El umbelico del Mondo

Today I drove from Lisbon to Coimbra via Almourol (a very interesting castle of the Knights of the Temple), Abrantes (a village in Ribatejo which looks like any other village), Vila de Rei and Lousã. I stopped at the geodesical centre of Portugal, which you can see above. The big pilar is the first geodesic mark, marking the first starting point of mapping portugal. It was discovered heroically in 18something. Thank god it was on a hill, else the triangulation would have been tiresome....

The little pilar in front is the geodesic mark TF4, which marks todays starting point of triangulation. At this place next to Vila de Rei there is the most wimpy museum I ever visited (it's for free, else I would be annoyed...). The only things on exhibition are a theodolite, a leveler and a computer with a GPS from Leica. Together with 4 posters on Geodesy, this is the whole museum... If it wouldn't be for the cafeteria, this would loose any reason for existence.

I'm Leaving on a Jet plane

Plane
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Don't know when I will be back again...

Actually I do, 4th of september. But I'll be gone nonetheless for the next four weeks. I won't respond to mails, if not considered important (important in this case means either from good looking girls or telling that the detector has blown up (in the second case the answer will be "Yooohoooo"...))

I may post some stuff here and put photos on flickr... But I am on holiday, so I will keep my contact to the internet to a minimum.

Photo stuff

Schloss
Originally uploaded by perreira.

I just bought a new lense: the Sigma 10-20 DC EX. Finally a decent wide angle... Although it looks like it is not very sharp at the edges, but this might also be an effect of wrong focussing...

And I started to geotag my pictures on flickr, so you can see where I have been when I took them. (You might want to check out flyr or Yuan.cc to look for geotagged photos and the flickr geotagging group for what's this all about)

A Fun day out

Cockpit
Originally uploaded by perreira.

You never cease to be a six year old. Today I flew a plane (actually I did a left and a right turn in a motor glider, but I did do it all my own...), I drove a fire brigade van (Ford Taunus from 1964) and I drove a Mercedes from 1963. The dreams of a six year old come true...

Fuck the establishment

I just gave up watching a discussion on TV between the heads of some of the bavarian universities, which are now organised in Universität Bayern e.V. (Warning: extremely ugly homepage). On the board also is his Magnifizenz, the rektor of my universtity. What a huge amount of bullshit they talked. Some stuff made sense, but most was just buzzwords (in english, which is a traditional indicator: if somebody talking german uses english words instead of available german words, it's generally because he is talking bullshit).

So, it's all about synergy, we have checks and balances, extensive and intensive research universities... These guys didn't even get it that they were talking nonsense.

This is why I want to leave university as soon as possible. The universities are now in the hands of the establishment. Nobody is creative anymore, it's all preserving the status quo, no innovation, nobody has the guts to think a bit aside of the mainstream. There is no Avantgarde. (Unfortunately the Avantgarde is dead, you won't find it in university, but also not outside university...) Even the students turned into the establishment. All of them just want to finish their studies fast and then become succesful consultants and managers. None of them is any creative...

We are now in a process of restructuring the faculties. Instead of lots of small faculties we want five big ones. All the people planning this are only trying to keep the already existing structures, but get more power to their own positions. We will have a faculty, beneath that departments, then institutes then chairs, then groups and subgroups. It's very vertical, if you want to put it into buisiness speek. None of the people involved shows any balls to do something radical. Why have so much organisation? We don't need a vertical structure that big... University should be fast, creative, research and teaching oriented. It just turns into a playground for would-be politicians...

I siwtched the channel after 30mins and am now watching the Montreux Jazz Festival... At least some creative people on TV.

Happy Little Trees

The Picasso of Puffy Clouds (via Positive Ape Index)

It's all a big hoax

The hole intarweb thing is a complete hoax. It just does not work, but you won't notice, because we have flashy animations and it's THE INTARWEB and it's hip.

I tried to book a plane ticket via one of the big portals. Searching for flights I found a nice connection, it said e-ticket available, mark it and proceed. Enter a lot of info, click around a lot, sorry, your flight is not available anymore, try a new search. Did that. Repeat ad infinitum. After trying four times I just gave up...

So I went to a travel agency, had a nice chat with the guy there and 15 minutes later I got a ticket for exactly the same flight, but this time 50 Euros cheaper than if I would have bought it via intarweb.

