Questions I would like to have an answer before I die (which will be in 60 to 80 years, depending on the progress of medicine and how good I can hide from it...) #1

There are two kind of baguette in the world. The ones which turn sloppy the next day and the ones which get rock hard. Why? And how can I tell one from the other? And why can't germans make a decent baguette (except these...)?

On general request by a single woman you may now post comments. I may not read them. And you need to activate JavaScript. Mariana, es da Máfia, mas gostamos de ti...

Started reading the stories of 1001 nights some days ago. (In a more exact translation, not the fairy-tale version...) I also started watching "sex and the city". Comparing both (which you can't) you start to wonder where all the poetry has gone...

Referring to sexual activities in "sex in the city" sounds really as if (north-american?) women do not have any fantasy at all, no subtelity, no poetry. Even when 1001 nights is as drastically as sex and the city, the arabian text shows much more beauty, more respect, more love as the american tv-show. Sad world if poetry is gone...

Random Images #2

Sometimes I wish life could be like a computer-game. You just save everything before the difficult parts and if you mess up, you start again. Would be nice. Sadly, if you fucked up a situatition, the only thing you can do is make it fubar and hope people declare you insane.

Blogspot has problems with non-ascii speaking people... Not my fault, if this looks crappy.

Went to a great concert yesterday. The band is called in extremo. They sound like Rammstein playing the Carmina Burana, a mix between medieval music and dark metal (or something like that). I still cannot hear well...

As I have been told, it was one of their more boring concerts, nobody got burned by misdirected fireworks and they were not as drunk as they normally are ;-)

Isn't it funny that although we know the train is gone, we keep on running, trying to catch it... Even if you know it is gone a long time ago, you know there is no chance to catch it, you still keep on running. You know it would be better just to wait for the next one (or to wait until this one passes by on the way back if you are fixated on the carriage), you still keep on running... While running you might up discovering that the light at the end of the tunnel is a train coming your direction...

Isn't it funny, that you always start using stupid metaphors, stretching them to the bitter end and end up talking crazy stuff...

I have been reading a nice article on how the brain reacts if you get dumped by your girlfriend. (Interesting, although the last time I skipped the girl-friend part and went straight to getting dumped ;-)

Psychologists seem to think we are still living in caves. After getting dumped you start acting strange as a call for help from the tribe. (Might this be, why I started blogging? Hello Tribe!) Then you enter depressive stasis as a cry for help from the tribe. Then you go back to the cave and shoot yourself. (Or so...). I think I go hunting some boar, maybe I can impress the female part of the tribe by enormous dead animals lying around my cave...

BTW Tribe: If I do not move much tomorrow, it is not because of being in depressive stasis. I did Capoeira for the first time again since ages. It will be just sore muscels...

Got a counter. Nobody visited my blog during the last half hour. Depressing... :-)

Random Pictures:

E-Mails considered harmful

E-Mails are a great way for buissines communication. For private communication they fail utterly... It is just too easy to send one. You sit in front of your computer, start typing and boof, you hurt someone, you insult someone, you get misunderstood...

If you want to say something important, try a phonecall, try talking, try writing a letter (for the slashdot readers out there: letters are these strange paper sheets written on by these things your grandparents called pencils which make ugly stains on PDAs if you can't find your stilo...)

E-Mails do not involve thinking. They are much too easy to send for that. Worse yet are web-cards. You find one, think it is funny, send it, and five minutes later it is not funny anymore, even insulting. On Valentine's day, you declare your love by a fraction of a second click or worse, you send an "Nobody loves me, so I insult you" card with the same click... Much to easy. Start thinking, learn writing, stop typing.

Buster Keaton. You do not need to say more... He was a genius.

Just saw Love's Nest on arte. The story is short, as is the film. Keaton, disapointed by a not responded love or something like that (missed the beginning...) sets sails on a boat named cupid only whith little food and water and a picture of his love. Enduring great pains on his way to nowhere he gets picked up by a ship of the name Love's Nest. This ship turns out to be a whaler with a sadistic captain who sends all of his crew overboard during the following days. Keaton sinks the ship to escape and ends up on a target for navy shooting exercises...

