Three trips (Skuta-Dolgi Hrbet-Češka cottage-Kranjska cottage-Savinjsko pass, Lovrenc lakes, Kanin)

Last two weekends I finally took some time for myself and did some trips to hills and mountain. There were three to be precise.

The first one was a bit more then just a trip, since it was quite intense. My sisters fiance Božo and me went on a trekking to Skuta, Dolgi Hrbet, Češka cottage, Kranjska cottage, Savinjsko pass and back to the valley. It took us altogether 12 hours and few minutes with all the rests and stops to finish this trekking. Our knees betrayed us on the way down. But we did it and were glad.
You can find some photos here.

The second one was to Lovrenc lakes. The pristine lakes on Pohorje that are really beautiful. We went there with my parents and it was a bad choice actually. There were tons of people all over the Rogla (our starting point) all the way to the lakes. It was hardly bearable, much like pilgrimage. Still it was worth all the beauty and fresh air.
Some photos are here.

The third one was to the mountain of Kanin. The plan was to see the new part of highway that was opened just a week earlier, and to get through Trnovski forest to city of Bovec and from there to Kanin. It was our first time in Trnovski forest and we were amazed by the beauty of it. Its the pristine natural forest in the midland. Perfect for easy trips and picnics. I bet there are lots of mushrooms there as well (note to myself: get them next time). We took the cable car from Bovec to the ski resort of Kanin and did some trips up there. Rocks are so different there because of all the glacier remains and karst terrain. There are some of the world deepest abysses here.
Again some photos are here.

World Science Festival

Now a traditional festival for promoting science, called World Science Festival takes place each summer in the city of New York. I've only found out that last week, when one of my friends posted a video from the festival on the facebook (thank you Samo). I was so amazed by the content of the video that I just had to check it out. And once I discovered the home page of the festival (here), I found out that there is an archive of videos (here) there from previous festivals. I took some time and watched most of them. And I liked them all.

Since I am a science freak this was an amazing discovery for me. I hope that I'll have a chance and join this festival. The things that scientists are presenting to the public are amazing, the discussions between the scientist are awesome, including all the arguments. I would suggest everyone who is interested in science to check this site and event.

Jon Schmidt

Just a week ago or a bit further back I have accidentally discovered this really great composer and pianist. It was on a site who all of you know for sure: YouTube when I was listening to the music for my research.

I came across a brilliant composer Jon Schmidt, his home site is: http://www.jonschmidt.com/

The first composition I was listening to was: All of me (YouTube, Jon Schmidt). An amazingly happy composition. I just couldn't stop listening to it for quite some time. I've also watched some responses to it like: None of me (YouTube, Jason Lyle Black), which also are amazingly beautiful.

But then I made even bigger discovery and I found: Love Story meets Viva la Vida (YouTube) that just blew my mind away for even longer time then All of me. This is just amazing piece of composition.

Still listening to it every day.

BBC documentary series

There were three BBC documentary series I've watched recently:

• Yellowstone (IMDB, Wiki)
  a 2009 documentary about my favorite national park I can think of. This three part series shows us what goes on in Yellowstone throughout the year. Each part is about different part of the year and shows ups and downs of commodity of living in this beautiful piece of Earth. It only encoureges me to go there by myself someday.
  
  
• Earth: The Power of the Planet (BBC, IMDB, University of Plymouth)
  a 2007 documentary series where in five episodes geologist Iain Steward takes us around the world to show us all the nature wonders and beauties our planet has to show. It also shows us how very small we are and what some real powers of our planet are. Also he shows us how human race is changing the planet and what are the consequences of our doing. At the end he faces us with the fact, that it is not planet that might "die" if we don't start taking better care of it, it is us that won't be able to survive in conditions that we are creating.
  
  
• Planet Earth (BBC, IMDB, Wiki)
  a 2006 documentary series in eleven parts. If I would have known sooner that the US version was nerrated by Sigourney Weaver I would have watched that one. But anyway. It is a series that shows us nature in all of its beauty. The places of the earth one could never see by himself, spices of plants and animals I've never heard of before. It was well worth watching to see what all our planet hold and what all there is to see in the nature.

All the documentaries are awesome and if you haven't seen them yet, you should watch them as soon as possible.

My first conference article

It finally came down to this. As I wrote down several times here on my blog, I am a researcher at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Multimedia (a long title it is).

And as a researcher there is some research I am conducting. My current research involves ethnic music and computers. More precisely I am researching how we can use computers to help ethno-musicologists with their research with use of computers.

Now to be really precise I will just put down the title of my article, that was accepted at the ISMIR 2009 conference: Calculating Similarity of Folk Song Variants With Melody-Based Features. I however had a lot of help and guidance of my mentor who is also a coauthor of this article.

I am glad that my work finally showed some results that are actually worth showing to the rest of the world. Once the conference is over I will publish the link to the article here as well. I will continue my research work in this field and hope to good research results in the feature as well.