Geosense

At Geosense.net you can try your knowledge of geographical position of cities in the world. This is the game I used to play with friends while I was a kid. We played only the capital cities, though. At Geosense, you can try your knowledge on the world map, US, Europe. There is advanced map, where the names of the cities are not displayed immediately but the letters in the name occur as the time goes on. The game is a great way to increase and practise your knowledge of geography! You can play alone or against other players.

geosense.net

Cars and Motorcycles

After all this time spent in Melbourne, I’m starting to miss cars and motorcycles. To be more precise, I’m missing driving and riding. I’m missing travelling and seeing different areas, landscapes, and environments. So I’m starting to look at what would be models to satisfy my needs in the future. I’m also developing this idea of how it would be nice to have something to rely on rather than having to abandon everything when I have to move. In the future I’d prefer to be based in one continent so that it would be relatively easy to move all the little things we need around. It is a bit difficult now because whatever I need, I think of the future and the moment I have to get rid of it. I borrowed an electric heater and a lamp. That way I can give it back. Otherwise I’d have to throw it away. Usually, when you have something to give away, nobody needs it. :)

So, as far as cars and motorcycles go, I spent some time looking at car models. The range I’m looking at is, with Toyota for example, between Corolla and Yaris. Well, the new Yaris is the old Corolla, in fact. The new Corolla is just a bit big. Fiat has Bravo, which is in the same range. Other manufacturers have something in the same range, as well. The price range for these models is around 20-30 thousand Dollars. To narrow it down, it is up to $25,000. That’s not too bad. The motorcycle remains unknown. The search is open and I’m to look into it in the future. With these prices, I’d expect even better deal with used cars. So I’m looking forward to that period when I’ll have to make a decision. For now, I need to set some savings goals and start working towards those goals. And, before that, it would be useful to narrow down the model search and the price range.

3 Degrees

This morning it is 3 degrees Celsius. That was the lowest temperature I have experienced in Melbourne last year. Can only hope that it would be the same this year.
On the other hand, it does not feel that cold. Either I am getting used to these quick changes or I’m paying more attention to clothing this year. :)

Since the Winter is only just starting it is futile to hope it will pass soon. In European terms, this would be the last day of October.

iGENEA: Bosnia and Herzegovina

Genetic analysis for Bosnia. It appears that Illyrian traces are the most present in Bosnian genetic pool.

Indigenous Peoples in Bosnia-Herzegovina Illyrian 40 % Teuton 20 % Celtic 15 % Slav 15 % Hunnians 6 % Thracians 4 %

See the link below (in German):

iGENEA: DNA Genealogy, Ancestry, Surname

Online Fantasy and Strategy Games (Free)

I decided to try out some of the new online games and post the results. The focus is on the free games. So far I can recommend the following:

• Rubies of Eventide (link) - similar to World of Warcraft. Downloadable client 320MB.

And all of the UMGE titles (link):

• Evony (link) - browser-based game. Done in Flash and very much resembles The Age of Empires. The first proper browser-based game I'm aware of. Shows what these games are supposed to look like.
• Surge of Valor (link) - downloadable MMORPG client.
• Leuric (link) - browser-based Flash game with Vikings and Atlantians.

Other games:

• Warrior Epic (link), downloadable client
• Glory of Fellowland (link), browser based
• King War (link)
• Travian - browser based
• Adventure Quest (link)
  
• 1483 online (link)
• Holy War (link)
• Tagoria (link)
• Cabal Online (link)
• Silkroad
• Ikariam, and others (link)
• Quake Live (link)

Lists of games:

• mmo hub (link)

EU Visa Regime for Serbia Could End in 2009

Serbian Foreign Affairs Minister Vuk Jeremic, after a meeting with EU officials Javier Solana and Oli Rehn, said that the EU visa regime for Serbian citizens could end up this year. This would be a welcome progress in the Balkans region.

In addition, some money from EU pre-accession funds could be directed to aid Serbia soon.

