my day

For month we planned to go geohunting by the time Fabian and I were both back in Karlsruhe again. So, during the last couple of days, we finally set things up, checked out some GPS receivers and got one from a big only auction house. Ladies and getlemen, I am proud to announce the retrival of our first geo cache. It was spotted today, Friday 16th, at 3:04am. We didn't find it directly although we had the right idea. But luckily enough we gave it a thorough second attempt and so after a total of maybe ten mins of watching around (and being disturbed by the nightwatch) we finally held it in our hands. Felt good! Of course it's back now, but I can tell you it's not the last one we were after.

Although I wasn't really sure if I still wanted to have another stop over after leaving Australia, Thailand turned out to be not to bad or at least very convenient for me. Arriving in Bangkok I felt at the start again: I didn't know shit, did not even have a rough guide or alike. Of course my flight was delayed and so the bus service to the city was long stopped, when I left the terminal building. I takled myself into the taxi queue and shared a ride with an Irish guy who wanted to go to Khaosan Road, where I got myself one of the famous beds in a box. That night was rough.
I spent only one day in Bangkok before I jumped on a bus to Chumpon connecting with a ferry to Kho Tao. That is one of the islands in the south, the smallest on the east coast, to be precise. It is also Thailand's Mecca for divers, and as I did my open water padi on the reef I felt that could be the place to go to have another enjoyable week. And so it came!
I was given some background information before by Kay, one of the Australian dive instructors who were on the dive boat with us. He had told me about Kho Tao and one particular diving school, where he had worked before. As prices are the same anywhere, I decided to follow his recommendation and give it a shot. He had also given me some names of friends to say hello to, I felt that could be a good start.
I had spent the complete night on a coach and added another two hours on the ocean when I finally arrived. Immediately (like seemingly everywhere in Thailand) there were Thais surrounding me shouting about their dive resorts and taxi services. Oh, dude ... but I got used to that quickly and so it became fun just having a little chat with every single one. Though they found out I wouldn't give them my money quite fast they still kept on talking, especially asking. I think the Thais are very friendly people!
I got myself a pickup cab to Big Blue Diving, where I then booked an advanced diving course. That was cool for I had thought about doing it in Australia anyway. Diving is so much fun. First they weren't very confident because of their tight schedules. I was told that I was travelling during Golden Week , where Japan is closed down and half of the people go to Kho Tao. But finally it worked out and I got and instructor just to myself, Mr James Rickert, who was one of Kay's friends. I think I am not supposed to mention that, but I was his very first student as he, after years of being a dive master, had finished his instructor course recently. Very cool.
Actually the days on Kho Tao went by fast and for Sunday I had booked my journey back. I wanted to spend another day in Bangkok, now that I felt more Thailand ready, besides I thought that having a bit of backup to catch my flight on Monday night wouldn't be too bad either. I arrived in the middle of the night again, around 2am, and checked in to the guest house I had used before. Again feeling way better that time. With a Stefan Loose guide I had bought on my first day in Bangkok I started strolling through town, saw heaps of temples, of course the palace and uncounted numbers of buddha statues. I even took part in one ceremony of a bunch of Buddhists, that was there because of an UN festival. Interesting!
Time went fast and finally it was time to take my backpack and catch the airport bus. I was told to arrive early as the ride was one hour. What I really don't fancy about flyinng is the check in procedure. Two hours for an international flight is not even true any more. If you want to have a decent seat or at least to make sure that they don't try to get you off by offering money, that you have to be there three hours earlier, to get a good position in the queue. Of course there were heaps of x-ray screenings again and the baggage weight gamble doesn't amuse me anymore anyway. As I was at the airport around half eight and the flight started late at 1.20am I had five long hours to do nothing. So boring... I have no clue what I did, but I managed to stay alive/awake.
We had caught up during the flight and arrived in Heathrow, where I had a connecting flight to Franfurt, in time. But the disaster happened: we didn't get a taxi pulling us to the terminal and so I spent a fun time on the runway seeing the my chances fading. I ran to the other terminal, as the special bus for the passengers having connections refused to let me board, only for Italian destinations. What the? After getting pulled out during yet another baggage check I knew I couldn't make it and was really pissed off for a minute or so. At least the lounge seats in London weren't to bad.
I finally arrived in Frankfurt around 1.30pm, my sister was kind enough to pick me up and give me a lift to Karlsruhe. How weird being in Bangkok one day and back in Germany the next. Still, so far I enjoy it.

How cool is that? I keep getting a lot of strange mails to my gmail account. First it's some kind of spam or probably autoresponder replys to spam mails that were sent under my name. I don't really give a thing. But that was really strange, I thought, as the gmail accound wasn't really mine! So you can reach me under florian.h[at] (yeah, I know, just publishing that on the internet), these mails were directed to florianh[at]. For those who are not aware: the dot is missing. So I looked through the online help, seriously not finding any answers. Then I filed a report (only possible to contact real people if you claim it was abuse), I was asked for the header that I included. So I have a copy of the header I sent them, just if you don't believe what I tell you now.
When I looked into that inbox again, there was no answer from any google authority, but another spam mail! What a shitty service I thought. But then again they probably cannot answer to every complaint. So I checked the header and ... was stunned. Gmail was talking to me! Look at the pic and see why I felt like Neo in the beginning of the first Matrix movie. That was definitely new! Just in case you wanna check, what people get told since Friday, here is the webpage I got referred to. Intersting for anybody who has such an account, isn't it? Now I wonder how many people it took to have them implement that indicator.

