A fun weekend...

Pictures are online here

Detail

Been to an oldtimer "ralley" (the german is "Sternfahrt", no idea what the english word is...) Got the 4th place out of 12. Not bad for the first try :-) Pictures available soon...

JAWOLL!

Jawoll!! Rettet das deutsche Obst! Nieder mit dem Fallobst!

32 years ago...

Maybe we should try something like that again. At least give the people the same drugs our politicians seem to use...

(For those not following german politics: our minister of the interior is hallucinating about blond and arian people, oh, sorry, german people being also attacked by foreigners, it's not only those niggers in Potsdam, it's also the good people who get bashed. Our minister for building and construction works is going to fight neonazis and giving people work by building nice little houses instead of socially wrecked ghettoes, hurra, garden dwarfs against Neonazis. And some other minister remembers the countless killed Wehrmacht-People on a meeting of Holocaust-Survivors. So much for touch and connection to reality...)

My left ear seems to be gone... I have a cold and can't hear anything on the left side. This really sucks. On the other hand, when I was in Hamburg on Monday, traffic noises were less annoying than usual. And I think I would have even survived a meeting if I would have gone to one, the choices of meetings get multiple each days. Now it's not only the onsite meeting, the technical recoil meeting and all the other regular stuff, it seems that now a silicon noise meeting is emerging, which covers all the silicon discussions done in the onsite meeting and again at the technical recoil meeting. So stuff will be discussed in a small group with most expertise in this noise meeting, in a larger group with less expertise in the technical recoil meeting and in a huge group with no expertise in the onsite. Each time the same questions but in each iteration additional dumb questions. Actually I am happy to have left...

Consistency

Now that I've got a classic car I need to work on the classic look. So I went out to buy two stetsons today... There's nothing like the traditional old shops which despite big mega-multi-plex- super-shopping-centres survive in their small niche, in this case Hut Brömmer in Erlangen.

Fast Reality

Found on the frontpage of Sueddeutsche.de (now sometimes with annoying audio ad). The text says: DAX rose. The graphs definitely shows it...

Du bist Deutschland

Im vergangenen Herbst kam man sich in diesem ansonsten ja so gemütlich wie zuverlässig vor sich hin entropierenden Land so vor, als hätten sich über Nacht das nordkoreanische Propagandaministerium und ein paar amerikanische Spindoktoren zusammengetan und Deutschland in emotionale Geiselhaft genommen.

Monatelang konnte man weder den Briefkasten öffnen noch den Fernseher einschalten, ohne dass einem eingehämmert wurde, man sei Deutschland, Goethe und ein Baum in einer Person.

Gefunden auf Sueddeutsche.de

And in other news: Welcome Phil.

Style

Ah, those glorious days when girls' hats did not only looked stylish but also provided nourishment.

(Picture of Carmen Miranda, shamelessly ripped off a page I can't remember...)

Been there, done that

Is your life empty and unfulfilling? Looking for a way to tamp down those ever-present feelings of existential despair? You might try emptying out your toolbox, and spending the afternoon cleaning and rearranging the contents. If you can follow that up with a Sunday afternoon spent fiddling with the workings of an old car, followed by shoving around heavy things in a friend's garage, why you're getting darn close to nirvana, my friend. That's exactly how I spent my weekend, and lemme tell you, it was a profoundly satisfying, dare I say, even a spiritual experience.

found here via BoingBoing

Meetings

Seems to have been the right time to have left. Now the mandatory meetings take at least 10 hours per week for students in HH. On average on these meetings there are about 20 people, all payed according to BAT2a, which gives you roughly 15.000 Euros as a sheer working cost for these meetings. I might have miscalculated, but still the monitary cost is impressive but much lower than the emotional costs...

Local Blogs

Thanks to the feedmap thingy I found 20 blogs from Erlangen and surroundings. All of them are from dotnet-fetishists or knowledge-management-people. Seems my blog is the less geekiest of these 20... OMG, I need more techno-babble.

Back Home...

I'm back in Erlangen.

And found an interesting article on liberal communism. (via 3QD)

Just one more day...

These people here don't have a life. They have meetings instead; even if everybody goes out to get hopelessly drunk, it's called the offsite-meeting. They don't have the time to send around a mail (which would take something like 5 minutes and inform about 50 people when sent to one of our many mailing lists), they have a meeting with three people for about an hour, to which agglomerate some other five who don't have any idea what the meeting is about nor any clue about the things discussed, but are happy to utter their completely nonsensical statements nonetheless.

If you show stuff on a meeting about which you do not had the time to reflect or which you don't understand, you get shouted at for doing so. If you want to discuss it with the two other people who have any idea at all what the stuff is about, at least ten other people completely unrelated, uninformed and dumb show up and you get shouted at for having a secret meeting and not let all have a share of the enjoyment of a meeting. Not mentioning that now you can forget the result of the meeting.

And while I am ranting about: today I cleared my desk and tried to leave everything in a reasonable state. I talked to my would-like-to-be-boss about who takes care of my on-call-expert-phone, as I will leave within days. He started to whine that I can't leave, it's all against his wishes and he could call my boss and "do all kind of cheesy things". This is the second time he threatend me in a week, showing his complete inability to be in any kind of position where he has to deal with people... The only good five minutes today were when a colleague basically told him "You have no life at all, and that little you have is really miserable, ain't that funny...". Naughty bastard, hope he does that again :-)

Religious Concerts...

I am just coming home from a concert of the First Second And Third Reformed United Baptist Church of Hamburg Choir and Brass Band, listening to chorals and sprituals the honorable Reverend and Godfather of Soul would be proud of. For some reason only at the time of leaving the fun part comes to light and you meet the interesting guys and beautiful girls...

