Random Science Picture:

Don't you just hate it if you sit on your sofa, reading, trying to have a quiet evening and out of a sudden a salsa band creeps out of the woods beneath your window and starts to party...?

(No, it is not a Monty Python Moment. Today is fiesta latina in the cultural centre just next to my flat...)

Carlos Paredes died yesterday. He was one of the greatest players of portuguese guitar...

I just like dictionaries... The former "Penguin dictionary of troublesome words", now just called Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson just arrived from Amazon and made me pick up my "Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers". Interestingly enough it just fell open at the page describing 42. 42 is the constant of the smallest magic cube. (Vaguely remember some article in nature about a cube shaped universe...)

Diving into the blogosphere I hit theomorph.

Not unlike the real world you are only seperated from any person in the blog world by a few degrees of seperation (you might want to call it clicks, though)...

Some Ideas turn out not to be as good as they sounded in the beginning...

The only thing you learn in university is learning. You do not learn actually doing things. This might happen during your phd. Sometimes it doesn't. You are basically dropped into the water: "you have learned something, so now just do something completely different. No we won't tell you how to do it, figure it out." Sometimes I wish to be back in the days of studying, where you just sat in the library and read books (and sometimes did math stuff)...

People who program stuff like while ((bk = bg + ((*(int *) bg) >> 1) + 4){} should be shot.

I called this blog gajo simpático, as I heard quite often that I am a really nice guy, but. (Here the sentence ends usually.) I just hate that.

There is one thing I hate more. Having to listen between the lines because you actually get a lot of talking but nothing said. "Yes", "no", "I do not know" are all valid answers, but only one at a time. Sometimes a "well, no" is better than talking about weather and having to figure out what we are actually talking about.

PHD life sucks (as micat already stated...). I am trying to squeeze in two weeks of holiday some time in August to visit some friends in Portugal. Sent a mail to my (kind-of-)boss in Hamburg. Every five minutes came an answer: No, this has to be done, that has to be done...

Seems I am the only one in Hamburg at that time and have to build the *****ing detector myself. So I will spent August with two mad russians in a cellar building a detector, turning into a gollum like creature and having a nervous breakdown in September. What a great life.

There is still hope for a week of holiday, but I am sure, there will be something why I cannot go.

Just to be clear: it is OK that I cannot make a holiday whenever I want. But our project is so badly organised that everything (which has to be done in Hamburg) dumps on me. Our so-called management manages by asking everybody to do the work for them... Asking for time to make a holiday I got the response: Make a detailed timeline for the project and then figure out yourself. Fun.

What would Jesus drive? Well, I think he would ride a mule. Or a donkey. I cannot imagine him trying to go around the deserts of palestine in a small japanese eco-car, nor driving there with a hummer. So Americans, do like Jesus did. Get a donkey! (Or do like Jesus did: get nailed to a cross, but that would be a nasty comment.)

Welcome to micat aboard the blog-train. One more way to procrastinate :-)

Another Bibliotaph on the net...

Geek level still low: 31.6%

Os americanos se passam! Vi no slashdot um Thread sobre uma pagina para fazer comunidades, que começou em inglês, mas agora ja há muitos que falam brasileiro (ou brasilês). E qual é o problema? Há paises, que não falam inglês. Tambem no net. E há pessoas que falam mais que uma lingua. Aber anscheinend nicht in den Staaten...

And there is the fish...

the last time somone listened to a Bush, a bunch of people wandered in the desert for 40 years

found on bash.org

Around 2000 BC some egyptian priest sat together around a pyramid and were frolicking around a big jar of grape juice turned bad. One of them started to think aloud: "." (This translates in modern english to something like "Why don't we take some wheat, let it sprout, rost it. Then put it in water, boil it, add yeast and hops, wait some time for it ferment and drink that stuff. Might be a jolly good Idea, don't you think?") Well, it worked. Beer had entered the world's stage.

Some 2000 years later romans were the masters of the world. Egypt was just one of the provinces of rome, but the idea of beer had kept on. Roman soldiers transmitted the Idea of beer to the germanic tribes they were fighting in the cold and wet north, what is now known as southern germany. Teutons by then were used to mead, honey mixed with water let rot for some weeks. Despite fighting the romans they caught some ideas from them. What is now Frankonia used to be teutonic border region, heavily influenced by the romans. That is why franconian wine comes in "Bocksbeuteln", a bottle modelled after roman bottles (the shape has been source of many disputes with Portugal. There they use the same shape for Vinho Verde, everybody wanted to have it patented...)

