Staroc's Wor(l)ds

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year Everyone :)

2008-12-25T00:48:00.002+01:00

And six months later...

2008-09-28T16:00:00.013+02:00

Maria Beach on Crete at it's best! Azure Blue...

I am on Crete. Yeah that's right - Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Crete! The island bearing the ruins of the famous Palace of Knossos, which by the way I haven't seen yet. There's nothing I could do, since I am here with my research group and on the completely other side of the island (We're on the western shore, Knossos is all the way to the east).

A little view of the 'City' Promenade in Kissamos, palm tree included...

So far we experienced rather nice weather, with around 28°C and crystal blue sky and topaz colored water. Today (Sunday the 27th of September) however someone went out at night and painted both sky and sea in gray. It has been raining constantly since morning, though not too heavily. Still we did a nice little tour to the south side of the island to see if the weather is any better there. It wasn't!!! :(

Crete under heavy clouds on Sunday the 27th of September...

More clouds and fog on a view from our trip through the mountians to reach Phalanasi Beach.

I've attached a few pictures so that you have an impression of how great it usually was the rest of the week. Don't think however that all we did was fool around and order cocktails in the sun. We did some honest work each day, trying to decide about the future of our research and stuff like that. I introduced my nearly finished thesis (about 230 pages) and after much debate, still have to change a few parts of the argumentation and come up with at least one new scenario. So as always, it's still not finally done. :( Everyone agreed though, that I am on a good way and once I figured the discussed things into the 'equation', I could basically hand the PhD thesis in. Whewhew! Well I am guessing I'll need a little more than a month for that, but PLEASE GOD and whoever else can help me let me finish before Christmas!!! I'll need to find a new job and I need time for that!

A car junk jard apparently placed right in front of a company called "Europa" ;) Mind you, this doesn't mean we Europeans are bad drivers, just that trash is part of our lives just as much as yours...

Oh and finally, a little news on Petpet and Kuki. My two frogs were with me on Crete and loved sitting on the beach, as you can see below. But only Petpet decided to take a 'dip' in the water :D

Petpet and Kuki dozing in the nice Cretian sun, safely out of range of the sea...

Petpet is a little hero in my eyes now, because he actually risked everything, just so that I could get a photo of him on some rocks being washed over by the 'raging' sea. He received a whole stick of chewing gum for that perfect feat :) I can only say he was very happy and would do it again without any hesitation. Only drying him up again, took at least 6 hours of sitting on yellow serviettes.

...or not! At least only Petpet got hit by the water and he just laughed and dried up quickly.

Thanks for the patience my friends

Staroc

Easter gone, we enter springtime...

2008-03-30T23:48:00.004+02:00

Well don't you know how quick time flies by? I wanted to blog about our nice New Years Eve which we spend with friends in Stuttgart and about the Heinz-Nixdorf symposium we visited. They had a Maserati Gran Turismo Coupe, a Jaguar MK Cabrio and an Audi R8 there on show and naturally I tried them out. Well you could only really sit in the Jaguar, but better then nothing, ey? But since I am wrapping up writing my doctoral thesis (It looks as if I'll finish in April), you may imagine I have been busy. I mean it is not as if I have ever been a busy writer on the net... I do not even like presenting myself too much where everyone has access to, but on the other hand, it is nice to have something you and your family can look back to in a few years to see what you did back then ;)

I will not promise to write any more again, as that is just a plain lie. I mean it is not as if that many people ever read my blog anyways. However sometimes I have a nice picture or twp that I want to share and while I still haven't gotten around to opening a Flickr account (or did I?!?), I will post them here with a comment or two sometimes. So here's one with a little story:

My little Werefrog Petpet (who refers to himself as Pitpit) whom you all met in my Christmas Card last year (last post too *grin*) has been home alone a lot this week, because I have been helping Ping finish her diploma thesis with corrections. So I promised him to take him along to the birthday party of a friend, so that he could talk to people there (the girls just love him, though it is always a little emberassing for me *grin*). Well, honestly, I forgot. So I come back and he had cried and so I promised him to make it up to him.

I know he wanted a companion for soo long now and since he is only 4 and practically an innocent child (meaning that he is happy with tickles and the occasional kiss) I finally gave in and got him a little girl-frog to play with. He named her 'Kuki' which, since he can't write was meant to be "Cookie". Petpet loves cookies and since he loves her too, this is what he chose to call her - following this 'logic' she could just as well have been named 'Kandi' or 'Gabesh' ;) Anyways, its springtime and everyone's hungry for love (probably, I mean how would I know working on the desk with dusty books [well PC notebooks] all the time?). So above's a picture of the two to get you in the mood...

Christmas Time...

2007-12-20T16:57:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone,

*I'll try posting a fitting photo or picture later - please bear with me, it worked the last time...*

it is almost Christmas again and since I think that I will probably continue to be busy the next days, I just wanted to wish everyone Happy Holidays or a Merry Christmas and of course a Happy New Year. I recommend watching the American Dad Christmas Episodes to get into the perfect mood for relaxed days, or for the girls or softer souls out there (those who may get offended easily) I'd rather recommend movies like Love Actually or (though it is not about Christmas) Music and Lyrics.

I'll try to blog a little more again, but I realize I already said that a few times before, so do not expect too much. I am finishing my doctoral thesis and that is taking a lot of time.

News:
I now have a Nintendo Wii and am a newly not yet celebrated Mii designer. I forsee good chances for my current Luigi implementation in the current pre-christmas Mii-challenge however. The Wii has proven a fun and pretty cool console, though other may of course note the lack of high-res graphics and the shifted focus on younger or older audiences that is also reflected in the games available. However I do really believe there are gems for everyone and almost any taste available, so long as you can just live with the Nintendo trademarks of Mario and Co. The Wii-Mote does however also have interesting side uses: See here

I am thinking about opening an account at Flickr. Lots of friends and colleagues already have one, but I never saw much need for myself to do so. I am starting to see certain benefits when taking a look at their libraries, which I will detail in a seperate post, if I decide to join 'that' community too.

Another thing I did, was open a StudiVZ account after my brother invited me. Again: I do not see much of the point for me, since I am no student anymore, but it is always interesting to find other people you know online. I haven't really put any effort into that so far however, but at least I gathered some knowledge about that phenomenon on my own.

Yesterday we went to the Christmas Market in Paderborn with a few friends and afterwards watched The golden Compass based on the first book in the Trilogy His dark materials by Philip Pullmann. I read the first book when it came out in 1995, though even then I thought some things were oversimplified, while other concepts like that of "Dust" as "Conscious Dark Matter" proved interesting points of reflection, as I had contemplated similar concepts when I was eleven or twelve. The movie's direction sometimes really suffered in my opinion. There were some really misplaced cuts and strange insertions.

I did however really like the actors. Nicole Kidman, convincingly playing the beautiful but still somehow erie, dangerous and creepy mother of the protagonist Lyra, shines especially here, but a lot of the other actors were chosen quite well too. I don't know if I can recommend the movie, I think you should rather read the books, but the others who had not read even one of them, all liked the movie. So make up your own mind, however I still think that they totally messed up that trailer. It was probably done by the same person who made those horrible cuts and transitions in the movie.

Again: Happy Holidays to y'all!

FromThe one and only

Au Canada...

2007-10-16T21:09:00.000+02:00

Hi everyone,

this is a report on the conferences I visited so far and first thoughts on the one I am currently at. The i-Know'07 in Graz was a very nice first conference. Lunch, coffee breaks (with a selection of nice cakes) and a nice gala diner with live music were included in the conference fee. There were about 500 attendents and I easily managed to get into contact with a set of nice people. My paper attracted quite a lot of people (the room was so full some people had to remain standing at the sides) and the questions were very focused. I received a lot of positive feedback from people who had seen the presentation, so overall I am quite content. I collected business cards like a madmen and handed out my old one, which reminds me: I need a business card holder.

The City Hall of Graz housed the Triple-I Conference 2007

Graz was also nice as a city, though it was raining most of the time and though it was actually quite similar to most German citys, down to the same kinds of shops. Well I know Austria isn't that far away, but I had expected more diversity. What was funny however was that along the central townsquare there were at least 20 loungerie shops ;) They sure like their sexy underwear the Austrians.

The Bell Tower of Graz - The city's landmark

The Hotel Feichtinger where I stayed was very nice and comfortable and had a simple but nice breakfast included in the price, just as well as free wireless internet access. It was really hasslefree and good service and also located in walking distance from the city center, so if you're
staying in Graz I can only recommend you stay there.

The 'Graziens' sure like their pillars and statues

More proof of 'pillarism' - Sadly the weather was a letdown...

The next conference the GMW ("Gesellschaft für Medien in der Wissenschaft" = "Society for media in the sciences") was quite a different thing: It took place in Hamburg and our research group tried winning the so called 'Medidaprix' which can mean a funding of up to €100.000. Originally my prof wanted to do the presentation there, but when the jurors came over 10 minutes before his presentation, he asked me to do it. So in just ten minutes I went through my prof's presentation, built my own presentation sheets together in a consistent manner, added a few new ones and raced to the assigned room to present out paper. It was rushed and that is also how the presentation felt: Not well prepared at all. A video of that shameful event can be found online, if you can find it.

Food at the Triple-I in Graz was plentyful and of nice quality, not so at the GMW in Hamburg :(

Naturally PetPet and I had a huge piece of wonderful Sacher Cake in Graz! Strangly however I ate some at the GMW as well, since our booth neighbours from Austria distributed them quite liberally. That was the only real food we got at the conference (of course excluding the one nice evening gala).

Needless to say: We didn't win the price, we didn't have a nice hotel and we didn't get any food between sessions. Only the evening gala dinner in Hagenbeck's Tierpark (the oldest and most famous zoo in Hamburg) was quite good, though that might be related to the bottle of wine, each of us must have emptied ;)

The view from my hotel room in the Hilton Quebec. The view was nice the service not as much. No wireless internet and the standard DSL costs extra. Breakfast isn't included in the room proce either.
(Again: I can only recommend "Hotel Feichtinger" in Graz. They had a nice breakfast, very good location, free wireless internet, a very good overall service and everything at one very moderate room rate)

Now I am at the E-Learn 2007 in Quebec-City, Canada and am enjoying the nice weather. I will write a little more on the conference tomorrow or Thursday, but so far it has been a nice experience (although we are again not provided with any food *grin*). The presentation went quite well in my opinion and what makes me even more sure of it, is that a lot of people told me so. The speaker after me however was a little bit lost, which is a nice way of saying that his presentation sucked big time. He had won a best paper award, but aparently was only firm at writing english not speaking it and to make matters worse had apparently pasted his whole paper onto the power point slides with a general font size of 12-14, I guess you can imagine ;)

A very nice fountain, depicting ladies (and a few kids and a bearded guy) bathing, in front of the houses of parliament, her in the nightime overview...

...and for all of you who like more detail a daytime close-up shot.

Edit: Quebec was very nice, we enjoyed beautiful weather and I had the special pleasure of a nice French/Canadian Dinner for 100$. That was really a Lucullan pleasure and totally worth it. Let me note however, that a lot of that amount went into tips and wine (which cost almost as much as the menu at 50$ a bottle for a 2004 Côte Du Rhone). Most of my readers probably know that food is my special hobby and thus, I think one sometimes has to spend (a little) more money to get a special meal. I really hope other people think the same way :)

Btw.: The pictures in Quebec were taken with my brand-new Canon Powershot G9 camera. This thing really makes beautiful pictures, but I still have to learn using its features properly.

The third course of the five course French/Canadian Dinner: Tartar de Caribou (a sort of North-American Deer), with poached quail's egg.

Quebec's trademark - Château Frontenac, which was being restorated at the time of my stay in Canada. I tried to catch a perspective without the massive scaffolding and I think I succeeded. Also notice the blue sky: The weather was pretty nice with about 15°C.

Another trademark of the city, a mural depicting the same view you would get from turning around on the plaza.

Hope you like the update. I know it's been a long time, but I tend to keep my promises (*grin*). Next (recent) post will be up, in a minute too.

