hmmmm. i guess i didn't even manage monthly updates, eh? thanks for reminding me in the guestbook, hendrik ;-) yeah, i've been neglecting it badly, and not even because there's nothing to write about. i'm knee deep in my thesis work, my supervisor want's me to try to get a short paper out the door for siggraph (deadline january 22nd, not very realistic i think) and i just got back from a four day trip to the alps. right now i am in great need of sleep but will update this site this week, promise! new pictures might take a while though.
g'night for now, and hope all of you out there are fine and ready for some relaxed holidays!
i just finished my report on life and studying in vancouver (in german language), posted it on the projects page and am using the time to simultaneously update this site while i'm at it. as usual, it's about time!
so i'm going to have to reset my goals for this webpage: i will not manage a bi-weekly update schedule anymore but will always post new stuff at least monthly. there's enough going on in my life to make a monthly update somewhat interesting, i hope. no really, i'm having the greatest of times back in germany and now after almost five months i can confidently say that i am very comfortable with being back home. a very good feeling, took me a while to get there again. but i still miss the mountains ;-)
for starters: rupert emailed me the pictures he took at last years thanksgiving dinner at my parents place. i remember those b.....ds rubbing it in last year while i was gone and i also remember being a bit homesick on that day. so to make up for it, here the shots he took. please, remember that it was the 80's when that dreadful shot of me on the wall was taken. that was cool back then. it sure isn't anymore, but maybe it will be again someday (hopefully not! ;-).
i passed my finals (diplom) in computer graphics with an 'a' and am naturally very pleased! we celebrated the occasion in a few pubs right away, but postponed the more extensive party to the red wine festival in ingelheim. this festival has a six year history with me, i got to know nadja back then and overdid it on the red wine, as always. only this time it was a bit more devastating since i am really much more into sports and not so much on the town as usual. unfortunately my thirst for good wine is still as big as ever so i kind of lost it, but in a fun and obviously entertaining way ;-)
the really fun thing about the red wine festival is that nadja always manages to gather a fun crowd of about 8-10 people, all in partying mood. we started the night with zwiebelkuchen, kind of a german onion quiche, for which i volunteered to cut one kilogram of onions. my hands still smelled for days. nadja took care of the dough as you can see for yourself on the shots below. then we headed off to the festival and consumed vast amounts of red wine. the winery holger and i got our wine from named it domina (dominatrix), and the results were exactly as you might imagine: severe headaches and memory loss the next day ;-). but hey, that's what the red wine festival has always been about, no complaining here. after a nutritious breakfast we strolled off to the traditional (and very large) flea market along the main road in ingelheim (on a beautiful autumn day). i just scanned the prints from the weekend a few days ago, so take a look.
on to more professional life. i'm still working regularly on the red bull intranet, but have recently cut that down to 2 days/week so i have more time for my thesis, for which i have been in research mode for the past 2-3 weeks (currently occupied with texture synthesis and meshing papers and a gorgeous book, tilings and patterns by gruenbaum and shephard). my six month deadline starts around november 15th, so i'll be done mid may 2003.
my supervisor, marc alexa, just got a job as a junior professor (i'm guessing the equivalent of an associate professor) at the fraunhofer institute for computer graphics here in darmstadt which he will officially start end of november. the way things currently look i think it's safe to say that i will be a PhD student with him right after i have completed my thesis. i can't really describe how cool i think this is! but first i'll concentrate on the thesis. but as apu would say: "life is goode." ;-)
what else have i been up to? i have actually found the time to read fiction again, which i think is utterly cool! i started with nick hornby's newest book how to be good, which i though was a bit disappointing. i have now moved on to all tomorrows parties by william gibson (vancouverite author of neuromancer) and am still 50 pages away from being through with that one. a very vivid interpretation of what a future california might look like. an interesting read to say the least. as time permits (which it won't once i'm in full thesis mode) i have already lined up some more stuff: catcher in the rye (i love it), the neuromancer trilogy (i always find gibson to get my creative juices flowing), hofstadter's goedel, escher, bach for obvious reasons, and finally the lord of the rings trilogy, which i bought in canada but have still never read (shame on me). i just saw the new matrix (the movie) previews for 2003 and being a fan of the original (who isn't?) i am anxious to see how they turned out. still haven't seen minority report but that will be corrected soon (yes, it takes a while for north american pictures to run in germany. germans like their pictures synchronized. great.).
