.arrival to Mannheim

.today was a big day. Guests arrived! To be more precise, my little sister Sasa and our friend Dano :). There are no direct bus lines to Saarbrucken so they were picked up at Mannheim. This was also a possibility to walk around another city. Due to the big traffic problems because of snow in the Czech Republic and also partially in Germany (only partially, Stuttgart and all the south east Germany are fighting with snow, yet here in Saarbrucken we haven't seen any so far this winter) the bus arrival had a big delay (3 hours). We've almost frozen during our wait on the parking place with Igi (temperatures are below zero after a long time)...

Anyway, after all the waiting we were ready to start our crusade into the old city centre ;). Mannheim is a very old (766 AD) and relatively small town (307,640 inhabitants). Main district consists of strictly regularly shaped streets and of a few sights (very few, to be honest). Worth of mentioning are Wasserturm (water tower, on the pic) and big 18th century palace (now a university)... So all the tourist stuff can be done in about an hour or so :).


So now I have my sister here (at least for a week) and that means a lot of traveling and other interesting stuff is going to happen, so stay tuned ;)!

.rendering competition

.finally! The work on my school CG project is finally over. It consumed all my free time in past 21 days. I'm glad I can relax a bit now :). It was interesting, I've learned a lot (or at least programmed a lot of new things) but it was too long ;).
To explain all this to you, we were writing a ray tracer. It's a software which computes mathematically-modeled visualizations of programmed scenes using a technique which follows rays from the eyepoint outward, rather than originating at the light sources. It produces realistic (or at least is capable of ;) ) results with advanced optical effects, such as accurate simulations of reflection, refraction and shadows.
It's used world wide (design, architecture, movie industry...). And as it's getting faster and faster (OpenRT project, group around Mr. Slusallek) it'll probably be used even more.
Anyway, in case you're interested, here is my webpage dedicated to rendering competition (with more details on topics and techniques used)...

And now I can return to posting regularly ;)!

.kyrillomania

.the global weather changes are each year visible more and more... These days Europe has seen the strongest windstorms ever (probably, at least it was the worst hurricane in past 25 years). And it affected almost whole Europe. Fallen trees, damaged roofs, tens of death casualties, paralyzed transport... The city I'm staying in was not hit with such a strength (only some lectures were canceled as a precaution) but situation in Germany was really bad and unusual this weekend (train traffic had to be stopped for a whole day, thousands of flights canceled, etc.).

Is this the way the weather will look like in the future? Hopefully not, hopefully the mankind can find a way to stop (slow down) the global climate changes...

.(almost) winter beauty

.probably nobody can argue that this winter is not as it should have been... No snow, temperatures way over the normal values. And I personally love this white, silky thing falling from the sky. It's making the whole world softer, nicer and calmer. But as I said, not this season (at least in almost all parts of Europe...).
So you probably can imagine my excitement, when today I awoke into white world :). Ok, it was not white because of the snow, yet the temperatures had dropped overnight by almost 15 degrees and it was freezing outside. Every possible piece of ground, trees and plants were covered quite thickly with hoarfrost. In combination with beautiful sunny weather it created breathtaking views, exposing the beauties of the nature...
I didn't hesitate much and took some photos. Hope they'll make your day a little brighter :)!

Have a nice (winter) day!

.pizza reunion

.we made a short break on our way back to Germany and stayed for a night in Prague. We had a few hours of free time, which was a nice possibility to meet friends. Pizzeria Einstein (famous among students for big ISIC discounts) was chosen, time set to 19:00. This was to be a special evening because our friends from South America were coming (Peru and El Salvador). I'd not seen them for a long time, so I was full of expectations ;). A lot of pizzas were eaten , sangria and beer drank. The night was filled with good mood and laughter. Many funny things, thoughts were said (for example a plan to solve Czech and Slovak demographic problems :)... ). It was a great evening and I know that I'll be happy to come back to Prague in two months because of friends :).

See you soon!