Teutons got the idea of beer. Some time later the christian monks found out, that beer is something to keep you alive during lent. Beer got perfected by the monks, a variety of thousands of different beers was born. And then, sometime somebody got the idea of putting some benches outside a cloister, beneath some lovely trees, maybe serve some food... Thus, the biergarten was born. The best invention of mankind enters world history. Not even electricity can come up to the ingenuity of a biergarten. Maybe the running hot water is better. But not much...

In a biergarten, there are no social differences. The only difference is if people are prussians or non-prussians. This is something not defined by where you were born, but how you behave. If you are narrow minded, chances are high to be a prussian. If you are narrow minded, but after a beer don't care, chances are high not to be a prussian. Biergarten is the best thing germans (or teutons?) have ever given to the world.

In case you wonder why there are so many quotes today...: getting bored I just read big part of the fortune database. I just put up some I liked, to find them again; some day I might need them...



A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

Nietzsche

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized -- and never knowing.

David Viscott

The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged, I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors, and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural for them to despise science fiction.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Science Fiction"

Just googled for fish shops in Nürnberg. One of the links said "Offers for fish at eBay". Cool. Just imagine, fresh tuna fish, starting bet 1 Euro, auction ends in two weeks. Can be send by express. Whooohooo.

I am always amazed about how much we talk, how little we say. Sometimes I should say things instead of hoping that people will get it. Sometimes people should say things instead of hoping, that I will get it... Life is complicated enough, there is no need to make it more complicated.

<>When I was a young man, I vowed never to marry until I found the ideal woman. Well, I found her -- but alas, she was waiting for the ideal man.

Robert Schuman

Being a nerd: On Heise there is a discussion thread about the shadow of the earth moving with more than the speed of light if you are far enough away. I am really amazed how stupid these argumentations get... (Yes, it is Heise, yes, I know people are dumb. But this dumb?) Seems that we are still deep in the dark middle ages concerning the physics knowledge of ordinary peasants.

Happily returning to ivory tower, staring at my computer screen and trying to figure out why my program dies...

38.095238095238095% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

Today at 8:24 pm CEST the 1000st vistor passed by (from t-dialin.net)...

Whoever it was, you won the honorary title "tambem um gajo simpatico"... :-)

Still gajo simpatico. Some things never change... :-(

Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space - space even more than time.

        Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer

(Image (c) Columbia Tristar, used without permission...)

Went to see spiderman 2 yesterday. Really nice movie. Aren't we all a bit like spiderman? Heroes, but we can tell nobody?

Well. Not really... but we try.

I only know intelligent people. Everybody I know who participated in a study from Spiegel and McKinsey about competences in languages, work experience and so on performed something like the top third or better... (me too)

(OK, statistics so far is 3...)

In soviet russia computers were programming you!

I am trying to understand some non-documented software written by a mad scientist fifteen years ago, ported to Linux by mad russian scientist some years later and modified by a mad polish scientist two years ago.

We are talking about deeply nested gotos, variables with instructive names like a,b,c,..., random stuff like a not-yet set variable b (which is a pointer to c, which is used for five different purposes and full of some bytes of data and some bytes of random garbage), ok returning to b, so b is handled with random stuff like b[5]=b[17], b[3]=b[19] and b[17]=0. This indented FORTRAN style (the first seven columns empty, then everything with no further indent...)...

Ah, and did I say already no comments, no documentation. The original programmer now lives in Australia, the russian is in Russia and busy with other stuff and the polish nobody understands...

Physics software sucks!

George W Bush's Desktop

It takes 180.11 cans of Coca Cola Classic to kill me by caffeine...

Seems I do not understand politics. The richest part of germany, bavaria, which also has the lowest unemployment rate and the highest productivity has 12 bank holidays per year. The poorest part, with the highest unemployment and the lowest productivity, has 9 bank holidays. Conclusion from that is we need less holidays to improve productivity and lower the unemployment rates. I fail to see the logic, but I am stupid anyway...

(Yes, of course this is simplistic. But so is anything I heard from our politicians so far...)

The server where I host most of my images is down (not really down, but the firewall is in the default state of blocking everything...). I will only get to repair it in two weeks or so. Please be patient, you will get nice pictures soon again :-)

Some sane people on the net: Chaos Computer Club

30 Years of Hobbythek. One of the best shows ever, although the bavarian TV did not think so (at least on the episode about marital helpers...). In 70s TV people were allowed to smoke, to drink, to behave like people. And it was really intelligent. Half of the words Jean Pütz used in that show are no longer understood by kids today...

