For everyone who's interested, I uploaded pictures of my new home to deviantart.

My new home by =Q-Rai on deviantART

The description will tell you a bit more about the rooms etc :)

Of course, I also have a lot of nice pictures of Edinburgh, the Highlands, a few Lochs and the Isle of Skye. I'll have to sort my (~400) photos some time soon.

Cheers,
Anne

Yay!!

The same day I wrote the last entry, I received a phone call at night by Laura, who had seen my desperate ad on gumtree.com or the EUSA forum, and she told me they had a room to let in their flat and I should call Danna, who was in, to arrange a viewing.
Since it was just around the corner, right next to the university buildings, I went there straight away and had a look. About ten minutes after I had left, I received a phonecall saying I have the room!

So yay! No more flathunting (and writing dozens of mails...I must have applied about 100 times...)! (\^_^/)

The only disadvantage the room has is that I don't have internet access there. But since the university is right next to it, I can just go there and sit outside on a mat to use the university wifi (as I am doing now) ;) As soon as I have my student ID, I'll be able to get inside some buildings though, as I've just been told by the nightguards who came by!

Oh, and I will post pictures some time soon, when I have internet access from a warmer place...)

Hi everyone!

In case you've been wondering about me not commenting on journals or hardly being online with messengers:
I left Germany on Monday August 28th, and I've been looking for a flat in Edinburgh ever since.

So far, I haven't found anything :( This is mostly because people don't want to let the flats for four months only. In some rare cases, the flat was already taken before I could visit. I've only visited three flats so far and in two flats, a friend of my flatmates-to-be was chosen over me (well I'd prefer a friend over a stranger, too ;) ). For one I'm still waiting for an answer.

I hope I'll find something soon. I'm tired of writing lots of mails and texts (thank god I have 300 free texts with every pay-as-you-go top-up). I've sent more than fifty mails -lost count- and approximately 15 texts (15 times an average of 2-3 texts in one go).

Now, I'll continue surfing gumtree.com... :P
Cheers,
Q-Rai

A few weeks ago, I applied to the University of Edinburgh for my semester abroad next autumn. Yesterday, I received the official confirmation that I was accepted! Yay! :D So I'll be going to Edinburgh in end of August (studies start on Sep 22nd, but I'll have a look at the Highland Games and the Edinburgh festival) I'll come back in January (being there in winter, I really can't miss Hogmanay ;)).

The lectures I'll be attending are:
Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming (5 ECTS CP/10 SCQF CP)
Introduction to Cognitive Science (5 ECTS CP/10 SCQF CP)
Introduction to Vision and Robotics (5 ECTS CP/10 SCQF CP)
Scottish Ethnology (10 ECTS CP/20 SCQF CP)

And hopefully, after talking to the Study Director (it's not a regular visiting student course)
Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence (5 ECTS CP/10 SCQF CP)

Actually, the Robotics one was only second choice, but I guess it will be cool anyway. I planned to do 25/50 CP instead of 30/60 to have some more free time, however, the School of Informatics expect me to take a full load, so I guess I'll stick with this. ;)

Yup, long time no (public) post XD More than a year, in fact.
So ever since, there have been some updates to my deviantART so check it out, in case you're interested :D

When I'm in Scotland, there will probably be more public updates, so stay tuned!

The semester started last week and on Monday we already got a huge bunch of work for our Software Development Project. We were to create a homepage (link for those who are able to access our university network -first real update tomorrow, it's already on my laptop), get to know ant build files (easier than expected and pretty useful), more UML stuff than before, program a working RMI piece (most difficult part, RMI sucks), learn creating JavaDoc (easy and convenient, it creates a documentation homepage for you!) and learn JavaSwing (not that simple but not too difficult either..mostly fun, too).
As to my other lectures I can say Computer Graphics will mostly be fun (I hope), Formal Foundations of Programming are a lot better with the professor who's doing it this time (the last one managed to make me fall asleep despite being pretty interested in the topic), Logic is okay and Mobility in Distributed Systems hasn't been lectured yet.

Since I found out how to embed deviantART pictures on lj, I'll post some of the newer stuff I've done. But I've also uploaded pretty much older stuff done at school during arts lesson etc.

