So today I turn 26. With the bare minimum of fanfare, being in the field in Dublin. But even with little fanfare, it is always nice to get the digital birthday greetings from home on a day like this. Thank you for the thoughts. I hope you’re all taking good care of yourselves wherever you [...]
Dublin has proven to be a very strange place. Because of the immense golfing event taking place over the weekend, the only accomodation I’ve been able to find was a rather lousy hostel run by a group of Polish people and, apparently, mostly inhabited by young Polish people seeking easy employment in one of the [...]
I have arrived safely in Dublin’s fair city, and have found it harder than expected to find decent lodgings, due to the huge crowds drawn to some sporting event taking place outside of town. But I’ve found a modest hostel dorm bed, and are now waiting for the registration to begin for the aKademy conference [...]
Under the impact of this information explosion, different degrees and types of anticipation result among the professionals who participate in the technology of the next generation of machine translation. [...] Each of these “users” has got hold of some major or side effect of the information explosion, and each is a potential supporter and advocate, [...]
You know what? I like comics. A single wellwritten and conceived comic strip can express some deep truths that would be impossible to convey properly in any other medium. By connecting simple images and dialogue while leaving plenty to the imagination to combine, comic strips can be like zen koans, absurd theatre, ponderous comedy and [...]
In the current influx of new Ubuntu Members on getting their blogs on Ubuntu Planet, I thought I’d join in as well. I’m fairly new in the world of Free Software, first getting really involved with Ubuntu at the Paris Ubuntu Developers’ Summit in June. While in Paris, I came across this surprise: Of course, [...]
From the Nazi rallying grounds in Nürnberg: From the “Street of Human Rights” outside of the Germanic Museum, also in Nürnberg: A tree rather than a column: (Meant to signify all the world’s language that couldn’t be represented on the columns) What the former nazi rally grounds look like today: (more comparisons of then and [...]
(07.06 Sunday morning. The first rays of grey morning light find their way through the curtains in a 12-man dormitory room. The door opens. In comes a young man, wobbily walking to the far end of the room where a bunk bed is located. He bends over the lower bunk and speaks in a tired, [...]
I spent last Saturday night hanging out at a local hostel in Munich, drinking a few beers with random people. I talked a bit a group of three American guys who, as it happened, were soldiers on leave from the American army base in Schweinfurt. Though they were on leave, they had violated the rules [...]