MC's Blog turns 5

Today my Blog turns 5.
Too bad that I just didn't have the time to write as much as I wanted to.
I really hope this will change soon.

Anyway, Happy Birthday to my blog!

First step to summer vacation :-)

Yesterday we finally made the choice were we will got to this summer.
From 13th to 27th of July we will be in fabulous Greece.
After we had chosen the hotel I phoned the travel agency to ask for special deals like they had in the past but thanks to the crisis every kind of special deals has been cancelled. Well, that ain't a real problem because they have at least the same price as we would have gotten on the internet - as far as I can tell. As the lady told me that there were only five(!) seats left on the plane I had her reserve the places and on monday we will complet the booking.

Stay tuned for further information about the destination and the hotel! :-)

PS: There will be a travel report too!

Sherlock Holmes' flat

Just found this cool drawing of Holmes' accommodation in 221B Baker Street (drawn by Russell Stutler).


Website: Strange Maps

Sherlock Holmes

On Friday we watched the new Sherlock Holmes movie.
We had already known that the story and the behavior of the characters are different from the usual Holmes stories.
In fact I really enjoyed the movie; there is lots of fun, action and tension.
I think even if you love the rather stiff and stereotypically british Holmes from the old stories you might like this movie. Yes, it's different but really good.
To be honest I believe that the new Holmes character is much more realistic than the old ones. You see the behavior of a genius when there is nothing to do, and that just being a genius doesn't do the trick. He has lots of problems and the smart Dr. Watson has problems too, so I am sure it's closer to live then it was before.
What I really loved were the fight scenes where her thought of what he will do in slow motion with a pretty cool monologue and realized it afterwards.

Hope there will be a sequel!

Website: Sherlock Holmes

MC is back!

I know it has been a long time since the last post! Life was a bit stressy recently. Beside my studies there was too little time for blogging left, but I will try to post from time to time.

What happened the last months?

Well, I am getting on very well with my studies. Except for some courses it's fun most of the time. Of course the exams aren't too easy and so I was very nervouse, but until now everything went fine. Some colleagues (Joe, Gery, Babs) and I formed a little learning group - some kind of "BRAINTRUST" *lol*.
On friday we had the last test for this term - math. We exercised with several old tests but the professor thought of some 'very nice' examples for the tests. Things that haven't been in tests before and were partly rather hard to understand what he wanted us to do, but I think most of us did at least good enough to pass.

One of last year's highlights definitely was the Bruce Springsteen concert! IT WAS AWESOME!!! hope he comes to vieanna again soon!

There were some movies I've seen recently too - like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Inglourious Basterds, 2012, Avatar, etc. Hopefully I will find the time to post about movies I see again.

I also bought a new tech-'toy' especially for my studies. A Samsung NC10. By now it's more than a year old but still works fine. The battery stamina is super for long evenings at the FH - and the size makes it perfectly portable. Once you got used to it the display size is even enough to write longer documents on it. I love the little "Sammy"! :-)

The last vacations were Prague (Silvester 08/09), Mali Losinj / Croatia (Summer 09) and Bratislava (Silvester 09/10). Each one was wonderfull and real fun. Prague and Bratislava were really cold; Croatia was sunny and warm, only thing we didn't enjoy to much about it was that Mali Losinj is rather tiny and so you don't have too much to see and the whole Island is a mountain, wherever you go it's always up and down and most of the time a bit steep; another thing was the accommodation - we just aren't the kind of people who are made for vacations in apartments, we prefer hotel rooms were we don't have to do to much on our own. But the sea was wonderfull! :-)
What I really loved in Croatia was the fish-variety in the resturants!

I think those were the major points of the last year.

Quantum of Solace

Seen yesterday.

Well, after having heard a lot of bad critics and nearly nothing good about the new James Bond movie, my expectation were rather low.

To be honest I don't understand what all those people are complaining about.
Yes, ok, it's not the cool British style agent we've known for centuries, but on the other hand everything changes sometimes. New actor - new character.
I think it wouldn't have worked if Daniel Craig had tried to be like Sean Connery (in my opinion the best bond ever). He looks more like a man of action and a bit less style, so don't just let him do some serious butt-kickin'?
I would say he's pretty cool.