( embedded pictures are under the cut )

So far I've mostly done fun stuff with my computer. Learned a bit C++ and PovRay, but only in theory. And I did a lot of surreal photo manipulation stuff which is a great deal of fun. If you're interested go here. By the way there's also an RSS feed for the gallery. Soon, I'll do more Blender stuff, too.
The Ewoche started with a lot of fun new Ersties ;) Monday's bar evening didn't quite work out since there was a football match in KL and there were lots of fans around. In the end we did find a place big enough for all though. Wednesday we had a Barbecue and Cocktail party which was loads of fun. At the moment I'm visiting my parents for Easter though.
Not too much to tell, really. ;)

And with a good start, too :)
Project Management is over and I passed math, too :D Yattaaaa
Now, I should definitely tidy up and clean my apartment, neglected it for quite some time..^^"
During my holidays (actually the first spare time I have since some time in June last year..), I'm planning to learn some C++ and QT, as well as get to know POV-Ray.
I also worked on my 3d model a bit, so it's going to be even nicer ^^

Oh, and I ordered the Aristocats DVD to celebrate :D Disney movies are lovely!
Everybody want's to be a cat~

Next semester I'll do Basics of Programming, Logics, the Software Development Project, Computer Graphics and maybe Mobility in Distributed Systems. As to exams I'll write the Software Development 3 exam which I skipped this week.
Apart from that there isn't too much to tell. Meeting friends, going to a employee training of the CVJM/YMCA this weekend, visiting Mathias' parents in the far North, visiting my parents, too, organising another Ewoche...there'll be more to tell afterwards I guess.

By the one has anyone tested the new Vertigo site scheme? I like it better than Horizon :)

Well, sort of ;) I could do a touch up on some details (e.g. the chin which is too pointed and -I can't believe it but I actually forgot adding ears O.o) but it's nice enough to leave it this way.

(click on the picture for a larger version. Comparison: My first version: click)

I edited the eyes to make them look less bulpy and removed the eyelash thingies because I did neither have a suiting texture, nor did I work out how to make the lashed a bit more transparent. Plus, a head with eyelashes but without eyebrows would look rather awkward, wouldn't it?
Then, I also made the nose a bit smaller and I finally corrected the grid orientation (bloody hell lot of work). Silly me started off creating the figure without paying attention to the axes (no, not those ones), so, since I was working mirrored (as in, I actually only made the left half of the picture -since Thursday I was told this was possible- and saw the right half anyway..Blender rocks), it didn't blend in nicely. Instead I had some edge sticking out on the nose (similar to that crack in the picture I posted yesterday.

What took me most time was to arrange the lights and find a bg colour which didn't look weird next to the skin (I tried various colours before trying dark purple!!) for this picture..^^"

By the way, tagging sucks, when you need é whilst working with Linux (I'll have to change something about it..)

After the exam, I spent the rest of the day having fun, so I continued on my 3d pic. Now the face has a decent nose and mouth. Oh, and a skin pattern, too. The eyes look a bit weird, but I'll work on it. Some day. (well, tomorrow, I guess)
Please ignore that weird black rubbish (I know it looks...wrong), it's because I messed something up (I still have the original, unmessier file though).

I didn't think it would work out this well ^^ And it's loads of fun :D

Two exams done, and passed. Not even too bad, too :)
So, two more to go. The next one is the Combinatorics and Analysis one on Thursday, which I really have to pass since it's my last try, otherwise..well I won't think about it. As you may guess, I'm pretty nervous about it ^^"
Anyway, I can't study 24/7, so I continued my Blender experiments which I started some time in January or so. I was stupid enough to choose a human head as my first project for Blender *coughs*..it was loads of work and I probably did it inefficiently, too, since I just started, without reading any tutorials or so (rtfm? well maybe). The program is a bit weird but it's allmighty :D (well, almost ;) it won't make me pass exams or so). So here it is, the result of several hours of work:

Raw version


With 2 level subsurf


To do: replace that odd greyish colour with a texture which looks more fresh and soft and nice, get rid of that jitter around the eyes, maybe model the eyes, too.

What I also did was to wipe my notebook harddrive, do a recovery as to have a nicer (relatively), working IBM assisted Windows, and, most importantly, installing ubuntu edgy. And yay, most stuff just works without me having to configure stuff for hours or so. ^^

To do: get the standby function, the browser forward/backward keys and the scrolling function of middle mouse button + touchpoint working.

