Naturelich

I have just returned from a project management training. The training took place at Hotel Via Stenden in Kerken. Kerken is a very rural place and the beautiful hotel is set in the country-side. The hotel is nice, with a bar, a BBQ place with excellent food, a Fußball table, a table tennis and billard table, a Sauna and a swimming pool (although swimming tub would naturelich be the more appropriate term, as the pool was rather small). It is not five-star but the training participants (incl. me) had a lot of fun. The training itself gave some interesting new ideas and hints on how to "survive" in international projects. Well, all in all, 2.5 very productive and social days.

Posted by Naturelich at 3:35 PM | Permalink

I have had some interesting ;-) discussions about Schlichtheit and 2D vs 3D-ness in a user interface design, naturelich already a few months ago. I just found an interesting article on The Old New Thing blog for your reference.

Posted by Naturelich at 12:00 AM | Permalink

Here is a very interesting article about passwords and suggestions of how to improve yours (mine). Although mine is naturelich never ever a target for attacks... Voice from the off: Or that's what he thought, as hackers wrote this blog entry... ;)

Posted by Naturelich at 11:49 PM | Permalink

Posted by Naturelich at 9:55 PM | Permalink

Naturelich, Amsterdam has been quite an experience (who would have guessed) --- ;-) Some thoughts and experiences while they are still fresh...

A boat-bus tour through the city was real fun to do. You can simply hop-on and hop-off as you desire and get a tour through the old part of the city. It was really worthwhile - perhaps a little but to much tourism. But if I were to live in Amsterdam, I would definitely get my own boat to cruise the Canals with some friends and some beers.

We also visited the Rijksmuseum which was showing the masterpieces of Rembrandt and Vermeer and other famous classic Dutch artists. It was really remarkable and better than one would have expected. I was especially fond of a picture by Aert van de Neer called River by the Moonlight which shows a wonderful Dutch scenery at night in the moonlight. The picture can be found on the Rijksmuseum webpages with some additional descriptions.

Posted by Naturelich at 7:47 PM | Permalink

I will leave for a business trip to Bonn tomorrow. Saturday and Sunday is going to offer some interesting sightseeing in Amsterdam. If the weather is not playing it too ugly, I hope to take some nice pictures to share. Naturelich here. We have booked the Bilderberg Garden Hotel which is located in the city center. Saturday will be shopping day with a nice evening dinner. Sunday will be our culture day with some museums to visit and maybe a boat tour through the Venice of the North.

Posted by Naturelich at 12:08 AM | Permalink

Bureaucracy is an artificial expression build from the French bureau and the Greece kratia (meaning authority or governance). The bureau is kratia'ing over today's student of econocmics. A bureaucracy is an organization structure (characterized by regularized procedure, division of responsibility, hierarchy and impersonal relationships - and to this last one I may also add that the same holds true for external relationships to customers) that knows no mercy. I will naturelich leave it at that and not start ranting about this wonderful invention of human kind. I will also spare you the details of what has happened today, leaving you assured to be hit by this tornado of stupidity one day yourself... Again!... Until then, I recommend some...

... furter reading:
1. An excerpt from Max Weber, one of economic sciences' greatest heros of bureaucracy (aka He who believed in it) can be found
here in German. (Note: search for something in English by using your favorite search engine)

2. The opposite view taken by a non-believer:
(click here to read the e v i l) (English).

Posted by Naturelich at 12:36 AM | Permalink

Today I had the great pleasure of taking a big step towards finishing what had started on October 1st, 1999: I handed in my doctoral thesis for official review!

*Cheering - standing ovation - spontaneous ejaculations of joy*

Another five to six months to go and we will know, how good an happy ending this project will take. Let's keep our fingers crossed. May the Almighty Lord of Sciences show mercy on my soul ;-)

Posted by Naturelich at 8:20 PM | Permalink

Ever had problems with your banana? The major problem for people today is to keep it perfectly shaped as it is now, without bruises or scratches. Yours has about the right length, supreme form and healthy looking color? It gives your friends an appetite? Well, now is naturelich the time to protect your banana.

Posted by Naturelich at 12:53 PM | Permalink

Today I found something to make my desktop look nicer. Finally, the Pelennor Fields desktop picture from The Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King was removed and the Warm Ball from Veer was installed. They have some coolish stuff there. Check it out...

Posted by Naturelich at 1:30 AM | Permalink

Baaaaad weather today. Reeeally ugly! Today, yesterday, the day before. I enjoyed a very good BBQ and a great birthday party on Saturday. A dear friend of mine got 29 and it was a loooot of fun - despite the weather and my general condition of total exhaustion (still from last week's work decathlon). Thus, our dear little day of regeneration and recovery - Sunday - dwelled in slowliness and sleepiness. This felt very good and I shall get some more of it right now. Trouble sleeping youself? Try this.

Posted by Naturelich at 12:29 AM | Permalink

The last few days have been exhausting: working from 8:00 through 22:00 in our new offce building and then - in the afternoon - finish working on my doctoral thesis.
Long days of layout formatting are over: unfortunately my word processor software was unable to handle the document in one file (353 pages with multiple tables and images). Due to its sheer size, it had to be split up into several sub-documents. Even more unfortunate: this caused the table formatting to be un-save-able...

After experimenting with the following steps:
- format table properly
- close word processor software
- re-open document
- and then think: wasn't this paragraph formatted with indent (or bold, or italic, or *whatever*)...
I decided to convert these documents into a portable document format which can be saved easily to a single file and be printed on any printer and operating system. And finally, at around 3 a.m. on July 9th, I was finally able to prepare a good-looking, printer-ready file.

Finally!

After printing 1059 pages (hard and heavy copies), I put my lunch break today to very good use and took three printouts to a traditional bookbinding shop and invested about 90€ to get the first three blue editions of my work. And *no*, I have not hidden a blue edition easter-egg! --- Although my professors might have liked some naked flesh in contrast to all the scientific contents! ;)

This is so surreal! Unbelievable... Whatever the next exams will bring, today was a *good* day. Having finally gone through with this... We shall see what is to come...

Posted by Naturelich at 11:55 PM | Permalink

What a stunning surprise. They did it! Otto Rehagel did it! It is simply unbelievable: the mavericks win the european soccer championship 2004! I was in a pub watching the game - the crowd cheered as Greece scored for 1:0. Although most spectators were fans of Portugal, the Greece minority screamed like hell, danced, drank, sang,... It was awesome. Above is a pic of the event. Afterwards the streets were filled by cars using there horn, the Greece flag was everywhere! Jámas!

(c) by Naturelich. All rights reserved.

Posted by Naturelich at 7:57 PM | Permalink

This guy bears a naturelich resemblance with someone... Picture taken in Hamburg, Germany on March 20th 2004.
Note: Lego and Legoland is a trademark of Lego Company.
(c) by Naturelich. All rights reserved.

Posted by Naturelich at 3:20 AM | Permalink

... there was a blank page...

For an author, trying to find the first sentence or writing the first chapter is probably the most diffifult thing to do. It needs to be exciting enough for people to continue reading, introduce the main character(s) and contain his (or her) most important traits.

This being said: did I just put myself under big pressure here? Trying to find the first sentence in a blog is equally difficult:
You want it to be something with a powerful meaning, something interesting, something about yourself. Well, I will just leave you here with your own thoughts:

1. Nothing about himself in his first post -> can this be an interesting person?
[Note: I just gave away my gender]

2. Nothing interesting in post number one -> why should I come back here?

3. No powerful meaning here -> Well, this page could become fun...

Posted by Naturelich at 1:46 AM | Permalink