christmas time approaching..

and the supposed main characters of the event get in touch via email...??!

Times change

Ammersee in November

What a bliss when after a rather rainy and unpleasant week the sun decides to show itself again on a marvellous Saturday! Even better if there is some company to hit one of the beautiful bavarian lakes for a stroll.. the weather was perfect and warm, the wind had pushed away all the clouds, gifting us with a spectacular view to the Alps, and when walking through the forests, the leaves covering the path made this nice rustling sound...
Fun fact: there were several windsurfers -- in November!!! Honestly, haven't been that torn between disbelief and jealousy for quite a while..

european zen garden

El Choclo

I recently got obsessed with this piece of tango music. To distract myself, I browsed the web and found myself surprised by the different versions that exist of it. Everyone presumably has heard it before, but for whatever reason, the 'pop' - versions seem to be much more known than the ones that have real character, real life in them (some of which, admittedly, one can not listen to whilst working - they are too attention demanding).

To mend this 'problem' and introduce you to the real fun: here are the versions of different styles which I found most remarkable.

Libertad Lamarque - female singer

Guitar version

Orquesta de Francisco Canaro - male singer

Roberto Filpo - milonga version

Hungarian violin version

Enjoy!

autumn mood - again

Come to think of it - possibly autumn might be my favorite season. Don't get me wrong, I also enjoy the other ones.. but I simply love the colors and the light which in autumn are somehow softer than usual. Same thing for the rustling noises of leafs everywhere (and don't forget all these golden ones raining down on you like in a fairy tale) and the sweet taste of the air. I even don't mind when the skies are grey; it just makes the golden and red tones shine even more.

street romance

it wasn't a mysterious stranger who handed me this beauty of a flower. it was waiting for me on the bicycle lane on my way home in the dark of today's rainy night. the fact that I noticed it, turned around, and picked it up makes it even more special to me.

as a character in a novel I'd presumably be about to meet the love of my live, but even in a more sober reality this event gives me a nice 'life is good' - feeling in my stomach ;)

Herbstlich(t)

psychedelic garden

romantic garden

autumn mood

8-bit paris

 totally love http://8bitcity.com/map?Paris#

strange reading

I suppose it is kinda commonplace - nowadays on this big miraculous thing called the Internet (of which most of us are no longer part, but rather connected to - but this is a different story about network politics...) - to read blogs of people one has never met. Still, to me it is news, and I am finding that I would actually like to meet some of them - the ones whose humor is just right and whose language skills stun me with their breathtaking subtleness.

So if anyone has suggestions for brain-trickling reads, feel free to share them with me!

shared responsibility

generally it's nice to think that the responsibility for making many things in life run smoothly is distributed on more than just my shoulders.

big drawback: if you've done your best you're in for a violent shock when someone else turns up to tell you they seriously screwed it up.

distorting reality

Nothing is as suitable to discover one's fears and insecurities than a person who does not show much response to the attempt of interacting with them. Somehow the mind will start to explain away the lacking information (the state of not knowing apparently seems to be unacceptable to the reasoning mechanism), thus producing a rather random image of reality.

It's comparable with a white wall - nothing is there to disturb whatever painting one will draw on it... nothing to give guidance for proportions, nor to put things into a realistic perspective. It's all done free-handedly, based on a potpourri of assumptions and impressions.

And then, compared with paint and brush, how much more powerful is a mind drawing it's conclusions and projecting them unto others in an attempt to explain what is happening? When drawing, painters usually have the reflex to step back and compare the painting with the model - which is not necessarily an instinct when dealing with thoughts?

I can't help wondering where to find the gap between realistic estimation and wild imagination. Any ideas?

répondez-moi...

pour Lise

Introducing my work mates

since people keep asking me about them, I'm introducing my 'work mates' to you. They are currently the major source of my current joy or frustration, causing hope and despair,s and look like this:

 This specimen is a msb430 sensor mote, aka Scatterweb mote. I'm programming fancy C on this little device (it's marginally smaller than on the pic, with a muuch longer antenna ;) which stars the unbelievable amount of 55KB flash memory and 5KB of RAM!
Their tinyness is misleading: these devices are not harmless at all (especially the pins can be really mean when assembling and disassembling the thing), and they are said to be especially tricky when they turn up in groups (which happened in my case...) and try to communicate with each other. They seem pretty human at that point - shouting over other mote's words, not understanding anymore because there are too many motes speaking at once, not listening, repeating what others said etc... and it's my job to teach them how to communicate in the right way.

