Berch

Berch
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Just went to a short visit to the Bergkirchweih. After three beers I went home. They were closing anyway...

As this was a nice quiet evening, the weekend will be hard...

Sharpness

One of the signs I have not spent sufficient time in my Erlangen Flat the last couple of months: the kitchen knives are blunt. They still are sharper than the knives found in most kitchens, but not sharp enough to be of real use. The idal sharpness is reached when a silk cloth falling on the blade gets cut in half by it's own weight. I have not yet reached this, but usually my knives are sharp enough that you only notice that you have cut yourself when you count your fingers or are standing knee deep in blood. The advantages of sharp knives are not only that cutting is much easier, it is also that wounds don't hurt and heal much faster.

So, off from the keyboard and hands on the sharpening steel. (Another word were the german is nicer: Wetzstahl)

At Home

So, I am more or less finally back in Erlangen. Again. And I will never ever go to work at the experiment again. Again. At least I don't have a flat anymore in HH. If you wonder why I prefer the small province town to the big rambling city full of oportunities and interesting and good stuff:

Today I started with breakfast at a friend's place, together with a couple of other friends, having white sausages and beer. Then I went with a really nice and good looking girl to a beer garden with a beautiful view, where I spent the afternoon (we went there with my DKW). The evening I spent with another friend in another beer garden. I did not get anything done today of the stuff I wanted to do (taxes are due, I should clean up my flat, I should prepare something for the tutorials tomorrow...)

In HH, I might have gone to a Cafe and sat there for some hours reading a book or so, but probably would have spent the day watching bad TV series. (Just for the files: I do have a few friends in HH, but I most probably would not be able to get my ass up and do something with them. I usually vegetated through the weekends, not being able to speak or move.)

Tschüss, HH

Since yesterday I don't have a flat in Hamburg anymore. So, from now on, I will have to stay in the guest house or at some friends to be in HH. It feels actually quite relieving, now that I am 100% back to Erlangen and only will go to the north in case of an emergency.

The detector seems to be quite dead now, we set up a test-stand, where we will try to heal some of the radiation damage (as if this would help...). Some modules will be repaired, it will then be installed again in about 4 weeks and then we will discover it did not change anything. So, time to start writing up and leave the sinking ship. Women and children first.

Critics

It seem's that there is intelligent movie critique sometimes:

There has been much debate over Dan Brown’s novel ever since it was published, in 2003, but no question has been more contentious than this: if a person of sound mind begins reading the book at ten o’clock in the morning, at what time will he or she come to the realization that it is unmitigated junk? The answer, in my case, was 10:00.03, shortly after I read the opening sentence: “Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery.” With that one word, “renowned,” Brown proves that he hails from the school of elbow-joggers—nervy, worrisome authors who can’t stop shoving us along with jabs of information and opinion that we don’t yet require.

Found in The NewYorker

Hell?

Hell?
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Yes. I did enjoy it :-)

Most searched tags...?

Most searched tags...
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Uploaded not even an hour ago and already 33 views :-) Quite simple to get your pictures popular on Flickr.


EDIT: at 148 views 24 hours later... :-)

Photos

Portrait
Originally uploaded by perreira.

The Scotland Photos are on flickr now... Have fun

The international JetSet Life of PhD Students

Just arrived back from a weekend trip to Glasgow and Edinburgh, will leave tomorrow for Hamburg, then Thursday off to Lund. After that, I might need a holiday and stay a couple of days home...

Pictures of Scotland available soon...

The stillness, always the stillness

unless there's a dog. SHUT IT! WILL YOU SHUT IT! You must listen to this, before they put up next weeks show... (via Cosmic Variance)

I for one...

welcome our new ten-hour-working-at-most-overlords. Either it was an abduction by aliens or our spokesperson was replaced by a japanese fembot, while she was on conference. It just is weird when you receive a mail from a person working at least 14 hours a day, 7 days a week that working too much can lead to accidents and is generally not a good idea... Something must have happened while nobody was watching.

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...)