It seems that my prophecies of doom come true. This morning germans turned into nice and smiling people... A really nice girl at the gas station gave me her bonus-points, smiled at me and she and everybody else in the shop were nice. Time to prepare for apocalypse...

I read in a news-ticker, that only 7.500 germans do blog. I am one of the selected few...

Γαίος Σιμπάτικος congratulates the greek team, but fears that there will be no olympian games. The greek will party from now on for half a year, nobody is going to work on the stadions... Only if Rehakles takes over the organisation...

ELWOOD: Jake! Are you allright?
JAKE: The band... The band...
REV. BROWN: Do you SEE the LIGHT?!?
JAKE: The band!
REV. BROWN: Do you SEE the LIGHT???
ELWOOD: What light?
BROWN: Have you SEEN the LIGHT?
JAKE: YES! YES! Jesus H. Tap Dancin' Christ! I have seen the
light!
JAKE: The Band Elwood! The Band!
ELWOOD: The band. The band. The Band? The band!
REV: Praise God!
ELWOOD: And God Bless the United States of America!

I for one welcome our new football overlords.

Europe is turning strange: Portugal was praised for best organization of a UEFA tournament ever...

In the end, germans will turn into nice, smiling and optimistic people, italians will have a government, english will accept the euro, french accept that there are countries outside france worth noticing... What a horrible thought!

Welch poetischer Radiokommentar:

"Jetzt wird es ein Hupkonzert geben, wie es Europa noch nicht gesehen hat. Es wird erst zu ende gehen, wenn die letzte Autobatterie im Morgengrauen sich mit einem leisen Röcheln verabschiedet..."

Sad news. KiKa is no longer broadcasting at nights. Good Bye Bernd das Brot night loop. The last good tv-show after 22:00 is gone now. I will miss it...

Random Pictures is back...

So true...

The Rules

(from Rules for engagement in modern guerrilla warfare: subsection relationships)

1. The female always makes the rules

2. The rules are subject to change at any time without prior notification

3. No male can possibly know all the rules

4. If the female suspects that the male knows all the rules, she must immediately change some of the rules.

5. The female is NEVER wrong

6. If it seem that the female is wrong, it must be because of a flagrant misunderstanding which was the direct result of something the male did or said wrong.

7. If rule no 6 applies, the male must apologise immediately for causing the misunderstanding.

8. The female can change her mind at any time.

9. The male can not change his mind, except with the express written consent of the female, which may be retracted at any time

10. The female has the right to be upset or angry at any time.

11. When the female is upset or angry, she is under no obligation whatsoever to disclose her reasons, if any

12. The male must remain calm at all times unless the female wants him to be angry or upset.

13. The female must under no circumstances allow the male to know whether or not she wants him to be angry or upset.

Should stop betting on football games... (Only did it this european cup, though)

My bet on Portugal - England was 1:2, ended 5:6. Greece - France I bet 1:3, now it is 1:0 and it does not look like it is going to get anywhere close to my bet...

Old chinese proverb says no luck at gambling... :-)

I learned something about Alice today... Hansenet is 100% owned by Italian Telecom. Explains a lot.

Also learned something about women today. Some of them are not as clever as I think they are... But on the other hand, that is not only women, that is all people. Most of them are vegetables, some of them are as clever as I think they are, some come close, most don't...

Note to self: 19. September International Talk like a pirate day

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Alice is fast. Finally she arrived at my flat, after a month, two telekom technicians, five hours in the hotline...

But at least it works and I get some 200K/s data transfers to Erlangen University, some 20K/s to Vienna University; austrians have always been slow...

When physicists get excited... or as the slide at todays meeting said "Nils close to the magnet when turned on"

Been to the comic salon here in Erlangen today. There are really great comics out there. Some funny, some serios, some both...

Better yet than the comcis was the audience. From the Erlangen Goth scene (imagine 15 year old kids with akne, looking pale, running around in dark leather coats and kilts, being EVIL) to Erlangen intellectuals (wild haircut, small glasses, babbling about how this reminds them of that and isn't there a TV show called teletubbies or so, yes, yes, it just looks like that) to Siemens people (*BORING*), to Frankonian Coz-Players (same as Goth-Scene, but brighter leather coats...)

