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During my efforts to understand the ridiculous language these Germans speak, I discovered something sort of interesting: The English word “snow” contains the word “no” in it. That’s often how I feel about snow—NOOOOO!!!!!!
As it turns out, the German word for snow is “Schnee.” The Germans also have a word “ne” which means “no” or “nope.” So, this means Germans also insert a “no” in their word for snow: Schnee.
Do any other languages insert their word for “no” into their word for “snow”?
I got a little prod from Leo a few days ago to post something on my blog after weeks of silence. So this is it. I’m posting.
So what happened? How did I go from posting nearly daily only a few months ago to now only posing once every month? The answer is: nothing has happened. With nothing happening, I’ve had nothing of any significance to report.
Therefore, these next posts to my blog may be a little less significant than most. Fragments of thoughts, funny notions, and other miscellanea. So here’s the first one:
Snow—Part 1
When I decided to make the move to Germany, I was definitely wary of potentially brutal winters. Though I just came from Southern California, I have experienced my share of winters before. Growing up in Idaho, the snow plows would create mountains of snow over twice my height out in front of our house. Tons of fun. Climb, slide, repeat. I used to wear snow pants to school and would wear holes in the knees from sliding around on the snow at recess.
In Denver, there was plenty of snow as well. My first year in Denver, it snowed so hard on my birthday that the schools were closed. Talk about an awesome birthday! There were many other school delays and closures throughout the years from the snow, and I also remember the headaches of scraping snow off my car and even a few occasions where my car got stuck in deep drifts on the road.
I remember power-outages all over the city caused by heavy snow building up on trees. The weight of the snow would break the branches which would then fall on the power lines. I would be working the graveyard shift at the copy shop when everything would go dead and I would just be sitting there in the dark waiting for the utilities to be fixed. Being that the copy shop was open 24 hours, I couldn’t even leave since I didn’t have a key to the place!
With all these memories in mind, I then extrapolated what things in Berlin would be like. I took my Idaho experiences and moved them 700 miles north. I shuddered in fear.
I’m very pleased to report, however, that my first winter in Berlin was astonishingly mild and short-lived (knock on wood). The way I see it, we only had snow once here this year. Yes, there were multiple occasions where snow fell from the sky, but it only built-up on the ground once from around the end of November until the start of January. “Fortunately” for me, this is also when I was stuck at home with my broken toe. As a result, I actually missed a lot of snow-ridden commutes to and from work. I would just sit on my couch with my foot propped up as I stared out into the white. Of course, the few times I had to go to the doctor to have my toe checked, I had to do it in the snow. Waddling through the snow with a destroyed toe was no fun.
But since shortly after New Year’s, the snow has melted away and has not returned. The temperatures are still cold here which has caused the pond out front to freeze again (this second time was great because it froze without any snow cover), but things are definitely improving now. The days are getting noticeably longer. A few months ago, it was dark by 4:30PM. That made the work-day feel really long since I still had 3.5 hours to go in the dark. Now, it’s still light at 6PM which has made the end-of-day sneak up on me a few times. Soon, it will be light until 10:30PM! That’s going to be a super-awesome summer here in Europe!
There is still one fact, though, that gives me pause: My birthday is April 3rd. If Denver got pounded hard enough to close the schools on my birthday, then there are still 4 weeks left where a storm could still clobber us here.
Attention!
I have had a revelation about Tron: Legacy since I saw it last night. This is because I just started reading an eBook on my iPad for Tron: Legacy and was able to reflect on the story at a slower pace without the constant 3D visual distractions. I must rescind many of my previous statements as I now evaluate them from this new perspective. So here’s what’s new: I am now considering Kevin Flynn’s addiction to the computer world. His behavior has had an influence upon the design of the computer world I had not previously considered. Tell me if you agree…
Surely, Kevin Flynn’s first trip into the Computer World back in 1982 was scary as hell. Come on, if that had happened to you, would you not have been electro-crapping your digi-pants? I mean, dodging discs, navigating Light Cycle mazes, and avoiding Tanks and Recognizers aside, I’d be loosing my junk over the mere concept of being in the computer to begin with. I know we all think, “Yeah, being inside the computer would be totally rad!” but that’s when we assume getting back out is easy or even assured. But the very first time it ever happened to the very first person, that person would probably be panicking over whether this would be their experience and reality for the rest of their existence. I know I would.
But then you manage to get out safely and, in the case of the first movie, things are better now. You’ve defeated the evil VP who stole all your video game creations and you’re the head of the largest software company in the world. While perhaps not within the first day, week, or even month after the experience, at some point you start to think: “Hey, I was inside a computer. When I was in there, I could see the structure of the system and interface with programs. The whole world exists within software so it can be shaped and controlled by software. I am a computer programmer who can write software, so I could write a world designed the way I want. I’ll be safe because I can enter the Computer World into a location I choose with parameters I set rather than being sucked into the Game Grid by a homicidal Master Control Program. Yeah, everything will be cool…”
And so you do it. You start with an initialized private computer system and program a world to your designs. You zap yourself into this new Computer World any time you want, do what you want, then come back to the real world with no ill effects. You start to spend more time in the Computer World, constantly improving it, crafting it closer and closer to your ideals. After a while, you start to prefer the reality of the Computer World over the real world. Is this what Kevin Flynn did?