And, 1 hour and around 40 minutes too late, my part to the world day of poetry, Joachim Ringelnatz:


Abschiedsworte an Pellka

Jetzt schlägt deine schlimmste Stunde,
Du Ungleichrunde
Du Ausgekochte, du Zeitgeschälte,
Du Vielgequälte,
Du Gipfel meines Entzückens.
Jetzt kommt der Moment des Zerdrückens
Mit der Gabel! -- Sei stark!
Ich will auch Butter und Salz und Quark
Oder Kümmel, auch Leberwurst in dich stampfen
Mußt nicht gleich so ängstlich dampfen.
Ich möchte dich doch noch einmal erfreun.
Soll ich Schnittlauch über dich streun?

Oder ist die nach Hering zumut?
Du bist ein so rührend junges Blut. -
Deshalb schmeckst du besonders gut.
Wenn das auch egoistisch klingt,
So tröste dich damit, du wundervolle
Pellka, daß du eine Edelknolle
Warst, und daß dich ein Kenner verschlingt.


and another one:


Logik

Die Nacht war kalt und sternenklar,
Da trieb im Meer bei Norderney
Ein Suahelischnurrbarthaar. -
Die nächste Schiffsuhr wies auf drei.

Mir scheint da mancherlei nicht klar,
Man fragt doch, wenn man Logik hat,
Was sucht ein Suahelihaar
Denn nachts um drei am Kattegatt?

Only Monday and already completely pissed off

Today I mentioned again that this will be my last week in Hamburg (yes, I did say that already quite often, but this time I'm serious). Which made my local would-like-to-be-boss say something that I can't, as the detector is not yet in a stable state. Well, it never will be... And he said something in the line of if I leave I never will get my PhD. (Yes, he said that, not for the first time! I have until now ignored it. Next time I will answer to it...) I am pissed off. Luckily he has not anything to do with my PhD.

I am not really sure how to react. I would like to tell him to go and f*ck himself (and I am quite sure, that if he wants to fight, it's him going to loose).

I was supposed to stay in Hamburg till August 2004. I am still here, one and a half year after that date. I have worked quite often up to 80 hours a week. I have my desk in a smelly dark container. I work with people I can't stand. (Some of my collegues I actually like, but unfortunately that's only a few). I get phonecalls in the middle of the night by incompetent shift crews. I have been in a state of being utterly pissed off for the last two years, I had not much of a private life. What do these fucking idiots want more?

This is my last week here. I want to keep at least a little self respect. I should have left two years ago...

Questions

I just had a look at the proposed questionary people have to fill out if they want to get german citizenship. Besides being completely ridiculous, western-german centric, too hard for 90% of the germans, there was one question I found really hard to answer, and most probably I would fail on that question:

Name three reasons why you want to become a german citizen.

Weekend

Playtime
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Time to play...

Health

Although I am a non-smoker: there is an interesting article on Süddeutsche on the stupidness of outlawing smoking. Nice to read, it not only applies to smoking but to other things considered not healthy as well...

Snippet, badly translated by myself:

Einen Schritt weiter kommt man beim Nachdenken über die Formel der Gesundheit, die von der Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO), vage genug, aufgestellt worden ist. Da wird dekretiert, Gesundheit sei der „Zustand vollständigen körperlichen, geistigen und sozialen Wohlbefindens“. Diese Definition umfasst mehr als die Gesundheitsvorstellung jedes Hausarztes. Wie könnte er auch, neben dem körperlichen, das geistige und soziale Wohlbefinden bestimmen? Das tut jeder für sich selbst. Und in dieser allgemeinen Bestimmung steckt ein Restchen anarchischer (und das heißt, genau übersetzt, herrschaftsfreier) Selbstbestimmung ohne soziale Kontrolle. Über den Zustand seines geistigen und sozialen Wohlbefindens entscheidet – wie lange noch? – jeder Mensch selbst.



You will get a step further when you think about the formula describing heath which has been formulated vaguely enough by the world health organisation. It decretes health as being the "state of complete well being, physical, spritual[1] and social." This definition implies much more as the definition of health your doctor has. How could your doctor aside of your physical wellbeing say something about your spritual or social well being? That everybody has to do for himself. And in this general designation of health there is a little remain of an anarchist (and that literally means without authority) self definition without social control. On the state of his spritual and social wellbeing decides - who knows for how long - every person himself.


[1] geistig can mean spritual, mental, intellectual. Not really sure which too choose, as all apply...

Tags: Health | Smoking | Sueddeutsche

Herr Paulsen

Tuna marinated
Originally uploaded by I&eye.

Herr Paulsen hat nicht nur ein lustiges Blog sondern auch nette Fotos...

Winter Walk

Winter Aboard
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Went for a walk on sunday. Until I got a phone call basically sounding like "It's beautiful weather, snow, everybody's on the outside for a walk, why aren't you at work".

Photos are on Flickr (of the walk, not the work).


Tags: Winter | Photos

Failure...

It seems that the last five years I have worked for a project which failed. It was always at the verge of failing, but managed to get along somehow, but right now my measurements suggest that the detector won't work. It might be possible to get some stuff out of it by intensive data massage, but it basically does not work.

Very motivating to have spent the last two years in a definitely not loved environment for that. I will get drunk quite soon...

Winter...

Mussno Ubahnfahn

Nässeltestlletona. Bidde-ll-esteign. Ausstglnks. Ltonadieserzgndethierbddelles-steign.

New Blog

For those interested in what my new car is doing, have a look at http://frontantrieb.blogspot.com

Tags DKW | blogs

Webcédario

Nice Cartoons at webcédario...

Tags: Cartoon | Portûgues

Hope...

Plugs
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Hopefully my last shift forever will be finished in 17 minutes...

Hopefully the light at the end of the tunnel is not a train.

Tags Hope

Physics seems to get sexy...

