Jan´s Blog Spot

The days that I actively played are long gone, but I still like Baseball as a sport, which is why I’ll post a little advertisement here. In case you’re in Germany and also like baseball, you might already know this but if not, there’ll be a small-scale baseball world cup in Regensburg later this summer, from the 9th to the 13th of September.

The four nations that are planning on each sending a team are the USA, China, Venezuela and Germany, so in case you share my passion for this sport, this probably is your best chance to go and see a couple of decent to great games live. Details and tickets can be had from the official site:

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For those who have read and liked the post I did last year discussing brand names and the perils of internationalization, there’s an update on my favo(u)rite for frozen diet food (in case you don’t speak any German: the other post also explains why I think this is funny). Things seem to be working well for them, as I recently discovered they opened their own stores:

Probably on of Paris' finest frozen food stores: KOT

This is a picture taken in St. Germain (here), and apparently they do also have a second store in Paris called the “KOT Lounge”.

It looks like they keep expanding as they already made it to e.g. Belgium and the French speaking part of Switzerland. I’m kind of curious if they’ll do their homework properly before expanding further east, i.e. to Germany or the German speaking parts of Switzerland… .

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Nothing big, but as it is pretty rare that I take a flight to Munich during day time I was quite amazed by the view I had flying in two days ago. Even though pictures of things like sundowns or views like this usually are a lot less spectacular than the real thing (and I still think the iPhone’s camera’s “below average”) I kinda liked this one, and so I thought I’d share it here:

The Alps from above 20000 feet

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No, this is not about the crisis in the .com world, but a site that is actually called www.despair.com – they do posters and loads of other things you can print on.

The theme is their very own (and slightly sarcastic) take at motivational posters as you can see by clicking the above link. I love them and in case your sense of humor is anything like mine, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy those. For those who are fans the TV show “How I Met Your Mother“: this is where Barney got his office decoration from. Thanks to René for pointing me to that site.

And then the internet wouldn’t be the internet if you couldn’t take parody one level further. There is absolutely no arguing with this (click for more..):

Couldn’t agree more.

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In case you are impressed with your iPhone’s user interface and/or liked the movie Minority Report and the way Tom Cruise’s alter ego John Anderton interacted with his computer system by simply gesturing in the air you might also be interested in watching this video that I stumbled upon today – it’s about the work of Jeff Han and his company PerceptivePixel :

The interesting thing is that this was recorded February 2006, i.e. ready almost one year before Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone’s “new & revolutionary” interface. I’m really interested to see what will become of all this.

And while we’re that the subject of Ted Talks: there is one related video about images and new ways of handling them, IMHO also well worth watching.

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Well, it’s almost three months now since I left my old job, and among the most amazing things that happened during that time is that this has actually become a reality:

So in about five weeks it finally is “Goodbye George Bush”, this time for good, i.e. with or without W. I know this isn’t really a scoop, but after seeing this video I wanted to share it, since even I must admit that he had his moments:

Top 10 George W. Bush Moments on Letterman (thanks Ernie)

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Just a short note since there is – once more – a new version of WordPress, featuring a brand new admin interface, in case you have your own WordPress I’d highly recommend the update. This time not only for security reasons

Other than that the dear spammers finally made it – I activated the Akismet spam filter for comments, since someone finally did it and found a way around the simple math question your required to answer to post comments here. So in case you do post a legit comment that doesn’t get approved for a while, please let me know and I’ll look into it ASAP…

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Times are a changin’ or as the Wachowski brothers put it: “everything that has a beginning has an end” – and that is not only true for the Matrix trilogy. After about 2900 days my time working for Lycos-Europe/Pangora is officially over and it has already been two months since my last day at the office. It has been a very interesting and moving experience that I would not want to have missed. I learned a lot and met many interesting people, quite a few of which I am happy to count among my friends now, but after almost eight years in my first job, it finally is time for something new. I’ll let you know as soon as there are news on that.

So it is “Goodbye Pangora” and of course all the best for the future to all the colleagues in Karlsruhe, London, Milano, Paris and Yerevan, it has been a pleasure meeting and working with you all.

As for the last few weeks: I decided to take a sabbatical until the end of the year and so far I’m having a ball! I’ve been out and about to go see a few places you usually don’t have the time to go and see, including California, Tokyo and Australia. So many incredible places to see, so little time. Picture proof to follow shortly…

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Well, ok, I’ll have to admit that it looks like things already have been less tense for people working at and with the stock markets. But on the upside times like these are perfect for black humor, and the people at Transavia (AirFrance’s low cost branch) seem to agree as the ad below shows.

The text says “Hurry, or the bankers are gonna take all available seats…”. Made me smile, so I thought I’d post it here. And yes, I do realize that black humor is one of those “you really have to wanna see it” silver linings, but hey, what good is a crisis if you can’t have a little fun…

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As I think I already mentioned at least once there are a few things that work differently in France and thus take a little getting used to. One of them is “centralisation”: this does of course apply to how the country is laid out, i.e. most things happen in and around Paris, and about everything is directed towards this city (people from other cities like Lyon or Marseille might tell you that this isn’t true, but they’re wrong).

And there’s more to this, one other thing that is centralized (or rather synchronized) are the summer holidays, they begin and end at the same time for each and every school in the country, which means you really don’t want to have to drive anywhere on the first or last few days and that virtually everyone is on holidays in August. That in turn also implies a thing or two:

• In case you need anything work related done in August: good luck to you, you’ll need it
• If you’re a Paris resident and go to southern France for your holidays, there’s a good chance you’ll meet all of your neighbors down there.
• Going to work by motorbike is soooo much more fun, since there is so much less traffic on the streets, for me the time I needed door to door was cut in half (to just over ten minutes), even though most road improvement and repair is usually scheduled for August.

But coming back to this posts title: now that mid-September is approaching, it’s back to school for the kids (la rentrée) and everybody’s back and Paris is back to its usual nice overcrowded self and since road works work the same way in France as everywhere else, i.e. they’re never done in time, going to work by motorbike or car has lost most – or pretty much all – of its appeal.

So here’s to everybody: welcome back…

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