My picks:

“We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.” - Jean-Paul Sartre

“Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.” -Italian Proverb

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” - Isaac Asimov

“Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.” -Kurt Vonnegut

“I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.” - Stephen Hawking

“In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.” - Bertrand Russell

“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” - J. R. R. Tolkien

“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible. “ - Virginia Woolf

“I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.” - George Bernard Shaw

“It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.” - W. Somerset Maugham

And one extra, my favourite:
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”- Dr. Seuss

Happy new year!

Imagine mixture of jazz Bird’s Parkers Mood and John Coltrane’s Alabama playing the piano in a succession of jazz combos and hip hop’s Golden Age of Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions to the Detroit-techno euphoria of Inner City. Magnus Zingmark and Oscar Simonsson, both from Sweden’s main university-town Uppsala, were the first jazzheads in their hometown (late 90’s - Sons of Koop, 1997 ) responsible for the groundbreaking music - under the name Koop. They brought new sound for Swedish jazz (Waltz for Koop, 2001) and gained the recognition of fellow European jazz/electronica fusion. Waltz for Koop brought out in daylight two great female vocalists, Cecilia Stalin and amazing Yukimi Nagano. After 2003., Koop published remixes that included singles for “Summer Sun”, “Bright Nights,” “In the Heartbeat” (feat. Terry Callier), Koop released this winter pleasure - Koop Islands Blues. Enjoy listening Koop Island Blues feat.Ane Brun.

Yukimi Nagano

Decani monastery has been officially informed that the Municipality is planning another “project” in the area withing few hundred meters from the Monastery with the money of United Arab Emirates. Beside the already built illegal restaurant and a planned Arab factory near the monastery there are several other pending projects which would turn the area around the UNESCO World Cultural heritage site into an idustrial area which would completely block the life in the monastery and destroy its surrounding. An UAE Consortium is planning to open a factory of mineral water although no industrial activities in the area of the monastery are allowed by the executive decision of UNMIK administration.” Kosovo -the land of the Living past…

For Issue no.9, the themes are: ’street’ and ‘from 9 to 5′ and ‘elegance’. About JPG magazine, who are not familiar. Competition is closed in 32 days. Register, post your great photos (if you are passionate photograher). If not, register to JPG and VOTE!:)  If you want to vote for my photos (I know I’m bad for this self-photo-promotion, shot me!), you can do it here: 1. In the waiting line, 2. Simplicity and 3. You can look but …

After, ‘I don’t know where and when I was’, freelancer journalist Mr. Dejan Kozul, in the company of colleague - attroney at law (who is involved for Serbian CC issues), and me (on blogs, wikis, open access, net violation, etc.) - interviewed us for Weekly Telegraph. As he took a chance to photograph me, I did the same. Just came right on time to end the evening with National TV channel (although I am anti-TV person), and watched the premiere of film Derailed (triller) -such trivial story and not interesting at all, but for two reasons that I saw at one place (niceee!) : C.O. and V.C. (english gentleman and french scoundrel, both intelligent, great). Enough said.

As I was awaken for the one meeting ( useful and brainstroming), then the other meeting, running through one part of the city to the other (downtown, my base: i like:) , I found out on the Board meeting of (meta)MediaWiki, many interesting facts and things: ‘am i the one who started the story on semantic web‘?, as well that some talks on intiative - Semantic media wiki and Meta Media.wiki projects, with plans for the next year (though’support’ in this is needed!). Good thing (stats) : Serbian WikiMedia (40/24 founders) has wider board than French (19 members) and Swiss Wikimedia (26 board members) and immediately got message from one of the Swiss admins’ (slade). Anyway, here’s the link to special photo i made - Oscar Van Dillen last weekend (with German sticker on his laptop for wikipedia) - <promise to upload wikicommons.org>. And how the day continued - read above the post.

Serbian Citation Index is database with locally published journals classified as periodicals of scientific character. It is project of Ministry of Science and Environment Protection - Directorate for the Environmental Protection, CEES - Centre for Evaluation in Education and Science  and project of National Library of Serbia . Tomorrow at 10 am is meeting on this SCi Index project - amphitheatre of NBS. Access to the SCindeks is unrestricted and free for all.

First snow in Belgrade made as beauty as well as mess in local transportation…

Some of the photos from the last weekends’ (geeks) meeting of Serbian Wikipeadians and guests from Wikimedia Foundation. Other files will be uploaded on YouTube soon.

Just came after very interesting wikipedians/international wikimedia meeting , here in Belgrade. As the fog outside fell over the city, instead of snow, I jumped into my neighbourhood culture center and missed first speech of great Mr. Oscar Van Dillen, president of Wikimedia Nederland, a self-dependent organization that shares the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation and supports it within the Netherlands. We introduced each other and talked on Wikimedia project as other wikipedians - serbian were debating on some of the issues on wikipedia in Serbian. The issue was that the fog is over Belgrade whole day, and the situation at the airport Nikola Tesla, with delays and not functioning, made some of the guests not to come. Belgrade fog, beside wiki projects, was the most talked subject, as well as, some of the plans within Wikimedia Foundation. Imagine geeks gathering and a gal with a camera (I need new and better camera and space on Flickr!!!) . After local speech, Mr. Van Dillen and I came to the idea that he may hold his speech again ( the one I missed: sorry, but curiousity didn’t kill the cat, and Mr.Van Dillen is very nice man: ), for those who will maybe appear later, due to rearragment of organization and the fog. So, Oscar, gave nice introductory speech and talked on Wikimedia projects, and many other issues that are concerned with vandalism, copyleft, copyright, wiki books, introducing wikimedia projects into schools, universities, after which German colleague put some useful notes. At the end, Ms. Danica Radovanovic gave public conclusion and opinion on subject of speech, as information management professional and researcher in the area of electronic publishing, which closed the meeting for tonight. Expect later, I will upload the videos of Mr.Van Dillens’ speech and some of the photos. Tomorrow I’m off (:

