Photos

Take a look at Garret‘s latest photo gallery. The pictures are just beautiful! Whenever I see photos like that, I get the urge to take my camera outside and go hunt for pictures like that, but it seems I just don’t see motives like those. Anf of course the photo I posted today looks pretty boring compared to the ones Garret or Susan take.

By the way, sorry for the poor quality of today’s photo. One of these days I’m going to sort through my 500+ slides from Kenya and have a PhotoCD made. Hopefully, the photos will look better then.

Happy day

Good morning! I have decided that today is going to be a good day. Not crappy like yesterday. Oops, I just realized that I wrote yesterday’ s rant in German, so you don’t know what I’m talking about here. Because of some complicated reason I wasn’t able to work on my thesis yesterday, so it was basically a wasted day.

But today is different. The weather isn’t as wonderful as it was yesterday, but I don’t care. I’m going to spend the day at the computer, working on my thesis. Later, André is going to make some lasagna! And I won’t let anything destroy my good mood and keep me from working today.

Have a nice day, everyone!

Manda Island, Kenya, September 28, 1995

Community

Hey, look at Raphael Nicolaj! What a cutie!

Crappy Day

Was für ein sch… öner Tag. Heute hatte ich eigentlich vor, jede Menge für meine Examensarbeit zu tun. Die To-Do-Liste ist lang… doch der Briefträger machte mir einen Strich durch die Rechnung. Ich habe den halben Tag verschwendet und bin seitdem so geladen, daß ich erst recht nicht mehr konzentriert arbeiten kann.

Ich werde die ganze Geschichte hier nicht erzählen, aber soviel ist sicher: Am Montag stehe ich um acht beim Einwohnermeldeamt auf der Matte und frage, was die für Daten über mich gespeichert haben. Und ob man die Herausgabe seiner Daten wirklich nur verhindern kann, wenn zu befürchten steht, daß Leute danach fragen, die einem an den Kragen wollen.

Dafür ist das Wetter heute super gewesen! Seit gestern habe ich nicht das kleinste Wölkchen am Himmel gesehen. Die Sonne strahlte den ganzen Tag, und die Temperatur lag angeblich bei 12°C.

Und jetzt werde ich mir was einfallen lassen, wie ich den Abend möglichst schön und unanstrengend hinter mich bringen kann.

Speaking of the weather…

Sheila has snow photos! It started yesterday and seems to have continued snowing through the night. Brent says she has off from work. Enjoy the day, Sheila!

Google

Sagt mal, werdet ihr seit heute auch alle von Google.com automatisch zu Google.de weitergeleitet? Da ich keine Cookies akzeptiere und als Sprache Englisch im Browser eingestellt habe, vermute ich, daß sie die IP-Adresse nachsehen und die Besucher danach sortieren.

Ich finde die ‘Auf gut Glück’-Aufschrift auf dem Button ziemlich albern. ‘I feel lucky’ gefällt mir wesentlich besser…

Update: Scott hat eine Erklärung.

Thanks, Scott!

Mehr aus der Weblog-Community

“Aber ich schweife ab (dieser eine Satz ist die inoffizielle Zusammenfassung dieses Weblogs :-)) “

Na, Sean, heute zuviel Laberwasser getrunken?

Es stimmt also doch…

Na klasse, die Telekom beendet die Flatrate für ISDN. Dann sollen sie sich mit den DSL-Anschlüssen mal beeilen!

Heise Newsticker: T-Online streicht die ISDN- und Analog-Flatrate

Link via Bastian.

Weblog Community

Although I’m almost sure she doesn’t read my weblog: Happy Birthday, Zannah!

And Hal‘s mother turns 70 today. Happy Birthday, too!

As promised (or should I say, threatened? ), Al has redesigned! I like the new look! And the page loads damn fast, too.

Computers

The conversation with Max Smith has reminded me of the first computer I ever used. Back in 1988, I took a computer course at school in which we wrote little programs in Basic on Apple computers. The computers were almost sqare boxes, a few centimetres thick, that had the keyboard built into them. They had a 5.25″ floppy disk drive, but no hard disk. And we used black-and-green monochrome monitors with them. All the cool kids knew that you could use both sides of a floppy disk if you cut a suitable little square from the right edge of the disk.

Cool, I found the computer at Apple History! The model was called Apple IIc, but I can’t remember them having a mouse.

The computer I now have is a Mac Quadra 800, which cost $4,700 in 1993. But I mostly use André’s PowerBook because the Quadra is a little slow…

Internal

Yesterday’s traffic in the discussion group has finally convinced me to change the discussion group from chronological to topic view.

Na, Sean, wie findest Du das?

Valentine’s Day

For lots of Valentine’s Day-related links, go to Booknotes!

Gosh, it sure seems to be a big day over in the US. Here in Germany, it’s not such a huge affair. Shops selling either flowers, chocolate, or perfume try to get people to buy Valentine’s gifts, but that’s about it.

Susan caught Valentine’s day’s sunrise – two days of great photos in a row!

Blog you, die letzte

Read a few thoughts on Blog you on Duncan’s Jotter and at Papa Scott, who is arraning his patio furniture the way he likes.

