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16.09.2008
I am moving my blog here: 
http://opensourcelife.wordpress.com
Its more convenient to use a blog software for this purpose than a wiki. Wiki is better for other things like writing some colaborative research papers and such. And the ning networks are also great! But lets not forget the wiki…
Beekeeping thoughts from others
Brian D. Bray bekeeper on a [beekeeping forum http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,15995.msg116710.html#msg116710]
1. Keeping bees in as near to feral conditions as possible works best for both the beekeeper and the bees. 2. One size of box is best as it allows more options and solutions than several sized boxes. 3. Ventilation is 1 of the more overlooked aspects of beekeeping. 4. Chemicals are not necessary and actually due more harm than good over time. 5. Darwin’s “Survival of the Fitest” makes for healthier, stronger, more hygenic bees. 6. Letting the bees build their own comb (foundationless) keeps contaminants mixed into foundation wax from getting to your bees and making them sick. 7. Use methods that assist the bees natural tendencies (slatted racks, Open or Screened bottoms, vented tops or top entrances) 8. There is at least 100 ways to solve every problem, just because one worked doesn’t mean it’s best, experiment. 9. Ask 12 beekeepers for their opinions and use their 24 answers to arrive at your own solution. 10. The more you learn about bees (or anything else) the more ignorant you realize you are. 11. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning or thinking. 12. Weather changes everything, year to year, season to season. Each summer only comes once, it will never be repeated so something new will crop up next year.
5.05.2008
Very interesting to me, after discussion with AndriusKulikauskas about the situation in SouthChicago I found this article about the history of Serbs in Chicago: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3945/is_200101/ai_n8931811/pg_1 I need to read that as I find it ery interesting and depicting social history and racial relations in America.
Comments
AndriusKulikauskas May 5, 2008 23:51 CET Sasha, I am glad for your interest in Chicago and your ability to link the BlackAmerican and Serbian experiences. In 1984, when I was a student at the University of Chicago, the people of Chicago elected their first black mayor, HaroldWashington. Yet he had trouble within his own Democratic Party. EdVrdolyak, of Croatian descent and from SouthEastChicago, led a majority of aldermen against him. Parts of Chicago had very strict racial boundaries at the time and HaroldWashington quietly opened the way for BlackAmericans to live in white neighborhoods.
29.04.2008
I am trying to setup some wi fi equipment. A wifi ADSL router and some internal wifi cards. I struggled for a few days to finish this in gnu linux but unsuccessfully, for now at least. It seems that the GUI in the Ubuntu and debian I use is still somewhat buggy. So I searched around and found something called wireless tools, it asks for working in console mode and I am not very well versed in that, yet. On Sunday I succeed to learn a few commands and their use but now the problem it seems is the driver of my laptop internal wifi card which has some problems with wireless tools. The thing that irritates me is that my laptop can see the ad-hoc network I created on the desktop but for some reason I cant ping between cards. I have asked for help on several linux forums and failed, probably I didn’t ask appropriate question. Someone said that to know to ask right question is already 95 % of the answer. I think this is true. Any way I am sure I will make this work like I made everything else. I just need to locate the problem and then fix it. There is a reserve plan. I have also two wireless dongles and maybe I can try to connect them, maybe it will be easier to make a network with them since they are same and use same well, everything. Also it seems that ADSL standards in UK and Serbia are not the same, a person on a forum told me that he had similar problem, an ADSL router from UK didn’t work in Serbia. Also I’ve got an answer from Yahoo answers here: http://ph.answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20080426061629AAzNbqm
So I am very disappointed this will not work for me. But maybe there is still the possibility to use the box as a wifi router for a local wireless network. I have never done that, and I am wondering would that be possible and /or useful. Finally I didn’t know it was such a burden to establish a wifi network. Everything works pretty fine on a LAN network. By the way I managed to establish the ad-hoc network while using windows xp, but for some strange reason, probably a windows bug, the wifi card breaks the connection every 30 or 60 minutes. Really unsatisfying but I will use it that way, for now.
