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Monday, June 28th, 2010
And because I forgot some “tweets” in the last entry and of course came up with some new ones in Évora yesterday, here’s part two of my “tweet blog”. Which sounds very innovative, by the way – did I just invent Web 3.0? *g*
- During the world cup, criteria for choosing a restaurant suddenly change completely. Priority 1: Does the place have a TV? 2: Which game is on? (I mean, who wants to see Switzerland-Honduras when you can see Spain-Chile?) 3: Is the menu somewhat okay?
- Soccer preferences depend on your surroundings. I’m pretty sure that in Germany, I would have wanted to see the Switzerland-Honduras game. In Portugal, I turned down two restaurants with good menus because the wrong game was on TV… *lol*
- On Tuesday, it’s gonna be Portugal against Spain. WITH goals this time. Campo Pequeno, here I come! =:-D
- It’s a LOT warmer in Évora than in Lisboa!
- What do you do if you happen to have an aqueduct in the middle of your town? Well, build the houses around it, of course! One wall less to build… (just wait for the pictures *lol*)
- Small pensions are much better than big hostels. And the girl at the reception even had the patience to talk Norwegi… uh, I mean Portuguese with me! =;-)
- AND I UNDERSTOOD EVERY SINGLE WORD! *yeah*
- I still need to get used to the “half Euros” again… (50 cent)
- Quote from today, at the beach bar thingy where I watched the game (fortunately only Germans and Portuguese around *g*), everybody nodding: “War drin. Oops.” *lol*
Tags: Portugal, vacation
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Saturday, June 26th, 2010
Time for some vacation! And I mean REAL vacation, not vacation with… uh, well, actually vacation with concerts, but only one concert and only because the concert fit into the vacation, not the other way around like usually. *g*
Anyway, so I finally made it back to Lisbon today – more than seven years after I lived there for six month. And it’s so nice to be back! Even though my Portuguese seems to be entirely gone (I can still understand a bit, but speak it? No way… *sigh*) But the city… *adore*
OK, and ’cause I’m way too addicted to Twitter by now and constantly thinking in Twitter style, here’s my list of things that I found out today (and that I would have tweeted if I had had internet *g*):
- Some things never change: The first person you meet on Terreiro do Paço will try to sell you weed.
- Some things DO change: Visiting the castle used to be free of charge. Now they want SEVEN Euros for that!
- I found out that the rule “If you keep on walking uphill, you will always end up at the castle” is not true. You might also end up on the hill NEXT TO the castle. *argh*
- Gosh, I forgot that walking around Lisbon is like hiking in the mountains… my legs hurt!
- It is much warmer in Lisbon than in Costa da Caparica.
- I think I never got lost as often as today – no matter where I planned to go, I ended up somewhere else. But at least I recognized the other places. *g*
- If you don’t find out where the public viewing is until 20 minutes before the game starts, you’ll be stuck at the metro exit with hundreds of people in Portugal and Brazil jerseys. And vuvuzelas. The latter being the problem. *g*
- POR-TU-GAL! POR-TU-GAL!
- Would have been even nicer with some goals though.
- Portuguese people don’t understand you if you talk in a mixture of Portuguese, made-up Spanish, and Norwegian.
And tomorrow: Xuuuuuuutos! =:-D
Tags: Lisboa, Portugal, vacation
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Monday, June 21st, 2010
Yeah, I’m gonna see Xutos! =:-D
OK, so – who the hell is Xutos?! Well, Xutos & Pontapés is a Portuguese band. Actually, it’s probably the first Portuguese band I ever heard of, ’cause we listened to their song “Não sou o único” in my Portuguese class. And I loved the song!
So when I came to Portugal to study there for half a year, I already knew the band. Not quite my style, I suppose, but when they played a free concert in Estoril, I decided to go there. It was a pretty strange arrangement though – it was supposed to be a free concert in front of the Casino. But because they were expecting rain (huh? no cloud in sight…) they moved it into the Casino, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable. Mostly because there were way too many people there, I suppose. So I didn’t really see anything, and honestly – the concert was a bit lame. They were sitting on stage and doing some… folk songs, or something. And then I had to leave early to catch my last train back, and they hadn’t even played “Não sou o único” yet.
