Monthly Archives: February 2002

Thursday, 28 February 2002

Spy Game

Yesterday we saw Spy Game in a sneak preview. For a major Hollywood movie it was actually really good. Very well acted and never boring although it runs about 2 hours. The story is told extremely well. I can definitely recommend it.

What I wanted to talk about in this post is something different though. Part of the movie plays in Germany and it’s so funny to hear those “Germans” speak German. I can’t believe it is so hard to find a couple of German actors in Hollywood for a short speaking role. Only one or two of the actors who played Germans actually were Germans. The others spoke German but it was very clear that that was not their native tongue. I bet it’s like that with all non-English languages in Hollywood movies. Only I don’t notice it then because I don’t know that language. I wonder if it sounds like proper German to Americans…

And another thing I notice was that when Brad Pitt and Robert Radford talk German (which they do a couple of times) it’s not very convincing either. They don’t have an American accent. They have some sort of accent but it doesn’t sound like Americans talking German. It’s kinda hard to explain but it just didn’t sound right. Or maybe it was because of the strange sentences they said ;)

This doesn’t make the movie worse or anything. It’s just something I noticed…

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 23:06 CET  |  [Comments Link]  0 comments

New Money

It’s been two months now that we have had the Euro and I still get brand new bills every time I get money at an ATM. I love that. They are so …crisp :) I’m surprised that they still have totally unused bills lying around somewhere. But I hope it stays that way for a while.

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 11:27 CET  |  [Comments Link]  3 comments

Wednesday, 27 February 2002

April Weather

We’re having the strangest weather currently. One moment we’re having the fiercest thunderstorm, the sky being almost black only lit by flashes and only minutes later there’s not one cloud in the sky and the sun is shining nicely through the windows. I love watching thunderstorms (when I’m inside that is). That reminds me of the photos I took of a thunderstorm last year. I think I’ll scan some of those and put them up here…

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 16:23 CET  |  [Comments Link]  0 comments

Tuesday, 26 February 2002

Moody

Note to self: Do not play Wipeout Fusion if you’re already in a bad mood.

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 22:48 CET  |  [Comments Link]  0 comments

Mouse Hunt

People who like mice should probably not click this link. It’s the diary of a guy on mouse hunt in his home. He uses some very unconventional methods…

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 22:14 CET  |  [Comments Link]  1 comments

Monday, 25 February 2002

Videos

I got another surprise for you. I had totally forgotten about the videos I shot of blinkenlights. It’s just very short avi’s. But I thought you might want to see the whole thing in action. You don’t see much of the surrounding area. It was just too dark. But you can see blinkenlights very good and that’s all that matters here anyhow. So here they are:

:: Play 118k
:: Spiral 118k
:: Pong 80k

Tell me if you have trouble viewing them.

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 22:58 CET  |  [Comments Link]  2 comments

The olympics

Now that I’m not pissed anymore I can share my joy about Canada’s win of the Ice Hockey final yesterday. Usually I’m not too much into watching sports. I only watch the big events like olympics, soccer world cups, the Super Bowl,…

I love it when the underdogs win. They even won on “enemy soil” ;) And what a game it was. I couldn’t sit still because it was so exciting.

Uhm. Well. I’m going now okay? Don’t be mad at me for rooting for the Canadians. ducks under table

peeks out form under table Is it safe to come out again yet? Cause I just remembered something else I wanted to say about the Olympics:

Germany won the most medals!! W00t!

Sorry. Little patriotic fit. Happens to me once every couple years…

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 17:35 CET  |  [Comments Link]  0 comments

I'm pissed

I wanted to work on my site some more this weekend but didn’t get around to it Saturday. Today (well yesterday now) I didn’t do much at all. I don’t know what I did all day long. Nothing much it seems cause I have this feeling which I really hate, the feeling of not having done anything. I feel so frustrated. On one hand I really needed to relax after those past two weeks of exams. On the other hand I feel so empty because I haven’t done anything even remotely usefull (well I took pics of Blinkenlights yesterday. That was cool. But apart from that…). I hate it when I look back at a weekend and I cannot remember what I did all this time. And then I finally wanted to at least work a bit on the site when Homesite started bitching around.

