Learn To Fly

Sometimes you've just gotta put your nose to the grindstone to learn how to fly:

Saturday Web Ramblings...

Got some posts in the works from last week and the weekend, but a bunch of smaller less-full-post worthy links here:

This is awesome! Beer commercials are the best!

Here's a post that looks at the unrealistic nature of video game currency and the probability of a universal global currency. I wonder what the effects would be (positive to third world or not?) of a unified global currency, and what about gold as that standard?

Wierd condom print ads.

The magic of being an analyst, promote something one minute while vilifying it the next.

Boing Boing has got a post looking at the economies of used vs. new books on Amazon.

Market Wire's got a summary study article with some interesting RSS info, nuggets I pulled out: Tuesday is the most active day in RSS readership, with Saturday the least active; Click-through rates (CTR) differs by more than 70 percent from Tuesday to Saturday; "Morning scanners" view the most content; late-night readers click through more.

I knew it! Even the French can't decide on how many of those greeting kisses to give!

Idiots. (wait till the end)

Very cool Vortex: (via Gridskipper)

Aye Aye Captain

Scotty's dead but warpspeed lives on. It seems that every time I post about how fast my connection is sucking down "stuff", it just gets faster! Case in point:



Stay tuned because after this post my connection will speed up so much I'll be making posts back in time!

Attitude To Go

Love this t-shirt I spotted on Gawker:



And just to let everyone know who reads this blog, we're better than everyone who doesn't ;-)

GoogleRoss

You've heard of EuroRoss. You've heard of Google. Now learn about GoogleRoss!

The Digital Divide

Mmmm, bandwidth. It's becoming increasingly clear that the combination of Super-High Speed Internet access and eMule is making my 40GB internal hard drive and 60GB USB external drive tinyer by the minute. I was creating this post because I had raved about getting 100Kb/s when I first jacked into this connection a couple weeks ago and happened to notice the following download speeds today:



Over double that speed! Then not even 10 minutes later while prepairing the caption and post I nearly pee'd my pants when I saw this:



Drool...

I can't wait to get my new tablet + desktop + 24" LCD + T1 line in Oct!

Home Coming

Internationalization is important both for gaining business knowledge and experiencing. It's also extremely important for your own personal development. Not only do you learn a hell of a lot about life in general, internationalization also gives you new ideas, views, thoughts, solutions and perspectives that you would have never had gained having stayed locally. To truely appreciate what you have you need just lose it, this holds true for friends, family, love and home. Last week I was reminded of just how great hangin' with the fam can be, thanks for the invite GP!



The beers were spot on. Can't wait for the next BBQ eh!

Willy

I hurt my Willy Wonka last night. Just thought you should all know ;-)

Broken Dreams

One of the best things about moving out of my place in Pforzheim last week was that it was finally "time". After 2 years off and on, 110 Gymnasium had finally lost its charm. This feeling had been building up since returning in March, roomate nerves, broken waterheater, dwindling number of people in Pf etc. etc. This was highlighted by a swami of crazy events in the last week I was there. First off was a 4 police car and 2 paddy wagon near street gang fight that almost happened at street level right below my place at 3am in the morning. Second came the mysterious suicide of one of the people in another appartment. The last straw was a mear 3 days before leaving where a newer tenant downstairs in a drug induced rage kicked through the back door glass, bled all the way upstairs (a lot of blood), kicked through another glass door to get to his shared (with his girlfriend) appartment window, yep kicked that in too. The cops where at the place till 2:30AM that night. Great. Because it happened on Friday night they didn't clean up the glass, blood or doors until Monday morning. BRUTAL!

This is a pic of the back door. I thought it fit perfectly to my feelings of how drugs killed that guys future... broken dreams.

Every Rose

Every Rose Has Its Thorn

We both lie silently still
in the dead of the night
Although we both lie close together
We feel miles apart inside

Was it something I said or something I did
Did the words not come out right
Though I tried not to hurt you
Though I tried
But I guess that's why they say

Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song
Every rose has its thorn

Yeah it does

I listen to our favorite song
playing on the radio
Hear the DJ say loves a game of easy come and
Easy go
But I wonder does he know
Has he ever felt like this
And I know you'd be here right now
If I could have let you know somehow
I guess

Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song
Every rose has its thorn

Though it's been a while now
I can still feel so much pain
Like a knife that cuts you the wound heals
but the scar, that scar remains

I know I could have saved a love that night
If I'd known what to say
Instead of makin' love
We both made our separate ways

But now I hear you found somebody new
and that I never meant that much to you
To hear that tears me up inside
And to see you cuts me like a knife

I guess every rose has its thorn

Yum Tum Crepies

When in France... was having a crappy work day Thurs so I thought I'd spice up my desert with a couple home-made crepes. Preping the sauz, look at those sexy-ass jogging pants, yes it was late and I was in my jammies ;-)



A steaming hot pan that I'm about to flip... I have as little confidence as you do that this will turn out well...



