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1. She did everything for “him” or maybe “her”?
2. Satellites should be slim, so they are commercially acceptable for launch.
3. Her Englisch is purrfect.
4. Swaying of the background vocals.
5. Dramatic stop at about 2:15 of the song allowing listener to think about the lyrics.
6. Geeks had 3 reasons to get hooked … left, right and … no no … physics, orbit and satellite.
7. Maybelline sponsored televoting with free promotional gifts?
8. Prepaid phones are available at reasonable price.
9. Men actually voted!
10. Its not about the voice but about spirit and presentation.

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Image by Patrick Keogh via Flickr

There was some some construction work on the blog for the past week or so.

We have made theme improvements and web server speed optimizations which will provide quicker loading times and less load on the web server.

Hopefully your reading pleasure was not disrupted, but if it was we sincerely apologize and hope that you continue to support us¹.

1. by clicking on the adverts and coming back for more geek stuff :P

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The “Three Wise Men” team would like to announce that this blog has been up and running for about a year now. If we travel back we can discover that the first post was posted on the November 18th 2008. Well over a year now.

Slowly evolving from cooking, games and movies we have embraced this web site and transformed it into a geek blog trying to cover everything that we think is interesting for you. From a merely 10 daily visits we have grown to a steady 400 visits per day. And this is  the biggest present – you our readers have given us through the year¹. Thank you!

I could go on and on about how rough was this year and what we are going to improve in the next year but instead we would like to wish you all the best in this holiday season. Albert Einstein could not said it better:

“I feel that you are justified in looking into the future with true assurance, because you have a mode of living in which we find the joy of life and the joy of work harmoniously combined. Added to this is the spirit of ambition which pervades your very being, and seems to make the day’s work like a happy child at play.”

Be marry and at peace, love and respect one another and keep coming back for more.

Your “Three Wise Men” team.

1. although you could occasionally click a link on the Support Us section ;)

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Guys at Zemanta, that did such a great job with WordPress plugin, which makes writing blogs easier than eating pancakes, featured Three Wise Men in their blog!

Thanks for the plugin and keep up the good work! Thanks for the feature too. ;)

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Here’s how I got my BarCamp cherry-popped with second BarCamp in Slovenia. Yes, it was a first time for me. *blushes*

Ljubljana, where BarCamp was happening is about one hour drive from where I live. Taking this into consideration and the time I’ll need to park my car, get on the bus and then get to the venue, I figured that I need to be on the road approximately two hours early. Everything would work out fine, my timing was dead on spot, but then I realized that somebody put the incorrect bus station in directions on how to get there. Lovely, lovely, lovely. I knew where I was going and how to get there, but I didn’t actually pay any attention while riding the bus, I was just listening to announcer. They never called my station and when I heard the name of the station that was in the wrong direction I had to bail out and quickly. It was a 15 minutes walk to the Inštitut Jožef Štefan, where BarCamp was held.

Schedule board, confusing?

Of course I was late and there were only few time slots left that I could pick for my talk. I booked my session for 14:05, second slot after lunch. I knew that the whole thing will be ad-hoc and I had a general idea on how BarCamp looks like, but schedule board was really confusing. Geekishly kind of cute and utterly disturbing at the same time. It lacked cohesion, order and orientation, it even failed miserably at Feng Shui guidelines. This was the first thing I noticed. Then there was registration desk and three female members of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Amazing! ;) So, I registered and got my name tag. Scanning the board I didn’t find anything that would really, really, really interest me. Picking a subject and them committing myself to listen to it for more than 15 minutes is quite a challenge. So I scanned the board a little, considering things here and there and after some time I made a list of things I want to listen.

BarCamp Introductions

I started with opening talk and introductions and then followed with this:

10:45 – Electronic Communications Survival Guide by Alesh.

11:20 – Introducing Hacker Space “TP1″ by Simon.

11:55 – Web Design for Localization by Karmen.

13:30 – How to destroy your community by P.

14:05 – Linux Rules, Windows Suck by BigWhale¹.

