Yesterday, Elke and I went diving for the first time this season. We drove to the Traunsteinbasis again, because they have some nice underwater platforms there and is is very nice to relax in the sun there.
It was also our first dive without a guide, which was fine because we already knew the underwater landscape and we just wanted to try out our new equipment.
Yeah, new equipment… Elke went on a shopping spree and so we now have everything we need, except for the lead weights and the air tanks, which are all very heavy things and which can be rented without a problem everywhere. It was great to have some new stuff for my own, which I can get used to and feel more secure underwater because I know that I can use my equipment even with my eyes closed.
I did not take any photos, because it was nothing special to see, except for lots of perch (german: “Barsch”) , and we even saw one huge one.
Elke and I took some days off from work and went on a short trip to Obertauen. Today we had wonderful weather and I took some nice photos, however the crappy internet connection via GPRS would not allow me to upload some. I added them today and will add some more soon.
We found a nice hotel in Untertauern, called “Hotel zur Post“. The room is ok and not too expensive, the food is excellent and the newly renovated main part of the hotel (we are in another building, 150m apart) features a nice wellness-area, with saunas and stuff like that.
We can definitely recommend this hotel, it was very relaxing there. The only difficulty for me is to decide if the wellness area or the excellent food (anyone who knows me knows that I am usually extremely picky) is the main cause for us to return.
A quick shout out to any fellow wordpress users: if you are currently running version 2.1.1, urgently update to 2.1.2. It seems that the previous release was compromised by a hacker.
It looks like there will be a huge leap in the way we interact with computers soon. No more inconvenient keyboards and inflexible mice. The iPhone is only the first commercially available gadget with multi-touch interface… the things possible with this technology can be seen in this video:
My first publication in a renown Journal has now been published. I’m quite proud of it… well, I’m not the first author, but one has to start small, eh?
I hope there will be more to come, but my diploma thesis work leading to this publication and being awarded the price for “Best Thesis Work” in BIN02 is a good start
And no, I do not refer something innovative… it seems like the company has run out of clever new ideas and started milking the cash-cow with rising of fees…
It also seems like Skype reads the systems BIOS when starting up… now why would they do that? I will try to keep up with information on that. Not enough that they can use your computer as super-node at will, without you being able to disable this…
Update: it seems it was linked to some new DRM stuff. They promised to remove it. Source
It has been some time since I last posted about IP telephony. Many things have changed, Skype is widely used (even normal devices support the protocol now in hardware, making nice things like mobile-phone-like gadgets that can use public hotspots possible).
I ranted a lot about VoipBuster and similar offers, but it seems my fears were unfounded. Voipbuster now offers free landline calls to Austria and Switzerland, and cheap (1cent/min) to Germany not to mention free landline calls to exotic countries (Guam, Estonia, Iceland, USA (+mobile!)) and SMS text messaging.
Gizmo Project is another provider, and they now offer free (5min/day or 10 if you register) calls via a normal browser (plugin required).
edit: I forgot to mention Jajah. I had heard a report about this company some time ago. They also offer free or cheap calls, but you only have to enter the numbers into the webform, and they call you and the recipient and connect you. The special thing about this company is that it was founded by two Austrians!