15.04.2008
I had some bad strain of flu, I don’t remember benn so sick for a long time. My whole family did get it. Youngest doughter got it first then wife, then me and at the end older daughter. I think my daughter brought the virus from the kindergarten ( its a great area for spreading every kind of sickness). I wasnt even aware that there is a epidemic flu going on. If I knew I would be much more carefull. The information was lacking, and it makes me thinking that simmilar would be in a case ( I hope never!) of flu pandemic. Having the righ information would mean the difference between life and death.
Comments:
LucasGonzalez April 15, 2008 12:59 CET Hi, Sasha. Hope you’re better now. This season seems to be having a longer tail than usual over here too.
As they say: “Hope is not a plan. And a plan is not preparedness.”
You’ll have lots of information in the next pandemic. Too much, maybe, so one important thing (one of Andrius‘ first questions) will be who to trust. Information about what’s going on and about what to do. It will be most important to give the virus a cold welcome: more like a Sunday afternoon (with not many people on the streets), rather than a Saturday night (with many young people dancing together).
And many are not at all sure the internet will even be available after a certain point. It may become patchy. One important thing to think about would be how to pipe as much useful information as fast as possible once people start to pay attention massively.
Be well!
08.04.2008
On the 11 April of 1941 there was a bombarding of Belgrade by Hitlers airforce, operation “Punishment”. National library was deliberately destroyed, 2274 people killed. 440tons of boms thrown. “Allied” bombardiers followed few years later on orthodox easter, with similar effects. Seems that Europe repeats its action… Thank you EU for everything. USA too. I am sorry my grandfathers fought on your side in WW2, they should know better.
Ruth Mitchell wrote about the implications of the Belgrade bombing for the US and for US citizens as follows in 1943:
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/081.shtml 
“The Serbs chose war. In spite of all the horrors they expected, this small race almost unanimously decided to oppose themselves against the greatest war machine of history. And in spite of the unexpected, unpredictable horrors that have befallen them, they still choose war….
I gave the dying men and women of Serbia my promise that I would spend the rest of my life looking after their children. I promised them that America would never forget the bond and the debt. I pledged American honor that the thousands upon thousands of orphans left in a ruined land would be cherished by their American brothers and sisters.
In view of all that the Serbs have done—for us; in view of all they have lost in fighting—for us; in view of all they have saved—to us—in money and in lives, I propose that for the rebuilding and the future of Serbia we appropriate the cost to us of one day of war.”
08.04.2008
I was very upset for a few days, my wife Zdenka was also. A tragedy happened near us http://www.pressonline.co.yu/vest.jsp?id=33431
Two persons are dead. One of them was a father of our daughters best friend. Although we were not friends we met him and his family members almost every day since the two girls are very close and visit each other almost every day and learn and play together.
He was a good person in my mind, as I said I didn’t know him very well but have seen and felt his relationship with his daughters,(two of them same age as my, 5 and 7 years old). He spent a lot of time with them, I saw him many times learning his younger one to drive rollers. He took our kids together with his few times to ice cream, that was something big in my kids eyes. And I am very sad because I felt his love for his children, and I can only imagine, knowing how much my kids are deeply connected with me, what kind of terrible loss is for them. They are left without fatherly love and support for their whole life, this makes me almost crying even now. I feel a deep sadness in my hart. Also the terrible pointless of the act, the killer killed him because of his former wife, he killed him and than killed himself on the street. He had also two kids. What a terrible way to solve things, What kind of craziness is this? There are always solutions in life for every possibly problem, but after death comes , then there is no solution… Every problem will be solved or not, but life always goes on, if the wife didn’t love him , there are many , many , beautiful persons here and all over the world. How did he have the soul to take away kids father , in the times when they need him the most? I have no answer …
Sometimes this world is beyond my understanding. Time will heal any wound.
