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So this video has been making its rounds on the internet today, and it really is quite cool: It's a video of lightning taken with a high speed camera. From a nerd's perspective it is really cool, as it kind of exposes natures algorithm to find its way to the ground. It really seems like a random-walk with branches (some branches actually go back up), and the lightning manifests when it touches ground. Sounds like a nice multi-threaded search algorithm to me :-).

Hey guys,

Have you ever heard anything like "Australian guy won tour de france"? No? Or not yet? Ok here is the situation: As you probably noticed that Le tour de france is on at the moment. The Australian cyclist Cadel Evans is doing really well in the tour. He's the third best at the moment fighting for the yellow jersey. And he's got a very good chance to wear that in Paris on sunday. So let's keep our fingers crossed for the possibly first aussie winner at tour de france.

Hey there, just wanted to let you all know, that Obama's visit to Berlin will be broadcasted on Phoenix tomorrow (Thursday, July 24th) from 2.45 - 5.00 pm.

Hey there, everybody! Just wanted to let you know about the upcoming WebSplash 0.52, and why it is taking so long for its release. The simple answer to this is: I am currently working on my Diploma thesis, and it really needs a lot of attention right now. My progress with it has been slow in the past weeks, and so I need to use every spare minute I have to work on it. Once I see that it is progressing nicely again, I will try to get 0.52 release ready.

So while you wait, I can give you a few hints of what is new in 0.52. Most of the new features are under the hood improvements: The export interface has been improved so that I can add more media-specific exports easily in the future (yes, I have some exciting plans there). There are some small interface improvements as well. A cool new feature is iChat Theater support, so that you can share media with your friends over iChat. Whether video will make it into the next release is still unknown. While I have some code there waiting to be released, it is still a MAJOR hack, and I am unsure whether it should make it into a release or not. Finally, there are a few bugfixes, most notably, keys should work correctly now in full-screen Flash games. I will keep you posted on any updates.

This is what a headline in the USA could like. Although he didn't get a spot at the Brandenburg Gate, Obama will be giving a speech in front of crowds at the Victory Pillar in Berlin. So you might think it would be a positive thing for his campaign to show his fellow Americans that he is popular overseas with America's allies. Well, think again. A commenter on CNN stated that:

"He's going to be really cheered in Europe, he's going to give a huge speech. He's going to have a lot of support there. But he's running for the president of the United States. And so they have to walk a very, very fine line here because they don't want to be seen having too many adoring people after him in Europe because he's running for president of the United States."

Of course, with McCain's nearly zero approval rating here in Europe, it is no wonder that his team is mainly responsible for generating these stories, and making Obama's popularity an "issue". Read the full article about it here.

While I did get a few chuckles out of the video posted below, it is quite shocking to see both Bush and McCain proud of being bad in school. I guess it is their way to put further emphasis on the fear that an Obama victory would lead to an elitist government (as if that were something bad). Anyway, have a look:

I could hardly believe my eyes when I read it: On July 24th Obama will be giving a speech in Berlin. This however has caused some controversy among politicians as there are rumors that Obama would like to give the speech at the Brandenburger Gate. While Merkel says, she feels "alienated" by the fact that someone is using the historical monument as campaigning grounds, Minister Steinmeier believes that the Gate is a central part of German-American friendship, and Obama's request should be welcomed.

For what it's worth, I have to go with Steinmeier on this one. Not because I am such an Obama fan, but because I think the use of the site is justified: Many high ranking politicians and non-politicians have been giving speeches there, from Kennedy to Clinton to the Dalai Lama. If a potential American president, that stands for hope and change, would like to express his thoughts there, I believe he has every right to do so. I think it underlines the basis of democracy. That being said, I also believe that John McCain should be permitted to speak there, if he wanted to.

Though I would recommend him not to. Because Germany, as many surveys show, is Obama land. Whether or not "Unter den Linden" will be transformed into an Obama Fan-Meile on July 24th remains to be seen. I, for one, now need a reason to be in Berlin on the 24th.

Hey everybody, I am writing this from my brand-new MacBook! Yes, I know, I wasn't actually planning on getting one now. But after my good friend Master Cui called me up from the Media-Markt, telling me that due to the won quarter-finals all products were reduced by one quarter, I just couldn't resist. Of course, once we got there, no MacBooks were left... that is, except the lonely demo units standing there. After raising the quarter off to about one third off, I was convinced and bought one of the demo units. Cheapest MacBook buy ever: At just 700 EU!

Jesus, this is one hell of a screen. It's at some Comcast center in Philadelphia and consists over 10 million pixels. Definitely not like one of those crappy always-broken advertisement screens you see here in German cities. At a price tag of 22 million dollars, and video data of 27 thousand gigabytes, it ain't quite ready for home theater use yet, but I'm patient.
If you have 10 minutes to spare, watch a demo video of the screen below. BTW, those lines on the wall are NOT the screen frames, but are really part of the video. You will see that they go away after a while. It is so impressive, that I sometimes can't tell if something is real or not. For instance, some of the top lights shining down are also just part of the video. Happy drooling!

I tried to find a new Linux game with decent graphics and came across Enemy Territory. There was a bit of work to do until it ran. Here I will show you what I did. I will be very specific and the result of the procedure will be a working installation of Enemy Territory in ~/apps/enemy-territory: