Blog entries for category "personal":

In case of doubt - always do it; and although I did not have any serious doubt, I did it. Beating all of my personal competitors I have completed a half-marathon! This will stay with me for life.

If you want to know more about the pain and the gain, the experience of agony and of joy I endowed myself with by successfully completing this race, then read on.

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They say I was in Amsterdam, and for a change I still remember. I knew I would have a stopover here on the way from Madeira back to Oz, but I neglected to realise that it was quite a long one. Only having arrived at the Schiphol airport I realised that there was plenty of time to dump my carry-on luggage into a storage locker and to take the train to the city for a few hours.

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I'd like to briefly report about the bad experience of staying in the Tivoli resort hotel in Funchal (Madeira) and why I recommend to avoid that place at all costs.

I went to Madeira to attend the ICEC'09 conference (International Conference on Evolutionary Computation) where I presented my and Suzanne's work on Dual Phase Evolution. The presentation went extremely well and there were some interesting questions during the following discussion.

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I had a stopover here on the way from Moscow back to Hamburg. For Fabian’s benefit I must say - it's a cute little city. It's got a typical West German downtown with a shopping district. There is giant Mercedes Benz skyscraper that dominates the otherwise unimpressive skyline. The atmosphere was very nice; I went to the city centre, got a kebab and an ice cream, went for a short stroll. Certainly, there would have been more nice things to do in Stuttgart, but I would not have known what they are, so I was on my way back to the airport within a couple of hours.

One question I have been asked many times during the week in Moscow was - "why did you not come earlier?". And looking back at the last 15 years of foolishly avoiding Russia I must say - I really do not know. In either case - I am very glad to have finally corrected the mistake.

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Since I first moved away from Hamburg many years ago, there was not a single time when it did not feel warm around my heart when I stepped out of the Hamburg airport terminal building onto the street. Whether I came for 2 days or for one and a half years, it always felt right to be there.

This time I came for 6 days and then again for 3 days a week later.

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Down in the old town centre lights shimmered busily. The wind mixed the buzz of the city, the hooting of cars, and the occasional laughter and shouting into a jolly babble and carried it up the Castle Hill, across the park, and up to the walls of the palace. Around, a few groups of people, strolling, many with wine glasses, chatting, smiling, enjoyed the warm Indian summer night and the views across the Danube onto the city of Pest. The giant cornice above the tunnel that lead through the Castle Hill and connected Buda's alleys directly to the Chain Bridge shimmered in a magical silver tone created by the fool moon that shined through the trees. The cornice was a traditional meeting place for couples, and on this night several of them sat and stood along the cornice edge and further up between the trees of the castle. Enchanted, I thought that if someone would ever ask me what it was that I missed while living in breathtaking Australia, missed so much that I could hardly imagine settling there, all I needed to do was to bring across a little of this humbling atmosphere that filled everything around. I could not imagine to find anything like that anywhere outside Europe.

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In this long overdue post I'd like to catch up on reporting about the past season's race results and to show off a couple of photos.

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The travel dates for my September-October trip to Europe are listed here.

My "traditional" German mobile number does not work any more, but I will forward my Skype-In numbers to my mobile at my current location. If that does not work, it means that I have no working mobile. Please email me in that case.

Russian:

Мой товарищ попросил распространить информацию о новой театр-школе "Образ" в Мельбурне.
Вот афиша:

http://www.paperin.org/flyer/obraz-melbourne/index.html

English:

A friend has asked me to publicise his acting course that has just started in Melbourne.
Please see here:

http://www.paperin.org/flyer/obraz-melbourne/index.html

I'd like to thank everyone for coming to my birthday party recently. It was awesome and I hope that everyone had as much fun as I did!

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Отблески в глазах.
Шёпот на устах.
Лезвие в ножнáх.
Дела - на словах.

Суматоха - яд.
Рутина - ад.
Мещанство - конец.
Сбереги, отец!

Стук сердца,
Кожи пот.
Кто смерился -
Не живёт.

Боль плоти,
Сила души.
Покорился -
Распишись:

Спокойно поплачь,
И потоскуй,
Не живи,
Существуй.

Время - убийца.
Спокойствие - враг.
Снова зарницы;
Сделай шаг!

Блеск в глазах!
Песня на устах!
Лезвие в руках!
Дела! (Хоть и страх.)

Не перед судьёй,
Не перед толпой,
А перед собой.
Прямой. Горой.

Существо - ручеёк.
Верни жизнь - ринь в поток!

12 - 13 Aug 2009

Many years ago I read a smart book on how to be successful in achieving one's goals. One of the few things I remember from there seems so obvious, yet it is amazing how people fail to follow this simple guideline in every-day life:

I imagine that some people might have wondered where and why I had disappeared over the last 7 or 8 months, as my apparent failure to communicate was even worse than usual and beyond what can be explained with my general difficulty to keep in touch that is explained here.

Well, I was getting divorced.

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Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a Happy New Year 2009!

I wish all my family, my friends and my colleagues around the globe a merry holiday season and a bright, warm and happy New Year 2009!

May you find what you seek! I hope that we see each other in 2009!

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My apologies to all my dear friends and colleagues.

