| 2005-11-11 09:12:18 - Open Document Formats in German Administration |
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Andreas Spengler, A Software Developer and fellow Golfer I know from Spicygolfforum entered a Petition to the German Parliament (Bundestag) that asks that the German Federal Administration uses Open File Formats (like ODF) only and no properitary File Formats like Microsoft Office Format.
If you are a german Citizen you can sign the Petition too. I did!
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| 2005-11-10 09:16:23 - Non-Patents |
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As you know there is a big discussion about Software-Patents and Patents in General going on.
The main danger is, that big companies or patent "trolls" are hindering small and middlesized companies without patents and Open Source Projects to do even the simplest things in their software and killing inovation and economical growth this way.
What would be a good solution IMHO would be a new legal construct.
I call it a "Non-Patent"
- You can get a Non-Patent for everything you can get a Patent now.
- A Non-Patent should be available at a fixed affordable cost (for instance 500$/EURO)
- You obtain no rights through a non-patent but everything that is covered by a Non-Patent can not be patented by someone else
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| 2005-10-17 13:30:41 - Project Tango: Common Look and Feel and Icons for FOSS Software |
 I just stumbled over the site of Project Tango. They try to create common look and feel guidelines and a extensive icon library for open source software.
I like the idea and the icons that are finished allready are looking good. But I have some doubts, that something like this is adopted by a lot of FOSS projects. I would be very interested, what the KDE guys are saying to this, since the people running Project Tango are from the Ximian / Gnome camp mainly, including Ximian Founder Nat Friedman.
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| 2005-09-23 13:53:50 - Music Discovery at its Best |
 Today I dicovered Pandora. A Internet Radio with a very unique Feature: It tries to plays only Music that you like!
[More]
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| 2005-09-09 11:52:13 - Added some UW-Picture galleries |
 I added some diving galleries from the years 2003 and 2004 on my diving page.
Please have a look!
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| 2005-02-28 14:29:41 - New York, New York |
 I went to have some Business related meetings I won't bore you with and visit my friend Dominique in New York where he is doing a Internship at KPMG German Practice for a couple of days who was friendly enough to let me stay in his 1000$ 20 square meters sublet upper eastside room.
The first incentive of the trip was, that I could see Airforce One parked at Rhein-Main Airbase just on the other side of the runway. "W" was visiting Germany that day and was harrasing the whole Rhine-Main area with absolutly paranoid security measurements for days.
The plane does really look nicely but he should really consider switching to Airbus ;-)
See some Photos of Airforce One in the fog
The flight itself was ok (Delta) and the only noteworthy was the fact that the stewardesses was more governesses that trolly dollys.
On the First day I first went to B&H to buy a Tamron camera backpack. A pretty impressing store. I never saw so much orthodox jews in one place before.
After that i went for a walk through Manhattan. [More]
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| 2004-12-27 15:44:41 - Stingray is ok |
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As all of you probably have heard, there was a massive (8.9 Richter-Scale) seaquake in the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra yesterday that caused a Tsunami with major impact on Sumatra, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and the Maledives but also far away on the Seychelles and on the East African Coast.
To see all this on TV when you was there 6 days before is a really strange feeling.
We are worried about several friends and other people we know staying/living in different locations in the area.
- We heard that Mona - a friend of us that is staying on Sri Lanka - is ok.
- We still don't know anything about the two italian dive instructors and friends of us Stefano and Ivan Aliveri who normaly stays in or around Phuket during winter.
I just read on Taucher Net - a german divers forum that - the Stingray and all people on board (Some people we dived with last week where still on board and we were really worried about them and the staff) is ok and fully operational. This is good news!
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| 2004-11-27 18:09:49 - Maxi in Frankfurt |
 Maxi Thoma an old friend of mine, who now lives in Helsinki, called this afternoon that he would be in Frankfurt this Evening.
So we met on the Frankfurt "Weihnachtsmarkt" for a "Glühwein".
Also some other friends of us like Jana and Minna were there.
It was great to see him again after almost 2 years.