Unrelated I got a mail, saying basically, payment details enclosed (subject line: "VB: Attached Image"). It had a PDF attached with an account number and all the international bank crap you need to send money around in europe (a scanned letter (of course printed out by computer first), so it's a big huge image (340kB!!!!!). Normally I would have thought, well, spam, delete it. The PDF made me worried. So I answered the mail, and, yes, it was payment details for a parking ticket I got nearly half a year back in sweden, where I send a complaint letter, that even if I would like to pay, I just can't, because there is nothing on the ticket stating how. (The story: I parked on something I thought being the vistors parking lot of a students residence. It actually was, but you needed a small paper sticking in your car, which you could get somewhere. The people I vistited in the residence did not know that, nobody told them and the sign was written in swedish, which I don't speak and which was also not understood by the people I vistited, although they speak sewdish quite well... So I got a ticket for 40 Euros, without any information how to pay it if you don't live in sweden.)

So, this mail had two dumbnesses canceling each other out: first make a huge attachment for a line of text, which you could have just put into the mail body and second write a mail which looks 120% like spam.

Maybe I just get disconnected and rely on usable technology like pen and paper, talking to people in person or maybe postal service. All the intarweb just does not work and only frustrates me...

Thank god...

... I am not responsible for the christian education of my godson. Thank god he is educated only by civilised people... (although he has a lot of contact to physicists, which makes the statement civilised somewhat vague)

The place to go

The place to go
Originally uploaded by perreira.

If you find out what's interesting about this place, please leave a note on the flickr page... (Micha, Markus, Phil: you are not allowed to guess in this competition ;-) )

Spam Spam lovely Spam

This has some surrealistic poetic note... (found in a v1agra spam)

Jan Zoscha wer beaufsichtigen William Aluminiumverbundfolie das, an Aluminiumverbundfolie Dickschnabelnonne duften wer Daumenlutschen William zum Fernstudium das gefangen fritten Aluminiumverbundfolie gut Daumenlutschen. wer, alles fritten befriedigt nicht wann auf entgleiste William wo bedingt entlassend rein Büroservice er/sie ist/war geschlichen aufgeklappt was Anwendungstechniker.
Charles Vetter ihm Er traut sich was William er/sie ist/war geschlichen wer, rein Blumenkohl Ami was raus die William wann Agrarwissenschaft er Frühsport die Erzielen alles erleben. wer, er eins Aufdrängen wer ich Anisotropie William wo Einspruch erheben gegen gleich Aufzug auf dem letzten Loch pfeifen Co.Compagnie wer geschnuppert.

At least they pretend to be sorry

I used to get terrorised by calls from SKL, a public lottery. About twice a week they tried to sell me stuff, although I already complained that I don't want to be called, although phone advertisment is illegal in germany and although I had put my name and number in their not-to-call-list. I complained again and today I got the following reply:

wie in unserem o.g. Email angekündigt, haben wir bei der Staatlichen Lotterieeinnahme Gregor eine Stellungnahme zu Ihren Ausführungen angefordert. Diese hat daraufhin bei den angegliederten CallCenter eine Stellungnahme aufgefordert. Daraus geht folgender Sachverhalt hervor:

Sie wurden vom CallCenter GCS Leipzig angerufen. Dabei unterlief dem CallCenter-Agenten ein Zahlendreher, so dass er statt der Nummernendung 662 die Ziffern 226 wählte. Das Gespräch dauerte ca. 40 Sek. und endete mit dem Hinweis, dass der gesuchte Teilnehmer verstorben sei.

Sowohl das CallCenter GCS als auch die Staatliche Lotterieeinnahme Gregor bedauern diesen Irrtum sehr und möchten sich sich auf diesem Weg bei Ihnen entschuldigen.

Wir hoffen, wir konnten Ihr Anliegen zu Ihrer Zufriedenheit klären und stehen Ihnen selbstverständlich auch weiterhin gerne zur Verfügung.


OK, so a stupid call center guy mistyped my number while dialing. I imagine the poor chaps in Leipzig, sitting at old bakelite phones with dialing-wheels, or even a plug-board... I also don't really recall to being dead or talking about dead people while I had them on the line, they also did adress me by my name (and I don't think there is somebody in Erlangen with my last name, having a 662 instead of 226 at the end of his number).

Either I accept that they think I am stupid, or I just complain uselessly. I think I'll do the latter...

The hard way...

In case you see me the next days and wonder why my right arm is looking strange: there is a reason why they teach you not to put burnable liquids on a barbecue... I tried and my right lower arm got serious burns (first degree, so cooling and desinfecting it with vodka should be sufficient, at least I hope...)

Ah, and by the way, we won the golden pineapple, the city is blocked with football fans celebrating the 3:1 against portugal.

