The Unmistakable Cone of Ignorance

Alright blah blah blah.. i’m in germany… wooo.  I went to Köln and visited Nik in the Ruhegebeit(eh however it’s spelled) It was a good time. gonna go to stuttgart/Heidelberg this weekend. Be a tourist.

Anyways.  The germany thing is wearing off.  I’ve lost weight cause I eat less/better and walk more.  Need to work on my abs and tone.. meh.  German beer is really good but it’s all the same 4 or 5 types everywhere you go.  It’s also not earthshatteringly good. Some is quite good but eh… I want me some good ol american microbrew or maybe a trip to Belgium later in life… where the really great beer is .  Beyond all that I have been thinking about my goals in life.

I realized that almost all the things that fascinate me about computer vision and robotics are all the cool things that are in a lot of ways no longer research topics of extreme note.   I can live with that.  Just means I need to find some cool things that are research worthy.  Deformable shit and optimization probably.  Should be good times I just need to do a shit ton of reading to find out what’s still open.

But my real goals in life.  Live another good 55 to 110 years as medical tech improves.  3 to 5 years relaxing on my porch with a shotgun yelling at the neighbors.   Finally a cyborg body with my brain converted into a massive computer array with massive EMP shielding and a nuclear power supply so I can live forever and incite a reign of destruction and science.  Should be doable.  Maybe I can get a postdoc doing brain chips but they’d probably want some official neural background and not just me reading papers and looking into data types.  Fuck them.

Anyways I’ve got a dinner to go to tonight and then I need to write and read and study and be fucking proactive.  Need to stop sitting on my ass.  Course now that I think I’ve finally finished this damn tracking project I might make it out sane.  I really needed to work harder on this project.  Taken much much too damn long.  Over a year almost.   Need to be more efficient or something.

So last saturday I crawl out of bed and head to the store to stock up on foodstuffs so I can gorge myself in preparation  for the impending day….

SCHNITZELJADG!!!

3pm and we all gather for the day’s activity.  A scavenger hunt through the English Garden seeking clues that led to cheap beer.  Terrible cheap beer.  Beer I really couldn’t drink.  We crossed streams, dug in weeds, climbed into the rafters of rain shelters and just generally had a damn good time running around the park.  Max got pictures and videos of the whole affair for our team. I still need to get them from him.   After the hunt there was a BBQ which was entertaining.  It actually turned out our team won the hunt since we left last and came in second and drew better pictures of the organizers for the questionnaire. The grand prize… 6 steaks and 2 bottles of cheap ass sparkling wine.  Not real useful to me but the others seemed to enjoy it.  Oh we also got to enjoy the drama of the first team bitching that we won cause the boyfriend of the girl organizing it was on our team.   How lame.

After the BBQ I got to experience germans when they’re drunk and have an acoustic guitar handy.  Germans singing at the top of their lungs, banging on tables singing songs by Die Toten Hosen and Die Ärtze( I think it was) .  There’s a great picture of me looking drunk and confused as hell.   Either way was entertainment value.  Ended up getting an upset stomach from all the hotsauce on cheese mixing with the beer we were eating after the party while we watched the simpsons and getting home at 5am.

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4th of July!!! Happy Birthday America!!!

Roll out of bed about 2pm to start cooking and prepping with Erich downstairs.  Being both Americans we decided to host a BBQ for the 4th and be lazy non working bastards.  Most of the guests were Germans but there were a number of Americans, a Canadian, an Icelander, an Israeli and I think that was about it.  Later some more Americans and a newly greencarded Aussie showed up.  Either way much drinking and fun was had.

Now here’s the strange part.  The horror/glory of the Schneemaß.  This is a half litre of vanilla ice cream, a quarter litre of Fanta and a quarter litre of schnapps.  They made three and they were going around the table and I think I drank about a full litre of the stuff by virtue of where I was standing at various times. All in all this wouldn’t have been a bad thing but I decided to invite people up to try this really good but pretty cheap scotch I’d bought the day before.  Scotch and ice cream DO NOT MIX.  Like draino for the bowels.  Dear god I was hurting for the entire train ride to Berlin on the 5th.    But besides that the 4th was a good day.  Good people, good food, good times.

I got a few pictures of people in my apt.  Again I need to post them.  I’ll try to organize them all on the train ride to Köln on Friday.

Berlin!!!

Berlin is a fucking amazingly fun city.  Being punk in Berlin is pretty much the same as being a homeless squatter which is so old school it hurts.  Berlin just never stops either. Unlike Munich which is dead as hell during the week day and the trains still stop at 2am every night forcing the use of the night busses and night trams.  If you haven’t guessed yet… I really really liked Berlin.

Thursday night I get to Berlin after riding the train with my headphones glued to my head and glaring at anyone who tried to speak to me.  Take the subway over to Karl-Marx Str and find my way to Nik’s friend’s house.  I get there and Maria, Peter and Schönes Stefen are there hanging out.  We hang out, have some beers and just chat till Nik arrived.  More drinking and hanging out and being mellow followed by falafel and sleep followed.  This was good cause I was still hurting from the 4th.