Source: Balkan Insight article

326 Days

There are 326 days left until my citizenship requirements are met. Today I have looked at the citizenship web site and calculated my requirements date. It appears that on March 12, 2010, I will have the two years of residence, actually two years of physical presence on the Australian soil, which will make me eligible for Australian citizenship. The only other requirement I need to do before then is to apply for the citizenship test. It is free to apply and I reckon I should do this a couple of months before the date is due, just to leave enough room for eventual processing or whatever may appear.

These circumstances made me think of how time flies. It has now been more than a year since my arrival to the new land, new country and lifestyle. Well, it appears to have coincided with the start of the Great Recession so the experiences could have been better. The situation in the IT, and elsewhere, is not that great at the moment and makes me wonder about different things and priorities in life. It certainly is better than back in Bosnia, and probably Europe, but that's not all. A few days ago I have passed my goal mark - the numbers assumed to represent financial independence. Of course, the numbers are way off as the economic landscape has changed significantly but it is still a mark. Only a year ago those numbers and goals were completely different. Just for illustration, the Australian Dollar collapsed about 30% off its peaks in 2007 when I was transferring some savings to Australia. Now it is recovering slowly but is still way off those heights. That simple fact means I am progressing towards my goal way slower than I originally anticipated. On the other hand, maybe things here move more quickly than back home and so any change makes more difference. Whichever is the case, I feel a bit without direction at the moment. I simply can not visualize the next 18 months or set any further goals or plans. Not to mention longer time frames. I can not see that I see myself in any country or continent, any position or any company anywhere in the world.

Lately I started thinking about going solo. Something like consultancy or being a contractor. The negative side is that there is no reliable income stream and this kind of activity is not very common in the Balkans. Plus the recession has already brought the decrease in economic activity and reduction in employment so I am not sure on how that is going to work out with contractual work. Simply too many questions. I guess I should simply enjoy the day and go out. Right now. :)

Government Stimulus Payment

Today I received a notice from the Australian Tax Office that the stimulus payment has been made into my bank account. Although I knew about the Government’s economic stimulus, I did not know if and how much would I get. So, in a way, I almost forgot about it. Therefore the more surprise and excitement today after I read the notice.

Amazingly enough, this was so unexpected – and other things so thoroughly planned – that I did not know what to do with this extra cash. I see it as a small push forward towards achieving my goals faster.

Coding Weekend

While for some this weekend has been a long one, including and additional two days of Easter holidays, for me it was quite a busy one. After working on Friday and Saturday, I was onto fast-track development in Java, using Eclipse, Google Web Toolkit, and Google Apps framework. I converted my web sites/applications from Python to Java. On the outside, not much can is visible at the first sight. But, the whole underlying technology is changed. Now, having a proper IDE for development and the language that is easier to develop in (for me), plus having tons of libraries available out there and years of development included into it, I’m quite happy to have a framework set up that allows me to improve the web sites with active content relatively easily.

Plugins for Eclipse allow creation of Google Apps web project and deployment to the server. Today I also included Google Web Toolkit. It is a piece I used to ignore but now it seems a perfect fit for an effective UI, utilizing AJAX and very easy development. It uses Java to develop client-side behaviour. Java gets compiled into JavaScript optimized libraries. The UI is very similar to what Google uses in their applications. I find it excellent for what I’m looking to do.

My new project, that includes all these technologies is VanguardPrices. It will have the following features:

• display the list of funds at Vanguard Australia,
• accept user input for the date and fund,
• retrieve the price from the web,
• store the price into storage,
• accept the date parameters for chart display,
• retrieve series of prices from storage for the given period,
• display prices in a chart.

I’m currently still working on proof of concept for all of the above. Once that is done I will move to assembling these different parts together. Most of these are proven in the past couple of days and I’m looking forward to assembling the pieces together in the near future. The progress so far has been excellent. Hey, Google just announced Java support a few days ago and I’ve only started on Friday! A few times I even wished to change to Java development professionally. :)

Conspiracy Theories 2

This topic has enough food for thought that it's no wonder why these stories live on and on. Now that it got my interest, finding out that there is so much material, I decided to do a little research. I'll first gather some material and try to pull out some conclusions over time...

See "Truth About Bosnia" part in this article published in Nexus magazine.

A few quotes about Warren Zimmerman and former Yugoslavia, from History Commons, here.