Long time, no see ;)

2007-09-04T00:49:00.000+02:00

Hi everybody,

as you may have noticed there haven't been any updates for over half a year. I have been busy writing my doctoral thesis and doing other important stuff. There were some nice things that happened in the past month that I might have blogged about, but somehow I couldn't really bring myself to doing it :)

Anyways I do not really think that blogging about just anything is worth the effort, but I wanted to say that I have been accepted with papers on four conferences this year, three of which I am going to visit. So tomorrow, or looking at the time actually today, I will fly to Graz in Austria and participate in the iKnow conference which is part of the larger TripleI. I'll return on Saturday, with hopefully interesting or funny pictures and a report of what a conference and Graz are like.

This photo was taken at the Japanese garden in Leverkusen at the wedding of a friend, it is just meant to illustrate how gorgeous I'll look in one of my new suits at the conference :)

So till Sunday when I might write about these experiences or some time later when I return from the other two conferences (one in Hamburg one in Quebec). Have a good time everybody

Yours

2007-02-28T12:09:00.000+01:00

Well nothing much happened in February this year. We celebrated Chinese New Year in the Bhuddist Temple and we had a Texas Hold'em Poker Game with friends which I naturally won (see pictures below). Then last Saturday I met with some old friends from school, which was really great especially since I hadn't seen some of them in ten years. That's however about all that happened.

Only 4 players left, I got lots of chips and its 3 in the morning...

The whole group of players (except for the kid! what did you think?!? *grin*) at 5am.

I am currently writing papers for two-three conferences, so that I can lift my profile as a doctoral candidate. The topic goes in the direction of enabling new teaching and learning scenarios through the use of graphical arrangements, with a special focus on overlays and using these in test situations. The PhD Thesis will then enlarge the picture with a refeshingly interesting concept that is, admittedly not totally new but has never really been explored in this specific way... WARNING: If you haven't dozed of while reading this, you are on steroids!

Also I am now the proud owner of a Wacom tablet, so I got a new digital signature you can check out. If everything goes well, there may be a lot more to report next time around...

Look what I came across by accident...

2007-01-19T12:01:00.000+01:00

Well if that ain't a good starter for a post, I don't know what. This is the dynamic duo of crime-solving anthropomorphic wack-jobs we have all come to love in the classic LucasArts adventure and their new plasti-mensional form in TelltaleGames Episodic Renditions.

As a youngster who got the game for Christmas back then in 1993/4 on CD in German, I was intrigued by some of the one page comics by some Steve Purcell included in the Step-by-Step-Hint-Guide (a Sam'N'Max kind of a walkthough). They were in English as far as I can remember and were of a level that I could only barely master at that time (with only a three or four years worth of School-English). The art and wackyness however came across and I distinctly remember that at this time I wished there was a Comic book for the self-proclaimed 'FreeLance Police'.

Sam and Max as they looked in the intro of the first computer game by LucasArts, called 'Sam'N'Max hit the Road' back in 1993. Oh the pixel glory.

Well in America there actually were several such releases, rare and not in great numbers, but they did exist. None were ever released here in Europe, not even the Sam and Max - Collected ("Surfing the Highway") Edition (see cover at the top) that included most of the previous works and is now considered the 'standard volume' on Sam (the wise-cracker dog) and Max (the totally insane rabbit).

I just happened to pass by some flea-market at our Uni and saw a slightly ruffled book with a dog and a rabbit on the cover. Something inside me went 'click' I had a blackout and when I woke up, I found myself the proud owner of the above mentioned paperback comic book. The events were a blur, I think I might have threatened several people with an axe at some point, jumped on one table and acted like a gorilla to scare an old lady away, but yes in the end it was mine, better yet it still is mine!

If you got any fond memories of Sam and Max or just want to contribute in any way with other memorabilia. Feel free to do so in the comments. By the way: I just saw that the exact same edition I got at the flea-market for 5€ for about $280 on amazon.com - yeah I am a lucky bastard...soon to get rich, maybe...

Well if you liked the classic gameplay of the Lucasarts game and still have the CD or floppies lying around somewhere like me, the you can enjoy the old game again under Windows95/XP/Vista with the help of a little tool called ScummVM. ScummVM allows you to use filters to upgrade the graphic quality, with in my opinion stunning results. You should definately check it out using the HighQualityX3 filter...

This is TelltaleGames Rendition of Sam and Max in funky new 3D. The game itself however plays like a classic 2D and the jokes are great.

If all this is an old hat for you and you like some more modern looking action, I bestow upon you the link to the genious minds of TelltaleGames. These modern bards have acquired the license to produce new games featuring Sam and Max from Steve Purcell their demi-god-like creator and have thus far spun out two hilarious episodes, the next of which will be released in the beginning of February. No endless wait like in the time before LucasArts cancelled their second game in the universe of the philosophically inclined dog and the schizophrenic rabbit anymore.

No, there's 4 more monthly episodes on their way for all of us to enjoy. The entire season comes at a decent and affordable $30 something price, or if you rather just test the season there is a demo version available (you could also download each episode for 9$ but doing the math - that costs $20 more... which at least for me doesn't make it an interesting option).

And if you still don't have enough, Telltale also has a webcomic on their site featuring the crime-pummeling duo-infernale in a story about cockroaches. Scrolling over the panels will reveal the text-bubbles, if you haven't figured that out already.

In this spirit: "Holy jumping mother o'God in a side-car with chocolate jimmies and a lobster bib! WE'RE ON OUR WAY!"

Thank you Steve Purcel, Sam and Max

Yours Staroc

Happy New Year

2006-12-29T14:06:00.000+01:00

Wow, it seems like I have been way to busy in the last two months to keep up with a least one decent monthly post here. Nothing much has been happening, that is for sure. So I do actually just want to wish everyone a happy new year and hop you guys spent a nice Christmas with your loved ones...

November...

2006-11-29T13:30:00.000+01:00

Nothing exciting happened at all, the month was pretty boring if not to say frustrating. Oh well, I guess we all go through such phases at some points in time...

Well since I got nothing else to post, here's a 'Chili-Con-Carne' Recipe that I came up with last week (This is one with beans in it, though I also know a Texas-version without...).

Staroc's Dry-Chili

300g minced beef/pork
2 shallots
1 celery stalk
1 yellow/red pepper
2 medium (Roma) tomatoes
2 large Chilis (one red, one green)
1-2 gloves of garlic
1 small-medium tin of kidney beans (425g) Salt & pepper One big bag of Tortilla/Taco chips/crisps

Cut shallots, celery, pepper, garlic and chillies into tiny cubes (REALLY tiny). Cut tomatoes into quarters, remove stem (some people don't like the seeds and remove them as well as the skin. I usually keep them, because they give a nice sauce - plus you need fewer tomatoes). Now heat a pan with some olive oil.

Put the cubed shallots, celery, garlic and chillies into the pan and simmer them until the shallots look glassy or start getting brown. Then add the meat and fry it. Use a wooden spatula to break up the clumps of meat into tiny tiny pieces, until it is a fine mass and well browned. Then add the tomatoes with the seed sides pointing down and wait for about a minute. Then squash them with the spatula and stir the resulting sauce until the tomatoes are almost gone (the chilli is supposed to be dry, thus there shouldn't be sauce left in the end, the tomatoes are only there for the taste). Add the peppers and finally the beans (well drained - you don't want the sugar water mix they are kept in in the tins). Stir for a while until the beans look ready, mix everything well again and season with salt and pepper after individual taste.

If you like you can also heat the chips for 5 minutes in the oven at 200°C. Now put chilli into bowls and eat fresh with tortilla chips. If you like you can also use some additional salsa dip to round of the taste. I would recommend a nice bottle of Desperados (tequila flavoured beer) to go with that.

Eh voilà a perfect dinner >;o)

Hope December is better - Staroc out

Oh God it's Halloween again...

2006-10-31T10:23:00.000+01:00

Sad sad times, when I cannot even find the time or will to post here. After coming back from my many travels I fell into the trap called German depression and have walloped myself into it where I wasn't walloped by others. Details are as always not forthcoming since I am not about to let my soul get raped on the internet >;o)

So what costume might I wear today? Maybe I do not need one, enclouded in the darkness that surrounds myself and the green mists of meanness... Should any kid muster up the wills to ring my doorbell today they are in for a very nasty surprise, I guarantee you that:

[Photo]

Happy Halloween everybody... Staroc out

Oh Canada we're leaving thee...

2006-09-25T20:45:00.000+02:00

...well not today but in 3-4 days. Ahhhh it was definately nice here, though we might have seen more stuff with a more thorough planning, which for good reasons neither my girlfriend nor I am known for when it comes to holidays. We just dig food, that's really what we look for in other countries. Okay what crazy stuff did we do since my last post?

Well let's start with the PNE Fair, where we went on the first or second weekend. Fair's are always epensive but especially so over here in Canada. You can buy a day pass, allowing you to go on most of the normal rides, but the really good ones cost extra (8-10$). Plus the normal games where you can win plush bunnies and so on, cost at least 2$ and even if you win you only get a small to medium prize. You have to trade in several medium ones to get a large one and so on until you get a free choice. So you'll be spending at least 12$... Anyways here's a picture:

Then we went to play Beach Volleyball and have a BBQ with some friends of one of Binh's cousins over here. That was fun! I love the American/Canadian relish, it just makes anything taste great >;o)

We also went to watch the Salmons migrating on Grouse Mountain. The picture shows one of the fabulous sights Canada and especially British Columbia have to offer:

Later we headed up to whistler where the Olympic Winter Games of 2010 will be held and met some Inukshuks (which have also become the symbol for the Vancouver Olympic Games) at the mountain top:

We had a four day trip to Vancouver Island, where we stayed in Victoria and explored the small city and also went wale watching, spotting some live orcas though from a distance.

As mentioned as a possibility in the last post we drove down to Seattle and spent a nice weekend there. However we only did that last week:

While Seattle was actually quite nice, the border guard wasn't. His voice was more like a dog growling and barking than I have heard ever before. It was good fun though. Another thing we did was go to the Vancouver Aquarium where we had fun watching the Beluga wales, one of which splashed a wave of salty water on my girlfriend who filmed the whole thing (video link may follow later)...

Well that's the most interesting stuff anyways. I don't have much time now, so maybe I'll post more later when I come back from Crete, where I'll be heading with my university's chair for 'research' from the 30th September to the 6th of October...

Show you how Indiana Jones 'Knossos' looks, Steve >;o)

Staroc out.

Mighty Vancouver...

2006-09-07T11:09:00.000+02:00

Well after discovering why most Americans apparently hate the Canadian's favourite beverage, namely 'root beer', I am again in a state that makes it possible for me to blog... So as a very short report of what we've done already, I want to start with the food here in Vancouver and since we are visiting my Chinese girlfriend's aunt that means pretty much all the Chinese food possible.

Allmost everything you eat over here is first of all authentic (going as far as celebrities from Hong Kong coming over here to have original Cantonese food that tastes better than at home... -we'll get to that later - As for the reason I guess Chefs earn a lot more here than over in China, which makes coming to Canada to cook an easy choice...) and second of all DELICIOUS. I ate the best sticky rice and congee I've eaten in my life over here and I won't even start to talk about the cakes you can get.

We already went all around the city. Pretty much meaning that we went to Downtown Vancouver and the Metrotown Mall quite often, which are some of the best shopping areas over here, which - do I even have to say that - naturally my girlfriend enjoys a lot (my wallet doesn't though *grin*).

Other than that we went to the biggest fair in all of British Columbia, the so called 'PNE', visited the Richmond Night Market and went to play Beach Volleyball at the beach close to one of Vancouvers Unis (the weather over here really treats us nicely with sunny 25-30°C). We also went to a nice Chinese style garden or park close to Chinatown, which even looks really pretty on the pictures I took. Here's one for you guys:

Alright, now to todays special event. My girlfriend's aunt works in a quite famous Cantonese restaurant here in Vancouver and she had heard that 4 Hong Kong movie stars were coming there tonight after a show they were doing for the biggest Cantonese TV station here in Canada. So we both dressed up and went there, to see if we could catch a chance of seeing them. That's how nice we looked:

Then when the celebrities were leaving we got a chance to take a picture with the actress my girlfriend likes the most, namely 'Ada Choi' or in Chinese '蔡少芬'. What?!? You don't believe me? Well here's the proof (and if you do not believe that that is a Hong Kong movie star -> look here):

Well that was quite exciting. We'll see who else we meet. Maybe next weekend we will drive down to America and if I meet everyone's favourite George W. Bush, I'll be sure to wear my favourite T-Shirt - you know which one I mean... Best wishes from Canada.