I'll stop typing now because it hurts like hell...

So, we lost...

...what's the problem? We went further than anyone would have thought, the world cup has been and still is one big party where people from all over the world are in germany and have fun. For a couple of weeks we were a nice and cheerful nation, showing hospitality and being generally nice and cool. Now we lost. In the last minute of a good and equal game. People started frowning again. People shouted at us "How can you have fun now?". We will turn german again...

I think we lost because Xavier Naidoo was singing before the game. He can kill any heroes with his depressive whining about pseudo religious stuff. But it was a nice game anyway, if you understand german, read more here.

And, by the way, the one who tried to cheer most at the beergarden where we watched the game was an englishman.

Philosophical Aspects of Football

"Se pensamos no título? O nosso principal objectivo é ganhar o próximo jogo, pois não podemos pensar em ser campeões se não conseguirmos bater a Inglaterra", afirmou Luís Figo...

Found in Publico Online. Yes, you can't win the final if you loose the quarter final. What a strange coincidence that is...

Shutdown

So, back in HH again for the last try to install our detector. The broken modules have been replaced or repaired, additional shielding has been put everywhere and some stuff, which was put together wrongly will be put together correctly. Today was especially boring, coming in around noon, waiting for a task to do, watching a bit of football, some more waiting, then going home. Tomorrow will be either the same or complete stress.

I think I could have stayed in Erlangen, but from the political point of view I need to be here. I just feel a bit misplaced, got some confuse ideas about how many hours people in physics should work, do work and just wait... This stay here will get me more confused than I want to be. I need a holiday, no, I need to finish and leave as soon as possible.

Best Photo Evva!

English Fan
Originally uploaded by perreira.

This photo just broke the 5000 views barrier...

Most of my pictures have 20 views at most. Even the swedish girl in stockings did not get above 800. I have no clue what makes this one special... Is it somebody famous and I am not aware of it? Victoria Beckham, maybe?

5 days HH again

So, I have to go to HH next week again. As you all now from my various rantings, I work on a detector which is more or less broken, together with colleagues, some of which I don't think that they are, let's say, competent...

We will install the detector next week after some repairs and after some changes (which won't help, because they did not remove the origin of the failures but only will weaken the symptoms, if at all). As it seems, I am one of the very few who actually know how to do things I have to go there.

Just right now I got the schedule. A 6 page PDF, generated by MS Project. And a textfile with a list of manpower associated with the tasks. I got it twice. The sender sent it again, because in the first version he forgot the subject. Opening the PDF, you get a fancy Gantt-Chart, which shows which tasks follows which and how long it does take. Unfortunately nobody in management has any idea what these charts normally are used for and complain that Project does stupid things when they have a person with 500% workload working 24 hours on 5 different tasks in parallel. So they leave out the association of tasks with people and do an extra list in their favourite text-editor, there nothing turns red or changes the timeline...

My tasks (which not only I will do, but also two to three others...) will be: after 6 hours of driving to HH, be at some meetings around lunchtime probably, remove very sensitive equipment around midnight. Then on the next day at 1500 start a 24h shift installing the very sensitive detector again. Third day: around midnight cable everything up on the sensitive inside, cable up the outside, test everything, remove cables again. Fourth day, around 8 am, cable up the outside.

Just to get me right here: I don't complain about working at odd hours (although I will stay at a friend's house, who will be very delighted about this schedule...), I don't complain about working a lot of hours once in a while. What I just want to say is: nobody seems to have taken any care about organising this. It's just the naive way of this follows that. No thinking about if it makes sense to have people doing stuff under pressure, no way of possible error. If something goes wrong, this schedule is gone. There are no buffers, no checkpoints, nothing. I would expect that people who reach management start buying a book about project management and at least get some ideas... But we are physicist. We can do everthing, we don't need to learn...

Endlich mal was los...

Oranges

Today I went to a concert to collect money for restauration of the Erlangen Orangerie. The Orangerie was built sometime in the 18th century, when it got fashionable to grow citrus fruits in places where they don't usually grow... Already in the 19th century it was required for the Erlangen citizens to save the Orangerie, as it should be destroyed to make way for a hospital wing. Today the Orangerie is in a very bad state, especially the roof needs to be replaced urgently. The university, to whom it belongs, has not enough money, so they did some concerts and expositions to collect money. If you want to participate, you'll finde more information (in german) on http://www.rettet-die-orangerie.de/

Morgan Super Sport

Morgan Super Sport
Originally uploaded by stormbear.

I want one of these :-)