What would you do if you wanted to take a break from studying?
I'll tell you what I did during the past two days: I redesigned my mood icons. Pretty, aren't they?
So now, about a 30% of them or so are animated ^.^ There will be more, some time in the future. And I'll repair those two soon (they look a bit weird with that yellowish shine about them, dunno why). Some backgrounds are white, too. I'll change this when I feel like it.
So, how do you like them?
* fixed the two with the yellowish shine, new versions to be seen in the mood icon theme preview
* fixed missing transparency

Click on the picture to send your whereabouts and view my map. If you think this is too much information, don't. MapLoco says nothing about privacy but the stuff shown under the map states city, country, time and date.

Create your own visitor map!

This week, we had our first ewoche registrator: A girl! ( believe it or not )

Apart from that we had a hurricane here on Thursday. Here being all over Europe. We had warnings all over tv and radio programs as I was told. If you're interesting in the Beaufort scale, go here. Quite a few people were killed and the Deutsche Bahn shut down their service completely. Energy was down for two hours, too, most places in town. Not at my dormitory though o.O" and not at university, where I spent the night (at least those parts during which the storm was worst), since there finally was another party where Fatstock played, which was great except for the few sleep I got that night...went to bed at four a.m. ^^"

Oh, and at the moment most of my exercises are fun. And I'm actually learning three programming languages, being Assembler (for Computing Systems), Java (for Software Development 3) and C (also for Computing Systems). Plus, I've been learning a Finit State Processes description language thingy which is, well, unique, as well as Shell scripting which I wanted to learn anyway.

Concerning my health, I'm still having headaches frequently, but I'll see my doctor on Monday anyway to discuss the results of my latest blood sample, so I hope to be given something which works better than Aspirin, Paracetamol or Ibuprophen *sighs* (meaning it would actually work).

Oh, and I finally had the time to tidy up and clean my apartment (just about time...I couldn't even remember the last time I did *coughs*), so now it's all nice ^.^

Later I'll go to another PAT meeting, but I gotta go get some work done first. There's more than enough.

Two weeks off, plus over a month of no posting about what happened and all.
So how the heck did I manage to almost disappear completely from online life?
The truthful answer would be work. Work and preferring to spend the rare free time with friends rather than surfing the internet.

Especially during lectures time there was no time at all. In only went to three parties (or even two only?) so far, this semester. Not because I wouldn't have liked to do more during the evenings but because there just wasn't any time. Also, I've seen another movie, Dark City, at the AStA cinema. I liked it quite well.
I've also seen Jeux d'Enfants, replacing the weekly AStA movie. Great movie, you should watch it! (Love Me If You Dare/Liebe mich, wenn. -weird "translations", both of them).
Other than this I've pretty much just worked. Or not worked, when I had headaches.

Christmas break itself was nice. I spent the whole Saturday afternoon (23rd) baking christmas Plätzchen. Lovely <3 However I had enough for now ;)
Sunday to Tuesday were spent with my family. Talking a lot and I even worked (after realising that the actual holidays are the only time I'd have some spare time to work, last year), at least a bit. Meaning I rewrote some notes from lectures, caught up with the Software Development 3 stuff (that lecture I can't attend, if you remember) and programmed part of my assembler project for Computing Systems. This was fun, actually and it even worked quite well, soon. In fact, I only had one minor misunderstanding (resulting in about 25 corrections :P) and two stupid mistakes in my code.
Christmas Eve was cool, too. We attended a mass in which some of my old friends performed a little play. Pinky being god, Sara was Moses, Constantin was John the Baptist and Chrissy, Eva and Chantal were angels. Quite a funny one, especially with Sara and Consti's Mad Acting Skillz^TM. At home we sang and we had nice dinner. The presents I got were all cool. Though I still didn't test my Wok. Shame on me >.<
On 27th, we went over two my aunt and uncle who'll move back to America in spring. There, we met a bunch of other family members like my other aunt and uncle and my cousin Frank. (not agent_opi-Frank! Though he wasn't that far away either.) Roy, my siblings, mum and I went to Mannheim while dad and his siblings discussed heritage matters.

