Monthly Archives: March 2002

Sunday, 31 March 2002

Very Busy

Yesterday was a very busy day. We got up at 8:30 (on a Saturday morning!!) to bring Foo to the garage so it could get summer tires (finally) and part of that technical inspection. The mechanic said that the repaired exhaust pipe wouldn't last long because the guys at the garage in Berlin hadn't done it properly. He said should we have any problems we should go back to that garage and let them fix it again (cause they would have to do it for free).

Anyhow, when that was done we took Foo to town to shop for ingredients for the cake we were going to bake for our friend Tim's birthday party. We had just arrived on the parking lot of the supermarket when suddenly

*CLUNK* *metallic scraping* *very loud motor sound*

we lost our exhaust pipe. It just fell to the ground at the front of the car and was only attached at the back. We were very lucky that this hadn't happened 5 minutes earlier when we were going 100kph. I'm sure it would've just been torn off at that speed. So we quickly parked the car in a free spot at looked at the damage. It was clear that we couldn't just drive back to the garage with the exhaust pipe dangling on the ground. So we called the mechanic and he said to tie it up somehow and come back so he could fix it.

Unfortunately a part for the car jack was missing so we couldn't use that. We called Michi's dad to bring us the missing part. We tied the pipe up with some wires and cords as tightly as we could and slowly drove back to the garage. It was pretty cool acutally cause Foo now sounded like a race car *VRRROOOOOOOOM*

The mechanic welded everything together again and only charged 15 Euro (as opposed to 55 Euro the guys in Berlin charged us for 5 minutes work that lasted exactly 2 days).

When that was done we baked our cake, wrapped our present (cool Converse Chucks with flames printed on the sides) and then drove off to the hut in the woods where Tim celebrated his birthday. After a small hike through the woods in the wrong direction we finally found it. It was pretty cool. We played some Pétanque and a very fun Swedish game called Kubb which we had discovered last year (unfortunately I don't own the game yet. We have built ourselves a replica but it's not quite the same as the original). Later we had some barbecued meat and then played Poker for quite a while. Michi won quite a bit, I lost a little but not that much.

It was pretty cool to walk back through the dark forest at 3 in the morning talking about all the wild boars, bears, werewolfs and whatnot that were going to ambush us any minute now. Fortunately nothing like that happened and we got back safely.

And it's summer time (daylight savings time I believe the Americans call it) now. One more hour of light in the evening. Yeah!

Michi is currently vacuuming Foo. I'll go out in the sun (W00t!) and help him now :)

  Posted by Edda at 14:13 CET  |    0 comments

Friday, 29 March 2002

Highway Idiots

The trip yesterday night was pretty okay. Not that much traffic (going south at least. For some strange reason the people going north had a lot of traffic jams..).

At one point we were driving through some construction with speed limit 80 kph. I was already going about 90 but still there was some asshole behind me who got so close I could barely see his headlights (at 90 kph!!). I couldn’t go to the right lane to let him pass because it was packed with trucks. Finally I found a spot and he passed me. I was so angry at that guy. Had I been forced to brake he would have had no chance to brake in time and crashed into us. Fortunately this didn’t happen. I continued to be really pissed until I suddenly had the totally irrational fear that he was some kind of madman and would have pulled out a gun and shot me had I stayed in front of him for a while longer. Dunno why I thought this as things like this don’t happen in Germany…

Tonight I dreamt that we were fishing at “our” lake in VA. I caught something huge. But it was no fish but a snake. I couldn’t control it. So it began to chase my dad who was swimming in the water. It almost caught him and then I woke up.

Today we visited an ostrich and llama farm. Very cool animals. Those ostriches were huge. The llamas liked me of course and didn’t even spit on me :) I shot a few pictures. I’ll see if I can upload some of them later tonight or tomorrow. I have to leave for a poker and “Roadrunner & Coyote” night now.

  Posted by Edda at 20:57 CET  |    0 comments

Thursday, 28 March 2002

yawn

I'm quite tired today. But we just had to watch at least one of the TNG episodes on my new DVDs.

We'll visit Michi's family over the weekend and leave tonight after work. Cross your fingers that Foo will be okay on the long journey and there'll not be too much traffic on the way south (many people go south on the Easter weekend).

A friend of ours will celebrate his 30th birthday on Saturday. We're still trying to decide wether we want to be mean with our present or not ;)

  Posted by Edda at 17:34 CET  |    4 comments

Pictures

I uploaded a couple of new pictures. Two in Miscellaneous gallery: One, Two. And two in Berlin gallery: Three, Four.

I got my Star Trek TNG season 1 boxed set today. Wohoo! Of course we couldn't resist and had to have "just a short look at it". We're currently watching the pilot. I've never seen a Star Trek episode in such good quality. And the box the 7 DVDs came in is very neat also. Plus it is in English. I usually have to watch Star Trek in the dubbed German version because that is all they'll show on TV here.

I got my first Euro coin from another country than Germany today. It's five cent from the Netherlands :)

Foo is back. They repaired the exhaust pipe again at no cost. I hope it'll last now as it'll have to drive over 1000km this weekend.

  Posted by Edda at 01:34 CET  |    2 comments

Wednesday, 27 March 2002

Power Knob

I think I need the PowerMate. First I thought it would be just a useless gimmick. But then I read some more about it. And then I found out that it glows blue.

"Okay. That does it. I need that thing. Would also save me a lot of mouse clicks. "

*Checks price* "Eeek. $40. .....Well okay. It *is* made of metal. And it glows blue."

*Checks shipping cost* "Oh. Shipping to international destinations just about doubles the price. *sigh* That is a tad much for a volume knob. Even for one that glows blue and can do things other volume knobs can't. "

Buying geek stuff is really expensive for people living in the rest of the world.

