effdeekaa

A while ago someone in the german BC forum asked who's playing any MMORPGs.
A week ago this came back to my mind, so I decided to have a look at what's out there.
If only I hadn't!  Within uhm...  let's call it hours, even though it's only been minutes  -  I found a space themed game with a free trial period.  OMG, that's the point where I should have stepped back!  So I did sign up...  :-)

Well.

Now I'm one of the cclii, inhabitant of my home planet corona [as in eclipse, *not* as in beer ;-) ] ...

Stolen from washti

Playing with books.
Instructions:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet!  I know you were thinking about it!  Just pick up whatever is closest.


Where's page 123 of my notebook?  ;-)
Okay, so I looked under the pile of paper on my desk, because there's always some book.  Actually I expected some computer stuff bible, but no.

Now I really don't know if what I found counts as a book at all.  There are no five sentences, so I'll give the two sentences I can find and continue with some random words:

Hauptorte sind unterstrichen.  1cm auf der Karte entspricht 180km in der Natur.  Südlicher Wendekreis.  Antofagasta.  Salar de Atacama.  Bermejo.  Monte Lindo.  Concepcion.  Sete-Quedas Fälle.  Maringa.  Londrina.  Sao Paulo.  Sao Sebastiao.

Cabaret Voltaire!



Actually I like the "Red Mecca" album much more than "The Crackdown", but they don't have any videos of any of those songs.

On the micro management level I'm never bored at all.  But on large scale, this might happen very well.

PS.  I hate this picture.  But I'm too bored to replace it... ;-)

Your Famous Last Words Will Be:

"Goodbye. I am leaving because I am bored."

On Friday, my BC&LJ-friend washti visited me and we did some non-BC-related non-LJ-related...  geocaching!  ;-P

and again I enjoyed it very much.  While last time we did some Stuttgart city caching, now we went out in the woods.  Very funny, because I never go there, and I learned about how to distinguish three different types of corn, or whatever this is called...  "Gerste", "Weizen", "Roggen".  I think "Weizen" is wheat, but I don't know the English names of the other two.

The first cache lead us to an abandoned warehouse area, formerly owned by the French army, then turned into a wonderful club with very good DJs and an area occupied by some punk rockers, now turned into an area waiting to be filled with housings and a multiplex cinema IIRC.  Right now it's an area inhabited by grafitti artists, wannabes, and pigeons.



Well, we had a lot of fun, and sometime in between even ended up in a thunderstorm in the woods.  At some point, we remembered the old saying "Vor Eichen sollst du weichen" ("Stay away from oak trees in thunderstorms"), noticing we took shelter underneath a big oak tree about 50 meters away from the car...  :-O  So we ran like hell!  But after a while the sky went blue again, so we did another two or three caches before we stopped.

In the evening we watched "As in heaven" at the temporary open air cinema.  Even with some very schmaltzy moments, I liked it a lot, and I saw a shooting star when I looked at the sky!

After that we had some wine and a lot of chit-chatting til the morning about BCs and LJs, i.e. about YOU.  ;-)


On Saturday, I woke up late and did some old fashioned Tomb Raider III gaming.  Too hot to do anything else...
Thank G*d, after a while a roar of thunder started.  But what happened soon after, I never ever saw before.  I guess this was a tornado.  Other people may be used to things like that, and of course that was nothing compared to real tornados, but I only know tornados from nightmares!  Normally, storms just blow in one direction from west to east.  Now this one was like in a car wash!  Hail horizontally hit at my window, where no raindrop ever went before!  I ran to the other side of the flat to close the kitchen's balcony door, but I didn't even dare to go near it, because I was afraid I will be sucked away -- the rain and hail went from right to left here, that is just the other way than what I saw from my window seconds ago.

Please laugh  --  as I can laugh *now*, but at that very moment, I went like *OMG OMG OMG!*

This is a shot looking pretty harmless.  But even though the raindrops seem to fall straight down  --  you're supposed to see the house on the other side of the street instead of just a massive grey wall like this!



The real storm lasted about 10 minutes, all in all making it about half an hour.