28th, I left my family again for the place in the world that feels most like home to me (as a place), Weil. Went to Mannheim via train, met agent_opi (yup, from now on I'll be referring to him, whenever I mention Frank) and we drove all the way south to visit asu_chan. We met up with some of her friends, namely Shinya (often) and Hiroki (just once), went shopping, watched movies, talked, played Singstar, laughed, just the kind of stuff you do with friends while enjoying yourselves. Talking of movies: This was a lot. Donnie Darko (twice, actually, once we watched the normal movie and afterwards we actually just meant to test the audiocommentary...and watched it whole. XD
Then, there was a bunch of so-called horror movies: Ju-On 1+2 (japanese Version, aka "The Grudge" or "The Quatsch") and Dark Water. All of them were nice, but not too scary.
Another movie was "The Eye", which I liked pretty much. It's actually more scary than the horror movies. Sadder, too.
Oh, and we watched "Blade of the Rose", a amazingly trashy Action Comedy. I liked it though.
Last but not least, we watched "Save the last dance" (which I liked well, even if it can't keep up with Step Up) and "Honey" (OMG TEH TRASHIEH, definitely not recommendable, if you aren't extremely bored).
On Tuesday 2nd, Frank and I had to leave for KL again. I wasn't sure if I was sad or happy because it meant saying goodbye to Asu-chan but it also meant saying hello again to Mathias.
In the evening I met Mathias and we spent a whole day together without working. :D We walked through town, I bought a great new pullover and he got himself a new jacket (I have a new jacket, too...bought it the day I arrived in Bonn...it's light blue and white...but at least it fits me. The other ones I tried on were either too tight around the shoulders or far too wide at the belly.).

Thursday, I went roleplaying again. This time it was a lot more fun than last time. Actually the story which developed was cool. But I didn't like the fact that another two of our team died :( However their players might continue playing with us, with different characters. More about this some time in the future when I have the time (haha) to finally continue Horatio's diary.

Friday was working on Mathematical Algorithms.

Saturday, Bernd and I started installing ubuntu on my desktop pc. However, my mouse just wouldn't work. After some more testing we realised that almost all of my hardware (being everything except for my cd, floppy and hard disk drives) wasn't recognised by the Kernel. He was kind enough to take care of that problem so now I have a different Kernel with a different system. So there I am, having a (running) Debian installation which is quite nice. I'm now using gnome instead of xfce or KDE, which I'm also using. So far I still like xfce best but I'm being told you can configure everything to make gnome/KDE behave like xfce. I'll see. As soon as I have I'll be able to tell whether or not it feels the same to use it.
Anyway, I don't want to bore you any further with my computer issues.

Apart from working all day, I'm okay at the moment. Doing Yoga and Swimming is good but my health could still be a bit better.
Until I post next time there could be quite some time, so have a nice time ^^/)

Merry Christmas and a Happy, healthy New Year!
I hope you all had a nice feast and got wonderful gifts :)

I would have posted this yesterday already if gimp hadn't crashed my computer twice. Crashed via 98% CPU usage, this is >_< I did that bloody cottage three times..and I tried the magi plus camels twice, too but they looked too trashy to actually put them on a christmas card.

It's a bit late but here's some fun link from some time ago during the World Championship last summer:
Zidane's deeds as displayed by the Italian, the German and the French news (top down)
Plus, a really cool Site. LJ users make sure you check out the LJ Dungeon Adventure! Though it's quite pointless if you have no interests defined in your profile (and few people of your friends list).

Examples:
Found in my own dungeon:
You find yourself in a torchlit armoury. Images of edgar allan poe are carved into the walls.
Calicus the minotaur guards the southern exit (67HP). Set in the centre of the floor is a wooden trapdoor.

You are in an octagonal corridor. Rich tapestries illustrate kaiserslautern.
In the middle of the floor is the Axe of Nacho Moewe.

You are in a cold bathhouse. There is a stone statue dedicated to psychology.

You were killed in a misty passage by Eri M the kobold, whilst carrying...
the Axe of Nacho Moewe, the Dagger of Erschlagener, the Sword of Kartoeffele, the Crown of Chrizzt and 62 gold pieces.
Score: 68
Other than this I've also found The Wand of Unix and The Sceptre of Mileswinter. Armours are completely missing in teh reachable areas so I usually die soon.

