Posts Tagged ‘age’

Develop your children intellect with Gcompris high quality educational software on GNU / Linux, Windows and Mac OS X

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

Gcompris Main entry Screen

Gcompris is a great piece of software to educate children in the age interval of 2 to 10 years old.
Gcompris is a tool of educative and funny interactive computer applications many of which has a form of games.

Gcompris strategy games

Gcompris is teaching the children on the following fields of knowledge:
 

  • understand the computer – keyboard, mouse etc.
  • Algebra – Summing up numbers, enumarations, table memory, mirror image etc.
  • Science – The Canal lock, the water cycle, how a submarine works, elementary electric simulation
  • Geography – Find out about country locations, Place the country on the map
  • Games – Learn how to play chess, improve memory and memorization, sudoku etc.
  • Reading – Learning to read fluent, reading practice
  • Learn to proerply tell time, solve puzzle games and learn famous paintings, basic cartoon making, vector drawing

Gcompris reading activities

All the funny activities Gcompris educative kid tool offers 100+. Gcompris is in active development so with time more and more activities gets added.
Gcompris is a Free Software and among with its native GNU / Linux support it has ports for Windows and Mac OS X

The Free Software nature of Gcompris gives possibility to be easily adapted and further developed! Its really funny not only for kids, but even for adults. If you had a stressy day and you want to relax in a childish way and feel like a kid again, give it a try and you will be amazed how much light and happiness this computer program can bless you with 😉

Many of Gcompris activities has a little cute penguins and in general its capable of introducing the kids to the nice concept of the free software.

As a free software Gcompris is really great as among the rest of the so popular free software freedoms: to distribute and modify the software it comes absolutely free of charge (in money terms). This is great news for parents who are growing their kids in the “developing world”, the so called 2nd and 3rd world as well is a good alternative to the many available paid costly application and games aiming at kids brain development.
Gcompris puzzle games

The name Gcompris is also known in free software realm under the name I GOT IT .Gcompris has currently Sound and text support for 33 Country Languages, here is a completele list of languages currently supported:

Arabic, Asturian, Bulgarian, Breton, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Basque, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Indian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Indian, Norwegian, Dutch, Norwegian, Punjabi, Portuguese, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Urdu, Chinese

Some of the languages supported still does not have a 100% translation but partially translated as its a question of time that enough translators are found to make the translations for all available major languages. The only 100% completed trasnlation as of time of writting is in French, Slovenian and Spanish

Gcompris is already included in almost all available moderm GNU / Linux distributions. A packaged version of it is part of Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu.

Gcompris Mathematics

For all those parents who wish to educate their children on Fedora Linux install it with the GUI installer or yum with cmd:

[root@fedora ~]# yum install gcompris
...

On Debian and Ubuntu Gcompris is installable via apt from repos:

debian:~# apt-get install gcompris
...

To add a text and sound translation to Gcompris its also necessery to install the relevant gcompris-sound distribution package, for example to add the sound translations for my native Bulgarian language I had to install the package gcompris-sound-bg, e.g.:

debian:~# apt-get install gcompris-sound-bg
...

Gcompris is developed to use the Gnome’s GTK and is a perfect match for Linux users who already run a Gnome Desktop on their PCs.

Most of Gcompris versions should run without much hassle on Mac OS X and Windows so all mommies and daddies on Windows or Mac can install it and use it to educate their kids 😉

Here are few more screenshots of Gcompris

Gcompris children intellect develop Experimental activities

Gcompris educational kids develop intellect Discovery activities
Gcompris various games for develop your kid intellect
Gcompris also fits well with  Tux for Kids Linux / Windows ready games also suitable for kids development. Gcompris and Tux for Kids makes Linux and  free software more “children mature” and is a perfect to be used on kids educational computers in kindergartens or any educational institutions aiming at children development. 

To sum it up, if you want to make your children smarter or you’re bored to death and you need to have some rest by going back to your childhood years give gcompris a try 😉

Sjecas li se dolly bell? – Do you remember Dolly Bell? – A classic serbian movie by Emil Kosturica

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Sjecas li se Dolly Bell / Do you remember dolly bell?