and to finish this update off: stef got a publication out of his bachelors thesis (studienarbeit) and needed a portrait for the magazine (publications in the area of business administration obviously need portraits, weird concept ;-). anyway, to show you the fun we had taking them (and because i know stef will be looking at this page at work on monday and will hate me for it ;-), here a selected series out of many more pictures, which i will threaten to publish if stef gives me a hard time about these ;-)
tomorrow evening meredith from canada is dropping by here to visit for a day or two. meredith was one of the a-frame gang, the group that hit red mountain mid february for some powdery fun. take a look at the daybook somewhere in the archives for a fun description. she's currently on a european tour and i'll try to show here around here a bit, some pubs, hang-out's and whatever else comes to my mind.
as mentioned above, if nothing spectacular happens in my life (who knows?), tune in in about one month to get the newest on my life back home. until then, take care!
p.s.: paula! i got the picture and i love it, thanks! check your mailbox soon for a reply. have fun on mellow mondays and give leslie a big hug from me!
behold: the promised update ;-) who really cares, hm? so off we go... what should i say. my life is great, all is well. nevertheless, all is running in slower paces as it was approximately a year ago, which doesn't come as a surprise. more and more trivial stuff is filling my days and most of it is not really that interesting. anybody for the properties of perspective transforms? hm? i didn't think so ;-) yes, i am kidding.
up until about two weeks ago i simply worked a lot. canada was expensive and i really didn't care to budget myself while i was there, which in retrospect was doin' the right thing ;-) i also like burning money for all kinds of stuff over here, but currently, most of my cash is going away for more practical stuff, like a new, big and extremely cozy bed. winter is around the corner and i love having a comfy place here at home. anyway, my final oral exam in computer graphics is next tuesday and i've been studying for that one on the side the past weeks. after that i'll be working about two more weeks, then i shift into thesis mode, which will take me about 6-8 months, including initial research. i'm still into escher-like tilings, but am planning to expand on the idea and move more into texture synthesis and animation (is this information interesting for anyone except my comp-sci friends? ;-).
last saturday, rupert, alex and i went to wiesbaden to see the nofx show, and what a great show it was! big, festival-like atmosphere and authentic bad-weather-plus-rain, just as expected. but boy, it sure didn't matter. i love jumping to nofx anyway, so the water puddles just made the event even more fun! el hefe and fat mike (both nofx boys) just talk and talk and talk during the show, generally making fun of everything under the sun. their best line: "it's pretty embarrassing to be american these days with that gung-ho, so-called president, but we pity you germans even more: soon, you'll have the stoiber!", referring to the conservative party's chancellor candidate. i wouldn't go as far to say that 'lamer' stoiber is as bad as bush, but he's bad. i'm generally unpolitical, but nobody with half a brain should be caught voting for stoiber (or bush for that matter), and anybody that does it for monetary reasons has my pity: congratulations to selling out. one more thing: if anybody has the chance to see nofx live, go see them! they promised to be back in germany within two years. it took them six last time. we shall see. here some shots from the festival grounds.
9/11 is just over a year ago now, and i still vividly remember the days in canada last year when it all happened, expecially how unvbelieveable it all seemed. we talked about it a lot and i dealt with it on my own, with friends and with my family. many a time mourning the incredible loss of lives and ideals. i cherish all the moments i found people with true hope and trust in humanity, for these were my greatest worries: that we would all be set back in our evolutional development by wrong decisions on behalf of world leaders and succumb to blind hate. of all these better moments, i remember when our professor, david kirkpatrick, read us an email from a colleague in new york, how this friend of his wrote about his work and family, how the events had shocked everybody, but also how much solidarity was at work all over the city. not once did this friend of david's mention hate or redemption. needless to say, this helped me a lot. and life continues and most of my worries have not materialized to this day. i just hope it stays that way.
and this one goes out to my canadian gang: i miss you all! i've been monitoring the grad emails and paula's invite to join in for the first koerners pub night of the term and it did bring back many, many fun memories. eddy, seems the social stuff is keeping you busy, eh? ;-) i remember our jericho beach bbq last year: great weather and beach-volleyball. is that really so long ago? must be. hm. how are the new germans? did any of them get hammered at the cocktail party? was there a cocktail party? do they partake in any social events at all? questions, questions. hey eric, what happened to the germany plans? did nando tie you up truckloads of work? and the most important question of all: how is humphrey doing? and how are things at the house? i'm guessing that frank is spending his last days in the country before he gets sucked back to germany. kick him out with a bang! and have fun doing it, which i am sure you will.
