.[brjus] is back!

.I was in a need of something to let my thoughts stray away from some subjects. And what can be better in such a situation than a world desperately needing a saviour ;)? There are only a handful of men capable of this deed. Chuck Norris ;), ... and of course the Bruce (not almighty this time)!
Do you still not know what I'm talking about? The whole civilized world (a.k.a. the USA ;) ) is again facing a great peril, this time based on hacking (some computers). Yeah, Die Hard 4.0 has come into our cinemas :).
I have to admit, this film is the best comedy I've seen this year ;). Full of (unintended) jokes and action moments exceeding everything that you know about physics and computers :). But it's definitely entertaining if you're not expecting the greatest movie of all times. Tough sarcastic lines of Bruce, said while driving completely shot up police car at full speed in a dark tunnel and planning how to actually destroy the helicopter with the same car :), are stellar. That's not all the fun you'll get for your money, lots of bad guys (unwilling to die after only a dozen of direct hits), lots of action (Bruce keeping a truck with a huge trailer on the bridge which is slowly collapsing; destroying the F-35 with almost bare hands; shooting down a helicopter with the help of a car - this is done twice! ...) and lots of crap ;). Anyhow, with the right mood this picture is a great fun :), check it out. And bow before the man called Bruce ;)...

.slalom world cup

.my own sport activities are somehow frozen these days. That's one of the reasons I've decided to took a part in Prague's leg of kayaking world cup (with many of the best athletes competing). The facility is really close to my dormitory. The actual noise and fan ovations could be heard from the window :). Of course I've taken my camera to take some nice photos of this nice dynamic sport. Unfortunately our favourites (sportsmen from Slovakia) haven't won. Famous Martikan finished 2nd (and it was really close after his amazing second run). Our still young super talent Dukatova took the 4th place. Not bad but could have been better ;)...

.new graduates are in town

.yeah, some of my friends from the university have become graduates today. To celebrate this event a bit we decided to meet in one pub near Florenc metro station.

We have had some good time including a lot of jokes about russian mafia ;). Sorry, Sasha, it was inevitable :).

Now the question of further life is gaining more and more of weight. How to start career, where to do it, etc. In three months the same will be true about me, real grown up life... I'm not sure I'm very eager about all this. Life of a student is not bad, you know ;).

Anyway, cheers to Gargii, Jozko and Feci!

.bbq all day round

.as the end of June was approaching a traditional (third time this year) cottage party at Drinov was being prepared. It is a celebration of the end of summer semester (next year it'll be something new, just a vacation...). This year it was also an opportunity to celebrate 3 new graduates (alas, not me...)!
The only problem was with not very pleasant weather forecast. Unfortunately it was fulfilled... Heavy rain and strong wind from the overcast sky :(. That quickly ended my plans to travel there on bike. Thus we have chosen a bus as a way of transportation. Luckily it's not that far away, therefore after some 30 minutes we were at our destination.
To find some decent placement for a barbecue while it's raining is a bit of a challenge. Yet it was beaten quite professionally and the first meal was served in no time :). After some time the sun spread its rays over the damp ground and warmed the whole situation ;).
Some people left and others joined our neat meeting the next day. Nevertheless, the party continued in an unchanged pace. Lots of grilled meat, some wine or beer, few miles of trekking to get ready for another batch of gourmet stuff :). Finally, during Sunday the weather cleared up and some sun bathing was on the schedule ;), accompanied by eating the last crumbs of food left in a fridge...
Evening had come and all that was left was a bus ride back to Prague. That's how this story ends, nothing more to be said ;)...

.milk encounter

.have you ever tried drinking milk (instead of a wine) outdoors with friends? Not? Well, me neither. Until tonight :)!
I have to say, it's not that bad ;). Big thanks goes to Lubica, for keeping me company. I guess it wouldn't have been that much fun on my own. So we sat on the stairs near the dormitory and chatted for a while (while the "liquor" lasted). It was amusing to watch the face expressions of people passing by ;). I guess you are not seeing people drinking milk outside that frequently at midnight...

Good night!

.podoli strikes back

.this is becoming a tradition. This week the four of us (me, Sasa, Igi and Spigi) went for a bit of sunbathing and swimming. The weather was extraordinary sunny and hot. This of course resulted in a small sunburn but who cares ;). I was extremely tired because I had been working on my thesis again last night (yeah, I've got some feedback finally!). So I was sleeping a bit, swimming a bit and also watching some women water polo. A European championship is taking place there this week. Slovakia had won 23:1 over Turkey, so I was quite happy :). After spending 8 hours on the sun it was definitely a good moment to go home...

.ubuntu!

.here it comes :). After many years spent on Windows platform I'm trying to move to something different. As lately I've found out that nowadays almost every commercial program I'm using has an open source counterpart, now I'm working on fully loosing grip of the commerce...
I've chosen Ubuntu as it sounded well suiting my needs. After some beginners problems (drivers, fonts, packages...) I'm now almost free ;). And finally 64bit free...

