Christmas Time...

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

Happy New Year

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...

Holidays

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"

Happy New Year...

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...

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)