Still, I bought their CD a few days later, and I just loved it. Actually, I listened to it so much that a few days ago, when I put it in again after not listening to it for a few years, I could still sing along. Without understanding WHAT I was singing. Kinda spooky. *g*
Then, a few weeks before I was going back to Germany, there was a free festival in Lisbon, very close to where I lived. Of course I went there! Great decision, ’cause not only did I discover Pólo Norte, a band that I adore ever since (and that played the song “Vou p’ra longe” that night, a song that described my situation so perfectly at that time, and even though I heard it for the first time that night I understood every single word and had tears running down my cheeks ’cause it was so true…), but I also got to see Xutos again.
And: I found out that Xutos & Pontapés are actually a rock band. *uhem* Hey, I only knew their acoustic album! How should I know that this was their “Unplugged” album?! And that they played an acoustic concert in Estoril? Arrrgh. I should have known earlier. ‘Cause they really rocked that night, even though they only played three songs or so…
I actually thought about a trip down to Algarve to see a Xutos concert a few days before going back to Germany, but I just didn’t have the money to do that. So I never really got to see them! =:-(
But now is the time! I decided I want to have some real summer vacation this year. Just a week, but that’s better than nothing! And since I haven’t been to Portugal again since I lived there, the choice was easy, and I’m gonna spend a week in Costa da Caparica starting Thursday. =:-)
Of course I checked Xutos’ tour dates (and the ones of Pólo Norte as well, but they don’t play at all). And yep, Xutos will play in Évora at the time when I’m in Portugal! OK, Évora is not right around the corner from Costa da Caparica – but it’s feasible. And I am SO looking forward – can’t wait! =:-D
Tags: Évora, Pólo Norte, Portugal, Preview, Xutos & Pontapés
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Thursday, June 10th, 2010
WordPress is great when it comes to “search optimization”, or whatever you want to call it that – as soon as you write a report or blog entry – you get a Google alert for your own website. 
However, it also attracts spammers. Which doesn’t really matter that much, because it comes with a great spam protection plugin as well, and I hardly ever have to do anything but empty the spam folder. And this – namely emptying the spam folder – is always great fun! Because the spam is definitely funny. Mostly when you see it in context… uhem. So my concert report about a Kaizers concert is “thoroughly researched”? Well, yes, I did a whole night of “research” for that! And I wrote the best post about my “Concert year 2009″? Actually I think I wrote the ONLY post about my concert year… *g*
So, why do I write this post here? Well, actually I hope that in the weeks to come, some of the spam comments will come in for THIS post right here. And then I will publish them and share the laughs! (And probably screw up my spam protection by doing that, but well…)
OK, so let the spam comments begin!
Tags: blogging, spam
Posted in Blog | 6 Comments »
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
The new Disco Ensemble album will be out this Friday – check it out!
Tags: Disco Ensemble
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Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
Hmm… seems I positioned my site right where I want it. The only problem is: How should I know the lyrics for the new Skambankt single?! *lol*
Well, time to write some mails and find out, I guess… =:-)
Tags: Skambankt, website
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Monday, May 3rd, 2010
Da mir meine Zugriffslogs verraten, dass irgendwie jeder dritte Besucher hier auf die Seite kommt, weil er oder sie Infos zum Parken an der Frankfurter Batschkapp sucht, hier kurz meine Erfahrungswerte dazu:
Direkt an der Batschkapp gibt es einige (wenige) Parkplätze. Wenn man die gegenüber und die am Supermarkt nebenan dazuzählt, kommt man auf vielleicht dreißig – jedenfalls nicht genug für alle Besucher. 
Die Batschkapp befindet sich aber mitten in einem Wohngebiet, man findet also durchaus immer einen Parkplatz. Es ist allerdings möglich, dass man eine Weile suchen und nachher ein Stückchen laufen muss – also genug Zeit einplanen. Oder einfach früh genug da sein und direkt vornedran parken.
Ich hab aber bisher, auch wenn ich spät dran war, nie mehr als fünf Minuten laufen müssen.
Vorteil: Parken ist kostenlos. Allerdings sollte man einigermaßen STVO-kompatibel parken, Gerüchten zufolge wird sonst auch mal abgeschleppt (hab ich aber noch nicht gesehen, nur erzählt gekriegt).
Hoffe, das hilft ein bisschen. Bei weiteren Fragen bitte ‘nen Kommentar hinterlassen, dann ergänze ich.