  Posted by Edda at 10:12 CET  |    6 comments

Oscar Quiz Results

The results of my Oscar quiz are finally up. Click here or the Oscar link in the sidebar for detailed results.

  Posted by Edda at 00:01 CET  |    2 comments

Tuesday, 26 March 2002

Poor Foo

Foo (our car) is broken again. Well not exactly broken but the noise is back. It started again yesterday on our way home from work. We had just picked it up from the garage four days ago. Currently I hope that they just didn't fix it right and that it's nothing worse than the exhaust pipe being loose again. The mechanic couldn't believe that the noise was back. I hope that's not a bad sign.

Foo's technical inspection is due this month (i.e. we have to get it done until Thursday as Friday and Monday are national holidays here). You have to pay a fine if you don't get the technical inspection of your vehicle done in time....

  Posted by Edda at 16:31 CET  |    3 comments

Monday, 25 March 2002

The Oscars

So Amélie did not win a single Oscar. Not one! That's one of the best films I've ever seen. Ah well. I haven't seen the one that won the foreign language film award. So I can't really judge which one was better.

What has always bugged me about the Oscars is that in Europe you don't have the chance to see all those movies before the show because a lot of them have not been released here yet. This sucks. I think I would have had more fun if I had seen more of the nominated movies.

The ceremony was quite good though. Woody Allen was great. I loved it when Owen Wilson told Ben Stiller that he looked good as an elf (not many people in the audience got the joke though). The little scenes with the characters from the nominated animated movies were great too. It was very cool that Halle Berry and Denzel Washington got the awards for best leading actress/actor. Still if it's such a big deal that a person of color gets the award something is very wrong. If all people were indeed treated equally nobody would have to make a difference between black or white. Anyhow, it was a good beginning. I only hope it will not take another 40 years before such a thing happens again.

I have determined the winner of the quiz but I'm too tired now to put it all together in a presentable form and then online. I hope you'll forgive me for letting you wait another day. I will put the results up tomorrow evening.

I need to catch up on some sleep now.

  Posted by Edda at 23:36 CET  |    0 comments

*bounce*

I just ordered my Star Trek Season 1 boxed set from amazon. Whoo Hoo!

  Posted by Edda at 16:32 CET  |    0 comments

*lol*

Today's Penny Arcade strip is hilarious. They take another little stab at the size of the XBox controllers.

*giggle*

  Posted by Edda at 15:08 CET  |    0 comments

randomness

I got a referrer from randomwebsite.com. Cool. I wonder what the odds are that somebody gets taken to my site through a random link.

  Posted by Edda at 14:55 CET  |    0 comments

Sunday, 24 March 2002

Gah!

Just saw on Kung Fu Nation that the Jimmy Eat World shirt I wanted (the red one with the headphones) is available in small sizes. They just didn't bring those to the concert. Gah!

Well at least they ship internationally.

  Posted by Edda at 16:30 CET  |    0 comments

Now that's different

Jason Kottke has answered this week's Friday Five with the help of a chat bot. Hilarious!

  Posted by Edda at 15:53 CET  |    0 comments

Whee

I'm de-smoked now (that's what I hate most about going to concerts or bars: that everything you wore and even your hair is completely smoked. I hate the smell of cold cigarette smoke) and have just had lasagna while watching an episode of Enterprise.

Now I'm ready to write about the concert. I did not take the camera because I was pretty sure I would not be allowed to take it in with me. However it turns out I could've just hidden it in my sleeve. They didn't check there. Oh well... First thing I had to realize when we got there was that the balcony was closed. Great. Remember when I told you about my luck with long-haired very tall guys always blocking my view at concerts? Sure enough about 5 minutes after I had found a good spot from which I could see the band the first 2-meter-guy had found the spot right in front of me very attractive and decided to stay there. *sigh* I hate them for keeping the balcony closed. Well anyhow the concert started out a little slow but got better towards the end. The main problem was that the singer did not keep a steady distance to the mic so that his voice was barely audible sometimes and sometimes it was ok. The songs where his voice was steady were the best. They also brought some cool merchandise. I would've loved to buy this really cool red T-shirt. But they didn't have those in girl sizes.

[rant]
The coolest shirts always come only in large sizes. Michi just ordered a bunch of very cool Wipeout Fusion (yes the video game) shirts from Kappa. They don't come in girl sizes. Most shirts I find on the net are only available from M onwards (granted most of them are geek shirts and it is a known fact that a lot of geeks come in XXL). I hate that.
[/rant]

So I bought the only girl sized T-shirt they had (which turned out to be a shirt for kids aged 9-11, height 140cm :) But it fits!). I also bought a cool blue sticker (which I scanned so I could include it in this post) with the same logo that was on the T-shirt I wanted but didn't get and a little red badge with the same logo as a surrogate for the shirt.

  Posted by Edda at 04:30 CET  |    0 comments

Saturday, 23 March 2002

J.E.W.

I'm off to see Jimmy Eat World now. I'm currently trying to decide wether I should risk to take the camera or not. If they don't let me take it in I'd have to run back to the car which would be really annoying...

  Posted by Edda at 20:19 CET  |    0 comments

Friday, 22 March 2002

Friday Five

This week's Friday Five:

1. What is your favorite time of year? Spring.

2. What is it about your favorite season that, well, makes it your favorite season? Spring is my absolute favorite because it finally gets warm again after winter. The air feels ...different. It smells different. Suddenly flowers begin to spring out of the earth. Everything looks so colorful and not dull anymore. I don't have to wear my thick winter jacket anymore. I love Spring because that is when I can wear my favorite clothes: pants, a T-Shirt and maybe a sweater or thin jacket. I love when the sun is shining (it doesn't do that often in winter here). Autumn is pretty nice also because of the colors of the leaves. What I don't like about autumn is that it's the season before winter. And all I can think of is that it'll be cold and unpleasant very soon. I like Summer because in Summer there's just so much you can do outside. In Berlin there's a street festival every weekend in summer. Ice cream is much better when it's hot also.

