just to let you know

Simon on 6/6/06 6:06

satanic dates and other fruit and vegetable.

no Humous in French

I've only just established that there is no translation to French for the word "Humous" - but there is one for "Chickpeas".

Drivin' with Colin Steele - Twilight Dreams

I knew the time would come for me when I would start feeling a bit "farsick" (never realised there is no word for "fernweh" in English - meaning that you are longing to be somwhere else). But when listening to Colin's debut album again in the car this morning there surely was a lot of "Fernweh" about...

I remember well the last time I went to one of his concerts in Edinburgh. Him and his combo played some of the Miles Davis/Gil Evans arrangements - a tremendous evening. I congratulated him on the gig later outside and told him that he is not charging enough for this sort of quality. He laughed and simply admitted he didn't even know how much the tickets were.

London Bombings

I guess all the previous announcements and drills did kinda prepared us all for this - a set of terrorist attacks on the UK's capital city.

Sal and my thoughts were with our friends & family living in London and we were very relieved when we heard that none of them were hurt. However, the mere thought that there are people who lost their dearest as an outcome still leaves me breathless.

I remembered that the bus incident in Tavistock Square is only a few steps away from a hostel I stayed in when I did some work practice in London back in 1995. I know this is crazy, but knowing that I have walked along this place about 10 years ago makes the whole thing even less believable for me.

It's such a shame that London has to go through this roller coaster of emotions in such a short space of time. We all were thrilled and excited when the IOC announced London as the host for the 2012 Olympics - how quickly all this changed.

On the way back from work yesterday a signpost along the motorway read: "Avoid London. Listen to radio.".

Padstow & Bedruthen Steps Coastal Walk

I took this picture on a recent trip to Padstow, Corwall - one of my favourites. Some other photos of a coastal walk to the Bedruthen Steps can be found here

quick update

Right, while I am waiting for Adam Curry's latest podcast to finish downloading, just a quick village fete summary.

It was a wonderful and very "villagy" sort of thing with a tombola, prize draw, slide and games for kids, tea, coffee and cake - you get the idea. Sal at one point said that village fetes must have always been like that for hundrets of years and I think she is right. It was such a small and nice little festival - another good reason to live out here in the countryside, we thought.

On a different note, we enlarged our range of garden equippment and are now the proud owners of another fisherman's chair and (finally) a parasol. Hooray!

More importantly, I have decided to pick up my "Beginning Java" book again (I purchased it back on Nov last year!) and what can I say: "This time it's for real!". No seriously, this time I really want to go for it and blow away those ABAP cobwebs :-) I am using Ivor Horton's book and so far (chapter 5 out of 22) get on pretty fine - I like his style and tone. More on my Java adventures soon.

welcome to Country Life

Tomorrow at 14:00 hrs the local village fete is going to take place right in front of our door and I must say I am getting pretty excited. I've never experienced anything like this - literally the whole village plus other visitors are going to go past our house - a little lodge belonging to a larger estate.

I will aim to take some pictures of the afternoon event - surely we will meet lots of villagers. Some of them came already round to our door to say Hi or hand in leaflets over the past few months. Sal and I are both so happy with this more intimate and closer knit community feeling. In comparison, Edinburgh was more anonymous - despite almost half a million people living in the place.

So, well, I shall keep you all posted about tomorrow's events and might post the odd picture - be warned !

Rain !

Finally, after days of blistering sunshine, the heavens opened this morning and gave the english Midlands the required cooling.

Hey, I am not complaining.

I'm back !

"What happened?", some may ask now. Why no posts?

Well I guess another typical "blogging gap" happened to me, lots of work, playing with Milly and enjoying this wonderful spell of british sunshine.

Speaking of which. It's been absolutely wonderful these past few days. It's just brilliant to spend so much time in the garden and to live outside for a change.

Another thing I've realised here "darn sarf" - as they say - is that no one complains about the heat in the same way as they do in Scotland, where temperatures rarely exceed 25 degrees.

