BPI inside

Tag: Personal

  • Applying for the next degree course

    Since I’m in the last few weeks of my Bachelor degree programme at the University, I’ve been applying for the subsequent programme. I’ve chosen to apply for the Masters degree in Advanced Security Engineering. For me this is just the logical consequence of my overall education path as it would conclude my technical progression over the last years.

    Today I had the face-to-face talk with representatives from the University, which is part of the application procedure. All in all it was the same talk I had when I applied for the Bachelors degree. Just that I knew the interviewer, who in fact was the one who supervised my first Bachelor thesis, I knew the difficulties and challenges when studying and that I knew how I could organize everything together with my private and work life. And it was in English of course, since it’s the main education language in this course.

    I think it went quite well and it shouldn’t be much of a problem getting accepted but who knows… have to wait for the confirmation.

  • “Mood Music” or What I took from the Eurovision Song Contest 2010

    Surely you all know this situation. You hear a song or some tunes and within moments your mood just changes from whatever to what the song is about. For me this does not happen very often, maybe just a handfull of times a year or so. And most of the time it’s not even a new song but one which you already heard in the past and which you are somehow mentally connected to. Maybe it not only reliably triggers a certain mood but also some memories, good or bad ones.

    My personal repertoire of such "mood music" is not that big but maybe the connected emotions, moods and memories are more intense because of that. And I think it’s perfectly ok that way.

    For example one of those songs is High from the Lighthouse Family which instantly brings up memories of the first girl I’ve fallen in love quite seriously. Well, as many teenage affections this one was not returned and faded over time. But still, it was the first one. I don’t know exactly why it’s that song but I think I can remember it being played in the background when I had a close moment with that girl. Or another unrelated example, Das Boot from U96, the one song/melody which got me into listening to 90s-Techno and other electronic music.

    I think the last week has proven that I probably can add another song to my pack. It’s Madcon’s interpretation of their own song Glow for the Eurovision Song Contest 2010. Altough I missed most of the show, I accidentially tuned in for this break-filler. And boy, I didn’t regret. It took me totally unprepared and after the almost eight minutes of happiness overdose my not-so-great mood from the last few weeks has vanished and I’ve too been infected with an almost euphoric and happy state of mind. And it’s still that way today, even although I’ve listened to this song now a hundred times and I guess it will keep that way for some time.

    What’s strange though is that the full effect only hits if watching the video, especially in HD. Maybe it’s because it’s cutting and choreography is done so that you really see only happy and excited faces for eight minutes and there are so much details in the pictures that you can watch it often and still discover something new and funny. Perhaps its long enough and re-watchable enough so that the presented positive mood just seeps deep enough into your subconsciousness.

    But in the end it’s completely irrelevant how it works, just that it does! What about you, do you have any similar songs on your mind which are able to turn you completely around?

  • Final piece of bathroom ordered

    It took quite a long time since the last major progress but now there has been another milestone reached. Yesterday I finally decided, after lots of thinking and measuring, which washing basin combination I’ll take to finish off the last missing piece for a 100% functional bathroom.

    A sample picture of the combo and how I ordered it (I hope this link lasts):

    Pelipal Roulette 09

    One catch still, it takes about six weeks until I receive it, the delivery is scheduled for July 5th. But then it’ll be great 🙂

  • …nuffin’…

    Just a quick posting. Not much happened since last time. Maybe just the fact that a cooling water thermostat in my car was fixed and now the engine reaches proper operating and heating temperatures. Apparently this fault already was present when I bought the car and so I didn’t recognize the weak interior heating to be a fault of the car at all. Nevertheless, now it’s working and nobody has to freeze anymore when being driven in my car.

  • Another online presence – Twitter

    A few days ago I’ve still been undecisive about Twitter and today you can already find my Twitter feed online at http://twitter.com/kosi2801.

    Setup was easy and fast (of course) and the first tweet has been online in a matter of minutes. What took a bit longer was to sieve out the initial list of other people to follow. There’s a massive amount of stuff which is interesting to me but many of those also have a tweet-frequency which is much to high for me or contain too much of the trivia-tweets that I’ve mentioned in my previous post. And I want to keep my Twitter-list at a reasonable size that I don’t have to spend too much time with catching up all the tweets. The decision for each feed is not easy, does it add enough information-value for me to add their tweets to my list or does it add more noise?

    For now I’ve settled on feeds that only add a handfull of tweets each day so I can scan over all the news in a few moments and process the linked articles (if any) also quickly. But I also know that this will take some tweaking and accustoming from my side to find out the right balance between interest and value for me.