3. What is your least favorite time of year? Why? Winter I guess. I would love winter if we had snow. But we very rarely have. Winters in Berlin are very, very cold (mainly due to the icy wind) and snowless. I love bright winter days, when there's snow on the ground and the sun is shining. And I love being outside when it is snowing. Snow crystals are so fluffy. I love just standing there watching them slowly tumble down. But as we don't really have all that I don't like winter much.

4. Do you do anything to celebrate or recognize the changing of seasons? Not really. I just enjoy every sunny day. No matter what season.

5. What's your favorite thing to do outside? Just sitting in the sun (if it's not too hot. Spring is the perfect season for that). Walking around and taking pictures of stuff.

  Posted by Edda at 21:17 CET  |    0 comments

W00t!

I just discovered that amazon.de has this great offer for the Star Trek:TNG boxed season sets. If you order the first 6 seasons before end of May you'll get the seventh season for free! W00t!

And this is the first time that I can get something on amazon.de cheaper than on amazon.com. A set is 110 Euro (around $97) here. On amazon.com it's $105. Plus we don't have to pay shipping costs. W00t!

  Posted by Edda at 19:50 CET  |    0 comments

This and that

:: Yesterday I tried to find me new glasses again. This is so hard. I've had my current ones for almost 6 years now and I've gotten so used to them that it's hard to find new ones that I like. The real problem is that currently the type of glasses that I like seem to be out. The ones I currently have are really tiny. Many people don't believe me when I say that I can see through them just fine. I want my new ones to be very small also but apparently nobody makes small ones anymore. Well, I guess I'll just have to keep looking.

:: So Apple actually did release a new iPod on Macworld. It's got a 10GB harddrive now. Only flaw it has is that it still doesn't work with Windoze. Why do they have to be so mean? I can't afford an iPod and a Mac. Well maybe I should start selling plasma like my friend Zach suggested...

:: We're going to see Jimmy Eat World on Saturday. The venue they're playing at is really cool. It's got a balcony from which even I can see the band (There's always some 2meter guy with long hair in front of me so all I can see is a drumstick from time to time).

  Posted by Edda at 18:36 CET  |    2 comments

New graffiti pic

I've uploaded a new photo I took a couple of days ago while trying to get a good shot of the new birds I've discovered. There are lots of these along the tram tracks. They come in many different colors and I like how they look. They might become my second "hunting" project after the birds.

  Posted by Edda at 02:21 CET  |    2 comments

Couldn't resist

I couldn't resist and played with MT 2.0's new features. The result can be found in the sidebar between the pic of the day and the playlist. You can now see the last 5 entries that got commented on. I find this highly useful. The only reason I know that a new comment has been posted is that I get an email whenever somebody posts a new comment. So I hope this helps you keep track of things.

  Posted by Edda at 01:28 CET  |    0 comments

Thursday, 21 March 2002

Birds

I have found 11 new birds. But it is very difficult to get a good shot of them as they are sprayed on a small wall dividing the train tracks running through Berlin. Those tracks are elevated (about 10 meters high). The only possibility of getting a picture of those birds is to shoot it out of a moving tram. And that's the problem. Trams move way too fast most of the time. So to get a picture that's as unblurry as possible I need 1. sunshine (to reduce the exposure time) 2. a slow moving tram. I think I'll have to spend a Sunday just taking trams back and forth between two stations and try to get good shots of the birds.....

One of the 11 new ones is easier to get a picture of though. It's located on the outside of a building about 10 meters above the ground. All I need there is a good zoom lens. I might have to take all these pictures with my SLR camera. I can control exposure time much better with it and also have a very good zoom lens....

  Posted by Edda at 17:08 CET  |    3 comments

Wednesday, 20 March 2002

Netscape defeated!

Great news:

My site now displays in Netscape 4.x! Michi and I kind of tracked the problem down. Netscape just has major issues with style sheets and crashes if you use styles in anything other than paragraph defining tags (like div, p,..). Also some padding styles wouldn't work. Now I'm using a different style sheet for Netscape.

It doesn't really look like it should but at least most of the site works now. And Netscape doesn't crash anymore.

  Posted by Edda at 23:39 CET  |    0 comments

Movable Type 2.0

Movable Type Version 2.0 is out now!

Ben and Mena have added many cool features making the life of Movable Type users a lot easier. So I guess I will spend the weekend adding cool new features to my site and ridding it of some now unnessesary php code.

We already updated to version 2.0 and everything seems to run smoothly.

Yay *bounce bounce*

  Posted by Edda at 23:09 CET  |    2 comments

Copy Protection

I fear this is exactly where all the copy protection of CDs and region coding of DVDs will lead us.

John Gilmore has written a very good article about this whole mess. His website doesn’t appear to be working at the moment. But I have found a mirror of the article here. I would recommend it for further reading if you’re interested in this stuff.

  Posted by Edda at 15:28 CET  |    0 comments

Rainbow

This Wired article fascinates me somehow. You know sometimes when everything seems just very dull, days like today where you have to turn on the lights long before the sun actually sets because the sun is hidden behind a thick impenetrable blanket of clouds. So on days like today I think it would be nice to see a rainbow when I looked at a newspaper. I need light. I’m in a much better mood when the sun is shining brightly. But if I can’t have light, bright colors might be nice from time to time….