Found another blog on physics, which tries to transmit physics (and physicists) to the real world:

Cocktail Party Physics

It seems that physicist try to get rid of the image they have as being very intelligent, but strange people, who look even weirder. Trying not to be the Doc from Back to the future. Which is nice. Most of them aren't. Even within physics there are some astonishingly normal people, some even looking normal. The problem is - there is also a lot of weirdos, and there is a certain geek-culture.

Sometimes you get the impression that people try actually to look like a physicist (meaning look like Einstein), trying to behave like a Physicist (meaning erratically, complete out of this world behaviour), chosing carefully clothes which scream around "I do not care about clothes and dress whatever I find". Nothing against geeks. I think I am one myself. But can't stand the "We are geek! We are different!"-attitude some tend to develop...

And there is very hard problem: the only ones which stay in physics (at least here in Europe) are the weirdos, who will not survive outside university care. All the normal ones leave physics to get a job which is payed much better, has more or less finite working hours and no strange people...

Tags: physics

Control Room

Control Room
Originally uploaded by perreira.

There's something german in all of us...

Comments on Strike

First a short translation for the non portuguese readers: Nuno's and Mariana's comments basically said with said reasoning (see last post) it never works striking against "The State" and if we don't strike now against the raise of 18 minutes, we will have to cope with a lot more minutes in a couple of years. Unions, as corrupt as they may be, at least are fighting for the right side.

Which I don't really discord. My problem with this strike and with a lot of other strikes is: it simply does not work. And that we don't know about anything else is not true. The strike right now transmits no message or the wrong message. The message I get is: Unions tell people to strike about nifty things, cannot prove their point and people will not be on the side of the workers who have to work more and in the end actually fear about loosing their job. Which I thing is a signal that striking in the sense of we just won't work fails.

I can think of a couple of things which you should do better, you might as well. What you want is tor transmit your message to the work, to your employer and to get your rights. So, why don't they use the full PR machinery? The trash removers pass every house. Why not put flyers in the letterboxes. Why not talk to people. Why not get the people on your side instead of just pissing them off? Where is the big announcments in newspapers? Where is the message you want to translate seen? I have not yet seen any consistent thing what they actually strike for and why it is necessary to whine about 18 minutes per day or about working 40 hours a week (by the way, explain why this is bad to somebody who will work something like 60 hours this week, getting paid for 18.5 hours).

Unions (and the left in general) might actually be fighting for the right cause (I never really understood what the left actually wants, if you ask two of them, you get three different answers), but they just can't get the message past. Not even between themselves. Ever talked to them? Ever tried to get a consistent picture what any left wing political party wants?

Don't get me wrong. This is ment provocative. I am actually considering myself on the left side of the political spectrum and think the workers should fight for their cause. I also think if we don't do it now, it might turn much worse and then it is too late. But: having to fight with a very well organized right, fighting against people who will use all your weaknesses, you just cannot afford being dumb. Where are the big posters from the creatives? Where are the left intellectuals we used to have? Where are the consistent movements? All of them disappeared for some leftish gibberish, trying to revive the oh-so-golden days of Soviet Russia, under their great Führer Stalin...

So, to the left: the future is ahead of us. If you want to change anything, look there. Learn from the past, but think for the future. Use whatever media you want, but use all of them and use them aggressively and consistent. Printing flyers you distribute to the masses who pass the factory gate does not work anymore. Print flyers and distribute them everywhere, get the TV, get the Radio, get the Papers. Don't be the left of Marx. Be the left of the future. No longer Viva Marx, Viva Castro. Viva our children! Viva their children!

End of polemics.

Garbage.

The following is generally oversimplified and much too short. But I don't want to bore you more than I do anyway...

In Germany, public services are on strike. They fight against a rise of the weekly working hours from 38 to 39.5 hours (or something in that order), so roughly 18 Minutes per working day. That's why garbage is lying around in the streets, why kindergartens and schools are closed.

In my, maybe naive, understanding, a strike is thought to be something you use against your employer, something to pressure your employer. Which is a valid weapon to get yourself heard and to get your rights garantueed. So, whom do they hurt in this case? Children, Parents, basically everybody. Except: the employer, who is "The State". And who does not get hurt by definition. The State does not bloody care. Next elections are in three years, by then everybody forgot about it. Government is a big coalition, opposition is ridicully to non existent, and even if they would be there, hey, they are opposition, so they are generally moaning about. Publicity you get from the strike: look, those idiots fight for a ridiculous cause, using arguments which are void (If you hear them, you wold note that they are definitvely void, as you can use them also to argue against the unions...)

Whom does that strike do good? Maybe the unions, because they had too much money... Politically, these strikes are the dumbest I have seen in a long time (OK, university politics is dumber by far, but that is a different world of students and professors trying to play real people and failing miserably). Time to move on, maybe time to get into the 20th century. The 21st seems still too far. Nowadays wars are fought on different levels, the old methods don't work if you are lucky, and fire back if you aren't.

Predictions

A few days ago a friend of mine said that now, as I have my classic car, all my friends are going to marry and I have to drive them around. I though that a funny remark. So, at 09.09.2006 I will be close to Bremervörde driving friends to their wedding...

Register soon, the price will go up :-)

Note to self

Doro, Wendla and Sandra. Gender studies, engineer and pedagogue. (Don't ask.)

It's all Israels fault...

I just like the reasoning of certain islamist dictators that dumb danish cartoons are all created by the zionistic international conspiracy and it's all Israels fault. Besides that, this post at cosmic variance wraps up mostly what I am thinking about the cartoon story as well.

Escape from Hell

The car dealer where Markus and I went last week burned down (Image above shamelessly stolen from spiegel.de). Around 50 vintage cars worth more than 10 Million of Euros were destroyed. Just by sheer luck the DKW I bought was already put on the delivery truck on friday, together with an old Volvo. These were the last two cars to leave the shop in a non-burned state.

