everyday. periphery.

Blog

  • Vacation and physical exercise? We play croquet.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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?

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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…

  • Small steps.

    Yesterday and today I did some more research regarding the subjects train station and passenger terminals. Surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be that available on the web, at least in German. There are many sites where you can read minor variations on the anti-surveillance-Foucault’s-Panoticon-exclusion-of-the-homeless theme – this is an important and central problem of contemporary cities and their public or semi-public spaces – however, this definitely doesn’t cover the intricacies and sublime effects of urban/spatial/technological design on social action. So, I’ll see what I will find in the texts that I ordered via internet at the libraries in Darmstadt. (I still can’t believe I managed to make those orders and start the real bibliographic work – a true burst of productivity!)

    Still, I found one or two interesting things. Following, a few links (all of these sites are in German):
    on urban space: stadtraum.org, transitraum
    on train stations: diskus, Bahnhofsoffensive gegen Rassismus (derive), INNENSTADT-AG Frankfurt, Rund um den Bahnhof (Schweiz), TAZ Artikel 25.01.02, and a historic essay on train stations
    on video surveillance: spotoff

  • The weekend.

    The trip into the Brandenburgian province was worth it. We took a train to Chorin, rode our bicycles to the Parstein lake where you can find a great spot to swim and refresh yourself in the water. *aaahhhh* Then we raced down into the valley of the river Oder and rode on the dike through the southern parts of the Nationalpark Unteres Odertal. Getting somewhat tired and we wanted to go to the closest train station after that. We went to Oderberg. And found out pretty soon that the station has been shut down a while ago :-( Well, it was only a 12km ride to Bad Freienwalde…

    There is one more thing to tell you about this weekend:
    Olli had his first public gig! He sang the future chartbreaker Kastanienallee in a club called Bad Kleinen. Of course, it was a great success!>

  • Another movie highlight from Scandinavia.

    Yesterday we saw Fucking Åmal. With a by now typical camera, we’re introduced into the adolescent life in a small Swedish town. It’s a high school movie. It’s a nice movie. I repeatedly found myself surprised by the way the story turned (or did not turn). The two main characters, Agnes and Elin, are portraied and played really well, and they create an enchanting story. No cheerleading though and (almost) no basketball… Mac geeks will be rewarded too.
    Check out a fan page with links to different trailers, wallpapers etc. here.>

  • Getting out, getting to a lake.

    This is the motto for this weekend. After today’s wedding party in the Manzini’s, we’ll need a break from urban space – a break from reflective thinking and discussing dissertation blah. A trip to one of the farther lakes in the Mecklenburgische Seenplate is in order. Some of these lakes are quite deep. Hopefully the water is still somewhat cool and refreshing, even after all these weeks of warm weather. Bathing in lake should of course be combined with nurturing yourself with food from the same, a nice fresh fish! Yum. Yum Yum. And then some relaxation. Cool evening air and a light breeze.
    Well, know you know why you shouldn’t be surprised if I won’t blog anything this weekend. It for the weather to decide about this.

  • Getting rid of the toughest obstacles.

    One of the major hurdles on the way to finishing my dissertation was taken today. I now am a proud bearer of an ID card for the Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek Darmstadt (the library I will use mainly here in Darmstadt). And, I do not only have a standard student ID, no no, I have a special feature member-of-the-TU-Darmstadt-staff ID. What a feat! Now everything else looks like it could be done with the wink of an eyelid.

  • Dämlich.

    Mist. Es ist schon wieder passiert. Der wohl häufigste und nervigste Fehler beim Verschicken von Mails: ich habe vergessen, das Attachment anzuhängen…
    Übrigens: wenn Ihr diese Seite Bookmarken wollt, müsst Ihr ganz einfach Strg+D (bei Windows) oder Apfel+D (beim Mac OS) drücken. (Linuxer wissen wie’s geht.)

  • Na? Mal vorbeischauen?

    Heute hab’ ich vielen Leuten meine neue Anschrift in Griesheim gemailt, vielleicht finden ja einige davon den Weg von meiner Mail auf diese Seite…
    Für Menschen aus meiner ehemaligen Stufe: Ich habe mittlerweile Adressen von 26 Leuten aus unserem Abijahrgang. Das reicht noch nicht! Wer mir also noch keine Adressen gesandt hat: E-Mail an mich schicken :-)
    Ansonsten muss ich sagen, dass dieser Sommer sich ziemlich gut anlässt – das Wetter hier in Darmstadt ist schon seit Wochen tipp topp. Es wäre eigentlich mal wieder an der Zeit, den Grill anzuwerfen. Doch heute Abend wird Sybille in Space, Place, Power über die Geschichte des Potsdamer Platzes sprechen und da geh ich natürlich hin!

  • Colors. An overwhelming amount of colors. And landscape. Lots of Landscape.

    This Monday I went to see Hero. It was gorgeous. I have only seen very, very few movies with such great aesthetics. If you like movies that create a sense of wonder about what the world could look like, this is a movie for you. It also has some martials arts fighting scences, but, please!, don’t let them keep you from watching this movie – it is a great work of art. If you were enchanted by the fighting scenes in the bamboo woods in Hidden Tiger, Crouching Dragon by Ang Lee, then you will really like this movie. The movie is slow, not your general action laden eastern, and it has a story with pathos (and some interesting turns). I think it is one of the most aesthetically pleasing movies I ever saw. You might want to check out the trailer. Enjoy!

  • Welcome to the world of audio chatting.

    Yesterday Apple presented new stuff. I would definitely like to have one of the new G5 machines, but I surely won’t have the money. Panther is a different thing – I’m looking forward to Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) very much, I only fear that it won’t run too well on my old iBook and the Pismo that I have. The Panther release might be time for getting the 900Mhz G3 processor update for the Pismo.

    But I do want to write about another thing Apple published yesterday: iChat AV, the new version of Apple’s chat program. Kerstin and I installed it and it works beautifully. I am very impressed. It is full duplex (i.e. both people can talk and listen at the same time), and the sound quality is very good. There are only a few dropouts now and then, but we might get that optimized sooner or later. It’s gorgeous. Our phone bill is quite likely to shrink by a certain amount.
    The only problem I had was with my overly restrictive firewall setting and with getting the audio in to the G4 at home, but after some cooperative hacking of the firewall (thanks Kerstin!) and some plugging in and out of cables and devices (thanks Chr!) everything is vanilla.

  • Neue Abi-Adressen – unverhofft kommt…

    Na, dass war ja mal ne Überraschung. Bei meinen gelegentlichen Checks der AEG-Alumni Homepage bin ich doch glatt auf einen neuen Eintrag gestoßen. Wunderbar – das Projekt 10-jähriges Abijubiläum ist wieder etwas nähergerückt.

  • Guest Entry Trial by Chr

    This is just to try if I am granted access to these selected pages by virtue of the password I was generously given on another occasion.

    IT WORKED!!! But now duty in the form of the tedious job of appartment-hunting calls. See ya later, as the Aussie likes to put it (even when the chances of seeing again later come close to being zero).