Another well done video I found on Youtube.

P.S. Alba won against Trier!

It’s been a while since I wrote here and that is because the post you’re reading right now was supposed to drop the big one. But well, I think that’ll have to wait a little longer. The Enola Gay will stay on solid ground for now. With no other news ready to be told, I am going to take the chance to promote my latest toy and talk about the weekend before last.

First of all, there is my brand new photoblog. Most of the blog’s pictures have been taken with my phone, which means that chances are, that they are shaky and noisy. Please keep in mind that this definitely is not meant to be a „look what beautiful pictures I took“-thing, but a „A picture is worth a thousand words“-microblogging-thing, that enables me to share impressions that otherwise won’t find their way onto this blog. If you’re looking for the more artsy kind of pictures, head over to Karsten. Once I manage to include my tweets to this feed, I plan to make it a tab of it’s own on this site.
Also I feel like disabling the flattr functionality for my posts. Sorry Marcus. This was meant to create occasional funds, if people like my stuff, but in fact it just created more cost. Tried and unfortunately failed.

The weekend before last I went to Wertheim to attend Sebastian’s birthday party. Admittedly it was back in February when he turned thirty, but he was out for a real special party. Something _huge_! Something that took like eight months of planning. Sebastian rent a hall, asked „Dritte Wahl“ and „Fuckin Faces“ to play at his event and to his own surprise both bands kindly accepted.
It took me a seven hour train ride to get to Wertheim, but the party was well worth it. I got to know some really nice people, had tasty food and – most importantly – great music. If you’re into punk/metal music and did not attend a show yet, you should definitely give „Dritte Wahl“ a try.

Tonight I am going to see Alba Berlin once again. Until now Alba lost each and every game I attended or watched on TV. Let’s see if this losing streak can be broken… 😉

Well, this is going to be one of the longer posts. It all starts here: I remember being at the CeBit back in the early 1990’s and Novell trying to convince the visitors not to trust any DOS below version 7. Obviously that – in a very weird way – even worked out, because in my nightmares I can still hear that tune and the guy rapping* the slogan again and again from Novell’s booth. Nearly twenty years later it is Microsoft (btw. the very same Microsoft who thankfully ended Novell’s campaign back then by obtaining a cease-and-desist letter against it) trying to tell us, that version 7 of their Phone operating system is here to make our world a better place and eventually save us all. To my greatest pleasure Steve Ballmer chose not the rap the message at Microsoft’s official product presentation, which is definite plus because it prevents me from having more nightmares and therefore helps me to stay relatively sane a little bit longer. 😀

In case you missed the event or didn’t care until now, the entire keynote is available as video at Engadget.

I’m currently using a HTC Hero running on Android 2.1 and I’ve been fortunate enough to put my fingers on a Win Phone 7 prototype device lately. Of course I was curious, if the actual devices would be as fast and smooth, as the product videos did show – and to my surprise they are. Everything is very responsive, clean, snappy and feels just awesome.
There are of course some more things than just the look and feel, I like about WP7. The first thing is integration. You log onto your accounts at Xbox Live, Facebook or wherever once and then just forget about it. You don’t need to check like ten social networks in order to aggregate your friends news, it is WP7 that does this for you. You just open up the person at the peoples hub and that’s it, all information is already there. Now that’s a BIG one for people like me, having friends constantly telling me things like „Didn’t you see that on my blog?“ or „I’ve tweeted this days ago…“.
The next thing is, that unlike other operating systems, WP7 is really centred about the user’s needs. Once you logged in to all of your accounts and personalized your starting screen, you’ll experience that everything you want to do or see is just a (very) few touches away. There are always options and shortcuts that lead you exactly to the point, you wanted to go to or let you do, whatever you intended to do. Obviously Microsoft did spend a lot of effort on predicting what people could really want to do at a certain point – and they did it well! If you want to, you can even make WP7 automatically upload all your stuff (a.k.a. pictures you took, messages, etc.) to your Skydrive, to allow you the most easy access from all devices and places.
Another good thing about WP7 is the integration of Microsoft Office and Exchange. Of course these are Microsoft products and you would expect nothing else than perfect integration of their own tools, but then again it’s absolutely irrelevant to me _why_ something works better than the competitors implementation, as long as it actually _is_ better. This is even more of big plus, as Office is still kind of a standard through the whole industry and business users most likely will have to deal with Excel sheets and PowerPoint presentations a lot.