For those who are not familiar with some of the Serbian history of literature and manuscripts, here is a chance to learn about Miroslavljevo Jevanđelje /Мирослављево Јевађеље/ (80’s of 12.century). It is the oldest and the most valued serbian cyrilic manuscript - liturgic book with very rich ornamentation, ordered by serbian knez Miroslav. Jevandjelje can be seen in special room/chamber in National Museum of Belgrade: from 16-25.December 2006.  More on Miroslavljevo jevandjelje…

I cannot resist to this one , the guy is genius and funny.

While I was trying to create in my head great, great idea for the main page for my new web site (thanks to M.H.), this afternoon I found out that my blog is not good. I had remark, critics from dear and young and ambitious friend of mine ( the names won’t be mentioned here), and all started from the chat on pagerank. Ha! Ok, my ‘blog is not famous’ as it is not agressive and does not scream …anything obvious, right? Then, he continued with ‘try to write longer and more interesting articles (!!! ok, shall i make the third e-zine?!, good idea, thanks!), though not to write too long either (sure, minimalist in me), and when i started questioning myself, he said:” it’s not bad….but it’s very short all the time” —> Does size matter? and “just try to make it interesting…. bring something new in it” (hm, science theory on global warming, or experiment provocative photos for male population , as purpose for gender studies - my photos included?, hm or semantic web, or better than that, ‘allergy’ topic of web 2.0 maybe?). Sollution —> Allen’s Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions! Suddenly i had strong attack of the headache when he continued with: “well… i never learned anything new on your blog”. ??? Excuse me?? Voila! —> Well, I thought: don’t read everything you believe. Then, next one: “but you should do it more personnal….and to do it more often” (to get back on my decolte?), and when I said that i should stop blogging (as i did 4 times before, with blogging experience since 2003 ) and then as blog-addict start over again), friend told me to ‘take some time to rest and do it when i feel better’ (well, i won’t feel better until i find out what’s wrong). And after continuing and sending me the link of ‘inspirational geek blog’ , I was so over to read anything, and absurd situation of comparing individual and cooporative blog (and that ‘refered’ blog, so ‘the great one” after deep evaluation with older colleague, we came to conclusion that it’s medium quality blog, especially considering the fact that few people stand behind it, with one editor). So, I went outside with all ‘belle de jour’ (in marc jacobs, he got 3/10) and in my ‘long black nazzi boots’ equipment for frozen nights and walked (ran?) two, three, four blocks to clear myself on minus 2. In the meantime, I tried to send text messages (with gloves on my fingertips) to a colleague (who is the expert in blogging), for ‘reality check’ < ‘hi, i have a question: is my blog really that bad and if so, what is wrong with it?”). When i turned back, he called me to say that my blog is fine, great and unique and that I should keep on blogging. And old, sage people have the same answer (similar i heard 3 years ago from prof.P.J. , got 6/10) - “everyone is unique in its own way”.

By the way, the friend who criticized meant well (”to improve my blog”) , though I have his words still in my head (’people should feel that you enjoy the writing’), hey I’m a writer for more than 15 years! I lost my ability and concentration to continue with designing the page for the web site (thanks!), and got encouragement from the colleague to keep on good blogging (’ blog is good one’ ) as i did before. And, do you ‘feel’  if I enjoy the writing? If not, please do touch the screen!

Randall Munroe created xkcd, one of my (many of) favourites (:

And talking about wikipedians’ meetings : )

Wikimedia Serbia has announced that this weekend, 16. and 17. December, regional meeting of Wikimedia (first one of this kind in the world), will be held in Dom Omladine, Belgrade. On this meeting, interesting guests from Germany (Nina Gerlach) , Nederlands (Oscar Van Dillen - Dutch Wikimedia), France, Slovenia (Roman Maurer), Croatia (Darko Cokor), Macedonia as well as Florence Nibart-Devouard, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation. More about the programe you can read here.

A medical student at UMass. developed a quick online way to screen for the tonedeafness. In this research ‘we were looking for neuro-anatomical correlates of tonedeafness (called “congenital amusia”) in the scientific literature’. Give it a try and later also you can measure your pitch perception abilities in three minutes, developed by the author who worked as researcher at the Music and Neuroimaging laboratory at Beth Israel/Harvard Medical School. “This is the first time this test has ever been made available online”.

Thanks to Coturnix to bring out this lovely (though not forgotten) word, which originates from Greek: kibernao - to navigate, to control; and librarian. The word indicates also information professional, provider, information and knowledge manager in cyberspace who ‘owns’ communication and interpersonal skills and IT knowledge, in order to discover, synthesize, transmit knowledge to the users in order to help and educate. This would be the role not only of Internet information specialist (cybrarian), but also of IT professional/teacher. Blog is one of the medium for those activities.