finger007’s blog

So finally I arrived back.
I'll shoot some better pics as soon as we have daylight again...

Cheers,

/me is having celebration beer :D

Some days (and some nearly-heart-attacks :P ) later I've got it licensed here. Gonna fetch it later today. FINALLY *sigh*
I'll definietly need it from Wednesday till Friday! So this got kinda close...darn authorities ]:->

I chose the path of having the expert called in. It is (hopefully) the faster one... The dealer of the car already gets pissed off since he has to do more work now. Well, he has his money :-|
You can imagine my mood keeps dropping daily...
Not much more to say for now. Everything else would go into the ranting-category again ;-)

... and can't go to get it...!!! OMFG

This is so annoying. It took the dealer I bought it off nearly a week to send me the needed papers and now my town (hooray Bernburg again... I hope they drop a bomb on here after I moved away!!! ]:-> ) refuses to license it without beeing able to see it.
I asked a few friends in different parts of Germany about it and --- no one ever heard of that practise. But I'm stuck with it here since I cannot tell authorities they are wrong. It's an outrage! Especially since I didn't buy the car here in town but quite a bit away (in Potsdam).

So they leave me with two chances here:

1. Buy a short-time license (valid for 5 days) to get it here to make their check and then fully licensing it (which I of course have to pay too) or
2. hire an expert (quite a pricy thing!!) over there to validate the car, send me the papers and get it licensed here after all that.

Well, tomorrow I will start option 3 and ask for the boss of the nice (yes, this is sarcasm :P ) lady who told me that bullsh*** and tell him/her what I learned so far. After all this is simply a technique to get more money out of me. And if this town thinks it specially deserves that, I see no reason to at least tell them i don't think so.
/me sighs
Well, in the long run I see myself just pay anyway. Who ever won against that system...?

I know, long time no post, but now is the time to tell something new again.

I sold my (hate-)beloved bike three weeks ago and finally with loads of help from a good friend (thanks bertel :D ) I aquired a wonderful A3 (it's an Audi for all ya non-Europeans :-P ) just yesterday.

It's kinda sad, but also really time for a change...

Yep, this is the time to look for something new. Although she boldly did her service for me since 1998, she also has been tired for over 3 years now.
I'm definitely not a geek when it comes to those things but, you know, you get used to them :( .

Well, the picture shows the main reason she's going for retirement - my last trip from my parents back home. It's about a 300 km ride and I had to pause two times for her.
After taking her 10-minutes-break she was willing to restart and I could go on. This is definitely annoying. She had this mysterious flaw since i bought her but it got worse every year...
Right now I'm looking for a car. No idea what it will gonna be - guess I'm in for a surprise :)

Nope, not the snake ;) The language.
Last friday i went for the Workshop in Leipzig. Since I intent to use it for webdesign I gave it a go and was quite impressed.

It was the first of it's kind so there were not too many people there but I think it will grow as rapidly as the language attracts users.

My crappy cam doesnt show too much thogh - you just will have to believe :)

They started out with a short tutorial/introduction for n00bs like me and got more into detail later on topics like

• py-dev
• xml with python
• python and product data management
• python and webdesign

A funny but also quite informative part was the introduction od Python in eduaction with a module called "xturtle". Mr. Lingl from Austria who develops it nowadays and of course uses it did as much of a funny showcase as a really interesting speech about how easy Python can be used to get 15 - 17 years old started into programming and computer science in general.

And for concluding a pic of Leipzig's Central Trainstation. It's quite impressive and I've seen it for the first time.
With 24 tracks it's considered one of the largest terminus stations in Europe.
This was taken on my way back.
Boy - I really need to get a better camera.  The size here is ok, but don't bother clicking on it to see it fullsize :-/ .

as promised today some pics i managed to take with my cellphone as i was on track yesterday.

it was a bit rainy and getting dark in the end (you'll see;) ), but still enough to imagine.

i should say at first that the town i live in is devided by a river making the banks the ideal training ground. well, as long as there is a way or path, that is...

for me it's just a ten minutes walk from my apartement down to the water. the way down looks like this (anyone recogizing?):

down there starts an alley leaving the last buildings of town behind...

and yes, it was raining. but since it was quite warm (something around 20°C), i took my run anyway :P

this is the last part of the alley. usually i get stared at by fishermen :) you know, i would be bored too only staring at the water all the time and drinking beer. so i would look at anyone passing by i guess. all i'm asking is to leave out any comment tho!! i know i probably neither look graciously nor elegant when running there but still that's more than just sitting around and going for booze :-D

and this is where i turn around to run back: somewhere in the forest just a few meters apart from the waters edge. at the time i took the photo it really was getting dark and the cloudy sky didn't make it any better for the crappy cam that is in my mobile...
as you can see the path has been asphalted for bikers. on the other side of the river it's without any asphalt but so far i have been too lazy to take the extra walk and especially the walk back... still keep promising myself to do so before autumn -> we'll see about that!

And now - it's time for the weekend. YAY

i managed to keep running every other day for the last 2 weeks.

right now, i'm running 3 times 10 minutes with a 2-minutes walking break between those. it's going really well now :)
for next week i will make 2 times 15 minutes my quest and going for uninterrupted 30 minutes after that. w0000000t!

when i started 9 weeks ago i never dreamt i even could make it so far.
but to tell you the truth: it is addictive! i'm looking forward to the running days on the days i am supposed not to run.

i'll take my cellphone today and make some pics of my current running track :)

other news? i'm learning python now. there won't be much to say about that since i am not at all born to be a programmer :(

Who hasn't heard of it yet ;)

Well, I've been trying and toying around with it for almost 3 years now. But it never has been so easy as it is now!

Of course I have been falling to Ubuntu when first retrying last year. But after running into trouble regularly with it when I wanted to perform some non-regular stuff (I still try to make music with Rosegarden, but have not succeeded - YET that is :) ), I decided to look for a distro that did care for linux-standards (linuxbase.org).

And where did I arrive? Nowhere :) You never do with linux. BUT: I have a working Debian (Sid) installation I can mail, surf, do office-stuff, run Rosegarden, watch DVDs and movie-files with. And that's pretty darn more far than I have ever come!
For 4 hours I now even managed to go WIFI with it (and am soooo proud of me, lol).

If you want to have a try: Use this Kanotix distro. It's a live-CD that can be installed to hdd. Based on Knoppix it gets you a Debian on your drive.
For all the problems you run into later they have a good Wiki at their page and a very active IRC Channel on Freenode.

Whats next on my list? Cinelerra! I want to see that Linux-flagship of video editing software!