Long time, no see ;)

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

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...

November...

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

Guys...

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

My new, once per month post...

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)

My little army...

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...

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)

A friend's blog...

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)

Short news...

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)

Update on me...

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*

A Buddy's Blog

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)

Serious Business...

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...

My new Blog!

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