La Boum

Tribute to my office mates

dedicated to you, and the poor guy who unfortunately could not join us this evening despite our friendly and repeated invitations ;)

thoughts about truth and choices

There are some phrases I came across recently, which keep running through my mind:

"Truth is a daughter of time."
I found this one in an article about corruption in Austria, especially linked to the famous politician Jörg Haider, whom many used to venerate in a saint-like fashion. Now, years after his suicide, people slowly start to look at irregularities they used to brush over, and demystification and criticism slowly start to shape a more realistic image of what has happened. The quoted sentence stresses the fact that often, after the end of an aera, it takes a lot (maybe a generation even) of time for people to let go of sentimental and glorifying pictures, and to face reality.
Why do I think this phrase is remarkable? I find it fascinating, cause it brings a fact to the point about relationships on many levels (personal, couple, family, society): that it takes time, patience and courage, to find truth under the delusions one has build up about something or someone.

"Sometimes it is harder to be kind than clever."
This phrase is from a TED-Talk by Jeff Bezos, the founder of amazon, given at a Princeton graduation ceremony. He uses it as basis to elaborate his statement that decisions in life matter more than the talents one has been given: Cleverness is something one has or not, it is given, so one cannot take credit for it. Kindness, on the other hand, is a decision put into practice, so it tells about the character of a person and shapes their personality.
The reason this statement keeps stunning me? It is the fact that often I am surrounded by very smart people, and could observe that some of them won't miss a chance to stress their superiority over others on the grounds of general cleverness. As far as I'm aware, they do so not neccessarily because they are arrogant snobs, but because they are so used to competing on that level (in the end, school teaches us so..) that they might not even notice how inappropriate this is on certain occasions (especially, if this superiority is already clearly established). I have the feeling that quite some marvellous, admirable, genius people could benefit a lot from accepting the challenge of practising kindness in their conduct.

Blueprint

How to become Parisian in one hour

I DID laugh a lot in this show tonight, and the best thing is: I'm now officially Parisien - so tourists, watch out!!! ;)

Because I'm such a nice person (ehehe), I'll share some of my newly acquired knowledge with you. Summarizing, the basic recipe for achieving parisien-ness seems to be: strip off all your carefully groomed good manners and let the world know it bothers you... I mean, it's just being honest!!
Turns out to be surprisingly hard, even for the supposedly oh-so-rude Germans among us ;) Maybe this sounds a bit simple (it might even be), but then, Parisian habits contrasted with famous American stereotypes, presented by a capable mime really gives an unbelievably funny cocktail, highly appreciated by a very international audience as well as the locals.

self-torture made easy

New communication media provide an entirely new means to torture oneself. What - generations ago - was the daily wait for the postman (limited, cause he passed once a day, at a fixed hour), now is the frantic 30s click on either the mailclient's or social network's refresh button - with the advantage of them being available 24/7.

I'll attempt to summarize the problem as follows: we all like to share things that we consider interesting or important. If they are personal details about our own life, of course they are very relevant to us (and, we might conclude from our limited poit of view, also to aaaaall our 'friends' on whatever lists they might be). Of course, they are all just waiting to share their viewpoints on these matters!

Now the great delusion hits: the number of people interested in our little personal stories is inversely proportional to the number of details we share. In other terms: hardly ANYONE out there is going to be interested in ALL the things we want to share with them. And to make it worse: the few that are might not even be the people we WANT to be interested in our lives (like stalkers, ex-partners, secret admirors, employers, parents-in-law, etc).

Ensuring the desired dose of misery, one might end up being bothered by the good advices of people one finds annoying, and observing the people one cares for displaying a lot of interest in the lives of - OTHERS!


Have a nice evening!


Ps: Why did I write this? Is it not contradictory in itself? I don't think so, cause the reason is: Just for fun, and for the few who might actually enjoy reading it... if you are, I wrote it for entertaining YOU ;)

Pps: Thanks to the people who inspired me - there are only very very few, but they are real!

Internet Amnesia

A very common illness severely impacting productivity when fulfilling tasks based on services available on the Internet.

Symptoms:
The patient chronically starts up the computer and opens a browser window to accomplish a certain task. By doing so, they get flooded by an unmanageable amount of stimulating information, causing them to completely forget their original aim. This behaviour is especially to be observed in the presence of tabbed browsing habits combined with session restore settings. Internet Amnesia can be very brief, leaving the patient capable to finish their tasks. However, in extreme cases, it is of longer duration and inflicting a trance-like state on the patient. This trance can be observed to last at least until the computer has been shut down. In some instances, the patient then suddenly becomes conscious of their aim again.

