everyday. periphery.

Blog

  • In trockenen Tüchern.

    So, zur Abwechslung mal in deutsch. Und zwar weil ich den Ausdruck in trockenen Tüchern so gerne mag. Stellt sich bloss die Frage, was nun eigentlich in trockenen Tüchern ist. Es ist: Der Sommerurlaub. Warum? Weil das alte Mietkautionskonto endlich freigegeben worden ist. Jo.
    Und sonst? Hier ist’s Wetter netter als daheim, was mich ja schon mal erfreut; desweiteren werd ich heute Abend wohl zum ersten mal seit vielen Monaten wieder eine Runde Neverwinter Nights mit Timo dädeldaddeln. Sozusagen in Vorbereitung auf das (hoffentlich baldige) Erscheinen der NWN Mac Version. Die hätte ja eigentlich schon vor einem Jahr fertig sein sollen, aber manchmal ist der Mac dann doch eine exklusivere Plattform als ich es mir wünschen würde.
    Bis Timo so weit ist, werde ich vielleicht noch mal ein paar Buffy Folgen aus der finalen Staffel rekapitulieren, auf dem Schlossplatz wandeln, mir einen kleinen Snack besorgen und ein bisschen das Treiben anschauen. Und vielleicht auch noch ein bisschen mit meinen Liebsten chatten.

  • Cambridge, my balcony, and Sunnydale.

    This is a selection of the spaces over which yesterday evening’s most relevant events were distributed. After finishing the asparagus season with a fine meal, shared between Florian, Chr, Sofie and myself, Florian left to catch his plane back to Cambridge. I hope that there’ll soon be some time and money for a trip to Cambridge. Haven’t punted through the Cam yet. After Florian left, the rest of the crowd gathered on the balcony, enjoying the vegetation and the mild air. More interesting stories relating to intestinal activities were told ;-) and some more white wine was consumed. As time passed and the sun went down Chr got himself involved in old-school telecommunication while Sofie and I started to visit Sunnydale as it was presented in the last two Buffy episodes (7×07 and 7×08 – to say it again, 7×07 was really scary and definitely one of the best episodes I’ve seen yet. Then finally Kerstin and Olli trickled in too and we saw this week’s episode: 7×09 – Never Leave Me. It’s still not clear what will happen to Giles, and, quite a surprise, it looks like some old fiends from the first season come back into play. So the circle closes itself. It fits just perfectly that Olli bought the First Season DVD – thanks Olli!

    Now, what about the space issue? Analysis of this peculiar socio-ficitonal-space is up to you. Any spaces more relevant than others? Why? Fun being back to school, isn’t it?

  • Getting started.

    It’s not an easy task. I am still working around my dissertation, not on it. This doesn’t seem to be a kind of behavior that is easily changed – I always have to complete all kinds of “infrastructure related tasks” first, and then I can start with the real work. Might be a good thing, though. It signifacantly trims down the number of possible excuses and makes the later work experience somewhat smoother.
    Well, what are the things that do I have to do before I will make the first observations? I have to get IDs for the libraries in Darmstadt, I have to organize a DV camcorder, and I have to read some more literature about harbours, train stations, and video analysis. Urgh. Too much stuff in the pipeline. However, I guess will get some of it done or at least started next week, because I will stay in Darmstadt from coming Thursday until Friday next week…

  • Monday in Japan.

    Sabu. Know the name? I didn’t know it but I will try to remember it from now on (his real name is Hiroyuki Tanaka, probably too complicated to remember for my measly mind). Thursday at eight p.m. I went to the Audimax of the TU Darmstadt where the university’s filmclub shows movies every Tuesday and Thursday for only € 2. The screen is big and the quality of sound and picture nice enough. The movie itself was very good. Slow shots but a lot of crazy content that develeops it’s own speed. I’m not too much into the content summary business. As I myself prefer to not know much about a movie before I watch I won’t say too much about the story and events in this movie. (Trailer)

    There are a lot of tragic and funny ideas in this movie and the way tragedy and humor are handled reminded me of a good article I read in the May issue of Le Monde diplomatique (in Deutsch, in English). In this article, Milan Kundera (I didn’t like The Unbearable Lightness of Being, sorry) writes about what tragedy and humor in a novel could (or should?) be like – what he describes is similar to what I enjoyed most about the movie. Why the change of mind about Kundera’s writing, you might ask… he likes and cites Cervantes’ Don Quixote. This ensures my sympathy for his text. It’s quite easy to satisfy my intellectual expectations ;-)

  • On the train again.

    Again sitting in the ICE from Frankfurt to Berlin, I am hoping that the train will be late by about 35 to 40 minutes. In Frankfurt we were only late by about 15 minutes. Only? Wanting to be late?! Yes, yes, yes, yes. Why?

    1. If I am late I might be able to get some compensation in form of a voucher from the DB.
    2. Kerstin works until midnight. If I am late I might get picked up at the train station!

    Convinced? I hope.

  • A place of boiling heat and rattlesnakes.

