Chatbot Wave

Hello there,

so, you've heard about Google Wave, haven't you? I got an invitation by a friend and now i'm toying around with it. So far i haven't managed to get Bloggy running which would enable me to blog here using a wave. Anyways.

You might have heard of chatbots. Or read about the test here :-) well, never tried to use/interact with a chatbot so far. But there's a simple one called Eliza the Robot Shrink that you can add like a normal contact and then add it to waves. I know it's only a test, but still, this thing is too simple to be entertaining:

Very interesting, indeed. Or am i just wasting my time?

Anyways, nice playing around with Google Wave. Much more fun with other people online, already had some editing-in-real-time-wars. Let's see how long it takes to become a useful tool.

Cheers.

Fire to screen

Hello there,

last Friday i went to another concert of one of my favourite bands: Green Day. Now, on rock concerts, of course it'd be best to be in the crowd in front of the stage. Unfortunately i checked for tickets quite late when it was already sold out. But i was lucky and got tickets from a friend of a friend who couldn't go. Great to be there, but our places were 'somewhere up left' with no access to the 'field' in front of the stage.

Great show, as expected after having been on an American Idiot-concert. An interesting thing was also to see the Web2.0-thingie going on. Usually on such concerts you might see a lot of lighters when the band plays a ballad, but this one was a little different: since i overlooked the whole crowd from my viewpoint i saw that there were amazingly many lights on all through the crowd. All the time. Not fire from lighters, but from a sea of screens of digital cameras and mobile phones. Easily distinguishable by its blue glow.

Having realised that, check this: search for "Green Day Wien" on youtube. And you'll find a lot, really a lot of videos from the concert. Of course they're all in crappy quality, especially the sound. But fascinating nonetheless, to have so many recordings from a concert you've just been to. To give you an idea of my not-so-great viewpoint, it was more or less like this, but on the other side of the stage (video quite bad).

Anyways, more about the concert. I was quite happy that they once again played an Operation Ivy song and announced it as the highlight of the evening.
They also once again brought three fans on stage to play their instruments. King-for-a-day moments of those young musicians, for sure ;-) and in the beginning of the show they got a younger fan up on stage 'for baptism' according to their show. Turned out he was a brave young Slovenian. Hope that inspires them to play more shows in our neighbour's country as well.
Speaking of making it a Viennese concert: besides addressing us by shouting 'Vienna' and 'Austria' numerous times the lead man also played 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik' on his electrical guitar every now and then inbetween songs. Pretty good one that.

Anyways, 'nuff said, to give you a taste of the concert i embedded this video:

Magritte toilet

I've been to Brussels recently. Wonderful city - if you don't mind the rainy weather. But i love the international atmosphere and all the European institutions, and, well, Belgians are cool people anyways. Hehe.

They also got their fair share of interesting museums. And they had a new one since my last visit in March 2008: the recently opened Magritte museum. Now, i love his surreal work. And i can recommend that museum. Well, it's not the ultimate Magritte experience because many of his famous paintings are spread all over the world's big museums (and private collections, i guess). But there are many good paintings on display and the new museum architecture is also worth a look.

Taking pictures was forbidden inside the museum. But if you know me well you might have guessed i couldn't resist shooting photos anyways. So here a shot of the interesting Magritte-esque mirror in their toilet:


Cool, huh? Unfortunately they weren't selling any mirrors like that in the museum shop. So i just bought two magnets.

Cheers.

57 tickets

It's that time of the year again - the annual movie festival of Vienna is about to start. The Viennale. Last year i missed the day they started selling tickets. And they're usually sold out quite fast. So this year, me and some friends who also wanted to go went there on the first day.
Knowing that there'd be an ridiculously large crowd waiting in the morning and that buying through the web would be almost impossible on the first day, we met in front of one of the tickets shops in the afternoon last Saturday. And guess what, it was impossible to get tickets.
Felt like the organisers of Viennale thought that this year, for some unknown reason, there'd be much less people to buy tickets on the first day. All their servers broke down and they couldn't sell any tickets in hours. Well, anyways, i agreed with my friends to meet on Sunday morning, some time before the ticket store would open.