Talks were all interesting enough and I didn’t need to flee in the middle of them. At the end of BarCamp people got the chance to participate in 5 minute lightning talks which were more funny and amusing then informative and educational. :) There was also a lot of hanging out with all the people there. Turn up was quite nice; around hundred people. The crowd was mixed, geeks and non geeks. My talk went quite smoothly and the audience responded nicely. Slides for my talk are available publicly on google docs. After the event there was a party at a club nearby. One of the fanciest places in Ljubljana, Klub Top and they failed to provide me with Pepsi. So much for fancyness! Organizers did a fantastic job with the whole event. Kudos to everyone! After party extended into midnight pizza snack and then it was a departure time for me. I had to catch the last bus to the parking lot on the outskirts, where I left the car. Obligatory pictures from the event below.

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• Mini Seedcamp Ljubljana Winners! (seedcamp.com)

1. Yes, me …

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Recently a friend of mine visited a doctor. In the waiting room he found waiting patients willing to  share thoughts to pass the time. By coincidence the talk stumbled upon the latest flu outbreak. Exact course of discussion alludes me. But since he pointed out the problem I was willing to write a thought or two about it and share it with you.

The outbreak of presumed swine influenza virus in Mexico had a lasting effect on the media and on the inhabitants of this beautiful planet. Media somehow sniffed out the news. Started to report about it. People who were not directly affected by it did not react – at first. But the day after – news was still there. Even in bolder and wider font, so that even the visually impaired people knew about it. And what happened the day after?

Talk on the bus, train, while eating, at home, at work, everywhere. We almost have a pandemic of news. News spread. And fast. It was multiplied by its potent and doom shaping fear. Although, I do not believe that this was intention of media houses, they still continued to ride the wave. Selling news for profit. And the people? Probably they started to think about it. Start to fear it. Start to discuss crazy ideas about how the flu was bio engineered and some boo-boo corporation was trying to make profit from it. Profit by infecting thousands of people and then selling them the vaccine for it?

I do not believe that. I believe that bio corporations are capable of that, but I think something like this would be done in more controlled environment. Maybe this flu is a part of normal and natural process of selection? Well of curse not. It is stupid to think like that. We are the masters of our own destiny. Nothing controls us. Nothing can beat us.

Thinking carelessly like that can get someone killed. A tiny – sub-microscopic infectious agent called Influenza A(H1N1) killed at the time of writing this post 48 people. There are currently 3440 documented cases of the Influenza A virus. Flu started in Mexico and moved all over the world. Most deaths were reported from Mexico 45, 2 from US and 1 from Canada. Death to documented cases ratio is high in Mexico 3.29% in Canada 0,41% and US 0,012%. Other countries don’t report any deaths at the moment. And those ratios are diminishing. Another win?

Did we really win or were we only lucky? Were we sufficiently prepared? Is 48 deaths enough or will nature require more? Media will be thrilled to have more. What will happen if the virus will mutate? Maybe results will be the same as 1918 flu pandemic? Well let me keep the fire burning. 1918 flu pandemic was a A(H1N1) virus.

Let’s be realistic. We are certainly not prepared for everything that nature can throw at us.  We can not be. We do not understand the nature that well. But we are better prepared than we were in 1918. We are certainly not masters of our own destiny. Is nature? Is media? Who do we believe? And what to make of all this media fuss?

We are a part of nature. That is a fact. Maybe we have overpopulated the planet and this is the way to keep us – as a species – under control. Maybe even media can find correct place in this story. Correct reporting of facts. Do not over speculate. That should be left to conspiracy theorists and people that do not have anything to do, but gossip all day long.

Until the next time when the pandemic hits …

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Wikipedia calls the Biblical Magi. The Three Kings or Kings From the East, mentioned in the Bible, so something about their existance must be true. Since I am not at quarrel with the good book lets say that they existed.  Quote from the Bible, more accurate Mathew 2:1-12

“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him. When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. In Bethlehem in Judea, they replied, for this is what the prophet has written: ‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.’ Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him. After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.”

Now the story does not tell us the number of the kings, but since three gifts were received it is assumed that there were at least Three Kings.

But, this post has nothing to do with this story. The story came into post by pure accident. Actually the fault lies in Google‘s search engine matrix. Well let’s get back to our three wise men.