OHHH YEAH! My flipping skills show a flash of brilliance. You're treated to the end here as the 5 hundred second delay on my digicam means the chance of actually getting a live action shot is somewhere between zero and null :-)



Now that's a crepe! Too bad I got too much Nutella on the camera for the last pic ;-)



I'm hungry...

Weekly Links

Here's a bunch of stuff I found interesting, funny and weird from the past week that was:

CNET's got a list of the "Top 10 Internet Fads", but none of these are as cool as the Darth Vader Burger King promotion. Update: Obviously I've been playing around with the Darth Vader site, interesting how it can even know if you're thinking about something sexual but it ends the game by simply stating that you're thinking about something sexual. Looking for more interesting ones (I first beat it with "infinity").

Wow, when designing your company logo maybe it's a good idea to have that bad boy reviewed by a couple people first eh ;-) (via Boing Boing) If you don't see it then you are really in need of a weekend out on the town! ;-)



Don't have much confidence in your gardening skills but want to exercise your green thumb? Why not try "Flowers in a Can" :-)


Also found via Coolhunting was these coaster "heads" that I found hilarious:



An interesting post about the constraints surrounding your project.

A look into the future of windows-type windows mobility, very cool (watch the demo).

Finally, the awe-inspiring beauty-terror of military art can sometimes blow the mind. Case and point "Angel Flares":




Eery.

Have a great weekend everyone! :-)

It's Officially Started

It's only been 40 minutes from my "Let's Get It Started" post and things are already going great, the NHL players union ratified the deal so we officially have NHL hockey this year and the Bundesliga Pokal Tournament first round timetable came out today, of note the two best matches on the circuit:

20.08.2005, 15.30 Stuttgarter Kickers - Hamburger SV
21.08.2005, 14.30 TSG Hoffenheim - VfB Stuttgart

So we'll be going to both these games for sure, anyone who wants to join us (for one or both games) needs to e-mail me NO LATER than Sunday midnight as tickets go very fast for the small teams. Also we'll be partying it up hardcore the Saturday night in Stuttgart, plans are flex but for sure will be starting with a little CBP action right after the game and move from there :-)



Let's keep it going eh! :-)

Let's Get It Started

It's Friday, and after a terribly frustrating Thursday of work it's time to get the weekend rocking starting with this classic jingle that's guarenteed to put a smile on your face for the day. Go over to your nearest P2P (ahem, legal file sharing service) and enjoy the magic of Disney with "Les Poissons" from the Little Mermaid (lyrics via Radish-Spirit.com). Let's get this Friday rocking:



Nouvelle cuisine
Les Champes Elysses
Maurice Chevalier

Les poissons, les poissons
How I love les poissons
Love to chop and to serve little fish
First I cut of zeir heads
Zen I pull out zeir bones
Ah mais oui ca c'est toujours delish

Les poissons, les poissons
Hee hee hee, haw haw haw
With ze cleaver I hack zem in two
I pull out what's inside
And I serve it up fried
God, I love little fishes, don't you

Here's something for tempting ze palate
Prepared in ze classic technique
First you pound ze fish flat with a mallet
Zen you slash through the skin
Give the ze belly a slice
Zen you rub some salt in
'Cos zat makes it taste nice

Zoot alors! I have missed one

Sacre bleu, what is zis?
How on earth could I miss
Such a sweet little succulent crab?
Quelle domage, what a loss
Here we go, in ze sauce
And some flour, I think just a dab

Zen I stuff you with bread
It don't hurt, cos you're dead
And you're certainly lucky you are
Cos it's gonna be hot In my big silver pot
Too-da-loo mon poisson au revoir!

Moving On Up!