My DKW arrived today, around 21:00, slightly wet by the rain but alive. So, be prepared that this blog will turn into a praise how marvelous DKW cars are and that my car is the coolest car evar!

Budapest

Budapest
Originally uploaded by perreira.

for Markus. I can do panoramas too :-)

which way?

which way?
Originally uploaded by Dean Forbes.

Found on Flickr in a nice series of B&W shots...

Cars, Pimps, and Düsseldorf or The lifestyle of the rich, the famous and the average PhD studends

Markus and me went yesterday to Düsseldorf. Markus went to not buy a Rolls Royce (partly because it wouldn't fit into his garage, partly because his Golden Credit Card (TM) was on limit). Me to look at an old DKW and probably not buy it.

After arriving at what we thought would be an industrial area somewhere outside Düsseldorf but indeed being a side street of the Kö (Düsseldorf's most expensice shopping mile) entering the car saler. Spent some time looking at Bentleys, Rolls, Jags, Car-brands I never heard of the owner steps in. Just back from Cuba, sweetheart of Düsseldorf's high society, dumped his super-model wife for a 17 year old school girl (as we learned from the newspaper snips on the wall). While showing me the DKW he greets his friends, who just entered. Two guys from Köln, white clothing, just arrived with their Porsche Cayenne, both with bubble-perms, one of them huge golden sunglasses, looking suspiciously pimpy. Beginning four hours of interesting fun, chatting about Rolls, Jags, old cars dumped in a forest as art with them. I decided to buy the DKW. But I have to wait, as an arabian prince arrives in a Maybach he drove to try out, wanting to buy the Maybach and a couple of Mercedes. An hour later, I got the contract and hopefully the car will arrive soon...

So this is my new car:


A DKW F8 Meisterklasse, 2 cylinders (two stroke engine), 684ccm, 17kW (20HP), three gears with strange gear-stick (same technique as in a 2CV), build in 1939. Four seats, suicide doors, brilliant state. And mine :-)

Education

Ientends & veulx que tu aprenes les langues parfaictement. Premierement la Grecque comme le veult Quintilian. Secondement la latine. Et puis l'Hebraicque pour les sainctes lettres, & la Chaldeicque & Arabicque pareillement: & que tu formes ton stille, quant à la Grecque, à l'imitation de Platon, quant à la Latine, à Ciceron. Qu'il n'y ait histoire que tu ne tiengne en memoire presente, à quoy te aydera la Cosmographie de ceulx qui en ont escript. Les ars liberaulx, Geometrie, Arismetique, & Musicque, Ie t'en donnay quelque goñt quand tu estoys encores petit en l'aage de cinq à six ans: poursuys le reste, & de Astronomie saches en tous les canons, laisse moy l'Astrologie divinatrice, et art de Lucius comme abuz et vanitez. Du droit Civil ie veulx que tu saches par cueur les beaulx textes, et me les confere avecques la philosophie. Et quant à la congnoissance des faitz de nature, Ie veulx que tu t'y adonne curieusement, qu'il n'y ait mer, ryviere, ny fontaine, dont tu ne congnoisse les poissons, tous les oyseaulx de l'air, tous les arbres arbustes & fructices des forestz, toutes les herbes de la terre, tous les metaulx cachez au ventre des abysmes, les pierreries de tout orient & midy, riens ne te soit incongneu. Puis songneusement revisite les livres des medecins, Grecs, Arabes, & Latins, sans contemner les Thalmudistes & Cabalistes, & par frequentes anatomyes acquiers toy parfaicte congnoissance de l'aultre monde, qui est l'homme. Et par quelques heures du iour comme à visiter les sainctes letttres. Premierement en Grec le nouveau testament et Epistres des apostres, & puis en Hebrieu le vieulx testament. Somme que ie voye ung abysme de science: car doresnavant que tu deviens homme & te fais grand, il te fauldra issir de ceste tranquillité & repos d'estude: & apprendre la chevalerie & les armes, pour defendre ma maison, & nos amys secourir en tous leurs affaires contre les assaulx des malfaisans.

Rabelais - Pantagruel - Les horribles et espouvantables faictz & prouesses du tresrenommé Pantagruel Roy des Dipsodes, filz du grand geant Gargantua, Composez nouvellement par maistre Alcofrybas Nasier.

Nostalgy

Re-read some posts from two years ago. Kind of interesting to see what I thought at that time, what my mood was at that time and how I thought I will only spend half a year or so in Hamburg. It's now something like one and a half year I have spent between Hamburg and Erlangen and I still prefer the little province town to the big booming city full of opportunities. Fun to see where you change and where not...

2nd Anniversary

Micha kindly reminded me that today is the 2nd anniversary of this blog... So I watched a movie. Fitzcarraldo. For me, one of the best movies ever. For various reasons:



They did carry a fucking big ship over a hill in the amazonian rain forest.



They passed some rapids with said ship. The main actor and camera crew aboard, resulting only in a dislocated shoulder of the cameraman.



And Kinski at his best. During shooting of the movie one of the indian chiefs offered to kill him, as he was always fighting with the director and generally mad.

Statistics...

Around 70% of the 11-15 year olds questioned said they did not picture scientists as "normal young and attractive men and women".



Among those who said they would not like to be scientists, reasons included: "Because you would constantly be depressed and tired and not have time for family", and "because they all wear big glasses and white coats and I am female".


Found at the BBC. As it speaks for itself I will refrain from any comments...

UPDATE: Also an interesting post on the same article on cosmic variance. Especially nice are the pictures :-)

IKB

Been to an art museum on sunday. This is the most impressive painting I saw. (Actually it isn't. This is Monochrome 79. I saw Monochrome 43 (or something). But you get the idea).