Friday begins the fun.  We got up earlyish, wandered the neighborhood for pastries then set out for to be tourists.  We walked past the squatter camps, the wall and all it’s graffiti and finally Treptower Park and it’s massive Communist memorial.  It’s so strange and so cool. I of course have pictures of all this to post and you’ll be able to see it for yourself but the photos just can’t do justice to the scale and magnitude of this place.  So amazing.

After touristing it up and getting some food we headed over to the brewery where Dina’s birthday bash was to be held.  The weather was sucking and no one was there yet so we walked around some more before helping to set up the storage unit for the party.  Well we only helped a bit.  Mostly we just sat around watching other people work.  Due to the poor weather I think only half the invitees showed up but it was still a fun party.  Not wild and crazy just mostly people hanging out and talking while some of the kid’s who were dj’s spun in the background.  I mostly talked to Nik, Dina,  Peter , this guy Bjorn and this Irish girl Avril.  Party ran till about 1 or 2 when people decided to go to Tresor.  Car was full though so me and Bjorn ended up taking the train around to get there with a detour by his place so he could drop off his stuff.  Got to the club about 230 or 3 and I ended up leaving about 345.  The saving grace of Tresor was Dina getting me on the guest list so I didn’t have to pay to get in.  Tresor is about as cool as AIDS.  Shitty crowd and boring music.   Went home and got some sleep.

The next day we mostly hung out at Peter’s until going to Dina’s for a dinner of veggie sausages and sauerkraut with Dina, me, Nik and Jakob an Austrian Med student/DJ.  The parties don’t start in Berlin till 2 or 3 am most nights but we actually headed out about 11 cause we got bored sitting around and met up with this Scottish Guy Culvin and his girlfriend Kirsty before heading to Berghain.  We got to Berghain way way early at 12 and almost didn’t get in since they heard us speaking English at the door.  But since Dina and Jakob were on the guest list we managed to talk our way inside.  Berghain is fucking amazing.  It has one of the best sound systems I’ve ever heard in my life and the crowd and music were both pretty damn cool.  I was a bit disappointed though.  I had heard all these stories about public displays of debauchery and gay sex and didn’t see a think other than all the people heading off to the dark rooms to engage in said acts.  But I didn’t have the wherewithal or caring to investigate the dark rooms since I didn’t want to have to deal with gay guys getting the wrong idea.  The night was awesome and the party even got going early at 1am.  There were 2 different rooms of music.  Heavy house in the main room(with the 3 dimensional sound mixing system) and then a more soulful/synthpoppy house in the upstairs bar.  We spent most of the time in the main room dancing and drinking and talking and drinking in the upstairs room.   When the bass kicked… the air moved around your body.  God that place is amazing.  I would love to go back before I leave at the end of August.  Nik and I are definitely going back to Berlin one more time though.   We ended up staying till about 7am before heading home.

Oh and one particular gem.  Girl comes up and opens up with ‘So do you guys come here often(in german of course)’  … flat out club slut.  Nik tries to get rid of her and I’m just ignoring her cause eeeesh club sluts still creep me the hell out.  By the end she flat out asks if we want to take her and her friend home with us.  She left a bit pouty.  We looked over to see where she had been sitting and watching us and made eye contact with a bear in combat boots, suspenders and black ‘tighty whities’  … he strutted past a few times to see if we had meant to initiate or not.

Either way we got home about 9am and ended up getting up about noon to go pick up nik’s bag and get food.  Walked around a bit more before our train and saw a few other things but nothing compared to Treptower.  Took the train home and have just been lounging around doing work and sleeping.

I’ve been following the Red Mosque shit off and on since I saw an article about how all the students are ready to die and such in the name of Islam.  I’d heard about it a few times before that but hadn’t paid much attention.  It was just another bunch of crazy Islamic hardliners being nutty in a country I wasn’t in.  However… I just saw that the Pakistani army is now storming the complex and currently the report is 50 dead students and 8 dead commandos.

How do I feel about this?  On one hand… I suppose I SHOULD feel sad that lives are being lost… On the other hand …. I’m very pleased that the Pakistani government didn’t take shit from these people and giving them what they so deeply desire in their life hating religion… cause honestly it seems like all the religions of the ‘Book’ revile life and living constantly focused on some  ephemeral afterlife that  promises all the things they revile and abstain from in their real life.

Seriously lets consider what these wank offs were demanding of the government.

1) They wish to live their lives under Islamic law.

2) They want the government to force everyone else to also live under Islamic law.

3) They hole up in a mosque and take hostages and go around kidnapping chinese massage workers cause they’re obviously prostitutes and the government isn’t forcing them to behave like proper muslim women.

4)…. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT OTHER THAN TO DIE?

5) … right… profit as martyrs… what do women get in heaven anyways?  guys get the 72 virgins or whatever… women get…. ?? I’ve never heard.  I’m really curious..

Either way I’m glad that at least one semi middle eastern country is telling them to fuck off and being manly about it. I mean sure I don’t want or expect violence for the sake of it or in response to peaceful shit… but when you go around trying to jam your religion down the throat of others you’re just asking to have your shit stuffed in. Figuratively or if you push hard enough literally. Either way… I wish people weren’t crazy and that this shit didn’t need to happen but I’m glad that the hardliners didn’t get their way.

Hrms that was a very gut response. Could maybe be a bit more subtle or thoughtful.. meh… Fuck hardliners.

I’ll write about the last few weeks of germany later.