Archive for July, 2003

T3 preview.

Thursday, July 31st, 2003

Yes, that’s correct – I’ll go and watch a Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines preview tonight. Olli acquired the tickets, and I’ll take off in a few minutes to be there in time for popcorn and advertisement guessing. Check out the Trailers 1 2 3 4 and a review.

Ever got involved in the car-rental-price-comparison business?

Wednesday, July 30th, 2003

Don’t. It is a morass that could easily swallow your sanity.

*sigh*

Wednesday, July 30th, 2003

It had been time. I’ve been away from Choriner Strasse, away from Berlin for almost three weeks. As I’ve realized, this is pretty long, especially if one spends most of the time in Darmstadt. It is quite refreshing to be back and watch the capital crowd moving through the streets and flaneuring below our balcony.

The real holidays are almost there (I’ll be gone during most of August). However, actually being here in Berlin can be relaxing too. I would never have believed that I would say that seven years ago, when I was living in quiet Kiel ;-)

Offline until Monday.

Saturday, July 26th, 2003

Another wedding… This weekend Kerstin, Christian, Maja and yours truly will be celebrating the wedding of Jascha and Sabine! Later today we’ll introduce Chr and Maja to one of the local Biergartens here in Darmstadt – at least if they arrive before nineish. There seem to be some heavy traffic jams on the way from Berlin to Darmstadt. Poor them. Hopefully, it won’t take us too long to get to Tübingen tomorrow. Perhaps we’ll drive through the Odenwald. As we all know, the shortest way is not necessarily the fastet…

Hmpf.

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2003

Gestern waren wir in Bruce Allmächtig. Der Film hat berechtigterweise nur eine Bewertung von 6,5 von 10 möglichen Punkten in der IMDb, ich würde ihn sogar noch schlechter Bewerten. Warum? Weil ich eh kein besonders großer Fan von Jim Carey bin und weil der Film eine so unangenehme individualistische Ideologie verbreitet. Bruce wird mit göttlicher Macht ausgestattet. Was tut er damit? Nur Dinge, die sich und sein privates Umfeld betreffen (und dabei noch die gesamte Umwelt in Mitleidenschaft ziehen und nahezu anarchistische Verhältnisse herbeiführen). Nachdem er damit konfrontiert wird, sieht er sich völlig außerstande, diese allgemeinen Probleme zu lösen. Natürlich geht alles gut aus, doch auf dem Weg zum Happy End in Zweierbeziehung und Angestelltenverhältnis verlangt Gott von Bruce noch ein Gebet zur Anerkennung seiner Macht. Erst betet Bruce für den Frieden auf Erden; dieses Gebet lehnt Gott jedoch mit den Worten ab, das sei ja allenfalls ein gutes Gebet für eine Misswahl. Derart zurechtgewiesen betet Bruce dann schließlich nur für sich beziehungsweise für seine Exfreundin. Ergo, sei nicht am Gemeinwohl interessiert, da kann man als einfacher Mensch eh nichts machen. Lebe Dein privates Interesse und es wird schon alles Gut werden. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Nichts desto trotz gibt es einige lustige Szenen in dem Film, die sollte man in Form von Trailern und Clips konsumieren und sich Zeit und Geld für einen anderen Film sparen.

Updated to Blosxom 2.0.

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2003

Today I updated from version 2.0rc5 to version number 2.0. Not a lot of code was changed, so I guess there shouldn’t be any trouble for you. If something is not working correctly on your browser/machine, please tell me.

There’s another minor technical detail to report: finally this blog actually validates as correct HTML 4.01 Transitional. As inquiring minds might have found out there was one incorrectly tagged post at the end of the queue which falls out with the posting of this entry. Yay!

It’s too darn hot.

Monday, July 21st, 2003

I want to apologize for the absence of posts during the last days. Right now my weather app reports 36° C. Kerstin and I are living a vegetable’s life here in southwestern Germany. However, yesterday we spent a very nice and refreshing afternoon at the Griesheim outdoor pool. After languishing a bit more here in the Arbeitsraum in Darmstadt, we’ll probably be back to the pool with a big *sigh* later today.
After that we’ll have a tête à tête barbecue with lots of cold beverages on our balcony… Hopefully we’ll have a big thunderstorm soon, things are really drying up. Especially those supposedly greyish and squishy things in my head.

What are you doing to cope with the heat? Any refreshing tips and strategies to offer?

35° Celsius?!

Wednesday, July 16th, 2003

Das sagt die Wettervorhersage für morgen. Kerstin, viel Spaßbei der Anreise im PKW… Ich war gerade im Woog (d.h. im öffentlichen Badesee hier) und werd mir nun mit einem meiner Mitbewohner zusammen eine Pizza gönnen. Bisher hatte ich noch keine einzige leckere Pizza hier in Darmstadt – vielleicht wird’s ja die Premiere, der Laden ist uns jedenfalls schon mehrfach empfohlen worden. Ich werde berichten. Und schwitzen.