In my Wired newsletter I also found this:

Progressive Prostitution
“In Germany, at least, the world’s oldest profession is starting to approach 20th-century working conditions, thanks to legislation. Felicitas Weigmann, who owns posh Berlin brothel Cafe Pssst!, has offered her staff employment contracts with a 40-hour working week and a profit-sharing plan of 40 euros per client. Weigmann drew up the contracts after the German parliament passed an historic law last year giving prostitutes new employment rights including social security, health insurance, pension and the right to legally pursue customers who don’t pay. While prostitution had previously been legal and earnings liable to tax, it had been officially declared “immoral”. “

I doubt that this would’ve happened under the old conservative government. Nor would they have made same-sex marriages legal and equal to “conventional” marriages. (I could be wrong here but I doubt that it would’ve happened). I hope people see this in the upcoming election and don’t vote conservative again.

  Posted by Edda at 11:47 CET  |    0 comments

Sorry for the Confusion

I just toyed with my code in hopes of finding the thing that causes Netscape to crash. I almost destroyed my site but didn’t find the problem. Just wanted to apologize to you people who were here during the past hour or so. Hope you were not too shocked by how it looked. I hope I have repaired everything now.

As far as the Netscape problem goes I think I can only fix it if I abstain from using style sheets. With Netscape you cannot use styles in div or img tags, not even in tables. I’m not sure where you can use them at all. So I guess there’s nothing I can do for Netscape users at the moment….

I’ll go to bed now. That just totally killed the really good mood I was in before. I’ll tell you why I was in a really good mood tomorrow. Not in the mood for it now. moody

  Posted by Edda at 02:20 CET  |    0 comments

Tuesday, 19 March 2002

Netscape Hate fit

AAArgh! Netscape 4.x still refuses to display my site. I’ve got friends who still use Netscape and now can’t do the Oscar Quiz. Darn.

I’m not sure wether it’s a problem with style sheets or with XHTML. Netscape just totally kills itself when it tries to display my site. A site I’ve found indicated that Netscape goes crazy if you use a style inline in an image tag. I do that at one point of the site. That’s my best guess at the moment. Unfortunately I can’t do anything about it at work. I’ll try that at home tonight. If that doesn’t solve the problem I really don’t know what else to try.

If anybody has experienced the same thing or can give any hints that might lead to the solution of this problem I would be very grateful.

  Posted by Edda at 14:53 CET  |    0 comments

Oscar Quiz

Most big events like the Soccer World Cup or the Academy Award Ceremony are much more fun if you bet on the outcome. Therefore I present you the

DOGNAMEDFISH OSCAR QUIZ!!

Anybody can participate. There’s not even an age restriction. You have to be able to read and have an email address to be allowed to participate though. Read more on the Oscar Special Site.

  Posted by Edda at 01:34 CET  |    0 comments

Monday, 18 March 2002

There went my weekend

I bought Metal Gear Solid 2 on Friday. What a great game. First of all it’s got one of the best manuals I’ve ever seen in a game. It’s a manga telling a short story and explaining all you need to know to get started on the fly (in case you haven’t played the first part) and everything else will be explained to you in the game. The more advanced stuff being explained ingame in a small library with short movies showing what your character will do.

The game itself plays very good after a bit of adjusting to the controls. Sometimes the camera angles are a little odd and sometimes, especially when there’s a lot of action (which doesn’t happen too often if you’re cautious and avoid being seen) it’s a little hard to control. You just have to push too many buttons at once sometimes. That is no problem though for the greater part of the game because there is no action but rather a very tactical tiptoeing around and hiding and quickly taking out guards without killing them as to not leave any bloody traces.

The graphics are stunning and the animation of the characters is really good. I love it when you hide behind a corner and peek around it to see what’s there.

There’s a lot of tension when you sneak around because you never know when a guard comes around the corner unexpectedly and you just barely manage to hide all the while praying that he doesn’t look in your direction. That can really speed up your heart beat.

Okay, enough of it. Have to get back to work. Just buy the game already. It’s worth it.

  Posted by Edda at 16:28 CET  |    5 comments

Sunday, 17 March 2002

Self-Destruction

This is what Bulletproof just told me when prompting me to confirm an overwrite:

Whew. I'm glad I hit the correct button in time. You never know with these self-destruct mechanisms. They never work how they're supposed to. Most of the time they don't work at all. Same with the ejection of the warp core. Never works when it's supposed to...

  Posted by Edda at 20:59 CET  |    0 comments

Hygiene Critters

When I was shopping for face cleansing supplies on Friday I passed a shelf containing all sorts of personal hygiene supplies in a very cute design. Every bottle/tube/can had some kind of critter on them:

So I grabbed my camera and began to pull them out of the shelf one by one and taking pictures while Michi wandered around the store pretending not to know me. Quite a few people passing me cast me funny looks. I bet they thought those damn tourists have gone completely crazy now ;)

I think Michi downloaded a font with these little monsters once. I'll have to check that. They're too cute.

Oh, before I forget. Uploaded two new pictures I took today: One, Two.

  Posted by Edda at 20:21 CET  |    0 comments

Ice Age

Just saw Ice Age. Ah, I love animated movies. This one is worth the money for the first 5 minutes alone. Hilarious. Those 5 minutes were already in the trailer but you just cannot get enough of it. That little sabertooth squirrel (or whatever it is) was a running gag throughout the whole movie and whenever he appeared the whole cinema burst into laughter. The scenes he was in reminded me of Roadrunner and Coyote somehow :)

  Posted by Edda at 02:57 CET  |    0 comments

Saturday, 16 March 2002

Microsoft

This is directly from Microsoft's website. If you believe it or not. Check the picture's url if you don't.

  Posted by Edda at 16:55 CET  |    0 comments

Friday Five

1. What’s your favorite animal? There are several animals that I really like but I get very excited whenever I see sheep. They are so …fluffy. I also like turtles.

