Reblog: 15 Amazing Castles from Around the Globe

by Dennis••2•Posted inJournal

(Reblogged from http://opentravel.com/blogs/15-amazing-castles-from-around-the-globe/ so that I don’t lose the link.)

Although designed and built for the prominent purpose of defense, today the castles seem like somewhat unrealistic constructions straight from the fairytale world. From solid strongholds to oriental fortresses and highly decorative palaces, the castles are our connection to the past, where legends mix with history and reality blends with a fairyland.

1. Hohenzollern Castle. Germany.

This fairytale castle is the historical seat of the Prussian Kings and German Emperors. Its origin dates back to the Middle Ages – it was built in the 11th century, then completely destroyed in 1423 and reconstructed in 1461.

The view from the castle that stands on top of Mount Hohenzollern (855 m) is as stunning as the complex itself. The castle is located about 50 kilometers (30 mi) south of Stuttgart, the capital of the Baden-Württemberg state.

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Mauro is One, the Problem is Many

by Dennis••1•Posted inJournal

…and then, on your way home from training, you get stopped by a middle-aged African man who tells you, only with the slightest accent, that he’s a fifty year old, Sudanese school teacher with two daughters, aged 4 and 5, who has been in the Netherlands for the past four years, working hard to learn the Dutch language and customs (with success, I can honestly say), who just learned today that he is to be flown back to Sudan tomorrow.

He says he will be brought to the airport under police escort and flown back to the country he left four years ago in search for a better life for his daughters. He says he’s happy they are allowed to stay, but that he’s heartbroken that he will not be able to watch his children grow up. He says needs money to take a train to France and submit himself to a humanitarian organisation that he’s heard might be able to help him. He asks if I can spare some money. He says he’s 163 euro and 35 cents short for his ticket.

I tell him that I can’t help him. I tell him that my finances are spread thin. He starts crying and tells me that this is not the land of hope that all the Dutch believe it is. I say nothing, because what’s there to say, really. He’s right. It’s not the land of hope for all.

Lung in Your Pocket

by Dennis••0•Posted inJournal

“Every model of mobile phone […] has a number like this, most of them offering so many possible iterations […] that at the usual rate of product release – say, between three and fifty distinct products per line per year – the people making them will still have plenty of serial numbers left when humans are so highly evolved and so thoroughly integrated with their own technology that the idea of a phone as distinct from the organism is disturbing in the same way that carrying your lung around in your pocket seems a little freaky now.”

20/20 Hindsight

by Dennis••0•Posted inDevelopment

A clean slate. This has come up several times over the last few days, in different contexts, but it’s coming back to haunt me once again. This time, it’s Corrosion. I am getting the itch to start all over, from scratch, and fix some of the mistakes I initially made. Set things right. I’m not going to do that, because I realise that you’ll always keep that urge. You work, you learn, you grow, you look back and you realise what you could’ve done better. It’s also one of the traps you can get caught in. Always go back to rewrite and redo your own code and never push forward to finish anything. I just have to keep telling myself that. :)

Corrosion, Motivation, Progress

by Dennis••0•Posted inJournal

Sometimes I find myself unable to get myself to work on something I’ve been dying to work on because my schedule has been so packed that I just need some time to do nothing of any significance, just to decompress. Even though I want to work on my project, I find my mind wanders to different things. Gaming, Facebook, 4Chan, reading MMA news, anything but my project. In the past I often thought that my avoidant behavior was because I secretly didn’t want to work on my project, but upon further reflection, that really isn’t it. After having wasted about half a day doing everything but the work I wanted to do, suddenly I’ll start working and suddenly I’m getting into it. It sucks because instead of the ten hours I had wanted to work on it, I only work on it for three because the first seven hours were wasted on other things.

It helps that there’s some pressure. It helps that this isn’t a solitary project anymore. With a handful of regular players and daily activity, Corrosion has strangely attracted a few people that keep coming back, even though we haven’t really advertised its existence.

It also helps that my brother is involved. A collaborative project is much nicer than a solitary one, especially when you’re both enthusiastic about it, work on it together, come up with new ideas and develop them together. To have someone sit next to you and work in a deep voodoo team, passing the keyboard back and forth trying new ideas and coming up with new solutions is even better. Unfortunately, that’s not the level of involvement I experience from my brother. Has good ideas and likes to think along, but he’s not nearly as dedicated as I am, nor has he put in even a tenth of the time I have. He wants to be involved and he knows what he has to do in order to be involved, but he can’t seem to get himself to do it. Perhaps much like me, he needs time to do nothing of importance before getting to his projects, too, only to never really get to it.

Sure, he lacks the technical savvy, but that’s not anything that can’t be remedied with a little elbow grease. I had to start from scratch, too, and I didn’t have the luxury of asking help or advice from someone. (He’s in a privileged position, really.) No, it’s not the technical knowledge he lacks, he lacks assertiveness and the drive to do learn what he needs in order to make a bigger impact on a game we started together. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to motivate him in this regard. I guess being part of this isn’t enough.