    It’s too damn hot. Says Ella and she’s right. And we don’t even have time to go swimming. And the Woog’s (outdoor swimming pool/lake here in Darmstadt) temperature will probably be too high to be refreshing anyway. Therefore, I’ll try to doze through the afternoon dreaming about a Gespritzter in the Biergarten.

  • The First Season! On DVD!

    Great news from Buffyland – our favourite guest and co-Buffy-watcher made a present to the WG yesterday: The first season of Buffy. Episodes 1-12 on DVD with audio commentary and an interview. So exciting. After watching yesterday’s episode from the final season (7×08 – we’re now getting to the scary basics of this season’s evil) we immediately watched the first two episodes. Very good dialogues. Thanks to DVD technology we could watch the episodes OmU style and therefore enjoy the subtleties of the witty exchanges. Alyson Hannigan is as cute as one could wish, everybody has weird hair and we had a lot of fun. Butter, I mean better, than I expected.

  • Rabbit-Proof Fence (Deutscher Titel: A Long Way Home)

    Good Movie. Go watch it yourself.

    Pleasantly modest in its implementation of aesthetic features like special light, music and mystic effects. It’s the story of the three girls and a, somewhat tragic, grand civilizator. It’s a good story.

  • Tomorrow is another Buffy Day!

    Yesterday, Kerstin, Olli, Christian and I watched last week’s Buffy episode Conversations With Dead People (season 7, episode 7). Spooky and very funny. It was mostly story telling in preparation for the following episodes I guess, and we got to see some super baddies from the previous season – who didn’t fare very well, I guess. It was a relief to know that we don’t have to wait long until we can watch the next episode. Perhaps our franco-canadian friend will be able to join us tomorrow. I’ll report this too, of course…

  • Slowly getting back into gears.

    The trip to Buchholz, the wedding, and the transition back to Berlin got me out of my slowly-establishing-itself routine. So I spent most of the day on the balcony, reading c’t and Le monde diplomatique and surfing the web. I wanted to go play some basketball, alas, there were too many people, and not enough power in yours truly to start playing with them. My stamina is still just above bare minimum and I would certainly have exhausted myself to such a level that I wouldn’t be of much use during the next days. Instead, I am now blogging and listening to one of iTunes internet radio stations (some blues hosted by the ParaDynamic Roadhouse). Later I will probably make use of the fact that today is “Kinotag” and go watch Rabbit-Proof Fence together with Kerstin. Read my report tomorrow!

    By the way, what do you think about the most recent addition to this blog? It’s called “ozean’s digest” and can be found in the left column.>

  • An idea for a common project for the Kolleg.

    Thursday night, when I drove home alone from the Kraftwerk to Griesheim I was fighting with the squatty WG-Mountainbike, stomping into the pedals. At the same time I was fiercely engaged in thinking about how we could find a good common subject or theme for the seminar which will be kindly offered by Andreas Hetzel beginning in the Winter semester 2003/2004. We had serious difficulties in finding a subject that would enable everyone in the Kolleg to really contribute something without straying too far from the path the individual dissertations are taking. After producing a decent amount of sweat and wrinkled brows an idea was generated: We could pick up these difficulties and make them our subject. We could combine the efforts we put in this seminar, into the Kolleg, and into our dissertations by writing and working on the subject of Technology and Interdisciplinarity. We could reflect our own theoretical and methodological (and perhaps even our personal/social) position. It might even be possible for a few to try to map the positions we take in a Bourdieuan sense, distributed on a field of knowledge and power. Yeah!>

  • Blogging Back in Berlin.

    In Buchholz I only have access to a feeble V.90 modem connection, and I was pretty busy before and after the wedding party so I didn’t manage to write anything during the last two days. :-( The wedding was a success and it was extraordinarily nice to see so many of my good old friends. During the party (which went on until five a.m.) I had some time to get myself updated about what’s going on in their lives. The size of the dancing crowd was only moderate (especially in contrast to the bar crowd) but it was a pretty decent dancing crowd!
    After some heavy thunderstorms yesterday the air did cool down a bit. Now, the temperature is perfect. I might even leave our apartment and play some basketball later. Until then I will keep researching for ways to get my reference database (Endnote) linked into some more German libraries. To get this worked out, I’ll probably have to ask some of the knowledgeable people at the Max-Planck-Institute‘s Library.
    I am still looking for a working link to the icons plugin. As soon as it is installed, we’ll have nice slashdot-style icons on this page. Other than that, I am probably going to update the left column and the link section of this page today. Look out for new stuff!>

  • Blogging on the way to Buchholz.

    Yeah! Rock’n’Roll! Right now I’m sitting in the ICE from Frankfurt to Hamburg. The train has already left Hannover behind. I’m driving through the heartland of good old Lower Saxony. Temperatures here seem to be much more in the pleasant range; I would guess something like 21°C (it’s now 20:40h). I’m looking forward very much to arrive back home, drink a fine and cool Malzbier and hang loose. Tomorrow, Kerstin will arrive from Kopenhagen – hooray! This will be a day of Partying! First: welcome girlfriend. Second: Go take a swim in the beautiful river Seeve (probably together with Timo and Berit). Third: Dress up. Fourth: Go to the wedding of Meik and Katja. Fifth: Get drunk. You can probably guess the rest :D
    Be jealous, yours truly will soon haunt the world famous Nordheidemetropole!>

  • First: Funky. Then: (some word beginning with a ‘th’ and meaning something like dissappointing or boring).