Sunday I should have implemented a bottom up parser in Java, but instead I created my first bookplate labels for BC.  Right now, the text is in German only, but I don't think they are good enough to go for other languages.  Basically, they consist of a small picture with a translation of the text of the artist's bookplate labels sold in the BC shop.

In the evening, I saw a cloud that looks as if our neighbour blows up his house...



Ok, this happened to be my weekend.
I liked it a lot.

Why can't some people just discuss things?

When I ask someone to give me a good reason for doing something, I really don't want to hear irrelevant crap like "You don't have to do that if you don't want to."  Hell, discussion isn't about anyone's likes and dislikes!  I want to discuss *reasons*, not someone's interpretation of what they think I think or why they think I think something doesn't make sense.

This really pisses me off.

3 a.m.  --  I have to admit it was real fun, even though no one danced  (which is my idea of a good party...)  But everyone seemed to have a good time.

Right now people chill and talk about all kind of things.  I like it, when people, completely drunk, underneath a wonderful summer sky full of stars, talk about J.S.Bach's "Weihnachtsoratorium".  ;-)
 

Hm.

We're having a party tonight, but after 1 hour of it, this is still pretty boring, so I just start blogging  ;-)

S. and her friends are still not at home, they will probably be here at 10.
And of course my friends didn't show up till now  -  they are late birds.  If they know a party starts at 8, they'll be there at 11...
So, all people right now are M.'s friends.  He's the Birthday child, so that's okay!
But all those people know each other and just don't spread all over the flat  --  they stay in the kitchen, where it's completely crowded.  Oh well, maybe later it will get better, when S.'s and my friends arrive.  I hope this will mix up a bit more...

Anyway, I'll have another beer from our bathtub.  Stay tuned...  :-)

PS.
While writing this, things change.  HA!  People crossing my room to get to the balcony.  I like it much more this way.

Lean out your window, golden hair
I heard you singing in the midnight air
my book is closed, I read no more
watching the fire dance, on the floor
I've left my book, I've left my room

For I heard you singing through the gloom
singing and singing, a merry air
lean out the window, golden hair...

[Syd Barrett † 2006]

 So I went to the park.  Did you know about those strange plants growing behind the gazebo?

Stolen from elhamisabel ...

Why do I care to post the result?
Because I like what the author says about the colour black.

Black is not all depression, night, death.  Most memes don't get this right.

You scored as Black. Although black is stereotyped as a very depressing colour, this is not always the case. Black represents fashion, elegance and at occasions, pride. This color shows that you are very serious about life and sometimes like to stand in the background and watch what is happening, but you are not afraid to intervene when you feel the situation needs your help. You are serious. Black 89% Blue 78% Purple 67% Orange 61% Red 33% Yellow 33% Pink 17% White 17% Green 17% Which Colour Represents You??? created with QuizFarm.com

I feel like almost offline these days.

Of course I'm online from waking up till I go to sleep, but still.  And I even missed sunneschii's birthday --- I'm feeling really embarrassed.  All the best to you, sweetheart!  I see everything works out fine for you, that's wonderful to see!  Did I ever tell you one of my favourite quotes?: "Alle Liebenden sind Wunderkinder."  (Sorry, I don't know any appropriate translation for this, can anyone help me out?  "All lovers are children of all of the wonders."?  Dunno, doesn't hit all of the points...)

At the moment I'm working a lot for linguacalc, a software development working group I'm one third of.

Then I do much more stuff for university than what I planned to do.  But this is very good for me.  I have to keep me going somehow, so I attend more than I used to attend the last year.  Right now I do "Grammar Engineering" and "Foundations of Tree Query".  Both are very demanding and time consuming, but also very interesting seminars.  And I like both lecturers, who still studied when I started, so this is a very "friendly" situation.  I also attend a fun course at the psychs.  A very basic lecture, but the lecturer is hillarious.

My work as the coach for the local ultimate frisbee team is fun, but also takes some time away.  I take this very seriously, because I want to have us back as powerful as we were in 2001, when we really kicked ass.