And so we did. Got there early, just to wait one and a half hours. And when we finally were first in line, just before getting to buy our tickets, they starting giving out numbers. Well, at least we got number one, pointless as it was, though :-) and then we got to the counter and bought 57 - in words: fifty-seven - tickets. I have never ever bought so many movie tickets at once. Hehe. And i can definitely recommend queueing up with friends. A social and quite fun experience.

Looking forward to a lot of great movies in the next two weeks, with a bunch of good friends.
Cheers!

Vienna - the BEST way

Hello there,

if you know me you know that this May i was showing my wonderful city to ten Serbian friends. As part of a so-called cultural exchange organised between my group and BEST Nis. One of them made a video of this week in Vienna. It was project for university, and a lot of fun. The video's actually quite nice, so i wanted to share it with you.
Here you go, enjoy:

Cultural exchange - Nis - Vienna from Ivan Antic on Vimeo.

Wrong bussi in A

Hello there,

i hope the title of this entry didn't confuse you. I am talking about cream filled gummies that look like this. While being on vacations - yes, visiting friends - in Germany in 2007, i discovered a new Haribo product called Jogi Bussi. Weird name, but being friends with all things Haribo i tried it. And really liked it.
Supposedly it was a new product, consisting of three different things. Deliciously put together, with the cream filling being the new idea. Well, actually it's a yoghurt filling, hence the name. I read later that it even won some candy-related prize. Apparently they have that in Germany =)

So far, so good. In the year after that, they tried to follow-up on their success with a new variation called Fruity Bussi. Basically the same, but instead of the yoghurt filling it had a kind-of jelly filling. I don't like that one at all. Really, not my thing. Yuck!

Now, until recently they were selling both kind of bussi only in Germany. But today i found out they have already brought one of the two to Austria: you guessed right, just my luck, now here we have Fruity Bussi on sale. But no Jogi Bussi! Who needs that sickly-sweet Fruity Bussi. I want Jogi Bussi!

Well, anyways, eating too much sweets only makes you obese, so thank you Haribo marketing experts, one less temptation for me in Austrian supermarkets. Nevermind the teasing.

And to you, my dear readers: if you think blogging about candy is lame, well, at least i'm not the one reading it ;-)

Cheers
CGA

ps: German "Bussi" translates to kiss. What were you thinking?

Corruption

You know, you always read that in this and that country the corruption is to high, they are doing something against it, it works or not, they have to improve the situation to join EU or whatever... all pretty abstract when it's all far away.

So, two weeks ago was the first time that i got into contact with actual corruption. Nothing big, but still. And if you've read my last blog entry you might have a guess which country i am talking about. BUT it's not like that: the Serbians were perfectly ok, i mean, i've seen nothing like that there. And that's including the Serbian border controls. Perfectly fine, just checking my passport and asking if i had anything to declare.
Where i have seen corruption was well inside Schengen. To be more precise, it was at the Schengen border where the Hungarian border police let us know that they are corrupt. I was travelling by bus, inside a Serbian bus. After passing the Serbian border control we moved on to enter the Schengen area, still in a queue with other buses. There was an announcement in Serbian. I expected that it would say we should get ready to get our luggage inspected by Schengen border control - i had heard from a friend that they check every piece of luggage for smuggled cigarettes. I asked the lady sitting next to me and she explained to me that the border police had informed us that they want one euro per person to let us through faster. Otherwise they would "do it by the textbook" which meant checking everyone's luggage. That might take several hours more. We had one guy on the bus who was rather keen on collecting the one euro from everyone. When they came to check our passports his was one of two passports that they took with them to inspect it further, so he his passport was neither Serbian nor EU. Anyways, most of the people on the bus paid. And nobody checked any of our luggage. Could've had anything in my backpack, everything passed.

50+ euros per bus, i-don't-know-how-many buses per day; you do the math.

Corruption. Disgusting. How normal it was for everyone, and all people were pretty happy about "one euro for two hours of my life". Well, i don't have any solutions to offer here, who am i to judge especially all those commuters going there everyday.
But it's definitely not allright this way.

