The Empty Church

I went to church today in Fulltofta in Sweden. The Lutheran church in the vicinity has gone to only having services every other week, so one often has to drive to other churches. I love the little church in Fulltofta, though, the ceiling paintings have been nicely restored. I really like the little devil painted above the chancel - they say that he is there so that he can hear the sermon best of all.

Anyway, usually there are not many people at the services. Today I was the only one not connected somehow to the service. There were: the preacher (an older woman who has just been ordained), the woman playing the piano and singing, the caretaker of the church and her husband, the woman collecting the offering, the district preacher and his wife, and the widow of a church member who died this past week and was blessed during the service.

In the announcements we heard that there had been 3 (three!) baptisms and 2 (two!) weddings in this church in the past week. But not one of the baptismal families nor the wedded couples were in church today. I get the impression they just like the church as some fascinating scenery for their own happenings. I wonder if they pay a good fee for using the premises.

Anyway, there was passable coffee and great pepparkaka after church, even if it took a long time for anyone to speak to me, they all had lots to tell each other, it seemed. One would think that with the church this empty, they would be all over the one guest, although I have been there numerous times before, and they did remember me when they got around to speaking with me.

dankInformatik

On my way to Sweden I took the boat from Rostock. As I came around the curve down to the terminal I did a double-take - here was the MS Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a very nice ship indeed, all decked out with this silly "stamp" on the side: "dank Informatik" (thanks to computing).

This year, the one following the "Einstein Year" in Germany, is the Year of Computing. You find this silly thing everywhere, I find it rather embarrassing, as there are so many thing that are going wrong in Germany, thanks to computers ... There was even one suggestion made that you put a sticker with "dank Informatik" on all of the broken machines that litter town.

I was concerned that someone had paid lots of money for the advertising, but it appears that Scandlines is a sponsor for the iniative, so they get a break for the tax write-off the painting has entailed, but nothing more. Strange, though, that they are not listed on the sponsor list of the Year of Computing. Oh well, who would put a thing like this on his boat just for the fun of it?

Nerd Score

Took this test this morning (found it on another blog I like). Wonder which question I got wrong..... But some of the questions were hard to answer, like what kind of a woman am I? I had to decide between Unix, SunOS, Windows and Mac. I just bought a new Mac, installed Windows on Parallels, and use Unix to get real work done (like ssh-ing into some stubborn computer in order to make it do my bidding).

Oh, I bet I know - it's the cracked software question. No, I actually use licensed software or open source stuff and want my students to be the same. Yes, I'm a pill.

New Mac Toys

I was at the TU yesterday so I stopped by Gravis, the Mac shop in Berlin. What a fun store! They have all the Macintoys set up for playing, and a loudspeaker room so you can test all of the iPod loudspeakers. You have to go through a gate, but then you can wander around, picking up stuff, and then head for the cashiers. The Info guys are insufferably arrogant - what does a woman know about computers anyway - but at the checkout the clerk at the next cashier nods to me, seems familiar, must be a student. I'm getting old, can't remember all my students any more....

Anyway, I parted with a lot of cash for some cute, tiny toys. A little USB hub in silver - the mains adapter is bigger than it is! A cute little Bluetooth mouse, a tiny 21-card-reader and a screen wiper. Of course, I grabbed wrong size, although I distinctly remember determining the M was the correct size. Oh well, it will clean, if not protect.

The mouse wouldn't work this morning after charging. Buttons work fine - and I can use it in presentation to click "next" from across the room, that increases its coolness factor - , scroll bar is great, but the mouse pointer does not move. Since there is no light and this is an optical mouse, something is amiss. I call macally's service center, somewhere in the Netherlands.

A guy answers on the first (!) ring. No voice mail hell to manoever. He only speaks a kind of English, but what the heck. He takes my problems, connects me to another guy. He listens, asks some questions (trying to figure out if I charged the batteries and paired the BT). Then he says: okay, take the batteries out. Now press the connect button for 5 seconds. Now press both mouse keys for 20 seconds. Now put the batteries back in. Should work. And it did! I asked him what these magic motions were about, he said that that is the initialization sequence and is published in the FAQ, where ever that is hidden.

I just conducted a test. The mouse is findable on their home page. There is a FAQ. There is nothing about this initialization in there, but a shocking statement to be found: "On the back of the package, in the feaures, we wrongly state that the mouse has 3 fully programmable buttons. We are sorry for the inconvenience this can cause you.". Okay, spelling isn't their strong point, and this is grounds for complaints - truth in advertising, anyone? - but their customer service guys get a gold star.

Comic Life is habit-forming

My new MacBook Pro has some free software with it. One particularly habit-forming tool is "Comic Life" - it is so easy to make comics with it! Maybe I'll start a comic blog....

Zugvögel - ... einmal nach Inari

We picked up this film from a big basket of "Bargain Films" at a drugstore. Just the thing for an evening where you decide too late that you want to go to the movies. Zugvögel - ... einmal nach Inari is a sweet film by Peter Lichtefeld about a beer truck driver who is passionate about reading train timetables.

Okay, since we now have online databases for train connections this hobby has probably died out, but I must admit that as a student I actually purchased a German train table (must have been about 4 or 5 inches thick, printed on onion paper) and enjoyed reading it. One summer we even got student monthly passes for the German train system and rode the rails from Flensburg to Baden-Baden, from Garmish-Patenkirchen to Sylt. The question of how to get from A to B optimally (according to some parameter) fascinates me. Must be something about my Dad being a railroad engineer...

Anyway, Hannes was promised time off without pay to visit a competition for finding optimal train routes to take place in Inari, Finland, but a new boss gave him the choice of quitting or not taking off. He took off after punching the new boss in the nose. Unaware that the boss was subsequently killed by another disgruntled employee, he manages to stay one step ahead of the law in a series of comical situations reminiscent of that master filmmaker, Aki Kaurismäki.

My favorite is when he forgets that Finland is not in the same time zone as the rest of Europe and misses a date with the nice lady he keeps meeting, managing to be the very last person off the boat. The Finnish border patrol have a copy of his picture and are looking for him, but when they think every one is off the boat the one police man crumples up the picture and tosses it, saying "Who would escape from the police by going to Finland? You would have to be insane". The other guy says "Even insane people would not come to Finland" and then they drop the blinds, seconds before Hannes races past.

There are some wonderful camera scenes taken on trains along the route, making this a great film for train buffs. The woman, Sirpa Salonen, who gets mad at her computer husband for forgetting to water her roses and in revenge waters his keyboard before going after Hannes, writes him a note at one point: "It is a long distance from glances to affection" and seals it with a big lipstick kiss - how romantic! It has a happy end, of course, but not as syrupy as so many other romantic comedies.

Along with the German original the film seems to be available as "Junalinnut" in Finnish and as "Train Birds" or "Trains'n'Roses" in English.

'Puter Stuff

Luise Pusch suggests calling a computer a "'Puter" in Germany (which means "turkey"). Sometimes this fits very nicely.

General Computer stuff

• The Nerd Score (September 2006)
  

The Mac tales

• Sunflower is here! (August 2006)
• The first sign of trouble (August 2006)
• New Mac Toys (September 2006)
• The Activation Key (October 2006)
  

Other topical links:

Home Girl Life - WikiRants - Plagiarism - Didactics - Book and Movie Reviews - Observations