easy come, easy go

easy come:
DSC01295nina and i are going on holidays, i paid for our tickets and yesterday evening she paid me back her half (1100$).
at least once i swam in money!
easy go:
DSC01298i just got this fine (around 150$) for crossing three red lights with the bike.
it was quite funny in the end, because the police-officer looked really puzzled, when i answered “no” to his question (he asked: “will that be a lesson for you?”)

global gutz

DSC01273_1since you’ve been reading about the global gutz last saturday, i thought it’s time to explain a bit.
every year on the 17th july there’s a messenger-race which takes part all around the world. the rules of that race are that there are 5 checkpoints (not including start and finish) evenly distributed on a route of 21km length. the route has to be as flat as possible (quite hard here in bern) so that the results over the whole world can be compared.
DSC01272_1so, last saturday the global gutz also took part here in bern. and in the end it turned out that bene and me (on top left) were the fastest of all messengers1 that took part here in bern (there were also some messengers from the velokurier biel coming over). after some time it turned out that we were not only the fastest in bern, but the fastest in switzerland! (shouts to anja (on the right) for preparing a fast course!)
since Rachel and Pia came in just two minutes later than we both did, they are the fastest global-gutz-women in switzerland. so we had to fight over the train-ticket to the ECMC in Warshaw (fahrradkurier.ch sponsored a ticket). In the end it turned out that Bene and Rachel are gonna go to Warshaw with the sponsored tickets, because they won in Scissors, Paper, Stone. Nono, we didn’t need to fight, I’m invited to a wedding-eve-weekend of a very close friend and Pia is on holidays. (Good for Bene, because i’m unbeatable at SPS!)
that’s the explanation why i didn’t stay on the gurten to see nena and iam and lunik. this was probably much more fun anyways!

1The only depressing thing is that we managed to bike those 21km in 34 minutes which means an average speed of 37km/h which is slower than what the guys at the tour bike for stages which are ten times longer….

oh, and by the way

sigi and manu and co.
i know that you cannot wait to see my pics of the gurtenfestival, but i have only so much time on my hands…
they’ll be here eventually.

programming

suicmc_picscoding something can be quite a long process for me.
anja mailed me some picture which i wanted to put on the homepage of the SUICMC04.
since i wanted to do it in the simplest and cleanest possible way i thought to make little table with links to all of the pictures, so that when you click on them, they pop up in a new window with the right size, with a nifty “close window”-link.
in the end it turned out to be a longer process than i thought:

here’s the way i did it:
– talk to b. about it.
– let b. propose some php-trickery.
– code something around:

<? $name = ereg_replace(“[^a-zA-Z_.-]”, “”, $_GET[‘name’]); ?>
<body>
<p align=”center” class=”text”><? readfile(“pics/” . $name . “.txt”) ?></p>
<p align=”center”><img src=”pics/<? echo $name ?>.jpg”></p>
<p align=”center”><a href=”javascript:window.close()” class=”link”>Fenster schliessen/Close Window</a></p>

  • add all the pics to the subdirectory /pics and add a PICNAME.txt file with the description fer each and every file.
  • don’t forget to use proper html-code.
  • test to see if the link ../gelaende.php?name=PICNAME (aare for example) does work.
  • be happy that aare.jpg and aare.txt do actually get put in the code.
  • make a thumbnail of each picture (iphoto comes in handy here).
  • build a 4 by 4 table with all the pics.
  • don’t mess up the code that michel and äbu made.
  • insert

<a href=”../gelaende.php?name=PICNAME” onclick=”window.open(‘http://www.suicmc04.ch/gelaende.php?name=PICNAME’,’popup’,’width=640,height=480,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,
directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=yes,left=0,top=0′);return false”><img src=”../pics/PICNAME_t.jpg” width=”56″ height=”56″></a>

in each cell.
– substitute PICNAME with the actual name of the .jpg in each case (344 times) and don’t forget a single one.
– thank b. for being such a nice guy.
– look at the endresult.
– see that you need to look that the windows are in the right size (which they aren’t, but i have to go to bed, i’ll do that soon).
– go to bed.
– get up in 5 hours and 30 minutes.

picture of the week

this weekend i wanted to go kiting with bruni. the problem was that the wind was really bad at the bielersee. we hardly managed to keep the kite in the air (although it’s a 12 squaremeter-thing) and thought it’s no use to try it in the water. then we just couldn’t find a suitable place at the neuenburgersee (i’ve been checking out kitegenossen just now :-( ) so the whole weekend was (kite-style) a big disappointment.
nonetheless i made a nice picture in neuchâtel which you can see below.

DSC01212
i think we need to spend a weekend in silvaplana (bad bad website for OS Xers), where we both learned to kite-sail soon.

spiderman 2

thomas allenbach from the bund wrote a pretty good review of the upcoming movie spiderman 2 (although he managed to call peter parker – who is spiderman – peter barker at least six times and no-one noticed…).
the fueled my desire to go and see the movie, because i always dug spiderman comics and think sam raimi has a good hand with fiction-films.

to relieve some pain of waiting, you can watch the trailer, that apple provides on their trailer-page.
but better (and a lot funnier) is to watch the movie spiderman: the peril of doc ock from spite your face productions which is as hilarious as it is brilliant, because it’s a full-featured, albeit short movie done fully as a stop-motion lego animation!
amazing!

[via todays bund and boingboing]

[update2] two links for you

the first one is funny: the point of the online-game on wagenschenke.ch is to walk back home with well too much alcohol. i managed to walk 75 meters this morning, when hämme showed me that game, but i cannot seem to replicate the result now to post a screenshot, maybe i’ll be able to do that later.

the second one is interesting in a physicists way: the new scientist points out that the speed of light might have changed recently, which would change a lot in traditional physics (read the article to get the point of “recently”). the change in the constant c would imply some problems with other constants, but is quite handy in a greater view, e.g. if you want to explain some interesting things like the horizon-problem in our universe (again, this is a physicist kind of problem, so you don’t need to worry :-)

[update]
i managed to grab a screenshot this morning: 77m! how much do you get? leave a comment.
wagenschenke

update2
max made it to 88 meters!
88meter

DIY

radial2 radial1 in the true sense of do it yourself i laced my own front wheel today. remember that i bought a frame from poland quite some time ago. now that i know all the relevant parts are gonna fit i’m in the process of turning that frame into a lean, mean riding machine :-)
because i want it to look nice, i laced the wheel radially, so it will look good (although lorenzo doesn’t like it…).
a good trained wheel-builder can build a full wheel in about an hour. it took me twice that time (and let me tell you, radially is much simpler to lace than the normal way, where the spokes intermittently cross each other) but now i’ve got a front wheel which i built myself, which makes me quite proud.
and now i just need steve to send me that rear hub, lace another wheel and i’ll be riding my [insert cool name here] soon. i’m really looking forward to it!

ps: if you’ve got a cool name which would fit for a black bike with golden logo, then leave comment!

new apple displays

cinemadisplaysapple updated their displays. they are friggin huge and stylish like hell! if you want to take the new display for a spin, apple provides a 360°-quicktime-movie of one with a g5 attached. a pity i don’t have 3k$ lying around to buy myself the 30 inch beast… (which would involve getting rid of my ibook which is far away from having the graphical power to juice the 4.1 megapixels on the biggest model…)
[via everywhere]