11/9

the bigger stupid has won over the smaller stupid

what a bad day

peace

IT

Computer classes at school were not for me.

It was 1986, the computers were Commodore C64 and the eye-hurting monitors with a bunch of clumsy code just weren't for me.

In University, computers were suddenly for me.

I could write, store and print my theses without a typewriter.

Earning money with doing the same for others was for me.

I learned to create plans and plotted them on a huge workstation.

Then came the internet.

First modem, electronic banking.

It was 1991.

I learned about TCP/IP, HTML and CGI.

Published my first web site in 1996.

All the time, working with computers included a lot of coding. GUIs weren't the norm.

Then GUIs became the norm. Drag and drop it was.

Now it's 2016 and I find myself back drowning in code for a freaking web site.

What happened?

No Title

When I was seven or eight years old (I cannot recall the exact time), I suffered from warts. One time at breakfast, my mother put the tincture to treat my warts in my cocoa and told me they would go away if I drank the mixture.

It tasted dreadfully, but after adding spoonfuls of sugar, I gulped the concoction down trustfully.

The last thing that I remember from this morning is the comic book I always read before we drove off to school.

I woke up in hospital, tubes in mouth and nose. My stomach was being pumped out. I stayed in hospital for a week or so.

After that incident, my mother was put on trial and revoked guardianship. She has been suffering from depression since before I was born and she wanted to commit what is known as extended suicide.

Only when she saw me sprawled on the floor, she had a moment of clarity and called an ambulance.

It took me years to realize what really happened, as no one in my family talked about this event. I thought of it as an accident. There were some newspaper articles (that were kept away from me) and in school I even got bullied about my mother being a child murderer. I called them liars.

I don't tell this story often, but most of the time I get asked if I felt or still feel vengeful against mother. My mother couldn't forgive herself and she still suffers even if I keep telling her that I have never even once hated her for what she did. Her act was one of despair and caused by a mental illness. And this illness is the real killer with a gruesome body count.

peace

Earphones? Seriously?

If you're depending too much - also in an emotional sense - to the tech that is supposed to support your daily life, you risk making a fool of yourself.

Millions of people are whining about earphones and how they connect to their expensive smartphones.

First world problem, anyone?

Stop whining and be happy that:

this is obviously your biggest problem,
you know where to sleep tonight,
you have enough to eat,
you can continue to consume your cat videos...

peace

Nature

Whenever I have to leave the countryside, I 'fill up' on nature.

Wanted to share these pics of Ysperklamm in the Austrian 'Waldviertel' with you.

peace

History

When I need to test the bandwidth of my internet connection (usually in hotel rooms), I usually go to speedtest.net.

You probably know the site. I like the way numbers are presented and it seems concise enough. Just recently, I noticed that every test is saved and can be accessed via a URL, such as:

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/2075194134

Now look at the URL and the ID at the bottom of the result page. I wonder what I would see if I change the number in the URL?

Would be interesting to retrieve very old results and compare with newer ones. I wonder if that is intentional by the good people at speedtest.net?

peace

Numbers

During my first excursions into the then young world wide web, I stumbled upon a 'world clock'. I cannot recall the site URL but there are plenty of similar pages on the web today.

All of them have one thing in common. They show counters for world population, births, deaths and other indicators counting up (or down) based on statistics and estimates.

World Clock by Peter Russell

It's a mesmerizing experience to watch these counters. Every second a human is born and the same instant a human life ends. It is as if you have a vantage point from where you watch Earth and see life pop up and dissolve breathlessly.

In the time it takes for you to breathe in and out, there are countless births and deaths. Life is coming and going but goes on forever.

Don't get me wrong, I do not feel sad or depressed in any way while watching these clocks and thinking about the implications of these numbers going up or down. Thanks to these pages I feel connected to life itself and reminded of my own evanescence.

Here are some more:

World Clock by Poodwaddle
worldometers
livepopulation.com

peace

Simple Things

The speechlessness recedes after all. It's summer/vacation time and I take refuge in nature, living the simple life. Far away from the lunacy that resides in cities.

There isn't much that is more satisfying than a bowl of self-grown vegetables, prepared on a fire from self-cut wood enjoyed with good friends.

That is the luxury that I indulge in.

Why?

Can someone please invent a cure against those f*ckwits who kill, torture, dismember or otherwise inflict misery upon innocent people?

Maybe I'm just asking for too much.

peace

Poppy

'tis the season of the flowering poppy. The rural Waldviertel area of northern Austria has a legacy in growing poppy and selling produce (seeds, oil, etc) all over Europe. For instance, farmers in Germany are not allowed to grow poppy, so Germany imports most of the poppy seed it consumes from Austria.