11.35pm, more studying ahead tomorrow and i got out of the sick habit of all-nighters in labs (actually, i don't study in the lab at all over here). i prefer getting fresh baked croissants in the morning and enjoying daylight while the last warm summer days pass by. soon, i can wax my snowboard again, yes (drool)! good night and take care.
i'm starting to get terribly lazy in updating this website regularly, damn. so even this will not be a proper update, as i am currently at work and have stuff to get done. i do promise to post a more extensive update within the week.
so in short: i'm studying, working (not so much anymore, approx. 2 days/week), hanging out with friends, family and my lovely girl, and getting some end-summer sunshine on our balcony and at the local pool (while reading graphics related papers of course ;-). rupert, alex and i went to see the nofx show in wiesbaden last weekend (cooooool!) and i'll have some pictures of the event up shortly.
hope everybody is well and enjoying what is left of the summer. cheers.
i'm done with my project for the image base rendering course. the project report can be found on the projects page. now i can get back to real-life (tm) work and the preparation for the final stretch of the comp-sci studies.
and perhaps some more summer and sunshine as well ;-) nadja and i went biking along the rhine river last thursday and it was lots of fun and extremely relaxing. maybe i should go on a short vacation after all...
(very) near future: all my life i have never been invited to any wedding, except for those within my own family (i have a brother who never learns ;-). people in germany wait very long until they decide to spend their lives together, at least this seems to be the general opinion within my group of friends. now i'm invited two two weddings within only one week. yikes! and i don't have anything to wear, yet. anyway, it'll be interesting to meet some people from my past, many of which i was sure i'd never meet again. it'll be fun ;-)
in two more days it'll be one full year since i flew out of frankfurt to start my vancouver adventure. time flies. but what a fun year, chock full of experiences. ah yes, good memories.
more of that around the corner though, as always. keep on keepin' on.
i've got my wake/sleep cycles back to normal. 9am and i'm already up and writing. the sun greets me outside and makes it worth fighting myself out of bed and getting an early start. yes, for a reason. i'm finalizing my image based rendering project this weekend and will hand it in on monday evening. after that i start some preliminary research on my masters thesis with the possible topic of tilings and patterns in computer graphics (see the paper on escherization), while working a 3-4 day workweek and preparing for my finals in computer science on september 17th. lots of stuff to be tackled. interesting stuff.
so this will just be a short update, still alive and kicking. mostly work in the past weeks, nothing overly spectacular. well, actually yes. some divine geekiness ;-) i remember from my past that i always told myself not to assemble a new PC from scratch. for a good reason obviously. i did it again this time around. an amd athlon xp 2100 /w geforce4 graphics. a gem, but a tremendously hot one. and i do not mean in the arousing sense. after two weeks the box started crashing on me at random, so after five (!) days of testing and trying (which was a royal pain in the ass) it turned out that the already big-as-hell cooler was not enough and the damn athlon was overheating. i cannot even start to describe how incredibly annoying the whole procedure was. the bottom line: do yourself a favour and get assembled systems and make sure the company you buy the computer from is fully responsible. everything else is a waste of precious time. nevertheless, the box runs now, and i mean runs ;-) finally.
aside of the work and workouts (yes, the new rowing machine here at home has me hooked) we still goof off and every now and then point the digicam at random. in the following case, the picture simply had to be taken. i missed this one last weekend while spending a relaxed time in the countryside with my parents and their dog, but oeli and alex made sure we'd get a look at play-doh art.
oeli just came back from switzerland and brought (or better bought) a beautiful concept two rowing machine for our home pleasure. even more workouts in the future and all through the gorgeous grey german winter ;-). right now though, we are actually experiencing summer and oeli and i will hit the local pool in an hour to get some swimming + sun. ahhh yes, weekend. anyway, on to the reason for this update: peculiar naming schemes for international dishes. here in germany, we call the turkish specialty doener kepab, the canadians (and the americans for all i know) use the term donair, but the best name to this date i can recall is shown below. oeli took this shot in switzerland. enjoy ;-)
tadaaa! the long awaited update (right). it's late, but i have to get this out tonight so i can get to my course project and other fun stuff tomorrow. as mentioned in my last posting, loni had already linked to my site two weeks ago and now i finally get to it. bad. nevertheless, i'll have to start with some canada-info. some of my friends from vancouver went on the west coast trail recently and eric put up a way cool logbook with stories and pictures right here. his writing style is much more entertaining than my own and he took some really nice pictures, from which i shamelessly stole the following batch of my favourites (notice the 'ou' instead of 'o', i'm not purely american anymore ;-)
i'm sure it wasn't all fun, but i sure would have liked to share the experience. looks like good times!. sometime in the future. and eric, looks like that wasn't your last trail anyway, eh?