Archive added.

Tuesday, July 15th, 2003

Since a significant part of the entries that I made is not visible anymore I added an archive in the column to the right. Just click on the links to see the entries that were posted during the respective month.

Bruno Latour. Iconoclash.

Tuesday, July 15th, 2003

Ein schöner, kurzer Text (76 Seiten, viele Bilder, Merve-Format). Latours Stil ist immer wieder anregend, offen und scheut sich nicht vor peinlichen Ausrufezeichen. Die Parallelisierung und gleichzeitige Unterscheidung zwischen Wissenschaft, Religion und Kunst ist spannend. Mir gefiel besonders der Typ der ‘acheiropoiete’. Ich verspüre zwar immer ein gewisses Unbehagen bei solchen klassizistischen Begriffen, aber der Typus der ‘acheiropoiete’ ist spannend. Gemeint sind Gegenstände, denen zugeschrieben wird, das sie nicht von Menschenhand geschaffen sind, wie beispielsweise die 10 Gebote, die von Gott kommen. Sind sind sakral und sind durch ihre Fremdgeschaffenheit nicht den Kriterien menschlicher Kritik unterworfen. Gleichzeitig jedoch liegt der geschaffene Charakter, die menschliche Arbeit und das menschliche Handeln in solcher Gegenständen und Ikonen offen zu Tage.

Die Zerstörung solcher Gegenstände, der ikonoklastische Akt, ist ebenfalls zwiespältig, denn er vollführt selbst eine bildliche Geste. Das zur Schau stellen, das Feiern der Zerstörung ist selbst ein Bild und reiht sich auf merkwürdige Weise selbst wieder in die Ikonenproduktion ein.

Diese Zwiespältigkeit, die dem Entlarven und Enthüllen von Täuschungen innewohnt, führt Latour zu einem programmatischen Statement: In Iconoclash stellt er der Einfachheit des (vermeintlichen) Entlarvens von Naivität einen komplexeren Anspruch an Kritik gegenüber. Kritik muss sich den Doppeldeutigkeiten des Lebens stellen; das Einfache Volk ist komplexer als von einer pseudointellektuellen Elite, die sich schick der Dekonstruktion und Desillusionierung verschrieben hat, immer wieder unterstellt wird. Das heisst nicht, dass Kritik falsch wäre. Nach Latour ist Kritik oft zu billig.

Wir wollen uns also anstrengen. Wir wollen die Mühen der Komplextität und der Doppeldeutigkeiten nicht scheuen und in den Alltag und seine vielfältigen Deutungsmuster einsteigen! Wir wollen die von uns dabei erzeugten Bilder mitreflektieren und unsere eigene Schuld eingestehen! (Zeit für ein paar Ausrufezeichen. hehe.)

Ein hübsches Zitat aus dem Text findet sich übrigens in den gestern neu eingerichteten citation cereals in der rechten Spalte dieses Blogs. Wer gerne mehr von Latour lesen möchte kann das umsonst und ganz legal machen, denn der Gute hat auf seiner Internetseite fast alle seine Bücher und Texte zur allgemeinen Verfügung gestellt.

Back from science + fiction and bustling Karlsruhe.

Monday, July 14th, 2003

The exhibition was good, we had a nice guide. You should probably check it out yourself. This is a link to the brain that they had on display. They also had some other interesting exhibitions and installations at the ZKM and they also had the obligatory nice museum book store. After being pointed to an interesting book by my co-Kollegiat Lars Meier (Urban Encounters by Helen Liggett) I spent some money for the mentioned book and for Iconoclash by Bruno Latour. Now I am feeling somewhat more like an intellectual again.
On Friday, we had the opportunity to see some Nanotechnology dinosaurs from the University of Karlsruhe. They were acting as one would expect: After some people were asking critical questions about nanotechnology in general one of the first questions they asked us (the members of the Graduiertenkolleg) was “Who of you studied physics? Chemistry? Mathematics?”. Well, looks like we’re not qualified… ;-) It was fun anyway especially since we were werved water and juice in measuring glasses that are usally used in labs.
Besides the work-related things that we saw, we also had some time to roam around the city. I must say that I am positively impressed. There was a lot of life on the street up until late in the night. Is this because of the proximity to France? Is it because of the climate? Whatever it’s causes, it was quite a striking difference to the Darmstadt experience. Although… yesterday, Sir Elton John gave a concert here in Darmstadt. See?

Vacation and physical exercise? We play croquet.

