Ok, wie ange­kün­digt geht’s ab jetzt wie­der in Deutsch wei­ter — es schei­nen doch deut­lich mehr Leute mit­zu­le­sen, die kein Eng­lisch ver­ste­hen, als Leute, die kein Deutsch ver­ste­hen…

Also, ab jetzt bin ich wie­der wie gesagt in Irland, für zwei Jahre das ganze, um mit mei­ner Dok­tor­ar­beit wei­ter­zu­kom­men. Worum’s da geht erkläre ich lie­ber ein andern Mal ;-) Wie schon vor 18 Mona­ten (ich hatte damals meine Stu­di­en­ar­beit hier geschrie­ben) bin ich wie­der am Hamil­ton Insti­tute ange­stellt; wie damals auch werde ich wie­der von Prof. Robert Shor­ten — “Bob&rdquo — betreut.

Noch sind meine 3 Kis­ten, die ich per Her­mes ver­schickt hab, nicht hier, aber ich hoffe mal, dass die in der nächs­ten Woche ein­tru­deln. Bin ja nach wie vor eh noch woh­nungs­los, die Damen in der Wohn­heim­ver­wal­tung war­ten ja noch dar­auf, dass ich Ihnen mei­nen Stun­den­ten­aus­weis zeige (ich kann mich aber nur mit der Hilfe der liebe Rose­mary, unse­rer Sekre­tä­rin, ein­schrei­ben — und die kommt erst am Mon­tag wie­der). Ich hoffe (bete), dass noch was frei ist irgendwo in den Wohn­hei­men. Auf außer­halb Woh­nen hab ich echt kei­nen Bock mehr…

Chi­ckens: The only crea­tures you eat before they are born and after they are dead.

Ok, this post is a bit late, but I still wanted to share that messy room pic­ture with you ;-)

So after a few very busy last days (a lot of “offi­cial” stuff needed tak­ing care of — bur­eau­cracy never sleeps in Ger­many) I man­aged to pack most of my stuff either in my big faith­ful suit­case (at first attempt it weighed 27.9 kg /​I’m allowed 20 kg on the plane…). What could not fit into the case (or was too heavy) was put in one of three par­cels that should be on their way here now. It was sur­pris­ingly cheap to send stuff within Europe — with Her­mes you only pay 30 EUR for a pretty big par­cel of up to 25 kg! Any excess kilo on the air­plane would have kost me 8 EUR …

Any­way, I arrived well here in Ire­land and things are look­ing prom­ising :-) More on that, of course, soon­ish.

PS: By the way, I will switch back to Ger­man lan­guage again, as there is hardly any­one fol­low­ing this blog that does not unter­stand Ger­man — but quite a few people the do not unter­stand Eng­lish, so the choice is obvi­ous… Sorry for any incon­veni­ence caused ;-)

Why is it that when we talk to God we’re said to be pray­ing, but when God talks to us we’re schizophrenic?

You may or may not have heard of it, but Ber­lin (well, Europe, let’s not be too selfish) has been hit by a pretty bad storm. The storm was called “Kyrill” (don’t know its last name though).

Any­way, it was that bad that I crashed for the night at the friends place I was vis­it­ing that night — as, when I was about to leave, the radio said that it would be sui­cide to leave the house right now.

I took a few nice pho­tos that night, but — as my Mac­Book Pro is still in repair — I can’t post­pro­cess them the way I would like to and hence don’t want to upload them yet. Besides, there are soooo many other pic­tures on my cam­era that are groun­ded too… Come on Gravis, fix my damn laptop! Actu­ally, come on Apple, deliver the bloody screen panel that’s hold­ing them up! AAaaaarrrrrrrr!

If you pin your hopes on someone, you often wind up full of holes… [wind, get it? ;-) ]

Oh boy, so many papers to shift through… Not only that, but two more books, a sem­inar to pre­pare and a paper I would like to con­trib­ute to the 2007 Rob­oCup…

Plus there is so many things to do every day in Ber­lin. The city never sleeps, the oppor­tun­it­ies for some cool night time under­tak­ing never cease to be pop up… So many people to meet, so many con­certs to go to, so many pubs to stop by. Oh, how I love that city.

If only I didn’t have to get up half past seven the next morn­ing. But that’s part of grow­ing up I guess. More things to do, less time for it, more responsab­ilites, less room for trivial stuff. But why not, I like it. That’s what we’ve all been work­ing towards, right?

It’s always hum­bling to remem­ber that any­time you think you’ve got­ten away with some­thing, you really haven’t.

As I told you, I got myself a new, decent cam­era. It’s a Sony Alpha 100, Sony’s first DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) cam­era. Well, “first” is not entirely true, as at some stage Sony bought Min­olta of course includ­ing all the intel­lec­tual prop­erty…

Any­way, I’m super-​happy with it, it’s just so much fun to use and the pic­tures are great. I know that’s rather super­fi­cial and sub­ject­ive, but who of you really cares about more details ;-) Along with the cam­era I got the stand­ard Sony 18 – 70mm lens, a 70 – 300mm Tam­ron zoom/​macro lens and an old Min­olta sys­tem flash, besides a bag and some memory.

What I like most about the cam­era is the built in anti shake sys­tem. It phys­ic­ally moves the sensor in oppos­ite dir­ec­tions of your shak­ing and allows you to take pic­tures (depend­ing of course on the focal length and how well you can hold still) of up to 0.5s of expos­ure without a tri­pod, i.e. from bare hands! That way I could take some nice, crisp shots in low light con­di­tions, such as the rose on the left (1/​6s expos­ure at 70mm focal lenght, bare handed!).

As you can see, I would recom­mand that cam­era to almost every­one right away, and it’s not that expens­ive either!

It’s easy to get mar­ried; it’s hard to be selective.

And again it’s been yonks since I last pub­lished a new epis­ode of Pod­pourri…

And, even worse, all I do in todays epis­ode is ask for some more patience, mercy, or whatever you want to call it.

In fair­ness, I don’t think there will be a new epis­ode before Feb­ru­ary, as right now my Mac­Book Pro goes to the “doc­tor” (Apple tech­ni­cian that is) to fix a num­ber of issues, and also I will be super busy get­ting an annoy­ingly large num­ber of things sor­ted con­cern­ing my semi – per­man­ent move to Ire­land (which will hap­pen on 1 Feb.). All will be good… I hope…

How to make a cat drink: Put it in a blender, strain off the fur.