Archive for 2003

Moving pictures.

Thursday, October 30th, 2003

Yay! Yesterday I finally got the camera which I need for my dissertation project. I am going to make short video cuts in ferry passenger terminals and train stations and will then analyze them in detail. As the camera wasn’t delivered with a FireWire cable I can’t yet transfer the video recordings from camera to Mac, but as soon as I am back home I will be able to do this and perhaps present you with a few neat clips to awe at.

If you are wondering what camera I chose: it is a Canon MVX100i.

Back to school.

Wednesday, October 29th, 2003

This week the real semester began here in Darmstadt. Yours truly will now be loitering around in the college’s office again and have more time and leisure to post stuff here in the blog. At least he hopes so.

Improved layout.

Wednesday, October 29th, 2003

That was a surprisingly easy solution: On the Post-Graduate College’s homepage that I coded one sometimes had more than one scrollbar to navigate the contents of a page – which was pretty confusing. After setting up the page and doing the initial corrections and adaptations I was not especially eager to do even more work on this page so this issue has been lingering for some time. But not anymore! It was an easy fix, I just had to change the overflow attribute of the div elements that I was using to format the layout: I had set them to auto, putting trust into the browser’s abilities to do the right thing; now I changed it to visible and the additional scrollbars disappeared.

Sorting screws.

Sunday, October 26th, 2003

The last days I made some slow progress in the sorting-of-screws-project. Sorting-of-screws-project? Kerstin and I are currently tidying up our small storage room and a multitude of screws showed up during this tidying up. I think I have now about 20 different categories of screws lying at the table besides the keyboard I am typing on right now. Some of these categories should be merged, I think. Especially those with less than five specimen total. At the end of this process, the world will be a much better place.

Entertainment and french cooking.

Thursday, October 23rd, 2003

Yesterday Kerstin and I went to see Jet Lag (original title: Décalage horaire) starring Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno. One thing is remarkable about this movie: Jean Reno probably has the tiredest look I have ever seen in cinema yet. And it is nice to see how he and Juliette Binoche’s character’s looks change over the course of the movie. Both actors are, of course, grand. The story is nice enough and explicitly Hollywood-style, so one knows what to expect. These hopes won’t be disappointed – if you are looking for a nice french/american movie with good actors and some well-done (heh) cooking and eating scenes, this is to be recommended. (Check out the Trailer.)

Fussball und Familie.

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2003

Am vergangenen Donnerstag waren wir im Wunder von Bern – der Film schien dem ungewöhnlich gemischten Publikum in der Kulturbrauerei gut gefallen zu haben (mehr Familien und ältere/echt erwachsene Menschen als sonst in der 20:15 Uhr Vorstellung). Die Schauspieler machen ihre Sache gut bis sehr gut, die Mischung aus Sport- und Kriegsheimkehrergeschichte funktioniert auch, Kulisse und Ausstattung sind nett, es wird in angemessenem Maße auf die Tränendrüse gedrückt und sportliche Spannung gibt es auch. Insgesamt ein Film, den man nicht gesehen haben muss, der aber auch ohne weitere Bedenken von nicht-Fussballfans und nicht-Männern angeschaut werden kann.

Dieser Beitrag ist wieder mal unterwegs verfasst, deswegen keine Links…

Aufgezeichnet.

Friday, October 17th, 2003

Dieses Mal hat es endlich geklappt – ich habe den aktuellen Beitrag des DLF aufgenommen und den Abschnitt über das Kolleg als MP3-Datei ins Netz gestellt. Viel Spaß beim Hören!

Neue Sendung des DLF.

Friday, October 17th, 2003

Der nächste Beitrag über unser Doktorandencamp wird heute um 14:35 Uhr ausgestrahlt. Es gibt auch einen Live-Stream des DLF. Ich werde versuchen, diese Sendung dann endlich mal aufzuzeichnen und als MP3 ins Netz zu stellen…

Am 16. Oktober geändert: Information bezüglich der benötigten Abspielsoftware korrigiert.

Nächste Sendung über das “Doktorandencamp”.

Thursday, October 16th, 2003

Donnerstag den 16. Oktober ab 14.05 Uhr wird die nächste Sendung ausgestrahlt. Wenn ich wieder zu Hause bin, poste ich auch das Link zum Livestream und zur Webseite von Campus&Karriere beim DLF.

Am 16. Oktober geändert: Fehler im HTML Code korrigiert.

Still in the mountains.

Tuesday, October 14th, 2003

If you wonder why there is another posting gap – I have been on a conference in Darmstadt from at the end of last week and until tomorrow I am in the Harz Mountains in Germany. Yesterday we walked up the Brocken – with 1142m the highest mountain of northern Germany. It was my first time on the Brocken and the view over the northern plains in all directions was staggering.

Do not watch it.