And no, the farming variety of Waldviertel grown poppy is not used (nor usable) to produce opiates.

peace

Frankfurt Niederrad

In my profession, it is a typical occupational hazard to spend some time in strange places. One of these places is the 'Bürostadt' in Frankfurt, Germany.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Niederrad is one of these locations where you can do/see any of the following in no particular order, but often at the same time:

• Take an evening stroll being the only human among hundreds of rabbits.
• Work in an office that looks exactly like another office in a different city.
• See what architects are capable of when they're given a clean slate.
• Sleep in a hotel next to a cemetery (very tranquil).
• Watch/hear a never ending fleet of aircraft landing.

peace

How Does the Web Feel?

The world wide web is fascinating. One of my favorite pages (long gone and irretrievable even by the wayback engine) was of a girl who wrote compelling personal stories.

One of them was titled "How Does the Web Feel?" and even 20 years after first reading the text it still rings with me.

Back in the mid-nineties the internet was a place to meet friendly strangers and make friends easily. It was a close-knit community and far away from what the web is today.

For more than a decade, the sole means of access to the vast interweb was modem dial-up. The good thing was that you were unperturbed by phone while you were surfing.

I spent many nights online, just exploring and marveling, feeling connected to the minds of people who wrote stuff like that girl.

Thanks Julie

Hubble's Constant

It was one of the better days of humankind, when we brought a telescope to orbit. Undisturbed by atmospheric conditions, the Hubble Space Telescope has been delivering imagery of the otherworldly kind for more than 25 years.

Happy Birthday Hubble, and here's to (at least) five more years.

More Mittelmaß Please

Considering myself a non-political person, I am surprised at the deep disturbance I felt on the #brexit. As a European, I think this will be remembered as some sort of beginning, but not in a good way.

Democracy is a tricky thing (and has some amount of crazy in it), but a majority is one more than half of the voting population.

It's just that close votes like #brexit or the last elections for Austrian Presidency (both close to a 50:50 draw) show how extremely divided we are as countries, a union of countries or as individuals.

Seems that there is no 'Mittelmaß', no healthy balance anymore. Just extremes. And extremes lead to extreme things.

In a union, be it a marriage on a scale of two people or a political construct on a scale of hundreds of millions, there will always be controversies and one party sometimes has to accept to give more than they take. I believe we have to learn that again.

peace

Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald

Ödön von Horvath's anti-Gemütlichkeit drama Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald never ceased to impress me with its clarity and brutality. The author died young (the fate of the Good obviously), hit by a falling tree branch during a thunderstorm in Paris.

I managed to grow older than Ödön, and can only confirm that hideous and brutal people whose only goal is to exploit and damage others still exist in abundance. Quite a depressing perspective on humankind.

His quote "Nichts verleiht so sehr das Gefühl der Unendlichkeit als wie die Dummheit" ('Nothing gives so much the sense of infinity than stupidity') is one of my favorites ever since. And by my own experience very accurate.

Let's hope we evolve

PS: This article was written before the United(!) Kingdom elected to leave the European Union.

Summer Solstice

Our rocky spaceship reached maximum axial tilt on June 21st, as it does every year. For dwellers north of the equator this means the longest day and shortest night.

In our neck of the woods, folks celebrate this astronomical event by setting up huge bonfires, locally known as 'Sonnwendfeuer'.

So let's rock on then

Genetic Algorithms

It was back in 2000 when I crammed my head with IT knowledge in the lovely township of Leonding, Upper Austria. I was member of a team of students that experimented with genetic algorithms. During my online research I found a tiny little application called imogenes (written in 1995 by some clever folks at Carnegie Mellon University).

The program does not run on my 64bit Windows and I am too lazy to set up a VM with XP or Win2K, and it doesn't matter.

Back then I was fascinated and spent much time tweaking the controls and marveled at the grainy output (images generated by iterating mathematical functions over and over).

One more bit of string that holds me together. Now where's that Win2k ISO file?

peace

Wood

Living in the country has its perks. Oh the joy of cutting down trees, splitting the logs and laying them out to dry for 3 or more years.

Moving to the countryside was the best decision in my life. The patch of land we found was totally grown in with trees. 5 winters of cutting and splitting later, we have a reserve for about 10 years of fluffy, cozy warmness.

And then there's still the neighbor's woodland to go ;-)

Don't get me wrong, I am as much an environmentalist as can be. Wood is a natural resource that grows back. Almost half of Austria is bedecked with forest. And it is growing every year.

Source: Wald in Österreich

peace

Harvest

I am a country dweller, always have been. Crackling wood in the fireplace makes me much happier than central heating. I even was a farmer for a while. Nowadays I like to watch farmers and their tractors buzzing busily around the fields. It's harvest season - hey (or hay?).

Nothing like the smell of fresh sun-dried poaceae. 

happy harvesting

Gravitational Waves

I'm in awe how sensitive humankind has become, so we can now detect the ripples in spacetime caused when two black holes gobble each other up.

Exciting times to live in. More reading pleasure here.

peace

Zeroes and Ones

How many zeroes and ones are stored in the digital universe we created?
Are there more zeroes or more ones?
How would this post look in binary form?

At least one question answered...
Better than zero

peace