I wish I could draw. The whole thing was worth beeing drawn in a comic...

The ballots are closed in Germany, now politicians start to babble on the radio...

Conservatives, who are the clear winner, claim it was a sign, that the people (more THE PEOPLE) are sick of social democrats and it was a clear sign against the government in Berlin. AFAIK this was european parliament elections, so what has this to do with Berlin...

Social Democrats, who lost alot, say it is because they did necessary reforms and now get this as a form of penitence for them. Yeah, just do some ave marias and blaim it on the stupid people (again THE PEOPLE) who do not understand the necessities of a state. The idea that it is because they had no message in this elections does not come to anybody's mind...

The greens, who gained more than 4%, say, they won because they were the only ones with a program... At least one party not babbling complete nonsense.

I vaguely remember some book, where politicians were shot after their 4 years in parliament. Might help...

Rule number one of the guild of Noisemaking Professions: Thou shalt only work between 7:30 and 9:00. Thou shalt choose the wall which is closest to anyone sleeping. Thou shalt use the largest hammer you can find...

Spiegel Online and Heise both state, that since early morning a fascist spam wave is roaring through the net... The first time ever that Neo-Nazis managed to get a bot-net working to distribute their mental diarrhea by spam mails...

I only got mails about cheap viagra and my small penis today (90% of all women think my penis is too small...)

"An important instrument of suppresion by patriarchalic society is the mandatory heterosexuality."

(from the program of Die Frauen - a feministic party candidating at the europian elections)

Thanks to a friend of mine (who should write a thesis instead of googling around ;-) more info on Alice

Mind the annoying SMS-Ticker at the bottom of the page. Who thinks of such stupid annoying useless and generally shite things?

Meet Alice. Alice was supposed to come to my flat last month. She did not show up... I phoned her, after waiting a few minutes in the loop, I got the answer, that she will come in a few days, following a telekom technician. A few days later I recieved a SMS that she will come a day after the agreed date. Fine... I was not there by that time. Talking to her (after minutes and minutes in the loop), we agreed on another day. SMS: it will be a day after that date... Fine. The technician bringing here was supposed to show up between 8:00 and 16:00. At 12:00 I recieved a call that Alice is not in my flat. Yeah, that I knew, I already told her that a few weeks before. So we agreed on an emergency telekom technician bringing her within 6 hours. Wich finally worked. Now I just need my password to use Alice (which is supposed to arrive by mail any day now)...

BTW: Alice is DSL provided by HanseNet here in Hamburg, in case you did not guess already

Picture taken 10:29 CET in Hamburg Altona, using a Canon EOS 300D, 300mm lens, covered roughly 90% by cardboard and using a black slide as filter.

Only every 122 years venus can be seen passing in front of the sun, but then twice within 8 years. One of the last venus transits features one of my personal favorite scientists: Guillaume Joseph Le Gentil. In 1760 he left Brest for India, to observe the venus transit from there allowing to measure the distance between earth and sun, a method developed by Halley. He arrived Pondycherry in India in time, but the city was taken by british soldiers who where at war with the french at that time. He could not leave the ship, so he did his measurements aboard, which ended up completely useless...

He then went to Madagaskar and Mauritius to do some studies there and wait for the next transit eight year later. Returning in time to Pondicherry, which has fallen back to France again, he was only able to stare at rain clouds. Disappointed he returned to france. On his voyage he survived two ships sinking, finding at his return that he had been declared dead by his family and all his welth had been spend by his heirs.

Blogging helps writing your dissertation

It is Bergkirchweih-Time. Starting Thursday before pentecost, Erlangen turns ten days into a madhouse... Every night around 10.000 people walk up a small hill and get drunk. You get Ox-on-a-stick (a whole Ox roasted...), Beer in 1l-mugs, lots of amusement-things like auto-scooter and drunk people. Astonishingly there are only minor brawls, nearly no casualities.

All teenagers go there and get drunk. Most of them are annoyingly dumb...

Interesting fact: about three to four months after the Bergkirchweih biology and medicine faculties get an unusual high number of foetuses to play with... When I grew up and was a teenager, I vaguely remember something called AIDS/HIV and always use a condom. Seems to be forgotten by now... But maybe I am just plain boring.

The said magnet... stupid piece of crap.

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...

Kuro5hin has a nice article about the portuguese revolution, which sums up portugal's history from the 1920 to April 25th, 1974 quite nicely. As far as I can tell...