Saturday, October 11th, 2003

This tuesday I have been watching The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen together with Chr and Andi. I don’t know if it is cheesy or tacky – it’s been one of the worst movies that I have been seen in months. Dialogues are not bad enough to be funny, the characters are too plain, and even the special effects are cheap. Probably the only thing that was interesting about the movie was that it was the first movie in which I perceived direct borrowings from The Lord of the Rings both in attempting to produce a culture specific design (here for Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, his equipment and the clothes of the crew) and in the way some of the shots were done. Bad thing is: nothing done in this movie does even come close to LotR… The only thing I liked were the characters of Dorian Gray and Mina – and that is probably because of my Buffy-phily (for Mina the vampire they copied another special effect, that of Konrad from X-Men 2).

Apologies for not including any links into this post – I am currently sitting in the train and don’t have the network resources to search for appropriate links and reviews.

French remake of a french movie.

Thursday, October 2nd, 2003

Yesterday we went to watch Swimming Pool in our local cinema. The film, directed by François Ozon who also did 8 Women is a nice example of a movie centered on very few people, a movie where not to many things happen, and not a lot of different places are used to stage the plot. It is centered around a swimming pool, an old and a young woman and a few men. The acting of everybody involved is very good, and the camera makes many shots that are quite close to people – without being too artistic or too Dogma-like. If you are looking for a well-done quiet movie with some funny and embarrassing moments, and some sublime suspense building up in the course of the movie this is well worth the money and time.

By the way, as hinted in the heading, this is the remake of a classic movie with Alain Delon and Romy Schneider: La Piscine. I haven’t seen this one yet, so if you know it, tell me how it is…

Ah, I almost forgot: the main male actor has a nice role-matching name: Jean-Marie Lamour. What’s even more: he’s wearing a moustache!

Significant growth in Linux share.

Tuesday, September 30th, 2003

Hear, hear: in the course of the last weeks my web server log service (SiteMeter) reports a growing amount of visitors using Linux… How could that be? ;-)

Neuer Report des Deutschlandfunks.

Friday, September 26th, 2003

Gestern hat der Deutschlandfunk einen neuen Teil des Features über das Graduiertenkolleg (bzw. das ‘Doktoranden-Camp’) gesendet. Unter dem Titel Stress im Doktoranden-Camp wird über die neuesten Entwicklungen im Kolleg berichtet. Leider habe ich die Benachrichtigung über den Sendetermin erst zu spät bekommen und konnte den Live-Stream der Sendung nicht mehr aufzeichnen.

That was quite a bit of work.

Wednesday, September 24th, 2003

A few minutes ago I put the new official website of my post-graduate college online. Take a look – I hope you like it. If have a moment of spare time you could check the site with different browsers and tell me if you encounter particular problems. One disclaimer: the layout does not work well with 4.x versions of Netscape. I would recommend updating to a browser using the Gecko engine, i.e. a Mozilla related browser.

Nerve wracking and exhausting.

Wednesday, September 24th, 2003

I have to tell you that even if you’re only the friend not the person affected, job interviews can be really exhausting. I’m almost down and out from the last days. Wouldn’t want to be in Kerstin’s shoes…

Neue Sendung im Deutschlandfunk in den nächsten Tagen.

Sunday, September 21st, 2003

Unser Reporter und Begleiter, der Journalist Ludger Fittkau, hat den Kollegiaten mitgeteilt, dass die nächste Sendung des DLF dieser Tage, voraussichtlich am Montag ausgestrahlt wird. Ich werde den genauen Sendetermin hier posten, sobald ich ihn weiß. Hier noch einmal der Link zur vergangenen Sendung “Besuch im Doktoranden-Camp“.

I will get better again.

Sunday, September 21st, 2003

Sorry about the lack of updates to my blog during the last two weeks. Updates will come out more regularly as the start of the next semester draws closer, weather gets worse again and I reduce the online gaming time with Neverwinter Nights.

New homepage for the Graduiertenkolleg.

Tuesday, September 16th, 2003

Soon I will change the layout of our post-graduate college’s homepage – it is utterly ugly and confusing now. You should take a look and try to navigate a bit. It’s embarassing. I hope you’ll like the new layout: it will have no tables, it will be W3C conform, more accessible for handicapped people, no frames – but, it doesn’t work well with Netscape 4.x …
A test page will go online in a few days, I would appreciate any feedback then.

Easier than expected.

Tuesday, September 16th, 2003

A few days ago I contacted the DB AG (German railway) with regards to my study; asking them for permission to do my observations, take photographs and record video. I sent them an e-mail expecting to wait a while for a response and having to re-adress somebody else in the DB hierarchy… However, next morning somebody tried to call me via phone and after being unsuccessful sent me an e-mail asking me to get back to him the following day. I did, and it was a brief and professional question answer interaction with the result that I will get written permission for all the things that I wanted to do for all the respective stations I want to look at. I am even allowed to make recordings in the ticket sale areas (these are owned/managed by DB Reise&Touristik, the stations belong to Station&Service. Thank you Deutsche Bahn. This was very helpful for me. Now the real work can begin!