A new game in town

Just found a wonderful inspiring game with music and particles.
Just check out :

http://www.playauditorium.com/

and let me know, what you think..
I am in the winter level and still love it.
Very creative, very different and very beautiful!

Thinking about thinking

Watching an interesting feature about the power of music I wonder if we should focus more on the trivial when researching the functioning of the brain. Why is it, that we can understand non native speakers even if theyr grammar is real bad ? What are the reasons behind such things as different as enjoying music, painting or doing smalltalk ? Maybe we focus way to much on the rational aspects of the brain and should focus more on the irrational, the emotional parts. To me, intelligence is nothing without emotions. But how much influence is there from emotions in the development of the brain. How much influence is there in the correlation of dreaming and intelligence? I deeply believe that dreaming is sort of a repair and learning mechanism, sort of a way to adopt to new experiences by trying out alternatives.

It is over but still it is relaxing

Had a rather different christmas this year. First, no longer member of the club we had a very relaxed winter solstice celebration.
Now we will start with the preparations for the new years eve dinner.
It will be a 5 dishes menu with the theme of "Mozart and its time".

Looking forward to it, expecially cause all our kids are big Mozart fans and love his music at least as much as i do.

Christmas fast approaching

Thank god last friday the release version of the project i am working on was delivered and approved by the customer. Yesterday we launched it and I now can have a really relaxed holiday season.

And with my new umts stick I can be online wherever I am.

And no, I am no internet addict..But a near miss ;) Call me geek and you are never wrong....

Weekend already over again.

The testing showed some minor glitches but overall, the saturday work went rather smoothly. We still have two minor glitches in the whole system but the basic technology finally works smoothly.

It is no longer following my personal design principle for good software (KISS - Keep IT Small, Stupid.)

But hey, I get payed therefore I will obey ;). I still can do it my style with the work I do for the community ;)

(Not really) great news for the evening.

I have to do extra hours on saturday.

And I will be the only technician at work, other than that its only the customer being present.

Great. It could have been a great weekend and now it is just a pile of badly wasted time at the office. (cause either everything that will be tested is ok, or we will have to fix it on monday. I am not the guy with the customer knowledge but rather the technician..But that does not bother anyone ;) )

About off road kids

Heard a great lecture about kids living in the streets and how an organization called "off road kids" helps them in finding back into a normal life.
I will try to support them by spreading the word and maybe collecting some money for the good cause.

To find out more, check out :www.offroadkids.de

Being a year older

Birthday is over and i got some great gifts. First of all, some great gifts handmade by my kids of which I am extremely proud. then a very special edition of "The lord of the rings" in leather all three books combined into one. And a very interesting book about Mozart AND recipes of his lifetime.

But really the greatest thing are the self made presents by my kids. And all three where so excited, much more than i was.

Back from the lecture

I think it was rather successfull and I hope to be one of the first to start a tradition in Mannheim.

Wish all the best for the future of the majug2 and I will for sure watch the further development.

Looking forward to more lectures of which i will listen to on or the other.

preparations for my lecture in Mannheim

Two students and founders of the mannheim java user group have invited me to give a lecture on the usage of java and frameworks in my company.

So i am in final preparations for holding a lecture on software development strategies at the university of mannheim on tuesday.

Looking forward to being in the inspiring environment of a university again.

On majorities

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."

Mark Twain

Committed to change

Back from the parliament I already had two press interviews and one article in its draft version already looks very promising.
As we all as parlamentarians have comitted ourselves to make the change in our life that we want to see in others I am now looking for more ways to save energy or use it wisely.

If you have ideas, why not comment on this entry ?

Final celebration of our success and saying good bye to everybody

And we sure had fun until late at night celebrating the final version of the "Aachen declaration" and that such an incredible crowd did such an incredible work.

Maybe we will meet in two years. And please: Give me a call when the making of "the day before tomorrow starts;)

Final vote, and celebrating the declaration of the first european science parliament on energy

After final votes on the amendments the vote for the first Aachen declaration on energy passed with a big majority.
And we made it on page three of the Aachen Newspaper. In fact the whole page three !!
Then there was time to party so we celebrated our success before we all had to say good bye.
Thanx to all the organizers as well as the members of the parliament for making this a very special experiences and maybe initiate a tradition for further parliaments to come.

Final work and voting for the Aachen declaration. AND IT passed the parlamential vote

The second day was filled with preparation for the parlamential debate in the afternoon.
First, the groups presented their findings and then they presented a conflict for the parliament to vote upon.
After that, the final version of the Declaration was drafted and the parliament was allowed to bring amendments to the parliament. Those were discussed and voted upon and then THE GREAT moment.

