Brezno

Sometime during February I was in the Low Tatra's (Malé Tatry) in Slovakia. I was there with a few good friends and enjoyed the weekend a lot, with sleeping, drinking a bit, playing table hockey and table football and singing. The usual stuff, which makes you feel fine and enjoy the company of good people. I don't want to go into detail. Don't think I want to.

What I want to talk about, and I'm sure I will remember for a longer time, is the city Brezno and it's surroundings. The first day I was going by foot for around 12 km's to see a near cave. The nature was beautiful, the weather clear, the roads slippery... The time flew by, and with a good friend to talk to it is always a good experience. Around 1pm, when we started to feel hunger, we stumbled upon a small cheese shop, where traditional Slovak cheeses were sold. Delicious! We bough also "bryndza" (sheep cheese) and "korbaciky" (woven cheese - the best were with onion flavor yam). And then we visited a stalagmite cave near there. (no pictures allowed, only for extra costs of course).

The second day I had a trip to Brezno. One of my friends lives here, so I was very interested in the city. As it is not a big city (you can see the whole city from the near hills) I enjoyed to walk freely and not getting lost a lot ;) As it was such a wonderful day I made a walk near the river, after like an hour I started to get hungry, so I tried to get to the city center. I was thinking what would I say, when somebody would ask me where I'm heading to, and I imagined to reply to a friend who lives in the Hviezdoslavovo street (in every Slovak city there is a street with that name.). For my biggest surprise just a few minutes later I found that street. Theory proven :P

Then my travels continued and with a rather long detour I got into the city center. Nice :) Wanted to eat something, found a pizzeria, at 16:00 they serve every pizza for 90 Skk. Fine... it's 15:00. Let's go around a bit more. Following some older buildings I got to a church and behind it was a road up a hill. I believed I will get a nice picture from the city from up there. I think in this case I was mistaken... at least not with a mobile camera...

The road went right into a graveyard. I felt a pleasing calmness and sadness while I was up there. I was looking around and found a few old graves and sepulchers. It was a beautiful day. I needed to be alone for a while, and this was the best place to do so.

and a nice pizza and a good beer at the end!
Cheers!

Beware of the Thing

Back in the 60's... A small family: mother, father, two children, a grandma, an uncle and a butler. Sounds quite normal, as it is. Though there is some more to mention like a lion, a hand and a dark, spooky surrounding. For those who don't know yet, I'm talk about the Addams Family.

In the last week I found most of the episodes of the original show on the Internet and I am watching it since then. I enjoy the the family members roles, and how they harmonize with each other.
A silly father, Gomez, who seems careless and is focused only on the things he loves, his hobbies, family and mostly his "querida". When near his wife he is easily falling into an almost uncontrollable state of the urge to kiss her.
The strange mother, Morticia. In my eyes a beauty in all means. Black long hair, humorous, full of the will to live with sarcastic and dark remarks. Having control over the family. It's nice to see, that she always has a good word to everybody, and encourages them.
The children being smart and "well mannered", playing with all childish things, like explosives, bats and spiders.
Lurch is someone no one could ignore. Gloomy, quite and still has so much to say with so few words... like grrr...
And uncle Fester. Who is simply crazy. Thing the hand, who never dials a wrong number, is always helpful. Kitty the lion, who doesn't eat human and is afraid when somebody screams at him and the burger eating plant called Cleopatra :)

A beautiful story of outsiders of the society, who in their own misunderstood ways try to be as polite and helpful as they can be. The jokes are always from the same field, and in this age you already know most of them, never the less the atmosphere of the family caught me, and so I will watch all of it. There are just two series anyway ;)

PS: I'm watching the series through veoh.com , if anybody is interested...

How easy life was...

In the last days I was remembered my childhood. I don't believe that I have ever grown up. This is a statement, that has to be clarified. I feel like a child, cause a child searches and enjoys the moment, while for me a grown up plans his/her future and enjoys the process and the success.

A few days ago I had to copy some documents, and at the copy shop there was a child looking at the movie "The Little Engine that Could". He was watching it on the computer, through which they print from USB keys (pen drives). The seller came (most probably mother, not sure), told that he should wait a few seconds, and can watch it again.

Of course he was quite unpleased by her decision, to stop him from his activity... well no one really cared about him, so it was natural to watch what is interesting a bit... And it was also natural for him to complain on the change of his position.

I would have felt in his situation now, like I'm unimportant, and just in the way. A quite unpleasant feeling. So I tried to make him smile. I love the fact how easily you can make children smile just by paying them attention, and so getting their curiosity. So I payed him attention. He looked around, so he saw me. I was looking right into his eyes. He didn't pay much attention at the first seconds, but as I was looking at him still he got slowly curious. After 20 seconds we played hide and seek with eye contact. Hiding the eyes behind the chair between us, and then searching for the eye contact again

This whole game gave me also a feeling of peace, calmness and happiness. The wonder of a simple childish game. He smiled, which made me smile also.

PS: Picture can be freely used, thanks to www.morguefile.com and Mary R. Vogt. Be aware that even a picture has it's copyright, not only music and video! ( original: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?display=186338& )

Another one down

It's always hard to accept, that something you got used to diminishes. I heard a lot of music on pandora.com, before this happened: http://www.pandora.com/restricted
I loved that station, found some new bands I find to my liking through it, and got never bored of the music. last.fm is a pour alternative, as it happens, that I can choose any kind of music, after a half an hour I get to hip-hop or electronic music. I think they sort the artist to eachother and not the songs... or I don't know... simply it never worked as fine as pandora.

And now my second source of quality media deceased. www.stage6.com a.k.a. stage6.divx.com. I loved that site a mass of high quality movies, from the early 50s, through documentations and animes... and if you were lucky, you could get a glimpse on the newest movies (of course because of the copyright issues they tried to delete the illegal stuff as soon as possible).
Features included high speed download, high quality movies, full screen view, no limit for the file length. And the possibility to save the movie on your hard disk.

Thank you for delivering a whole lot of quality movies. Thank you for the hours of movie, I have been seen because of you. I hope you will be resurrected soon!

Some more info:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/66198-divx-and-stage6-chock-full-of-fail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage6

-> As I see in the divx forum, a spark of the spirit lives on... 1 month to wait to see the truth: http://newstage6.com/ <- well a few days after I wrote this post the idea was banned on copyright claims, according to my knowledge. :( Will see what veoh.com has to offer... or some other sites... please give a note, if you know of a good provider

Small wonders of technology

I remember the days, when I was a child, and wanted an instrument I could intuitively play. And then once in a while I just moved my fingers randomly in the air, like I would know what I'm doing. I believe that a feeling is all you need to make something unique. It's most probably also a feeling that most of the "air" guitar players dream of + a whole lot of need to show them selfs off :)

A lot of times happened to me (before I bought an MP3 player) that I was just imagining, creating some kind of a song on the go. Usually of course it where just parts from different song I have already heard and I glued them together... but sometimes it was something new, that no one will hear again (maybe). Or some classical instruments playing a Sunday afternoon song, other times words were going through my mind forming verses which made sense, and I never had a tool to write them down. Maybe now, if I will be brave enough to take out my mobile and switch in on record, I will have something. But the older I get, the less of them appear. And I think it is a sad think. Trigger your imagination, if you can. That's what a dreamer tells you :)

All in all I drifted away again from the original topic, so here it is. The theremin. An electronic instrument you don't have to touch, to make music with it. Enjoy the movie, if you got interested. (when I look at the artist I have the typical feeling of calm waters are deep :))