Friday, July 11th, 2003

Plans for our collective trip to France are ripening. They are inspired by this beautiful page. You should really take a look at this page.
If you are interested in the rules of croquet, it’s history and such, check out this page. It is maintained by Dr. Ian Plummer, Oxford, UK. That should be enough of a recommendation.
The biggest questions for this year’s trip to France and the beautiful village of Pomy are: Will we have an adequate lawn? Will we have authentic equipment and, most important: Who will serve the Raffaelo?

Less entries visible.

Thursday, July 10th, 2003

To make access to the blog a bit faster again, I reduced the number of entries that will be shown on this page from 40 to 30. If you think I should keep the entry list longer, even if it has a negative impact on the time it takes for this page to appear on your screen, say so.

Some more optimizations.

Thursday, July 10th, 2003

Yesterday I finished fiddling with the HTML and CSS code of my web pages. *sigh*

You probably won’t notice any differences, but everything is much better now. ;-) The blog displays exactly as it should in a ton of different browsers: Internet Explorer 5.0 on Win98, 6.0 on WinXP, 5.23 on MacOS X, several different Mozilla/Firebird/Camino builds on different platforms, Opera 6.02, and Safari (which uses a tweaked version of the rendering engine of Konqueror on Linux). Only the trusty iCab has it’s usual problems with the correct rendering of pretty basic CSS code. But the page still works nicely even in iCab.
The code for my other pages has undergone some optimizations too. It might now be rendering a tad bit faster. It has also been revised to be even more accessible to handicapped people, and people with text browsers or slow connections. Hopefully this also has a positive impact on my google ranking, because I am now using the appropriate tags wherever possible (i.e. I am formatting the contents list using list tags, I am formatting my contact information using the address tag etc.)

It is valid.

Tuesday, July 8th, 2003

Hey Ho! After some more experimenting with the way blosxom works, I finally came up with a tuned version that validates both as HTML and as CSS. As you know, I never ever want to brag, but this is quite a feat!
There is only one small caveat: Some of the entries in this blog contain special characters, which I didn’t encode properly during the beginning of my blogging life. I won’t change these; they will eventually vanish as I will write more entries. If I would change them now, they would all have a changed date and accordingly appear under today’s heading. We don’t want this. No. Just enjoy the new Valid HTML and Valid CSS logos in the column to the right.

Oh, when will it arrive?

Tuesday, July 8th, 2003

The city of Neverwinter is in great peril. And only Timo and I can save it. There is a big obstacle blocking our way to the rescue, though. It is called lame progress in porting NWN to the Mac. Bioware, the producer of this and related Games taking place in the Forgotten Realms of AD&D, seems to be almost ready with the game, things are obviously delayed by the publishing house, MacSoft. Get your act together, so that Timo and I can save those poor people from dying! Slaughter some monsters!

Up until the great day when I will find the game box in my mail, I have to bridge time and space by relying on the computer hardware accessible here in Darmstadt, using a … windows … machine. That’s how hard it is.

New comments layout.

Monday, July 7th, 2003

Since I implemented the comment function in this blog I have been unhappy with it’s layout. Today I dug a little deeper into the way the comment stuff works (the “writeback plugin”). Interpreting the bones and shards that I found in the hole that i dug, I was able to generate a new, hopefully more pleasing layout for you. Any feedback or comments? ;-)

Haunted by the past.

Sunday, July 6th, 2003

It was predictable. After severeal years of watching people wear plateau boots it was becoming clearer and clearer: sooner or later even the eighties will be making their way back into fashion. I am ambivalent about this whole thing. On one hand, there is a certain resignative, shaking-my-head sense of disbelief about why people would do this; on the other hand, there definitely is some potential for amusement in this. Even if it borders on sarcasm.
Today, however, I am in a state of shock. Checking out Apple’s Movie Trailers web page I saw a link to … Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights!! Trailer, official website. Please, let it be a flop!

Ich versteh nur Bahnhof.

Friday, July 4th, 2003

Habe heute den ersten Stapel Bücher über Bahnhöfe aus der Bibliothek abgeholt. Spannend. Werde in der nächsten Zeit über die interessanteren Titel berichten.

Productive travelling.

Friday, July 4th, 2003

During today’s railroading from Berlin to Frankfurt I suffered a real outburst of productivity. Being ignorantly creative, I had to hastily stuff my stuff into my bag so that I wouldn’t miss leaving the train on time at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. How could that happen? What did I do? I read all the exposés for this and last week (ok, this doesn’t sound too exciting) and I made an outline for my presentation at the colloquium Space, Place, Power, offered by Martina Löw and Helmuth Berking. But what’s even more astonishing: I also prepared my first presentation via laptop+projector (using Apple’s Keynote, not Microsoft Powerpoint, as you hopefully would have guessed). So, people at the colloquium will witness my first dabblings into digital presentation technology.
Formwise, I will be following established standards. Contentwise, I will try to do a Different Thing™. Stay tuned for more information. I will probably put the presentation online after I gave it. Perhaps in a “Manifesto” style…