Right now I also enjoy summer a lot.  Most of the time I'm sitting on the balcony in the shade with my notebook.  There's an audio cable going inside to the stereo and my headphones' cable out again...  Bought the new Kraftwerk Live 2CD and the new Boards Of Canada maxi.  Both are on heavy rotation on winamp...


All in all, I feel pretty good, but lacking time for the LJ and BC communities.  Sorry to all of you.

Stolen from sempfmistress, who seems to know what's it about to love Lindenstrasse.

When Shirley sings Milk, my eyes fill with tears.  She's cool.  She's hot.  And I love her eyes.

But I'm not sassy, not outspoken, not wild.  Any of it now and then.
Most of  the time I'm too arrogant or detached to care about being like that.   ;-)

And I would have to work on that chickness thing...  Maybe I should search for my old eyeliner as a start, hehe...


Which Rock Chick Are You?

Stolen from martip

You Are Guinness

You know beer well, and you'll only drink the best beers in the world. Watered down beers disgust you, as do the people who drink them. When you drink, you tend to become a bit of a know it all - especially about subjects you don't know well. But your friends tolerate your drunken ways, because you introduce them to the best beers around.

I'm so happy I did it! Somehow the old goth pics in my last post really made me sad, because I felt pretty old when looking at them. Well, 'old' is the wrong word.  Burnt out, not interested anymore, something like that. Of course this is not a matter of hair style.  But not to care does mean something.  There's also a good aspect in not caring anymore, but  I think this is only true if you are aware of the fact and you feel good about it.  I didn't. Whatever. To the left you see me with my brand new haircut and dying cream.  The photo to the right is after the whole procedure.  It doesn't even look too fancy I guess, because my hair covers a lot of the shaved areas.  Perhaps I'll cut a bit more off of it.

nice_cup_of_tea is doing this with good success, so I'll try this, too.

• *urgent*: implement a quick hack of Earley algorithm parser in Java for linguacalc.  P needs it for testing stuff.
• have a close look at the TRALE system for our Grammar Engineering workgroup.
• finish the photo CD of International BC Meetup Basel 2005
• finish software for E.H. (see S.K. for chit-chat and H. for treebank test data)
  
• implement software project for F.R. (low prio)
• clean up my room (I'll do it tomorrow...)
  
• *very urgent* cut & dye hair.  ;-)
  

I doubt this will work for me, but now you know what I'm supposed to do...  And don't get on my nerves with any of those, O.K.!?!!!  ;-D

As I read martip's thoughts about online friendships, combined with the pics some of you posted lately, I also want to show you my bed.

I think I have to put the picture above the shelf somewhere else.  Before I had the shelf, this place was ok, but all those books in my bed...

Anyway, this is where I read and sleep and dream.

I just can't believe it: Yesterday I dug out this tape from a cardboard box in the cellar -- and I really enjoy it! I mean... this is handmade music from the late 70's, OMG! I'd better check my temperature and listen to the new Boards Of Canada...

Dammit, I'm deep down in the red zone, but still I needed a pair of new trainers! Really, my old ones for indoors felt just like ice skating since four months now. So I promised to myself to get new ones, CHEAP ones... Oh well.

Went to a low cost store to get cheap ones, but all they had was those "cool" stylish stuff everyone wears to walk in the streets. I need *sport*shoes*, no stylish crap. Then I went to a real store for trainers. Not so cheap. Not cheap at all. Rather expensive. I tried a pair of mid priced shoes but they just didn't feel right. They were 75€, way more than I wanted to spend. Nevertheless I tried them, which was a big mistake. Because after a while I got familiar with the fact I had to spend much more money to get trainers I feel comfortable with than what I planned to spend.

But the next thing broke my will: I saw the next-next-generation of my old trainers. Tried them, and they fit like Cinderella's shoes. Played a pretty good defence in the aisles of the shop... So I just had to do it. This means I got awesome new trainers for a mere 120€, which is about three times the money I wanted to spend. This means no party, no cinema, just bread&water for the rest of April.


On the other hand, there are so many people who would be so lucky to have just a little bit of anything&water.

Such a shame.
Dammit.