Sjecas li se dolly is a piece of classic in the well known Kosturica genre, the movie is from the distant 1981. The movie action takes place in communistic Yugoslavia. It clearly contains anti-communistic nuances. I’m really amazed that this movie see the light of the day in the early ’90s while still communism had strong influence on information media in Yugoslavia.

As I’ve lived until the age of 7 in communism and post-communism (and experienced myself communism), the movie was especially interesting to see. In the family in the movie I can see many things I’ve seen and suffered many of the anti-human communistic bull-shit in my own family in my boy years.
Communism has cripppled us the Bulgarians as a nation and destroyed any society which it was in (clearly observable in all post-communistic countries).

Interesting thing to notice among the communistic Marxist ideas in the plot is the growing influence of the Western World (seen in the anti social behavior of the actors),the enthusiasm to look for occult of the main actor the teenager boy – (Dino), the desire to look follow Italian western culture etc.
The movie also keeps the mark of the negativism and crazyness which is so distinct about all Kosturica movies I’ve seen. Anyways from an art point of view the movie is a real master piece.

The movie plot takes place in the so conflict area of Sarajevo, a place predominated by Muslims. What is shocking about the movie considering its time of make, is the explicit erotic and sexually related scenes. The censorship in communistic times was quite severe so it’s amazing, how this anti-communistic movie containing society unacceptable scenes ever came to existence.
Do you remember Dolly Bell? is a drama movie, presenting a sad reality, we still partially continue to live in the Balkans. Though 20 years has passed since the fall of communism pitily not much has changed here…

Near the movie end there are some religious scenes as well obviously attempting to fill in the material emptiness of communism with something spiritual. The religious scene,is a muslim local tradition of a funeral preparations.
The relation between the movie and Islam is understandable as Kosturica had some Bosnian Muslim roots from the line of his father. This kind of muslim influence is also observable on the other Kosturica movies as well.
Nowdays since 2005, Kosturica is officially Orthodox Christian baptized in Savina Monastery which makes me happy as myself am Orthodox Christian 😉

Arizona Dream (1993) – Movie Review

Sunday, June 19th, 2011

Just completed Arizona Dream by the famous Serbian director Emil Kosturica. The movie is starring Johny Depp an movie actor I’m not too big fan of.

The movie’s plot is too cracky. It all starts and ends with scenes of some Eskimos, where it progresses and depicts later on an ordinary life of an american fisher.
As movie progresses parts of the life of a successful car sells man comes in place. Axel (Johny Depp) is the main actor. The movie revolves around the sexist element.

Some of the scenes and movie delopment looks quite unexpected. Axel starts living in a place with two beautiful woman (a mother in law and a daguther in law).
The mother in law is famous for her passion to attract and sleep with new young man. Axel fells in love and together they follow a dream of building an airplane which is supposed to be used later on as a mean to kill themselves together and according to Eskimos belief bind together their souls for eternity.
The spiritual concepts of the movie are completely messed up and clearly the movie contains references to multitude of anti-christian ideas.
The movie is generally a bit depressing as the atmosphere one can feel is a jail like. Initially Axel fells in love with the mother in law Ellaine, later on near the movie denouement, he losts his passion for Ellain which is a bit older for his age and fells in love with Grace (which is a way younger and even more attractive).

Grace has a severe problems with feeling of unvalueness and suffers with chronic depression and thus things constantly to kill her self.

Near the end of the movie Axel explains himself in love with Grace (which seems to also be in love with him).
However the ending scenes are too sad as Grace decides finally to kill herself and commits suicide with a gun …

Honestly I expected a way more from the movie and I wouldn’t recommend it as a piece of classics or a movie with some significant value.
The rest of the movies directed by Emil Kosturica seems to be a far more superior and positive than this one.
If you want to save yourself from some insanity just stay away from this cranky movie!