Well for those of you that don't know yet, EuroRoss is no longer a permanent resident of Pforzheim. That's right, even though I'm finishing up a project (hopefully a long term PHD-integrated one, more on that in a later post!) I've moved out to accommodate the renovation of the apartment I was staying in which commences next week. Compliments of my generous friend German I've been able to store my stuff (read: crap) at his place in Darmstadt while I spend the better part of the next 6 weeks backpacking around France, Northern Germany, Denmark and hopefully Italy/Sicily at the end. I'm trying to do that while tele-working on the project... well we'll see how that goes ;-)

Darmstadt is a relatively unknown city outside of Germany but it has many charms. One of which is the vibrant "art district" which was created way back by one of the local German kings of Hessen to foster the arts. The community is still quite alive today and is highlighted by this famous residence created by a famous artist, I paraphrase: "life and nature doesn't contain straight edges and corners so why should our living environments? Rather they should complement our surroundings with beautiful curves and colours". Tres cool:



Of course the place still needs a modern watering hole for the local "artists" to converse about Picasso, Monet, Da Vinci... and of course VFB Stuttgart! :-)


After moving in and checking out the local culture scene we'd worked up quite a thirst, off to downtown!



Thanks to German and his buddy "Server Dude" for hooking me up with some hardware for the project, now if I could only scrap that shitty FreeBSD in favour of windows we'd be all set ;-)



We checked out all the usual places "Park Place", "Pretzel Place", Irish 2 and finally "Cool Local City Place" at the end of the night. This place is totally unknown by everyone save diehard cool locals, it's amazing they even let us two geeks in!! ;-)



The best beer combined with a long night (3am morning actually) and funky atmosphere can really screw with your mind :-)

BBQ Again? Oh Yeah!

Certainly I won't be able to complain about not taking advantage of BBQ season this year! We were at it again with a couple of the oldtimer MBA gang at Swampna's last week, the only thing hotter than the sun was the spicey Indian chicken eh! Fantastic, and I love those disk things too! Anyways the afternoon started off by taking the short jump to Stuttgart which of course was accompanied by the now-required pitstop to CBP (Circle Beer Place), considering the number of pics I've sported from CBP I figured on posting one from a different perspective:



The hike up the mountainside to Swampna's place is quite the nature path:



On your marks, get set, GO!



Blew a tire ;-)



Max'in and relax'in:



Thanks Swampna and Cool B-Friend Guy for another great BBQ, see you at the wedding!

A Week Of Remorse ;-)

After over a week since the VFB Stuttgart - KSC Karlsruhe exhibition game debacle (3-2 KSC) I'm finally ready to post some of the pics from that great game (despite the final score). It was especially gratifying to see VFB play again in Karlsruhe last Tues as the first game I had ever watched in Germany was VFB at this exact same stadium for a UEFA qualification match (the DG Stuttgart Stadium was under construction at the time). Good times. Once again the brilliant (term used very lightly) weathermen predicted rain of which none arrived. There was some rioting after the match, but what else is new for soccer in Europe ;-)

Here's a great look at the stadium just before the game was about to start:



The crowd was packed for the game, chalk full of KSC fans anticipating an on field upset:



When the goals for KSC started going in the crowd went crazy with joy (click on the photo below for a quick video):



At halftime they had a parachutist come down from the sky and land on the centre of the field, pretty cool, unfortunately the video didn't come out so great:



Well it was a great game (especially for only 5 bucs and a free subway ride from Pforzheim to the game!) and at least it wasn't regular season! Here's looking forward to Aug 6th Bundesliga!

Living It Up!

Posting has been light lately cus I'm too busy living. Life is a game, you gotta play it hard. Follow my moto:

Work like an All-Star,



Party like a Rock-Star,



Bang like a Porn-Star!



:-)

Who says there's nothing free on the internet anymore! Today as I was buzzing through my feeds I came across Jeff Nolan's post about "The World is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman and Oliver Wyman which coincidentally I had just added to my Amazon wishlist just a couple days ago. Not only that but I somehow scammed a free copy of the book just for being at the right place at the right time, not bad for a starving student! :-) In case you're wondering, the right place is Jeff's "Venture Chronicles" blog, and the right time is always since you'll be richer for checking it out (it's been on my blogroll for a while now). Thanks for the book Jeff!

