September 8th, 2007

This is just a great picture. That was taken somewhere in Crete, somewhere on the north-east coast, still looking for GPS-coordinates. It was on the last day of the annual Linuxbierwanderung when Kerstin, Edwin and me took Jens’ Landrover (he was grounded due to pain in his back) and drove east to find a nice diving-location.

(Me in Jens’ Defender 110 checking the map and showing off – picture courtesy of Edwin Top)

Eventually it just became too late for diving so we figured we could rescue the day and just look for some nice road for slow driving and enjoying the landscape.

(Click for bigger picture – picture courtesy of Edwin Top)

And more landscape…

(Click for bigger picture – picture courtesy of Edwin Top)

It’s about time to get some holidays again.

Our next big thing is going to Tirana, the capital of Albania. One of the last big adventures in Europe.

See you there?

Addendum:
Found this other great picture. Very last day, about to leave, packing our gear.

Staff from left to right:
Me, Alexander W. Janßen (de) – Edwin Top (nl) – Andy Siptak (at) – Mike Kallies (ca)

(Click for bigger picture – picture courtesy of Jens Chr. Bachem)

Update: Mini-Linuxbierwanderung 12/8 – 12/10 – details

Update:

Hi all!

I’m kinda busy so I make it short: We’ll be meeting up on friday vening at 18:00 in the restaurant “Uel” on the Ratingerstrasse 16:http://tinyurl.com/t2r8m

It’s about a 5-minute-walk from the subway-station Heinrich-Heine-Allee”, which is about 500 metres south of the Ratinger Strasse (can’t miss the big blue U-sign).

It wasn’t possible to make a reservation anywhere because of all the corporate xmas-parties, so we might end up somewhere else later. Contact me via email to get my mobile-phone number.

The Neanderthal-thing will happen on saturday morning at 11:15; we’ll meet up at Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) on platform 13 at 9:45. Buy a B-ticket first and validate it, you can’t do that on the train!

10:04 Düsseldorf Hauptbahn via “S-Bahn S28″ in direction “Mettmann Stadtwald S”
10:23 At “ME-Zentrum S” get of the S-Bahn and go to the Bus Platform 1 (“ME-Zentrum S Bstg. 1″)
10:46 Take the Bus 741 in direction “Hilden Südfriedhof”.
~10:50 Get off at the station “Neanderthal/Museum”.

We’ll be busy in the Museum for around 1.5h – 2h. The restaurant cross the street opens at 13:00 so we could have lunch there too.

I’m still trying to arrange a visit in a brewerey for after lunch, ith no luck so far (I’m just too damn busy). After lunch we’ll head or the Altstadt to visit the Christmas-markets. It’s up to you where e spend our time in the evening.

OK, in case you got questions, drop me a line.

Off for Mini-Linuxbierwanderung in Luxembourg

So, I’m off for the weekend – gone for the Mini-Linuxbierwanderung, meeting the LBW-gang in Larochette, a small village about 30 km away from Luxembourg-city. We’re all going to meet up tonight in the Hotel “Op Der Bleech” for beer & food. Sven is going to fetch me in the next hour or so, so i should start packing my stuff. I also wanted to fetch some cash from the ATM…

Well, read you later, have a nice weekend.

Tech Tags: Linuxbierwanderung Geeky Fun

Back home

Arrived Düsseldorf just about three hours ago, went directly to our local university to see a specialist ’cause of my fancy little souvenir from the Paluse-woods.

Still have that infection and the doctor found out that the antibiotics i got in Lithuania aren’t enough, so she prescribed me more drugs. Apparently i’m infected by multiple strains of bacteria and the antibiotics i was taking since thursday are only helping against certain strains. The new antibiotics is supposed to be some kind of Weapon of Mass-Destruction when it comes to killing bacteria.

They took blood-samples to check with what else i might be infected to improve the therapy but she said it might take weeks until I recover. In six weeks I’ll have to make yet other blood-tests to check if i got infected with meningitis (my fscking vaccination was expired!!!) or even got borreliosis. Since nobody actually knows what really bit me (although the spider-theory is popular) it can’t be ruled out that it was a tick-bite – and those little bastards can transmit lots of nasty crap. Blargh.

However, this LBW was really nice (although i was grounded for quite some time) – beer and food is cheap and good (greasy though – the food, not the beer), the people are really nice. Kerstin and me decided we’ll definetively come back to Paluse.