Staroc out...

Holidays

2006-08-22T19:45:00.000+02:00

Yeah, you read right, for the whole of September I will be in Canada (Vancouver, where they shot the X-Files episodes) and after that I will be in Crete for a week 'working'. Just the usual conference attendance and drink sipping.

So there will be many news I guess, which I will blog if time permits and if they have internet at Starbucks... >;o)

Canada here I (or more precisely we, as my girlfriend will be joining me) come!

Staroc "up up and away" and then just as safely "back again to Germany"

Guys...

2006-07-26T12:00:00.000+02:00

Guys... I moved. Not as usual to another website/provider/web-whatsoever, not to reach for the fridge, not to go to the toilet - no were talking moving houses here. Or flats to be more exact. I am leaving the tidy, surveyable 14 m² of my old student accomodation (which at least included my own bathroom with shower) for a proper 60m² flat that is worthy of a 'still wannabe PhD' like me.

The thing is huge! My bedroom alone is bigger than my old flat with bathroom included and I am not talking about the super large living/dining room!!! It's just gorgeous.

However as with everything good in the world there's a downside: It is a tid-bit expensive AND there's a lot of cleaning to do >;o) - Well both things I can definatly manage. Now however I still need to finish moving (assembling IKEA furniture, cleaning, I am already finished with painting at last [which sadly isn't something I can say about my Warhammer minis] and I got all the stuff from my old flat over - Now I just need to decide where to put it...there is luckily enough space!!!), while at the same time supporting my girlfriend who is currently close to the deadline of her Bachelor thesis (ends 1st of August).

Today after a verbal lasersword duel with those telecom-pimps (which due to my Chanbara Arts I won) I have working DSL again. REJOYCE!!!

So I will be able to pester you with boring once-a-monce posts for just a little longer... The trip to Canada for the whole of September and Crete (Work but still CRETE!!!) thereafter, is drawing awfully close and this will be added to the things that need to be done/prepared. At least I already have my passport and the tickets...

Well for now, I bid you goodbye without new pictures and tell you what, maybe around this time next month my brother will finally have bought the PSP he's been longing for and I will have defeated and humiliated him in about any game he brings up, except maybe for racing :( ...ah I'll go practice!!!

See ya around - Staroc

The many faces of...

2006-06-28T12:28:00.000+02:00

Rachel Blake. Chances are if you are as much an avid Lost fan as I am, that you may already know who I am talking about. The woman, portrayed by a possible Kate cast candidate looking slightly like the girl in the heavy rain animation, set out to stop the evil Hanso Foundation. While their website was still up, we got a good look at their 'saving the world' experiments and research areas. No one with a clear sense of mind wouldn't have felt a slight chill down their spine (horrible experiments gone wrong, mad dictators, 'same we do every night Pinky - try to take over the world' anyone?).

Then the ominous female hacker Persephone appeared to enlighten us with knowledge bits, detailing the dirty truths behind any of the Hanso Foundation's projects and staff of directors. It became evident that Alvar Hanso, founder of the whole enterprise, had been missing for quite some time and that a self-proclaimed Dr. 'Thomas Mittelwerk' was now running the show.

Here I have a little sensation for all of you like minded individuals. Diggin through old Danish newspapers, I found this 1950ish picture of the young Alvar Hanso - low as the resolution may be, it still proves that this man did exist, though medical papers found by Persephone indicate that he may be in a medical state of great illness or even die soon. Maybe he was brought to THE ISLAND for its mystic healing powers. Behold the man:

[photo]

Well Rachel is just now following Mittelwerk to Iceland after a possible attack on her life. It seems Dr. Mittelwerk is overly interested in old shipping lanes and maybe a certain island we would all like to know more about...

I can only say - if ever there was ever a captivating web experience game - this one's the king... maybe you are just like me and cannot wait for more! Chances are however that you don't care at all like most of my pals or work mates - then just ignore all this and continue supporting Hanso and others >;o)

If this DID raise your humble interest just head to The revelation of Truth to be filled in, starting where we all started at 'the beginning'...

Oh and also: THE VALENZETTI EQUATION. If you do not know the formula yet, here it is in it's plain and beautiful truth: [note that the hieroglyphs on Rachel's site have been translated to a, b, c, d, e from left to right]

e -a = bc² -d. Thank you Enzo Valenzetti our modern day Einstein >;o)

Namaste and Good Luck - Staroc

What did I like about the E3?

2006-05-16T16:13:00.000+02:00

A lot! Even more! For one... I am going to buy a PS3! I love the games that are coming out for it and I do especially like the game you see below: Final Fantasy 13 however will not only come out as one game, it will come out as 3 games, giving you access to certain sides of the story. It will be much like the Final Fantasy 7 Compilation. So for me I guess the main FF13 will be the only real option.

The sad thing however is that I haven't even played Final Fantasy 12 yet, since the expected release date over here in Europe (just like in America) is around September to October 2006. With the newly anounced worldwide release date for the PS3 on the 17th of November that doesn't really leave much time to play through 12 on the PS2 before embarking on journeys on the new console...

I did however observe that Gears of War on the XBOX 360 looks intriguingly well, even better than the similar PS3 title Killzone, which is in my opinion however not due to hardware limitations but due to the developers' abilities. Look at the FF13 trailer and you will see that the ingame scenes look just like the cutscenes. There is next to no noticable difference. THAT is how it's done!!!

Congratulations Square-Enix, despite your utter lack of well behaviour towards us European pigs at least you show us that you deserve to look down on us - wait wasn't there this German developer Crytek showing their new game Crysis?

Oh hell yes there was... Guess even the guys at Square could learn something from these guys - now who's the winner bros? The realism guys from Germany or the artsy cultists from Square? Well both are in my opinion however standing next to Japanese guys quite often lately, my pal Steve said: "As a 6 foot European, you look down on them just naturally..." What does that tell us? I don't know, I just need a coffee. See you next time (month?!?) - Staroc

My new, once per month post...

2006-04-12T21:13:00.000+02:00

My my we already have Easter before of us (tomorrow basically at least that is what it seems like). I think I am getting old, I remember christmas like it was yesterday sometimes I think it was. Then however comes the realization that it will be xmas again just a few days after my birthday which is the day after tomorrow. Thus the year is realistically reduced to about 4 days which equals a compression-ratio of about 98,2%. My compression is the best out there basically.

I just read what I've written so far and realize that I am at the verge of madness - ahhh heck - I already passed the door, threw myself into the cuddly bed with my dirty boots on and asked madness to bring me something to chew - pronto! Well in my case that means everything is fine!!! So what have I been doing instead of just working (and not getting any research on my doctoral thesis done as usual (some research, ok but not AS MUCH as I had hoped for)) ): I have been training chanbara which is japanese swordfighting taken into the ring in an all out deathmatch with soft swords and helmets. I have also built my first table top table with the help of a friend. WOOT!

Oh and yes I did something so utterly horrible that the dimensions themselves clashed and shattered and thus caused it to snow in hell so that the demons and other hellish creatures just gave up about being total badass torturers of humanity since even they love snowball fights. There's just something so utterly and childishly fun about it that they even play it in dimensions where time and space are so warped that the Flying Spaghetti Monster actually sits at one table with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, playing bridge with Death - oh and WHO says that it isn't this dimension?!? (Oh there is one place at the moment which doesn't like snowball fighting anymore: bavaria, they like it even less then then the ENUI do and that says something...)

What I have done? Well I bought something! Something I have bought every single part of, while only really loving the first one and then only enjoying the second one. The other parts all plainly sucked more or less (ok the 4th one wasn't so bad but that's just because I love the setting...). The thing I bought is 'Tomb Raider Legend' for the PC, as such the 7th title in a series that has been steadily declining since it's marvelous inception.

[Pic]

And what can I say? I am impressed, I love the game, every minute of it and I think it's as good as if not even better then the first one. This proves it, I must truly be mad. Have a nive Halloween, er Easter, yours Staroc >;o)

Sudoku....Aaarrrggghhhh!

2006-03-03T11:02:00.000+01:00

Hi everybody,

I found another waste of time that I can use as an excuse for the lack of updates. BEHOLD: Go Sudoku for the PSP!!!

This junkball of a simple numbers arranging game has already cost about 42 hours of my life. At least! Since I discovered that the PSP has a very well done Sudoku implementation I am totally addicted. Before I only played online Sudoku without any flashy effects and practical funtions: like DKMSudoku. Just test that and you may already spend your next few hours doing nothing else basically. Now imagine what the PSP version with its beautiful graphics, endless puzzles and practical functions (if you have put in all 9 instances of a number it disappears as a choice...) has done to me.

In other though related news, it is now possible to enjoy GTA Liberty City Stories on Firmware V1.5 PSP (like mine) where before it was only possible on 2.0+. A great day for the gaming and homebrew community.

Also my girlfriend and I are planning a trip to Canada for this fall, which means that I need to safe a lot of money now. Which means that I won't be able to buy funky new stuff that I could try and show off with on this site. Oh well you'll just have to endure my usual shit for a lot longer.

The funniest thing I read to day was on one of my favourite sites 'Penny Arcade'. They had the a comic up at Wednesday and on Thursday received 1200 Krispy Kreme donuts from SOE's big boss John Smedley. I've been told they were filled with choclate, however I do remain sceptical (knowing what SOE manages to do with almost every product they bring out, which is essentially to turn it into shit [see StarWars Galaxies for reference]).

Well time to grab a donut myself and see you around next time for my circus of oddities - my senseless yabbing >;o)

My little army...

2006-02-22T15:35:00.000+01:00

Nothing much today, except for this picture of the already painted units of my lizardmen army. Aren't they cute?

Sorry for not commenting on the avian flu in Germany (when your mensa or cantine suddenly offers wild duck - just say 'NO!') or the Mohammed caricatures (though I think the concerned religious followers are reacting a bit drastically - you could even call the situation 'explosive' *grin*).

I have to write a paper for work and just am not in the mood... Maybe however I will be tomorrow... who knows...

Posts getting rare...

2006-02-07T11:18:00.000+01:00

Well people let's face it, winter here in Germany still manages to freeze everything... my car, so I cannot get to work, my Internet lines so I cannot even surf (downloading? Well maybe at 0.0001 KB/S) and almost certainly my hand has slowed down to such an amount that not even my evil thoughts can motivate it type my usual gibberish. And who suffers? No one, 'cause you guys must be glad not to be overloaded with my self-glorifying shit (or at least that is, as some journalists say, all of us bloggers do - oh and HOW RIGHT THEY ARE!!!).

So what's going on, in this part of the world? Nothing much, except that I have continued painting my little Warhammer army (lizardmen), am rewriting my novel in English now and have discovered that my PSP really is the ultimate gaming device, opening to me the worlds of Kingdom of Paradise and experiencing the childish magic of Tokobot. On the PC is momentarily stick to Warhammer 40K Dawn of War and cannot wait till Namco releases Warhammer Mark of Chaos... Don't really know why I like Warhammer that much actually, but I really jump from fantasy world to fantasy world always saying the one I am inhabiting right now is the best. Right now that is Warhammer.

I also just finished reading the 'Da Vinci Code'. Well interesting book! The sacred feminine is everywhere! So grab your's and celebrate your own little ritual!!! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee >;o)

Happy New Year...

2006-01-09T16:43:00.000+01:00

Well it is sometimes amazing to discover that some freaking idiot has been playing around with your credit card during christmas and even more amazing to discover (after some frantic phone calls - I tell ya) that this idot was basically you yourself. Damn it. Then as a new year's resolution you tell yourself that you will lay low a little in January only to find yourself taking out your girl-friend for French food and Bowling.

