Category Archives: Personal

Nine years

Six days ago, this weblog turned nine years old. I briefly thought of it, but the last two weeks have been very busy at school (lots of end-of-term stuff), so I didn’t get around to posting. Now I’ve been reminded of the anniversary by Jörg of Schockwellenreiter fame who always remembers these things. Danke!

Nine years ago I was a student, living in Bonn and apparently having a lot of free time to write (almost) daily postings. I started a weblog just to try out the software my then-boyfriend worked on. I had no idea that I would keep this up for such a long time.

Well, I’ve moved twice in the real world and once online since I started this weblog, I’m now a teacher with a lot less free time to write (almost) monthly postings. Yet some of you still visit my weblog or read my RSS feed – and have been doing so for nine years. Thanks!

This weblog has allowed me to talk to people living around the world via comments or e-mail and to meet friends who live several thousands of miles from here on another continent, namely Garret and Sandra, and Hal and his wife and son. I still remember this occasion very fondly and would do it again in a heartbeat. Thanks very much, you really helped making this day unforgettable!

Change.

Fortunately, here in Germany we are six hours ahead of Washington, so I was able to watch the inauguration live online. By the way, it’s really amusing to hear the BBC’s reporter ask a couple their names and then say “pleased to meet you!” So very British. ;-)

I have to say that I was really moved. I felt like I have witnessed history in the making, live. This might be one of those moments that you later talk about, starting with “I remember exactly where I was when…”

I’ve felt that way once before, and that was on November 9th, 1989. I was fourteen years old. When I came home in the evening, I heard on TV that the GDR government had opened the borders. It was hard to believe what I saw on TV that night and the following days. Even weeks before noone would have thought that to be possible, and yet it happened.

I bet that a lot of people in the US also believed that it would be a very long time before a non-white president would be elected, and yet it happened last November.

Edited to add:

Take a look at The Big Picture – 48 photos of the inauguration and of people around the world watching it.

Frohe Weihnachten!

As usual André and I are spending the holidays with family and friends, so I won’t have much time for blogging until the new year.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! See you in 2009!

Stacks!

I think Apple invented stacks (which really are just folders that reside in the dock) just for me. No more dropping files willy-nilly on the desktop: Downloads automagically appear in one stack, and I created several other stacks for all my stuff. Now the desktop always looks tidy.

Stacks are a new feature of Leopard. I’m really happy I finally upgraded the system from Mac OS 10.3.9 to 10.5. And by the way, I upgraded the hardware, too. I won’t even call it an early Christmas present to myself because my old iBook was over four years old and there were a few things I could no longer live with in order to be able to work effectively, so I found a good new home for the iBook and bought a MacBook. :-)

Funny, but it’s still rock ‘n roll to me

A couple of weeks ago I had to get an MRI scan of my head because of my frequent headaches. I wasn’t so much worried about the results as curious about the procedure because I’ve studied MRI and other medical imaging technology at university in theory and was interested in seeing an MRI scanner in real life. As it turns out, I was right, and everything is perfectly fine inside my head (I can now prove that I’ve got a brain!), and the scan was an interesting experience.

I was told beforehand that it was going to be very, very loud inside the scanner, so I was prepared for it to be very, very loud. Fortunately, I was given ear muffs, and the noise wasn’t really that bad. I had heard it being described as loud knocking or banging sounds, but found that it didn’t sound like knocking at all. It rather sounded like an electronic beat or an electronic bass guitar and reminded me of the beginning of this song by Bily Joel, which is among my favourites since I played it in our highschool Big Band. (In that version, I actually played the bass part on the piano, so I know it very well.)

All of this is just a long-winded introduction to this link: What does an MRI scanner sound like? which I found over at LaLaGirl today. You can listen to MRI sounds there without actually having to go into a scanner. Just imagine the sounds to be quite a bit louder and all around you.

P.S.: I had tickets to a Billy Joel and Elton John concert when they did their “Face 2 Face” tour in Germany. Unfortunately, Billy Joel had an inflammation of the vocal chords and was unable to perform, so Elton did the show all by himself. Since then I’ve been hoping that they will be doing another concert together somewhere in Germany. I hear there’s another tour scheduled for 2009, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

P.P.S.: auf Deutsch gibt es natürlich auch eine Seite bei Wikipedia zur Magnetresonanztomographie bzw. Kernspintomographie: MRT.