2. What pets have you had in your lifetime? Bunnies, a rat, my brother also had frogs and lizards and after that two small snakes (fortunately they ate dead fish and no living animals). And we had a dog (Golden Retriever) whom I loved just like a sister. I was devastated when we had to put her to sleep a year ago. I still miss her a lot.

3. Is there any specific pet that you’ve wanted but never had? Why? Hmm. I’ve never had a cat. Before we got the dog we thought about getting a cat. But then my brother and me talked my parents into getting a dog instead. So there was no need for a cat anymore. I might get a cat in case I stay here. IMO it’s torture to have a dog when you’re living in a big city. Especially if it’s a large dog. If you have a dog you should have a big enough property for it to play…

4. Are you allergic to any animals? Not that I know of.

5. Do you have any ‘pet’ pet peeves (your pets or others’)? Can’t think of anything really. EDIT: I hate those rat-sized designer dogs, who’s only meaning in life is to be carried around by their owners (who go crazy when a proper-sized dog wants to get to know their poor little baby) ugh. And I hate dog owners who don’t remove their dog’s poo from the sidewalk.

  Posted by Edda at 16:53 CET  |    0 comments

Friday, 15 March 2002

Air-net

High-speed Internet services on Lufthansa 747.

Oh yeah, baby!

  Posted by Edda at 15:04 CET  |    0 comments

::geek::

“But perhaps the most impressive thing about iPod, in contrast with more confusing computer gadgets, is that its manual is six sentences long.”

Found this in a review on vnunet.com. ::geek::

Nik finds my phoenix photo fantastic. Thank you Nik! That compliment from a complete stranger really made my day!

  Posted by Edda at 13:30 CET  |    0 comments

Thursday, 14 March 2002

Hate Mail Follow-up

John Scalzi posted a follow-up article on the “How to write hate mail” article I wrote about yesterday. It’s hilarious. Although I don’t think German is one of the best languages for insulting. But could be I only think that because I am German and all the German swear words are kind of boring to me. Then again, the German swear words Americans come up with are often very funny :)

What made me almost fall off my chair though was this Latin insult somebody recommended to John:

Homonecropetapyrobestiphiliac
(“One who prefers sleeping with under-aged, dead animals of the same gender while they are on fire”)

That totally made my day!

  Posted by Edda at 18:49 CET  |    0 comments

04:44

I just stopped my Winamp player to talk to Michi. Then I noticed that it had stopped at exactly 04:44 minutes.

  Posted by Edda at 15:16 CET  |    0 comments

Strange Noise

Just as Michi was parking the car at work this morning it began to make strange, very unhealthy sounding noises. Kind of like a high-pitched rattle on top of the motor noise. All I can think of now is the car because I fear there’s something wrong with it again. Can’t concentrate on work at all. Wish me luck that the car is healthy and that noise was just because of the humid weather or something….

  Posted by Edda at 13:52 CET  |    0 comments

Wednesday, 13 March 2002

That was close

I just almost had a car crash.

Michi and I were on our way home from work. The weather is pretty nasty currently. It’s raining quite a bit. At one point we had to pass a tow-car which was blocking most of our side of the street. The woman who was driving in front of me passed the tow-car and then stayed on the lane she had used to pass the car. The lane was a left-turn only lane but she slowed down so I thought she wanted to take a left there. So I accelerated again to normal cruising speed and just as I was about to pass her on her right she suddenly swerved right, back onto the lane I was driving in. I barely managed to dodge her car by hitting the brakes hard and swerving to the right myself. Even the tires squealed. The road was very slippery from the rain which made it even harder to avoid hitting her.

Well I managed. I’m very glad there was nobody to my right cause there was no way I could’ve dodged both cars. Unfortunately I don’t have lightning reflexes when it comes to hitting the button for the horn. Otherwise I would’ve honked her off badly, ‘cause I’m not sure she even realized what she did. I’m so mad at that woman. She almost ruined my evening. And that would’ve been even worse than the damage she would have done to Foo (that’s our car). My evening is sacred.

  Posted by Edda at 19:29 CET  |    3 comments

About hate mail

Check out John Scalzi’s tips on how to write hate mail. Very entertaining. I read some of his other stuff too. I like his style.

  Posted by Edda at 17:37 CET  |    0 comments

New iMac

The new iMac looks much cooler in reality than on the pictures I’ve seen. While waiting for a chance to play with the iPod I played with one of the new iMacs at the store yesterday. That adjustable screen is fun to play with. It just glides through the air as if it weren’t attatched to the computer. Fun.

Btw: I’m not connected with Apple in any way, nor do I get paid for saying nice things about their stuff. I think it’s a geek thing or something… ;)

  Posted by Edda at 17:02 CET  |    0 comments

New Pong

Are you tired of playing the same old pong game over and over again? Why not try something new? Like Textbased Pong.

You might also want to try 3D-Pong. That one is really hard though.

  Posted by Edda at 16:57 CET  |    0 comments

I'm such an addict

Being away from the internet almost completely for three days in a row results in a lot of work. It takes ages to bring myself up to date again on all the sites I visit regularly. I only realize how much of my time I usually spend online when I don’t.

  Posted by Edda at 01:06 CET  |    0 comments

Tuesday, 12 March 2002

I Want One!

I just had the chance to play with with an Apple iPod for the first time. This thing is so cool ::me totally geeking out here:: I want one!

Why, oh why don't I have a Mac?

I hope XPlay will be finished soon.

