Count to 10,000!

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Mikhailovich, what a coincidence! I was just coming to visit you!

(We're deep in the shit now...)

 

[youtube]90krBpThX28[/youtube]

 

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[YOUTUBE]U0bVpxXP3rY[/YOUTUBE]

 

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3805
Pleeeease, gimme that armor! :embarassed:

 

3806

Screw the armour, I want some vodka!

 

3807

I know stereotypes are bad but some eastern European stereotypes fit you so well

 

3808

Haha, I know, it's something my friends have joked about in real life also. As long as I don't turn into a complete stereotype (i.e. alcoholic with nothing on his mind but vodka), then I'm fine with it.

EDIT: pointless rant below:

Spoiler

Poland has a bit of an alcohol problem as a country. I believe in the 1980s we may have consumed the most vodka (proportionately to the population size) in the world, but I may be wrong since I don't remember where I heard about that - could be an urban myth or something.

In any case, in the 1990s there was a political push to culturally abandon vodka and start drinking beer instead. They campaigned for this through the creation of a beer drinkers' political party, opening more British-style pubs and it actually kinda worked, but I'm not sure if as intended. Nowadays, despite of vodka still being sort of like our national drink, beer finally overtook spirits in sales in Poland during the 1990s and has been the most popular alcoholic beverage ever since.

The problem is that every city still has its homeless drunks on the streets and alcoholism wasn't really beaten. Vodka is still the drink of choice for many Poles, it's also much cheaper there than in the UK, and it continues to play an important part in Polish traditions even for people who now prefer beer (you may be offered some vodka by the host when paying a visit to someone and Polish weddings are known for outrageous amounts of vodka). I'm kinda frustrated by it that people now group Poland together with countries like Czechia, Slovakia, Germany and Belgium as territories known for their beer, when traditionally we were until very recently much more like Ukraine, Belarus and Russia in that vodka was the most popular. So politicians unnaturally changed part of our culture over a short period of time, but without fixing the problem. What was the point? hwell:

Anyway, that's just me whining due to my personal preferences. I'm sure most people from Katowice (a city in the part of Poland that has been historically quite heavily influenced by Czech and Germanic culture) or from Szczecin might argue that "no, beer has always been the Polish national drink!" whilst someone like me from Warsaw or someone from Białystok will argue in favour of vodka.

 

2809
Sucks to hear, Bamul. If it is to any consolation, the different Polish beers I had in Poland weren't really that good

Anyway, Good News Everyone! Remember how I managed to uninstall GTA V by mistake? I finally finished reinstalling it, and it turns out that not only my online-profile is saved, but my Single-player Story mode profile is also saved! :whoo:
I guess it's a new thing Rockstar have started with? Saving your SP progress? I know Uplay did this with my Watch_Dogs account. Either that, or it's possible that the files that I did save (which I thought were all the files for GTA) were the save-files. :noidea:

Speaking of Watch_Dogs, my brother has more or less been an electrician all his life. From he was a little baby, his favorite hobby has been to fiddle with electrical stuff. When he lived with me and the family, he had his desk full of electrical wiring stuff and fiddled around to connect his smartphone to the lamp in the ceiling, and to anything else electrical in his room. Once, he "put electricity" on his room's metallic door-handle, so when I grabbed it to enter his room, I'd get electrified.

Now, living in his own home, he can turn anything and everything on/off with his cellphone, even if he is on the other side of the earth. The AC cooler, the TV, playstation, lights, his computer. He can also do anything on the computer, I think he uses Teamviewer. Now, over to the Watch_Dogs part: The most recent thing he did was programming his cellphone so he can tap into other unfamiliar electrical things' frequencies, so he can now lock/unlock other peoples' cars, he can jam their key-signals so they can't lock/unlock without using the physical key. He can listen to police radios everywhere around the city, and communicate with them (although he doesn't dare to do that of course).

