tuesday 1 – still some strong winds in the night, didn’t sleep so good, but got up and went for quick run around west park to liven up, say goodbye to everyone and jet off to the office, before taking a flight up to hamburg for working a couple of days
overlooked someone on the s-bahn reading Rolf Dobelli “die kunst des klares denkens” looks an interesting book, here a modified review about this:
Tip from ute to go see the opera, prokovief’s feuerige Engel
then sitting at a desk with a decent monitor, LG Flatron W2442PE, supports also 4:3 and 90 degree rotation, also the Samsung Syncmaster 2443 is not bad, but it only had DVI, which could be advantageous to use as normal/second adapter when the first is HDMI.
take afternoon flight to hamburg with guan and petra, we check into hotel and meet up with everyone for meal at uruguayan restaurant:
restaurante-carrasco.de
then in bed late and very tired
wednesday 2 – driving into the office in hamburg and listening to mike and the mechanics “everybody gets a second chance” and the beatles “you’re gonna lose that girl”, put me in a good mood and now listened to the beatles in hamburg!
thursday 3 – creativity training at work with david chabeaux, very inspiring and he writes a challenging blog:
http://www.davidchabeaux.com/category/david-chabeaux/
friday 4 – to celebrate with katie, went to sabel schule on schwanthalerstr. near hauptbahnhof for a concert by frau jonas’ group of ‘sendlinger streichern’.
sunday 6 – practicing nativity in sunday school, cathy was great in directing the children and we managed to get it worked out as to how it could work next week
monday 7 – putting up christmas tree with eve, after she returned from her violin lesson, she can’t wait any longer, christmas fan that she is
wednesday 9 – watched polar express with evie, relaxing and feeling very tired, finishing off some work late.
thursday 10 – working out of the leopoldstr office, had massive red thai curry for lunch
guan mentioned about the air quality in beijing being taken seriously now and that there was a red alert for figures going above 300 mg per cubic metre (it had sometimes previously been over 600 mg and they hadn’t really taken it seriously)
http://aqicn.org/city/beijing/
went for swim with stephan to club night, good program to get back into some fitness – seems the season is the wrong way round to how it was when i was training as a youngster – there we did the endurance training in the winter and the speed training in the summer when the races are – of course, for triathlon, this has to be the other way around, focus on style and keeping reasonably fit and fast in the winter, endurance in the summer. anyway i managed the program more or less:
10x 3 lengths – 2 crawl slow first, faster second, 1 breaststroke
4 slow
8x 1 length, fast as you can, rest recover and repeat
4 slow
8x 2 lengths – swimming under water as far as you can on first length, then finish off the 2 lengths
4 slow
friday 11 – got up at 7.30 late as usual this week, since so tired – got the herbstblues!
there was an article on bbc radio 4 about the air pollution in delhi, india being at 500 mg per cubic meter (and no one is doing anything about it), causes lung diseases and irreversible damage in children, earlier deaths etc
1000 cars coming on the roads there in delhi every day
typical european air quality limits are around 20 mg per cubic metre!
chatting with sabs over breakfast about the contents of the security evening at eve’s school, giving a few examples, was nice to discuss and she asked about which CDs I might want for Christmas.
fact that 20,000 windfarms (typically a windfarm has 30 turbines), these produce in total 10MW power ==> 500 kW per windfarm or around 10kW per turbine average (check figires)
big data analysis can yield a 15% efficiency increase (typically such data would be in data graveyards, if not used within the business)
hilary’s benefit concert for asylum seekers – katie was a bit nervous accompanying gibril on the trumpet and amongst so many professionals but her part went very well
stayed around till the end, having to look after the money, we made €1625 in total
saw interesting mixing software on the MAC:
serato DJ – not sure if it mixes stuff from iTunes and other audio files on the machine, plus FLAC support?
saturday 12 – lazy day writing the christmas letter, then going to anitra and bill’s in the evening
check out the shop ‘die werkstatt’ on artilleriestr. which does hi-fi repairs and digitisation tasks
the climate change talks are ended and george monbiot’s comments are quite pertinent – no mention of limiting supply along the lines of the keep it in the ground campaign
linking also with the NY Times International Weekly in the SZ from 11.12.15 article entitled “The Path to a Clean Planet”, about how it will come more down to regional governments, eg. california and also company/altruistic interventions (like the gates foundation) to make real progress, here some facts:
solar panel costs have reduced by 80% in the last 10 years
wind power is supplying 5% of electric power in the US, in some countries and states that figure is in double figures, eg. a firm in texas offers free electricty overnight
this inspires claims that solar and wind could provide the entire load, eg. a study by Dr Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University of California, claims this could be achievable by 2050 in the US.
The plans would need around 150,000 offshore wind turbines and 300,000 onland over the next 35 years. In 20 years, european countries have built so far 3,000 offshore turbines.