[See more Pictures]
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| 2004-11-21 18:08:35 - 102. Stiftungsfest - Abtrunk |
 As last part of our "Stiftungsfest we met at the "Affentor-Schänke" a very nice traditional local Restaurant in Sachsenhausen - a district of Frankfurt.
Between 12 and 2 o'clock the first surivors of the previous evening showed up and we had a nice afternoon with good food and "Apfelwein" a strong Cider that is the speciality of Frankfurt.
[See more Pictures]
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| 2004-11-21 11:07:43 - 102. Stiftungsfest - Bällchen |
 Yesterday evening with had the Ball of our "Stiftungsfest". normaly we would have been in the Ballroom of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange but due to neccessary date changes of the "Stiftungsfest" only around 30 people registerd. So we had the ball at our fraternity hous and it was more a "Bällchen" (a small ball) than a real ball.
But it was a very nice event anyway and we celebrated till 3 o'clock.
[See more Pictures]
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| 2004-11-20 16:57:16 - 102. Stiftungsfest - Kommers |
 Yesterday evening my fraternity Landsmannschft Frankonia Started the "102. Stiftungsfest" - the 102nd founding anniversery - with the "Kommers".
The "Kommers" is a traditional celebration of german fratenities where the members gather in a formal way to meet each other, hear some speaches, sing some traditional student songs, talk with each other and drink beer together.
[See more Pictures]
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| 2004-11-19 18:06:46 - Wikipediameeting with Jimbo |
 Today I attended a local meeting of Wikipedia users/authors.
Most interesting point was, that Jimbo Wales - the Founder of the Wikipedia - was there to speak about the Wikimania Conference that will take place in Frankfurt next Year.
[See more Pictures]
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| 2004-11-08 14:01:53 - IQ and Voting |
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I just found the final prove on the web why introducing a minimum IQ limit for voting is a VERY good idea.
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| 2004-11-08 13:59:51 - LJC Revival Concert |
 Yesterday was the 25th anniversary concert of the "Landesjugendchor Baden-Würtemberg" (State Youth Choir of Baden-Würtemberg) in which I performed from 1993-1996.
In the concert the current choir performed 2 pieces alone and 2 pieces together with ex-members who gathered for a revival meeting.
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[See more Pictures]
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| 2004-11-01 08:23:09 - 'LaKo' Frankfurt |
 Over the weekend the "Jungen Liberalen" Hessen (Young Liberals) held there state convention in Frankfurt
I was involved in the organization and was very happy, that (almost) everything worked fine and the delegatees enjoyed the convention
I'm also happy that two good friends of mine was elected for the board. Lasse Becker as chairman and Christoph Schnurr as Press Officer.
[See more Pictures]
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| 2004-10-20 23:22:26 - Snail Macro |
 Today we found a very small snail on an apple we collected near Sabrina's parents house
I took out my 100mm Macro and took some photos. Please have a look at them.
[See more Pictures]
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| 2004-10-17 18:21:55 - 'Buko' Travemuende |
 This weekend i was in Lübeck-Travemuende at the baltic sea for the national convention of the "Junge Liberale" (Young Liberals).
It was a very nice weekend with interesting discussions, nice people and a very scenic location.
[See more Pictures]
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| 2004-10-12 12:09:52 - New Scanner |
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Yesterday I got the Film Scanner I bought on Ebay. It is a Reflecta DigiDia 3600 that can scan slide Magazines I did a test run over night with a 100 slide magazine. There was still some "wrongly" scanned slides where only a part of the Slide was Scaned. I hope, that I can solve this Problem, so I can archive all my Slides in the next weeks.
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| 2004-10-05 20:21:22 - Evening Cup Paragon |
 Today I played the first tournament at my home golf club.
It was the best round I ever played. With 34 net stableford points i coudn't decrease my handicap but at least i won the 3rd net price in the hcp class below 28.
[See more Pictures]
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| 2004-10-03 14:21:00 - Farewell Party of Dominique |
 Yesterday I was at the farewell party of Dominique at Dominique's and Janine's place. He will leave today to New York for half a year for a internship at KPMG.
They had prepared a great buffet together with Janine's sister.
It's sad to see him leaving but I'm happy to know that he will be back in April for the next golf season. ;-)
[See more Pictures]
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