Ok it wasn't French food, but i was still expensive and we went out almost every fucking day of my first remaining week of holidays, which coincidentally happened to be the first week of January. Well then you bring your car to have its anual (YES the 'u' BELONGS there, you gay twarts!!!) inspection and they tell you that it is now 5 years old and hohoho be merry it's gona cost you a lot. Well I guess I became quite pale when they showed me the bill, as you might imagine. I looked like radioactive milk in a glass...so to speak. Now well now I'll have to live on bread and water for the rest of the month, so don't expect to hear much from me except bitching around about everyone else or anything expensive... so I am sort of back to normal.

Which brings me to another thing that costs me money, since Sarge convinced Crawler and Shooter (yup the guys from my squad that I tend to call friends) to try Everquest 2, I reactivated my account and am now playing as a Froglok. Yup you heard right, a walking, talking, bipedal, amphibious, slimey and green frog by the name of Pitpit. You can admire a picture of him further down. The first one is from my former character a Ratonga or rat-men (you might observe what kind of characters I tend to play *grin*) who always was in a bloody good mood, or not...

So now, because of having spent a lot of money, starting work again and having not that much fun playing the game, poor Pitpit will so to speak be put into cryogenetic stasis until I decide to reactivate the account once again. I'll be sure to let you guys know!

Merry christmas...

2005-12-22T15:54:00.000+01:00

Well as you can see from the absence of recent posts, the christmas time stress finally cought up with me. Nevertheless I didn't want to let you go into the holidays without at least a litte christmas poem I found, since it is perfectly true for about any girl I know *grin* or not...

Christmas Haiku

I Wanted a diamond.
You bought me a sweater instead.
Babe is the doghouse cold?

Yeah so much on bad poetry for this year, but as that wasn't a proper greeting, here's the real version:

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

and may Santa be nicer to your kids (or yourself) then he was to my cousin...

[Pic]

Ho ho ho, hope to se you next year (damn stutter) *grin* >;o)

Long time, no Narnia!!!

2005-12-13T09:13:00.000+01:00

Hi again! I know I didn't post for a long time now and the promised Harry Potter review never saw the light of day, but the reason behind all this is: I was ill and basically haven't even completely recovered now. Well 'insane' as always, I now feel well enough to marter you with my newest review of the Chronicles of Diharroea - er - Narnia:

Just like with my Sin City review you can guess that I just tend to write reviews if I hated the movie and you're right: So well why was Narnia as shitty as Sin City?

First of all it was tedious, very tedious and boring. The story that carries the kids to the actually interesting point of the battle (i.e. climax) is about as boring as you can possibly imagine a fantasy story to be. I mean just look at LotR and how they did it - there was real threat and danger due to the ring wraiths everywhere around. Here we get nothing for the first hour or so until then finally the white bitch ...er... make that witch sends out her dogs (I mean wolves) after having captured one of the kids, the cleverst of them all - and by that I mean the most stupid of the lot.

Don't get me wrong they are all about as dumb as a doorknob with their brains at a below zero degree working temperature! They are what most Europeans would think how American kids must be like. Yes they are THAT stupid. Coming to the countryside, fleeing from German bombings in World War II, they are cought up to there necks in questions of authority and kids games. None of them, even the oldest two (a bossy, motherly type and a loser with a low leadership value [god I have invested too much time in Warhammer lately]) seem to have a clue about what's going on.

Well let's begin with Lucy or however that little brat was called. So the kids were just killing time by playing hide and seek and Lucy stumbles over an old wardrope in which she hides, noticing that it leads into a snowy forrest. Well she assumes that it must be a rather BIG wardrope she is in... ahem ... yeah sure kid, there's a whole fucking WORLD in your bloody wardrope... ok... enters a Faun or however these beasts are called. He is half man half goat (yup actuall goat legs and all - though due to Disney, while being pantless, no sexual organs actually show). That in itself is a statement that should give you an idea of the weirdness of the situation. However Lucy just goes on as mothers warn their children they shouldn't when encountering strangers:

After talking to him and helping him pick up some of his stuff, JUDGING how nice a person Mr.Tumnus really is, she then (stupidly as always) follows him to his place to have some nice tea and toast with anchovy. Er...yeah...that is what I would do......sure........Discover a freaking gate into another world (not worrying a bit if you can get back) following a complete stranger with goat legs (and no visible sexual-organs!!!) to have fucking tea with him at his place?!? My god what did that kid's mother teach her?!? Nothing? Bullshit? Both!!! Well turns out that the 'nice' Mr. Tumnus actually wanted to kidnap Lucy and keep her prisoner to deliver her to the evil white bitch, witch whatever. Only now he that he's done it, he's too chicken (despite being half a goat...) to actually do it. Well that is SOME luck little Lucy, because in 99% of the cases you would now have been raped and possibly killed, or at least been handed over for a lot of money to the white queen who then would have raped and or killed you.

[Photo]

Well just as luckily she discovers (suddenly remembering that she has been away from home for a while) that she can go back through the wardrope to her own time/world/dimension and that no time has passed there at all, though she has stayed at least a day in Narnia. Ok the clever audience notices, almost no time passes here, when they are in Narnia, so logically if she would enter the wardrope a second later, years would have passed there... Well only problem is the gate to Narnia has closed, so no one believes Lucy and she cries around (her big brother and sister are helpless as always).

At night Lucy gets back to Narnia (gate is open again) and her second brother follows her (he's the family's rebellious character). Well interestingly just a little time has actually passed in Narnia despite our expectations...so yes it is an illogical world-gate-structure portrayed here. Ed, Lucy's brother, manages to stumble upon the white bitch and her chariot driver (a mad dwarf - well that is actually a rather well-done portrayal of dwarves) who first almost runs him over, then almost kills him until the queen orders him to stop and asks Ed if he wants to enter the sleigh........ok what did your mother say? Never enter a stranger's car, especially if they offer you sweets...... the queen offers him whatever he wants to eat and drink (turkish delights and hot chocolate) and OF COURSE he enters the chariout and believes EVERYTHING the bitch says and then agrees to bring around his sibblings (which she needs to kill to negate an age old prohecy about her death).

Again - yeah sure that is how I would act! I would never have ANY suspicions about people giving me stuff for free and then keep asking me to do stuff for them just because they are SO nice...

Well I'll skip a bit now since I think you got the impression of tediousness and overall stupor already and the film goes on in the same anti-pace and with the same amount of boring events and mindboggling absence of sanity (or well behaviour due to a good upbringing).

All the kids come to Narnia and meet some (well animated) beavers after discovering that Mr. Tumnus has been arrested for NOT giving Lucy in (her brother told the witch about all this - man is that boy smart). The beavers can talk and tell the kids about the prophecy, that anounces the end of the white witch, the coming of Azlan (a lion king - saviour [or a Kebab-takeaway (and delivery) around where I live]) and the big battle leading to these events fought by the 2 sons of Adam and 2 daughters of Eve (I wouldn't have wondered if one of the kids had said: 'but Dad is called Burt and Mom's name is Monica'...well but they got it right this time, only that they understandably don't want to fight at all having just fled from war). They can only agree on having to free Mr.Tumnus (yup the guy that almost raped their youngest sister...) and then their borther Ed aswell, who ran away to his new flame the white bitch.

Since he cannot pay her fees (that would be his sibblings) there is no sex for him (he wouldn't have survived THAT anyways - think Basic Instinct) and he is thrown into prison with the almost-rapist Mr. Tumnus, who is killed or rather frozen (since the queen is not really killing anyone, just turning them into black ice or stone - yup smells disneyish to me aswell) shortly after this, having learned that Ed is the 'traitor' who gave away the info that Tumnus didn't turn in Lucy. Queeny sends out her wolves to catch the kids but they are unable to, since the kids are lucky again (they are running to Azlan's pad [maybe they are hungry, they DO have cheap, yummy Kebabs there - now pay me for this statement!!!]). Then all of a sudden they meet Santa Claus (ho, ho, ho - what a great, fucking insane idea!!!) who gives them weapons as chrismas presents. Little armsdealer Santa...who would have thought it, but now we know how Sadam got these weapons of mass destruction that (later) no one could find hmmmmm?

Well they do arrive at Azlans camp and learn that they must fight, so that the eternal winter put over the land by the evil bitch (Lucy learned from Goatie WHY she is THAT evil and must thus be killed: She made it always winter but NEVER christmas - GOD THAT IS PURE EVIL, NOT EVEN DARTH VADER MANAGED TO DO THAT!!! - hey but isn't Santa back now, huh?...nah still need to juice..er..kill her!). The queen's wolves attack the kids again and the oldest brother doesn't want to fight, then in defense holds up his sword into which the big bad (talking) wolf then readily jumps. Yeah really, he totally jumps into the blade, the boy doesn't even move it. Maybe it's just me but I deem the wolf's move was tactically speaking 'unwise' or even 'unfavourable'...(so we see the creatures are just as stupid as the kids...)

Then the queen exchanges Ed's life for that of Azlan - the Lion Saviour, who in the night is killed by her on a huge stone altar. The killing itself is portrayed rather emotionless and boring [a bit more excitement would maybe have put too much bloodlust into a Disney-Movie, but who cares anymore by now], we do however find the two girls watching the whole thing happen. Then while they mourn at the lions side, the big battle begins, led by the oldest brother, who shortly before still hadn't figured out on which end his sword should be held. Imagine a battle that could have been as intense as the last battle in Lord of the rings. Now take away dark, really ugly creatures and replace them with furry animals and a few angry looking dwarves. Now take away all the blood and darkness. Take away the music and the choreography. Now you can almost picture the epic 'vastness' (should be wasteness) of this battle being fought on green hills in the sunshine.

Need I say it? It is boring as hell to watch, despite being the fucking climax. Then the lion returns from the dead (that is what people mean when they talk about all the Christian references in the books) and manages too kill the bitch just in time, before she can kill the oldest brother - now the hero who can suddenly kill Minotaurs and the likes. The lion bites her head off, but since no blood is on his mane or snout, maybe she was actually really made out of ice (icequeen) and he didn't bite her head of, but licked it off or something... since licking (a girl) in any form would be sex-related the whole scene isn't shown.

In the end the kids get to sit on the thrones, worshipped as kings and queens with new fancy-pansy titles. The whole world has summer again, Azlan leaves to where ever fighting lion saviours go and after living for 10 years or more in Narnia, the kids stumble upon the wardrope-portal again and are thrown back to their own world, being turned back into the spoiled, dumb brats they used to be. Serves them right in my opinion.

Nothing works in this movie, except for the glorious animation of the computer-generated animals which hasn't been paralleled before. The characters have no real developments, or if they do have it, it is all of a sudden (like the oldest brother knowing how to fight after the wolf jumped into his blade), there are no strong motivations really (why for example does the white queen want to rule Narnia, what are the benefits?) and there is no pace or interesting action in there at all.

I would have walked out of there had I not waited to see if at least the end is somewhat interesting, but yeah I should have left earlier. Really if this had been a horror-flick the stupid kids wouldn't have survived more than 10 minutes.

Thank you for your attention, if you haven't fallen asleep over this review or beat yourself to death with a spoon due to the detailed report of stupidity in this movie>;o)

Mourn...

2005-12-01T16:14:00.000+01:00

My dear friends mourn, mourn one of the greatest artists of our century. Mourn Frank Robinson - the 'Xylophone Guy'™!

When I was over in Nottingham there were two true artists that enlightened my stay in Robin Hood Ville with their musical performances from day one till the day I left. The day I arrived in Nottingham, I was greated, arriving from the station close to one of two large shopping centres by the Jazz-Man. That was what the black guy with a voice somewhere between Eric Clapton and Elvis called himself, playing blues, Jazz and Dixieland on his Guitar in the streets. God that boy was good! When I threw some money into his hat after listening a while he bowed and whispered: "Thank you, at least there are some lovers of real music left! Good Luck in Notts, boy!"

I came to the town hall and had the next musical encounter. It was quite different but again it made me smile: A rather ruggy old geezer was playing or rather entusically trying to play on a children's xylophone. The tunes he produced were up to the level of musical quality that we sometimes encounter with kids around 4 trying 'creatively' to get as much sound as possible out of the little 8 key instrument, rather lacking a sense of melody, flow and rythm.

Well the geezer at least had some rythm which he demonstrated by shaking his foot off beat. He was so cheery, calling out to people with a gnomes voice at times that I just had to laugh about the funny old man with his 'instrument'. I gave him my second little donation of the day and walked happily into my new life in Notts.