Consequences:
A huge loss in productivity, electricity, and an increase in absentmindedness have been observed.

Le Bain de Soleil

Top-down-approach

I've been wanting to post this for ages, but then I did choose not to. Why? Maybe at first the reason is not entirely obvious - some random stairs in some random forest - why should or shouldn't one bother to publish the pictures? Well, the it is kinda straightforward (once known) and a little bit egoistic:

I did not want to scare off my visitors!

Because what you see on these pictures is the only way to get from my room to the train and vice versa, whenever there is no bus (which is on weekdays after 9pm, on sundays, holidays, or when there is yet another strike)...which makes it a close to daily (or nightly, for that matter) experience for people living or working on the campus.

So chances are that one is taking these wonderful stairs at least once when coming to visit (and, no, I was not joking, nor encouraging eco-tourism when I asked if you had a big rucksack ;).

Funnily enough, no-one really bothers informing you about this 'fact' when you prepare your stay at the university, so the first ascension is literally a lot of 'fun', especially if you bring a lot of luggage.. I have seen quite a few people dragging huge suitcases up and down, so the way is lined with the odd cracked stair, or some suitcase handles.

I suppose, so far I do not sound too positive about the whole thing.. but I'd like to stress that - given enough time till the next train departure, and maybe no rain - I quite like the walk DOWN there (on which I had enough breath to hold the camera and take non-shaky pictures..) as there are a lot of birds singing, one can meet echses and hedgehogs, and the wind blowing through the trees is really pleasantly refreshing. So in fact, I appreciate the peacefulness of this walk and prefer it a lot over the bus!

The only part which I don't like is this last bit, and if you look closely, you can see that there are no stairs.. just gaps in the concrete. At first one would think ' how pleasant', but with casual shoes things can get tricky: the whole thing is quite steep and extremely slippery even without rain.. (and maybe you see the 'solution' to the problem on the right side of the pic: they added a handrail!!!) apart from that, the irregularity of the steps and gaps really need some practice and a good eye.
So equipment in this case matters - especially if you have less than 10 minutes to catch your train...

The yearly plant picture

this time from france,
dedicated to martins ;)

Tourist Weekend

This saturday I finally managed to do one thing being on my list for ages: visiting the famous (and freshly renewed!!) castle of Versailles. On arriving, I was instantly impressed by the size of the castle, but what really amazed me was the fact that on the tourist map I could hardly find it, as its garden is ginormous in comparison. If you don't know what I mean, check it out on google maps!
For entering the castle there is of course a very long queue, which takes up to hours to finish. To save yourself all that time, here is the thing to do: check in your wallet (or wherever you keep it) if you don't aready have a free ticket in the form of your ID card - proving that you're a European citizen and under 26! If yes, you can directly enter the castle (yes, without a ticket)!

Der Rote Punkt

The evil question

deployment of the permasense project 

Whenever I tell people about my internship, at first they seem very impressed (wireless sensor network business - uuh, what a topic) and then very sceptical (but is it of ANY use?). Whilst browsing for catchy applications for writing my introduction, I came across one which DEFINITELY will save the world, because it helps to find out about global warming! (I also found a project about volcano monitoring... very trendy these days..) So, yes, there is a use for sensor networks, and if you're curious to look at the project, you can find it here (they even provide real life data from the network... ^^).

palaiseau plage

definitely the most spectacular dining venue on campus - i adore this place, it's magical!

feel the light.

un éclair de joie dans un lieu autrement desért..
pour victor

Les Valseuses

Some days ago I got introduced to some crazy and wonderful jazz recording: Tribute to Stéphane Grapelli, by Didier Lockwood & Biréli Lagrène (violin & guitar).
One of the tunes, Les Valseuses, was composed as soundtrack for the equally named film, which I watched last night. I guess it was the first time I watched that kind of movie (it's from 1974, features an unbelievably young Gerard Depardieu, and provided my initiation to French rude language) and I still don't really know what to think of it - for the moment I'm in a state of shock, laughter, and disbelief.
But the worst thing is that for nothing in the world I can get that genious tune out of my head!! So it merrily keeps jamming along in my ear.. "tada-daa-tada-da-da-ta-da-daaa.." but listen yourself!

hello world

it's been some time since I last had a browse through all my friendly blogs.. on one of them I found an article that I want to share with you: it is called Joker and probably everyone travelling around will recognize themselves in it (at least a little bit). I'd love to share with you all the thoughts it's stirring up in my mind - but I have no words for them.

love paris by night

ain't it pretty?