Like any Keaton movie, it is really funny to see him struggle with things, with people or with life in general. He tries to escape by lifting the life boat from the deck, ending up in sinking the whole ship, easiest way to get the life boat floating... Just like real life ;-)

Browsing through my past posts, they look like I am really depressed... I am not (and have not been in the last time...). I have been in better moods though...

On Sunday I got told once more that I am a nice guy, but. (Sentence finished, no comma!)
I am used to that... (that's why this blog is called gajo simpático - nice guy) This time it was via mail, which shows a lack of style or a lack of courage, but OK, life goes on. (Still thinking sometimes of her, but only pondering, if she really has no style...)

Before that - night shift makes you moody, complaining about "nobody writes me" happens if your only taks is to check for mail every ten seconds ;-)

There are also good things happening in my life, but I won't tell you them :-) Since I started writing this blog, a lot of people started patting my back and going "It is all right", nice thing...

Random Poetry:

Um problema de multiplicar

Numa mulltiplicação
se um dos factores faltar
e outro chegar atrasado
quando é o resultado?
Velerá a pena esperar?

       Manuel António Pina - Pequeno Livro de desmatemática

Got a new toy, a Canon EOS 300D. Looks like it is really whippin' the llamas ass...

Went to have a coffee after spending all my money in the photo shop. The cafe was full of girls from medicine and law faculty. One day I have to go to these strange universes they live in ;-)

Random thoughts getting home drunk:

Have a dream. Aim for the stars, you might actually catch one, even if it is a falling one. This might sound like old time witticisms... If you start acting realistic you loose the possibility to change the world. If you do not set out to change the entire world you won't change anything. Have dreams, try to do things unrealistic, try to reach the stars....

Walking around the city, seeing a lot of young people walking from party to party. Their only purpose seems to get drunk, to loose notion of the world around them, to get rid of their frustration. These guys do not have dreams, they already gave up changing the world. They look like pathetic people already old centuries, most of them not being in their twenties... Everybody thinking only about himself, not trying to catch a star, not trying to catch more stars to give to other people...

Why not be crazy, why not aim for the big dream? If you do not try, you have already lost.

Home, sweet home. Finally back home again... Going to get drunk with some friends

The last shift is coming to an end...

Always choose the right tools for the right thing. Trying to figure out how much quota the users of our computing room need, I ended up doing
du -sh /home/s*/???????? | awk {"print $1"} > disk_usage, then analyze this with a full blown root-analysis[1]. They use average of 24 MB, some up to 180MB, most of them less then 20. Plot available on request ;-)

Maybe I will program a script like "if over quota call shooting squad" ;-)

[1] For those not in physics: root is a tool to analyze data from particle accelerators...

Last night Shift (for this time). Yahooo!

Womit beginnen wir, fragte er, Womit man immer beginnen muss, mit dem Anfang, antwortete Marta

       José Saramago - Das Zentrum

Too tired to read. Surfing around Magnum Photos, where some of the worlds best photographers show their work (Henri Cartier Bresson is still my favourite)

Went to an art exhibition today. Pictures from Lionel Feininger (good), Paul Klee (liked two of them) and some dutch masters from 17th century Haarlem (near Amsterdam, not the part of Nieuve Amsterdam); and the pictures which are permanently at the Kunsthalle in HH (modern works as well as old masters). The most interesting thing about these exhibitions are not the paintings, although some are really great. What I like more is watching the different types of people who go there. These people are the same at every art exhibition.

The rich couple: they go there to show their presence at something cultural, mutter things like "This remembers me of the early works of (insert well known painter) in his phase when he was in (insert well known french place), don't you think..." Generally well dressed, always being really serious, no smile, talking softly, walking around like the place belongs to them and being annoyed by the peasants standing in their way.