Burek for breakfast

So, last week i took some days off to visit good friends in Serbia. It was the second part of a so-called cultural exchange, meaning that my friends were already in Vienna last may and now me and some other people went to visit them.

Anyways, i'll tell you a bit about my experiences in Serbia. First of all, i ate a lot. Yummy food. And because it's Serbia, most of it is meat, of course. I still don't feel hungry, even though i left Serbia about five days ago =)
I ate a lot of Pljeskavica. With and without cheese filling, at any time of day or night, bought in little sausage-stand-like stores or personally made and bbq-d by friends... wonderful fast-food. Wouldn't mind having more of that here in Vienna. A picture to give you an idea:

Nice, huh? Also notice all that meat in the background. Of course i also ate other food. Niš is the world-capital of Burek, or so i was told. Not only that, they also had the annual burek festival while i was there (Buregdžijada according to Wikipedia). Nice little festival with lots of good burek to eat, life music, and so on, each year in a different part of the city. Yummy again.

General observation in Serbia: toilet doors cannot be locked, almost everywhere, be it in public places, restaurants, or at private homes. Well, i guess some can, but most of the ones i saw had a lock but no key inside. At least that's what i saw, not making any assumptions here.

Back to Niš. My friends also took me to a place calld Radon which is one of the hotelst in Niška Banja spa. The water with supposed healing abilities is radioactive. Which is definitely not one of its healing factors :-P but whatever. You are only allowed to stay for it for one hour at a time, so that's what we did. Quiet fun in the hot pool.

Another cultural thing, and again this wets my appetite, was the Slava: a truly Serbian tradition. Every family has its own date for it. Basically it means that you invite all your family and friends and eat together. Lots of nice food, some traditions. Ooooh it was nice. They organised it especially for us, even though we weren't there at the date of their actual Slava. So nice.

A not so nice but very interesting thing in Niš was the visit to the concentration camp. The Nazis built one there. Smaller dimensions than the ones i have seen so far. Still horrible.

Niš also has some 'celebrity sons', most memorable for me was Constantine the Great. He was born there and returned to the city several times throughout his lifetime. They have a huge area where they started uncovering ancient villas. With beautiful mosaics. And a lot of it is still uncovered because there simply isn't enough money to properly preserve it. Until there will be, keeping those mosaics covered is the best option to preserve them. Bloody shame that those treasures of old aren't visible for us. If anyone feels like investing, do it! ;-)

Anyways, i had a great week, thanks a lot to my Serbian friends!
I'll leave you now with a picture from the skull tower, and impressive monument of the first Serbian uprising against the Ottoman empire:

200+

Hello there,

i spent last weekend at the so-called "Meer der Wiener" (literally the ocean of the Viennese), i.e., at Lake Neusiedl. It's a quite shallow and relatively large lake close to Vienna, on the border of Austria and Hungary. I was there with a group of friends, camping directly at the lake. Good weather, nice swimming, lots of fun.

Only one drawback: mosquitos. The area with all the nature, water and reed is famous for having lots of mosquitos. And the last couple of weeks supported this by offering the perfect breeding weather for them little basterds. I took some insect repellent with me but the bastards seem to especially like my blood. Or at least they liked mine more than the blood of the people around me.
Monday morning i counted 19 mosquito bites just on the back of my right hand. So, i decided i really wanted some numbers here: i let a friend count the stitches on my back. She stopped at about 170, but that was far from all, so right now i have more than 200 mosquito bites on my back. Feet look also like i would have chickenpox, all red dots and so on. Funny except for a little bit - or quite some - itching.

I feel like if i go donate blood now there wouldn't be much left inside me :-P

Enjoy summer, people!

Cheers
CGA

Future train

Hello there,

look at this photo, taken on the 8th of July, 2009:


I was in a train in Germany. One of them double-deckers. We have the same kind of trains here in Austria. I was dead-tired and so a little confused when i saw the date displayed =)

My next thought was that the train system must be running on Windows Vista. Just from my personal experience - i've been working with it on my company laptop for a bit more than a year now. It seems that it doesn't like portable devices, or at least being disconnected from electricity for a while. Happens usually several times a week when booting up, it's confused and displays a weird date and time. Usually January 10th, 2006. Just after midnight. I guess that its birthday or something.
Awwwh, Windows.