Well he and the Jazz-Man played throughout the whole time (he even played the day I left and send a nod and a salute to me, saying good bye, singing a blues song about either leaving a girl or trying to keep her...) of my stay and brightened up my life, but no one caused as much laughter and joy around me and my pals as little Frank Robinson - the Xylophone Guy did. I last heard him play a week or so before I left Nottingham.

Frank died on July 4th of last year (2004). No one will ever hear him play again. Mourn the loss of one of Nottinghams greatest celebrities, the old geezer and busker Frank Robinson 'The Xylophone Guy'™! We will always remember you Frank!

PS: Maybe Jeff still has that video we took of Frank playing, I'll see if I can get that and post it here (and thus void my last statement >;o) )...

Chinese Geisha...

2005-11-18T12:04:00.000+01:00

Well I don't know if you have seen the new Harry Potter ('Goblin on fire'...meaning Dobby or sth. similar) yet, but you will find my review of the movie here somewhen next week.

Besides the trailers for Chronicles of Narnia and King Kong there was this one trailer for 'Memoirs of a Geisha' which at the time (1997ish) was a must-read novel. Well I didn't read it but the trailer itself looks promising. The only little problem that I had with it was that 3 of the main characters (Geishas respectively) aren't played by Japanese Actresses but by Chinese ones! Now don't get me wrong, I love good-looking Chinese actresses [god my own girlfriend is sorta Chinese] but the American directors are inviting trouble:

I don't know if you have followed the recent conflicts of these two Asian countries, mostly centered on a Japanese history book that plays down their cruel military acts commited during the second world war on chinese civilians. Now there was quite some more screaming when the Chinese public learned that Zhang Ziyi would play a 'japanese whore'. Contained within this statement are several misconceptions:

[Photo]

First of all it is suggested that the otherwise gorgeous Zhang Ziyi could 'play' this role. Obviously she can't, her acting isn't well enough to play such a role!!! Ha ha - gotcha! Nahhh of course I meant that she can't play this role in a metaphorical sense, since she is that good that she actually becomes the character she plays as long as she's acting (portrayal of the blind dancer in House of the flying Daggers was that great). Since she is gorgeous and strong and well-of she could never become a whore, so the statement is void already.

Second 'geishas' aren't prostitutes in the traditional (yep long tradition!!!) meaning of the word. 'Gei' means art and as such they are women of art. The art of entertainment (that may include sexual entertainment, yes, but is never obligatory and happens out of the geisha's free will or desire - much like at prom night), music, dancing, conversation or the well-known tea-ceremony. So that makes the statement wrong aswell.

Third, Zhang Ziyi's Geisha will have the special and remarkable feature of having blue eyes! I don't know about you, but I don't know any (pure-blood ~ Oh god a Harry Potter reference - shame on me) japanese girl with fucking blue eyes; as cool as this may prove to look in the end. So third point that's wrong in there.

In the end, I do think it might become a great movie to the likes of Last Samurai, especially due to having only Asian main characters. Zhang Ziyi will play the protagonist with the given name of 'Sayuri', the wonderful Michelle Yeoh will feature as her mentor and Li Gong will play a rival geisha by the name of Hatsumomo. Enjoy these chinese ladies, speaking English with their sweet accents, alongside Japanese actors like Ken Watanabe speaking with their Japanese accents. I look forward to finding out, IF the chinese actors got lessons to acquire a Japanese-English accent.

Let's close this treatise with a truly marvelous picture from last years oscars. Now ain't she beautiful?

[Photi]

Well she doesn't always look THAT good, especially without make-up, but then, who does (plus she's still cute) >;o)

Japanese Games are like Japanese TV...

2005-11-14T15:02:00.000+01:00

Well howdy, my fellow Erthicans. My two week writing break has to be justified by the utter lack of exciting things happening over here in Germany or the Game-Scene in general. France has burning cars (not that I would think of that as good, but it's at least something to write about!) we have foggy, rainy and already bloody cold weather.

Gladly then I found something that is worth reporting. My ultimate target is though not publicly displayed on this site, but one of my common targets since my childhood days, the Japanese Game Industry and the dubious stuff they tend to call 'games'. One such Playstation Portable Games has recently come to my attention.

"Yawahada Eigo Juku" is its title. It is, following the description on the box, a program for learning conversational English, or 'EngRish' as the 'L' does not natively exist in the Japanese language. The game offers the TVs standard method of teaching english: Videos are played with sub-titles, first doing a conversation in Japanese, then reperforming the same conversation in English. Bad English AND subtitles in this case however as the following picture of the protagonists of this little piece of software will make clear:

Yup, you're seeing right my conversative American protestant, those are half-naked bikini girls (thank you Japan!!!). Nice japanese chicks with big boobs (as rare as that might be, they found three role models for this disc)! Their ability to actually speak English while dancing on the screen, finding silly reasons to start hopeless 'conversations', is to say the least utterly horrible. Another site referenced this bit of 'EngRish' girl-talk: "KUDO YUU TERU MII HAU TSU GETTO TSU ZA GUDDO RESUTORAN NIA HIA?!" (meaning "Could you tell me how to get to a good restaurant around here?").

My good religious parents, some of you must have thought it: "Will they strip and shake those jumbos around and then have a shower and touch each other?" just like you used to love in those porn-flicks, when you were around the same age your kids are now? (I know while back than that was cool, you now have to protect your poor kids, even from erect nipples under a shirt, while you cannot stop staring yourselves... go and pray in church on Sunday!). The answer however is "NO"! No they will always keep their nice bikinis on, but they sure as hell love to dance around the screen, giving you as much chances to see the rest of their perfekt skin, listen to their little Japanese manga-voices raping the English language and being perfectly cute while doing so.

Use this UMD as a chance to show your kids that Asian girls are indeed hotter than the fast-food fed barn-queens they may jump onto on prom-night (or more likely not...). If you may spot some small criticism between the lines, then yes, my dear reader, I don't think the Japanese company selling this is doing anything wrong (except they should hire gorgeous Japanese Girls who speak English properly, though that might be rare and thus expensive), not even buyers are doing anthing wrong (except if they actually want to learn English with this trash, which would be a waste of money really).

No the only ones who are wrong are those who think the idea behind this Software is dirty, since even her in reality-land, looking out of my window onto the parking-lot, I see all the parked tanks (refer to Shiratami's blog for the Japanese view of what the typical German is like) and the hot bikini-girls scrubbing all the dirt off them and in the process drenching themselves in soapy water. Believe me it's better than HDTV - I can see ALL THE DETAILS! While my mouth now fills with the same kind of substance, hoping not to be beat up by an enraged girlfriend, I send you these words:

"Are we lost (have you seen her die in the series last week? now Ana-Lucia may be hated even more, if it really was her...) Daddy?" the boy asked, "SHUT UP!" his father explained!

Think about it and see the truth! Oh and Steve get me a copy of this as long as you're still in Japan >;o)

First G5-squad design

2005-10-27T14:01:00.000+02:00

Hi guys, not much today, just the promised G5-design. Kalli this is for you, our expert sniper! Though Crawler and Sarge are quite adequate snipers as well they are not even close to your 'camping skills' >;o)

My little G5-design for you buddy - Eh voilá:

Hope GOLD is to your liking!!! I call it the 'Sniper's Goldfinger' - or if you like that better 'Goldmember' >;o)

The lost things...

2005-10-05T09:39:00.000+02:00

Tonight is gonna be a glorious night over in america, when it will be finally revealed what the meaning of the hatch is. We have all gotten the hints and I will spoil it for our German readers: It's a quarantaine shelter of some sort, since the illness that Danielle has been talking about seems to be much more real than anyone imagined... Well I still can't get this picture out of my head: Well guys, I really do hope they bring the new episodes out in Germany as fast as possible! Now GET LOST >;o) Don't want to? Well okay than you get the special surprise: Here's what I found on the net, from episode 2 season 2, it will reveal large parts of Kate's secret >;o) Be warned... large spoiler >;o)

I know you want more... GO GET IT YOURSELF!!!

Nintendogs goes Everquest...

2005-09-22T16:36:00.000+02:00

Have you heard the news? Digital Pets sell well... Not really news in my opinion, since this is something I knew since that Tamagotchi wave during my childhood swamped over the world. Well however if you remember Sarge Starlight from my BF2 Squad that you have already seen in some of my short comics on this blog is also (strangely?!?) an Everquest 2 fan.

Well Crawler and I had this conversation about giving Starlight something nice for birthday, like a dog. We were laughing a lot about that, since Starlight will be turning 29 (almost 30) without a girl at his side and showing the first signs of age... (Like part of his digestive tract, deciding to leak explosively... yeah you get the picture). So we thought about getting him a hat, a stick and a dog, a dachshund. I suggested naming it 'Purzel' since that was what my grandfather (god bless his soul) called his dachshund.

We started laughing even harder when we thought that there should be a plaque or digital code-card of some kind coming with the pet, allowing Starlight to take Purzel the dog with him into the game Everquest 2 he so loves to play. Now that is SOME strong marketing argument, don't you think? Your true companion for hunting in real and digital life! A man's second best friend. A reason to live. OK, I'll stop it alright! Here is however the graphical result of our conversation depicted in a scene that vividly haunted our minds. Please imagine Starlight speaking with a scottish or a strong german (Cologne-Area) accent:

Well Starlight, since I know you read this blog aswell...I'll be out of country for a while *grin* AND I hope this doesn't spoil your birthday surprise for next year... >;o) Staroc out!

Kung Fu Hustle...

2005-09-20T12:49:00.000+02:00

Well well well... looks that there were no BIG news or a lot of fun stuff in the last few days going on, especially with out German elections and the 'interesting' results, but let's not bath in pessimism:

Have you seen the 2004 movie Kung-Fu Hustle? Great movie! Fun, fist-on and wacky where needed. I like that! No me as a gamer asks himself, how come there are no cool kung-fu games out there reflecting some of that Hong Kong fun-style? Why aren't there any proper Kung-Fu games... Well as a language analyst you might add that kung-fu only means 'always train' and that some freaking games require exactly that to become well enough to earn ranks (yeah I KNOW what I am speaking of, still being private and also being scheduled forBF2 parachute lessons by my own guild...). It's not the same however:

Since I am a modern man, I want to be a master of 'having always trained' without the effort of 'kung-fu' (or was it the otherway round..). Someone must have thought the same: BEHOLD mortals the great power of Ragdoll Kung-Fu!!!

It's a game alright, it's about wacky Kung-Fu movies and it let's you create whatever moves you like to apply and let you use every object around. Yeah I know it looks sorta dated and 2d-ish but that is not the point: I really don't expect this to be a major game, a seller, I just expect it to be fun as hell, as a distraction that only requires a little training for the desired effect. You basically use the mouse to drag the ragdolls' limbs around to create devastating manouvers...

The above picture really cannot convey any of the possible fun this little piece of entertainment may bring, so I strongly advise you watch the trailer (warning: slow download - you can also watch it here - oh watch the second official trailer, the first one is crappy: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/ragdollkungfu/) Have fun guys, I know I will... oh and by the way it will be available for download on the Valve steam servers (no matter how evil that may be...)

Baby Lon 5...

2005-09-12T15:46:00.000+02:00

I got a new baby, not my first one but the first one called Lon, though technically it is the 5th incarnation of Lon since the first Lonnies didn't live long enough to be mentioned really. Why then have 5 in a row, if it's not efficient? Oh well you know how we all love our babies. Okay so Baby Lon 5 is a bit on the fat side weighing roughly 2.5 million tons (of spinning steel) but well its just like with Obelix - she's strong-boned.

Now Lonny lass may be young of age but she is already crawling with bacterial activity. Millions and millions of parasites that could not live unprotected in the space surrounding our Baby Lon 5 are swarming inside her huge body. Among the most prominent of those are Humans, Narn, Centauri, Mimbari, Vorlons and Hobbits. Okay cut out the Hobbits...different story really.

The best thing about this big Baby is that it fits sliced into lots of tine pieces on loads of silver disks. DVDs.
So fun aside. If you were ever even remotly interested in science-fiction from a religious, scientific or political level this television series from the mid-nineties is for you. True the computer effects (at that time spectacular) look very dated, but very soon you will forget this fact, because of the dramatic, world-changing story unfolding that always comes back to unimportant and important little details covered in earlier seasons. It was one of the bigger, successful series that made it to a full of 5 seasons (it's called Babylon 5 after all) and actually managed to tell all of its story.