Of course wherever the light is, there is shadow as well. And there is a big shadow when it comes to navigation. While Google’s navigation does work just fine, there is no such thing in WP7 at all. I am quite sure, that the app store will fill this hole one way or another, but in that case build-in and free navigation is the measure of all tings.
Another thing I don’t like, is that very much like Apple’s iOS and in opposition to Android, WP7 does not allow sideloading of applications. For most people this won’t be much of an issue, but diversity of suppliers is never a bad thing and I prefer the system I actually paid a lot of money for, to be as open and customizable as possible. Things like the upcoming Amazon-Store for Android will be very unlikely to be seen at WP7.
Last not least the Zune Pass, will not be available in Germany for the time being. Although this isn’t Microsoft’s fault (once again, blame the greedy GEMA!), the offer would have been an great addition to the other services. Where enabled the Zune Pass allows the user to listen to an unlimited amount of music and even keep ten tracks as DRM free MP3 per month for just 10 bucks.

All in all WP7 does a lot of things amazingly well and surely raises the bar for the next gen devices. It definitely has the potential to get a solid slide of the cake and it will be interesting to see, if WP7 cannibalizes sales from Android, RIM or WebOS, or if the smartphone market is growing fast enough to make room for all of them.
Now it’s Google’s turn and I just can’t wait to see Android 3.0. It’s just five more months until my current plan ends and I am keen to get one of those next gen devices – even though it prolly will be a tough one to decide what system to chose. Considering how much data Google and Microsoft could possibly get from those devices, maybe the choice will be more about what company to trust more, than about who has the sexiest gadget.

On a completely unrelated subject the TV station „Sport1“ chose to draw back from DVB-T in Berlin. No more „Doppelpass“ on Sunday morning, no more summarization’s of Sunday’s football matches. Half of the people I know in Berlin do not pay for cable and use DVB-T instead, so this is really a clever move Sport1…. not! I hate you! I really hate you guys!
More unrelated stuff: Two weeks ago I finished #179 of 11131 at a poker tournament, which made me kind of proud. I had quite a good start because there were some inactive players at the table, from which I could steal blinds, but later the tournament was quite tough and considered it being a freeroll the people played really well. In the end it was once more the queens who digged my grave. I went all-in pre flop with pocket queens, the other player showed the jacks (yeah!), I did hit my set at the flop (YEAAAH!) and by this time my chance to win the hand was 96,25%. Well, you know what that means: The other player rivered his backdoor flush (Hell, NOOOO!) and therefore kicked me out of the tournament. *sigh*

Another vicious comic. By reading this whole wall of text you really deserved it.

Also there is another one of these both interesting and funny posts at the Okcupid blog. Be sure not to miss it!

* A big, bad rapper telling me whom to trust. I think Novell actually never got the irony in that…

The last time I posted here, I wished for a week or two off, because I felt terribly tired. I went to Wolfsburg for the weekend and we looked for some more geocaches, I complained about people „hiding“ geocaches at places like ten metres up a lamppost and tag them „no wheelchair, no stroller“. Honestly guys, do you really expect somebody to climb up to this, just to prove worthy in your eyes?! Nah, get lost!
On Monday sweet Lady Faith promptly delivered what I asked for. A week off. Even though still being tired to death after last weeks pleasures, I felt quite Ok when I went to work, but within hours some weird shit happened. Out of nowhere I got fever, attacks of sweating, had serious problems concentrating on things more challenging than just existing and my whole damn everything did _hurt_. I asked my team leader for permission to leave early and barely made it home, where I collapsed to my bed and did not get up again any earlier than Wednesday.
On Wednesday I had the energy to visit the doc, who signed me off work for the rest of the week and prescribed me some drugs. Also I brought my mattress to my living room to at least watch TV while being awake.
I am still not sure if I want to know what knocked me off that badly. Even now I still have difficulties swallowing and feel brutally battered. Careful what you wish for…