We were at the cinema here the other day to watch AntMan (Pretty good movie btw), and on a large wall there were many huge active TV-screens with movie-trailers and commercials, and you probably already guessed what he did. He brought up his cellphone, pointed it at the screens, and pushed a big On/Off button, causing half of the screens to go black, and they stayed black :lol: After so many years of seeing him fiddle around with electricity, I've first now realized that he has all his life been preparing to become the next IRL Aiden Pearce (Watch_Dogs main character). Now all he needs is my leather-coat and a cap, and he's ready to go. :spy:

 

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That sounds absolutely brilliant, though I have to point out one possibility... it would suck if someone hacked his phone to gain control over it and all the "powers" that entails.

Also, I'm glad you got all your GTA V progress back.

 

I would have never guessed, that Vodka originated from Poland, if you had never said so in previous threads. I always though that Vodka came from the Russians (huge stereotype right there :lol: ). When it comes down to linking, a country, with what type of liquor its people drinks: I never really had a clue with what Polish people drank. Now, though, I have a better understanding; but if I had not know that Poland was the birthplace of Vodka, I could have made a stereotypical-educated-guess and related beer with more "Western-type" countries, wine with Italy, sake with Asian cultures, and vodka with most every country that would remain in the Easter hemisphere.

That's awesome . That's one of the few things that I like about Steam. One is able to recover, their in-game progress -most of the time- through the Steam cloud.

And the story about your brother: Dang.....that's really cool. I always wanted to do stuff like that. You know, I bet your brother can enter, in one of those hacking competitions ,and get hired, by a company, that's looking to find faults in their digital security systems. Nonetheless, that's a really cool talent to have. :lol: and that movie theater stunt.
3811

 

3812
Who needs a special phone to listen to police signals, my Action Man walkie talkies when I wasfive picked up police radio. My dad, being a police officer, reported this and they were never quite sure how to fix this

 

3813

It's an understandable stereotype though since vodka has been a part of Russian culture for centuries. The same applies to Ukraine and Belarus, to a lesser extent the Baltic countries of Lithuania and Latvia, and finally Finland, Estonia and parts of Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway). The problem with saying that vodka originated from Russia is that there is little to no historical evidence to back it up. As far as I'm aware, the oldest Russian document on the topic (from 1533) refers to "водка" as a medicinal drink bought from Polish merchants. The production of vodka was present in Poland for several hundred years earlier, with the earliest available written Polish source referencing "wódka" in 1405, but there are even older Polish sources that speak of "gorzałka" or "okowita" (Old Polish names for vodka).

Many believe that the technology of distilling stronger alcoholic beverages arrived in Poland in the 1200s, via Arabic merchants. It was there that it was first used to distil vodka using grain (so, like most other European inventions, something new was created using technology that already existed in the Middle East). Some people say that vodka was invented in Poland even earlier than that, but most of the sources they provide seem to be rubbish that someone made up. In any case, it was natural that the Ruthenians (now Belarusians and Ukrainians) were next to start making vodka since for many times throughout history they shared a state with the Poles due to Polish imperialist aspirations and the union with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. And then, through well-established trade routes, the drink found its way to Russia. It began to spread to Northern Europe as well, mainly due to Polish trade and Russian conquests (plus the Swedes had their fun ransacking the Commonwealth during the Deluge).

By the 19th century, vodka had already been well-known for hundreds of years in Eastern Europe and parts of Northern Europe, but it only really became popular in Western Europe and Northern America around the first half of the 20th century, and that was to a large extent thanks to Russian owners of private distilleries who emigrated to the US and other countries following the October Revolution to continue their business there. So I guess that is the main reason why, at least in the English-speaking world, vodka is still more often associated with Russia than Poland. Why I know any of this is because I too once thought that vodka came from Russia. When I first heard that it came from Poland, I decided to read up on it to see whether it wasn't just bullshit and I learned all this.