If you get a chance: Grab it - watch it - love it

A friend's blog...

2005-09-07T17:51:00.000+02:00

Steve a friend of mine is just now sitting in a plane to Japan where he will work at a company close to Tokyo for about a year. He will also visit Japan's oldest and most well-respected sword school, since he is even more of a Katana addict than me (he actually does Iaido properly, not the fun version I am adopting ever since I got those Tai-Chi lessons...).

He will be writting his experiences into the following blog, be warned though, most of it will be in German: http://shiratami.blogspot.com/ Best wishes to Steve and if you actually have a grudge against him, as I said he is right in a specific airplane on route to Tokyo right now...

Got you buddy, got you good - and nobody will ever notice that the monster is in truth XXXX... >;o)

Disgustingly violent pets...

2005-09-07T15:14:00.000+02:00

Well maybe there is still somebody in this world who doesn't know Happy Tree friends yet. If you haven't get to know these little urchins of gut filled blood spraying lovable pets. They are the most adorable cuddly pets imaginable, yet engage in actions so utterly horrible you just got to laugh...

Let's review this last statement: In a mental home this might sound quite normal, but in real life (such as the Internet *wink*) it sounds sorta off. Well maybe it does only to me, since in a world where for most americans sex is considered to be much more dangerous to young children than blood-drenching violence, these cuddly cartoons (aliteration anybody *grin*) may just be the right thing for our children on afternoon TV.

Since I saw how fascinated some kids around 8-14 got by the GTA games (I know they should not have been playing it, but they were not my kids, okay...) saying things like: "Oh no you need to kill more hookers, they have all the money (at least capitalism still works). Oh! You just missed another, just shoot her in the head than stomp on her corpse..." I figure that we need a new campaign for more disgusting pets that take themselves apart. THANK YOU.

For all of you adults that want to take a look at what modern kids would go crazy about, look at their website or compare these two screens:

BEGINNING

END

Sweet dreams to all of you... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Short news...

2005-09-06T15:16:00.000+02:00

Oh by the way: Everybody (not only other BLOGGER users) can now create comments. You only need to fill in the word verification... showing you are a human not a dumb machine or Terminator come from the future to leave smartass comments like I do... >;o)

Daydreaming & Titanic...

2005-09-01T16:50:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we were flying around in Bagdad or whatever city they depict in Battlefield 2. Sarge announced she had to go the the toilet shorty and would be back immediatly. Crawler was flying steady and well as always, but seemed caught in a sort of daydream. He always gets those when he is really excited... and he was quite excited because of a new feature...

His distractedness was immediatly used by some Arabs to send a little present our way, which coincidently just missed us and exploded when Sergeant Vanessa left the restroom.

The shockwave however did hit us, making Vanni trip and fall into her own bowl of excrements. This made her even more angry than usual when she hasted to get to the machinegun to pay those bastards back. Ace Crawler however was still dreaming, while I private Staroc was as 'high' as ever only fearing for MY life at the hands of a daydreaming pilot or should I say 'captain'?!?

I did jump AND this time my parachute button worked, I closed my eyes shortly for a quivk prayer but when I opened them, I somehow found myself in 1912 on April 14th...

Then a pterodactyl flew by, caught me with it's mighty beak, chewed me to a violent and minced death leaving me to get reborn into the conflict I knew. I spawned in the same helicopter from before that Crawler had just now managed to fly into a tower, making it explode. I awoke with a slight headache and desperate for some ice...again teaching us to be careful with what we wish >;o)

Since it is 25-30°C over here in Germany at the moment I am myself longing for some ice-cream right now, so good bye till Sunday or Monday everybody, since I won't have time to write up anything with all the wedding party (sheduled for Saturday evening) preperations for the next two days. C U around next week >;o) STAROC

Drama on sea...

2005-08-30T15:02:00.000+02:00

Well I haven't had much time to play Battle Field 2 or anything lately, but I just had this dream yesterday night, where our standard team was chasing this Bond guy (wearing a suit and everything), who was fleeing in a captured hovercraft, while we were hot (not like hot coffee mod hot, to get this clear!) on his tail (again not the hot coffee mod kind of tail!), trying to get back those stolen plans (I don't remember what for exactly, but let's just assume they were for the dreaded Deathstar). Well Crawler was despite his usual urge to go slow quite fast and we caught up with Mr. Bond in like no time until there was this strange stuttering sound, a far-away tinkling of small bells, a strange light and a new sensation in my stomach that said something is trying to get out. Depicted below is what happened directly before someone was thoughly beat up by an angry sergeant and the bazooka missile that hit our boat, fired by the agent, missing me who was kicked into the water by Sarge Vanessa for inapropriate behaviour before I had even had a chance to say hello again to my breakfast for the second time.

Well I guess I was lucky...the piranhas liked my vomit better than me, so I could get on land again where Sarge and Ace had just re-incarneted. Then I woke up... Strange dreams we sometimes get huh?

Oh only for all of you who love chinese food: Tonight were having original chinese HOT POT at my girlfriend's parent's place - OMG I LOVE THAT... Poor you who has to eat toast with cheese... >;op<

A rare Phenomenon continued...

2005-08-29T12:40:00.000+02:00

As you may all be aware the AT-AT is a maternal kid-raiser. The father leaves childbaring and care entirely to the mother and disappears immediatly after the act, depicted in my last exclusive insight into these mighty creatures habits. The shots I was able to take now have even more sensational quality, since they depict the return of a paternal AT-AT to his young amongst a herd of mother animals.

Seemingly the young one did not recognize its father which brought about a depression phase that this beautiful animal handled very much like any of us: DRUG ABUSE!!!

I do hope to be able to continue my research and bring about new sensational findings to you my dear scientific readers.

An Empire rising...

2005-08-26T11:58:00.000+02:00

As some of you might know, Staroc already had an incarnation in the world of Star Wars. Krein Staroc was his name, a 'heroic' smuggler with crazy ideas... he hated the empire and especially the emperor himself, 'cause he was so damn ugly. He would have like to be reigned by a hot chick, yeah he really would have liked that! However, he may never get a chance, nor will we:

As you might have realized by now the old pope is dead and we got a new one, the sinister cardinal Ratzinger aka. Papa Ratzi! Some bloke at Wikipedia posted a certain picture of another person instead, but he/she was right:

Everyone with eyes in his head should have realized that Ratzi is the emperor come to THIS galaxy, to bring about a new empire... now we all know what really happened when Palpatine was thrown into the reactor shaft in episode 6... he was reborn into this world (yay the Bhuddists were right!!!).

Now he will grab his lightsaber and go on a new crusade, just like Indy or McDonalds and Microsoft >;o) :

All he now needs is a new Darth Vader, but as there are elections in Germany shortly, I guess he will know who to recruit... May the force fuck us all...

On not so related news - I found the following picture somewhere on the net: Smoking may be expensive but if you got all the money you can finally enjoy the FULL TASTE the way it was meant to be with the new SMOKINATOR (it's only 1000 bucks):

The minister of health already ordered 200 for his private collection. Stay healthy...

Wedding...

2005-08-25T11:38:00.000+02:00

What was going on yesterday? Well it was wedding time for my girlfriend's sister. It was a crazy day with a vietnamese-cantonese-buddhist wedding-ceremony and I can't go into details. All I wanted to say here is:

CONGRATULATIONS VINH AND TAM AND THE VERY BEST THE WORLD HAS TO OFFER TO BOTH OF YOU

Please note that the white stuff in their hair is NOT dandruffs >;o) BUT artificial canned snow from Canada...

Let's close with a picture of my girl-friend's sister in her traditional (ceremonial) vietnamese wedding dress in red. The other girl is a good friend (yes, before you even try to ask, she's married AS WELL!!!):

Again best wishes to bride and groom (see first picture, idiots!)...

A trip to Paris...

2005-08-23T10:36:00.000+02:00

Whew, if you have been wondering why there haven't been any posts in 4 days, well this was due to a little vacation my girlfriend and I made to Paris. Friday to Monday we escaped the sullen weather that seems to dominate the summer in Germany and experienced genuine sunshine.

So what happened on our adventures? I will spare you the details of what we ate, because this would by itself be enough for 3 blog-posts:

Friday:
We arrived in Paris at about 18°° and after a bit of search found our hotel, close to the Avenue de Wagram. It was a calm 'area', but the hotel itself was nice, though the room was a little small. After dropping all our belongings we made our way to 'cartier 13', the Cantonese-Vietnamese quater of Paris and had the 'buffet' of our lives. I was soooo stuffed afterwards, I had to sit down every few steps...

Then we went to the 'Tour Eifel' which was brightly lit at around 22°° but when we arrived at it's foot, the special light show had already ended. We then decided to do something romatically funny, like having some crazy asian guy draw a portrait of both of us. He still wanted 30€ for it after tense haggling and I said 'why not - if its good'. After one wasted hour we had to pay the crazy dude 15 bucks for something that did not even closely resemble any one of us. Mind you it was no caricature but a failed attempt at a real portrait. What a waste, but we still had a good laugh.

Saturday:
My girlfriend went to La gallery Lafayette in the morning which as every guy who has ever been to Paris with a chick knows is bad... even evil... well I went to the Lafayette 'Homme'-Store which had a delicatessen shop spreading the whole first floor. I could have eaten ALL of the stuff there if it hadn't been expensive as hell. The French sure know how to annoy foreigners by refusing to speak English and putting up price tags that millionaires would refuse to pay (them greedy buggers). For lunch and further shopping we went back to the 13th quarter and had Vietnamese soup (oh my god - FUCKING great).

We went to big Asia markets bought a whole lot of stuff and then went to an Asian gallery to buy even more stuff. My girlfriend bought herself a vietnamese style dress that looks absolutely fucking beautiful and was compared to the prices at Lafayette (185€ for a bloody shirt...no thanks) quite cheap. Then we had vietnamese baguettes for dinner and then went down to the Seine where quite a lot of people were playing 'Boules', singing, dancing, strolling along and having picknic. We wanted to play 'Boules' aswell and have picknic at the Seine but it was just not possible on Saturday. So we walked over to the second Seine-Isle had some great Italian Icecream before we went to Notre-Dame and from there to a nice little quarter where a lot of small cafés attracted a whole lot of people.

We then had our second dinner with snails, mussles and cheese and had our names painted in deco-fashion. It was great fun with all these people around there and with all the wine we drank...*hicks*

Sunday:
After sleeping a little longer...now might that be connected to the wine?!?...we went to the 19th quarter (where islamic and some asians reside), bought a new suitcase and had vietnamese lunch (self-rolled rice rolls). Then we went to the 13th quarter again, where my girlfriend bought even more stuff (like shoes fitting her new dress), while I had to wait...I guess it was then that my back began to hurt. Then we bought duck, baguettes, some desserts and left for the Seine to have our picknic dinner finally, after which we played some 'Boules' (you rent the balls but its free, you only have to leave a security).

Then since Saturday was so great with people everywhere and Sunday being so boring because no one was partying we went to the heart of town, to see if at least there, somethings going on... Nope! Nothing... so we had an expensive coffee and ate (YES ATE even more) some Sushi...

Monday:
I felt sick in the morning (basically still do a little). My first guess was that I had eaten something foul, but now I guess it was just my back hurting so bad, that my ribs started to hurt out of compassion as well, which then caused the strange feeling of sickness in my stomach. My girlfriend went to Lafayette again, while I got 15 vietnamese style baguettes for her family. Then we took the bus to Carles-de-Gaule and flew back to Germany. The sun from France still in our minds, we left the plane in Dortmund and wanted to go back immediatly. It was a bit like the 3-weather-hairspray commercial:

"Paris - blazing sunlight - the hairdo keeps its form perfectly. Dormund - rain and fog - the hair still looks magnificient..."

--> Only our expressions must have changed to >:o(

On our way back with the train, we stopped some time before our final destination because of a 'human-accident' - meaning that someone had killed himself on our route by jumping on the rails in front of a train. So my girlfriend's father had to fetch us with the car... At their place I was greeted by the horde of kids (yeah the same kids I went bowling with...) and then had a hairdo by my girlfriend before I fell into bed.

