Wall and Echo

First moment of seeing a computer is not something you remember, for me it could be 20 years ago, and I don't. What I do remember is, the geekness appeared, having something hi-tech and able to control it. Not only in Eastern Europe, but at that time, anywhere was pretty much hard core about having a computer. You were a kid, and it was expensive or you find yourself visiting the friend more often who had one. When I look at it now, it was a lot of luck. First the 8 bit's, funny was, I was learning to write in school with pen and at home on keyboard at the same time. This will definetly influence my future. After 20 years, noone is able to read my handwrittings except signature but it's pretty clear I do write better on the laptop. I find myself a bit disabled, in the hand writting point of view. Communist had this great idea to teach left handed people write right hand, or maybe it wasn't the communism but the stupid teacher and school and social system. The result, I was writting so bad, that I was getting slaps with a ruler in front of the class. Well, that fucked up was my first grade.

The situation around us for the whole time is pretty much bad, no matter how many times or ways you look, it just stays that way. I mean, the life? Yours or mine.

Is it something you pretend and create to live worth anything, is it? I just doubt the question, it can matter only to you, and probably noone else. When you have something, that matters to someone else, don't let it go, you may not find it again. Sometimes we think that what we found worth a lot, or we just pretend it that way. No matter if you do pretend or really feel, you can loose it easily. I lost so many times and I told myself this will be the last one, but it keeps coming back. Something terrible did happen, do I found myself on the edge of the cliff ready to just let it go. No, I don't, and never will. I rather spend the life standing and facing the cold wind from north on a not so really welcoming surroundings a top of hill above the ocean.

I remember the first moment when I met her like it was yesterday, , even when it happend years ago. It's because of the moments that made you feel special, that things out of the sudden started to mean. I almost always felt the meaning of what I am, of what is she.
I met her at not really welcoming phase of my existence, it was for few months age of wonders, age of stuff that was burried for years appeared again in reality. It wasn't pleasant for anyone around, especially me and the closest one. Almost three months I was falling somewhere inside where I didn't even know I started heading. It's because you tend to loose the big picture, which for me do explains a lot, always. After some months, you just realize, oh my god did I really think or do this? big picture appears, and all the things you was blind to are there, you see them clearly. It's something so different you didn't seen coming, but it was there. Now it starts to disappear, but the collateral damage is for some unbearable, and they tend to loose to hope.

I am sorry for it and ashamed of myself,
things are completely different. I hope, one day you can see it

Fresh boot to writing

I had this long pause in writing, longest since I actively started publishing 4 years ago. Why is that I ask, no clue, some part is played by the 2008 year of major changes and twist ups in my life. After I look at it, I sincerely was in a way depleted, not without thoughts to write about, but just so chaotically sucked into real life problems and challenges.

Few major things happened to me in recent months or days, not going to any detail but I find myself changed in a ways, and see new ways how to be changed even more which I like. It makes me happy in a way, that I see some parts which aren't really a good ones, and now some of them are gone. Others which still exists, are in the aim now, some are discovered and being taking care of.

The writing, I was thinking about writing the whole time which I didn't wrote a line, I mean a line of sense from me, not some news letter or a press release which sounds more like a marketing, pr and work kind of stuff. Sense was in me, but not published. Two weeks ago, or something my friend asked me if I want to write a article about openness in source and communities for a printed weekly cultural magazine. Why not I said, it's been a while since I published some piece. After some agreements what they expect and when, I had like a week to finish it. Some shit happened, I didn't slept for a few days, personal and work load was amberable. There I was, 1 hour before the deadline, didn't had a god damn thing written, that's a start. Half of the text was finished one hour after deadline. Not so light fatigue took it's place and the thought about writting more tomorrow appeared. Few hours in dream land and now you write, in your bad morning moods, no thoughts, empty shell, finish the story. Somehow the article was made 30 minutes before the deadline for printing, so it will be published. You woudln't expect much of such extrem conditions writting, it seemed like a no big deal article. But the other authors from the weekly magazine made me believe I was wrong. The article was mentioned as first article in the editorial, and that feels a way impressive for me. I kinda like the article now.

iphone and me

Beginning of this year,my close friends and colleagues had this iphone mania, I certainly
wasn't into at all. They were obssed by macs anyhow, still few of them do graphics, which seems
logical. But for me, the apple mania died last Christmas when I gave my macbook black
to my sister as present under the tree and switched to more suitable and reliable old
fashioned linux, since sometimes I do want to hack a bit, and on macs I founded my hands bounded.