Women in Physics

A lot of physicists grew up as socially awkward adolescents — not exactly the captain of the football team, if you know what I mean — and have found that as scientists they can suddenly be the powerful bullies in the room, and their delight in this role helps to forge a strangely macho and exclusionary culture out of what should be a joyful pursuit of the secrets of the universe.

CosmicVariance has a post on women in physics and why there are only so few of them. Above quotation not only might indicate why, it also shows why working in physics sucks. It's not only the treatment of women, physics I think is gender-indifferent in most physicist being socially retarted idiots. Men are just used to it, as we are more prone to be one ourself. So, instead of concluding that we need more women in physics, I would conclude we need more socially apt people. Which might not necessarily be women, but, as you can also read in the post (there cited as an argument of macho-idiot-phyiscists like me), women actually do look better...

Original

Found some web-gallery which actually seems to be nice...: Original.

You need to run a local script to generate the gallery, then copy it to your webserver and then, voilá, nice gallery. Very easy to add information or protect individual galleries with a password (put into info.txt restricted_user|<username> and restricted_password|<password>)

To rotate images before use exiftran.

Weekend trip

Hamburg - Achim - Erlangen - Köln - Hannover - Hamburg. 1510 km. Two parties, one social security number, an art museum and a bit of paperwork... Busy weekend it was.

Scientifically proven...

Life's harder for man.

You've been Pimped?

I am now officially certified to comply with EN 14153-2.

Random Philosphy

Passionate in english usually refers to love and sex. In portuguese apaixionado means in love. In german "passioniert" is usually used in conjunction with stamp collecting and other really passionate stuff. Strange people.

Lights

New toys arrived. Now I can enter the world of glamour portraits (and normal portraits as well), the only thing I need is models. Any volunteers?

Happy...?

Your Social Dysfunction: Happy You're a happy person - you have a good amount of self-esteem, and are socially healthy. While this isn't a social dysfunction per se, you're definitely not normal. Consider yourself lucky: you walk that fine line between 'normal' and being outright narcissistic. You're rare - which is something else to be happy about.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com Please note that we aren't, nor do we claim to be, psychologists. This quiz is for fun and entertainment only. Try not to freak out about your results.

"Abuso di Credulita Popolare"

Seems you are not allowed to publically fool people in italy. Now a court has to decide if it is the church or the atheist fooling them...

Working on weekends...

The bottom line is that, in my experience, one will in general be healthier, happier, and more successful if one takes reasonable amounts of time away from work, doing whatever helps you to relax. Don’t let the culture of crazy work schedules and macho bragging about them drive you to unhealthy practices. Find out what works for you and, as long as it isn’t clearly unreasonable, stick with it, and explain that to anyone who tries to persuade you not to.

--- Found on Cosmic Variance

Seems I am not the only one thinking that having time off is better for your mental health...

Tech Underground

This looks promising,

Random Stuff

Happy Newton's day. (Newtons Birthday was the 25th...). Also celebrated on the same day: the birth of the first communist jew or jewish communist roughly 2000 years ago.

On tsunami-news: the german minister of science now wants a tsunami warning system for the mediterranean. The one in the pacific and indean ocean (if working at all) will give people a 10 minute before warning. Assuming the speed of tsunamis is the same in the mediterranean as it is in the pacific and the indian ocean, this will give you a 2 minute before warning (rough and unscientific guess by me). Time enough to kiss your ass goodbye or have a last quick one with your girl-friend (or whatever at hand), not time enough to run.

And I'll be gone till the 5th, as there surprisingly is no work to be done inbetween...

Bonobos

Just came home from a nice evening with friends. Going with the S-Bahn is always interesting...

Just opposite of me sat a couple, both being at the beginning of their twenties. He sitting there showing off like "I have that big balls and a that huge member, I can't even sit straight", she sitting completely taken by something in her hands, ignoring him. Both having that "I'm so annoyed"-face. No talking. Then he grabs whatever she was holding in her hands, she shouting at him to be careful. Silence. Annoyance. Kissing. More Kissing. He starting to take out his earphones, not paying much interest in her, even while still kissing. She had to get off at the next station, saying "I love you", he mumbling something, then louder "You too". Kisses. She leaving, he completely obsessed by his walkman. Still annoyance on both of their faces.

Then I thought, well, my life sucks. But their life sucks even more, and worse: they don't even know it.

Cosmic Variance

This seems to be interesting...

A poem is a city

a poem is a city filled with streets and sewers
filled with saints, heroes, beggars, madmen,
filled with banality and booze,
filled with rain and thunder and periods of
drought, a poem is a city at war,
a poem is a city asking a clock why,
a poem is a city burning,
a poem is a city under guns
its barbershops filled with cynical drunks,
a poem is a city where God rides naked
through the streets like Lady Godiva,
where dogs bark at night, and chase away
the flag; a poem is a city of poets,
most of them quite similar
and envious and bitter...
a poem is this city now,
50 miles from nowhere,
9:09 in the morning,
the taste of liquor and cigarettes,
no police, no lovers, walking the streets,
this poem, this city, closing its doors,
barricaded, almost empty,
mournful without tears, aging without pity,
the hardrock mountains,
the ocean like a lavender flame,
a moon destitute of greatness,
a small music from broken windows...

a poem is a city, a poem is a nation,
a poem is the world...

and now I stick this under glass
for the mad editor's scrutiny,
the night is elsewhere
and faint gray ladies stand in line,
dog follows dog to estuary,
the trumpets bring on gallows
as small men rant at things
they cannot do.


--- Charles Bukowski

The yellow Blinking Lights...

The yellow Blinking Lights...
Originally uploaded by perreira.

...are turned on for testing only.

It's the end of the world...

...as we know it.