So here's some insight into my weekend. First: It started late, I left work at 8.30pm. Yeah, somehow I am proud, although it's not really about the overtime but more about my worries that I feel lazy sometimes starting my day reading German newspapers for half an hours. So after all it might be more accurat to relate to it as being relived. Well, it had a very lazy Friday afterwards, not really worth mentioning. Stayed in our Newtown mansion, all by myself as my housemates took the day off and went camping to Cattai again (I wish I had written about that adventure, so that I could link it here). I made some progess in my new book, Kundera's Ignorance. Tough stuff.

Had a very long day yesterday. Started a bit confused, although I slept in a was really tired. So I decided to take my time, have breakfast, do some weights and accept the fact that I would be in office late. But around 9.48am it hit me that I had signed up for a seminar on intellectual property that would start at - nah, who can guess that - 10am. I stuffed all my things (including tennis gear and lunch) into the backpack, flew threw the the rest of my morning routine and headed off. Well, I was pretty confident that I would make it in time for I live quite close to the ATP, but then again I didn't wanna sweat too much for I would have to sit there for two hours immediately! Everything went fine and I even wasn't the last one to pop in.
The seminar itself was more or less interesting, although I can only shake my head about all these patent atourneys, unwilling to give in to their point of view. That's not about research anymore. But on the other hand it might be useful to keep in mind what their important aspects of innovation are, just so I know what I do publishing things or leaving a copyright message somewhere.
Anyway, there wasn't a lot of time left till lunch and so work didn't really get under way. But I was keen on solving some problems I had experienced before and therefore really didn't spend too much time in the cafeteria. Back on my desk and on the terminals I started checking out some more of the memory leak detectors I had downloaded the day before. Acutally there seem to be some very useful tools, hopefully I get to write about that experience later.
The next bottleneck was the time between 4pm and 6pm. I had said that I would play tennis with Damian and Kathryn, but I felt it would be pretty uncomfortable leaving my desk again without having figured out why my datastructure eats memory in gigabyte portions. And in addition to that I had told Thomas that I would join him for the computational geometry lecture he would give at exactly that time slot at Sydney Uni. I'm not against cloning.
At about 3.29pm I found the nasty little line messing up the fun. Damn, that felt good for I had been hunting it for quite a while (with a lot of distraction in between). Having my head focused on doing a good job since I won't be working for too much longer I went with Thomas (leaving Damian to be tormented by his wife on the court). The lecture was interesting and fun, for me it was nice going to the campus and seeing some students. I gotta say that I miss that athmosphere quite a bit and that I am looking forward to having a student's life again. Since the semester here now started again there will be some more of that the next weeks.
As the course took a bit longer than expected/planned we arrived back at NICTA around 6.30pm. I checked on the experiments I had started before we left and was quite satisfied with what I could see already. We talked about some more or less work related things and so spend enough time to see the computer finishing its taks. But after seeing that I would have some nice results to look at the next day, I decided to go home at last. That was at about 7.30pm.
Coming home there was loud music and a little guy running around in our house. That's Jack, Susi's (Adrian's girlfriend) 2-year-old son. He's great fun and wouldn't stop following me wherever I went. The others were having a BBQ in the backyard by that time, invited me to join. But my conscience kicked in and forced me to put on my running equipment and leave the house. I gotta say that it's getting dark very early again, in fact noticeably earlier each day. So I didn't see a lot, but the air was somewhat fresher/cooler than normally and I had a very nice and fast run down to Sydney Park and back. Damn, that made me tired. So there wasn't much time or energy for more than a long shower, a quick check on my email some improvised dinner and a more or less early night. Can't have been more than five minutes before I fell asleep, I am talking about going to bed before midnight here.
By the way: The original plan was to spend the time I had in front of my laptop yesterday blogging this, but unfortunately the database server of my provider had broken down - and I was disconnected.

Wow, that rocks. I just fried some pasta (as so often) and decided to give some of the chilis growing in our backyard a try. And now my mouth burned for half an hour. Actually I like that. Don't you know that feeling ordering a pizza with extra chilis on it and then every single bite just hurts but you can't stop cause you're addicted to this mixture between pain and taste? Great, just great. Hopefully some of the green ones hurry up ripening so I can get the next shot.