A few words on Pseudo Christian Spirituality. A false “Spiritual” Movies and Books which we as Christians should Fully Avoid

Monday, April 18th, 2011

Heresies and How to Avoid them

We live in the age of the boom of sects, false prophets and false “messiahs”. Today it’s common that the bookstores are filled in with all kind of occult literature and magic teaching literature, agnostic books, horoscopes and all kind of empty modern day philosophy books which teaches evil, the so called “Get rich for a day”, “The secrets of success”, “How to take advantage over the others”, “How to be succesful”, “NLP for your success”, “How to enter into business”, “How to become rich quickly” etc. are e very short list of all the non-sense literature one can meet on the books market.

Along with the books we are being offered all kind of movies and philosophies “teaching us” about the life meanings, trying to explain the meaning of life and the universe and the meaning of each self as a human being.

From Christian perspective, most of this movies and books which plead to contain “a deeper life meaning” are empty of any real pure spiritual contents but are simply a mixture of various religious beliefs belonging to different group of worldy faiths and mostly targets to make the authors of the story or screen play rich.

This movies are not being inspired by God – The All Holy Trinity and they reject Christ as a founding stone on which to stand over, it’s clear that they contain an anti-christian content and every truly devoted Christian should try to abstain from watching them.

To name just a few of asuch a movies which are ecumenical (preach for unification of world religions) and from Orthodox Christian perspective are anti-christian in essence:

  • What the Bleep Do we Know – Down The Rabbit Hole
  • The Great Secret of Water
  • The Secret
  • The Fountain

We as Christians should try not watch this movie or praise them as something which confirms our faith, as they don’t confirm our faith in Christ but they try to spread up a “sick spirituality” and insane ideas.
This is just a small list of movies I have encountered which has influenced my spiritual health in a really negative way, therefore I hope if you’re a Christian you will take my warning and CHOOSE NOT TO WATCH THESE MOVIES!.
The reason for choosing not to watch this movies would be purely to prevent yourself from experiencing a spiritual (soul) damages by exposing yourself to the heretical teachings and ideas of the aforementioned ones.

Also try to get astray from all the genres of boks which I have mentioned above which try to teach you how to become sucessful in life, I have personally read a book I’m not sure about the exact name but it was similar to:

  • “The subsconscious could do everything / (Psyche can achieve everything) / The power of Mind etc.”

The book teaches the false idea that with our subconscrious mind we built our own current realities and promotes “positive thinking” as a way to attract wealth, personal success and happiness to yourself.

You can see yourself that this is insane not only from a Christian perspective but even for any rational person.

The idea of this false teachings is to convince you that man is undeveloped god and that we are masters of our own reality.

Therefore it is in direct contrast with even basic Christian beliefs, we Christians do belief that our reality and existence is completely in God’s hands and nothing could happen without God to allow it to happen.
Therefore from a Christian perspective if you, “during the whole day think about how you will get rich and how you will have millions in a bank account” as many of the up-mentioned devilish movies and books teaches, nothing will happen if God does not allow it.

We’re clearly said and taught from the Holy Bible and the Livings of the saints that all our life and daily goods we attain through our life are given by mercy, the saints has taught us that our lives and all we’re and possess are from God for God and through God! To whom be glory now and forever and ever! Amen.

Watch out for this heretical false doctrines which might separate you from Christ and our mother the Orthodox Church. The appearance of all this kind heretical literature and movies is in accordance to the prophecies by our Lord Jesus Christ who said that in the last days there will be many wolves in sheeps clothes, who will deceive and be deceived.

Let we as an Orthodox Christians be careful about what kind of books we read and keep our selves away from these and the similar kind of poisonous teachings.

