Real Life

I got home from FOSTEL 2007 a few hours ago. I was there to represent Gobby and to spread the word about Openismus a bit.

I met a couple of interesting people there like Philip van Hoof, the author of the Tinymail framework, Robert McQueen from the Telepathy project and Jochen Topf who pointed me to the OpenStreetMap project (and who is also living in Karlsruhe, by the way). There was also a lot of VoIP and Telephony stuff I do not know much about and I did not understand that much, but it was nevertheless pretty interesting and fun. I really enjoyed Sean Egan's talk on XMPP, too.

Things I want to keep in mind for the next conference:

• Do not pronounce Gobby in a way so that people might understand Kopete.
• When doing a five minute talk, only prepare for about four minutes, because it will eventually take longer. Apropos lightning talk, the slides of my Gobby Status talk are here. OpenOffice messed the headers up when exporting to PDF, but I don't want to fiddle around with that at the moment. Also expect a blog entry about that topic in the near future.

Last but not least, I want to thank Dave Neary (and probably OpenWengo) for providing me free accommodation and for the dinner Wednesday night. Perhaps we meet again next year.

Last night was the first time I slept in my room in Karlsruhe. Saturday, my parents, my brother and another friend helped me to carry and install the furniture which went quite well and quick, so I had some time left to learn for the theoretical physics exam I wrote yesterday. People here are nice and internet and television work, so there is nothing I could complain about. But as you know a picture tells more than thousand words, so enjoy.

I also wrote experimental physics on Friday last week, but most problems were taken from old exams I already have seen before. Actually, I expected more from an elite university, but well, the good thing is that I most likely passed that one.

Today I signed a contract about renting a room in Karlsruhe. It is in Baumeisterstraße 8a, room number 35 and 19m² in size. The whole building is a kind of flat share, so I am going to share the kitchen, toilets and stuff with other students. The building itself is pretty old (with high rooms) that was restored last year and it is located near the center somewhere between the university and the station which fits quite well since these are the institutions I (currently) visit most in Karlsruhe. I am already going to move in in the first week of February. I hope that I gain some more time during the week as soon as I do not have to commute anymore from Offenburg to Karlsruhe every day. I will post some photos when I am there.

After more than twenty years without one, I got finally around and acquired a mobile phone. It is a simple Nokia phone that does not even have a camera (Yes, those phones without camera still exist) or whatever toys most modern phones have. So I guess it is just right for me since everything I want to do (for now) is to get in contact with my father to get home with him after university. Until now, I took the phone of my mother for this purpose, and that is why she wanted me to get an own one. I, for myself, could still live without it.

Originally, we wanted to use the same contract that my brother uses for my new phone (since my mother does already the same), but it turned out that they recently changed prices and a prepaid tariff was cheaper, so that is what I have now. Anyway, I find all this tariff stuff overly complicated. We spent nearly an hour in the Vodafone shop.

Today I wrote my first exam at university in experimental physics. The topic was classical mechanics (Kinematics, Dynamics, Energy conservation and stuff). I really cannot say whether it went good or not. There were 6 problems to be worked on within two hours. I spent the first twenty or so minutes on the first one without getting anywhere and then continued with the rest which went more or less well (at least I had some pretty logical approaches which lead me to solutions at the end, even if those differ from those of a friend of mine). During the last fifteen minutes I have gone back to problem one and solved it straight-ahead which was fine, but I didn't have the time to work on the last problem then. However, only 12.5 out of 30 points are required to pass (with 25 being enough to get full marks). More to come when the results have been published, probably Tuesday.

The exam took place at 15:30 which was quite late in my opinion since I could not concentrate as much as I normally can in such situations when writing mornings. However, the problems seems to be that those big auditoriums in which the exams are written are already occupied most of the time and we have to take what we get. This is probably also why I have to write the next examination saturdays (16. decemeber in theoretical physics), but at least at 10:00 in the morning.