Yet another week gone. And what a exhausting week that was. At work there’s a new policy in place that makes us be there a bit earlier. „No big deal, it’s just twenty minutes earlier!“ I thought – but then again this was at Monday and I was sort of well rested. I should have known…
On Tuesday evening the folks gathered at David’s place to play the brand new „F1 2010“ Formula One game. Also we had lentil soup and if I remember correctly some booze was involved too. Even though having a crush on racing games I was never really good at playing them, so most of the time the other guys did the racing while I had a good time watching and giving „helpful“ hints like „Come on you pussy! You have to go faster!“.
On Wednesday Karsten and I had tickets for Bodo Wartke and I was really, really looking forward to this since I didn’t see Bodo live until now. _Really_ looking forward. Unfortunately having a „real life“ screwed everything for us and Karsten (who had the tickets…) couldn’t come.
So I intended to clean up my flat because in a moment of mental illness I invited the guys to have Ursuppe with me on Thursday. I was totally willing to spend the whole evening for that, but Ronny asked me to help out in World of Warcraft, as our raid group needed a healer. So I „quickly“ run through the Icecrown Citadel and did the quarterly washing up afterwards. Not earlier than three o’clock I went to bed.
On Thursday evening we had a hard time to even get here, because of an bomb from WWII that was found nearby* and had to be disarmed. The police closed an awful lot of streets and no buses or suburban trains went here. Finally we arrived and what was planned to be a pot of Ursuppe turned out to be more of paste-like thing and we therefore called it Urpaste. We watched „Hangover“ (oh the irony!) and „From dusk ‚til dawn“ and once more we had a lot of booze (seriously guys, killing the gin was ok, but DID you have to finish off the rum too?!), so being at work in time was kind of my personal hell on Friday. The whole day I fantasised of my bed and how I would go to sleep very early. Well, not the whole day. At late afternoon Mitch invited us to „Hops & Barley“ on the occasion of his birthday. Of course I wouldn’t call off a friends celebration and went there for a quick drink or maybe two. I stayed there ‚til half past one. So tired…
So, no time for poker this week (which I consider a bad thing!), no arena matches with Ronny (which is as worse), the weather just plain sucks and me having not enough sleep. Gimme a break! Really, I could use one or two weeks off now. On the other hand I’m really looking forward to Marcus coming over from Stuttgart in November. Hopefully we’ll see Sabaton play at the Columbia Club (I have the tickets this time!) and generally have a good time.

*nearby like in „1.5 kilometers from here“

P.S. Again no „sex and bunnies“ stuff in this post Karsten. Sorry.

Well, it’s time to sum up another week. The Friday before last we went to see the Grizzly Adams Wolfsburg play against the Hamburg Freezers. As I stated in my last post this was the first time I saw a game of ice hockey live and I really enjoyed it. After scoring the first goal, Wolfsburg was down by two goals after the second third and managed to score another four goals within the last third for a 5:3 win.
Also we went to find two more geocaches and both were pretty easy to find. This time I used a new software for my Android mobile. The c:geo client is able to log in at geocaching.com, to look for nearby caches, hunt them down, log them and much more. If your into geocaching and use an Android powered device, you definitely want to give c:geo a try! It even comes for free!
Last weeks Monday our bunch of „casual n00bs“ started trying the Lich King, who is the final boss of the World of Warcraft expansion „Wrath of the Lich King“. We had like twelve tries and managed to bring him down to 5 percent. Last Wednesday the guild had some more tries but was not able to make any progress without me. 😀 Tonight we had another four tries, got into the third phase from the first try and finally killed the Lich King and earned the title „Kingslayer“. So, once again evil is punished and we are ready to face the next and even more evil evil in the upcoming expansion Cataclysm. *cheer*
On Wednesday the guys from work and me went to fight the biggest escalope you can get in Berlin. To our greatest surprise Micha B., who totally failed last time, literally _inhaled_ that beast. With sweat pouring all over his body he fought hard and he fought quick. The 1.4 kg of meat and coating went to his stomach in absolutely no time. All glory to the new Schnitzelmeister! Every „finisher“ got a cool certificate to hang up at a wall.

On Friday Micha B., Ronny and I went to see the glorious Chemnitzer FC play against Türkiyemspor Berlin. After scoring 11:0 goals in the last two games Chemnitz was something like a runaway favourite against the bottom club and of course we expected nothing less than another win. Türkiyemspor showed some offensive flaws but played way better than expected, for 30 minutes they even had the better of play, but it was Chemnitz‘ Benny Förster who scored the first goal after 32 minutes and „Paule“ Fröhlich later striked for the 0:2. This was of course not the best game I ever saw, but after all it’s extremely important to win these „easy“ games against smaller teams. Well done CFC, great attitude!
The weekend was a rainy and very, very lazy one. Lot’s of WoW, some reading, some poker, watching football, watching formula one… nothing to report.

This one is to honour a brave man! When Elliot discovered the quarterly washing-up for Q2 and Q3 not miraculously done by a pixy and the dishes already whispering _things_ to him, he didn’t think much (less than two weeks!) and then attacked without showing the slightest bit of fear. Under a pale moon the battle raged for hours, the foulness got purged and death and decay flushed away from one plate after another, fingers macerated and as a new day’s light softly layed upon his kitchen, the world was not the same anymore. In an heroic effort Elliot made this world a better place, so please join me in thanking him! If Elliot should ever fully recover from this battle’s bruises, you might want to sent him a plea to fight your dishes too.