Let we be fully delivered by God’s grace from being exposed to this kind of faith tempting books by the Holy Prayers of The Theotokos and all the Saints. Amen

My 17 years old, first in line Cousin Stanislav died in a motorcycle accident :(

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

Stanislav Valentinov Velikov, my beloved first in line cousin
Yesterday about 14:08, my beloved cousin Stanislav Valentinov Velikov has passed a way silently in a motorcycle accident.
It’s really terrible, I’ve been told today by my relatives and it was quite hard to believe it.
My impressions from Stanislav was that he was a very kind good and shiny boy. Like most of us the sinners he had a deadly passion Motorcycles
I haven’t seen Stanislav for already about 2.5 years, which was my personal fault not to keep a close contact with such a close relative.
Last time I saw him, he was almost a child and now just few years later he is gone. I’ve just came by from his home, where all the relatives friends, grandfathers, grandmathers and all that loved him and know him when he was still among the living were gathered to say a last goodbye

What is even more painful is the ridiculous way he has passed away. Stani as we used to call him was driving his new Honda motorcycle and was driving nearby a traffic lights on a street “San Stefano” here in Dobrich, a taxi driver was trying to do a manoeuvre right after he had left his last customers.
Of course as it often happens in Bulgaria the taxi driver was doing the manouver against the set driving rules, (he was doing a backward maneuver) on a street crossroad (located nearby the big supermarket Billa).

Stanislav was coming through the traffic lights in a high speed (it’s not clearly known what speed).He was driving the professional motorcycle without a a proper driving license, as he was 17 he only had a driving license for moped vehicle.

It appears the stupid taxi driver was doing his irresponsible law breaking maneuver right in the moment when Stanislav was riding on the road before the traffic lights.
As my cousin saw the taxi driver he got probably scared (presumably) tried to use the breaks to prevent crashing the taxi driver possibly loose the motorcycle holders.
He jumped over the motorcycle and hit and broke his neck 😐 It’s a terrible story really. What is even more terrible that the taxi driver was an ex-policeman and was one of the responsible sides for the deadly accident which costed the life of my cousin.

What can I say Bulgaria is really an insane country, even though I’m not a big wester fan I should say such an accidents are not that common in the Western World as the law is more observed there.

I’ve heard from my grandfather and grandmother that Stanislav was really gifted in technics especially in repairing motorcycles, moped vehicles etc.

Stanislav is still a pupil in the nearby Mathematics High School “Ivan Vazov”. Before his unexpected death my cousin was planning to get her girlfriend and get a ride to Varna where he was supposedly going to spend the school break and see my other cousin Desislav …
I’ve been to Stani’s home and saw his lifeless body and it’s really striking, he is so young his death is causing an enormous trace and pain in me and my family.

Now my family is lessing itself with a one more good and decent person. Stanislav is a victim of this cruel age. I remember since his childhood that he was very pationate about computer games with motorcycles and cars.
His deadly passion then went on into the real world, he first got a moped, then a professional motorcycle. He violated the law taking the bad example of the many computer games which preach uncontrolled high speed, adrenalin and living on the edge.

But my beloved cousin Stanislav as he was still a teen was not the one to be blamed, the real responsible ones are our parents who doesn’t educate is in the tradition and spirit of the faith of our fathers Orthodox Christianity

I’ve heard from my relatives that now the taxi driver probably want even be hold responsible, as he is an ex-cop and he has many friends still working in the police. Friends who would proof the taxi driver innocent!

We had a small talk with my sister today about the direct influence of the movies and the computer games on the computer psyche.
I believe my cousin is not responsibe for his tragedic death as he was just following an implanted route in his mind by the multiple games and violent movies he has been a fan of.
Stani is just another victim of this cruel age … As I saw him laying in the coffin I was thinking how short our live is. We work we bye we sell but we never know when our time will come.

What makes my cousin’s death even bigger trady is my uncle’s death (his father) who died just a few years ago after a severe sickness …

It’s a sad day today, it’s, also a clear example that we who are still living should come again to the mindset that we’re here for a short time.
We should day by day think of what we have done wrongly (our sins), we should try to live better and love more as our saviour Christ has instructed us “If you’re my pupils, love each other”.
It’s sad that we’re so hard-hearted that we don’t realize that what happened is a God’s warning not only to my family but to everybody out there.

If we don’t repent our sins and start living as God instructed us, our pains would multiple and our days will be living in sorrows …
I pray that our merciful God the Holy Trinity has mercy on Stanislav’s (newly presented) soul and be merciful on him and receive him in paradise …