Finally got my satelite receiver working. The last week I was only able to see childrens television in very bad quality. I phoned to the company responsible for our antenna, and discovered that the people at Saturn sold me the wrong cable, which lead me to connecting it to the wrong output. Never trust any of the sell-bots from Media-Markt-Saturn...

Now I get 5 different home shopping channels and Viva 2, which is a music channel sending annoying music videos in a small corner of the screen, all the rest of the screen is occupied by scrolling text bars showing sms-messages slightly less intellectual than "Luv U Hunnybunny" and charts from Timbuktu to Borneo. Yesterday night I ended up watching the childrens television night loop (Bernd das Brot forever).

Holy Foreskin!

On Shift again. Jumped in for a friend...

Just been here half an hour and already bored :-) Reading Spiegel Online: Singing birds in big cities sing louder than their counterparts in the country. In the trees behind my house are some nice examples of that. One is especially annoying, as it imitates the sound of a cell phone beeping. I think this bird has a lot of fun in the parks going beep beep and all humans around start looking for their mobile...

In other news: Teacher was threatened by a student with a cookie.

Poor Darwin. Now creationism reached Europe (again, we returned to the middle ages...). Italy kicked evolution out of the curriculum in schools in the first 10 years or so.

On the other hand, evolution is popular in Portugal, so it seems. In 1974 they made one of the few (more or less) peaceful revolutions (there were not a lot of casualities, military ran around with flowers in their guns). Now there seem to be people going on that it was not really a revolution, more of an evolution.

I do not know what you want to call it else than revolution. Military marching around the city, suspending by force the old government, providing new government. The old government did not need much force to get thrown out, but nonetheless, that's what I call a revolution.

Some people also go on, that the iraq war was not really a war, because wars need at least 1000 fatalities. So it was just an armed conflict, or let's say some minor disagreement between a government and a terrorist (figure out yourself where the difference between them is...). Just hate these changing of words. If people shoot at each other, that is war. Even if there are less than 1000 deads.

Language is a great tool for hiding things. Just find a euphemism and everthing is good...

Just passed by a Taxi with an advertisement for "Kill Team - Taubenbekämpfung" (Anti-Pidgeon-Services...). Now I have the image in my mind of lots of people in complete fighting gear abseiling from office buildings going "Hut Hut Hut" and trying to shoot pigeons...

WEEKEND! Finally! Sunshine, it's warm, friends from far away coming around, what do you want more...

I went to buy some running shoes yesterday. It was amazing. Men have flewn to the moon with less technology. Entering the shop I was completely confused. The last time I bought some sport shoes it was sufficient to know your size (at that time I think it was not even distinguished between man and woman (regarding running shoes, everything else was already discovered). Must have been shortly after shoes were invented but shortly before sport industry was invented).

Now you have to know what you want to do with the shoes, if you want to do walking, power walking, nordic walking, jogging, marathon, run around the world or just pretend to be sporty (most of the shop was occupied by a department called "style"). You have to know how you run. If your feet are inclined when they touch the ground. And how far. If you are a "Normalabroller" (that's german for moving your feet normally, at least as I understood it, I learnt a lot of new words today, most of which I already forgot again...) or if you walk like a rheumatic camel.

Luckily there was somebody who could help me. We did an analysis of my running style. I had to get on these conveyor belt things you use to run indoors at fitness centers. A computer with a high speed video camera attached to it analyzed my running. My feet are only slightly inclined, so I am a "Normalabroller". Phew. Thank God. Now I am really relaxed.

Sadly all the cheap shoes were for non-"Normalabroller" (As were most of the others. Seems that being a "Normalabroller" is not normal these days...). Shoes for me started at 95 Euros and went up to nearly the price of a small car (I could not see any differences between them...) Luckily the cheapest were the ones which fist best. So now I am equipped with a pair of shoes, 4 Euros cheaper than a flight to Lisbon or Istanbul, perfectly fitting to my running style, enabling me to run a marathon, what am I saying, preparing me for Iron Man.

Went happily for jogging afterwards. A lot of people seemed to have the same idea, close to the Elbe it was really a lot of traffic in the parks. I discovered that Hamburg has a lot of steep hills but nevertheless I managed to do some 15 minutes of jogging with only short intervalls of trying to revive my legs and trying to breath again (The 15 minutes are jogging time, not counting the intervalls...). I am proud of myself. Goal until July: try to jog for half an hour without any pauses and without breaking down...