And the best, of course, is this one: Al Critiques Blog You*3! Al’s review gets 10 out of 10 points from me!

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

While I lay in bed and slept soundly, things were pretty busy in my discussion group. I wonder why weblogging tends to happen in ‘waves’. Sometimes, there’s not a useful link or interesting topic around for a week on end, and you just flip the page to let people know you’re still alive, and then everything happens at once. Just look at the entries from yesterday and the day before, and look at the discussion group. I just changed the preferences so all the messages fit on the page… whew!

I guess you don’t need a critic to tell you if your blog is any good if you’ve got so many nice people post and discuss! Thank you!

I’m back from the University. Today was likely my very last Vorlesung ever. Now I have to get some work done. Let’s hope there’s not so much interesting stuff around to post today. Sonst muß ich ja bald befürchten, daß Jörg sich beschwert, weil ich ihm den ‘Mr. Output’ streitig mache…

On a serious note…

Craig has some links and facts about the death penalty today. It’s also being discussed in this MetaFilter thread.

Even more Blog You

They have now reviewed The Curmudgeon (John), dangerous meta (Garret), Blivet (Hal), Duncan’s Jotter (Duncan) and I really must insist you leave (PattiAnn) as well. (And none of the anchor links seem to work… sigh!)

Heh, they didn’t even realize that Duncan uses Conversant to maintain his blog. To them, anything that looks similar to some Manila blogs, is a Manila blog.

All in all, it seems to me that Tom puts much more work into his reviews than Ed. He can spell better than Ed, seems to be able to click his way around one site more easily, and tends to give a higher rating.

For additional comments, check out the discussion group (for today and tomorrow).

Wie die Zeit vergeht…

Fühlen Sie sich alt? Da kann ich nur sagen: Ja! Ich kenne noch Raider und Treets, und Eis gab’s früher für 50 Pf die Kugel. Allerdings muß ich zugeben, daß ich mich kaum an die Zeit vor Kanzler Kohl und Papst Johannes Paul II erinnern kann… also ist’s vielleicht doch nicht sooo schlimm.

Link via Bastian.

Academy Awards Nominations

Besides Tiger & Dragon, I’ve seen three of the films that have been nominated: Julia Roberts, nominated as best leading actress in ‘Erin Brockovich’, which has also been nominated for directing, best picture and writing (original); ‘Oh Brother, where Art Thou’, nominated for cinematograpy and writing (adapted); and ‘Space Cowboys’, nominated for sound editing.

Kino

André and I went to the cinema tonight and watched Wo hu zang long, better known as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or just Tiger & Dragon in German(y).

We really enjoyed the film. The story is excellent, the fighting scenes are breathtaking, and the old Chinese clothes and buildings are interesting. We just kept wondering whether large parts of the landscape shootings were done in Death Valley…

I especially liked the scenes in which the main characters seem to run up walls, fly over roofs and through forests, or walk on water. Those reminded me of dreams I had in which I could fly or walk on water. The feeling was just right!

And by the way, Tiger & Dragon has been nominated for the Oscar in ten categories: art direction, cinematography, costume design, directing, film editing, foreign language film, music (score), music (song), best picture, and writing (adapted).

Across Antarctica

Have you been following the Bancroft Arnesen Expedition? Well, the two women made it across the whole continent. They are now on the Ross ice shelf and have only some 800 km left, I think. Read their latest updates here or look at a map of Antarctica to see where they are.

Community News

Hey, Garret started an image gallery!

It seems everyone is going ego-surfing for his/her first name: Duncan, John, aka The Curmudgeon, Al… Anyone else?

Flatrate?

Heise Newsticker: Flatrate von T-Online möglicherweise vor dem Aus. Was? Möglicherweise wird die Flatrate für ISDN eingstellt, die für DSL aber nicht.

Klasse. Wenn’s nach André und mir ginge, hätten wir längst DSL statt der ISDN-Flatrate, aber die Telekomiker kommen mit der Technik nicht nach. Das wird ja immer schöner, wenn der Benutzer jetzt teuer bezahlen soll, daß die Telekom mit DSL-Anschlüssen nicht nachkommen!

Link via Bastian.

Blog you

This morning I received an email from Edward Champion, informing me that my weblog has been reviewed at Blog you. You can find it at http://www.edrants.com/_blogyou/a.html#andrea, but the anchor doesn’t seem to work, so you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom of the page. And they got the name wrong and write about “Andrea’s World”.

Update: They corrected the name. Thanks!

The best part? Tom writes: “Andrea is bilingual […] I’m barely lingual.”

Other than that, there’s not much to say about the review, we have talked about this a couple of days ago.

However, I have a few things to say about their design. They criticize the “drastic limitations of Manila”, but don’t really seem to know a thing about Manila. I don’t know whether they use any software to build their pages, but something seems to keep their anchor links from working, for example on the index page of Blog You. And on that page, the whole text is a link to the page itself. Does that make sense?

And have you noted that many headlines appear at the end of the last line of the previous paragraph, for example here?