I was so at one with the world today. Don't no why, but everything was just fine. I could try to describe todays features, but as I am in a strange mood at the moment I reckon I wouldn't be able to capture a true picture of it. So why exactly was I suspicious enough to expect destiny's rebound? It's a Wednesday, so Thomas and I rode to the Roxbury, which by the way was more crowded than the weeks before. The students are coming back to town. Nevermind... it was a nice evening although we were hopelessly lost in the trivia. About one and a half hours ago I started my ride back to Newtown. Normally it would take me ten minutes, but this time I managed to blow of both of my beloved bike's tires at once by crashing into a huge chuckhole. This earned me another half an hour with the bike on my shoulders and a lot of work tomorrow morning, not only to fix the bike but to get all the oil off my clothes and stuff. Only positive thing about it: the bike shop doesn't open before ten, so I will be stuck in bed a bit longer!

One more thing: only 100 days left till the kickoff in Munich!

A lot of you might understand what this is about: Quite frequently sombebody asks me what my profession was and I say that I work in theoretical computer science at the moment. People might get curious and ask what that is about - and if I am in the mood I might actually try to sum up the beauty of complexity and algorithms, a thing that I myself forget about from time to time. In fact I often asked myself why I didn't stick with mathematics or physics which seem to be so profound. Well, after a while I notice that I baffeld the questioner completely so I might underline it all with some practical examples if I don't give up directly. However, the reaction I get is the same over and over again (I really dislike it): "Oh, sounds interesting, my {cousin, friend, friend of a friend, uncle, brother in law, sister}^1 is in IT, too. {He, She}^1 is {doing webpages, a programmer, a cybernanny, the owner of an Internetcafe} (as well)." SLAP! This is so wrong.
Today I was sent a very nice article, an interview with Bernard Chazelle, who is describing what computer science's potential is (in his opinion), how the world could look at it and why there should be more people taking up that subject. Maybe he is right and our guild is the next one to turn science with a great revolution. One that is yet to come. Ease for a troubled computer scientist's soul.

There've been a lot of things happening lately, this is why I simply did not have the peace to catch up here with it. But there's light. First of all I've really been working a lot if not too much. There weren't a lot of days I left Nicta before 7pm, I even met the night security guard a couple of times and my record is being home past 1am, just to give u an idea. Would be nice, if I got paid overtime - but as I don't get money in the first place... However, after some real frustrating problems I yesterday finally ran some cool and serious experiments and this is what I will do throughout the next days. There will be a lot of writing, too.
I also really wanna spend more time being a bit touristic again. I haven't been to the beach in weeks and I really wanna see some spots in Sydney I haven't been to at all before I leave in a couple of months. Of course all this does not mean that I wouldn't enjoy myself in my temporary home. Au contraire! I did a lot of nice things, spend a great Australia Day in the Botanicals was camping in Cattai (out in the west) with my housemates and friends, played tennis quite a few times, had some great BBQs, went out in Newtown (for convenience reasons), went to ZanziBar, had another really crazy night at the Roxbury and heaps more. Today (like a week ago) I went climbing with my mate Damian. He, by the way, is gonna visit us (@i11) in Karlsruhe this year in autum. I feel a bit drained and so I better go to bed soonish.
A couple of minutes ago Sander popped in, he is permanent user of our couch by now and just stopped by on his way from Perth to Auckland. This guy lives from holiday to holiday (although he would now correct me to point to the work he has done in between). Officially he left Syndey like two weeks ago, before that he was living an 3 Baltic Street and before that again we had a very nice Dutch ThankGodHesLeaving BBQ at his old place. About this alone I could tell some funny stories - another time. Well, with Marc in January, Greg a couple of weeks ago and Sander now (more or less) a lot of my usual suspects left and this is reminding me to the fact that I won't stay forever from time to time. Strange.
Good night and ... good luck.

... and please don't try to convince me it was good, I know better. Oh how could a single person stand this pain. And how could somebody reading up to this line not know what it is about? I will tell you. Today, like half an hour ago, the final ticket sell for the worldcup in Germany started. It's first come first serve. Hell knows I prepared to be first. From 9.35pm (=11.35am MEZ) I was ready, sitting in front of my laptop checking for any early possibilities. All necessary data, ID numbers, adresses, wanted matches, credit card information, my login and password ready in an extra window to be c&p'ed to the fifa form. The last five minutes were spent starring at the atomic clock seeing the minutes and finally seconds pass by. It should be mentioned here that the website was opened nearly 30 seconds late, but who's counting. And all this pain for nothing. I mean NOTHING. The form, different to earlier ones, was a list of all possible matches showing red entries telling me that there were no tickest on sale for all interesting games. So I might be able to be live in a stadium seeing the Ivory Coast matching Serbia and Montenegro, of course even for those there were only more expensive categories available. Thanks. How am I ever gonna explain to my children (if I ever have some) that I didn't attend the worldcup in my home country? That's shit. I could go on crying about this for a long time, complaining about the fifa's ticket sell system in general and my bad luck in particular. But I reckon it's not gonna change anything. And I really did what I could. My tribute goes to everybody out there who suffers from the same destiny. So what have I learned about being laid-back? Well, I think I will spend a few hours more than expected in front of the TV this summer.