Archive for October, 2003

Citation cereals change.

Thursday, October 30th, 2003

I put a new quote into the citation cereal section to the right – the new one is in German and it is prose, not social science/philosophy as the old one was. Here’s the old one for those that didn’t read it yet:

“Suspicion has rendered us dumb. It is as if the hammer of the critique had rebounded and struck senseless the critic’s head!
“This [text] is also a revision of the critical spirit, a pause in the critique, a meditation on the urge for debunking, for the too quick attribution of the naive belief in others. The devotees are not dumb. It is not that critique is no longer needed, but rather that it has, of late, become too cheap.
“One could say, with more than a little dose of irony, that there has been a sort of miniaturization of critical efforts: what in the past centuries required the formidable effort of a Marx, a Nietzsche, a Benjamin, has become accessible for nothing […] You can now have your Baudrillard’s or your Bourdieu’s disillusion for a song, your Derridian deconstruction for a nickel. Conspiracy theory costs nothing to produce, disbelief is easy, debunking what is learned in 101 classes in critical theory.” (Bruno Latour 2002, Iconoclash)

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!