Comments
AndriusKulikauskas April 9, 2008 10:13 CET Sasha, thank you for sharing your sadness. I feel you open my eyes to think of others, to appreciate the good they do and what we can do. I am sad for your daughter and her friend.
14.03.2008
Vinay Gupta video on Flu pandemic http://tinyurl.com/25x9ep
10.03.2008
http://www.pride-unlimited.com/probono/idioms1.html
http://members.aol.com/MorelandC/Phrases.htm
http://www.daveseslcafe.com/slang/list.htm
1.02.2008
“Dance, as though no one is watching, Love, as though you’ve never been hurt before, Sing, as though no one can hear you, Work, as though you don’t need the money, Live, as though heaven is on earth.” – Rumi
30.01.2008
Just had a brief conversation on skype with Graham Stewart. He is the developer of the “Game of Now”.
http://williamgrahamstewart.com/2008/01/30/sasha-mrkailo-minciu-sodas-and-kenya/
26.01.2008
Nice thinking Andrius, although it not easy to use as a measure.
<AndriusKulikauskas> it’s not about perfection, it’s about organic evolution [16:56] <AndriusKulikauskas> and including others [16:56] <AndriusKulikauskas> if you do it yourself perfectly then others aren’t involved and if it’s a total mess then they can’t get involved either so it’s in between somewhere
20.01.2008
http://raforum.info/article.php3?id_article=315
http://www.justfortheloveofit.org/index.php
07.01.2008
Look what I found out today. Internet is full of surprises. Today I found a satellite picture of my home 
. Big brother is watching, for good or bad.
This is my home here:
http://wikimapia.org/#lat=45.760386&lon=19.121125&z=18&l=0&m=a&v=2
Happy ( Orthodox) Christmas
Comments
Little brother is watching, too! And I will be organizing our wiki and together we can make it quite effective. I am checking out your work with the maps. AndriusKulikauskas January 8, 2008 3:21 CET
27.05.2007
Maria Agnese, Andrius and Sasha in Firenza
26.05.2007
Today is Christmas for the western Christians. It was a nice day and we had a snow for this date that we lacked for ten years. My kids and me played a lot on the snow today, we borrowed a children sled and had great fun. I enjoyed every moment of that. Their happiness is so pure that you cant resist but remember how beautiful and direct it is when you are a child, and when you see things clear.
What I wanted to write is that I am reading a book on Alexander technique, which I think is very important and valuable ( I have problems with my back and spine). I would describe it as AppliedPhilosophy ,maybe some kind of western yoga,but that is probably not a good comparation. I have read a sentence from there and searched for further material on the web. It was a story from German writer Heinrich Fon Kleist about a bear which without any effort deals with an excellent swordsman, and doesn’t react to false attacks. Its incredible how easy it seems and the author speaks beautifully about conscious and unconscious movements and knowledge. Please read it if you are interested in such things here: http://www.somatics.de/Kleist.htm
I think this is very connected and close to work of Jinan K who is thinking about education and who works with potters. http://www.re-cognition.org/crafts/index.html#
And interesting I see here another connection. I have this idea that we (my people ) lost many of the old tradition, old culture and tradition and in the meantime didn’t understand new culture and didn’t really get accustomed it, so now we are in some kind of limbo where we lost what was behind but cant find the way forward. Maybe its the same with every human being, we lost our unconscious wisdom and still didn’t get our consciousness to highest level. Same as in the story, you are so gracious like the unconscious bear from the story or you have to be the ultimate swordsman with the ultimate consciousness’s.
Besides by searching the article on bear and swordsman I found that another author which books I read with enjoyment, Phillip Pulman ,was also very impressed with this story, that was another coincidence,and very interesting to me. That is why I like internet, everything is connected and i can follow different strains of thought and find out what is really interesting to me.