Today:
WORK! ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH >;o)

The jump...

2005-08-18T10:05:00.000+02:00

I don't know if any of you guys remember my adventures in Star Wars Galaxies as Krein Staroc who made jumping at the Anchorhead cliffs one of his favourite passtimes... however every single 'Staroc' incarnation seems to have a slightly jumpy quality about them, as I have recently demonstrated in Battle Field. Gaze upon the mighty impact Private Staroc made on THE GROUND!!! (As always: click on any picture to open a larger version):

It so happened that I (always playing special troops or anti-tank) was up on a higher building when I saw someone sneeking up to Sarge Vanessa who was defending a flag down there:

Well an order is an order and since (s)he said 'at once', the stairs were of course NO OPTION! I knew I had to do THE JUMP (*imagine a horror tune played on an old organ*) - THE BASE JUMP MANEUVRE - there was only one tiny problem once I had jumped:

While our Crash Pilot Hermy had recognized my arrival as an immediate threat to his life, he didn't realize that jumping out of my way would be an option... He died as a patriot - stupid but proud! Since that is alright in the army, Sarge didn't blame him but me by comming back to the tiny detail that hat led to Ace Hermy's recent demise in our debriefing, immediatly after my impact...

I just don't understand why they don't kick me out of the bloody army, no matter how often I shoot the sarge... well at least my kill count has risen this way *evilgrin*.

Oh, er..., the other thing I of course didn't understant was the mental asylum part... I was just once in a 'hospital' you know for my 'illness' >;o)

Update on me...

2005-08-16T10:16:00.000+02:00

Alright, some stuff on what's going on at the moment (with me here in Germany):

Guess where we went to yesterday?

Indeed, we went to a toy-shop... Nah it was bowling...of course! Before I explain to you how much I suck at this game, let me detail the events that led to me sucking even more than normally:

The night before I didn't get much sleep (went to bed at 2:30 but couldn't really sleep) and got up at 8. Then I went to work - I work at a university by the way - and had some nice progress preparing my doctoral thesis. So at 6:30 I finish my work and since my girlfriend came over earlier, 'cause she needed my car, I walked to her parents place (roughly 3-5 km away). So you can imagine I was a bit exhausted by then (especially since I was carrying my Backpack around with me, which due to Notebook, PSP and other stuff weighs round-about 7-10 Kilos).

Now I had to help my girlfriend prepare stuff for her sister's wedding, which is set for a course of 2 weeks, starting next week. I had to draw on and cut their names from cardbord (and since I had to do it nicely it was bloody painful for my fingers). After finishing at about 10, my girlfriend's sister called, saying that they are going bowling with all the kids (meaning most of my girlfriend's cousins - a band of 5 kids - all cantonese/vietnamese but some born in Canada, some in Germany --> oh yeah didn't tell you yet my girlfriend is asian).

Soooo at 10:30 to 11:00 we arrive at the bowling place, I try to get some feeling back into my fingers, ignore the tiredness I am feeling and watch all these amazing kids reach at least 8 points on their first go and three strikes. Well as I told you that I suck at this game anyways, the prospect of losing to a band of 10 year olds wasn't helping my mood nor my tiredness. So after a passable first roll, it just went downwards, ending my game with 61 points losing again to my girlfriend (75 I think) AND half of the kids.

Now guess what - they didn't want to play a second time, to give me a chance to get some more points (or even greater embarassment) but agreed that the next place to go would be McDonald's... So there we went. As I am seemingly the best person to order stuff, everybody just yelled their wishes at me before and while I was trying to place the order... Didn't help matters... In the end however everyone got what they wanted (Chickenburgers for the most part) and I could enjoy my McSundae caramel before I finally went home, fell into my bed and dozed off immediatly until my alarm clock rang about 2 hours ago.

Well need to get some work done now... At least I had some proper sleep yesterday, though it were only 6-7 hours >;o) *YAWN*

What's lost...?

2005-08-15T11:49:00.000+02:00

Have any of you seen Lost yet? The ABC Primetime series about a band of plane crash survivors stranded on a (more or less) deserted island. Well obviously there's a mad french woman, a secret hatch and a damn MONSTER. Discussions have arisen starting directly after (or during...) the first episode ever of this TV must-see. Many think it's like in Michael Crichton's Prey - A swarm of nanobots. Some think it might be an invisible dinosaur, others think it's an alien robot or Metal Gear (see my little review *grin*) or it might even be a combination of all of the above. I do however have my own theory, depicted in this little (slightly modified) wallpaper:

Well someone else made an effort to tell the story of the people from the tail section of the plane that is 'lost' in the series (everybody thinks they are dead, however in the last episodes of season 1 there are hints, that they might still be alive). Please keep in mind that whatever he writes is purly fanfiction but very well done fanfiction in my opinion. You can find it HERE.

Also there was some speculation at one of my favourite web-sites some time ago, at PENNY ARCADE. Remember however:

THE ONLY TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING WILL OF COURSE BE FOUND HERE AT STAROC'S WOR(L)DS ONLY >;o) Maybe I should try to get an interview with the monster... Comment if you'd like one >;o)

A rare Phenomenon

2005-08-15T11:37:00.000+02:00

Yesterday night, I could witness a very rare event, normally only occuring in a lightyears fashion of galaxies far far away. The sheer beauty of the AT-AT's mating act is something that would let every StarBiotechnologist's heart jump in pure ectasy. I was able to make a little recording of their mating call and mating ritual which you can download here (reminds me of Lost somehow...see next post). However the most terrific thing was the picture someone was able to take during the beautiful creatures' act:

A Buddy's Blog

2005-08-15T09:28:00.000+02:00

Yup! If you like technology, geo-caching and funny stuff Han's Blog is definatly something for you. This old (there is the damn word yet again *cry even more than last time*) buddy of mine knows its way around all these topics and has an eye for cool stuff on the net:

Han's Blog

Visit him, pay him credit and damn you come back here for new Staroc's Wor(l)ds... >;o)

The best console gets even better!

2005-08-15T02:16:00.000+02:00

The PSP has got lots of goodie homebrew fun for everyone already but now it got even more in the house for all us PC lovers:

"DOS - if you are as old as I am *cry* you can remember this..."

"Blue-Screen coming to PSP soon..."

Not much to say on that other than AWESOME, all the DOS and WINDOWS greatness coming to PSP - what more could I as an abandonware freak hope for? - Well okay there's one downpoint to the current x86 emu - it is slow as hell... keep your fingers (or if you are from Zemrulon 5, all your 7 tentacles) crossed for future updates, or even a running DOSBOX port >;o)

SHIT CITY - You know the one with SINS

2005-08-13T14:42:00.000+02:00

We have all played Sim City I guess... You never saw the Sims themselves (beside their 2 extra installments that in my opinion are SHIT too), only the houses, cars and sometimes news reports on high violence and stuff.

Well there's STINK CITY now, a horribly artsy pansy movie-comic adaption in the tradition of recent 'highlights' like Elektra (which of course was bullshit as well).

Sin City (see I could already bring myself to mention its real name in the third paragraph) is the CRAP I have seen a day ago. Oh my god is it bad. Yeah there's violence, a good deal of hinted and real nuditity, however it's still lame.

First its in black and white (artsy), plus the 'story' sucks: There's the unbribable cop (Bruce-boy) who hunts down the DON's son who rapes little girls and kills them (and gets away with it 'cause of his mighty dad, who bought the whole fucking town [not a wise investment if you ask me...]). However he (the 'perv' not the cop) is a little impotent and 'can only get it up, when they (the little girls) scream'. Great idea for a story... Well the cop is almost killed first by his heart dissorder then by bullets from some bribed cop, after first shooting the pervert.

Then there's the Barbarian (A bit like Crawler actually) who has sex with a whore who is dead next morning. Instead of looking if he crushed her accidently, he immediatly 'knows' she has been murdered by a hobbit (Yeah Frodo's a manical girl killer [yup there's 2 in the movie] and EATER in this one). So Mr.Conan declares war on the city, kills everyone who doesn't answer his questions plus those that do, finally finds the killer and his protector (a bishop). Then he shows the padre his favourite boy's head (again the hobbit) and kills him as well before being caught by the police and fried on one of these high-voltage chairs.

Next there's the Doc from 'Closer' who kills for money, yet loves a city amazon who he can't be together with (properly - fucking seems to work though). Well his new flame (not the amazon but some hairdresser...) is bullied by her old boyfriend, who later goes to the Amazon part of town (oh you know whores WITH GUNS) and is promptly killed. Well turns out he was a cop. Since there was a truce between amazons and the police this means war, if any info leaks. Well it leaks to be short and there's a lot of action to try and conceal it (mostly concerning an interesting trip with the talking corpse of the cop and the 'Closer'-Doc - did I mention the Katana Amazon [Kill Bill anyone?] had choped up the cops buddies so they would fit into the car's trunk?) with all cops that rushed to the scene being shot in the end.

Zoom back to Bruce-Boy still alive in hospital - who is now imprisoned by the Don-bribed police for eight years (well actually this is eight years ago from the barbarians and 'Closer'-doc story - he's arrested for girl raping...). The girl he saved writes him letters every week for eight years (So then, now is the same now as the Barbarian's 'now' - oh, because of the letters he sort of falls in love with the kid, though never seeing her again until the new 'now', which again is the barbarians now - figure it out >;o) ). When he gets out of prison she (the girl who's 19teen now - oh its Invisible Girl from Fanta 4 by the way), who's now a lap-dancer falls in love with him and he gives IT to her, then a creep shows up (not the hobbit but a yellow goblin (really depicted in yellow, since for even more artsy-ness, they put in colours on certain people...) who is the kid-fucker from the beginning after multiple operations trying to save his life since Brucy-Boy shot him 8 years previously - Well he kidnaps the girl,

Bruce (now in angry mode - facial expression stays the same due to 3-weather-Hairspray) finds them brings an end to creep, kisses girl goodbye and then brings an end to himself, though apparently his heart has stopped anyways. This luckily brings the fucking ton of shit people like to call movie (or comic adaption) to an END, before my heart actually stopped (was close though *evilgrin*)

GREAT MOVIE - NEVER GO AND WATCH IT IF YOU AREN'T AN 'ART-LOVING CULTURE CRAVING SADO-MASOCHIST PANSY COMIC BITCH WANKER

Thank you! I know, I watched it, but I didn't have my warning beforehand - YOU do >;o)

The Truth on Gaming Violence...

2005-08-13T14:18:00.000+02:00

Well as we all know, we gamers are a brutal murdering lot of unsocial alone-living friendless ugly-looking fat idiots that have never seen daylight. Of course we are all most comfortable with this. >;o)

Now however one professor by the name of Dmitri Williams tries to shatter what we all know and love as the only reality and truth:

"Results of some of the first long-term research into online video game playing, conducted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign alongside Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has reached results claiming that there is no evidence of a strong link between video game violence and aggression behavior in players.

Studies were made of players of Turbine's massively multilplayer online role-playing game Asheron’s Call 2, where, after an average of 56 hours play a month there was found to be “no strong effects associated with aggression” caused by the game. Players were found not to be statistically different from the non-playing control group in their beliefs on aggression after playing the game than they were before playing – according to Dmitri Williams, the lead author of the study.

Gameplay was also found not to be a predictor of aggressive behaviors. Compared with the control group, the players neither increased their argumentative behaviors after gameplay nor were significantly more likely to argue with their friends and partners.

"I’m not saying some games don’t lead to aggression, but I am saying the data are not there yet," Williams said. “Until we have more long-term studies, I don’t think we should make strong predictions about long term effects, especially given this finding.”

The new study involved two groups of participants: players – a “treatment” group of 75 people who had no prior MMORPG play and who played AC2 for the first time; and a control group of 138, who did not play. The participants were solicited through online message boards and ranged in age from 14 to 68, the average age being 27.7 years.

