Friday: we finished our diving course. The night dive was fascinating and our equipment was ok too (we chose a wetsuit one size bigger than before). We are now fully certified Advanced Open Water Divers.
Saturday: we went to a summer toboggan run at the Wurbauerkogel and had some fun there. I made some pictures too and even a short movie (Quicktime, 11MB)
Yesterday evening we had Karo and nostromo as our guests for the evening. We prepared some sushi and maki together and sat talking until 01:30. The sushi was great, but there are some things to remember for next time:
I just found something interesting in a Slashdot Article. It seems like some scientists managed to create proteins by designing the genes on a computer and inserting the sequence into E.coli. A short report in simple words and a detailed article in “Nature” should provide any information you want about this.
I just recieved a nice spam mail. They even used babelfish to translate it into my language!
[ Name of company edited, because I don't want to advertise for them 
]
SPAM-CORP Inc. kann Ihnen helfen, Ihre Traume zu zwingen, sich, bekommend
das monatliche Gehalt, das das Internet einwirkt, zu verwirklichen.
Um mit SPAM-CORP Inc. zu arbeiten, brauchen:
• Ein Bürger Deutschlands zu sein
• das Vorhandensein der Rechnung in der Bank
• die Vereinigung des Computers zum Internet
• ist ein wenig es Ihre freie Zeit
Wie es arbeitet:
Arbeitend für uns wie die Bezahlung, Die den Manager bearbeitet, werden Sie
Teil Aus der neuen Tendenz im weltumfassenden Banksystem. Die Pflichten Die
Lage ist einfach, und das Einkommen hangt nur von Ihren Bemühungen ab.
Sie Sollen – die Zahlungen der Sendung zwischen unseren Kunden, die Ihr
Interesse von jeder Operation bekommen, machen.
Hauptsachlich werden es 5 %, mit jeder Sendung, die Ihr Interesse züchten
wird. Unsere Kunden bekommen 1000 EURO zu 20000.
www.SPAM-CORP.com
SPAM-CORP Inc. sorgt sich um Ihr Blühen. Machen Sie Ihr Leben besser
zusammen mit der SPAM-CORP Inc.!
As I mentioned earlier, I tried various offers for internet telephony. First and most famous (read: hyped) one is Skype.
Then there is Gizmo which is not so famous, but open source.
Because of the small userbase, I could not find anyone of my friends willing to test the quality. But hey, if you sign up, you get a free 25 Cent CallOut credit!
Another option I came across is WengoPhone which has started recently.
I just tested this CallOut service, and it works reasonably well. I even could connect to a German 01805 number (something I couldn’t even with Skype), which was € 0,12/Min, according to the website. I had to pay less then that: ALLEMAGNE 8m 48s € 0,153. Quality was superb. I think I like Wengo 
.
There are other options as well, like GoogleTalk or MSN or ICQ VoiceChat, but I have not tried them yet. If someone knows of another good client, please leave a comment. I quote from another blog:
If all the non-Skype softphones (Google Talk, Earthlink Vling, Xten, WengoPhone etc.) join forces and allow SIP calls to each other then Skype might be in trouble.
But until that joyful day, Skype will be the hype.
Last but definitely not least, VoipBuster.
In totally unrelates news, Opera has now finally started to give the ad-free version of their great browser away for free! Grab it if you don’t have it!
If you want to test a client, contact me
… not much, really.
At work, I’m programming another small tool, and to increase my stress levels, there were some problems and misunderstandings about my employment. I can give you a full report when it’s cleared up, but for now: I got a “Werksvertrag”, so I’m not employed by the Red Cross, so I got to care about my insurance and taxes myself. So that is something to sort out…
To relax I play NationStates since last week. It’s a web based game, where you get to lead an imaginary country and decide about issues, which effect Civil Rights, Political Freedoms and the Economy. You can get up to two issues per day, and I think it’s really funny. As you can see, I’m letting my dark side out: currently my Holy Empire is a “UN Category: Psychotic Dictatorship”.
I also found a nice little web game called Traps, Mines and a Sheep. How far can you get?
06:30 – Getting up from bed. I like getting up early, because I feel that my day is much more productive when it starts early. If I start working later, my motivation is much lower.
07:30 – Leaving home. Stopping at the bakery Brandl to get my coworkers and me some breakfast.
07:45 – Arriving at work. Today we wanted to call Prim. Gabriel to get some information about the next project. We were told he would visit just before 10 o’clock. Finished my first coffee.
09:45 – A lady arrived for a demonstration of a possible new appliance at the Blutzentrale – a Nanodrop, that is a spectrometer which only needs a small amount of sample (1-2 μl) to perform the analysis. It was nice to take a look at the demonstration.
10:15 – Demonstration is over, still no sign of Prim. Gabriel.
11:00 – We recieved the information that the head of a department is at the other lab for a meeting. He will probably come over to talk to us in a break.
11:45 – My tutor, Mag. Danzer, left for a congress in Germany. He will return monday.
12:00 – Went to get something to eat. Half a Pizza by Francesco. Quite good, actually.
13:00 – Did some productive work, since ther still was no sign that Dr. Gabriel would show up.
15:00 – One of the people at the lab got some call about me. Seems there was some misunderstanding about my contract, or so…
15:10 – Called Prim. Gabriel about my contract and if he would show up here. We will (probably) meet tomorrow.
16:00 – Left work and went to nostromos place to feed Lilo. I hope that cat will like me soon.
19:30 – Leaving for home \*yay\*
20:00 – Had something to eat, watched Universum about Europe on ORF1
21:00 – Played some WoW to relax
23:00 – Went to bed
As announced yesterday, you can watch Elkes performance at the RMR here. I’m sorry, it was rather dark, so you don’t see much. clicky here: RMR.MOV
Elke, our guest Belinda from Vienna and I went to the OK on Saturday to take a look ath this years Ars Electronica Entries. We liked RMR
and the Firebirds the best. I even have a video of Elke running on the RMR, but I haven’t decided wether to put it online or not.
I also ran into Bigii twice. She said we could both blog about the ars electronica and the Klangwolke, but it looks like she is still asleep or so. – Speak the devil! As I was writing this, she put together an entry about it here