The rich intellectual: sometimes smiling, comments more based on knowledge than the comments of the rich couple. But not that different

The leftish teacher couple (including numerous children): usually dressed in ecologically correct clothing from remote regions of the Himalaya or dressed in bib overalls. Accompanied by lots of children who are running around noisily, behaving like this is the greatest playground or the most boring place on earth. The parents generally just running around, looking at the pictures, reading heavily in the guide or listening to the audio-guide at least twice. Absorbing all facts and useless information about the pictures to torture pupils in school with them.

The well educated upper middle class couple (with two too nicely dressed, too well educated children): having some knowledge from books about the painter and having read all about the exhibition in newspapers, they walk around and believe in the little texts close to the pictures. Their children are really silent, no running, no making fun, just standing nicely dressed and in awe in front of the pictures. These children grow up to be really boring bankers or might catch a turn during puberty to get really interesting freaks... These families look just like being out of a text book from the sixties about happy families.

The economy student: he is usually there to impress his girlfriend. Walking around and behaving very well educated, pretending knowledge about art he hasn't, and in general behaving like an economy student (actually he might be a law student...)

Ah, and sometimes there are normal people, walking around, looking at the pictures, trying to understand those little texts which talk the impressive reasoning the artist has done for his work, sometimes liking pictures, sometimes not, sometimes in front of modern works wondering if it is art or a fire-extinguisher...

Of course there are more types of people, these are just the most prominent....

... Man [sollte] nie eine Gelegenheit vorübergehen lassen [...], etwas von anderen zu zitieren, was immer interessanter ist als das, was man selbst findet.

      Marcel Proust

In wirklichkeit ist jeder Leser, wenn er liest, ein Leser nur seiner selbst. Das Werk des Schriftstellers ist dabei lediglich eine Art von optischem Instrument, das der Autor dem Leser reicht, damit dieser erkennen möge, was er in sich selbst sonst vielleicht nicht hätte erschauen können. Daß der Leser das, was das Buch aussagt, in sich selber erkennt, ist der Beweis für die Wahrheit ebendieses Buches

         Marcel Proust

Erstaunlicherweise widerspricht die Definition der Seilbahn im Österreichischen Seilbahngesetz (s.u.) nicht der Defintion der Eisenbahn des deutschen Reichsgerichtes von 1876:

Eine Eisenbahn ist ein Unternehmen, gerichtet auf wiederholte Fortbewegung von Personen oder Sachen über nicht ganz unbedeutende Raumstrecken auf metallener Grundlage, welche durch ihre Konsistenz, Konstruktion und Glätte den Transport großer Gewichtsmassen beziehungsweise die Erzielung einer verhältnismäßig bedeutenden Schnelligkeit der Transportbewegung zu ermöglichen bestimmt ist, und durch diese Eigenart in Verbindung mit den außerdem zur Erzeugung der Transportbewegung benutzten Naturkräften - dampf, Elektrizität, tierischer oder menschlicher Muskeltätigkeit, bei geneigter Ebene der Bahn auch schon durch die eigene Schwere der Transportgefäße und deren Ladung usf. - bei dem Betriebe des Unternehmens auf derselben eine verhältnismäßige gewaltige, je nach den Umständen nur bezweckterweise nützliche oder auch Menschenleben vernichtende und menschliche Gesundheit verletzende Wirkung zu erzeugen fähig ist. (Reichsgericht 1876)

Seilbahnen sind Eisenbahnen, deren Fahrbetriebsmittel durch Seile spurgebunden bewegt werden. (Österr. Seilbahngesetz)

Somebody complained about lacking sources for the rant about funiculars (yes, in german it IS Seilbahnen): so, here they come (most of them in german). I originally saw it on TV (NDR extra3, a satirical magazine...)

mvregio.net,
Die Tageszeitung
Das österreichische Seilbahngesetz (not really related, but funny anyway...)

I did not manage to find anything on the pages of european union... These pages are in law-speak, which I do not understand...

And by the way: the highest mountain in MeckPom is 178 meters, not 160 meters as I stated. Sorry if I hurt the feelings of anybody from there...