There was actually an effort made to highlight the real origins of vodka by Poles in the 1980s I believe, but at that time we were still politically, economically and militarily dependent on the USSR so any official claims were quickly dropped (just as nowadays you don't see the Polish government criticising US foreign policy or use of CIA prisons on Polish land). Vice did a pretty cool two-part documentary about this, which you can watch here and here. They do go a bit over-the-top with bashing the Soviet Union at one point and disregarding the fact that it actually helped turn Poland into a modern capitalist economy (as opposed to what happened much earlier with the partitions of the 18th century, when parts of Poland that were absorbed by the Russian Empire kinda devolved), but they got most of their history right otherwise.

It's pretty easy to figure out, just look at the climate of each country (and, obviously, its history). Southern Europe (Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, parts of France) have a Mediterranean climate, so they have perfect conditions for growing grapes to make wine. Greece's equivalent to vodka is ouzo, which is made using anise that is native to the Mediterranean region and Southwest Asia. France has absinthe, Italy has Sambuca and arak is popular in the Middle East, all of which are also made using anise. Some of the Southeastern European countries (former Yugoslav states, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania) are too known for wine production, though their regional specialty is rakia – a type of fruit brandy that can be made from grapes as well as plums or other fruits from slightly colder climates (hence slivovitsa – made from plums – is widespread not only in the Balkans, but Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Poland too).

On the other hand, Eastern Europe has a more humid continental climate. Countries like Belarus, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania or European Russia may have fairly warm summers, but they are mild in comparison to Southern European temperatures plus their winters are harsh and often quite snowy, making wine production unrealistic. However, the climate and some of the soil there is ideal for growing cereal grains. As such, well up until the early 20th century, most of these countries still relied on agriculture and grain exports to keep their economies going and thus vodka was the ideal alcoholic beverage to make under the regional conditions. Even in colder parts of Russia, winter wheat can be used to make vodka. Plus, due to how warm it makes you feel (though your body temperature doesn’t actually increase), vodka is just really nice to drink during a freezing winter.

That must have been pretty fun, especially if you got to listen in on any car chases or anything like that. :lol:

 

With great power comes great responsibility

Thanks

Over to Coconut news:
Here the other day I had a sip of my Malibu Coconut Rum Liquour, but it tastes awful. Because of this, I got a real craving for Coconut, so I went to the store, bought a coconut, drilled two holes in it, and drank the contents before I ate some of it.
Next day I bought three coconuts at the grocery, but one was moldy and the other two looked like zombie-brains, and the coconut-water was yellow and sour.
So today I went to a local small Asian vegetable/miscellaneous store and bought four coconuts, all four were perfect with a lot of juice in them. I made a drink with crushed ice out of the coconut-water. I blended and shaked a lot of coconut-meat with a bit of water until it was almost like a puree, then I sifted and squeezed it over into a cup, and guess what I got? Thick, white delicious coconut-milk, like the ones you buy in cans, only better! And last but not least, some thin slices of coconut-meat are now drying in a drying-machine for some hours, so tomorrow I'll have dried coconut-snacks. Yummy! :whoo:

 

3815

Haha, nice, coconuts are great. Malibu liqueur is very sweet, so I'm not surprised you didn't like it. I once mistook it for actual rum when I was younger and was at first shocked by how different it tasted. :lol:

Your coconut story makes me want to try making coconut vodka (by steeping coconuts in grain spirit and maybe adding a bit of sugar). I once tried it with mushrooms and it ended up tasting pretty bad. I'm sure I've already mentioned this on the forum before.

 

3816
I never thought, that a drink,could cause so much fluster between two nations. Then again, some say the World War I started because one guy was, at the wrong place, at the wrong time as he decided to pause, for a moment, and eat a sandwich . The Vodka videos were fun to watch and also funny . I really thought it was cool (and funny) how it showed that Russia has a pseudo Lenin and Stalin, walking around, at the Red Square so you could take a picture with them :lol:. That was some good insight into the origins of Vodka topic, Bamul. Thanks.