Common Sense

Friday I went to a lecture about research managment in chemical industry. Triggered by that I browsed my fathers bookshelf on some stuff about management in general, project management, time management, etc. Disguised as the new fancy shiny multicolored hat XYZ method (highly priced seminars available) are usually things, which I thought of as being completely obvious to anybody. Well, at least thats what I though before I started my PhD some years ago...

It all boils down to some very simple rules: define your goal, define your objectives. Then figure out how to reach these goals and define a route. Check regularly if you are getting closer. If you do, fine. If you don't, re-check the goals, if they are clear enough, re-check your path, if it leads where you want it to lead. When dealing with people, when trying to lead people do the same. Be clear about stuff, if you want person A to do B, tell person A to do B and not let person A figure it our by himself, because most probably he will do C. Treat people as people. Be nice to people. If they fail, do not treat them as idiots, everybody fails sometime.

Please send now an enormous amount of mony to my bank account for this short introduction to the deep and mystic ways of management.

Unfortunately our management did not get these insights until now...

Portugal, 1964 part two

Done with scanning slides, now the whole set of pictures of Portugal in 1964 is on Flickr. Does anybody of you know a better idea to scan slides with glass frames than opening the frames and taking the slides out? (Not a good idea, as they are glued in...) Most slide scanners only can handle the thin glassless frames.

Portugal, 1964

Oporto
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Scanning the slides my father took in 1964 on a trip through Portugal.

People

I wish I could write... There is an amazing amount of people around here worth being put into a story.

Usually I take breakfast at a portuguese cafe around the corner, where there are the habitual people, sometimes some new people. There is the group of elder portuguese man, usually discussing football or complaining about stuff. Complaining, saying what one should do, but today nobody ever, one really should, if it would be them, they for sure would. And maybe have another bagaço around eleven in the morning.

Two days ago there were two women, I didn't really get what they were, psychologist or astrologist (anyway, same species). They were discussing some computer programs to councel people, you put in some stuff, get a recommendation, edit it and people are supposed to live happily ever after if they follow these recommendations. Telling how you have to put in stuff about love and partners for younger girls, put stuff about the job for middle aged men, about younger girls for older men.

There is the alternatives, pretty common around here in Altona. They try to be really different from the mainstream, starting by dressing differently. But, differently in a very strict dress code, wearing kind of an uniform. All of them look the same, behave the same, talk the same. All of them are very individual.

And sometimes, very seldom, you may actually spot a hamburgian, mostly an elderly couple of them. They speak the local dialect, are conservative and open at the same time, are very anxious to show that they know a couple of words of portuguese, order a badly pronounced galão, talk about the holiday they once had in spain, it wasn't that bad there, people were quite well behaved, it was clean, well, the food was a bit weird, but in generally, yes, it was very clean, not like in Italy (or Yugoslavia or wherever). And the people there were nice as well. Well. Not like at home, but not that bad...

False sense of Duty

I could have been to Lisbon. I could have been to one of the best parties ever. I even was offered that I do not have to pay the entire trip...

Instead I spent my day in the Experimental Hall, labeling exactly four cables and talking two and a half hour with six people about three cables we need. Just to clarify: the cables have plug A on one end, plug B on the other and are of a well defined length. In real life, this would be a matter of one e-mail or at most 10 minutes of conversation, of which 8 would be occupied by asking how is the family. No, we spent more than one complete person-workday on that.

The next time my would-like-to-be-boss tells me that I am urgently needed, I'll tell him to sod off and go on an extended holiday.

National Shame...

I am not really a modern guy, sometimes I think my value system is so 1980... Having too many doctors in a hospital is a national shame. I thought too few would be a shame, too many a sign of luxury. But, as I said, sometimes I am so 1980...

Small with big feet...

Hobbit


To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla

Random stuff...

First: I am drunk.

Second: I just don't want to know what the guys at the neighbouring table where talking about:" you know, there is this rock, yeah, this rock is three metres or so, yeah, this rock, on top of this rock there is a lighthouse, yeah, you know, and the locals are doing it for money."

Third: There was an amazing amount of beautiful and nice girls in the bar.

Fourth: The water was 12 degrees, the air 4, and now I am a certified diver and officially certified to spend much more money on courses and even more on equipment.

Fifth: There was an amazing amount of beautiful and nice girls in the bar.

Sixth: I forgot.

If you do not hear from me until monday...

... I am either frozen to death or drowned. Tomorrow I have my diving exam in a very very cold lake close to munich, where there is nothing around but woods. In any case: it was nice to have known you ;-)

Theory...

I have a theory. It for sure is wrong, but I am content with it. A theory why it usually does not work out with the girls, why I usually get to hear that I am a really nice guy, but.

Of course this theory does not apply to neither the female readers of this blog nor the girl friends/wifes/whatever of the male ones. Nor to any people I know not reading this blog. Basically you are all intelligent, nice people, where this theory is completely ridiculous.

OK, so now to the theory: women want idiots. Not real idiots, but guys not capable of living on their own. As I can perfectly live on my own, can cook, do household stuff, well, I even have got a sewing machine (which amazes a lot of girls...), no chance. No way the mother instinct is getting on. I think this is why a girl once said I am not manly enough (she definetly could not have spoken about anatomical details as we never got that far nor is there reason for that, as it does not really count as a detail.) I am just too able to live on my own, I don't need help to survive.

I like this theory because it says basically it's not my fault for being too good, it's just girls being too dumb. And without the above mentioned exceptions, this applies to all girls, just to prevent comments in this direction.

And please, leave me with this small ego-pleasing theory, don't spoil it by saing it's all my fault. I'll get depressed soon enough as I have to go to Hamburg for the next three months to install a stupid detector.

Staying home...

... sometimes turns out to be better than going out. Got phonecalls from a good friend, from my family and from two really nice girls. The alternative would have been to spend the evening with a bunch of physicists (sorry guys, you cannot compete with these two girls...)