Oh, and another thing happened: I got into Podcasting. No no, don't worry, my friends - Michael is not planning on doing a podcast himself - that would be pushing it a bit too much. And besides, I don't think my voice is sexy enough. But I've found a few good Podcasts out there - german and english. I particularly like Annik's "Schlaflos in München", Adam Curry and the offerings of the BBC so far. All very different, all achieving different things and all beautiful in their own way. And most importantly: they shorten my daily commute to work.

Oh slow me !

As usual, another ingenious new web service site passed me by again and again and again. Then I finally noticed and can't believe I never realised the potential. This time it's Flickr photo management and sharing service which grabbed me and made me upload my small and simple "arty shots" collection.

rent-a-german

For all those of you who are desperate for some good old German chit chat or even a bit of "Bratwurst romance", check outRent A German.

an hommage to a watch

Manual watches - there is something to be said about them.

With the exception of trains perhaps, there are not a lot of things which can be described as dead certs when it comes to stopping these days. To me, manual watches spread out a charm and beauty of repetition and precision.

Manual watches give me a sense of being in control. It's like I wind up my future by myself. When I spin that little wheel in the morning, I know that I inject some more life into the mechanisms of this little clockwork for approximately another 40 to 42 hours. The exciting question is: "What's going to happen during the time that I am now winding up?".

On a more philosophical level, winding up my watch in the morning has an almost therapeutic influence on me. I am getting myself ready for the day, making sure my own springs and kogs are fully wound up. And the fact that this little job needs doing every day in order to keep the wheels and hands spinning gives me a little bit of comfort.

And I like that.

everything's going "Micro-"

Microcelebrity, Microdonations, Micropatrons - Jason Kottke talks to Newsweek how life's like as the first pro-Blogger on the planet.

Scotlands secret shame

Tonight's BBC's Panorama dealt with the problem of Sectarianism in Scotland and specifically at the West Coast/Glasgow and supporters of both Celtic and Rangers FC.

However it reminded me of a Hibernian - Hearts match I watched years ago . The scenes and chants were more or less the same. I've never seen so many people at a match that were in no way interested in football and only came to pick up a fight.

Jason Kottke quits job to blog

Not sure what to think of this, but it must be the top blogger news of 2005 so far. Jason Kottke of Kottke.org decided to chuck it in and concentrate all his brain power to his blog (or whatever he prefers to call it). Go Jason!

Rediscovering cooking

I am on a new journey. It is called "cooking" and on my path I meet foreign vegetables, strange meats and other tasty ingredients.

It all started when after a long and drunken night-out in Aachen Don, a good old friend of mine handed me a present in the back of a taxi. I opened it straight when I got home and all of a sudden had become the owner of a copy of the "Satt" Kochbuch ("Full" cookbook).

Now "Satt" is a cookbook with a difference. First of all it's in quite a different format and second of all it's also a beautiful book because of its artwork. Not surprisingly, Werner Koehler, the hobby chef and author behind "Satt" is a good friend of Detlev Kellermann, a reknowned Illustrator. This Cologne-Aachen connection produced a culinary read with a difference and even if you're not into cooking - it's still worth it having it on the shelf or to get them tastbuds going.

I tried out the first recipe last Saturday and I would call it a 66% success - I shall improve, I promise!

The book is written in German - and here is the link to Amazon.de .

Test your Starbucks concentration

This test is originally taken from Kottke.org and determines the number of Starbucks cafes in your surrounding. The basic rules are simple: how many outlets in 5 mile radius? Apparently the high score is 162 in Regent Street in London. I had to enlarge the radius to 50 miles and then found a proud 28 outlets.

They are going to get you !!!

"They beat me from all sides"

A man with a German passport travels to Macedonia to celebrate New Year and is captured under the suspicion of being a terrorist and finally ends up in what appears to be one of the prisons the US Army runs for its "War on Terror". Story from Guardian Online.

I understand that Khaled el-Masri's story is still being verified. However my usual approach is the one of "partial truth", meaning that it would already be shocking enough if only a small percentage of this story is true. It looks likely.

blog criticises ringtone reseller

In a recent article on Jabba, a german ringtone reseller, Johnny Haeusler of Spreeblick.de criticised the 60 Mio Euro business of ripping off teenagers by selling monthly ringtone subscriptions whilst suggesting to charge one-off fees only. Jabba's related terms and conditions are tricky to view while being shown in smallprint during the annoying stakkato sound-like TV adverts - for example.