As you might have imagined by reading this posts introduction, the last days (while not being uneventful at all), lacked of big news I am ready to share. Last weekend we all went to help our colleague Stefan with his house moving. Later Markus and I went for a bike tour, but unfortunately Berlin attacked my bike’s back tyre and his bicycle light, so we had to give up after just 1.5 km. Damn you Berlin, damn you a thousand times! Later this evening I went to visit Elliot. He served some really tasty burgers and we watched some guy who’s name I already forgot to permanently clinch at Wladimir Klitschko and Wladimir beating the sh*t out of him. Sweet.
On Sunday I went to see Hertha Berlin playing against Arminia Bielefeld with Micha B. He got his hands on some complimentary tickets and was kind enough to share them with me. Now that’s what I call lived solidarity between fans from Herne West and Lüdenscheid Nord. Even though the sun tried to fry us in our own grease and the BVG once more showed their endless skills in the field of incompetence, it’s been a great pleasure.
Tonight I am going to attend my first ice hockey game. Grizzly Adams Wolfsburg faces the Hamburg Freezers and I am quite looking forward to this, since I’ve played Electronic Arts‘ NHL Hockey series for countless hours, I did watch one or another game on TV, but I didn’t attend a game yet.

P.S. Yet another wicked one by SMBC. I like this kind of humour!

Now it’s a week since the Fitbit arrived and I think it’s time to write a few more words about it. Since there have been a lot of questions I want to start with all the things that Fitbit is _not_. Fitbit is no super-uber-gadget with GPS tracking, heart rate monitor and whatsoever. While all these things would make Fitbit even cooler, it comes with a motion sensor similar to the one from the Wii remote and measures your general activity and estimates the calories you burned. The estimate seems to be a bit lowish compared to others, but that’s ok for me. Also the Fitbit logs your sleep time surprisingly accurate, automatically uploads the data to the Fitbit website and creates cool graphics like this one:

But maybe the most important thing about Fitbit isn’t the technical stuff. Having this little fellow tacked at my side changed my mindset a fair way. Now I happily take some some extra steps knowing that the Fitbit will reward me with higher numbers in the evening. Also you are advised to log all your food and therefore have to fiddle with your calorie intake. For me this is the first time I really worry about it and I get a far better feeling what my wrongdoings are. 😉 All in all I consider the Fitbit absolutely worth it’s money. *thumbs up*

Last Thursday the shirts I ordered at T-Shirt Hell arrived. The shirts are good quality and so is print. That’s a definite recommendation! But be aware: These American guys are _serious_ about size! I ordered the same size I buy here and they make a beautiful knee-length dress or nightgown. These are the first shirts in ages I tuck in. :p

Last Sunday Anke and I helped out as track marshals at the Wolfburg marathon. We had to block traffic from a crossroad in order to let the runners pass and we happened to have two police officers with us, who turned out to be all relaxed and quite cool. Obviously not all cops are such pissed off badasses like the ones I happen to meet in Berlin all the time. When one of the cops went for a coffee, he even leant me his signalling disc. And what can I say… these things _do_ work way better than just trying to stop a car with a hands signal. 😀

We did have a quite nice day in the sun and got not only a shirt but also tickets for a game of the VfL Wolfburg and the EHC Wolfsburg as a representation allowance. Sweet.

P.S. Another blog post at Okcupid.com. I just plain love it, when those guys do a little data mining.
*Eastside Boys & Lousy-Split to come soon. Stay tuned, stay lousy!

Another quick one with a finding from the net:

Obviously this is an ad for Tipp-Ex, but it’s utterly cool and definitely funny enough to be mentioned. Be sure to try out „talks“, „eats“, „kicks“, „marries“, „shoots“, „pictures“, „cuddles“, „urinates“, „washes“, „Tipp-Ex“ and (of course) „humps“. Even though there seem to be a lot of things to do with the bear, I miss some internet memes likes „tazes“ or „blends“, but well, I guess you can’t have ‚em all.
Also it’s kind of cool that more companies seem to realize the possibilities of Youtube and the Web2.0 instead of just doing what they did all along. Let’s get nerdy!

P.S. Please leave a comment if you find more cool things to do with the bear! 🙂
P.P.S. Funny comic is funny!

After several months of waiting, the most mighty Fitbit has arrived today! When I read about the nifty little toy in late May, I didn’t think it could be much of a problem to get one of these. Well, of course I was wrong.
One of the main issues was that (due to missing radio approvals) Fitbit doesn’t ship to countries other than the U.S., so Markus and I asked the guys from Dollarpig for an offer. Their offer sounded reasonable and we agreed. That time the Fitbit website said that they have to fulfil queued orders and distribution of new orders should start on June 15th.
Now it was just some „minor“ supply bottlenecks, exchange rate fluctuations and the German customs that stood between us and our toys and it was only three months later when they arrived. /me is a happy boy with a brand new toy. /me will post more after trying out everything.
All in all ordering stuff from the U.S. still seems to be a bit of an adventure. For goods not to be delivered directly to Germany, I can definitely recommend Dollarpig, they did a good job and the delay wasn’t their fault at all!