but the thought of you

   I went wandering

Yes, we’ve finished! The revolutionary weather forecast interface has been deployed to slovenian national television’s site

It gives users a chance to get accurate forecast for cca 400 towns in Slovenia, which means almost all the towns and some villages even. They also get RSS for their hometown.

Some would ask, why do we need this? Pick a town in the interface and look at the forecast. Now pick a town, that looks nearby, not exactly the next one, but two or three dots away. Note the dofference? The forecasts are actually that different and accurate. OK, now go to the front page of the site, and note the former forecast. Note the sun+cloud+rain symbol? What does that tell you? They just combine whatever is to happen and in the most cases this means everything.

Some would ask, where are the temperatures? Well, they’re not there, that’s for sure. 🙂 But frankly, the temperatures don’t change much across the land, and we don’t have so precise temperature forecasts. Unfortunetly.

All in all, I am quite pleased. There are things to be improved, but this is finnaly a weather forecast I can appreciate.

Credits go to Uros and Jure for great work they have done on backend and frontend.

Pariz in Ženeva sta v mojih spominih nekje zelo blizu skupaj. Ne po umeščenosti v življenju – v Parizu sem bil turist, v Ženevi pa na konferenci, bolj po uporabniÅ¡ki izkuÅ¡nji.

Ženeva je pravzaprav nekje med Berlinom in Parizom. Imajo germanske enodružinske hiše in Pariške mnogostanovanjske soseske z visokimi pločevinastimi strehami, vse skupaj začinjeno s primerno razpršenimi sedeži mednarodnih organizacij, ki naredijo mestu zelo samosvoj vtis parka.

Parižani dejansko stalno hodijo naokrog z bagetami. Zanimivo pri tem je, da nikoli nisem videl parižana, k ibi tisti kruh dejansko jedel, stalno pa paradirajo z njimi po mestu. V Ženevi imajo podobno navado, le da kruh zamenjajo glasbila. Skoraj enako pogosto kot bagete v Parizu sem tu srečal glasbenike s kovčki za violine, flavte, kitare ipd… Tako da, ali so vsi po vrsti člani kakega simfoničnega orkestra, ali pa vsaj mafije.

V Parizu so mi edinkrat doslej izgubili prtljago na letališču – precej običajno za tisto letališče sem sliÅ¡al pozneje. V Ženevi se mi je prvič zgodilo, da so mi pozabili rezervirati sobo v hotelu, kar je povzročilo precej slabe volje. Pa ne pri meni, jaz sem miren in dobrovoljen po naravi. Težava je bila, da sem zmotil njihov naravni red – postal sem napaka v matrici, zaradi česar so bili nenadoma sicer Å¡e vedno neskončno potrpežljivi in vljudni, a Å¡e vedno vidno razburjeni. Å vicarji so pač tradicionalno urarji, njihova vizija idealnega sveta je urni mehanizem, ki ga oblikujejo in potem pustijo da teče sam od sebe. Napake v delovanju pa najbrž vzamejo osebno, kot nepopolnost lastne sprevidevnosti.

Ob vsej urejenosti sem najprej preveril, kje je kak cigaretni ogorek na tleh in se oddahnil, ko je bil le pol metra od mene. Ta eksperiment sem še večkrat uspešno ponovil, tako da lahko potrdim, da so očitno povsem normalni Evropejci.

Poleg hiÅ¡ ima Ženeva Å¡e dve sorodnosti z Nemčijo in Berlinom. Prva je pokopališče, ki je dosledno germansko, z nizkimi grobovi enakomerno razporejenimi med peščenimi potkami in le nekaj francoskimi ‘hiÅ¡icami’ v zadnji vrsti. Druga sorodnost, ki me je izrecno spominjala na Berlin so pa gradbišča – pol centra Ženeve sestavljajo gradbišča, kar precej ustreza situaciji okrog bivÅ¡ega zidu.

Sem pa doživel eno ogromno razočaranje v Švici, ki bo za vedno zaznamovalo mojo percepcijo te alpske državice. V Švici skorajda ni Alp. Naj ponovim, v Švici skorajda ni Alp. Vem, ker sem se pri belem dnevu peljal skozi celo Švico od Züricha na vzhodu do Ženeve na zahodu in ves čas gledal skozi okno, iščoč tiste slavne serije tunelov in viaduktov. no, ni jih. Mogoče so na južni meji z Italijo, a na obzorju jih skorajda ni bilo slutiti. Zdaj, ali nam lažejo zemljevidi in je Švica bistveno obširnejša kot si jo predstavljamo, ali pa pretiravajo v poudarjanju alpskosti. Mi smo se večino časa vozili ob ogromnih jezerih, polnih jadrnic in kopalcev, tako da sem imel občutek, kot da sem na Sredozemskem morju.

Hotel je bil spodoben, več tako ali tako ne bi pričakoval od treh zvezdic. Samopostrežni zajtrk, z natanko eno vrsto kruha, ki pa je bil ena tistih dražjih, polnozrnatih sort; Podobno je veljalo za sok, rogljičke, sire, jogurte. Namesto marmelade so nam ponujali neke želeje… go figure.

Å vicarji ne vejo kaj je to kava. ÄŒaj je enako grozen.

Oh, in še nekaj se mi zgodilo prvič. V sicer snažnem hotelu sem srečal ščurka. Nisem imel srca, da bi jim povedal.

Image via WikipediaI finally found some time to blog about my recent activities. I have only a few minutes left before todays meetings start… 🙂

On wednesday, we finally launched the Odprti kop service, me and Andraž were preparing for our national TV for the last 6 months. It’s very cool, and other bloggers have made full reviews, so let me just quote myself: here is one of my TV show articles from alst december, on how spoiled we really are:

Resnična resničnost: Gadgeti

Vir: RTV Slovenija

The presentation and launch is avaliable at Kiberpipa.

So anyway, besides that, we’ve started our own company Zemanta, which will focus on putting similar ‘smart technologies’ into real web, not just academia conferences. Expect more of it soon!

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there are days, when i work a lot and feel good about it

some days, after i work a lot, i just feel tired

but some days, i just feel sad, no matter what i do.

anyway, i got new server. many thanks to my good friends trillian, maq, and kiberpipa, who contributed bits and pieces…

i so f****ing hate the ‘www.apple.com/support’ message…

No prejudices, only preferences!

No wishes, only fetishes!

To be is to be demanding.

http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2007/03/05/1

hm

en dan kasneje sem bil na naslednjem zhuru in edina oseba, ki je nisem ze sam kdaj pripeljal v pipo je bila neka soseda, ki je sčasoma ugotovila, da je prijateljica naÅ¡e najljubÅ¡e kustosinje… 😉

Nič hudega sluteč sem šel na pijačo z bivšim pipcem. Sčasoma se nama je pridružilanjegova prijateljica. Sčasoma smo se vsi skupaj pridružili njeni najboljši prijateljici, ki se mi je zdela nekam znana. No, sčasoma sva ugotovila, da se poznava preko skupnega prijatelja, ki je tudi pipec. In ravno ko sva to razglabljala, je tista prva omenila, da je njen brat tudi pipec.

Skratka srednje naključno zbrani štirje ljudje sredi noči na pijači v Ljubljani smo bili vsak na popolnoma drugačen način vpleteni v našo najljubšo klet. Zanimivo.