Personally, I do not object to Jabba's business pratice. However, I am very annoyed about these TV ads with the frog on the bike.

British Red Cross Appeal

Please give what you can to support the British Red Cross Earthquake and Floods Appeal.

Thank You and a Happy New Year.

Make Poverty History

MakePovertyHistory is backed by numerous charities and organisations fighting (amongst other issues) for an end to 3rd world debt and a move towards fair trading / trade justice.

If you think you've already done your charity bit for Christmas, then there is nothing wrong in signing up with them - IT IS FREE.

The beauty of dialup

"Is he now going completely mad?" you might ask, when you read the title. Maybe, but I've just re-discovered a beauty of dialup, as I was checking out 24in48.org, a website of 24 New Yorkers who document their steps over 48 hours with cameraphones. The slowness of the load of the pictures just made me linger that little bit longer and look at each of the images. Nice one!

Maybe I should cancel that broadband order for coming Monday after all.

Espresso Galore !

Espresso coffee - you just can't beat it. Other than some newly Starbucks groupies, I have always been a fan of the beans. People sometimes gave me a weird glance when they saw me grinding beans for my italian pressure coffee cooker and storing them carefully and sealed in the fridge.

It's all in the preparation and since this week I am the proud owner of a fabolous Espresso maker that will catapult my coffee drinking into the outer stratosphere. Thanks again, Sal !

lost in translation

It recently occured to me that there could be more that I can do as a german father to teach Milly german. I thought that I could really speak more in my native tongue to her.

Basically, I had become lazy and preferred english when talking to Sal or Milly. When I was tired and exhausted, I chose english over german as it was simply easier for me to converse to Sal and Milly at the same time. I resorted to german songs from Milly's favourite german songbooks and that was that. Now I do rate the singing in german quite high as well. In my opinion, it can teach you a lot about the phonetics and the "sing-song" (that's what I call it) of a language.

"But there should be more.", I thought and decided to speak more of the day-to-day talk with Milly again in german. Somewhere along the parental path of the last months I lost my german touch, I found. So it was just about time I go back into german "yik-yak" again.

It was harder than I thought! It almost feels like I have to learn this sort of german again. Which is funny really, as years back I tried desperately to get rid of any german traces in my english, whereas now I almost have to go back and think and act more german again.

Maybe I should start with some sunbeds and towels...

Useless Dads ?

Why do so many women think that Dads are useless with kids? Over the course of the last 14 months where women quite clearly signalled to me their astonishment when I successfully changed a nappy, prepared baby food or dressed our daughter in matching colours and in full.

I find this attitude very annoying and overly predjudiced. Why shouldn't fathers be able to properly care for a small child? Why does giving birth is the ultimate reason for being the perfect parent? I don't get it.

Jacques Henri Lartique

We watched a BBC Four program on this extraordinary photographer tonight. I am amazed I never came across his work.

The most incredible thing I found was a shot of a person whilst jumping down some stairs - being in mid-air. According to some photography specialists, it was literally impossible to make such a shot with the equipment at the time. JHL also kept a complete and concise diary for over 75 years of all his shots. He was able to remember photos he had taken and scribble them into his diary before these had even been developed.

autumn was in the air today

I definitely smelled it today. Can someone please explain this phenomenon? Because to me this is some sort of Hen-and-Egg thing - what was there first? On one hand I could say that I had the actual knowledge that today in fact was the first weekend of autumn 2004 and therefore I smelled autumn in the air. On the other, can't it be that I actually smelled autumn first and then realised that it was the first autumn weekend?

Anyway, Milly and I had a brilliant long walk outside in the early autumn air today. Our walk took us into the Edinburgh Royal Botanics, Inverleith Park and Stockbridge. A beautiful little tour and my now 1-year-and-1-week old daughter and I thorougly enjoyed it.