Nikio

On the other note; this blog is celebrating it's 2nd birthday! Yay!

In that time we acomplished:
- almost 90.000 visitors
- 146 articles
- 66 albums
- "Best blog by a male" award
... and lots more

The European peacock caterpillar (Inachis io).

There will be more photos and less words for a while. I don't feel like writing.

It's been a while since my last post. I've been very busy!

Now that we have summer on the northern hemisphere, I'd like to share some knowledge on watermelons with you. It has been my favourite summer fruit (or better vegetable, depends on classification) since I can remember. In that time I developed some roules on how to find a really good one.



If you're buying just half or 1/4 of the whole fruit, you have no problem. Just make sure you are buying a piece from the largest watermelon possible. Flesh must be crimson-red with hard and crunchy texture. Note that small watermelons tend to be pink (especially spring "edditions") or have soft squeezy flesh on the polar sides of the fruit. Avoid that! If the watermelon has about 60% long crack on the inside, consider it a good sign!

But what if you are buying the whole one? Many people claim to have skills to distinguish a good watermelon from bad (good = juicy, sweet and crunchy). Two technicques can be noted: by first they put the watermelon against their ear and and press it really hard so that they "can hear how it cracks". Well, I have problem with that; first of all - watermelons are very much shaped like eggs, which are very hard to crack. Secondly; how does he/she know which crack-sound is good and which is bad and how does that relate to the level of suggar, watter or texture of the flesh? I tried this a couple of times and based on available information, I find this technique bogus.

Some other like to put the fruit to their ear and knock on the other side. While it may very well be true, that sound does travel differently trough different media, which vary in the level of water and suggar content (not to mention structure and texture), I believe it is hard to really hear that small differences, unless you are in studio environment with precise equipment. This technicque is often performed by resellers who usually don't eat the melons they sell and on that level it is just as bogus as the previous one.

So; here are my advices if you are buying a whole watermelon:
- pick as largest as you can buy - larger watermelons have more sugar, watter and better texture
- most watermelons come as a part of larger delivery. Watermelons of the same delivery are from the same field, (perhaps even from the same plant) and are very much the same. You can observe (and try) some that are already cut in half and then pick an other as a whole. It is very very likely, that it will be the same as the one observed.
- the best time to buy watermelons is from late june to mid-august
- if you can't afford the whole watermelon at a time (or if you don't plan to eat as much) it is in 95% of the times better to buy 1/4 of a big one than 1/2 of a small one.


Enjoy!
(image source)

I will present two examples and then I will draw a conclusion.

1. The other day I was watching a lecture on TED, where the speaker (Michael Pollan) made an interesting analogy; let's take a look at the bees. They are drawn to the flowers by their looks and smell. The flowers actually make them fly onto them and "forces them" to help them (flowers) procreate. The bee is actually fooled by the flower but gets honney in return!

2. Imagine species that are really good at surviving, like sharks or aligators (or humans?), which have been around since before the dinosaurs and have changed only a little during that time. They must be really perfectly built for their purpose of living. Now; wouldn't be just great for you if you could make a shark or an aligator depend on you? That would, in a way, make your survival a lot easier. Is like befriending powerful people. There actually are birds which clean aligators teeth and I imagine those birds are somehow in advantage over the other birds, for they have a really stable source of food and protection.


The conclusion: Are we (humans) any better any better than the bees? I believe not! We too are fooled by tomatoes, cows, pigs and some birds (chickens and turkeys) which now flourish as species. If you have problem imagining that, it is probably because you see tomatoes as "food" and not as a "plant" in the ecosystem (a couple of years living in a city and shopping in supermarkets will actually do that kind of damage to your brain). But that's what it really is! Tomatoes are just plants that grow around in some places! They produce very juicy and tasty fruits which fool us to plant them more and more. In terms of business: tomatoes (along with some other plants like potatoes...) made a risky but very profitable investment. As long as we are here, they have nothing to worry about.
The deal we have with cows, birds and pigs is even more perverse; yes, we do kill individual cows but we take a really good care for the population which has never been larger.

Perhaps this is not the most scientific way to look at the evolutin, but it sure is a lot of fun!

That was my Sunday afternoon. Finally the sea is warm enough to swim. The evening was nice too.

PS: the photo is quite good for a mobile, isn't it?

If I only knew before that it is so easy and simple to make them...



Yes, they are very good. Much better than anything similar you can buy in the store. Not because I would be such a great chef but because industrial cuisine makes shitty food (why do you think it is so cheap?)!

"Maturantska parada" is a big event in Central Europe that started 7 years ago in Ljubljana (Slovenia) with an annual goal to break the world record in synchronised Quadrille dance that is traditionally danced by senior high-school students as a part of their official prom program (in Slovenia). And since there is exactly 4 years of our local high-school here in Ilirska Bistrica, it means that we have a first generation of our own senior students to dance. Our school joined this international event and contributed 42 dancers. They danced on the main city square where by pure chance was also a weekly fair going on, so there was a lot of people who watched it. The whole thing reminds me on how much fun it is to be 18 - just old enough to have everything legally and young enough to neglect all of the responsibility that goes with it. Being in senior high rocks!



Here are some more pics of my own, or you can hit a much larger selection here.


See photos and video from other cities...

Today I would like to present a work by Slovenian sculptor Janez Lenassi, which is located in my very own town (I can even see it from my room). Sometimes when something lies right in front of your eyes for too long you might become blind for it's beauty. Many people from my city are not aware of the masterpiece they are seing every day. I myself wasn't aware of it's meaning untill recently.


Ilirska Bistrica is a city that is merged from two previous villages; Trnovo and Bistrica. Inbetween there is a hill, covered with grass, that now stands in the centre of the city. In 1960's they decided to use that prominent location to make a monument to fallen in WWII. The design of the monument was done by a sculptor, Janez Lenassi, who wanted to present two basic ideas; the shape of the bones (there are actual bones of dead solders burried underneath the monument) and a cube of Kras' cave that is taken from beneath the ground and now floats above the ground. (Karst, called Kras is the predominant type of landscape here and has deep symbolic meaning for local people).

The monument was an immediate success. In the same year Lenassi recived the Prešeren Foundation Award and got published throughout the former Yugoslavia. The monument is still often published in architecture and design magazines. I believe there is a lot of visionary thinking behind this design.

Sadly, Janez Lenassi died earlier this year.



More photos here.