Update: I now have the results for both exams. The good thing is, I have got more than 50% in both of them (19.5 out of 25 in experimental physics, 18.5 out of 28 in theoretical physics), the bad thing is that I thought I had done better (at least in theoretical physics). Anyway, to pass we need 50% out of two exams (in each subject; the next ones are in february) so I have a rather good starting point.

So, my first week at university passed fairly well. For those who don't know: I am studying physics at the university of Karlsruhe since october. It is pretty much work (much more as in school). Each week I have to process five sheets containing exercises in analysis, linear algebra, theoretical physics, experimental physics and computer science (which is just a minor subject, but I have to hear the same lectures (and write the same exams) as those who are studying computer science as major subject, plus, they do not have any physics). Of these, linear algebra is by far the hardest by now, maybe because it is just too abstract for me (which I hope will change in the future). I could also do higher mathematics instead of analysis and linear algebra, but I chose to do it this way because after the first semester, I am still able to switch to higher mathematics (but not the other way around). Plus, I still like mathematics as such and I do not even need the linear algebra certificate (but just analysis) at the end of the semester.

The everyday life at university also becomes more and more "business as usual" and I find more free time now than four weeks ago (which also was a reason why I did not blog during the last weeks). Currently, I still commute from Offenburg to Karlsruhe (about 70km) every day. Normally, I go with my father who is working in Karlsruhe and commutes since many years. If the time does not match (or he is away from home, like this week) I take the train. Besides from getting up pretty early (around 5:30) this works quite well. Nevertheless, I look forward to move to Karlsruhe for the next semester.

Exactly two months ago I was in Freiburg im Breisgau because of the Kreiswehrersatzamt (A kind of department that has to fulfill personal needs for the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr) wanting to check me for military use as part of the general conscription in Germany. They stated me as T2, meaning "partially useful" and they could draft me for military service at the beginning of october. However, I expected to become T5, meaning "not of any use" because of my glasses, somewhat broken back (I even had a medical attestation about this) and pretty bad grades in schoolar sport. But this was not the only reason why I was not satisfied with being T2: On the one hand I wanted to begin my study of physics in october, on the other hand most of my class mates have been rejected - even those with significantly better sport grades.

This is why I entered objection against the decision of the Kreiswehrersatzamt. After some exchange of letters they decided to recheck me today, so I went to Freiburg once again this morning. After several minutes of waiting here and there the doctor did a quick examination and finally called an orthopedist in Karlsruhe who decided to declare me T5 after having received some medical documents like the attestation mentioned above. So I came home just about an hour ago being happy that I have no longer to deal with those Armed Forces people and having removed the (hopefully) last obstacle for beginnig with my studies.

The problem is not even the general conscription as such, but the fact that they accept/reject people mostly arbitrarily satisfying their needs (well, at least it seems so to me). It just hurts that most of my friends could begin to study while I would have to do some military service (or civilian service) for nine months that gets me nowhere but is just another lost year. The other thing is that there is no corresponding obligation for women, but this argument has already been raised against the conscription several times. I hope that it is just a matter of time until they either drop the conscription at all or introduce obligatory civilian service for anyone except highly disabled people.

Normally we do not do any such trips since my brother and I do not leave with my parents for vacation anymore. But since they took a few weeks off without going anywhere this year and me waiting for my studies to begin (and even my brother who is usually either dancing or hanging out somewhere with his friends every day has now some time, due to summer holidays) we visited the monastery at Maulbronn, near Pforzheim, last Saturday. It looked like the monastery that is part of the school I was going to, but much bigger and more impressive.

Today, we visited an old silber mine located in the Black Forest. I didn't expect it to be that dirty. We had to wear boots, some kind of jacket and a helmet. One really looked like a real miner in this dress. However, I am way too tall for a miner since I always had to bend down when entering a gallery (well, I am only 1.83m, so most had to. Now I know why they often took children for helping out in the mines).

When we saw this lorry (which was, by the way, only decoration; it was too big for the small galleries in the mine) I immediately thought at that clonk loader on which a clonk is pushing a lorry full of gold. The result of my not-so-great image-manipulating skills is that picture on the right. If you zoom out a bit, you do not see the rough edges around the clonk...