just watched BBC1’s insideout, especially a feature about the “development” of london’s portobello road. “development” in quotes because it’s really about driving out old, established small shops and businesses to increase the yield through rents that are 100% higher and can only be afforded by the big chain stores (just noticed that my hands wanted to write “chain saws”…fitting, though, as these chain stores just mercilessly cut through established societal fabrics, destroying local culture and colour wherever they appear). the term the presenter sumi bose used was clonetowns — very appropriate!

no, i didn’t mean to write “track suit” :-) the astronauts on the ISS will be releasing a used astronaut’s spacesuit filled with a radio and sensors into orbit. according to NASA’s suitsat page explains how the russian cosmonauts came up with the idea of stuffing “three batteries, a radio transmitter, and internal sensors to measure temperature and battery power” into used (and, one assumes, retired) spacesuits. using a police scanner (hmm, now, who’d have one of those?) or a ham radio one can tune in: 145.990 MHz FM :-)

now, if we could just release all suits into space…

just read an article in the german edition of february’s technology review about the work of harmut koehler on the revitec(tm) project. the revitec project tries to stop and reverse desertification by using jute bags (recycled coffee bean bags, bremen is one of the major german coffee importing and processing ports) filled with sand, compost and other organic material. the jute bags are then used as “breeding ground” for weeds, grass, and even tree. the jute bags decompose over time (after two years they apparently have completely disintegrated) and the plants then tend to spread further and further — and stop desertification! a nice project.

reminds me a bit of my attempt to create a pair of grass trousers back in 1985 as a kind of running gag for our high school graduation week — i took a pair of old jeans, a can of spray-on glue, applied the stuff to the pair of jeans, then sprinkled grass seeds all over it and kept the whole appliance wet for a couple of weeks. well, the only thing running was my nose: i had applied the spray-on glue in a closed room and my nose had not taken that assault kindly, causing me to sit through my verbal exams with a case of a badly running nose…the grass pants didn’t really work out as planned. (it would have looked cool though ;-)

lessons learned back then:

• gardening was not my forte
• reading the manual is sometimes a good thing to do

this morning had us a bit worked up: we had planned and then this morning led through today’s worship service at our baptist church here in erlangen. all a bit exciting and we certainly had a bout of stage fever. everything worked out fine and even the sermon was well received (sigh of relief :-)

over lunch we were invited by friends, which we enjoyed very much. the rest of the afternoon is spent working on the missing pictures of last thursday, friday, saturday, and sunday… (you might notice that saturday’s picture technically is not really saturday’s picture: the date & time recorded in it’s EXIF data is already past midnight and would thus indicate that it’s been taken on sunday already: not so, the clock on my digital camera is still running on summer time [and i can’t be bothered to switch it, not with another summer time rushing towards us]).

p.s.: due to numerous requests i’ve now added a “quick link…” section to the right side bar on d2h.net…

it’s sunday…yesterday we attended a full day workshop on “aufatmen und frei sein” (roughly translated as “breath again and be free”) which was organized by the united methodist church of switzerland and took place in zurich. it was rather refreshing and provided lots of encouragement not only to take a positive, christian view of the world but also to try and make a difference in other people’s lives. the workshop was done by robert seitz (contributing excellent texts, giving much food for thought) and christof fankhauser (accentuating and amplifying seitz’s texts through his musical meditations and songs). excellent stuff.

today, we are off to take a winter walk. originally i wanted to take a walk on top of rigi — to which my beloved wife objects on the grounds that it takes too long to get there…hmm…the argument that there’s a very pleasant boat ride from lucerne to vitznau included somehow does not find a lot of purchase — instead an alternative is proposed: zugerberg. at first i’m quite sceptical. “zugerberg” sounds like a lot like “üetliberg”, the favourite local mountain of all of zurich (with good weather up on üetliberg and bad weather down in zurich, that is quite often in winter, you almost have to queue to take a walk)…but: it only takes 1 hour 10min to get there by public transport. as my wife (as always :-) has a point about the travel time required to get on top of rigi, we finally agree on zugerberg.

so, after a nice sunday morning breakfast we take the train at 10:55 to sihlbrugg, change into the train from zurich to zug, take a local bus up to the ground station of the zugerberg funicular railway and then the funicular railway up the mountain. while it’s all grey in grey down in the plain, once we pass the 900m mark we break through to the sun! up at the mountain station we have a fantastic view across the alps, with pilatus to our right, followed by rigi and a bunch of other mountains (sorry, pilatus & rigi are about the only ones i can identify — unlike mr r who knows the silhouette of every swiss mountain from any direction at any time of day).

we take the large walk combining winter walks #2, #3, and #4 into one long walk. quite a number of people are up here, but it’s not crowded yet. part of the high plateau up zugerberg consists of moor land: and the vegetation looks rather like the moor land of northern germany transplanted to the alps! cool! :-)

all in all a very nice day — thanks to dorothee!

a happy & blessed 2006 to you all!