Found in asu_chan's dungeon:
You are walking through a fire-ravaged temple. The mosaic floor shows akifu.
You read the scroll marked 'EDISON CHEN'. You hear the sound of devilman in the distance.

I don't do well today, I must say. But it's fun anyway ^^

So, some update on bad as well as good stuff about university. Also, about rucksacks, studivz, movies and fun stuff.
By the way there's no need to understand that title ;)

Two weeks ago, I've been told, I have to do the Software Development III (SD) exercises. (if you want a more detailed version I'll put it in the comments) So yay, another five-instead-of-four lectures semester. This time, maths just really has to work out but apart from maths, I also have another few lectures which are a lot of work. Ridiculously enough, Computing Systems II (CS) exercises usually take me longer than Mathematical Algorithms' (MA) ones. The latter are more fun, too. At least as long as we don't have programming exercises for CS. SD exercises aren't that much work, actually, however I can't attend the lectures since I have maths lectures at the same time, so I have to repeat all topics on my own at home which is annoying.

However, let's turn to nicer topics: Two weeks ago, I handed in my Working Techniques paper. What I did was to create a homepage (and a pdf version of the homepage text) about Yoga. We were to choose a random topic we are interested in and present it in any way we think of as appropriate. Except for the tight schedule I had (due to exams and then lectures), it was pretty much fun! And the final mark is quite satisfying...1,0 :D My best mark at university so far. Too bad it won't influence my final mark at all :-/ But it was worth the work anyway, just for that wee motivation bit ;)
So, my free time has been reduced drastically. I still take my time for swimming on Mondays (I do the 2,5km in about 1,5 hours now!) and Yoga lesson every Tuesday (which is great, too, we are doing a lot of interesting stuff now and I'm improving quite a bit). But I don't have significantly more time at the moment. It will probably be better after Project Management (PM) ended, in three weeks from now.
I've seen a doctor, too, and given blood samples (gah!!!). My blood values are a bit better than last time but then my medication hasn't changed a lot bar the exclusion of Iodine. So now, I'm taking 75 instead of 50 micro grams of that stuff...I'm not feeling any difference though.

Oh, and I have a new rucksack (I just wrote rocksack XD). My old one was kind of broken but fortunately, the guarantee lasts two years and those rucksacks have only been sold for a bit more than one year so far, so, although I lost my guarantee paper thingy I got a new one for free :) I had to go to the University shop for a billion times for this though, since they didn't have any for a long time. Now, I'm the first person at university with a red one. Yay! XD~

Yesterday, Frank, Lars, Mathias H and I watched Donnie Darko. Brilliant movie, indeed! I will definitely watch it again when I have some spare time (-sarkastische- Stimme aus dem Off: Hahaaa~).
Also, I've seen Barry Lyndon at the ASta cinema (AC) and I quite liked it, too <3 Barry is a bastard though! And his mum isn't any better (well maybe a bit..) I feel really sorry for his wife. I must say Kubrick's films are quite...differing. I didn't really like 2001 but I loved The Shining and Barry Lyndon. And I'm already looking forward to watching Clockwork Orange at the AC.
Oh, and we've also seen Caché which was pretty interesting. I liked the end, since it was kind of unexpected.

Oh, and StudiVZ...well that's a difficult issue. If you don't know anything about what it is or what happened recently: It's like facebook and you can read the rest here. Anyway, I haven't deleted my account, opposed to a lot of other people. Why? This is simple: I found a lot of people I haven't met for ages. Mostly so, because I moved to Bonn after 9th grade, so this is more about my former classmates from Weil than everyone else. I would appreciate keeping in touch with some of them so I'm staying, it's as simple as that. However, I don't provide much more than the essential (=non-deletable) data and my email adress. (The additional info is on my last school and my hometown, so it's easier to find me)