More pictures...

Trees
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Seulement pour le plaisir des yeux...

Help...

...I am getting Micro-Managed!

The youth of today

Since the beginning of mankind people keep on complining about the youth of today. If you would believe in it, we would have had the perfect society around three to four hundred years ago where everybody was intelligent, well educated and so on...

On the other hand: we have not been such naïve, stupid, narcistic idiots. I am the first to admit that I am socially inept, kind of naïve, having a political point of view far from real life, but I am always amazed how dump people can get... (Just returned from the Fresher's Party of our faculty, amazing amount of dump idiots between them, just very few people I would think of being intelligent enough to be in university)

I am getting old, elitist and intolerant. I am loosing confidence in my idea of people...

Bonfire

Bonfire
Originally uploaded by perreira.

more photos...

Why popular science is evil...

Saturday the Erlangen Night of Science took place. Lots of Institutes, Factories etc where open to the public, showing their research to the interested. So was the physics institute, we got something like 2500 visitors. I was there to stand in front of some posters and explain what we are doing...

Basically you could divide the visitors into two categories. The interested who knew not much about physics and just came by to see what we are doing, and the more interested who read a lot of popular science books and watched a lot of TV science shows. The latter had the worst misconceptions on physics...

Most of the popular science bits explain stuff. Better, they give you the truth about stuff. What the usually fail to mention, all of the pictures they use to explain stuff, are, well, pictures. They are not reality. They are a story to ease the understanding. Which most of the time does not work. Quite often it seems, that these pictures provide a heavy misconception or just add to the confusion. Mostly this happens with pictures which seem to be easy, but the author has missed to mention some iportant point... And what stays in mind is the stuff which did confuse you most, so mostly the wrongest picture or the least understandable misconception.

Also popular science is about spectacular stuff like light waves surpassing the speed of light and therefore seem to violate the theory of relativity. Stuff which has deep philosophical implications. The only problem is: nobody really understands that stuff, not even the proper physicist doing the experiments. They have a theory, which might prove wrong. This is work in progress, a lot might happen. Combine this with people who are bad in communicating, trying to explain that to journalist who do not even know the terminology you end up in stuff like "Einstein was wrong" even when nobody ever said that. Science is not trivial. If everybody could understand it without work, there would be no need for scientists. Of course everybody should know something about it, most people actually have the ability to understand it, but you can't explain string theory in 30 minutes. You can maybe get some ideas across. Unfortunately you have to pass that to the viewer/reader as well (maybe have something like this scrolling along the screen "WARNING: THIS IS NOT THE TRUTH, THIS IS JUST A STORY WHICH MIGHT GIVE YOU AN IDEA...")

Urban Glow

Urban Glow
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Put up some new pictures on flickr...

Traffic

Dear Erlangen Cyclists:

please use your fucking headlights. In a dark night in a dark road dark clothed cyclists on a dark bike are usually not looking very bright. Please signal when you turn direction, look around you before you turn. Don't jump off randomly of your bike. There might be somebody much faster than you trying to get by you. Use your gears. It really helps when you shift the gears of your shiny 37 gear bike when you go uphill. Just don't be generally idiots.


Dear Erlangen Pedestrians:

bikeways are for bikes. So don't look pissed when a cyclist rings to get you off his ways. Don't run into a bike going at 30 km/h, it hurts.

Der Erlangen Cardrivers (especially Forcheim Car Drivers):

there are cyclists. Yes, you might not know them, but they exist. And they can go pretty fast. If they are coming from a direction you don't expect them, that usually means you don't know the traffic rules of that place, sometimes it is actually allowed to go in both ways. Sometimes they appear although there is a traffic law which states they shouldn't. Don't stop and stare at them. They won't disappear, you will get a heart attack soon if you get angry evertime stuff does not happen as you would expect it and the cyclists will get angry because of you being a narrowminded idiotic Korinthenkacker. Sometimes stuff does not happen as you like it, just go on. That's life.


Return tomorrow for a shiny new post on why popular science books are evil.

Stylish TVs...

Espressionism

I want one of these...

The advantage of being behind...

"The 20th century is a cul-de-sac," says Claudio Prado, Brazil's digital culture czar, in London with Gil. "And the engine of progress doesn't have a reverse gear, so it's hard for the first world to get out of the cul-de-sac." The fact that many Brazilians still live in 18th or 19th-century conditions, he says, means that the country has an opportunity to accelerate into the 21st century without entering the cul-de-sac in the first place.

--- found in an article of The Guardian you should read...

Instead let's try something new in class: thinking.

--- E. Tufte

Homebanking Fun

I tried to get homebanking to work. Tried first linux, then gave up as it didn't seem to find my HBCI-Card. Switched to windows. And the fun started...

First no Java installed. So install Java. Reboot. Then the java applet did not load but I did also not get any error message in Firefox. Tried IE. Got "Your Java is too new". Damn. Downgrade Java, reboot. Not working. Deinstall new Java, which did not happen automatically. Reboot.

Finally I get the Java Applet. Now I need some weird DLL, which I copy from the net (address found on the FAQ of the bank). Then got error message native DLL could not be copied. After various reboots and an hour found the DLL, copied it to system32 dir, and see, it works. That was *really* easy.

Now trying Linux on my laptop...

Vedi Napoli e poi muori

Well, it seems I did not get to Bamberg again. Everytime I try to see Bamberg, something happens and I won't go. This time a cold got in the way. Well, I'll try again. Maybe I see it some time...

(In case you wonder about the title, it's an italian wordplay, which was cited by Goethe and lost it's pun in translation...)

Spam

I turned on word verification as I got fed up with spam. Sorry if making comments is getting a bit more cumbersome, but I hope you still keep on commenting.