Anyways, cool to travel with a train that's 20 years ahead of its time ;-)

Cheers.

Travel Work :-)

Hello there,

if you've been following this blog for a while you know that i've been travelling quite a lot with my last job in the petroleum industry. Well, since a bit more than a year i have a new job where i can use my brain again. Good fun. More and more interesting the more i get into it. Mmmh, heuristics.

Anyways, right now i am on my first business travel with my current job. And it's wonderful. I am participating in a conference in Bonn, Germany. Not just any conference, but "the biggest of its kind outside of the US" as i've been told. Some numbers:

• 2500 participants, three days
  
• 2000 talks
• 45 sessions in parallel

There's more, but well here's official information. What can i say, it's wonderful. More than two thousand people, all working in my field, i.e. Operations Research. Gives you quite a boost in motivation. So many interesting sessions, it's hard to pick which ones to attend. I already listened to a nobel prize laureate and a guy who wrote a graphic novel called Logicomix. The latter one also talked about sex and optimization there (don't ask, no idea).

My own talk was also an interesting experience. I had about 20 to 30 people in the auditory. More than expected, considering the fact that it was in the first session on Monday morning, even before the official opening session. And i learned afterwards that this was quite good. I've been to other talks of people way more clever and well-known than myself and they only talked in rooms where not more than 15 people fit in. I guess it's because i'm working in aiport operations. Lots of airport talks here, a lot of work going on.
Just a great feeling that so many people all over Europe and the world work in the same field. I even attended a stream where the chair was one of the guys who wrote the 'airport bible'. Prestigious. Love this event.

Some words about the cultural programme: if you know me well, you might have a hard time believing that i skipped the welcome dinner at a traditional German beergarden. But yes, i didn't go there. But i did go to the concert of classical music on the next day in the Beethovenhalle. Fancy. And i was at the conference dinner which took place on a big boat on the river Rhine.

Speaking of Beethoven: he was born here in Bonn. So they are very proud of him, and for good reason, i guess. Lots of stuff called Beethoven-something. Coming from Vienna i just had to think of what my music teacher told me in high-school: "A genius can be born in the smallest, most remote hicksville, but where she/he dies is far more interesting" since that is a question of choice, i mean, where they move. Guess what we have in Vienna =)

And some words about Germans: it's almost too cliche how much they do follow rules. Like, waiting for the pedestrians' traffic light to turn green. Even if there is no car near and it takes the light forever to switch to green. But well, that's a good thing, i guess.
Speaking about traffic lights: creeping me out. I mean, that it switches from green light to red without any warning. I think it's a particular Austrian thing that there is some green blinking before that. But i found myself quite confused in the middle of the street: you don't look at the traffic light for a moment while walking and suddenly it's red and you have no idea if you should run or not. Well, i got to used to living in Austria again, i guess ;-)
One more traffic thing: even Mercedes cabs stop to let pedestrians cross the street here. Never happens in Vienna. I even more or less signaled the car that i don't want to cross but still it stopped without complaining and waited till i was at the other side of the street. Very brave.

So much from my first conference, yippiiieee, love it!

Keep on working in jobs that you enjoy, everyone,

Cheers
CGA

In Oil we trust(ed)

You might remember that i go to work on bicylce and pass by an area with a lot of graffiti. There is one column that caught my interest last summer: it had a graffiti-fied oil platfrom on it. Given my background that was funny for me. Look:


The cool thing about this is that the artist seems to be a rather persistent person. I first saw it sometime last summer. Since then it has happened numerous times that someone sprayed something else over it. But it always came back. Looks like someone really wants to deliver a message here. Or maybe it's just the omnipotent oil-industry, leaving us a reminder of their power
*conspiracy, hello big brother*

By the way, if you think that oil has no more influence on your life these days, i recommend you to read the excellent book 'Oil: A Concise Guide to the Most Important Product on Earth' by Matthew Yeomans.