on 21 december spiegel online had an article about a young photographer, lisa frischemeier, who had done a rather interesting project in 2005: she’d taken and published one picture a day every day in 2005! quite a challenge…but worth the try. above is my first. taken on the way from church to the railway station (getting tickets back to zürich for tomorrow). erlangen once had a thriving glove industry, this picture shows one of the few remaining guild signs.

while discussing travel arrangements for next years vacation in england (london & the isle of wight) we wondered whether it would be possible to get from the isle of wight (ryde, to be precise) to erlangen in one day…by train! to make it more interesting, we didn’t want to get up in the middle of the night, so a decent departure time, like 9 o’clock was desired…

so, off we go and ask the european train timetable oracle…which to our immense surprise returns the following schedule:

Station/Stop          Date                Time    Products
Ryde Pier Head        27.05.06    dep     09:45   Schiff  
Portsmouth Harbour    27.05.06    arr     10:03    
Portsmouth Harbour    27.05.06    dep     10:15   ---     
London Waterloo       27.05.06    arr     11:51    
London Waterloo Int.  27.05.06    dep     12:40   EST 9132
Bruxelles-Midi EST    27.05.06    arr     16:10    
Bruxelles-Midi        27.05.06    dep     16:28   ICE 17
Frankfurt(Main)Hbf    27.05.06    arr     19:58   
Frankfurt(Main)Hbf    27.05.06    dep     20:18   ICE 927
Nürnberg Hbf          27.05.06    arr     22:29   
Nürnberg Hbf          27.05.06    dep     22:45   RE 35480
Erlangen              27.05.06    arr     23:01   

Duration: 12:16; runs not every day
Border crossing: Aachen Süd(Gr)

which is not really that bad. were we to take a rental car, we’d have to drive all the way from southampton to heathrow, drop of the car, get to the terminal at least one hour early, endure the customary delays (pilot got locked in in the WC, co-pilot lost his key to the cockpit, & whatever else they’ll come up with…more inventive regarding excuses than we were back in high school those airline people, that’s for sure), the fly over (with nasty turbulences over the channel, over france, just after the start…”oh, look, there’s a thunderstorm that just popped up all of a sudden, sorry about that really, but we hope you enjoy the flight with us today”), then we’d have to change planes in frankfurt or munich or zurich (alternatively we could fly from luton but then we’d have to cross london and that would easily take us 12 hours alone ;-), then wait some more (fog in beijing causing delays in frankfurt or munich or zurich), then fly to nuremberg airport, get a taxi and be home probably around the same time — just completely knackered and unnerved.

so, take the train or take the plane? hmm….tough decision…LOL

p.s.: yes, clarkson would do that trip in a 1001 breakhorsepower lamburghini-mazda-aston-martin in a little under 5 hours (and could have done better if it hadn’t been for that tractor near the french border…)

from the 1950s back to the future: len and nora from jawboneradio have an interesting link to “a podcast christmas carol”, a podcast adaptatation of charles dickens’s christmas book a christmas carol into our times and a into a podcast featuring podcaster from around the world.

sounds interesting. let’s see how that is going to turn out :-)

[the following article is rated SGR (some german required)]

just saw the link on spiegel online about the west german radio station WDR recovering their 1956 web site from their archives!

excellent archaeological work! they managed to completely restore their vintage 1956 web site. i particularly like the tv programme section:

• on sunday, 1 january 1956 they had only three (3) broadcasts, while
• on monday, 2 january 1956 they had an almost full programme with a rocking 9 broadcasts and a “switch-over at 21:25” (whatever that was). wow! those were the days…

you also might want to check out their blog…

cute :-)

quite sad to read about the execution of tookie william last night. the common view by commentators seems to be that california’s governor, arnold schwarzenegger, did not grant clemency because of not wanting to his republican clientel to appear soft on crime — and in particular wanted to boost his image after having lost several referendums and elections in the last months.

mr william has been in prison for such a long time that in other, civilized, countries he’d have served a life sentence already. from what is reported of mr william, he seems to have done a 180° turn-around from his criminal past, has been instrumental in resolving gang wars in as far away places as new york, has been writing books for kids and teenagers in which he delivers a very strong message against joining gangs.

mr schwarzenegger nevertheless decided not to pardon mr william — mainly on the grounds that tookie william never regretted the crimes he’d been sentenced to death for. now, the reason why mr william didn’t apologized for those crimes is that he’s maintained since before his trial that he did not commit those crimes.

so, to get this straight: there is a man sentenced to death, sitting in death row for the most part of his life, has done a very convincing and effective 180° turn-around from his criminal past (has to all intents, facts, and purposes repented) and has always maintained his innocence about the crimes he’s been accused of — denying clemency on the grounds of him having never apologized for the crimes he is alleged to have committed is a rather arrogant and presumptuous position. arrogant and presumptuous because it assumes that that judgement was a correct and just judgement and it fails to acknowledge the history of wrongly assigned sentences and, even worse, death sentences.

in my opinion mr schwarzenegger literally walks over dead bodies to further his own “career” — and certainly is not man enough to grant a pardon to mr william. if you ask me: a rather wimpy terminator…