True, that technology has been around for a long time now anyway. I was impressed with how Skaara's brother, was able to figure out, how to turn of the screens at the movie theater. As for your walkie talkies: I believe the problem could have simply been fixed by replacing the radio crystal in which the walkie talkies operated on. There are many different radio crystals out there, and many of them work off of many different frequencies. Really, anyone could get a hold of radio crystals and simply un-plug and insert, or un-solder and re-solder (depending on how the walkie talkie is set up) and just try out different ones to see what type of conversations you can pick up. You could listen in and interrupt drive-through restaurants, police radios, secret agent radios p), and everything else. Heck, I've even read that you can take, one of the radio crystals, from inside of a modern-day toaster (for bread). Either the police officials over there thought that nobody would decide to use a weak frequency and decided to by cheap radio crystals; or the manufactures of your Action Man walkie talkies bought some quality equipment. Here's a picture on how the crystals could look like:

Spoiler

Coconuts: Licious. I found out that, an easy way to spot mold, on a coconut, is to see if there are any grey, black, purple, bluish spots (no matter how light) on the three, distinct circles on a coconut (it also works if there's even a light hue from the colors mentioned). If you see any, there's mold (at least from what I've seen). The reason is that those circle points are the softest points, on the outer shell, of a coconut; so it's easy for the mold to show up on there first (meaning that all the mold, from the inside, has begun to push its way out...gross). Also, I found that that easiest way to get the coconut milk is to pierce through those circles as well. It might be faster with a drill; but, survival wise, you could get a knife, a screw driver, or an ice pick (or anything that's pointy) and easily go through the outer shell. That's how I've always done it .

 

3817

Interesting stuff about radios... and coconuts too, I knew about how to open a coconut and all, but I had no idea that there's such an easy way of telling whether it's gone bad.

 

Vodka always seemed like a Poland thing to me. They're always drinking it in the Witcher games.

 

3819

 

That's exactly what I did when I bought it. I just read "Coconut Rum.... -OH BOY, GOTTA BUY THIS!" *Comes home and reads it again* "Coconut Rum-liquour...." *facepalm*. It's indeed very very sweet, but that's not what's the problem. It even has an alright coconut-taste, but there's this other weird artificial indescribable taste that is just friggen horrible. :sad:

But oh boy, mushroom-vodka, that does sound horrible :lol: But the coconut-vodka thing could probably work. I found a recipe on the interwebs on how to make coconut-essence, by just putting some coconut in vodka and letting it stay for some time.

Interesting about being able to tell if they're moldy, 'cause it does make sense as those three circles are indeed the thinnest/softest spots. I just never knew about that. Thanks, now I know what to look for next time I buy some coconuts! As for opening the coconut, I too used something sharp to poke the holes open, but it's a bit of work, and the water runs slowly. Using a drill will just cut big open holes, and it's quick and doesn't require any use of muscles *doing it the Skaara way*. After emptying them, I just whacked them with the nail-pulling-end of a hammer until they cracked open pretty neatly. I also saw a video on youtube, demonstrating how you can freeze them, then gently hit them everywhere on the shell before cracking it open, and the brown solid skin that is between the shell and the meat will then stay on the shell and loosen from the meat. It's really tough and difficult to get it off otherwise. (Like I did, with a veggie peeler).

[YOUTUBE]?v=8i3Tz22lif8[/YOUTUBE]
I couldn't help but laugh at how the video absolutely had to show us the guy actually opening the refridgerator, opening the freezer, putting the coconut in, closing the freezer, and closing the refridgerator. Then a black screen with "Take it from fridge" for unnecessarily long before doing the same process in reverse :lol: All this, when they could have just kept it as simple as just displaying the first text, saying "Keep the coconut in deep freezer for 12 hours before cooking".