take a seat and enjoy the tour

Ok ok, it is not a real tour, but I made a little compilation of pictures that I have taken since the beginning of this year.
Some of them were made with Patti and me on tour and some alone on my own.

You find pictures taken in the first two month of 2008 here.

Welcome to the family

Yesterday I had the first chance to see my cousin from Venezuela, South America. It's been more than 10 years since I saw the last picture and I am really happy to say:

"¡Hola Christshane! Bienvenida en la familia! :-)"

I really envy her for her cool name: Christshane Maria de Jesus Rodriguez. Wow isn't that way cooler than John Smith or something like that? Anyway, I hope there will be someday the chance to meet all in person.
So, good luck for your future ^^

Get Germanized ;)

'What the...??!?!' was my first thought when I saw this on the website of the Deutsche Welle, a broadcast and media station that provides German content on the net, on TV or by radio broadcast for Germans or those who are interested in the language.
This is a funny way to get instantly "Germanized" ;)

germanizer.com

64DD : IPL4ROM download

It has been floating around the file sharing scene for quite some time so I want to share this with you guys. It is the 64DD ipl4rom that has been configured to work with emulators like Project64.
Click here to download the file or simply take a look at the crappy video ;)

Happy Birthday to... koteshi.com

Yeah it's been more than two years already since I started this blog but I forget this birthday...
In 2006 on February 14th I wrote the first 'Hello World' and so far there were 160 postings and about 10,000 visitors. Thank you guys and keep on kicking ass ;)

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 download - FINALLY

Yesterday I had the chance to download the new and shiny Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista which had been released as a RTM (Release to Manufacturing) version a few days ago.
The download package is about 1.3 GB big in case you download the version that includes the x64 and the x86 Service Pack.
The x86 version just alone, is about 600 MB big and the installation on my laptop took about 30 minutes.
Well so far I haven't noticed many differences but two.
First, the file transfer rate really has increased :)
Second, the remote desktop client now offers the option not to see the "the client you are connecting to doesn't use Windows Vista" anytime you take control of an remote PC or Server.
All in all I am happy about these changes, but I really hope there's more than just these few features...
By the way: The official release date for this major update is March 2008.
In case you already want to receive it via Windows Update here's a nifty little trick, but be warned before because you have to restart your system about 4 times:

• First of all check your version of Windows Vista. An easy way for that is to input "winver" into your startmenu. If you already installed a Release Candidate before, it is now time to uninstall it. After the uninstall don't forget to restart your PC.
  
• Now check your current installed updates. KB935509 must be installed so far, because it reconfigures the bootloader. Without that, installation of the Service Pack 1 is impossible.
• Install all the "important" and "recommended" marked updates. KB935509 can be one of them.
• Download the Vista Registry Hack here. This .cmd file's code isn't really complicated. It simply deletes two keys in the registry that prevent your PC from downloading the update automatically, and starts the 'wuapp.exe'.
• Right-click the just downloaded 'vista-reg-hack.cmd' and select 'run as admin'
• The command prompt should open now, Windows Update should give a life sign and asks you to restart your system. Listen to your PC ;-)
• After the restart, start 'Windows Update' and install the newly appeared 'KB938371'. Again you have to restart your PC.
  
• Another new update appears now: 'KB937287'. Simply install that aswell.
  
• What comes now? You guessed right: RESTART.
• After four restarts, it is now time to start 'Windows Update' one last time. Oh look what's there: 'KB936330' aka Windows Vista Service Pack 1 :)
• In case the Service Pack does not appear at the first try, simply click on 'search for updates' for several times. The download size can vary between 60-600 MB.
  
• All you have to do now is to follow the instruction that will appear on your screen.
• Et voila, that's it.

Have fun :o)

...and Asia's male Paris Hilton is: Edison Chen

That's right folks. Maybe you guys remember the time when there was Paris Hilton's leaked to the internet some years ago. Well a kinda similiar case happened in Hong Kong these days.
Famous pop idol (singer, actor etc.) Edison Chen really had bad luck this year.
First his laptop breaks down, then he gives the notebook to a repair shop and finally some naughty repair guys find about 1000 private pics showing him with some well known celebrities like Gillian Chung in some explicit positions.
But that's not all. Somebody really must have disliked him because one month ago somebody posted some of these pics on a HK forum.
And everybody wants to take a look at the little handsome guy... Oh boy...
Well let's hope media will lose interest soon, so that people can have their old life back.

PS: Here's some Google Trends stats when you search for Edison Chen.