.a night at the museum

.i was proud to be a part of this year's Prague Museum Night (during this one night many museums are opened for free). As I've also witnessed some of the previous years, the choice of something new and interesting to see was quite narrow. But anyway, I chose some exhibitions on Prague Castle I've not seen before (because of astronomical entry fees...).
First one was situated inside Lobkowitz palace and consisted of portraits of probably every king and queen ever ruling the Czech nation ;). Small part was also left for medieval arms and musical instruments. The bad thing is that I was warned that it is prohibited to take pictures inside. Thus enjoy this pre-prohibition one ;)...
As a next stop, the big and long presentation of castle's history was chosen. At first I was thinking about leaving the place (because of a huge queue). But the crowd was moving quite fast and the entrance into the oldest parts of the castle was reached relatively quickly. The exhibition guided us through many centuries of the history. From the prehistoric times and the first settlement in the area to the latest events of the 20th century. The museum is modern, combining historical exhibits with the projections of contemporary paintings, photos. All this is accompanied by the ancient music and some sounds recreating the mood of the times. The whole exhibition is interesting but a bit too long (2 hours) to keep focused :).
To end the adventurous evening I've met some friends in the nearby pub for a beer. That's all folks ;)!

.water, steam, water...

.it took me two weeks to finally get into Podoli swimming pool area. It's not an easy job to persuade some people to go to some place :). And I've asked many friends over the time... They were busy (or lazy). But that's their personal problem ;).

So today was a grand première, opening of outdoor swimming season :). A couple of people should have come but as the time of departure was approaching they backed off. So our crew consisted at the end from two people only (me and Lubica).
Weather was sunny, with a small thunderstorm at noon. We wanted to spend a few hours sun bathing, swimming and relaxing. Entry fee is only 80Kc for whole day (student price) so it's definitely worth it (2x 50m pool, 30m pool, toboggan, sauna included). After finding some nice sunny place and chatting for a while (we both have very similar problems with our theses) we tried the quality of water (really delicious ;) ). The sun was replaced by clouds but this water - chat - water thing was continuing anyway :) (I did some nice and funny geriatric tests, with quite poor results ;), as Lubica is preparing for a final exams at medicine...). After a while some tender rain began and temperature dropped a lot. We decided to go inside (another 50m pool). There is also the sauna, so I've tried it, it was really hot (they have wet sauna with a lot of steam everywhere) but soothing.
We were forced to leave at 8 PM as they were closing the building. We were tired anyway so it was not such a big deal. On our way back we've dropped in a nice little Chinese bistro to recharge our batteries with long awaited food ;). Yeah, not a bad way how to spend a day in the summer :)...

.rocky adventure

.yeah, this was a full dosage of adrenalin and fun :). We've spent whole day biking through the Kokorinsko nature park together with Jozko. We did some 102 kilometres... Weather was really hot and sunny, so it took me 3 litres of water and 1,5l of Kofola to stay alive in this sunny inferno ;). But let me take it step by step.

At the beginning Jozko almost didn't make it on time for our train. Luckily only almost... After 40mins we were in our starting point, station Hnevice near the park. We bought some quick lunch in a local supermarket and after finding our tourist sign headed along it into the depth of the nature.
We were overwhelmed by awesome sights, giant orphaned sandstone rocks, deep pine forests and challenging (a bit muddy also) up and down narrow trails. Some parts were absolutely not passable on bike (steep footways through ravines). Aside from the rocks we've seen also ruins of army bunkers from the II. world war. They were a part of the large network of entrenchments that was actually never used because annex of the Czech Republic by Germany...
Finding water was really problematic as there are no springs (or at least we haven't find any) in the vicinity of marked paths. In this case bilberries are a great alternative. These forests are full of them so we ate some :). And when the situation with dehydration got even worse we just asked for a water in a small village we were passing through.
After a tasty late lunch and a short relaxation we continued our journey towards the symbol of this region, Kokorin castle. We took a nice trail leading near the river with many wooden gangboards and other cool stuff :). Castle was not that interesting. Maybe because I've seen too many castles in my life ;). But I have to admit that it is in good shape, not like many ruins in Slovakia...
We were running late, so we did some quick descent into the town of Melnik, took some photos of the famous confluence of rivers Vltava and Labe. Afterwards we've tried to reach the train station in time but without luck. We missed the train by a few minutes. So we headed for another station. Road goes close to a big powerplant and so we had an opportunity to see this ugly monster (and there are new family houses a few metres from a cooling tower, unbelievable) and got home at around 9 PM.

What a wonderful day :)!

.blend it!

.to do something interesting while waiting, I've returned to a 3D modelling and rendering stuff (and this time from the artist point of view ;) ). My favourite application is Blender, it is free, open source, yet very powerful.

I'm still learning how to use all the new features and how to build complex scenes. Because of this I've prepared few exercises, to train some more interesting stuff like cloth simulation, fluid simulation and creation of more complex materials, etc.
Some of the example renders are included, they are not final and there are many ways to improve them (as always, nothing is perfect...). At least I'm doing something creative and I can enjoy every progress :). Right now I'm working on a complex fluid animation, but all additional info is top secret ;). And probably will be for some time because to render really complex scenes you need much more then a standard desktop computer... This way it is sooo slow, but at least my PC has some duty during the night time ;)...

.still waiting...

.almost three weeks have gone since I finished my thesis, yet I still haven't receive supervisor's opinion. All that I got was an email telling me that he will surely look at it in no time... Great. An identical thing can be said about the job I've applied for. After two weeks they answered that they will let me know in less than two weeks... Isn't it reassuring?
So I'm quite bored now, watching movies, reading, playing computer games, doing some sports (I've started with running, as a complement sport to biking, it's not bad at all :) ). I was home for a week, but it didn't help much. I'm not used to doing nothing, last 7 month I had many duties and things that needed attendance, now it's absolutely nada to do. It's boring. And I'm still nervous as of how will this waiting end like.

Maybe tomorrow some new info will come?