Who i missed a bit was Q. Where has that cool, sarcastic secret-technology master-mind gone?

I liked the movie. It's definitely not a must-see but I would say a good one anyway.

Website: 007

Long Night of Science

On Saturday we had a cool event called 'Long Night of Science' with stations in Vienna, Graz, Klagenfurt, Salzburg and Wiener Neustadt.

I visited the stations at the FH Wiener Neustadt.

It started at 16:27 - local sundown - pretty cool idea!

At 5 p.m. there was the lecture 'The Invention of Time' by Univ.Prof. Rudolf Taschner. It was great!
He explained how time was meassured and calculated in old Egypt and Babylon. People back then were really smart. It's fascinating how exact they could tell for example the length of a month and on which observations their calenders were based. Egypts used the sun and Babylonians the moon.
He also told us about several procedures to correct the differencies resulting from light inaccuracies. Like inserting an additional month or the last correction by Pope Gregory XIII who took out 10 days of October in 1582 when 4. October was followed by 15. October. While catholic countries went along the new calender very fast it took more then a century until the protestant regions accepted it. In eastern Christendom the Gregorian Calendar was not accepted for several hundred years, and then only as the civil calendar. The Gregorian Calendar was instituted in Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1917, and the last Eastern Orthodox country to accept the calendar was Greece in 1923.
Then Prof. Taschner told us about some guys saying that time is just an illusion. They had some really cool arguments to confuse people and their own belief.
Next he referred to an artist who draws 'the time'. No it's not the picture with the clocks by Salvador Dali. It's Roman Opalka, who paints one number after another. In 1965 he started with white numbers on black ground; in 1972 he started to ad 1% white to the base coating so his 'pictures' get lighter piece by piece.
Best thing about the lecture was that Univ.Prof. Taschner didnb't just give dry facts he explained it with a lot humor and so it was fun listening to him.

After this lecture I went through the different stations. Really cool was the station about 3d-meassuring. There you could get a 3d-picture of your face. Really funny and interesting!
At other stations you could see self driving 'mini-cars'. On of them was also patoling on the floor to guide visitors through the corridors. It was led by a line on the ground and carried a flag that said 'follow me'. :-)
There were also stations about automation and medical stuff.

I think it's a fantastic idea to bring science closer to interested people.
I really hope that there will be a sequel next year!

Websites: Lange Nacht der Forschung (Long Night of Science), FH

Time for Change!

Congratulations to Barack Obama and his team!

Website: Barack Obama

Wanted

Seen Yesterday.

Nice movie with an interesting idea behinde the story.

The realisation in fact wasn't as good as it could have been.
Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie and all the others were great but that alone can't make a movie a masterpiece. To bad it's much too often tried to put great actors into a f**ked-up story to make people think it's a great movie, but it never does the trick!

The effects are cool and the stunts are awesome but anyway I wouldn't call it a must-see.
To many weird actions and to little depth and background in the storyline.

The story itself is about a brotherhood of people who believe that a loom tells them the names of dangerous people and that it's their calling to take them out.
Could have been a great movie but they messed it up.

Website: Wanted

Surprise!

Here in Austria kids get a school cone from their parents when they enter school for the first time.
Well, as a matter of fact this tradition doesn't stop at the first school day of first-graders, because of the high fun factor you may get such cones several times. For example when you change to a next level school type of start to study at an university or things like that.

Now that I start my study at the FH Wiener Neustadt (University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt, Austria) I had the pleasure of getting THREE of those cool presents!
WOW!!!

First I got a huge one on Thursday from my girlfriend Julia, one from friends on Friday and one from Julia's mother Christa today.
In all of them were a lot of writing utensils and sweets.
In Julia's there were also a plastic baby giant panda, a soft toy tige with magnetic paws (already on our fridge) and a cool puzzle-ball from sheepworld.
In the one from my friends there was also a pez dispenser (the Joker) and a puzzle magazine for brain training.
And inside Christa's there were two little model cars (a blue Audi A4 and a cool U.S. police car).

from Julia:
from my friends:
from Christa:
Thank you all very much for the great school cones!