    Since I’m on Twitter now only for a short time I also have to find out how I should set up my tweet-frequency and the content in each. Currently I think it’s mostly exactly the trivia I’m trying to stay away in other feeds but I hope that I will level out somewhere that other readers also get some information out of it for themselves.

    Futhermore I’ve decided for now that I’ll keep my feed in German, as this is much easier for me to tweet when I’m posting from mobile and don’t have an English dictionary at my fingertips (which I use too often even for my own taste). But nevertheless I will respond to tweets and messages in any language I can understand 🙂

    Maybe over time I’ll also connect this blog and SIMsalabim to my Twitter feed as it provides a very quick contact possibility for feedback and questions. But I don’t know yet if this will happen sooner or later…

  • To twitter or not to twitter…

    For quite a while now I’m having an eye on Twitter. In the beginning I soon stopped to check it regularly because most of the messages just were meaningful in a context unknown to the reader and weren’t even useful as short amusement or something. Nevertheless from time to time I still looked into it especially when there were links from other blogs or news articles centering around it and its technology.

    Meanwhile, while there are still lots of those low-value tweets around, some effective real-world uses have emerged. Ranging from instant news (even directly from the NASA Astronauts) to direct product support channels and even political content there are nowadays a lot of Twitter feeds which can affect a much larger audience than just personal messages. This is also represented in Twitters message question which now says "What’s happening?" instead of "What are you doing?".

    And because of this shift in focus and content I’m again rethinking my opinion of Twitter and really considering to join this social network. Which would also open an additional communication channel to the users who try out SIMsalabim.

    But I still have to think about this a bit because currently I’m already drowning in all the news-sources I’ve set up on Google Reader, FeedReader and email, SMS, IM, etc. I’ll already have to find some time in the future to re-check each and every feed and news-source I’ve listed and sift out the ones which I can really afford to spend my precious time on. And I guess with another source of instant distraction, like Twitter, this wouldn’t get any easier…

  • Maths lecture by Prof. Rudolf Taschner

    On Friday before my lectures started at the University I attended a guest-lecture of Prof. Rudolf Taschner at the 2/BRG Kapfenberg2. The lecture was called "Rechnen mit Gott und der Welt" ("Calculating with God and the World"). The description in the invitation we received sounded quite interesting and because it was scheduled just before start of my real lectures I decided to join this lecture.

    The content of the lecture was about how the mathematical basics have been invented and used by the stronger part of the cultures to keep suppressing the weaker ones, how it influenced the invention of writing and how it helped economics to develop.

    The audience was mostly composed by 13 to 17 year old gymasiasts which in the beginning seemed to be not very happy with their presence at this lecture. But over time Prof. Taschner got their attention with really interesting explainations and funny interpretations and at the end of his lecture these gymnasiasts were applauding enthusiastically.

    Never seen such young people been so excited about maths and history… If there were only more teachers able to explain their stuff like Prof. Taschner can.

  • Chilling out…

    From time to time there is just the need to calm down and chill out a bit. If I’m in the need of some cooling-off-minutes I often just fire up another tab on the browser and head to the video below. It’s an ultra slow-motion footage of a Saturn V rocket launch underlaid with a very fitting soundtrack.

    For me it is just impressive how much power is generated during this liftoff and what quantities of fuel are burned each second (15 tons each second). To get a size impression just have a look at this image where Dr. von Braun is standing in front of the five F-1 engines from the rocket.

    If you’d like to have a technical commentary on a Saturn V launch then head over to this video (Update 2014-01-27 new link to Vimeo), otherwise lean back and relax with this one:


    via videosift.com

  • Honesty is still out there

    Today, while I’ve been shopping, I’ve been asked by a poor-looking teenager on a parking site if I had some spare coins to buy something to eat and drink. Usually I’m not reacting on such questions because most of the time these people spend the money on alcohol or other drugs. This time I gave him 2EUR. I don’t know exactly why I did it this time, maybe because he clearly said how he wants to spend the money. Nevertheless, I gave it to him and entered the next supermarket, not thinking about it anymore.

    Imagine my surprise, when he entered the supermarket just a few minutes after me and coincidental he queued just behind me at the cash desk. And he really bought a softdrink bottle and some sandwiches. And later back on the parking site he came up to me again and wanted to return the change.

    Somehow gives me a warm feeling around my chest…

  • Happy New Year

    So that’s it. 2010. Feels somehow not very different compared to the last decade, only with more global worries. Maybe it’s also because I’m now older and even more interested in the stuff going on globally than I’ve been ten years ago, but I cannot really tell. Hm, at least I’m still as busy with school as I’ve been ten years ago…

    Nevertheless, I hope you have all arrived well in this new year, and I wish everyone only the best for the upcoming future.

    Happy new Year 🙂