Their story begins in the year 1976 of our Lord when one of them was born. Yes one of them is older, more wise by the year count. Now the other two followed in 1977 and 1980.  Just as wise as the First One. All of them post-Flower power generation. Some share the same parents as the others. Raised in loving family environment, but in a small corrupt socialistic country. But the life was good for them.

All of them did not know each other until the summer of 1986. Oh yes … 1986. It was good to be alive in that era. None of us had a lot. A place to stay, food on the table every day, nothing to do all day but catch the shade, play and have fun. The summer vacation had something to do with quick and inefficient time passage, but we used that time to unknowingly knitted the bonds of friendship which survived to this day.

I will not bore you with the details of school adventures, after school debates and other fun and character building activities we went through. Suffice it to say that today, after seeing the destruction of that corrupt socialistic country and formation of new era for Europeans, we still see and talk to each other. Technology has changed, monetary denomination is different and we do not own the streets at our doors any more. But our playground has expanded.

Now we are older, wiser and pumped with life experience. Some have found companions, some have converted them to spous. Some were blessed with children. But most of all we were blessed with our selves. With the bond we knitted that summer of 1986.

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Now you have all been to the doctor. Right? Was it a pleasant visit? Did you have fun? Would you like to do it again? Now if you have children and god forbid that something like that would have to happen to your children, but did you ever have a child in the hospital? Strapped to the bed? Waiting for them to get better? Have his sick eyes looking at you and silently asking you to make the stay in the hospital more fun?

We hope that you answered No to the above questions, but if you didn’t and if you are lucky enough to live in Europe, we can offer you a fun loving, joy inspiring unconventional doctors. Those doctors help sick children with laughter, joy and vitality. Wait, don’t stop reading, this is not a trick.

The organization that we are trying to introduce to you is called Red Noses Clowndoctors International. They have been visiting sick children in the hospitals since 1994. By their statistic in 2008 there were 169 Clowndoctors which fill the day with laughter, joy and vitality to around 5000 patients. Organization operates in Europe with partner organizations in Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia.

The whole thing is quite simple, a group of clowns dressed as doctors with funny names are visiting children in hospitals. The idea is simple and as it was already said, it brings those kids, that have to spend their long days in hospitals, a little fun and excitement in their lives. Although not being real doctors Red Noses can relate with Patch Adams and his work in medicine and helping people.

This blog post is part of Zemanta‘s “Blogging For a Cause” campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.

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Every now and then even a geek/nerd can get hungry. When caffeine is not enough and you are in desperate need of some carbo-hydrates, pancakes are a way to go. But what kind of a pancake? There are bazillion of different kinds of pancakes. From North American hamburger like pancakes to thin french crêpes with ham and cheese or chocolate and cream to go with. Sweet, sour or salty, you can have them in any flavor you desire, basically only the sky is the limit. From egss to batter and from batter to pancake, read on to find out how to make the finest french crêpes.

Ingredients:

• Eggs, shell can be of any color, around here we mostly get light brown ones
• Flour, there are many many flour types around, take plain white, the most common kind for a start
• Salt, not really a necessary ingredient, but most of the people like batter a little salty, I personally don’t care and I tend to avoid salt
• Milk, low-fat, full-fat, who cares if it looks like like milk, if it tastes like milk then it is good enough

Equipment:

• Bowl for batter
• Whisk for making batter
• Spatula¹ for TheFirstTurn(TM)
• Frying pan for frying, make sure your frying pan has low edge
• Two flat plates as temporary storage for new pancakes
• Pot cover for above plates
• Ladle for pouring the batter into the pan

The amount of ingredients will vary. From two eggs you can make anywhere from five to twenty pancakes. Twenty is already a stretch, but it can be done. The amount of milk and flour will be determined later. Batter has to be liquid enough so that will pour smooth enough to cover whole pan.