Jens and me also decided to go to St. Petersburg next April to watch the Ice Hockey World Championship preliminary rounds and generally to enjoy Russia. I decided to take some Russian-lessons too – i mean, why not? I’m not keen to learn french, chinese would be useful but i’d had to learn very hard for little effort, so russian sounds like fun to me.

The only thing which was quite a bite disappointing was that we actually didn’t build anything although i brought a shitload of electronics to Paluse – if i only brought that 25 MHz crystals you need to get the Ethernet-stuff running… I also missed the Ignalina Nuclear Power Station. I really wanted to see that. So not much hiking, not much hacking, but a fair amount of drinking. And i bought Chuck’s 8 dB Wifi-antenna – proven technology :) Need to get the correct pigtail though.

Tech Tags: linuxbierwanderung lbw journals

Frxvkhv!

Anti-hystamin: Check.
Anti-inflammation drug: Check.
Penicillin: Check.
Cortison: Check.
Pain-Killer: No need tonight.

Woooo, fancy coulours… Sniff you tomorrow, if you see what I’m saying. I fly for a swim in my bed, if that elephant get’s out of my shoe.

Come on and get some, you pesky germs!
/me wields a +15 blessed pill of penicillin named "germkiller" (doomed)

Tech Tags: linuxbierwanderung lbw journals stoned rants

Last post! (probably not)

Actually Mantas, one of the locals, invited everyone to a camp-fire thing on the camping-site but actually i didn’t feel like coming. Mantas: Sorry, couldn’t come. I mean, i really wanted to, but i already had quite a couple of drinks and my foot started swelling, so i decided to go back to my apartment, have a last drink (probably for the next couple of weeks) and read a bit in Terry Pratchet’s fantastic novel “Monstrous Regiment”.

Kerstin was quite tired too, so that fit somehow – she was busy with reading one of those Diana Gabaldon novels and just couldn’t stop reading. When i left the appartment to go to the hall she wanted to go for a swim in Lake Luse, but she just got stuck reading the book. Although it sounds like one of those scary women’s novel, i might give it a try – i believe in my wife’s taste so it can’t be that bad.

However, while sitting in the apartment i remembered Jens’ statement from a couple of days ago “I found a little strain of our wireless network in my apartment”. His apartment is just a couple of meters away from Kerstin’s and mine, so i thought i’d might give it a try and voila! There i am.

This was probably my last post for the next couple of days, I’m going to take a shitload of medication in the next couple of minutes – after taking them I’m going to be pretty fucked up.

Whoa, i just heard some noises on the floor so i opened the door and found Heike, Chris and Mike with their guitars – they want to go down to the beach, hope they have a good time. Mike splattered some water at me, next time i’m going to shove up some good old russian medication up his… sleeve.

Read you later.

Tech Tags: linuxbierwanderung lbw journals

My holiday is pretty much over :-(

Woke up this morning, no pain but a foot in weird violet and blue colours. Got scared, took pictures and sent those pictures to my doctor at the tropical institute of the University of Düsseldorf – he looked over it and said that it looks like a so called “superinfection” to him and that i really should go and see the doctor again.

So Kerstin – along with Jens and my fellow translator Mykolas – drove me to the hospital in Ignalina again. Well the doctor inspected my wound and found it to be infected too, he also managed to explain me in a funny mixture of all imaginable languages that i have indeed an infection and an inflammation and that i need to take even more medicine. I’m now on a mix of Penicillin, Anti-Inflammation drugs, Anti-Hystamins and Cortison.

So, tonight will be my last night of drinking, from tomorrow on I’ll be completly fucked due to the medication. Arse, a Linuxbierwanderung without beer and hiking – that kinda sucks, although the Internet is working now.

For all the LBW-participants, this is a public service-annoucement: You may have noticed that the Internet isn’t working reliably at the moment, this is due to routing-problems of our upstream-provider. Please use the proxy which is written on the poster next to the hall’s door.

Tech Tags: linuxbierwanderung lbw journals

Those blasted insects!

We had a light hike on monday evening before the BBQ and i was bitten or stung by some unidentified insects. First it was just a red spot, then my right ankle started to swell like a friggin ballon. It got worse hour by hour; this morning i woke up at 0500 AM because my ankle was hurting – it was not only swollen but also really red which might indicate an inflammation.

