Old becomes new

The other week on my way to work I noticed a whole pile of stuff in the bin room, on my way home I, in my scavenging ways, asked the Hausmeister if it was all supposed to be rubbish and if so could I have some. It turns out that yes it was all destined for the bin so we scored:

A 1930's Singer 31-15 industrial sewing machine (table only unfortunately) which I gave a wash and put a temporary top on. It's still got the old wooden top with inlaid measuring tape - but that needs a little more work.


A couple of really cute bedside tables - now that these have aired out on the balcony for a week or three to get the old people smell out, and with some new knobs they actually seem quite reasonable.


And my very own Peugeot which only needed the valve on the back tyre replaced, some oil and some air to be in great shape - didn't even need to adjust the seat height!

You beaut!

After weeks of drizzly rain and cold nights, this is the kind of forecast that just made my day this morning :)

No strings attached

Here's a video made of Unix playing with bits of strings and various other toys (including him ignoring a rotating mouse!) :)

“A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam”

so yes - I've been whinging and whining about my 5(!) exams this semester. Not only are there five, but four of them test knowledge from two semesters - so yeah... lotsa pressure. Now I'm three down, and what's the status?!

Well...

1. I have a suspicion that I failed the first one (social psych)... umm... for many many reasons, 50% of which have to do with the stupid organisation, or lack thereof, of the exam, and I guess I might've been poorly prepared for the kind of questions they were asking.
2. I had a Brain Anatomy exam on Monday... for which (and it's not like in Australia where you have to wait AAAAAges to find out marks) I got a what could possibly be translated into an Aussie system as a solid distinction. I'm reasonably happy with that - considering I only really had a weekend to study for it.
3. Today I had the 'hammer' or the b!tch of a Stats exam. 3 hours of utter agony. Or was it?! It was actually quite reasonable and out of 80 points that there were to give out I answered for about 76... I didn't have a clue about those 4 points. Thus if I did at least 53% correctly I'll pass the exam.
   

Just to demonstrate how much statistics has been f#cking with my mind...

I couldn't sleep well last night... and kept on trying to recall various formulas for things like "zwei-faktorielle Varianzanalyse ohne Messwiederholung"... basically being silly. Then this morning on the way to uni I kept on having the recurring realisation of how lucky others are who don't have to sit this stupid exam. To give an example... sitting on the train and observing a man accross from me looking out the window I had a thought "what a lucky bastard - he can just look out of the window and doesn't have to sit a stats exam"... then thinking about a car that gave way to me crossing the street "lucky person, can afford to waste time on a pedestrian and doesn't have to sit a stats exam"... then to the birch trees "you lucky trees - you just have to stand around and do nothing, let alone a stats exam"... finally when I approached uni there was a bunch of people standing in front of the entry door having a cig so I thought to meself "lucky bastards, they can just stand here and smoke and dont' have a worry in the world... hang on, they're my class-mates... ha ha... they're also here for the stats exam!!! yey I'm not alone!!!"... yeah - the verdict - STATISTICS EXAM IS THE FATHER OF ALL EVIL, but if fathers sample and the evil sample are two independent samples then a t-Test is a way to go!!! :)

I need a new phone

My (ex-IBM 4yr old?) old old OMG its so old 6610i is dying. Instead of vibrating it makes a sick-death-rattle coughing sound, the buttons don't work all the time, the screen is scratched beyond readability and the battery lasts for about one call. It has also become a common laughing stock of people at work...

Verdict: I need a new phone.

I only want a Nokia preferably it will

• must have the new style small power connector;
  
• would ideally not slide / flip / twist / fall in half;
• be as small or smaller than my current phone (shouldn't be too hard);
  
• have good battery life;

other that no specific requirements that I can think of.

Any suggestions? Do you have my perfect phone - or one I should not buy under any circumstances?

R.E.M.

Yes I know I should be studying for my Stats exam tomorrow, but I just wanted to write a little report on the REM concert last night. Jack took some pics with his phone, but in the meantime I found this one on the net where Michael Stipe still has hair - amazing! :) He's actually born in the same year as Jeremy Clarkson, the guy who runs Top Gear (yes we've been watching too much of that lately).... I just find it funny that one has a gut and the other one jumps on stage like a maniac.

The concert took place in Waldbühne, which literally translates to "a stage in the forrest"... it's a big amphitheater next to the Olympiastadion... some older pics here. Not sure how many it sits, but looked like around 10000... and it was packed. It was actually a really nice venue... the old stone stairs you walk down on have such an amazing feel to them... and although the venue was HUGE, it was also somehow cozy... makes sense?