This is the holiday season. New Year, Christmas, Hanukkah,- it's the season when most people around the globe have their most important holidays. These days I feel particularly bad about constantly failing to keep in touch with people who bring joy into my life as often as I would like to. They deserve better.
I hope, my friends, you will be more understanding if you know what it is that makes it hard for me to keep in touch regularly. Probably, it's not a very good reason, and it's not intended to be an excuse. It's simply the truth. Maybe, some of you will even recognise that we share something in this respect.

Having moved around so much, I am keen to stay in touch with good people from several different continents, who live in many different time zones. I keep meaning to call, to chat, to email more often, and then...

I get really busy working days and nights for some deadline or so, postponing important, but not urgent things like writing emails to friends. Once done, I avoid spending any extra second at the computer looking for some rest, and again postponing important but not urgent emails. Then, I realise that I have not written for many months, feel bad about it and decide that if I get in touch now, it has to be a longer email, which, again, gets postponed. Then the next deadline comes...

A vicious cycle. Here is my New Year wish, and on my side I promise to try paying more attention to the really important things in life, than to random deadlines:

Please be forgiving. Don't be a stranger and keep emailing even if I am not replying as quickly as I should.
It would make me very happy!

As a parting gift Microsoft presented me with a Zune. For those who do not know – Zune is Microsoft's version of the iPod. I must say, it is a very nice device. I've got the 8GB version. The casing is of metal and hard plastic. The build quality is very good. The device seems to be just the right size, it is not too light and not too heavy. The controls are functional and convenient. The screen is bright and easy to see, the buttons have a nicely distinct click point and the stroke-sensitive button is easy to get used to. The software is intuitive and convenient to use, the menus make good use of the space available. There are a lot of extras, gimmicks and options. And, most importantly, it produces crisp, high quality sound. Overall, it a worthy competitor for the iPod (well, at least if Microsoft would market it properly, but that's a different story). But I am not writing this to advertise the Zune. It is a great device, but I got it for free. Despite all of the above, I would not buy it for myself, even at a big discount.

In this post, I'd like to share my thoughts about why I would not buy the Zune, or, in fact, the iPod or any of the gang. I hope that in mid-term the designers can address some of the following issues.

It's nice to be back.

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome!

;-)

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I had spent 12 weeks in Redmond and I got to like the Seattle area. I also got to like working at Microsoft a lot more than I originally thought I would. But it was never meant to be for longer than three months. It was time to leave.

Once again, my life was reduced to a suitcase. I was going back Down Under, but I was looking forward to have a 5 day layover in Los Angeles first. As a city, L.A. doesn’t really exist. Well, to be precise, there is an actual place called Los Angeles, but all it is, is a bunch of grim roads with bleak giant parking spaces, a few unimpressive sky scrapers and a small train station build in Spanish colonial architectural style. There is nothing there to see. I didn't believe it, so I went to check, and that was right. Nothing to see. But what Los Angeles really stands for is a giant suburban area stretching for over 100km each way. L.A. is Hollywood, L.A. is Santa Monica, L.A. is Long Beach, Beverly Hills and a lot more. There was something to see after all.

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They say she is the European city in the United States. I do not know about that, but I sure had some fun. San Francisco was one of the places I went to from Redmond; this time we went for a three day weekend with my friend and flatmate Bartek. It was the Halloween weekend.

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or "about improbable probabilities".

One particularly amazing thing happened to me in Vancouver. I was just queuing up to get into an Irish Pub, as someone called my name. The next person I could think of who knew my name was 250km further south, in Seattle, and I was naturally surprised. However, that surprise was nothing compared to what I felt when I realised who was actually calling me.

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As explained previously, I am continuing a brief review of a few places I went to while in the States...

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Well, during the three months in Redmond I tried to not loose any time. When I was not working I was either sleeping or exploring what western state Washington and its habitants have to offer a traveller and/or a longer term resident. In fact, the "exploration" was the activity I invested most energy in. Having had no time to blog while in Redmond, I'd like to give a few very brief impressions here for the benefit of friends and family.

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In the past I have worked with many people and organisations on many projects and I am being contacted with job offerings on regular basis. And so one day, must be about a year ago from now, I had an email in my mail box. It caught my attention as instead of praising the job as a unique and great opportunity, as head hunters and sales people often do, it was quite brief and to the point. Another thing that caught my attention was the company it came from. This is how the email started (I blanked out names):

Gregory,

My name is [...] and I am a recruiter at [a known software company]. I recently received your name as someone to consider for technical positions when we come to Australia in two weeks. If you are interested in being considered for a position, we would like to get a better understanding of your background by conducting a mini-interview with you. [...]

This was followed by a few brief questions, some of which were quite technical in nature - again - something you do not usually see in first contact emails.

I was intrigued by this email, and what made me even more curious is that I have never been in contact with that company, I did not know any people working for them, and in fact, I was not a huge fan of their technology. Who would have given them my name?

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The visit to Hamburg was very brief indeed. The sole purpose of it was to spend some time with my family and that is exactly what I did. Nevertheless, I am very happy that I have still managed to meet some friends one night.

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I did it! Not without some adventures, but I did it!

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The Eleventh International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems was a big success in general as well as for me personally. While the biggest ALife event to date, the conference was signified by a traditionally very low acceptance rate and a very high paper quality. Presenting my own work as a full conference paper was fantastic, and attending the meeting of the leading ALife researchers in the world was a stimulating and rewarding experience.

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