Speaking of graffiti:

As seen on one of the benches in front of the main entrance of MQ. I hope you can make out the two surveillance cameras in the drawing. Pretty funny, huh?

Feel sLOVEenia

Hey there,

guess where i've been last weekend:

Yupp, visiting friends in Maribor. A nice weekend, good fun. Pictures will follow on my picture page, this blog entry is just a short teaser ;-) i've been there on a 'cultural exchange'. Funnily enough we had a Polish friend with us and after she saw a poster of it we went into an exhibition of 'Polish icons of architecture'. That was the only museum thingie we saw from the inside on that weekend.
Europe, ain't it wonderful, all mixed through.

Oh and in case you're wondering, i've hardly been travelling at all during the last month. My last travel was a month ago, in the end of March, also to Slovenia. To the town of Osilnica, home of local hero Peter Klepec. And just at the Croatian border - since it's a Schengen-border now they were constructing some new border stations, yet unfinished. Funny to see in a place where you'd expect almost nobody crossing except some local residents.
Anyways, that thing at the end of March was a working meeting, organised by friends from Ljubljana. With people from all over Europe. Hehe.

Speaking of Croatia: do you know Cedevita? It's a pulver to put into water, pure chemistry, love it. Croatians are very fond of it, also telling everyone how healthy it is, with all those vitamins and so on. Whatever, i recently ran out of Cedevita. Had a 1.1 kg-bag since last year, a present from a friend. So now that i was in Slovenia i refilled my stock. Now look what i've got:


Yummy! And six different tastes: blood orange, regular orange (the classic taste), mandarin orange, lingonberry(!), lemon and grapefruit. They say it's the best hangover medicine. Well, i'll simply use it whenever i feel like having something purely artificial.

Cheers.

Thessaloniki

Long time, no blog. I know. And i still have to blog about some of my Russian adventures and so on. Anyways.

Right now i am in Thessaloniki. Wonderful Greek city. I am here to do an ATHENS course, ain't that ironic. It has been almost four years (!) since my last visit in Greece, far too long. And this is my first time in Thessaloniki. Quite a nice place, next to the sea, with a wonderful promenade at the harbour.

I arrived friday afternoon. Took a walk through the city to get a first impression - sunny weather, nice buildings, usual hectic traffic like in all bigger Greek cities. And then at night i met up with some Greek friends to get to now the nightlife. Hehe. Greeks party until the wee hours in the morning. Literally, until they closed all the clubs. And then some. It was also interesting to see that no matter how full the club is, you don't immediatly pay your drinks. Only when you leave you talk to the barkeeper again to pay. Different system to what i am used to.

Saturday was the beginning of the course i am attending. Official opening at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. And then the cultural programme started. On Saturday we took a guided tour through the city, from the citadel down to the harbour, through the exhibition area, around the "White Tower" and so on. And we visited the Archeological Museum. If you know me long enough, you will know that this was a highlight for me =)

Speaking of highlights, Sunday was even better: we went a bit out of the city with a rented bus. To Vergina and Dion. Now, i have been to some quite impressive places in Greece, but this area was still unvisited by me so far. In Vergina they have found the unrobbed and unopened tomb of Philippos the Second. Almost sure it is him, THE Philipp II., the father of Alexander the Great. Wow. Including bones and all (not on display, the bones, being under constant restauration).
2300 years waiting there. Rediscovered 1977. Fascinating. Truly fascinating.

Other than that, not too much to tell right now. I am enjoying the course - it is related to my PhD and the professors are quite good, plus sympathetic like i know Greek - and Greek lifestyle.

Well, there is aspects that i don't like too much. For example the fact that they are smoking everywhere. Literally everywhere, in public, in private, indoor, outdoor, in the cafeteria, in every restaurant... you get the picture. Let's all trust EU to change that all over Europe ;-)

I've been to a club with only Greek music. And the Greeks who took us there really loved it, knowing all the lyrics and singing and so on. Hehe. They also took us to a nice restaurant to eat fish and seafood. Best octopus i ever had. Yummy. And Ouzo, of course. The good one, from Lesvos.

Once again, on the danger of repeating myself:
Life is good!