  Posted by Edda at 16:49 CET  |    2 comments

Back

Back in Berlin. Bought cool stuff today. Too tired to tell. Have to go to bed. Can’t concentrate….. snore

  Posted by Edda at 00:04 CET  |    0 comments

Monday, 11 March 2002

Friday Five on Sunday Night

Didn’t have time to do the Friday Five yet. So I’ll do a Sunday night five now:

1. What makes you homesick? Hmm. Mostly being away from the people I love. Also thinking of our (well not “our” for much longer) house in VA (the house my dad lived in when he still worked there. We used to visit him there at least once a year). I loved that house. Still do. I would’ve loved to spend all my summers there for the rest of my life.

2. Where is “home” for you? Is it where you are living now, or somewhere else (ie: Mom & Dad’s house, particular state/city)? “Home home” for me is the house I grew up in. The house I’m sitting in while writing this entry. I call the place I live in in Berlin home, too, but I’m not very emotionally attatched to the place itself. More to the things I keep there. And then there’s my “home away from home”, the aforementioned house in VA. Which will always be a second home to me even if other people live there.

3. What makes it home for you? People? Things? Both. People are more important. But I am quite attatched to the things I own. Mostly because a lot of them bear so many memories.

4. Where is the furthest you’ve been from home, miles-wise? Uhm. What is the distance between Germany and the US West Coast? I’ll see if I can find that out, just a sec… OK, apparently it’s around 5800 miles. I intend to increase that distance to “the other side of the planet” very soon though :)

5. What are your plans for this weekend? Drive home, celebrate my brother’s and my birthdays with the family, kick AOL off my brother’s computer by formatting his harddrive and then installing Win2k on his system all day long. That’s what Michi and me did today. Took quite some time because there were some, er, complications (all my fault, I admit it). Also downloading security patches for Windows and IE takes a loooong time with an ISDN dial-up connection. Where’s my DSL when I need it? I’ll tell you what I’ll do on Monday too cause that still belongs to the weekend for me as I’m not working. I’ll try to decide on new glasses (wish me luck), spend some money on clothes, maybe shoes and maybe even MGS2 (which is finally out here since last Friday). Then drive back to Berlin.

  Posted by Edda at 02:05 CET  |    0 comments

Golden Sun

My brother gave me Golden Sun for the GBA for my birthday. Yay! I’ve heard so many good things about this game. Now I hope I’ll have the time to play it. I have so many games still lying around that want to be played…

Now that I’m earning enough money to be able to buy more video games I don’t have the time to play them all…

  Posted by Edda at 01:29 CET  |    0 comments

Sunday, 10 March 2002

Yet Another

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVY!!

  Posted by Edda at 21:20 CET  |    1 comments

Saturday, 9 March 2002

Not much time to post

I’m spending the weekend at home (well my old home at my parents’s house) in Koblenz. We were celebrating my and my brother’s birthday today with the whole family. I enjoy being around my family (parents, brother, aunts, cousins…) a lot. We’re always having a lot of fun when we get together. Unfortunately though that means that I’ll not be online often during the weekend. Also without DSL surfing the net just isn’t as much fun ;)

Yesterday after work we drove here. Took us the whole evening (around 7 hours). Fortunately though the journey was very uneventful. I placed the tripod in front of me when Michi was driving and took some pictures on the Autobahn. I think some of them are quite good. I’ll see if some are worthy to be put on this site when I’m back in Berlin.

I had a fun day. I wanted to see if I could find new glasses today cause I’ve had my current ones for around 5-6 years now (Can’t believe it’s already been this long. Feels like yesterday that I got them). Well anyhow, so I went to my favorite optometrist (is that the right word?) to see what he had. It’s so hard for me to decide on new glasses. Cause they change your whole appearance. I haven’t decided on anything yet. I’m going back on Monday with my mom. She usually has a pretty good taste in these things.

I love to go shopping in Koblenz (100,000 inhabitants). Everything is so close together. All the shops you might want to go to are in walking distance. Whereas a shopping tour in Berlin (3.5 million inhabitants) is much more work cause you have to travel from one end of the city to another and then back again.

So I bought many small things and I think I will return on Monday and buy that great coat I saw and maybe a pair of shoes. I’ll keep you posted.

I bought the expansion for Carcassonne. It sounds like it could be fun. I think some of the new tiles they included might make the game a bit more interesting because there’s more strategic desicions you have to make. We haven’t played it yet though because we don’t have the base game with us.

When we returned home from our shopping tour most of the family was already there so I spend the rest of the day having fun with them.

Now I’m quite tired. I’ll watch some TV and then go to sleep. I’ll try to get back to you tomorrow!

  Posted by Edda at 23:18 CET  |    1 comments

Friday, 8 March 2002

New Playlist Feature

We just had the glorious idea to add links to the bands you see on my playlist. To make things more interesting we used google’s “I’m feeling lucky!” feature. So whenever you click the name of a band in the playlist you’ll be taken to the first link google comes up with for the band name.

Works great with Foo Fighters, The Get Up Kids and Incubus for example. Not so good with Bush or The Presidents of the USA (i.e. you don’t find the band’s homepage) ;) But that’s the fun part. You never know where you might end up. I for one will click every link in my playlist today just to see where I’ll end up :)

Hope you all like it!

  Posted by Edda at 14:08 CET  |    1 comments

Playlist added

Playlist added to the sidebar today. See this post and this one for further explanation.

  Posted by Edda at 00:45 CET  |    0 comments

Ouch

No Pain, No Game. I’m happy with my force feedback controllers, thank you very much.

  Posted by Edda at 00:43 CET  |    0 comments

Playlist

Michi coded a little something for me this evening. It is a playlist that will show the last five songs I’ve listened to in Winamp, most recently first. The really cool thing is that it will also work when I’m at work where they have closed the ftp port making it impossible for us to just upload the playlist via ftp and include it via ssi.

So now you can check in realtime what I’m listening to (if you hit reload every couple minutes) . Oh and you can find the playlist in the sidebar.