Tags: Batschkapp/Frankfurt, Parken, Suchbegriffe
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Friday, April 30th, 2010
Zur Abwechslung mal ein kurzer Blog-Eintrag auf Deutsch, weil er sich auf einen deutschen Artikel bezieht, nämlich diesen hier:
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,691364,00.html
Kurz gesagt: Google Translation ist super-duper toll und innovativ, weil die nämlich alles nur noch statistisch auf ihrem Korpus machen und nicht mehr mit Regeln, wie alle anderen.
Äh ja – wie alle anderen? Das ist mir nu wiederum neu, ich hätte ja behauptet, dass seit vor Babelfisch niemand mehr ein ernstzunehmendes Übersetzungsprogramm ohne statistischen Ansatz entwickelt. Sicher nicht rein statistisch – aber genau das ist ja das Problem von Google Translate. Es gibt nun mal in jeder Sprache irgendwelche unveränderlichen Regeln, und wenn man die zusätzlich zur Statistik verwendet, sind die Ergebnisse gar nicht mal so übel. Statistik komplett ohne Regeln ist aber weder innovativ noch sinnvoll.
Ich benutze in letzter Zeit recht häufig das Google Translator Toolkit (und füttere damit nebenbei natürlich die Datenspeicher von Google, aber das ist ja nicht schlimm). Es funktioniert für Norwegisch nach Englisch wunderbar – da gibt es offenbar genügend Daten. Allerdings lernt es eigentlich nicht – ganze Sätze werden zwar gespeichert bzw. aufgenommen, so dass sie bei einer weiteren Übersetzung des gleichen Satzes gleich vorübersetzt werden. Aber wie oft begegnet man denn bitte schön identischen Sätzen? Wichtig wäre es, dass einzelne Phrasen gefunden werden. Das passiert aber nicht…
Weiterer Nachteil: Wenn ich von Norwegisch nach Deutsch übersetze, ist das Ergebnis grauenvoll. Warum? Weil die Übersetzung nämlich über eine automatisch Übersetzung ins Englische läuft! Anstatt also einen Korpus Norwegisch-Deutsch aufzubauen, wird der Text erstmal durch die Übersetzung ins Englische verhackstückelt, womit natürlich bei der Übersetzung ins Deutsche nichts Brauchbares rauskommen kann. Und übrigens wird für die Übersetzung ins Englische nicht mal die Version verwendet, die ich kurz vorher selbst in Google Translate bearbeitet habe…
Kurz gesagt: Der Ansatz ist sicherlich verfolgenswert, aber nichts total Neues und Innovatives (auch nicht, weil Google drauf steht!), und ausgereift sind die Tools auch noch lange nicht.
Wer aber den Übersetzungsansatz “mal gucken, wie andere das sagen” sinnvoll findet, dem sei www.linguee.com ans Herz gelegt. Die Datenbank ist zwar sicher nicht so groß wie die von Google und leider gibt es auch nur das Sprachpaar Englisch-Deutsch, aber dafür kann man in die Datenbank reingucken. Genauer gesagt ist genau das der Sinn der Seite – einfach eine Phrase eingeben und gucken, wie sowas denn von anderen übersetzt wurde.
Und wenn man daraus dann mithilfe einiger Regeln einen ganzen Text zusammenbasteln würde, dann wäre man genau da, wo Google hin will. Aber ganz ohne Menschen geht es halt nicht…
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Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
All of Europe is under the influence of Eyjafjallajökull. Or rather its ashes, which constitute a danger for air traffic.
All European countries came up with clear regulations: either air traffic is allowed at a certain point in time, or it is not allowed.
Germany didn’t manage that. In Germany, air traffic is still banned. Except if the pilots fly “on sight” and have special permissions. What does that mean? It means that the pilot has the whole responsibility for the flight. Not the airline, not the air traffic control, not the government. The pilot. Who is forced by his company to fly, and who will be condemned by everybody if anything happens.
Obviously it really isn’t possible to say whether the ashes in the air are dangerous and whether they are really a risk for air traffic or not. And it’s obviously very hard to determine their concentration. That is fine. It’s a new situation, how should anybody know how to deal with it?
But: We have to deal with it in one way or the other. And we in this case is not the pilot. We is not the airline. We is the officials in charge. But obviously, they don’t have the guts to deal with it.
They decided to close the airspace. They were criticized for it. So they have two choices:
Have the guts to keep the airspace closed, no matter how much the airlines, the industry yell at them. THEY are responsible for the safety, THEY decide, everybody else doesn’t have a say, and that’s the bottom line.