The research highlights a scientific paper stating that the oil and gas industry in North America has built around 50,000 new well per year since 2000; conluding that it is possible, but comes down to political will.
Check out also the efforts of the Deep De-carbonisation Pathways Project.
sunday 13 – nativity sunday, better than last year but a few areas to improve, such as remember:
– to create a lot of space at the front, which the “choir” behind the piano
– to keep control of musical cues, like the triangle
– to ensure narrators speak, ‘langsam und laut, mit achtsamkeit’ ie. fully in tune with what’s developing
– to mic-up any character(s) needing this and testing before hand
basic recommendation:
to have a full and final rehearsal in church the week before, eg. after the service in church (which means the script has to be more or less 100% finalised by then – which is what we were doing previously)
reading George Monbiot and a telling statement:
“No politician does anything with enthusiasm unless they wanted to do it all along: look at the glee with which George Osborne pursues austerity, even as its initial justifications are forgotten.
Cameron, like other prime ministers, appears to suffer from Churchill syndrome: the belief that, to be a great leader, you need a great conflict.”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/02/climate-change-david-cameron-bomb-syria-global-warming
monday 14 – went out to office
tuesday 15 – discussion on security with dse program, look at malware protection:
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/advanced-malware-protection/index.html
and various certifications:
Certifications: Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
SANS Institute: GIAC Security Essentials
wednesday 16 – working at home
thursday 17 – went out to the office and ute had prepared a little ‘fest’ with a delicious walnut cake then after lunch a nice surprise with some danish christmas tree decorations
at swimming we each at a lane, martina had me focussing on maintaining stable core via the following reps:
back crawl legs – either with arms by side or out-stretched, maintaining high stomach position (and ‘angespannt’ rump), say 4 lengths, then dropping down to 2 as fatigue sets in
breast stroke – long stroke, arms narrow and lifting body out, then holding arms and legs to glide (optimum position to be in for crawl, i think), then moving arms and legs more or less together, say 2 lengths, then upping to 4 as fatigue sets in on legs
repeating to get correct feel of optimum position and stability
friday 18 – working at home, then preparing room at church for sabs party, getting beers and drinks, loading fridge, most of the rest was done by homework club, katie, lily and evie
saturday 19 – going for some printer ink, then a bit of christmas shopping, then go back to get working through umpteen photos to get one for each year for sabs party
watching strictly final, just katie and i – we’d been to church to help a little until around 6.15pm when sabs asks us to go!
we are disturbed by every loud noise outside, wondering if it is the girls coming back from party, in the end they get back around 4am katie said, so it had clearly been someone else
sunday 20 – get up around 7.30am to go and clear up the rest of the stuff from the party, but there was not so much, mainly just the kuschelecke chairs and tables to take into sunday school and the drinks to sort through, leave a crate of andechser green label which disappears like hot cakes at church later; have breakfast with kats at zottl, then take taxi home with the rest of the drinks
monday 21 – working out at gbr with guan, marko and tom, went to oez after work and hit lucky at body shop and conrad (for alarm clock); then onto real
tuesday 22 – travelling to stuttgart for conclusions and discussions about the issues there, which have been working on
thursday 24 – thinking of what to use in the service, first line was inspired by a prayer for the day from an irish contributor the week before, which led to:
those who wait on the lord’s coming, will renew their strength;
those who wait for god’s calling, will hear their answer;
those who rest in the spirit, will have eternal peace
God offers us not tinsel and lots of presents, but a constant presence and light for the world;
the gifts of the spirit are untouchable, but they are the most valuable of all
and as a living, breathing, believing christian community, we know that these presents are all we really need.
after christmas eve service, christine and reiner, nico and jakob visit ours to have lasagne and salad followed by apple crumble, it went really well
friday 25 – the usual presents to open, delighted with my CDs, jam and omd from katie; omd and mercury rev from sabs, lovely jumper from eve, which has become a staple for me
we go out for walk along the isar up to balderplatz, then get back to cook a bio chicken with chestnut stuffing, parsnips, roast spuds etc
saturday 26 – fly out on late flight getting home around 1am very tired
sunday 27 – went to st james then we visit mabel, then my mum
monday 28 – walk from inn at whitewell up the river hodder for about an hour then return to meet up with pete, roz, steve, christine for lunch
tuesday 29 – margaret, james, celine and josh visit for evening of games and chat with the fire lit, it went well and was great, unstressed fun
wednesday 30 – drove over to susan and robert’s for family get together, took 3 hours to get there via the a629 over keighley way and 2 hours to get back using the navi over the snake pass and motorway
thursday 31 – fly back on mid-day flight then staying at home watching the fireworks outside and watching jools holland, sabs had been up to olympiaberg to watch the fireworks and had awful problems getting back due to the security alerts at hauptbahnhof and pasing, but she got back ok around 1am and we continued watching for another hour or so.
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