Spent nearly all the day going back and forth between the experiment and my office. Managed to tighten some screws inbetween. Another very productive day...

Yesterday went for a walk in the area where my flat is. Really nice. A lot of the Big City People ^(TM) look like people from a brit pop video or like they came through a time-hole directly from the eighties. Hoped we would already past that, but one never can be sure... I got the strange feeling like looking as the guy from provinzz. Maybe I should go looking for the stuff I wore in the eighties, it should be hidden somewhere.

Local easter tradition in northern germany: getting drunk around a lovely small fire...

Random Pictures #4 (or 5?)

Been watching the easter service live from vatican. Eurovison just cut off in the end, while it still was going on. Afterwards interview with a priest looking exactly like Uwe Seeler, the interview exactly like after a football match. Do you think the pope was handling the ball well? Did you like the first half? Was it really a penalty kick?

Sometimes I feel the urge to shoot my TV.

Moving changes perspective. It is always interesting do discover that again. I moved to Hamburg last week (that is the reason for no posting...) and some of my views changed almost instantly. Happily living in Erlangen, thinking that it is a quite lifely city, where you could get everything you need, now living in Big City, thinking that Erlangen is kind of province, small minded and possibly boring...

Maybe I turn into a kind of bohemien, living in two cities, Erlangen and Hamburg, eternally on the move, this time not being at home in one of them, living a nomadic life. But it is nice to see everything from a fresh perspective...

I thought until recently, that within our collaboration everybody is not really at war with each other. Now being not in an remote outpost but in the very center, it looks a lot tougher than before. You have to fight, you have to publish your stuff (even internally), if you don't somebody else will get the credits. You have to do politics. Working is amazingly unproductive, because of meetings you have to show up to, even if they are not of the remotest interest to you, you have to do a lot of so called social meetings, to be known and not getting the image of boring guy, who does not want to talk to his collegues. And you have to be present in your office late in the evening, not because there is work to do, but just because.

Still have to get sorted. As I do not have Internet at home in Hamburg (nor phone, I thought it would be nice to be not so reachable...), there will be less posts here. I will do my very best not to bore you to death...

Sequels we all have been waiting for...



Picture taken 1st of April, 1:15am, Erlangen...

Been to the post office today. As I am moving to Hamburg next week, I want my letters send to there...

The post office used to be, back in the good ol' days of state monopoly, a place where you meet uncommunicative buraucrats, who would not talk to you, but after some time of showing you that they are in charge, they would happily fullfil your wishes (I did not look happily, but at least you got your things done.) Now the german post is a private company, customer oriented, service happy and all is good. No it isn't. You have to wait forever. You are treated like you are absolutely dump. And you cannot get a single thing without having to listen to the litany of "Do you already know our newest service". Worse yet, if you try to stop them telling you about their new and shiny bank accounts (or whatever), just by saying "No, thanks. No interest in that.", they just won't stop. "But you have to know about our new bank account." "No, thanks, really, I have heard it twice" "So then, what are the benefits?" That was the postal-droid. Asking me like an exam. You only get your form if you can answer at least three questions right on the all new all shiny bank account.

And not stopping there... They also wanted to sell me electricity (ecological one, made of recycled electrons...), telephone services, water, so on so on. Luckily the queue behind me reached the outer doors, so they started realizing, may be it is a good idea to cut a bit short...

Finally they handed me over a brochure about things you should think about when you are moving. I read it. They must think I am a mentally retarded three year old. In big friendly letters they remind me of things like "Turn the light off when you are leaving your house to move to a new one". Thanks. Did not think about that.

Capitalism may be one of the few working systems. But please, people are not as stupid as companies might think they are. There is no need to treat people like mentally retarted three year olds. Not even in the name of customer satisfaction. I am not satisfied! If it wouldn't be the monopolist for letters, I would not even be a customer anymore.

If I go to some place saying "I want that thing" I just want that thing. No added value, no other product. If I want to be informed about new products I go there saying "Please inform me about your new product". See the small difference in wording? Yes? Well, then there is hope.

Bloody Friends. Just wanted to drop by a party of a friend for a short time. Ended up leaving at three in the morning as one of the last guests... It is really bad if you know a lot of interesting people ;-)

From the manual of my digital camera:
Section "How to prevent casualities and deadly injuries": Do not take pictures in a moving car using a flash.

It does not say: do not take pictures while driving...