20.12.2007
Today it was quite interesting day. I visited my uncle who is a hotel owner, He had a “slava” today. Slava is a orthodox Serbian holy day , the one today was devoted to S. Nicolas which is one of the biggest saints in out church and tradition. I had meet there some interesting people and we discussed a lot about different issues like Kosovo and such. I had taken the direction to the theme of unjust working condition in a factory where I worked ( where workers are treated almost as criminals in jail). That is something I think a lot about, the big state run media television in fact which is most influential is not mentioning things like this which is of most importance since we all have to work something and the living/ working conditions are awful here in my opinion, and with extremely high unemployment rate makes things even worse, many people are just forced in such relationship. For myself I declared I will never ever again participate in such a damaging institution. We talked a lot and one person was some kind of leader of independent villagers syndicate and he told me some of his experiences regarding different injustices, it was an interesting conversation and exchange of ideas. He told me that I am quite not flexible and that in life I have to be flexible like a dancer, when someone pushes you if you are not flexible you will fall, but if you are flexible you will just dance away. Like Mohhamad Ali perhaps. I SIMPLY CANT FIGHT others peoples battles. If they are quiet and don’t want to get up, why should I sacrifice myself? Perhaps they are just not yet ready to think for themselves. Critical thinking is a rare, very rare skill in Serbia.. But in this occasion I feel people, workers, unemployed, we have to take a strong stance and fight for our rights. If we don’t want to fight for us who will? Nobody I am afraid. Teachers in Serbia are striking quite often and they have comfortable wages, and I applaud to them. But they are organized, educated and they have leverage which they use very successful and smart. Who cares for the unemployed, old people, young people, workers etc when they cant fight? Nobody. If you don’t protect yourself don’t expect any mercy. Life is like jungle here I feel. Al is wrong and that is depressing me a lot. Also I have declared to be free and independent but that is not easy especially with family to take care of. If I was alone I would live free as a bird but like this I have to fight and provide for my kids. And it aint easy. I think I have to find some more commercially oriented work where I can earn more money. Mincius Soas is great, but I can simply not live with the money I get here. I need to find some additional source of income.
07.12.2007
Long time since I didn’t post here. Life is quite hectic when you have two small girls in your home which is by the way your small home office and workplace, especially when one of those girls is a newbie first grade pupil. I started again to practice Aikido primarily from healt hrelated reasons and second because it is an beautiful martial art a art in the real sense. You have to use your head and thoughtfully study those techniques otherwise you will get nowhere. What I wanted to add here is how the idea of going to Aikido club where you deploy almost 100 % of your capabilities in an art which is not at all competitive, (where you can gain nothing except health and self confidence and …) incredible. Incredible, 10 persons working hardly in a small dojo with the only reason to develop themselves. I said to my friends there, “ imagine people working like this in some company or other institution, what would look like our economy? Instead of poverty and misery that we live in we would have standard higher than that in Japan! Imagine people working to develop themselves , working hard but thoughtful, were could this approach lead us? ) I need read the book on proposed open source economy on the http://www.peereconomy.org site.
Also my issue today is that my younger kid has smallpox, and its not easy for us , the parents, although its not really dangerous. makes me thinking what kind of disaster would a flu pandemic could be. I need to do a serious research on this… But the problem is there is no t enough time to follow all directions of research all interests, all email groups everything. Plus I hav e to constantly repair things here, yesterday I repaired my stove, and something else too, makes me think that I could go whole day with a hammer and a screwdriver and repair things whole day. Which maybe wouldnt be too bad because i think I simply spend too much time in front of the computer. i have heard on the news today about appearance of ebola in Uganda. Tragedy, What a disise it kills itself off before it gets the chance to spread.
Lately I am also experimenting with gnu linux. Its a fantastic system and I prefer it over windows for variety of reasons. But there is one issue with linux and laptops, it seems that laptop manufacturers produce their machines with only windows in min and that can be troublesome. For example I lke a lot Ubuntu linux which is very nice for linux newbie and at least as much functional as win and in my opinion far better. i feel gnu linux is a step forward in evolution.