Monday Funnies

Something to brighten up your Monday. You know when you're looking for a parking space and you finally find one only to realize that you won't be able to park in it because some other retard didn't park his car straight in an adjacent space? Well you're not alone my friend. Take a gander over on this Flickr group for pics of poor Yahoo employee parking jobs, some are funny, some are interesting and some just make you want to scream!



Also on tap for today is this video that was very well done: "Seven Words You Can't Say In Kindergarten", via Vowe.net.

Dream Monitor (good), Unbelievable OS (bad)

Warning: The following post comes from EuroRoss the geek ;-)

Wow, I just noticed my dream monitor from Dell (24 inches of pure joy) is $240 off (it's still a wopping $960 though so it'll have to sit on my "things to buy when I'm a millionaire" list). Also on that list is this cool $200 - $300 function key/wireless keyboard. Of course when I do get one, if Longhorn does this then I'll be moving on over to OS X.

My Two Favorite Things

Pretty isn't it? It's made of chocolate! Amazing.



Beauty and chocolate, my two favorite things ;-)

Old Post Alert

Just found an old post I was working on about Superbowl commercials that I never got around to finishing nor posting:

TiVo (who might not be around too much longer) also released some metrics on the most re-watched parts of the Superbowl. Of course one commercial didn't even get watched by anyone!

One of my favorite commercials (interesting to watch) was for the Olympus m:robe, of course the geek world did not share my sentiments. Ok actually here's the top ten from "The Raw Prawn" and they have it at #5, so maybe I wasn't sooo far off.

Can't wait for a new season of NFL to cleanse the last 2 years of Bucs incompetence, DO YOU HEAR WHAT I'M SAYING BUCS!?!?!



Go Bucs 2005/6!!

...and NHL's back!

BBQ Heaven

It's summer, the sun is out, perfect B-B-Q weather!

Of course you should go easy on the spliffy sauce! ;-)

Tour De Pforzheim

Well I finally got around to loading and formatting the pics from the weekend Tour De France appearance in Pforzheim (which I rushed back from Paris to catch, more on that later). The TDF has only ever been in Pforzheim once before in 1987, so it was a rare treat especially since I've never seen the TDF before and it's something that I definatly wanted to do once (and as it turns out ONLY once) but that I wouldn't go much out of my way to see it. For those of you who accuratly point out that Pforzhiem is not in France, you are correct :-) The TDF always has a couple stages that actually start or end in a nearby border country, so this is not abnormal. I guess this is for marketing reasons as well as the fact that the borders of France were not always like they are today ;-) So for those of you who missed it (snicker, read on for why), here's my photo montage of the day:

I thought this was hilarious. On the way to the track I saw this official TDF van parked next to a tow sign. The French just don't have any respect for German laws ;-) Obviously we were headed in the right direction :-)



Here's the bridge located downtown Pforzheim, notice the large "Hier Start" sign that's been there for the last month or so. This is important for later. I like the spraypainted bikes they strung up, very shick :-)



I had checked the TDF website the night before to confirm the start time. They had listed 9:45am as the "pre-start" and 10am as the "real start". At 9:30 I saw a parade start to come by the path, there was no way the race was going to start at 10, I was starting to get grumpy that I had woke up at 8 and waited for over an hour (to get a good view) only to realize I could have slept in my comfy bed for longer... as I would soon find out, much much longer. Click on the photo for a short video of "when the tour, goes marching in" :-)



I love these blow up air guys, the 67's (my favorite junior hockey team) have got one at the civic centre, I could watch them for hours... no I'm not stoned ;-)



Finally! The riders start to warm up. The crowd enthusiastically cheer them on as they slowly roll past, Ulrich of course gets the biggest cheers followed by a close second for Team CSC.



The man:



The Roo ;-) Love the shades :-)



Now here's the best part. After waking up at 8am for a published 10am start, which actually didn't even go until 11am, standing in a jam packed stinky crowd for over 2 hours just to watch the bicycles wizz by in 10 seconds... I didn't even get to see them wizz!!! Despite the sign (mentioned earlier), despite the path map showing my corner as part of the track, the bikers actually started about 250m west of my location, travelling west... this means I got screwed!

Brutal.

Moral: if you want to watch a stage of the TDF, go 2 hours after the stated start time and don't bother listening to the clueless organisers and make sure you follow the warmup cyclers so that you don't miss the start, at least the riders know where they're going!

At least I had some fun later in the day :-) Ride on!