Napoleon and Lisa

Finally, after some months in Paris, I made it to the Louvre!! I'm obviously very proud of myself, culturally aware and so on... (well, to be honest, the weather was awkward, which kinda influenced my planning ;)

As it was my first visit, I originally intended to do it 'the right way' - entering the museum by it's famous pyramide (which was build in 1989 - I was surprised it is actually that old!). But, as on bad weather obviously all the tourists were looking for shelter, there was a huge queue.. forcing me to redefine the 'proper' way of getting in: Getting in without a queue...

It turned out that the side entrance is really good for that! There was one person in front of me, so I got my (free!) ticket in under 3 mins. And no queue for entering the museum either!

In the side wing, I found an amazing collection of original art - traditional art of all kinds of tribes. As there weren't may people visiting it, I decided to give it a look and even got a private guided tour of some of the artworks. Of course afterwards I had to go to the gallery of italian paintings... and this was definitely where my visit became anything but peaceful contemplation of art.

Tourists are literally flooding the corridors, the flashlights of their cameras giving the impression of being in a club, and the noise level getting there too... all leading you to the probably most famous item of Louvre's collection: the Monna Lisa. I had a quick look, as I couldn't be bothered to queue for ages just to get in front of her.

Instead, I dedicated more of my attention to the other amazing pictures hanging on the walls next to Lisa. To her right, I made a funny discovery: there is a portrait of a very elegant lady (presumably an venetian courtisan) which is displayed looking bored out of her mind as no-one is paying her any attention. And, in fact, everyone but me was turning their back to the painting :D

The together of all these impressions later triggered the creations of this collage, called 'Lonely Napoleon' or 'Napoleon and Lisa'...

Informationserhaltendes Aufräumen

Die Assoziationen die mit dem Wort 'aufräumen' einhergehen beschäftigen sich meist mit dem Zurücklegen von Dingen an ihren Ort, so dass sie gleichsam 'von der Oberfläche verschwinden'. Implizit findet in diesem Fall ein enormer Informationsverlust statt, da die Spuren stattgefundener Vorgänge entfernt werden. Oft ist dieses Vorgehen gekoppelt an die Sorge Außenstehenden nicht zu viel über das persönliche Innenleben zu verraten, gleichsam um eine gewisse (respektvolle) Distanz zu wahren.

Beobachtung hat jedoch zu Tage gefördert, dass diese Assoziationen viel zu eng gefasst sind: Aufräumen kann nämlich durch geschicktes Drapieren der Objekte zu einem Mittel werden, mit dem Informationen nicht verschwinden sondern präzisiert und möglicherweise auch manipuliert werden.

Mangels kreativer Einfälle nenne ich dieses Verhalten:

Kommunikation durch informationserhaltendes Aufräumen

Bewertung:
Generell ein geniales Manöver da es die Schaffung eines höchst plastischen Gesamteindrucks ermöglicht ohne Besucher durch explizite Unordentlichkeit zu abzustoßen. Der Eindruck kann durch wenige gezielte Anmerkungen enorm in Szene gesetzt werden oder ohne diese den Betrachtenden in erhebliche Verwirrung stürzen.

Verstörend ist für den Betrachter die unbeantwortete Frage ob derart intime, unfreiwillige Einblicke in das Leben des Gastgebers ein Versehen oder tatsächlich von diesem beabsichtigt sind. In der Konsequenz gerät der Betrachtende unter Zugzwang: er muss sich entscheiden zwischen explizitem Ignorieren oder Artikulieren seiner subjektiven Wahrnehmung. Jedoch begiebt er sich auf Grund der unklaren Situation mit beiden Alternativen auf dünnes Eis.

Abschließend wird festgestellt, dass das Konzept für den Sender der Informationen viele Vorteile bietet - er kann den arglosen Empfänger in jede beliebige Richtung manövrieren. Beispielsweise kann jede Bemerkung des Empfängers der Subjektivität (und damit Fehlerhaftigkeit) seiner Wahrnehmung zugeschrieben werden. Zur effektiven Klärung von Sachverhalten ist das Verfahren allerdings nicht immer geeignet und wirkt durch seine Subtilität unaufrichtig. Dadurch stellt es gleichsam die verbal-kommunikative Sozialkompetenz als auch die Absichten des Senders in Frage.

Paris

Now it's set - I will write my thesis in Paris :)

the occasional bug report...