Well everything works again now. But I’m just totally pissed. I’ll go play some Playstation now and then go to bed. It’s about time anyway. Sorry I couldn’t surprise you with a finished ‘Me’ section this weekend. I intend to do it during the following week. So please bear with me….

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 00:46 CET  |  [Comments Link]  2 comments

Sunday, 24 February 2002

Blinkenlights gallery and a few pics

I took some pictures of Blinkenlights on its last day of existence and made a new gallery for it. Read about it in my blog here and here. I also added new pics to Miscellaneous gallery. Two of me One, Two and one of a light leading people to a party. And finally I’ve added a new picture of Berlin’s quite famous broadcast tower on Alexanderplatz to my Berlin gallery.

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 04:20 CET  |  [Comments Link]  0 comments

Blinkenlights

Michi and me couldn’t stand just sitting here all evening knowing this would be the last night of Blinkenlights’ existence. So we snatched my camera and tripod and went off to have another look at it and take some pictures. I also wanted to play pong (via cell phone. You call a number, thereby donating your connection fee to Chaos Computer Club, and then play pong against the computer or another caller). But it didn’t work. Maybe they have already turned off the pong feature. First we went to the nearby Burger King to have dinner. I took some pics (this and that) of my reflection in distortion mirrors.

Then we picked a good spot to take pictures of Blinkenlights from and stood there in the cold freezing our fingers off (can you believe that we actually had 16.5°C at the beginning of February?) for quite some time experimenting with the right exposure time and waiting for cool animations. I think I got a few good ones. The bye bye blinkenlights party was right next to blinkenlights building and there were tons of people waiting outside to get in. I wouldn’t have thought that a hacker party would attract that many people. Two guys asked us where the party was at the exact same moment Blinkenlights displayed a message about the party and a huge arrow pointing right to it. I think they must’ve felt pretty dumb ;)

I’m really glad we went to look at it again. I’ll miss it. It always made my day a little brighter when I saw it. Well at least I have my own little Blinkenlights shrine to remember it :)

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 04:13 CET  |  [Comments Link]  0 comments

Saturday, 23 February 2002

Bye Bye Blinkenlights

Blinkenlights will be shut off tomorrow morning around dawn. Blinkenlights is the world’s biggest interactive computer display. The Chaos Computer Club, a hacker club, has transformed the upper eight floors of a currently unused building into an 18×8 (giant-)pixel screen. You could play pong with your cell phone or send love letters or make your own little movies and have them displayed there. Might be a geek thing but I think this is so cool. Unfortunately I have never managed to play pong there. Nor have I managed to make my own blinkenlights animation. Just didn’t get around to it. I read in the paper that there is a chance for it to come back though once they have repaired the building. I hope it does…

Bye Bye Blinkenlights!

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 22:15 CET  |  [Comments Link]  0 comments

Friday, 22 February 2002

New gallery again

Added another new gallery this afternoon. It’s about snow.

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 22:36 CET  |  [Comments Link]  0 comments

Gone

Snow is almost gone again. Around 3pm it had apparently gotten so warm that it started to melt. There’s nothing ickier than half melted snow. I hate it. Well at least I had half a day of snow even if I couldn’t really enjoy it. Acutally I’m currently looking forward to warmer weather anyhow. At the beginning of February we had a couple of days that were warm enough to be able to leave the house without a jacket. That was so cool. Made me want Spring now!

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 22:33 CET  |  [Comments Link]  0 comments

Snow!!!

This morning when I woke up I couldn’t believe what I saw. There was a snow storm raging outside. On the radio they kept reporting accidents involving multiple vehicles and traffic jams. You don’t want to be out in your car in such a weather in Berlin cause most Berliners don’t have winter tires on their cars (most of winter they don’t need them because it doesn’t snow often and Berlin is rather flat). So everybody keeps sliding around and there are a lot of accidents. I looked out of another window from which I could see the street and they hadn’t managed to free the street from snow yet. So Michi and me decided to stay at home and do our work here. It’s hard enough to predict the arrival time of the bus in nice weather but today we knew it would be impossible. I didn’t want to go by car either (although we have winter tires) because of the aforementioned problem with everybody else driving around on summer tires.

So here I am in my warm and cozy room. I took a few pictures and made a new gallery so you can have a look at some snow pictures.

Okay, gotta do some work now.