Or have the guts to open up the airspace, at least at certain times – and take the risk for it.
But no, they don’t have the guts. They keep the airspace closed, but allow the airlines to ask for exceptions and they grant the exceptions but don’t take the risk. That’s coward behavior at its worst, and it leads to a total chaos because nobody knows what is going on. ALL other countries manage to come up with clear rules, except for Germany. So show some guts here, one way or the other!
Tags: Eyjafjallajökull
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Friday, April 16th, 2010
OK, so everybody is talking about Eyjafjallajökull at the moment, the volcano in Iceland that causes so much trouble for all of Europe. And honestly: I’m laughing my head off about it. I know that’s not fair, I know I would be SO annoyed if it would affect me in any way – but it does not, and it’s just crazy to see how much we all depend on flight traffic.
But let’s back up. I first read about the eruption on Twitter on Wednesday evening, when some Norwegian posted something about flights not going because of a volcano in Iceland. Huh, what?!? Checked aftenposten.no – oj, yeah, now that looks bad! Will it affect Germany as well? spiegel.de and tagesschau.de didn’t have anything. Or well, yes, spiegel.de did – a month old article about the first eruption, duuh. news.google.de gave me some Austrian and Swiss news sites that were at least saying that “scientists suspect there might have been an eruption”. Well, okay. I guess Norwegian online news are just faster than German. (Which is no surprise though, I have experienced that before – I would never think about checking the internet for what has happened when walking by some crime scene in Oslo. Norwegians do. And it works…)
OK, so I guess I was one of the first Germans to hear about the eruption. And I felt glad that I hadn’t planned on traveling to Norway this weekend – I had considered it because of the Kaizers Orchestra laiv and because I haven’t been there for so long (more than two months now!!!1), but decided not to go. Puuuh…
The next morning, it was actually on the radio. We discussed it during lunch – with people laughing at me because I doubted the weather would really be so nice this weekend, with all the ashes in the air… At that time, I was still convinced the airports down in the south wouldn’t be closed, but I expected we’d get at least some ashes, like we get Sahara sand in summer. Turned out the airports in northern Germany were closed the same day, and the ones in the south on Friday morning…
As I wasn’t traveling, I had time to keep track of those who were trying to travel. In Norway, they started replacing flights by busses – funny idea, uhem. *g* The Norwegian band Katzenjammer posted they wouldn’t be able to make it to Bremen the next day – because the ferries were fully booked. (That means they weren’t trying ALL that hard though – they could have driven via Copenhagen, that would have been feasible. )
And on Twitter, it was really crazy following the WWE wrestlers who are currently on a tour through Europe – for once, they are now stuck in Europe, which is probably not the best feeling you can have after two weeks of constant touring… And then, they had to get to their next shows. Which meant Hanover-Zurich for one part (which isn’t much of a problem), and Lille-Belfast for the other part. Uhm. France to Ireland WITHOUT flights? No way. But yes, obviously there was a way (bus-ferry-bus-ferry-bus *g*), they made it to Belfast in time. To quote from Twitter: “sleeps overrated anyway”. Hell yeah, that’s dedication… (OK, dedication from promoter’s side, I assume. *g*)
Anyway, today the news continued. A colleague who’s traveling to China (yesterday: “When are you flying?” – “Saturday.” today: “You are flying tomorrow?” – “I have no clue…” *lol*), the state funeral in Poland where the guests can’t come, the thought that Metallica might be stuck in Norway, Norwegian soccer teams that have to spend hours on the bus (and they might not make it anyway because of… guess what… snow falls! *rofl*), Merkel being rerouted to Portugal (hey, it’s only a thirty-some hours drive to Berlin from there!). I know it’s not funny, but somehow it is. Never thought about how much we depend on flight traffic…
(Oh, and the fact that you can do millions of stupid word plays around ash or aske doesn’t make it less funny. Not at all. *lol*
At least as long as you’re not affected, I know…)
Update: Obviously, WWE is now trying to somehow get their wrestlers out of Europe in time. By carting them from Zurich to Madrid (!!), probably hoping that Madrid airport will still be open when they get there… 
Wait, are we being evacuated here and nobody told me?
(Yes, still joking, but I AM getting a bit sarcastic…)
Tags: Eyjafjallajökull, flights, travel problems, WWE
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