Happy Valentine's day to everyone :)

At least today you should remember who's the most important person of your life.
I already found this person and I am pretty sure you know him. His name is Patrick...
Hahaha, just kidding. The person I meant makes me (most the time ;) ) really happy and I don't wanna miss her in my life :)

Trip to Bad Homburg

Last Tuesday I had to make a trip to Bad Homburg near Frankfurt to bring my Mum back home from the hospital. Well, as you can imagine this was not the kind of happy trip you did with your parents when you were a little child. Nonetheless traveling by train is one relaxing thing for me.
On the 3 hours ride I had enough time to study for my exams and I even took some pictures at the main station.
One thing I like about big train stations airports is that you see people from all over the world, talking in different languages. Especially when you see how families get reunited or the couples meet their beloved once again. Yeah kinda nice scene. But you can also see the tyical business guys, far away from family and friends. who just make the next calls on their now working cellphone. That's about my
On the way back I had the chance to test a (for foreigners) 'typical German meal'. The famous bavarian Schweinshaxe. Yummy, but after this 'snack' my stomach was sooooo full :-(

By the way: This little snack is called in Chinese 豬腳
Another funny story happend when I had some questions at the DB (German railway company) infopoint. Two Asians, I think they were Taiwanese cause they had green passport, talked in mandarin about me. Actually I found this amusing cause I really understood some basic words. Hehe :-D

Happy Chinese New Year

As I am writing this, Chinese new year of the rat has already begun and I would like to wish everybody a happy time with the family.
Thank you for all the people who helped me in the year of the pig so much in learning Chinese and just were there for me ^^

Fucking Fuck and the fuckiest Fuck

After a really nice night at a new club in Bochum called Apartment 45, I got the info at 2AM last night that my mum is in hospital right now in a city about 300km away...
The most fucked up thing is, there's no way I can go there by now and my Mum is there all alone...
I really hope she gets well soon and so far I will take care for her little cat and try to avoid worse things to happen...

In the end: A really fucked up situation...

new cellphone on the screen :D

Because my old Nokia 9500 communicator had reached a critical level of "hull breaches" it was time to change my old busted cellphone with a shiny new one.
My weapon of choice was the S730 by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC. Germany is right now no big fan of cellphones produced by Nokia because they are planing to close a site in Bochum/Germany, firing their 2300 employees (more infos here) and I also didn't choose the successor of the 9500 the E90 because for 2 reasons: a way to big formfactor and the price of 800Eur...
So I am now proud owner of a Windows Mobile 6 cellphone but one thing still bugs me: Seems like there is no support for east asian fonts so far. Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh.... :'(

weird dreams and some pleasant side effects

I know I usually try to avoid posting too personal things on my blog but this night I have some kind of creative climax ;)
One trigger for this seems to be a weird dream that occured lately:

In this dream I was invited to a wedding. I don't really know who married, but all I remember is that everybody talked Chinese. And I don't only mean some Chinese guests, NO everybody. My whole family was present. Even my great grandma chatted in Chinese with my mum and my brother was joking around in Chinese aswell. So I asked my grandma "Hey, since when do you speak Chinese?" and she simply replied "Well, I learnt it within a few days. But tell me why do you need so long for learning easy and simple sentences?". I felt like there was a big "WTF?" sign on my head...

So what does that tell me?
Well since the Chinese course at the VHS Dortmund has been canceled due to too less interested students I fear that I might never master Chinese to an acceptable level. At least I would like to have a simple conversation... :'(
Hmm, someone told me I should "gasgeben/Jia you" and I think this nails it.
So I started to sort my old self made dictionary into my very own vocabulary book. Specially edited for my needs. I will try to post some short examples soon to let you get a glimpse of it ;)


Ok ok, now it is time to kick some asses ;)

snow in Guangzhou? - Hell NO!

Maybe some of the readers remember that I will do a big step in my life this spring: I am going to Guangzhou / China.
Because of that I listened very carefully lately when there were news about China in general and expecially about Guangzhou. So I was more than suprised when I heard that there was some snow during this week in the capital of Guangdong province...
Thanks to some students at GDUFS (guangdong university of foreign studies) I know that they have right now about 6°C, rain, rain and you already guessed right: rain + chaos at the train stations because most trains had been canceled due to the bad weather and Chinese New Year is approaching and: NO SNOW.
So take that lousy RTL news... As far as I heard/read on Xinhua there were only some snowfalls in Guangdong province but none in Guangzhou though still hard to imagine such cold weather in a city where I had about 35°C back in September last year...