Nas vésperas da inauguração da Ponte Rainha Santa Isabel (ex-Ponte Europa)... (Publico Online)

Not yet opened the new bridge in Coimbra already changed its name... The Bridge Formerly Known As Europa.

Congratulations to all Conimbrigenses and Santa Clarenses, now there is one more way to meet.

Still-life with tunnel tea...

Did I already say, that I hate cooling down superconducting magnets? No? I hate cooling down superconducting magnets. It just bores the hell out of you...

Elite Universities are great. Let us all copy american unversities! We want 10% of the students thinking of suicide and 1.3 percent actually trying...

Just did the RTL test on german. Scored 16 out of 20, really bad. Punctuation and text completion 0 mistakes, guessing strange words and capitalization each 2 out of 5 wrong.

The strange words guessing is comlete nonsense. They ask for words no one ever uses... And they do not even tell you afterwards what you did wrong. And it is a bad flash animation. Just so RTL...

This seems to be the new hype in german televison. Doing the great german whatever test. There has been a fitness test, now there is a spelling test, there were these stupid germanys most intelligent people tests, working like any quizshow with questions about useless facts (what bra size has Britney Spears...). Sad to see where TV is going...

BEWARE OF THE INTERNET. Use a filter...

This Blog complies to the BLX standard...

Tried contact lenses today. Although I did stick quite a few things in my eyes when I was a kid (like scissors), it took me about two hours until the optician put them in. Getting them out I managed myself in under half an hour...

It is quite a good feeling not having glasses on and seeing everything clearly. Although I am not used to it and it just felt wrong to see without anything sticking in your face... I will try again some time, I got two lenses for free. Maybe some day I get used to it.

Always Remember:

Ensimmäinen runo

Mieleni minun tekevi,
aivoni ajattelevi
lähteäni laulamahan,
saa'ani sanelemahan,
sukuvirttä suoltamahan,
lajivirttä laulamahan.
Sanat suussani sulavat,
puhe'et putoelevat,
kielelleni kerkiävät,
hampahilleni hajoovat.
Veli kulta, veikkoseni,
kaunis kasvinkumppalini!
Lähe nyt kanssa laulamahan,
saa kera sanelemahan
yhtehen yhyttyämme,
kahta'alta käytyämme!

Another fun and interesting thing to do: watch a superconducting magnet cool down. Just sit next to it and check every 15 minutes if it is still cooling down with less than 30K/h... Not to mention it is loud, we have dried air and there is a low annoying wind passing through the hall...

Changed the blog template: as blogger is now providing comments, i got rid of the haloscan ones. Anybody can comment now, without the need for JavaScript...

I am starting to understand, why so many Physicists (see below...) turn up here. I spent the last two or three working days painting small dots in a grid on our superconducting magnet. Combine this with other equally stupid and boring tasks, no social life, no contact to non-physicists (in case you get in contact, it is only short and stops at the question which Job you have) and you end up being a pathetic sociopathic Physicist. Or an alcoholic. Or both...

When I am done with my PHD I will go to Brazil and live in the Jungle for quite some time... Or end up in a mental institution with friendly people telling me everything will be good. Sorry Nuno, no Bar here in Hamburg.

I wrote a complaint about the information policy of the S-Bahn (metro) about the trains going after the suicide. They had at the display something like "Wait for Announcements", but all the announcments were unreadable because of trains passing by. Nobody at the station (at least the passengers) had any clue about where to go...

I got an answer quite fast. I should have gone to the Info-Point to get an individual time table blabla. They will forward my complaint to the crisis management blabla. It seems that none of them ever goes by train. If it says "Wait for announcment" I wait for Announcments. If they want me to go to the Service-Point, do an announcment "Go to service point if you want to get home". If they have no clue what to do, make an announcment "We have no clue what to do, find your way home on your own".

There was actually a train going where I wanted (Altona), but this was an interregional one (ICE), not a S-Bahn. They could have said "Take this if you want to go to Altona", as it was empty anyway.

Never go with anything connected to Deutsche Bahn again. Bloody Idiots.

Went to the cinema yesterday with a friend to see Troy. As usually the book is much better, Petersen does not seem to have read it... Either I slept, or there is no twelve years siege. Achilles is an arrogant idiot, Helena is not so beautyful to start a war for, all is historically inaccurate (not to say plain wrong) and fighting scenes are just stupid. Achilles wears his steel armor on bare skin, which I think would not last a few minutes in a actual fight, his swordplay is just ridiculous.

There are no gods in the movie. As far as I remember the whole story is about man being a toy for the gods. Achilles is a semi-god. In that movie he is not even invulnerable (he just does not get hurt), there is no explanation why he is hurtable only on his feet...

All the greek heroes look like vikings. (Only Hector looks a bit italian) I really do not like the Idea of greek heroes being tall blond blue eyed vikings. They should look like small, big nosed greek (no offense to the greek. Call it a classical profile...)

I could go on ranting for longer, but you might get the idea... On the way back home, which would have been two stations with the metro, some idiot jumped in front of a train at a station before, so no trains where going in my direction. All announcements at the station were made when trains passed by, so you could not understand anything. Catched the last train to the main station, hoping there would be a possibility to get home. There were no more trains, the last one gone half an hour ago. So we took the night bus, taking one and a half hour for a travel taking ten minutes normally.

It just was classical. After the Iliad (or a bad movie of it) came the Odissey (or a bad night bus version of it). If it wasn't for my company being a very nice girl, this would have been a horrible evening...

Never try to discuss things with Physicists. (I distinguish between Physicists (Capital P) and physicists. The latter being somebody who studied physics but survived somewhat being a normal person, the former a absent-minded creature, only knowing other physicists, social life consisting of meetings and getting drunk with two other physicists. You get the Idea...)

Discussions with Physicists go around in circles, they always try to take EVERYTHING(TM) into account, they make up problems, they have no clue about what is realistic and what not. And for some reason they sometimes fall silent for about 30 seconds, staring around, and then start the discussion again. Maybe it is because they do not meet a lot of people, so if they have got the opportunity to talk to somebody, they overuse it...

Been to the Hafengeburtstag. Highlight: The Tug Boat Ballet...

Been in Erlangen for the last two days, going out with friends and signing a new working contract. I am still not sure if I like Hamburg that much, anyway I will return to Erlangen as soon as our project in Hamburg is finished...

Packing stuff now, as I will leave for Hamburg early tomorrow morning (I wanted to leave tonight, but I am too tired to survive 6 hours of driving). It is raining.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry -

My favourite political movements, Part #1: Posadistas

Quote from Fortean Times: "They called themselves the Posadists after their founder Juan R Posadas and, like many UFO cults, they bore a fierce loyalty to their “dear master”.1 They believed that close encounters were evidence of superior socialist civilisations from Earth’s future. Their bizarre belief in flying saucers was not channelled to them by some tackily-named space entity but “theoretically informed” by Marx and Trotsky, and was for them a logical extension of Marxist dialectical materialism. Posadas wrote: “We will travel to planets millions of light years away under a Socialist society.”

Trotskyism meets UFO-Cult. Groovy...