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.

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

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!

back to school (3)

WOW! That was fast!
As I wrote earlier today that I took the aptitude test just last Thursday and this evening I received a call from my mother who told me that a letter from the FH had arrived. So I rushed to her to open the letter. Didn't think that there would be the big YES or NO in it, just something about how I did on the test.
When I opened it my heart raced a hundret miles per hour and I was pretty shaking. I pulled the letter out of the envelope and directly in the subject line it read 'entry confirmation'.
I REALLY MADE IT!
All that's left to do is to fill out the 'study entrance declaration' and bring it to the FH and then - starting at the 2. September - I will be an official student at the FH Wiener Neustadt.

Website: FH Wiener Neustadt
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MC listened to: AC DC - Thunderstruck
via FoxyTunes

back to school (2)

Last Thursday I took the second step on the way to become a student at the FH Wiener Neustadt - the aptitude test.
I was really nevous the days before; I think that was because of the fact that I didn't know what it would be like and that there was nothing you could have prepared in advance.
As soon as the test had started it was like always, nervousity was blown away and it was no problem to focus on the test; and afterwards I have to say it was rather amusing.
Some of the stages didn't make to much sense to me in relation to the study.
This time was the first time in my life I had the feeling that I even solved some of those damn number rows - where you are given some numbers which have a logical run and you have to find the pattern and put in the next following number. But on the other hand I think I completely failed the German part. I think there will be some right answers but they only by luck. Some of the words I have never heard before.
End of the week I should get the test result.


Website: FH Wiener Neustadt
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MC listened to: Sting - Englishman In New York
via FoxyTunes

back to school

I just was at our local University of Applied Sciences - Fachhochschule (FH) Wiener Neustadt - to sign up for their Businees Engineering Program (part-time). Now all I have to do is to pass the aptitude test on 10. April, and then, three years later, I will - hopefully - be Bachelor of Science in Engineering. And I think I will go on two more years to become Master.


Well, if I told you that I ain't nervous it be a plain lie! To be honest from time to time I feel like I'm going to s**t my pants! ;-)

Website: FH Wiener Neustadt
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MC listened to: Thin Lizzy - Whiskey In The Jar
via FoxyTunes