Schön langsam wird das TUWIS (Informationssystem der TU Wien) ja benutzbar. Da gibt es jetzt die Vorlesungszeiten als ical und vcal zum Herunterladen und in die Kalendersoftware (zB Evolution, Outlook, iCal) Importieren. Noch praktischer wäre natürlich webcal, so dass die Daten immer automatisch am neuesten Stand sind. Und natürlich wäre es auch ganz praktisch, wenn die eigentragenen Daten stimmen würden. Aber immerhin ein Schritt in die richtige Richtung (bei anderen Unis soll webcal und so ja Standard sein). Hoffentlich wird bald was aus Hula.
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Which is kind of sad. But on the other hand there is a lot I am looking forward to in the next semester. Some intresting lectures (algebra, number theory, set theory, introduction to computer science (for mathematicians)), some conferences (AbiTuPhys, AbiTuMath). Sadly, the first sign of the comming semester is the exam in statistics and probability (which I'm not very fond of..) and I am currently not in the mood of learning something that does not interest me so much -- and there are so many distractions, like playing Guild Wars. At least I did start: Searched for the script and put it on top of all the other things on my desk...
I finished reading Hesse's Steppenwolf. Though, as the auther himself notes in the introduction to my edition, the book was written by a fifty-year-old for fity-year-olds, I think I did understand at least parts of its intention and learned something from that.
In an attempt to excuse me from studying, I started to experiment with MediaWiki and I am in the process of transfering the data from the wiki at oemo.at to it. I do not know yet how to exactly integrate MediaWiki with the existing structure of oemo.at, but the current wiki has to go, because I will never undertake the useless exercise of programming all the unimplemented functionallity it still needs.
When I installed plog (the software behind this blog) I chose the blufil template as a temporary design until I had the time to create one myself. So, more than a year later there it is now. Very simple, but hopefully also very clear and useable. Forks fine in current Firefox (1.0.x), Internet Explorer (6.0) and Opera (8). IE 5 has only slight errors, IE 4 and Netscape 4.7 suffer from severe CSS-misunderstandig but should be useable. Sorry, I currently cannnot test Konqueror and I do not own a Mac. If you have problems with your browser, found a bugs or have suggestions for impürovement please let me know.
When a new computer game (Age of Empires 3 demo) cannot get your interrest for more than 20minutes and a 15-year old 256-color-game (Monkey Island 1) can make you lose track of the time and you start thinking "the computer games were better once", what does that say about you?
I am spending quite a lot of my time travelling through the global net. Amogst a lot of rubish I there are a lot of very good/interesting/informative/funny sites and my bookmarks are growing by the day. So I thought I might as well share them with you. This is planned to be a more or less daily feature. To get only the Links of the Day, go to the category listing or subscribe to the RSS feed.
I am starting this series with an excellent article by ArsTechnica: Editing your digital images without the mystery. This article/tutorial covers the basics of enhancing digital photos:
We'll cover a number of goals like adjusting contrast, warming imagesup and reducing noise from shadows in a more accurate and controlledway. Then we'll get into advanced stuff like masking but all explainedin an almost-too friendly, "why are you touching my arm?" sort of way.
The article does not cover photo manipulation, but only the stuff most good digital photographers do with most of their images.
My computer is in a useable state again, and I began editing an uploading photos from Luxembourg. All photos (that I choose to upload) from the Interrail trip will eventually go to this flickr photo set. I only took the old Canon Powershot A40 with me, so do not expect high quality photos. I still hope, I got at least some good compositions.
First the file system (reiserfs) on my root partition started to behave strangely with random acces errors, now one of the disks in my server reports block access errors. My hard disks do ot want me!
So I'm now reinstalling Gentoo -- this time on an ext3-formatted partition. Until if got the basics (the os, xorg, gnome, mono, gimp, evolution, firefox) working again, there won't be any pictures from my recent Interrail trip to France (I just cannnot do any photo editing on the lcd screen of my laptop). And as every Gentoo user knows, compiling all that takes some time. Luckily my home partition was not effected and I was able to save the /etc dir, so at least I do not have to reconfigure everyting from scratch.
As for the server: Now I have proof that a RAID-1 is very helpful indeed. Though I did not think that the disk would fail after just over half a year.
UPDATE 16:45: Gnome is running again. Now I only need a decent browser (Firefox) and image manipulation (the Gimp) and archival (F-Spot) programms and I'll be happy again 
Oh, and a music player (beep-media-player and amarok (which takes very long to compile as it uses the kde-libs)) would be fine.
Der erste Abschnitt von Studium ist abgeschlossen! Muss sagen, das ist ein gutes Gefühl. Die Analysis II Prüfung war heute richtig angenehm. Fünf Minuten und dann wieder draußen. (Und ich war einen halben Tag furchtbar nervös...)
Got some good new music, an interesting mix:
- St. Germain, Boulevard (the complete series): Something between house and jazz. If you do not know Ludivic Navarre (the man behind St. Germain), give him a try. I'd especially recommed "Soul salsa soul" (though it is not on this CD).
- Klass Brothers & Cuba Percussion: Symphonic Salsa: Classical music with cuban rythms. Combines the harmonics of classical composers with the feeling of Latin America.
- The Art of Fugue by J. S. Bach (played by the Emerson String Quartet). Having read Hofstadters Gödel, Escher, Bach, I just had to have that. Also include is a good booklet with explanations. (And it goas without saying that this is good music.)
Today I finished uploading the best pictures (in my opinion) from our holidays in Greece with this one from Venice (where our ferry on the way back arrived):
I did also upload some pictures from flowers I shot while it was raining yesterday. I just could not resist...
Und zuletzt noch eine Leseempfehlung: Small World! von Martin Suter. Und da ich jetzt schon genug geschrieben habe, verweise ich nur auf die Leserrezensionen auf amazon.de, insbesondere die von Dirk Diehm. (Lässt sich leider nicht direkt verlinken.)
The first batch of exams is over, and I'm leaving for Greece tomorrow morning
I went to see the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy yesterday and can only recommend the movie to anyone, regardless whether they had already read the books (or listened to the radio drama) or not. It is probably the only film version of a book, that is good just because it did not follow the book too strictly.
Warning: SPOILERS ahead.
What I missed in the movie: Two of my favorite scenes of the radio show: The politician giving a speech when they start to build the bypass ("the verry splendid and worthwhile") and the proof of the nonexistance of god ("q. e. d., says man. - You are right, says god and vanished in a puff of logic"). Also missing are the "scientific" explanations about the universe (area, imports, life forms, etc.) and the creation of the infinite improbability drive (though they do include the uses of the finite probability generator). There were about two sentences left out at the book entry during the credits (Careless speach costs lives,...). Also there was no explanation who let them board the Vogon ship.
What I did not like: The ending is a bit too much a Hollywood style happy ending. Of course there wouldn't have been the time to do the whole ending of the radio series (restaurant at the end of the universe - black ship - arc fleet to earth).
What I liked: Most of everything else. The new story elements. The "gun". That they used the original recording from the radio drama at at least two places (the soundtrack for the book at the beginning and the inner monologue of the whale).
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