:)

  Posted by Edda at 00:40 CET  |    0 comments

Feng Shui

Another little something from my Wired newsletter:

No Parole
“The cops in Sausalito, California will continue working out of portable trailers near the waterfront, at least for now. That’s because the good citizens of this quaint little town on San Francisco Bay voted against building a $7.8 million police and fire complex to replace the 93-year-old police building destroyed in a 1995 flood. Money wasn’t the issue; a number of Sausalito residents could write a personal check for that much on their way to lunch. The issue was feng shui, the Chinese art of placing things to ensure a harmonious energy flow. Opponents argued that the facility was too large and out of character, and the voters agreed. “

Is it only me or does anybody else find this hilarious?

  Posted by Edda at 00:28 CET  |    3 comments

B-Day again

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JAN!!

My “little” brother is 22 now.

  Posted by Edda at 00:16 CET  |    0 comments

Thursday, 7 March 2002

Google logos

You might remember that I love google’s holiday logos. Now Michi pointed me to their online museum of holiday logos. Just great. I especially like the alien story :)

  Posted by Edda at 11:22 CET  |    2 comments

B-day

clears throat
[SING MODE ON]
Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Steeee-heeeff, Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuu
[SING MODE OFF]

Happy Birthday to my friend Steff!

  Posted by Edda at 10:59 CET  |    0 comments

Slightly new look

I worked on the site the whole evening (didn’t even look at my PS2). I have added quite a few improvements most of which you probably won’t notice. It’s all little details that have been bugging me ever since I put this site up. I won’t bore you with the details of what I did.

I hope you like my new date header. I wanted to include the day of the week somewhere in there because I realized that it might sometimes be interesting to know the weekday of an old post without having to look it up in some calendar. I tried several different looks but nothing really satisfied me. So I surfed around a bit to get inspired. In the end I pretty much copied Dawn’s layout. Hope you don’t mind, Dawn.

Have to go to bed now. Sweet dreams everybody!

  Posted by Edda at 00:49 CET  |    0 comments

Wednesday, 6 March 2002

Coincidence?

Found in my Wired newsletter today:

Twin Killing
It was a horrible coincidence, but an incredible one. Identical twin brothers, aged 71, were killed a mere two hours apart in identical bicycle accidents along the same road. The first brother was killed early Tuesday by a truck after he had gone out cycling on the west coast of Finland. Two hours later, before police had even had a chance to identify the victim, his brother was also killed by a truck while cycling along the same road. “It made my hair stand on end….” said a police officer. “It came to mind that perhaps someone from upstairs had a say in this.”

I know this has to be some sort of twisted coincidence. But stories like this always make me think about fate…

  Posted by Edda at 21:12 CET  |    0 comments

Just something I noticed

I think I’ve never seen a female bike messenger before. And today I saw two of them. Strange. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention before. And now that I am I see them all over the place. But when I saw the first one I thought: “Wow, a female bike messenger.”

Okay, I guess that’s not very interesting for you guys. It’s just something I noticed.

On another note:
My mission to spread the joy of bean bags is beginning to be succesfull. I just convinced my parents that my brother needs one of these for his birthday (March 8th). If you’ve played PS2 sitting on one of these once you’ll never want anything else. I really want that small company who made mine to earn lots of money now because their service is really good and they sell high quality stuff. Now, who else needs a bean bag badly?

  Posted by Edda at 21:02 CET  |    4 comments

Pictures suck

I just realized that my pictures look horrible on the laptop I’m using at work. That might mostly be due to the fact that I don’t have 32-bit color on this thing. But it just looks like all the pictures are too heavily compressed. On some of them I can see very nasty compression artifacts. I did compress them quite a bit because I wanted to keep loading times for people on modem dial-up connections at a minimum. On my CRT monitor at home the pics look great though. But it is of no use if they only look good on my own computer. Does anybody else think the picture quality is too poor?

  Posted by Edda at 16:20 CET  |    0 comments

Movable Type

Michi got me another present for my birthday. He donated to Ben and Mena of Movable Type, the personal publishing software that powers most of this site. I would’ve done it myself because I really love MT. The thing with donating is that my site will be listed on the “Updated MT Blogs” list on the MT site whenever I update it giving me many new hits. Yay!

So just wanted to give a warm welcome to all my new visitors. Hope you like my little site and come back soon!

  Posted by Edda at 15:56 CET

Tuesday, 5 March 2002

Scanning trouble

Argh! Whenever I scan pictures it takes ages to tweak them to make them look like the original. And sometimes that darn scanner just does totally strange things. Like today. Michi and me are making a website for an artist. I wanted to scan a picture of one of his sculptures from a glossy magazine print. Whenever I scan it I get strange interferences in the picture. I have no idea why. I tried several different methods of scanning it but nothing helped. The strange thing is that I scanned a color print from the same magazine without any trouble. Another color print caused trouble at first but cooperated after a little tweaking.

That scanner totally makes me lose my patience. I’ll just leave it for today and spend some time with my bean bag and my Playstation now :)

  Posted by Edda at 23:37 CET  |    0 comments

Me, Me, Me

Yes I know I’ve promised the ‘Me’ page ever since this site went live. I will do it eventually and hopefully sometime soon. But I won’t promise it anymore cause I probably won’t be able to keep that promise (like all the others I made before). I’m just having too much to do currently. I should have a little more time around the middle of March….

Oh and, when I do the page about me I’ll also do one about the people I frequently mention so those of you who don’t know me personally at least get an idea of who I’m talking about….

  Posted by Edda at 13:55 CET  |    0 comments

User Friendly

Today’s User Friendly comic is pretty great. I somehow love the idea of Tux the penguin going shopping for Win XP. Or maybe it’s just the mental picture of a penguin going shopping. Or it’s just the weirdness of this whole strip.