Eggs

Get the eggs in the bowl and make sure there is no egg shell in the bowl unless you want crunchy pancakes. ;) Then give them a good whisk. If you want to bother, you can separate egg white and make egg foam if you want. Then you use all the other ingredients and make the batter and add the foam in the end. I just didn’t bother to do that, it takes some time and people around me were already hungry, besides making an egg foam with a whisk will put some strain on your wrists and we just can’t afford a carpal tunnel problems, can we? ;)

Eggs being whisked

Give your eggs a good whisk and then start adding milk. Slowly whisking away don’t forget about the salt. The amount of milk will vary, it mostly depends on the size of your ladle, pan and the number of pancakes that will be consumed. Rule of thumb goes that one ladle should fill one pan and that an average person can eat at least three to five pancakes, depends also on filling and dressing. Cases where people have had ten to twenty pancakes are also known so make sure that you know all the people that will feast with you. Now you have eggs and milk. Frying this will result in a very milky scrambled eggs so we better add some flour.

Pretty white goo..

There, the gooey, yet liquid batter is ready. A secret ingredient here could be also 1/4 cup of sparkling water. It will make the batter lighter and smoother, some people claim that. But we’re not complicating things today so no sparkling water. As said before, batter should be very liquid. While adding flour you must be careful that you add it in very tiny amounts, whisking away while doing it, because flour will stick together and you will end up with a batter full of tiny little clumps. At this point you can taste the batter if you want it.It is really nothing special, you can add more salt if you want to, but don’t over do it unless you’re planning to eat your pancakes with ham and cheese.

Heating it up

Batter is ready and we have to prepare for frying. On the left side: a plate with a cover, on the right side: frying pan which I use only for pancakes, few drops of oil in it and the spatula. Heat is essential. When you think you pan is hot enough try tilting it a little and watch the oil in it. Does it flow almost like water? If so, then you’re basically ready. The best is to have oil heated up almost to the smoke point. Now pour batter in the pan. Use ladle, pour in the middle of the pan and then tilt it to the sides so that batter covers whole pan. Minimize the amount of batter you need to cover the whole pan. It will take some practice until you reach the perfection. One of the important things is to use the same ladle every time you’re making pancakes so that you always know how much batter you’ll be pouring in the pan. When batter is evenly distributed around the pan settle it down on the cooking top. Cooking top should always be on maximum setting.

Waiting for the first one

Turn, baby turn

Now you wait it will take about two minutes before you turn the pancake. First the outer edges will start to curl inside. When that happens use the spatula to go around the pan making sure that pancake won’t stick to the pan. After a minute or so you’ll notice that batter is solid and a little darker, this is the time when you use spatula to go under the pancake and make sure it doesn’t stick to the pan on the bottom. We took care of the edges before. At this point you’ll see if you used too much batter. If that happens just spread it evenly around the pan or lift the pancake on one side, tilt the pan and let the batter flow under the pancake then give it few more seconds on the heat. For the first turn I always use spatula. Tossing the pancake in the air in first turn can be risky. All other turns, which are not needed anyway, can be made with tossing. No problems there, but as I said, they are really not needed. When you turn the pancake, put the pan down for a minute or so and you’re done.

One down, fifteen to go

There, your first pancake. Now rinse and repeat for next thirty one. You do realize that the number of pancakes you make should be either a prime number or a power of two, aren’t you a geek or what? Freshly done pancakes can either be eaten or put on the temporary stack. It is a standard LIFO stack and it serves as temporary storage for pancakes. Temporary storage should be covered with a cover to keep the moist and heat inside. Dried up and cold pancakes are as good to eat as doormats, so be careful. I always turn on the cooking top where the stack is on minimum setting. So the plate also heats up, take care when you pick it up and carry it to the table.

Stack of 16

Ending stack will look something like picture on the right. All pancakes are done and you have no batter left. True art is when the amount of batter is divisible with the exact number of ladles you needed so that you end up with no batter when you make the last pancake. Only true masters can do this. ;) Notice the condensed water on the cover? Without the cover all this water would escape in the atmosphere drying up pancakes and turning them into doormats in best scenario.

Now all that you have to do is to decide on what to put on the pancakes and how to serve them. Usually they are rolled up and you eat them with your hands. In a restaurant they usually serve them folded in triangle with fork and spoon. Fork for eating and spoon for cutting. Who came up with this silly idea I don’t know. I use knife instead of spoon.

The end result?

Needs more chocolate

1. I used something that resembles frosting spatula, but I have no idea on how it is actually called in English, you’ll have to excuse my ignorance

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