2004

There were 317 posts published in 2004 (this is page 6 of 16).

my weekend

the past weekend i spent in italy. a good friend of mine had his wedding in the hometown of his girlfriend, now wife. i met kim seven (!) years ago, when we both made a kind of student exchange in australia and we both managed to keep in touch through all these years, amazing!
the wedding was the most spectacular wedding i’ve ever attended (it was my third ever by the way :-) and was held in the beautiful town of villasanta, near monza (the town famous for their formula1-race-track).

the first row of pictures show kim and samantha kissing during the huge diner they held, the newly-wed just before the firework and the firework that was held for them. the second row shows a panorama i made. it features the church of villasanta, where the ceremony was held (512kb .mov file)

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villasanta

kim, if you ever read this, i wish you and samantha all the luck in the world and would like to thank you very much for inviting me to your wedding it was “marvellous, splendid and amazing!!!” (little inside-joke)

i has got me a new bike

this morning i went to finish my latest addition to the pool of bikes i own.
and after quite a long time i’m finally able to ride it.
my fixed-gear bike: no brakes. one gear, no freewheel. the pedals turn as fast as the rear wheel does and the only way to brake is to slow down the pedals with your leg.

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watch the tight space between the seat-post and the wheel in the last picture of the middle row!

picture of the week

the grand-raid was really exhausting. renzo and me underestimated how hard it can get to ride 76 km on a tandem.
the picture below shows the profile of the race (which we finished as tenth of eleven tandems). we started from Heremence and drove to Grimentz.

grc

update: datasport has put the results of the grand-raid online. click here to see how renzo and me finished (look for CTan in the lower part of the page). 10 hours and 12 minutes and a mean velocity of 7.5 km/h, how pathetic :-)

from the 6th september on you might be able to see pictures of our effort online at the fotolaboclub. i have no idea how it’s gonna work. in any case, we’ve been riding with the number 7005, this might help to search for pictures…

grand raid

tomorrow renzo and me have a new project with his tandem: we’re gonna ride the grand raid christalp (76km mostly up and down :-).
i’ll keep you updated on how we manage to compete with the other ten teams.
and now i think i’ll just go to bed, cause we got to catch an early train tomorrow morning. maybe i can tell you something about the (surprisingly good) movie i just saw later on.
for now i just wish you a good night.

back home

backhomei’m back home, it was wonderful.
more on that later on.
now i start have to sift through all the mail i got. (i think about 800 mails are actually spam, mostly comment spam on this blog)

/blog in sleep mode

there won’t be any updates here for at least the next two weeks, because i’m on holidays.
nina and i will be diving in the red sea and stay at the flameco beach resort in el quseir.
have a good time and behave while i’m away.

sleep
ps: perhaps there will be one or two tiny updates on my moblog, but don’t count on it, because i’m on holidays!

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog!

This posting is a community experiment started by Minding the Planet to see how a meme represented by a blog posting spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet; results and commentary will appear there in the future.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate — the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq6 2010920352598gawstw98qwrt189849813907azq4 (this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google for all results of this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post at Minding the Planet; Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and fill out the info below, substituting your own information in your posting, where appropriate.

(Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)
1. I found this experiment at URL: http://powerbook.blogger.de
2. I found it via “Newsreader Software” or “Browsing or Searching the Web” or “An E-Mail Message”: Newsreader Software
3. I posted this experiment at URL: https://habi.gna.ch/blog
4. I posted this on date (day, month, year): 04 August 2004
5. I posted this at time (24 hour time): 10:07:35
6. My posting location is (city, state, country): Bern, Switzerland, Europe

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):
1. My blog is hosted by: gna.ch
2. My age is: 27
3. My gender is: Male
4. My occupation is: Bike Messenger
5. I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Net News Wire light
6. I use the following software to post to my blog: ecto
7. I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 17 October 2000 (but not here). Here my first post dates from 08 July 2003
8. My web browser is: Safari
9. My operating system is: Mac OS X 10.3.4

it all comes together

nearlyostroafter i laced my wheels for the second time (i thought i had a 32-hole rim at home, but it was a 36 hole rim and thus had to re-lace the front-wheel) and fitted the bottom bracket and the steering bracket my ostro-frame starts to actually look like a bike (sorry for the bad picture-quality, but it was dark and i took the pic with my mobile…)

i might be riding this baby on my birthday, so you better watch out!

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….