The results of the new study, Williams says, support the contention of those who suggest that some violent games do not necessarily lead to increased real-world aggression. He does concede though that because the study didn’t concentrate solely on younger teenagers, “we cannot say that teenagers might not experience different effects.” "

English Source
German Source

Now how would he know anything from this dumb game? Has he never heard of Doom, GTA, Quake, Battlefield or even WOW or Everquest (the spawn of evil - already led to a kill...)? Asheron's Call is for pansys at best *evilgrin* Well obviously he has, since he limits his own proclaims in respect to other games aand teenagers...

--> Get it into your head Mr. Dmitri Williams do the same thing with these games and people then (only then) the world might start to believe you and all of us gamers will have to seriously think about getting friends, going out (into the sun) and getting a life. Gosh what a bummer - otherwise people might think we're different >;o)

A bit of background story:

2005-08-12T17:32:00.000+02:00

The following excerpt is in GERMAN and gives a bit of background information for the novel ('The Change') I am writing. If I find the time I might translate it, for now just ignore it if you don't understand it or for fun results try an online translator like babelfish. For all of you that can read German, this story will be continued:

Die Zer'sha und die Feydhal

Kapitel I

"EIN LECK, WIR HABEN EIN LECK!" hallte es den Flur hinunter, begleitet vom röhrenden Alarmsignal und dem blinkenden grünen Leuchten, die Gefahr bedeuteten. Elian war klar was das hieß. Rennend hastete er auf die sich schließenden Schleusentore zu. Die verdammten Zer'sha hatten ihr Schiff entdeckt und die richtigen Schlüsse gezogen, bevor sie endlich in den Hyperraum springen konnten. Elian hätte eigentlich gar nicht hier unten sein sollen, aber er hatte sicher gehen wollen, dass die spezielle Fracht sicher verstaut war. So konnte einem das Schicksal manchmal mitspielen. Er musste zurück Richtung Brücke, man würde ihn dort brauchen. Er hätte Lanielle schicken sollen, sie hätte hier mehr ausrichten können und er selbst wäre beim Kommandostab gewesen als die Zer'sha angriffen.

Noch nie zuvor in ihrer modernen Geschichte war so etwas vorgekommen, dass eine Gruppe anderen Idealen folgte und dann auch noch zu neuen (oder musste es heißen zu alten?) Wegen aufbrach. Ein Problem war wohl die Größe der Gruppe, die trotz ihrer friedlichen Motive und dem selbst gegebenen Versprechen ohne Kampfhandlungen heimlich von dannen zu ziehen, als eine Revolution betrachtet werden konnte. Das andere war wohl, dass sie das modernste, größte und kampfstärkste Schiff der Flotte dauerhaft 'entliehen' hatten um ihrer Bestimmung zu folgen.

Der Rat der Anthoril hatte gar keine andere Wahl als sie zu verfolgen und militärische Schritte zu ergreifen. Die Emeril (Südstern) stellte eine taktische Bedrohung für das ganze Imperium dar, nicht nur wegen seiner Kampfkraft und den erfahrenen Generälen und Geheimdienstlern die mit ihm flohen, sondern es enthielt auch sämtliche Archive und Aufzeichnungen ihrer Rasse, Gensplicer und –rekonstructer, Technologieparks mit Werkstätten und Selbstversorgungssysteme aller Art, nein es hatte auch den Prototyp des Hyperantriebs installiert dessen Pläne die Zer'sha nach langen Verhandlungen aus der Ausgrabungsstätte auf Gradius 4 hatten bergen können. Als ob das nicht schon genug wäre war die Emeril unauflöslich mit der zentralen KI des Imperiums verbunden, die als Schaltzentrale für nahezu alle Nachrichten öffentlicher, privater oder geheimdienstlicher Natur diente.

Elian lachte in sich hinein… Der Gedanke, dass es seine wagemutige Idee gewesen war, die dieses Unterfangen erst ermöglicht hatte und das er eine tragende Rolle bei der Übernahme des Schiffes gespielt hatte beflügelte ihn. Seine großen blauen Augen leuchteten freudig während er schnell die ihm wie seine Westentasche bekannten Gänge der Emeril entlang eilte. Die ersten neuen Haare, eigentlich kaum mehr als leichter Flaum, auf seinem Kopf kitzelten ihn, als sie den Windzug spürten. Sie würden bald länger wachsen, wie sie einst bei seinen Vorfahren gewesen waren.

To be continued...

Serious Business...

2005-08-12T17:23:00.000+02:00

After all that games business, something a bit more serious:

If you are interested in white boards that allow for semantic structures, i2-brain, a program I found on the net, might interest you. It still has some flaws, as it is not totally intuitive to use, but the overall capability of differently filtered views on available information is already quite well implemented.

You can download a free trial version from their web-page:

www.i2brain.com

Have a look at their samples. It is quite interesting really only notintuitive enough yet...

Games I play at the moment

2005-08-12T14:38:00.000+02:00

Well okay this is just to give you a short round-up (you already saw Zuma in the last post):

1. Battlefield 2 (EA Games)

A multiplayer tactical FPS combat game - my squad (Ace Herm Crawler, Seargent Vanessa Starlight and myself Private Staroc Bitch [Staroc will never get beyond private...]) and I have a lot of fun going round killing everyone else and in Crawler's Case 'us':

Sitting in an airplane Crawler shouts into his headset: "WOooooo I can see a whole nest of them down in that village - BOOoooMMbbbSSS FaaaLLLiiiNNggg..." - Vanessa cries : "Noooooo DON'T Drop the bombs, it's us down here!" I look up and see little falling things until the world dies in heated explosions.

The following scene is taken directly from gameplay... no modification

As you can see, we have great fun with our little team (guild) that exists in the same constellation in the other game we play(ed):

2. Guild Wars (ncsoft)

A massive multiplayer online guild-oriented roleplaying game. Yeah we have a guild there with our gay mage Vanessa Starlight, our slow (in every aspect mental and physical...) Barbarian Crawler that's always late and myself the slutty Necromancer Khara Staroc.

I am currently looking for a nice group-picture put let's start with this little one and one of Khara for all you dirty pigs:

"Give me all your gold!!!"

Naturally fun is guaranteed here aswell when we're out with our guild 'Civitas Venatio' hunting 'furs'...

3. Metal Gear Acid (Konami)

One of the best PSP games out yet, though of course not AS funny as the group oriented games above. This is single-player all along, tactical shooter game that bases it's rounds and actions on a stock of cards you hold (weapon cards, movment cards, armor cards, ... you get the idea)

Big points for the execution, the graphics and mainly of course (like with every Metal Gear) the story! Set in a not so distant future the governments of the world act like any big corporation and secretly build bipedal mobile nuclear battle tanks called metal gear. As terrorists and psychics get hold of these machines there's only one guy a genetically enhanced agent (cloned from the most efficient soldier ever) in their way: Solid Snake...

Prepare for some nice (unexpected) plot twists... TRUST NO ONE!

4. Lumines

Argghhhh... If you like Tetris this is for you. Same principle basically only you just have quaders of 4 blocks with each one of these 4 in one of 2 colours. Giving you a total of 6 variations. Do clear stones you must arrange patterns of at least 4 blocks to a square...

Addictive like Zuma, here a picture of the PSP version and a link for a PC clone

"Be wary of the alien dancers..."

And here the link to a PC-Clone of Lumines called 'Lumines'!!! Steering is a bit difficult as W,A,S,D are mapped as Up, Left, Down, Right and 'J' and 'K' can be used for turning the blocks.

5. Ridge Racer (Namco)

Another PSP favourite... Never really was into racing games, but this one definately is FUN. Only bad part is that the horny babe from the intro flic is under represented in the game itself (not visible at all) --> GTA 3 is better in this respect, if you know the same Hot Coffee Mod I know >;o). Well I can already imagine our wizard playing the game in 'HOT' Mode:

Yeah that looks about right *evilgrin* - But if you own a PSP this game is a must-have guys, even without cheerleaders in it...

6. Squarez (Globsoft)

Squarez is homebrew for the PSP and another one of these addictive little games I so love. As the name says it's all about circles...

You are a blue square and your only instinct is to eat, you want to eat those yummy green suare that is around. Yet when you eat it there's suddenly a new green square and a moving red one. Now remember what Mommy said: "Don't play with the red ones Harry! They'll steamroll you when you want to eat them and nobody likes to be a steamrolled Harry Potter!"

So only eat those when you are properly protected (safer sex --> safer feed) with a yellow circle...make that square. Other toys are the kill all normal red bomb (deep red with counter), slow down all reds (light blue, counter) and big splitter bomb (yellow-orange with counter) that can possibly even kill a boss red (double outline - cannot be eaten even in protected mode) if a splinter hits them...

Confused? Download it here and see why Squarez are cool, Circles boring and Sprites suck >;o)

The game that haunts my family...

2005-08-12T13:48:00.000+02:00

Alright I went home last weekend, visiting my Mom & Dad (aswell as my sister) and showed them an interesting little piece of game software that a friend (Hai) has 'infested' my computer with. Within minutes after his first demonstration my girlfriend and I were already addicted playing nothing else for hours...

The same happened at my parents' place - Mom, Dad and Julia (my sister) were fighting for a place in front of Mom's new notebook (where I had first installed it) until I told them I had left the installation file on the harddrive. Now that everybody has their own copy of ZUMA DELUXE, the regular fighting has ceized and now fights about highscores begin to errupt (btw. I have to admit that my girlfriend holds the record having reached level 10 or 11 with a score that would reach over 2 lines of space here *grin*).

So if you don't know Zuma Deluxe yet, go here to download it directly, or here to play it online.

The principle is quite easy: You are a stone frog in the middle of the playfield who turns around his own axis to face the mousepointer (it remains fixed on his spot however). Now on predefined lanes coloured marbles start rolling down slowly toward a 'death hole'. If they reach it the stone frog, 'you', loses a life! You have one chance of surviva: Dissolving the marbles. The frog can produce and spit randomly coloured marbles (You see the colour of the marble that can be spat at the moment and the one that is next [you can also exchange these by right-clicking]). If you create a pattern of at least 3 marbles with the same colour linked directly, these will disappear.

Sound easy? Try! When you succeed - try doing COMBOS! Still easy? Try reaching level 10? Still easy? DAMN YOU >;o)

Did I mention that Zuma is great fun? No? IT IS GGRRREEEAAAATTT ADDICTIVE FUUUUUNNNN!!!

Playstation Portable (PSP) Mania

2005-08-12T10:38:00.000+02:00

For the past month I have really learned to appreciate the best handheld console of them all - the Playstation Portable.From Games over Music and Videos to Emulators, Homebrew or Applications you can have all the fun in the world with firmware 1.50 that is!!! Whatever Sony tells it's customers about the NEED to update to 2.00, don't do it, when you want to use the PSP in any possible way.

I know the loaders and hacks allow to play pirated games right now, which I despise by the way, but why the hack should I not be allowed to play Lumines (which I own) from my MEMSTICK if I want. That is the prospect I am talking about - own it and then play it any way you want!!!

What happens when you update to 2.00? Well okay you get a web-browser and the possibility to play movies in a newer MPEG4 Codec that still plays only in a maximum resulotion of 320x240. WOW! Well not so 'wow' when you consider that there are first homebrew browsers (or some ripped from games) out already or in development and that there's a DivX/Avi Player (homebrew again) that can play videos in the PSP's native solution of 480x272... Didn't give me much trouble deciding to keep my 1.50 firmware... What about you guys?

Some may ask: What then about games requiring newer firmware (like Rocketman Dash, GTA, ...)? Well I guess there will be overrides for these! Don't get me wrong I will still buy them, but I will not play them from UMD but from my memstick and skip the bloody update!

If you already upgraded you can only hope that someone will find a way around firmware 2.00 and enable you to run homebrew on that aswell, but chances are sinking with every new upgrade 'cause Sony closes every hole they find...

So guys have fun with 1.50 --> and if you consider buying a new PSP, there are still 1.50 PSP out there only living in Europe you would have to import them, 'cause when selling them starts on September 1st over here in, they will all have firmware 2.00 >;o)

My new Blog!

2005-08-11T14:22:00.000+02:00

Just wanted to say 'Hi everybody!'. This is my new BLOG...

Don't know what I'll put in here yet, but I guess it will be about anything I deem funny or noteworthy in whatever way... you'll see >;o)

Staroc