Jens was so kind and drove me to the hospital in Ignalina where i was pushed around for some while until i met a doctor who spoke a little bit of german – good enough to tell me that i was bitten or stung by some poisonous insect and that i have a major inflammation and a hefty allergic reaction. My foot looks like i’d be the elephant-man and it hurts like hell.

The doctor prescribed me some steroids (some cortison-like stuff from Russia) to stop the inflammation and gave me lot’s of anti-hystamin as well. So if you see that mynext posting is full of random characters i fell asleep and banged my head on the keyboard.

A shame i missed the trip to Ignalina’s Chernobyl-type nuclear power station – i was really looking forward to it but instead i spend some time in a post-communistic hospital – which was probably *far* more interesting then the power station’s visitor-centre :-)

OK, i’m probably posting more regular now ’cause i can’t walk, hike or run and ’cause I’m pretty much stuck in the hall. Unfortunately the internet-connection sucks today, keeps flapping. Pesky Wifi-link up the hill.

Tech Tags: linuxbierwanderung lbw journals

LBW: Arrived Paluse

We finally made it to Paluse after quite some trip. I was a bit worried if i’d get problems with all my electronic gear ’cause all those security-bonzos go ballistic ’cause people have a bottle of water with ‘em, but it all went smooth for most of us.

Our friend Antony had a problem though; he checked in at London Gatwick, headed to security and it took him so long that he missed his plane. We were waiting for him at Vilnius International Airport and thought that he’s still waiting for his baggage – but he wasn’t on that plane at all. Bugger. We found that out when a security guard allowed me to enter the secured area (!!!) and search for our friend. He wasn’t there, so we went to thze British Airways office were they told us that he wasn’t on the flight and that he was rescheduled to the same flight a day later. So he’ll come to Vilnius tomorrow, will meet Brian, take a bus to Ignalia where we’re going to fetch him later.

Checking into our hotel/room/appartment was an adventure on it’s own. There seemed to be a problem with the booking so that we got a temporary room until tomorrow – when we get our “luxury appartement”, yeeehaaa! It’s all a bit worn-out, let’s call it “Ostalgy” – although it’s clean, nothing to complain about.

We just arrived in the pub-of-the-day, having our first beer (“Kalnapilis Grand”) which is not to bad. Unfortunately the kitchen is already closed so that we can’t have dinner – a bit shitty considering that it’s just 21:32 local time…

Whatever, will post pictures later.

Tech Tags: linuxbierwanderung lbw journals

Last LBW preparations

Tomorrow! Yes! Finally Kerstin and me are going to Lithuania to attend this year’s Linuxbierwanderung. Mary, the organizer, is already there and is having a good time.

We have just finished packing our stuff; i got lots of electronic gear with me, i hope i don’t get into trouble at the airport! Along with socks and underwear i got, including, but not limited, the following crap in my suitcase: 1 kg of capacitors, 1 kg of resistors, lots of cables, breadboard, assorted 74- and 40-series ICs, some AVR microcontrollers, boxes full of assorted electronic parts… Lot’s of stuff in short.

We just put all our stuff on the scale and we’re at about 43 kg… that’s about 2 kg of excess weight, i hope that they’re not going to charge us a fucking fortune for those 2 kg (especially if the worth of the capacitors and resistors was just 3 Euros at Radio Shack).

Kerstin is pissed off that se needs to check in all her personal hygiene stuff, like nail polish, nail polish remover, perfum because they baned all liquids in the plane. This is so absurd; at Boing Boing some people are reporting that the security guards take away your bottle of WATER because it could contain EXPLOSIVES and throw em in a BIN. It’s a a big fuck-up and i wouldn’t be surprised that this is a PLOT. Made up by Blair to secure his re-election. I’m so angry about this nonsense-security.

I can already imagine the guards face when my suitcases passes through the x-ray – i hope i don’t set off DECON 1 or similar shit.

And another thing is worrying me… somehow the whole rental-car issue is giving me a hard time. It’s no problem to get to Paluse, but Kerstin and me would like to have our own – or shared – car to be mobile. Ah well, I’m sure we’ll find a solution.

Next posting from Paluse!

Tech Tags: linuxbierwanderung lbw journals security