Books...

Today I finally got my photo-books printed from photos I put up on flickr. Well. The photos have not been of very high resolution, but they look much worse printed. The colours are a bit too dark and they are not as homogenious as they should be (especially skies look weird, sometimes you see stripes). Printing them out myself and giving them to a book binder would have produced a better result and been cheaper... So, I am not really convinced, but your milage may vary.

Intelligent Design

Day No. 1:

And the Lord God said, “Let there be light,” and lo, there was light. But then the Lord God said, “Wait, what if I make it a sort of rosy, sunset-at-the-beach, filtered half-light, so that everything else I design will look younger?”

“I’m loving that,” said Buddha. “It’s new.”

“You should design a restaurant,” added Allah.

--- Found in The New Yorker

Sweden

Swedish Girls
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Pictures from this weekend's trip to Lund and Malmö...

Visited Countries...

create your own visited countries map

Off for the Weekend...

I would like to live in Sweden
When my work is done
Where the snow lies crisp and even
'Neath the midnight sun
Safe and clean and green and modern
Bright and breezy - free and easy
Sweden - Sweden - Sweden - In Sweden
I am gonna live in Sweden
Please don't ask me why
For if I were to give a reason
It would be a lie
Tall and strong and blonde and blue-eyed
Pure and healthy, very wealthy
I'll grow wings and fly to Sweden
When my time is come
Then at last my eyes shall see them
Heroes every one
Ingmar Bergman
Henrik Ibsen
Karin Larrson
Nina Persson


--- Divine Comedy, Sweden

Smiling Verboten

As of November smiling will be officially verboten in Germany. Everybody caught smiling in public will be shot immedeately. Laughing has been already frowned upon for years and will now be prosecuted with utmost force. Jokes have been banned.

Geee. I just love this country.

Whales Weep Not!

They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of the sea!

And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas,
and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
and in the tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
Then the great bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep of the sea

as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and comes to rest
in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale's fathomless body.

And over the bridge of the whale's strong phallus, linking the wonder of whales
the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and forth,
keep passing archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.
And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-tender young
and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of the beginning and the end.

And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring
when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat
encircling their huddled monsters of love.
and all this happiness in the sea, in the salt
where God is also love, but without words:
and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!

and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.


--- D.H. Lawrence

Just saw Star Trek IV - The Greenpeace Voyage

Bad Science

[...] the humanities graduate journalists' parody of science, for which we now have all the ingredients: science is about groundless, incomprehensible, didactic truth statements from scientists, who themselves are socially powerful, arbitrary, unelected authority figures. They are detached from reality: they do work that is either wacky, or dangerous, but either way, everything in science is tenuous, contradictory and, most ridiculously, "hard to understand".

More here. (via 3quarksdaily)

Attack of the Killer Elevator

Cameras

My collection of old cameras keeps on growing...

Lomo Lubitel 2

Build by Lomo (Leningradskoye Optiko Mechanichesckoye Obyedineni) from 1955 to 1980. A copy of a Voigtländer Brilliant. Format 6x6 cm (aka 120). Astonishingly good for a cheap russian copied camera.

Minox B

Build from 1958 to 1972 by Minox GmbH in Wetzlar. Format 8x11 mm, integrated CdS meter. THE spy camera.

Zorki 1b

Russian copy of a Leica II with an Industar-22 lens (50mm, f3.5, interchangable, M39). Build from 1948 to 1956 (mine is one of the earlier variants as it has still the old Leica times of 1/20, 1/30, 1/40...)

Random Picture

Cochon Bourgois

Just returned from a weekend trip to Budapest, on my way to my second flat in Hamburg, short stop in Erlangen to take a diving lesson (which unfortunately is at the same time as my riding lesson), finding in my letter box my Lufthansa bonus-miles card aside of the status of my stock depot...

"I live above my means but below my standards" -- Oscar Wilde (Not sure, but he would have said something like this...)

Science and Media

A portuguese newspaper is starting a program to get scientist making an internship in their offices to promote the communication of science to the public. Which is a nice idea. This is what they say why it does not work nicely now:


A relativa pobreza da comunicação e divulgação da ciência realizada pela comunidade científica e pelas instituições de ciência deve-se em grande parte a um desconhecimento por parte destes profissionais das rotinas, critérios e cultura dos media. Este desconhecimento é gerador de desconfiança, fechamento ou mesmo de mal-entendidos e conflitos que poderiam desaparecer através de um maior contacto entre a comunidade científica e a comunidade dos media.


Translated (badly, but hopefully understandable...):

The relative weakness of communication and divulgation of science done by the scientific community and their institutions is caused to a huge part by a lack of knowledge on the side of these professionals about the routines, criterions and the actual culture of media. This lack of knowledge generates distrust, closedness or even misunderstandings and conflicts which could disappear if a better contact between the scientific community and the media community is established.


I am one of the first to rant about the incompetence of scientist to promote their works. There is nothing worse than physicists trying to do publicity about their own work; most of the time the result is boring people to a slow and horrible death. And most of the time there is not even a conscience of having to transmit science to the public (which is dumb and won't understand it anyway...)

But to just blame it on the scientist I think is also wrong. A lot of journalists have passed through the sacred corridors of our physics institute. They have asked questions. They filmed. They did not even try to understand the stuff people tried to explain them. They filmed people in lab coats (nobody actually ever wears them in a phyics institute, there is no need...) standing in front of complicated machinery with lots of Blinkenlights (which has been specially constructed for this filming and serves no purpose whatsoever). They have absolutely no idea how science works.

So, what I would propose is an exchange instead of an internship... Get scientists into the newspapers and get journalists into a university (a science faculty to be precise, as most of them have studied something or other). The only problem: find a university actually crazy enough to do this and find journalists crazy enough to do a thing like this.