And by ugly I mean: What is going on here?!


I have nothing to say, really.
Fuck off.
Even though Week 5 is almost over, I shall try to write down how my fourth week of the year was. I don’t remember most of it, actually.
恭喜发财 – Water-dragon year. Yeah.
Two weeks are over again, so we went for the Traditional Asia Dinner1 again. This time (and of course because of Chinese New Year) we went to Tsun-Gai which has very authentic Cantonese food. Awesome and a fun evening.
I have no recollection of this day.2
I think I played some Minecraft.
Man, this weekly blogposts are depressing.
Every day is the same.
Wake up.
Drive to work.
Work.
Discuss where to have lunch.
Work.
Drive home.
Minecraft.
Bed.
Repeat.
Funniest lunch ever. But I promised I wouldn’t put it online. But seriously.
Finally I managed to go to Naniwa. So tasty.
Later: More Minecraft.
Drove to Bonn, listened to Satomi play viola in a huge orchestra playing Mahler’s Symphony No 2. That was rather okay even though I doubt that Mahler will be one of my favorite composers any time soon.
At some point a couple of weeks ago, in one of those weak moments late at night, I went ahead and ordered a Samson Meteor Mic – it’s really pretty and Dan Benjamin called it “really impressive”. I told Teymur about it, who is already doing some podcast stuff and we decided to give it a try. We recorded a pilot episode on tuesday and decided we’ll turn it into a regular show.
The pilot episode is over here – give it a try and let me know what you think.
And at some point we might even explain the name.
Mapstalgia: video game maps drawn from memory. [via]
Googleheimer – Markus rantet und fasst die aktuellen Probleme mit/für Google zusammen.
I’ve blogged about it before, but Teymur asked me to update the list. So, I checked my Instacast and here is the old list:
And since then, these were added on:
Holy fuck. And I was thinking the last time that I am obviously listening to too many podcasts. But these days I am quite ruthless about marking single episodes as heard, especially with the interview podcasts – if the guest or the topic doesn’t win me over in the first couple of minutes, I’m gone.
Currently in my drafts folder:
Who knows when these ever see the light of day.

Komplett versagt.
Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you – in fact, most of the days were so uneventful that I don’t even remember them now, just a couple of days ago.

I have (finally?) switched from Quicksilver to Alfred. Since I just use those as application launchers and mostly ignore their advanced features, the change was completely transparent to my daily workflow. In fact, someone could have changed them for me and I would probably have not noticed. Except that Alfred yet has to close itself at random times, something that Quicksilver was prone to do to lately.
I got my Facebook Moo cards. Fun!

I have given Alcatraz a chance – it’s the new TV series by J.J. Abrams and has the pretty interesting premise that the last batch of prisoners on Alcatraz somehow vanished in 1963 and now return one by one, going back to being murderers. The first two episodes weren’t bad but nothing too special – I’ll keep watching, in the hope that the “murderer of the week” type of episodes weave a nice mythology arc.
Oh, and it has Parminder Nagra who I’ve liked since Bend it like Beckham.
Oh, and Sam Neill.

The day Wikipedia went black.

Or: The nerds are back in town
For the last two weeks I’ve had blissful solitude here at the office – the three guys who share the room with me were in Munich to do Munich stuff. As someone who snaps out of the zone pretty easily working two weeks without any real distraction was a pretty good thing which ended on that Friday when they came back. 1

I don’t know.
I bought Onigiri again and fed one to my sister, who was crashing at my place, as she tends to do when she goes to her courses in Düsseldorf.
The Minecraft bug bit me again, so I basically was digging around on our server all day.
E-Mails zuhause auf dem ersten eigenen Tchibo-Computer vorgeschrieben, auf Diskette gezogen, im Büro dann verschickt. Empfangene Mails ausgedruckt und mit nach Hause genommen. Machen manche heute immer noch so.
Die neuen Autos sind anders. Sie werden, wie vieles zur Zeit, vom Tod her gedacht: Nicht vom möglichen Glück kündet ihre Formensprache, sondern von der Gefahr des Unfalls, des Scheiterns, vom worst case scenario. Der Mini Roadster soll Spaß machen, ja, aber für den Fall, dass er sich überschlägt, hat er zwei verchromte Überrollbügel in Habachtstellung hinter den Kopfstützen stehen; absurde, ständig präsente Skulpturen der Angst. Chromglänzende Mahnungen: Ich mag das Offene, das Abenteuer, sagt das angsthöckerbewehrte Cabrio. Aber nur, solange ich mir keine blutige Nase hole.
Via Neues Autodesign: Das Leben, vom Tode her gedacht, in dem es nur vordergründig um das Automobildesign geht.
The one important exception to this dismal record is electronic brainstorming, where large groups outperform individuals; and the larger the group the better. The protection of the screen mitigates many problems of group work. This is why the Internet has yielded such wondrous collective creations. Marcel Proust called reading a “miracle of communication in the midst of solitude,” and that’s what the Internet is, too. It’s a place where we can be alone together — and this is precisely what gives it power.