So, now let's head for the fun bits. I've collected a lot of nice liks during the past few months. First of all, Christoph's blog. So far he's not on Planet Fachschaft but he might be, some time in the future.
Then, some artsy stuff: Look at that damn awesome work of LEGO! I would appreciate a more peaceful fopic but other than this it's just brilliant! And huge!
Oh, and my brother showed me some hilarious video with a really cool song: Ultimate Showdown, make sure you pay attention to the lyrics. There are subtitles, too.
Then, what ntropie called a "vegetarian catchy tune" (take care, it really iscatchy! And have a look at the direction the girl is whipping the leek!!! It's barely visible but it's alternating)...there are a lot of badly done copies on the internet but this seems to be the original. The text is originally in Suomi and you can find live performances of the group who sang this version a capella, searching for "Loituma".
Finally, a very original tv (?) Honda Civic ad. Love it <3

There isn't too much to tell about the past two weeks. Basically the title sums it up quite well XD Anyway, here's another update:

First of all, I took up swimming again, after not going since August. Mathias H (not S, obviously, since he's in Glasgow ;)) joined me and we did 2km last week and "only" 1,5 yesterday since we didn't feel like swimming too much. At Montemare, they changed a lot since August! The changing rooms have been changed (yay! pun!) and the uni people can now use the regular lockers. Thank you! The lockers in the accumulative changing rooms were mostly broken..so we always had trouble finding a place to lock our stuff. So, to use the regular lockers we now can get ourselves a chip for 5€ (pledge, though). Oh and the number of people has been limited to 200....so a lot of people didn't get swimming passes :-/ Yvonne, Mathias and I got numbers around 180..so we were kind of lucky XD

Second, exercises started, too. So I've spent the majority of my free time trying to solve the (sometimes pretty difficult) tasks. Also, I've almost finished my working techniques thingy. The only thing I still need to find out about is some detail concerning the pdf version. However, you can have a look at the Homepage I designed, if you like. Comments/suggestions on changes are welcome, however I mustn't change it anymore after Friday morning.
I must say I almost enjoyed the Computing Systems II tasks XD At least the Assembler programming parts. Oh, and we got really good scores on our exercises so far :)
Project Management is still hell due to the length but it's fun, too. Yvonne and I are now working with two people we barely knew by now but they're nice as far as I can tell.

Finally, there was a Schandmaul concert in KL, on Saturday. Mathias, Lars and I went there and met a lot of people I knew. Two people from my dorm (who I knew would come), one of the girls from Yoga class (big surprise!) and of course a few Fachschaft people (I only knew Philipp would come but it was no surprise to see the others either ;)).
The concert was absolutely brilliant. A Swiss band called Deep Trip came first. Their style reminded me a lot of Creed (you'll know what I mean, perhaps, after listening to the music o their homepage) but sometimes also of bands like Nirvana. They were suiting to play before Schandmaul anyway. (looking at their homepage, I can only see two members...o.O" there were 5 people on stage though! Weird..) Later, during Schandmaul's show they stood next to us...haha they know how to party ;) Anyway, back to the concert: I regretted not knowing Schandmaul's new Album Mit Leib und Seele better (I only got it two days before the concert) but they fortunately played a few old songs, too. They even played all but one of my favourites! (The one missing is from the new album, actually: Abschied). The atmosphere was great, too. When Deep Trip played I was a bit afraid the audience would stay like that but I was wrong, fortunately, and they became more lively.
Memo for the next concert: Choose a place other than the stairs! But except for people not being able to decide whether they wanted to stay up- or downstairs it wasn't too bad.
So yay for a great evening with lovely music and a cool show! The best part (except for the music of course) were the singer's comments! Oh and I love Anna's tattoo! <3

I didn't only pass Computing Systems during the Einsichtnahme yesterday (got another 5 points..of a total of 54, which was just enough to pass, with 45%) but agent_opi also just notified me of the fact that the Communication Systems Results are out...and I passed! Being on rank 4, too :D
Although this still means that I only have a four, but who cares, the best mark was 3,7 and the exam was f***ing unfair and difficult!
So yay, me! Only Combinatorics and Analysis to go!

Well as the subject already tells you, I'm testing the LJ Talk posting feature. LJ Talk is livejournal's new jabber client and it allows you to post via IM. They say there will be other features such as comment notifications, too in the future. We'll see. I might even install the Gizmo client since it makes voice posting possible for non-US citizens.
It's a bit sad though, that you can't use any of the usual options like userpic, tags, mood, music, location and, most importantly, the security level.


Is anyone else using it?