Winter

Hey there,

if you have been following this blog for a while you might know that the last two years i managed to escape winter - one i spent in the KSA and the other one near Hong Kong. Both places have a climate that i prefer to winter with all the freezing and so on. I prefer summer, actually, being able to run around in a t-shirt during day and night and so on.

This year it has already been quite cold in Vienna, around new year and in the end of January. But well, to have the real winter feeling i did something else: i went to Russia! So here i am right now, blogging to you from a classic block building in Ekaterinburg. I took a direct flight to Moscow. Got onto the aeroexpress into the city and went down into the metro to meet up with a Russian friend. Oooh so many things to write about, so many impressions. In short, it is a really interesting country for me.
A bit longer: well, a lot of things would be as you expect them. The metro is really impressive, with the glorious stations. The first i got into already looked nice. I drove to another where i touched the statues of a dog for good luck. I got out of the metro and saw the Bolshoi theatre, walked on around the Kremlin (passing quite some Russians who ate ice-cream outside, bought at макдональдс). It was sunny and according to my friends it was about -15 degree C. Nice weather. We walked around the Kremlin and when we got up close to Red Square we ... went into a pubilc toilet there. Nothing much to tell but for the soldier at the entrance of the toilet who warmed himself up, leaning against a radiator. Unfortunately we could not go into Red Square on that day because some politics going on and it was locked by police. But i saw it from afar. We went on to eat some Russian food, driving around in the Lada car of a friend there, passing the Duma and some more places that so far i had only known from movies and TV. I have to say once again that it is all simply cool to see and interesting to experience. I drove through a lot more parts of Moscow that afternoon, passing at least four of the five(?) highway rings of Moscow, getting out of the car for making a picture in front of Lomonossov university (not too long because the two Spanish friends with me where freezing like hell) and our Russian friends insisted we buy some alcohol as welcome drinks to Russia together with some food to accompany it. Funnily enough the first supermarket we passed was a BILLA - yes, the Austrian supermarket chain...

Anyways, i spent a night in the airport and took a flight in the early morning to Ekaterinburg. -15 to -20 degC in daytime and a lot more snow. And so much fun. I"m attending a course at the university here and a lot more things. I have done sports indoor and outdoor(!) - Russia will organise olympic games in 2014 i think - i have tasted some vodka, yes, i did a city ralley, saw a castle made out of ice in the style of Chinese palaces, Lenin statues, i was at a live concert of a young Russian rock band, i attended a Hawaii party(!) and so on...

Now i have to go, i just cooked "Kaiserschmarrn" for my friends here for the international evening, yummy! More will follow, including pictures,

Cheers
CGA
-yippiiiiiiiieeeeeee!!!

Banksy no more

Maybe you've heard of Banksy, maybe not. Sure has made some nice pieces. I recently bought his book entitled 'Wall and Piece' and can highly recommend it - good fun to read, or look at.
All the more interesting to find one of his works in the streets of your own city (well, at least if you live outside of the UK, this is something special, i guess). Well, i haven't, but a friend of mine has found one a couple of months ago (thanks for the pic), look:


The police-smiley. I asked her where that was. Unfortunately i was too late:


They painted over it, well, most of it. And someone has scratched "BANKSY HATES YOU" into that :-)

...when hell freezes over

Hey there,

maybe you know the idiom "until hell freezes over". Hell, a rather mythological and hence non-existent place, can be a rather ridiculous topic to research since it simply does not exist, "it's all in your miiind!". But well, in the traditions around here it has mostly been described by whoever made it up as a hot place.
Having lived in the desert for a while i was quite reminded of that old idiom when i read the news yesterday: snow on the gulf!
See here or here .
A mountain in UAE, quite a rare thing as such, and covered in snow. And then it's so remote that it can only be reached by helicopter. And so the only people able to enjoy real snow there are some rich bastards. All the rest might get a chance in Ski Dubai but after growing up in Austria i find the idea of indoor skiing kind of pervert. Well, well, those are strange times...

Ballsaison!

Cheers
CGA

ps: if you haven't heard that story about hell freezing over by that student, go here and enjoy.