You probably have to start at the beginning of the whole story a couple of days ago to totally get the strip.

  Posted by Edda at 13:50 CET  |    2 comments

Monday, 4 March 2002

Bean Bag

The birthday present Michi got me finally arrived today. And it is *so* cool!

It's a super cool bean bag. I've always wanted one. But never found a store which sold cool ones. But Michi found this store that custom-makes them for you. You can choose everything from material to color to amount of stuffing. Everything he chose is so perfect. I love this bean bag! The picture shows me testing it under PS2-playing conditions. During the next few days I'm going to test it under several different conditions like reading a book, listening to music, watching TV, having sex j/k ;) ...

The thing arrived this morning when we were at work. Our roommates say the delivery guy didn't look all that happy that he had to haul it (it's heavy) up to our apartment :) This is such a cool present!
*hugs bean bag*

  Posted by Edda at 23:49 CET  |    5 comments

Sunday, 3 March 2002

New music

Yesterday Simon told us to give this new CD he bought a try. It is The Big Romance by David Kitt. Very beautiful music. Something to just sit there and dream while listening to it. Actually you cannot stop listening to it over and over again.

  Posted by Edda at 21:19 CET  |    0 comments

The day after

Okay. So I’m 25 now and I don’t really feel different (not that I had expected to). The first thing my brother said when he called me to wish me a happy birthday was “Gawd, you’re old now!” ;) Oh well… (I’ll have my revenge when he turns 25).

Just wanted to thank everybody for the cool presents and greeting cards. I enjoyed every one of them very much. Yesterday was definitely one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had. Don’t know why. I just felt good and had a grin on my face the whole day (even when I got my butt kicked when we tried the new game I got from David). Yes that’s right, I had a game day on my birthday. That’s about the best way I can think of to spend one’s birthday (except having wild sex all day long perhaps ;) ).

And thank you Michi for getting up at an absolutely ungodly hour (10am after 6 hours of sleep) on Saturday to make cake and prepare most of our dinner so we would have time to go out and enjoy the great weather before our guests arrived.

Actually I can’t believe that the weather on my birthday was great. March isn’t exactly known for its great weather around here. But the sun was shining and it wasn’t too cold (between 5 and 10°C I’d say). I took some pictures while we were outside and put them up in the gallery. Check the news site for more info.

Okay, I’m off to spend some time with my Playstation. And when I come back I’m determined to finally think of something to write for the ‘me’ link….

  Posted by Edda at 20:52 CET  |    0 comments

New pictures

Added new pictures to Berlin gallery and one to Miscellaneous gallery.

  Posted by Edda at 20:34 CET  |    0 comments

Saturday, 2 March 2002

Moog

We just had breakfast listening to my roommate Simon’s Moog Cookbook CD. That is so funny. It’s a bunch of Indie and Grunge hits played on a Moog Synthesizer. Sounds a lot like elevator music ;)

  Posted by Edda at 13:49 CET  |    0 comments

Yay!

Michi just coded a little birthday present for my GBA.

Isn't this great?

(We have this writable GBA cartridge because we want to program our own GBA game soon. We just got it a few days ago. But Michi found out how to display an image tonight and quickly made this for me. This is *so* sweet! Oh, and in case you haven't noticed yet: Yes, we are geeks!)

  Posted by Edda at 02:48 CET  |    0 comments

25

Okay. It’s my birthday now. I don’t feel any different though (of course I don’t, who does anyway?). Actually I do feel different. Happy because of the very cool presents I got. But I might not feel different because I’m not really 25 yet. I was born at 03:58am. So I still got 1.5 hours left before I’m really, really 25.

  Posted by Edda at 02:20 CET  |    4 comments

Friday, 1 March 2002

4 hours 5 min 23 sec

…left before I’ll be 25. I feel old.

  Posted by Edda at 19:54 CET  |    2 comments

Friday Five

A lot of webloggers I know answer the Friday Five questions every Friday. As I don’t have anything interesting to say currently I figured I could try it as well. So here are my answers:

1. What’s your favorite vacation spot? Hmm. I have always loved to spend my vacations in the US. I‘ve been there almost every summer since I was 13. That’s when my dad started to work in Virginia. He lived in that great house on a lake and my mom, my brother and I would visit him there every summer. We had a boat, a wakeboard and fishing rods. What else do you need (except internet access)? Unfortunately my dad doesn’t live there anymore. Sure, Detroit is much better for shopping but I do miss the lake. So to wrap it up I think the US (all of it) is my favorite vacation spot up to date. But I’ve still got so many places to go to….

2. Where do you consider to be the biggest hell-hole on earth? Vacationwise or in general? I’ve never spent a vacation in a place that would qualify as hell-hole.

3. What would be your dream vacation? Traveling around the world for a very long time (at least 6 months or as long as I’ve got money left). Planning nothing in advance, just going to whichever place just caught my fancy. I’m already saving my money for this. And it would definitely include visiting my dad, my friends in San Francisco, Hawaii, New Zealand (Yes, I already wanted to go there before they filmed The Lord of the Rings there), Australia, Japan.

4. If you could go on a road-trip with anyone, who would it be and why? Michi. He’s not only my b/f he’s also my best friend. I know our fights wouldn’t last long :)

5. What are your plans for this weekend? Today Michi and me will relax from our work week, play some Playstation, make Pizza and wait for midnight and my birthday. Tomorrow I got a few friends invited for cake, chili con carne, Mexican beer and games. Sunday will probably be cleaning day and then hopefully I’ll have some time to finally work on my site some more and write something for the ‘Me’ link.

  Posted by Edda at 19:52 CET  |    2 comments