    This week’s reading for the Kolleg consists of a chapter taken from the book Die Herrschaft der Regel – Zur Grundlagengeschichte des Computers, written by Bettina Heintz. In this chapter (It’s #7, we got no information about how many chapters the book has etc. Either we do have a badly paid student assistant problem here, or some serious photocopying coordination problem…)

    oops – right now I’ve got a serious time problem; I’ll finish this entry either later today or tomorrow.

    Here I am, back again on the next day. To pick up the thread: Heintz does a nice job of presenting three different perspectives on technology. One perspective, based on Hans Linde, focuses on technology as things, that are similar to Durkheimian ‘fait social’. As ‘fait sociales’ things have definite normative implications that influence and regulate human behavior. The second perspective, related to the work of Karl H. Hörning, focuses on the contingent character of technology: it’s use is more ambiguous than commonly thought. Technology can have many non-inteded applications, and side-effects. The third perspective offered by Heintz draws upon Werner Rammert’s non-material, process-oriented understanding of technology. At this point, Heintze brings Turing back into play: His functionalistic concept of algorithmic processes is presented as being closely related to Rammert’s conceptualization of technology. At this point, I became confused; Heintze presents the non-material, and functionalistic understanding of technology as an inspriring and new concept. It remains totally unclear, why this functionalistic should be better than any of the other reconstructions. Why should technology as an alogrithm be a more useful concept than technology as a material, contingently used object? Probably the following chapter will answer this question, but alas, we didn’t get it.

  • One of my all time favorites: Delicatessen.

    After a long day in the Kraftwerk Christian and I rode back to Griesheim just in time to not get soaked by one of the gazillions of rain and thunder storms that these days frequently empty themselves over this area. After a quick, student style pasta dish, we wanted to watch Bulletproof Monk. We decided not to. After a few minutes of Chinese only dialogues we (kind of) agreed that we have to look for an alternative. Which was found in the form of Delicatessen, by Jeunet et Caro. Marvellous! Great! Inspiring!
    It has been several years since I’ve seen Delicatessen for the last time. Now I know for sure again why I did attach that Delicatessen poster to the kitchen wall. Christian fell asleep, but that does not keep a real Jeunet et Caro aficionado from watching the movie to the end and be highly amused and inspired (as I said ;-) ).
    If you haven’t seen Delicatessen yet, do it as soon as possible. The world will be different…

  • A View from David’s office.

    Right now I am parked at David’s office in the sociology department of the University of Mannheim. You can look at a portait of the staff here (including David – the Photoshop’ed guy :-) )He’s got business, I’ve got time to blog.
    The electronic equipment here seems to be quite up to date, the offices however are depressing examples of 60ies university/office architecture: small tubes with greyishly painted metal walls, and bad air circulation. Only exception to the blandness of the office is the view on the city. Not to grand in itself, but at least it opens a perspective to something other than enclosed and regulated production of knowledge…

  • To Mannem!

    I’ll see if I can take some pictures there and perhaps post them here. Some new media added to the blog…

  • Gruseliger Style.

    Gestern nach abgeschlossenem Spaziergang auf der wirklich wunderbaren Mathildenhöhe (viel schöner Jugendstil, viele Boule Spieler, es gab gerade ein Open Air Klassik Konzert) und nach anschließendem Aufenthalt im Biergarten zurück nach Griesheim geradelt. Da “zum Einschlafen” noch gemeinsam mit Christian The Others mit Nicole Kidman geschaut. Eigentlich bin ich ja nicht son Gruselfan, aber das war schon ein echter Knüller. Mit coolen Wendungen in der Handlung, düsteren Kameraschwenks und der richtigen Portion Wahnsinn.

  • Sci-fi? Truth? New Taser weapon introduced.

    I just read news about a new electric shock weapon, the TaserX26. This scares me. I read about this weapon at the Heise Newsticker. You can read the article (in German) here.
    You can read a good article about non-lethal weapons written by Steve Wright for the Le Monde diplomatique: in German, in English.

  • Another sunny day, the Mathildenhöhe is waiting

    Back in our working room in the Kraftwerk, a strong iced coffee in my veins. The plan for today is to pretend to work a bit, write another entry for the blog, and then take a walk to the Mathildenhöhe, a nice hill with a park, some museums, and a Russian chapel on it. There Eleni, Christian and I will loiter around a bit and probably consume some more coffee containing beverages.

    Other than that, I’ll check out the trains going to Mannheim or ‘Mannem’, because I’ll visit Master Reimer tomorrow. My first visit to the City of God. We’ll see what kind of entertainment David will come up with …