Long story short, I bought a iphone cos of the deal, not because of the device. I wasn't reading about them at all, so basically I had only opinions of the iphone and i nerds, which wasn't really objective at all.
Phone costed less than 25 euros, and it seemed the best choice comparing the price and power.

What I discovered after having it for few days was quite shocking for me. First of all, you turn your iphone on,
it ask for a pin code and when you cancel it you can normally use the device without any restrictions except GSM/3G services. Which means, If I lost my iphone, anyone can read my emails which I have there, my smses, my notes, my anything, I even think that you can synchronize the whole god damn bloody thing and literally steal all the shit from it. This made me realize a security code policy, which actually solved the problem, anyhow it's still annoying to turn your phone on, put a security pin and then a regular pin. Do that every morning for two weeks and you found yourself crazy.

Paul Watson - problem of the earth

Paul Watson is one of the original activist in greenpeace and founder of sea shepherd observation society for upholding international regulations on fishery and ocean protection. He is leading one of the most radical green movement on planet, he sunk whole whaling fleet of 8 ships and ended whaling in northern sea. Paul:

I think the problem is that we don't really understand what we are, in essence of we are coincided naked apes but our mind is some sort of a divine legend, and we see our self some sort of a god. We think we can walk on the planet and deciding what who will live and who will die, what we will destroy and what will prevail. The truth is we are just a bunch of primates without control.

We are now in the middle of third world war, but the enemy is not ourself, the objective is to save the planet from ourself. There is no hope for masses of humanity, anything they never had and never will. All social changes are from passion, intervention of individuals, small group of individuals. Slavery wasn't ended by any government or institution, woman got the right to vote not because of any government. Civil rights movement is the same thing, India with Mahatma Ghandi, in South Africa Andela. Again is always individuals, you need those individuals with passion and energy to get involved. I don't know any government or institution doing anything to solve this problems. All over the world I am seeing individuals and non government organizations that are passionate to protect ecosystems, species, civil rights. That where I see some optimism, that's where the change is happening.

There is no species on the planet that has survived ignoring the basic laws of ecology and we are breaking those everyday in every way that's going to be on our demise in a very short period of time in less we learn to live harmoniously with the natural world.

Future generation are going to look back on us and they gonna think of us as barbarians, the same way we think of slave trades. There are going to look at us as barbarians, the fact that we are burning all the fossil fuels in few generations, that we wiped out the oceans, we driven species to extinction.

This is the worst, we know what we are doing. The scientist know, the environmentalist know, the companies know and the general public knows and we are allowing ourselfs to do it.

We are the top predator to choose which species will survive and which not.

Floating brain

Sometimes you feel a bit deserted about yourself, like a mindless walking corpse. In such cases I try to focus on creativity, which most of the time bring me back to myself again. You cannot be creative all the time, it's possible for almost all the time :)

I'm glad the Christmas madness is over, cos you spend so much money, throw so much energy and the results is just presents and happiness for small amount of people. What about these other thousands of millions out there? That's what I'm thinkin most, how I can live to help others and still survive as a normal person.

One needs to have time for himself to think about the stuff around. Sometimes it's matter of hours, sometimes days, it never been longer yet. I needed a plan for this year, something to accomplish, far beyond I did before. It's calling, pushing the limit, push it as far as you can.

I decided that is allright for Slovakia to host a OpenOffice.org conference (OOOCON). It will be hard, to hopefully get it approved by the OOO team and finally realize it. I started to make the steps from now on, so I can overlook some fuckups from some nasty Slovaks which are full of shit.

I started to put together around 10 EU country partners for a Framework Programme 7 of the European Commission, and the best is that the government office of Slovakia is willing to participate in such open standards and Free/Libre and Open Source Software projects. It's because of the egovernment and initiatives of the commission like IDABC. For the sake I believe it will be a way different than the Ministry of Finance losers, who are generally incompetent in anything and signing "great" deals with Microsoft.

January is a snail for me, the seed has been planted and I must take care of it until it grow into results. And everybody love the harvesting season, isn't that right? :)