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 15:22 CET  |  [Comments Link]  2 comments

Thursday, 21 February 2002

Paranoia

I think writing a thesis on computer security issues is not good for me. The more stuff I read about it the more paranoid I get…

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 17:39 CET  |  [Comments Link]  1 comments

Wednesday, 20 February 2002

New pics added to fireworks gallery

Added scans of my paper pics to the Fireworks gallery.

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 23:53 CET  |  [Comments Link]  2 comments

Scan complete!

Okay people. I scanned pictures all evening and now the rest of the fireworks pics is up. All of those I shot with my film camera. Some of them might have done better with a shorter exposure cause there’s really a lot of stuff on there. I’ll have to practise taking pics of fireworks some more. but for a first try it wasn’t bad I think.

I had originally planned to work on my site some more today. But I’m just too exhausted to do it now. Work totally sucked today for some reason. After all those exams and no real weekends because of having to learn all the time I desperately need a real weekend again where I can sleep as long as I wish. Too bad the olympics will be over so soon. Now that I would have more time to watch. I even missed the Men’s Trick Ski finals on Tuesday which I really wanted to watch. Oh well. Now Icehockey is on though. Germany vs. USA. Wouldn’t it be cool if the Germans kicked their butts? :)

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 23:52 CET  |  [Comments Link]  2 comments

Tuesday, 19 February 2002

Vanilla Sky

We saw Vanilla Sky today.

[TANGENT]
Wouldn’t that be a perfect name for a band? Too bad everybody connects it with the movie now (rather than the painting).
[/TANGENT]

Where was I? Ah yes. The movie’s really not bad. And Penélope Cruz is just adorable. It did remind me a bit of Total Recall in the end but only a bit. There are moments in the movie that make you think of David Lynch movies more than anything else.

But what I really want to know is this: Have any of my American visitors seen the movie? If so, were you able to see Cruz’ boobs in that one scene or did they cut it out? Just curious cause I know how sensitive the American movie industry is when it comes to showing nudity in movies….

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 23:47 CET  |  [Comments Link]  2 comments

Craziness

This evening when I was waiting in the car for Michi in front of our house some idiot sped past me at at least 70 kph (speed limit in our street is 30 kph). It was around 7pm. A time where you still have some kids out on the street. ASSHOLE! I hate people like him. He can kill himself on the Autobahn if he wants to but risking the life of others like that really upsets me.

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 23:18 CET  |  [Comments Link]  0 comments

What have I done?

I accidentally told somebody just about the longest imaginable way to the next McDonald’s today. It just didn’t occur to me that there’s a much shorter way. I only realized it when it was too late. I felt bad because of that.

Oh, on another note. I have my paper photos of last week’s fireworks now. But I’m too tired to scan them today. I never sleep well the night before exams. Sorry munkee. I know I’ve promised to put them up today. I’ll do it first thing tomorrow when I get home from work. Promise!

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 23:12 CET  |  [Comments Link]  0 comments

Monday, 18 February 2002

Oh well

This is what I found in my Wired newsletter today:

Last Laugh?
A Berlin man who laughed too often -- and too loudly -- was evicted from his flat after neighbors complained. Juergen Olschewski, 59, was forced to leave his home in the working class district of Wedding because he "violated the rules" by laughing loudly, the daily newspaper Bild said. The paper quoted Berlin's state-operated building association as saying in an eviction notice: "You have been charged with violating the rules: causing disturbing noises through loud laughter." An agency spokeswoman said, "We've had too many complaints." Sounds like they need to lighten up.

[RANT]
*sigh* No wonder most people think Germans are unfunny assholes when all they hear about us is stuff like this. I mean of course there are small minded people like this in Germany but I'm sure you can find them all around the world. It's just that this is not what all Germans are like.

The other thing people from other countries will most probably not know is that this Bild newspaper is really not far from e.g. the National Enquirer in the US. (Okay, they don't have kids with a dog's head or angels or stuff like that. Let me just say that you better not believe what they write without checking back with some other news source). Also in Germany if you think somebody has treated you in an unfair manner you don't go to a lawyer and sue him (like you would in America) but you go to Bild newspaper and they'll do the rest ;) What I want to say is this: The story might be true. But it is very likely that there was some other reason to throw him out of his flat as well.
[/RANT]


[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 21:47 CET  |  [Comments Link]  4 comments

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