Sadly it was raining all of yesterday and when we got to the venue just before 19:00 (the support act was only starting at 20:00) it started bucketing down. When we got there it was still fairly empty, so we got some really good seats... except that they were wet. But we took out a plastic bag, put it on the seat and sat around with umbrellas for an hour before the support act started. This was The Editors, which were decent, and actually got us into the mood for some good music.

After they've played the roadies went on stage and basically mopped and cleaned to try and make the stage not as slippery... the light guys who sit at the very top of the stage had to perform some interesting acrobatics to try and get into their seats, as they were all covered in plastic to stop the rain from getting onto the equipment.

As the concert began the rain has actually stopped and we saw some beautiful blue sky with red clouds from the sunset. Michael Stipe also changed his shoes during the concert, 'cos he came on in trainers to try and not slip, but said that he "felt like an idiot", so got someone to bring his boots and we saw him change his socks and shoes on the big projection screens at the back of the stage... funny.

The concert was good. I'm not sure whether this was a better or worse show than what we saw in Melbourne in Rod Laver, it just had a different feel to it. I actually love REM concerts because you get to be surrounded by a much older crowd who just boogie like crazy. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside - that when I get older I can still boogie and don't just have to sit around at home and eat mothballs!

I think this week has been somehow emotional for me and I even shed a tear during the 'Great Beyond'. Dunno, sometimes you just get a right song in the right moment that just hits home... it was the perfect song for how I'm feeling right now - and I could relate to every single lyric. Anyhoo... that's that from me and now back to Einfaktorielle Varianzanalyse Ohne Messwiederholung!

Should Jack get a new job?

So here's the dilema...

I have a job, that much is clear otherwise I couldn't afford to keep this blog filled with interesting and witty repartee, well something like that anyway...

So my current job:

For Good computers 2x nice 22" screens great chairs great coffee* some good people (although a few have left already) paid overtime ability to take some overtime (1/3) as extra leave up to a max of 10 extra days reasonably autonomous work - ie I can decide what and how to do stuff good pay esp. given what I'm not doing ;-)

Against the boss has the social skills of a snail recently at the centre of a nuclear explosion there's no new work coming in (yet) the customer is a git the staff at the data centre of the customer are mainly ex-gardeners (it's government so they cant hire new people but have to use people who their old departments want to get rid of as they are too stupid to find their own arse with both hands) it's all becoming a bit same old same old

*this does not go without saying - coffee in Germany usually sucks and/or makes one think of a camel with a urinary tract infection...

So the question is:

What do YOU think?

We have kitchen

Over the last couple of weeks I've finally gotten off my butt and finished the kitchen. We've only been living here for four months so I think that's completely reasonable.

To be fair there were some minor technical issues...

We wanted to use the glass from the old interior doors as the spash back for the kitchen bench. We thought that it would be cool and retro and funky and stuff - all probably true but with a few problems. We needed to cut holes for the power points, which is not easy in glass as I was to find out in my several attempts. So many attempts that in the end we didn't have enough big bits of old glass left.
So we ordered some glass from a glassier - who was kind enough to point out that even they couldn't have put the holes in the old glass without it breaking. That did make me feel somewhat better.
The glass only arrived a day or so before we left for Odessa, and when we got back from that there was the party to organise and recover from.

But finally it is done - was incredibly fiddly as the bits of aluminium all had to be cut using the world tiniest hand saw, then filled so that they were the right shape to make everything look square - as none of our walls are square. And to finish up we put everything together with silicon at about 1am one week night. Thankfully it looks reasonably ok and I didn't manage to electrocute myself when I wired up the power points.

Midsummerfest

We've found an expats organisation recently - english speaking people from all over the world who are currently living in Berlin. There are a few Germans hanging around too mainly those trying to pick up englishmen but there's always yours truely as well...

Anyways there are quite a few cool people so a couple of weeks ago - 21st June actually - we had a Midsummerfest at our place, a couple of the girls had offered to cook if we hosted a party, we figured that was too good an opportunity to piss - I mean pass - up ;-)

T'was a great night - the sunrise was spectacular too about 2:30am:

And just after people went home around 4:30am

Making things standard

In Russia there has been a new education reform introduced over the last year, which involves standardised final year exams (ЕГЭ - Единый Государственный Экзамен). So all students in Russia sit exactly the same exams. It might be ok for some subjects (although out of 1 Million students who did the maths exam this year, only 1000 got full marks), but they also did this for literature. And in literature they seem to have made a very large part of it multiple choice, where they ask questions like:

In Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" how did the main character commit suicide? By:
a) hanging herself
b) throwing herself in front of the train
c) overdose of Viagra
d) some other stupid explanation

I mean what a disgrace! Grandma and Dad have been fuming about this and I think I'm getting this way inclined too. I mean this is in the country that gave birth to the said Tolstoy. What's the world coming to?!