on to the stuff of the past 2-3 weeks: the fabled heinerfest. paula missed it by barely a week and i guess that's ok, given the devastating partying that went on from thursday all through till monday. so after getting hammered on friday (the 5th of july) we met at loni's place saturday around noon to cure the wounds and enjoy a delicious brunch, to which markus, sylvie's dad (and later on myself) started a guitar-jam. totally vancouverite, dude! until about 3pm, coffee was consumed, but thereafter we all switched to the beloved hessian refreshment: apple wine. this (and markus'humor) caused us to laugh so much that we hardly made it to the concert at 8pm. we did though after all. alex called me on my cell phone, only to be told (also by markus) that his mom prepares meals in the toilet. yes, our humor is sometimes of very simplistic nature. we laughed nonetheless ;-) impressions.
so we got there (downtown darmstadt) on time to see the space hobos, an incredibly fun coverband from berlin. most of us had already had enough at this point (including me), but we held out and partied till late, late, late (and then some more). see the shots from the concert below. i woke up at 1pm the next day to a gorgeous hangover and partial memory loss after 1am (i think ;-). sorry, no details here. ask someone else. what i do remember, is having loads of fun! and caipirinhas ;-) goooood ones...
the last two weeks were work, work, work and also getting my new computer up and running (which i could easily use as an excuse for not updating this page but i won't ;-). the weather here sucked, considering it's summer, so not much has been going on except for the occasional beer in the evenings. we went to see heather nova in concert last sunday and it was a great concert! what a voice, and she looks gorgeous as well ;-) the evening was a birthday gift from some friends here and they treated me to drinks so we stayed out for a while after the concert. they (markus, matthias, daniel and an old buddy of his) left for a weeklong rowing tour the next day. i would have loved to join, but i still have some other stuff to do. my nine month vacation is still fresh in my memory and serves me well as a consistent replenisher of lost energy.
now i'm off work for a few days and will get back to some biking and other unfinished stuff (like that project i still haven't finalized). will also visit my parents in the countryside and go for a nice long walk through the fields with sam, my (ok, our) dog. very relaxing. and about as close to vacation as i'll get this summer. sunshine, where are you?
2.30am. tired. but the update is there. it won't be another three weeks till i get to it the next time. two weeks max. i'll try. g'night.
god, i'm getting soooo lazy in updating this page of mine. so this is not really an update, rather an i will update soon with new pictures update sort of thing. sort of. loni already linked my site as a newsletter for the heinerfest (here in darmstadt) two weeks ago and i still haven't updated. shame on me. will happen this week. on a new page. fun pictures. you'll see.
other than that, all is well. almost. all my emails to cs.ubc.ca are bouncing back. crap. so guys, i just tried calling you. no luck. so here goes other info. first off: wish i could have been there for the party! i got eddy's hear ye, hear ye mail and got homesick immediately. other than that:
hendrik: thanks for the winamp plugin link! yes, we have already spent many hours in front of it. and have also closely followed your suggestion ;-) it works... try the tool album lateralus
eric: come whenever you like. you're always welcome. i have an exam mid september (around the 15th), so if it's september, try for the second half (if possible). i still hate you for your second hand shop luck ;-) (on a side note: the adidas jacket is way cool)
eddy: even you seem to not be getting my mails anymore. damn. paula and i got yours while she was here. now she's already back home. time flies. i've been back here for over two months. crazy. needless to say i miss some stuff. guess what.
dave: how's the room coming along ? ;-) kidding. i'm sure you have other priorities. as i read in wolfgang's recent mail, hendrik and you (and i) still haven't handed in a project for cs514. i have no chance in meeting the july 29th deadline (too much real life work). good luck! and have a great summer.
summing it up: i have to make it over to vancouver for summer of 2003 (and winter of 2003 ;-) to partake in certain activities. if all goes well, it'll work out just fine. the bottom line: i miss you all and will be back...
but in seven more hours i have to get some work done, so it's g'night for now and keep on keepin' on!