I have totally neglected my bees and my ceramic project since I came from Italy. Need to work on this again. Its never good to rely on one source of income or anything other for that matter. Decentralize, decentralize,decentralize!
I am reading a fantastic book “social Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman I like it a lot because it gives some scientific background to many of my assumptions and real life hypothesis. I recommend it to everyone …
5.11.2007
I have just yesterday solved my frustrating problem with using audio in Skype for Ubuntu Linux. Its a great feeling, how open source community works! I have researched for a month on that but unsuccessfully until one member of Serbian Ubuntu users group didn’t dedicate time to help me. Its a fantastic feeling when people are helping people without reason. Remember our discussion Andrius in Santa Marinella when you asked me have I ever seen community and does it really exist? Here is example for you, yes it exists and I believe it can be spread to other fields other than software!
3.11.2007
I have found something that I think could be an excellent resource and useful to us in many different ways. I haven’t tested it yet, so would like to do that. If someone is actually reading this, I need help to try this out!
28.08.2007
I often find myself not good at saying things i wish to communicate to others. And sometimes I stumble upon thoughts of other people which perfectly says something really meaningful to me and my life.
“Do not depend on the hope of results . . .you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. . . .you gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. . . In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything. ~ Thomas Merton”
Comments
Sasha, thank you for your many hopes which provide a lot of meaning for our lab and our participants. What calms me often is to pursue goals that will yield positive results even if we fail. For example, with the FlashDriveEditor, if we can organize the manufacture and profit from their coming to be, that is good; if somebody else can make them better and sooner, that is also good; if it turns out that they are not helpful, but we can learn why, that is also good. AndriusKulikauskas August 28, 2007 22:29 CET
19.08.2007
http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/ShowCase
RepRap is a open source developed 3D printing device in development. The basic idea is to have a machine that is easy to build from of the shelves parts which is able to rebuild itself and in the end build all kind of different products from plastic metal and clay. I think this is relevant To Marcin‘s OSE project. And I think this project shows how is the open source /Free software movement slipping into all areas of life slowly but steadily. And this is a very good sign for me. As one reporter said: “[RepRap] has been called the invention that will bring down global capitalism, start a second industrial revolution and save the environment…”
09.08.2007
JohnRogers has started his consultancy web site and business http://www.valueforpeople.co.ukThis is an really “rightfull living” business so I wish him luck and I am interested in how this will develop for him. I am adding the link to his site to boost his google ranking position.
25.07.2007
Today is somewhat more normal day with temperatures around 25C and I feel fine first time in the last 10 days.
Yesterday my wife sent me to the supermarket in the mid of the day with the strongest sun and I think I got the sunstroke.
Had 40C temperature last night , I didn’t know this could be so dangerous guess I underestimated the temperatures.
Is this GlobalWarming in Action? UK is under heavy rainfalls and floods biggest rain in last 60 years. So very different climate and we are not really far away from UK.
That’s the meaning of preparedness we are talking about lately regarding FluPandemic. Sometimes even a small straw hat can be a difference between life and death.
Comments
Lucas: A “small straw hat” needs to be grabbed if it is to be useful. It’s looking at reality in the eye that may make the most difference, and then being constructive and creative about it. (Too much tv for many people.) I’m glad you’re better today.
19.07.2007
It was very hot today here, 39C Tomorrow the temperature will go up to 42C maybe. Very hot for this part of the world, so I will try to work on the wiki during the (somewhat) colder night hours.
13.07.2007
Mindful eating, a concept that I have to explore http://www.bemindful.org/mindeating.htm
12.07.2007
Simple and easy exercises I use and I feel they help me a lot. Gives me a lot of energy and help me feel better when I sit for a long hours in front of the computer.
Five Tibetan Rites
Sasha's blog 