Early preparations

Getting up early in the morning for some more research and reading before the second day of science parliament starts. The financial crisis continues, which could turn out to be a chance for change.

Dinner in the evening

After a long parliament day the parlamentarians go for an evening dinner. I join the group going to a sushi restaurant.

Parliament at work in the "aula"

After the working groups we mix and meet in the parliament to check interconnections between the working groups and discuss our strategies.

My working group on personal responsibility

The working groups begin and we start intense discussions on the topics at hand. I am i the personal responsibility group and also in charge of supplying up to date informations to our platform on the internet.
First findings, educate but differently so we really reach the people.

Some impressions from the initial meeting of the european parliament and the first working sessions.
More to come tomorrow as well as the voting for the final draft of the "Aachen Declaration"

First meeting of the parliament

The first meeting of the parliament took place in the main aula.
We were introduced to the code of conduct and what our role as parlamentarians is.

Arrival in Aachen and welcome evening

Arrived in Aachen and participated in the welcome event in the Town Hall of Aachen.
Several speakers, good food and drinks and a very interesting ballett performance with light effects summed up to an very interesting introduction.
We all got name badges which we "enhanced" with our nicknames from the science parliament forum.
Now I am looking forward to the first day of parliament work.
There will even be live blogging, video blogging and more in addition to the special working groups and the parliamental debate in the afternoon.

Final preparations for the parliament

Collecting last numbers and data and already preparing my luggage for the Aachen science parliament. Tomorrow it will begin and I will try make regular updates on what is going on.

Making our own apple juice

This weekend we made our own apple juice. We joined the family of y wive in a very enjoyable yet work intensive weekend. Round about 950 (yes nine hundred fifty) delicious litres finally which we filled in a whole lot of bottles.
And it really tastes sweet with no additional ingredients, just pure juice.

When commercials become satire

Funny, i just watched a bank commercial and to be honest, them mentioning "the company you can trust" itself made me laugh...

Funny how things have changed with the financial crisis.

The intrepid ibex goes beta

Well, the ibex in its alpha appearance is on my sony vaio for a while already and it works smoothly and supports nearly all the hardware despite the well known bug about the brightness of the videocard. But this is a problem of the driver rather than ubuntu. As a bug hunter I found it to be already very stable in its Version 6 release and I am now looking forward to testing the beta.
The update for me today consisted of only 6 files.

Other than that the system got even better with some small changes and a lot of changes on top.
Have a look at www.ubuntu.com for news and the latest images.
I recommend the torrent so you can get and give.

Alive and kicking again ! And deep in research for the science parliament

On german "Tag der deutschen Einheit" I am beginning to get better. Well I am out of bed but still a bit dizzy. So not much to do as today is a holiday but already doing research for the european science parliament again. Found some very interesting sources of information and will have to do a lot of reading, the last few days before I will go to the parliament and be part of a really interesting project.
Here are some videos regarding the Science Parliament.

Being sick and hating it

My stomach is grumbling (not out of anger, at least not this time) and i have to stay in bed for at least another two days. Best thing, i can update this blog and restructure it a bit but there are so many things to do round the house in the moment and i just can't help now.
Well, maybe on the weekend. At least it is bad weather outside, so staying inside is not that hard.

My participation at the first european science parliament

from 9th to 10th of october, the first european science parliament will take place in Aachen, germany.

Participants from all walks of life (students, teachers, scientists, politicians, ngos, citizens) will meet to discuss the future of energy in europe.

And i have been selected as parlamentarian representing the group of citizens together with others.

I will update my blog while at the conference so you wil stay informed on the discussions and the result, the "Aachen resolution" which will be given to the european parliament as a recommendation.

For now, more infos can be found at: www.science-parliament.eu

Katja and her new bicycle

Now our second kid is becoming really mobile. Katja has her first very own bike, a cool cube mountainbike with 7 gears.
And she is really good at bicycling already.

Katjas first school day

Doesn't she look proud ? And for now she really likes going to school and even making homework. I will try my best to keep the spark of interest for knowledge alive.

Our holiday in austria

Some impressions form our holiday in austria, and expecially salzburg, cause our kids are big Mozart fans.

Of course, we visited Mozarts birthplace in Salzburg.

We were really lucky, had a sunny but not too hot day
and could visit all the places, our kids were interested in.