I’m thinking now to the scene in the movie where Flynn is attempting to repair Quorra’s program (her arm having been cut off in the previous fight). We did not see lines of code but rather geometric networks and digital DNA. I originally dismissed this scene in my head assuming that these pretty graphics were in the movie just because they looked cool and seemed “really technical” to most viewers. I figured that trying to repair anyone’s program would have required browsing through lines of code. But I am now thinking that this new Computer World is so computationally advanced that programs are simply constructed of these networks and can be extremely dense and complex. After all, if the computer can digitize the physical human and re-image them within a computer simulation, this computer must be capable of running neural network programs as complex as those in the human brain. If a human is defined by chemical DNA, a computer object could be defined by digital DNA. Is that what Flynn did when designing this new Computer World?
If this is the case, then all the physical attributes of the new Computer World make sense. Flynn saw the first world and experienced the unrealistic properties there, and made sure to account for them in his new system. Therefore, when he goes into the system, he feels like he’s in a better world than he was previously (the real world). This also provides a reason for why there is a replica of Flynn’s Arcade in the Computer World.
If I continue thinking along these lines, then I understand why Programs have their own personalities…why they could choose to change sides and rebel against their creators. This Computer World is as much an exact simulation of the real world as Kevin Flynn could achieve where Programs exist in Man’s image. They possess the same weaknesses and flaws. Maybe more. If a User can go bad, so can a Program.
The concepts of the ISOs now become a little more plausible and interesting. If this digital DNA is what constitutes a program in this new world, then a random clump of errant or otherwise bizarre DNA could create a new program of its own. Flynn seems to be suggesting that these new programs are new consciousnesses. An ISO is a mind born of the computer, a consciousness as real as Flynn’s when he’s digitized into the Computer World. That would be pretty wild, finding a colony of living minds within your computer rather than the programs you’ve grown to expect. It seems this is what happened for Flynn.
So it really is a miracle, as Flynn kept saying throughout the movie, that Quorra is seen riding on the back of Sam’s motorcycle at the end of the movie. Her’s is a mind born in an electronic box that is so complex and developed that it can actually be translated into a physical human form. Clu’s killing of all the ISOs is much more of a horror now as these weren’t just programs being deleted to free up hard disk space. They were unique minds being executed.
So this does really change everything. Clu and all his baddies really do pose a threat to humanity so our protagonists’ struggles in this movie seem more noble now. But this also changes some other things:
See, it’s the concept of addiction that brings this all together for me: The Computer World is the way it is because Kevin Flynn is obsessed.
What do you all think of where I’m going with this one? Possible or am I way off target?
By the way, here’s a link to the old discussion I wrote.
Word association: Fireworks
If you’re American, like me, the first thing that probably pops into your head is some sort of imagery or activity relating to Independence Day–the Fourth of July. Summer heat, poolside barbecues, and school is out. Time to celebrate with fireworks. Little ones on the front driveway, bigger ones in the street. And massive displays put on by the city. There is no escaping fireworks on the 4th–someone nearby will have them, and they’ll likely start setting them off at dusk (not counting all the mandatory “test firings” occurring sporadically the days before).
If you’re from certain parts of America, like me, then you may also be feeling a tinge of sadness or disappointment at those words since there were ordnances in your area limiting the size, scope, and spectacularity of fireworks you can have for your own amusement. Sometimes the reasons made sense: the city was in a wooded or mountainous area prone to going up in flames with even the slightest of sparks. Sometimes the reason made you shake your head for the poor portrayal of your fellow man and his apparent disinterest in self preservation. Whatever the cause, it meant you knew you were getting gypped at the fireworks stand buying tons of sparklers, fun snaps, and whistling fountains. Whooptie-doo! Yeah, those don’t make you forget nights of bottle rockets, Roman candles, Black Cats, crazier-than-ground-bloom-flowers-which-bounce-all-over-the-place-which-I-don’t-know-the-name-of… Imported stuff. That could be fireworks driven down from the Colorado/Wyoming border (they had fireworks stands set up right at the border because Wyonming’s fireworks rules were lax). It could also mean fireworks from a source completely unknown to me–don’t ask, don’t tell. Just enjoy.
But what if you live in a country other than America? In your home country, it’s unlikely that you care to celebrate America’s Day of Independence with such gusto. Thus, no fireworks on July 4th. So what do you think of when you think of “fireworks”? What is the association?
Judging from the sound outside at this moment (6PM local time on December 31, 2010), I’m thinking its quite possible that, for Berliners, the mention of feuerwerk immediately conjures images of New Year’s Eve. During my 4.5 months here, this is the first time I’ve witnessed German’s really ‘werk it up. There have been other random occurrences of fireworks during that time, but they seemed centralized to a specific location–maybe a football game or an outdoor concert. Today, the fireworks are completely decentralized–the sound just comes from everywhere. Many are far away but some are surprisingly close. And should I be surprised? After all, I did see some of the most gigantic bottle-rockets-on-German-steroids begin sold at the ALDI a few days ago. Like, big enough that a cop would probably pull a gun on you in LA. These things go up, and they go bang. Actually, due to their immensity, they have more of a “boom” than a “bang.” If a small firecracker or even a gun goes “bang,” this is more like the sound of a frickin’ mortar. Deep and punchy. These volks are going for it just like Americans on the 4th…but these people are doing it in the cold! The effect is that of a city under siege. Wooo-hooo!
Happy New Year!
Zeug happens to be one of my favorite German words thus far, because of its meaning and because of how it sounds. “Tsoigk!” It means “stuff”, “thing”, or “equipment”. And check this out:
Feuerzeug = Feuer + Zeug = “fire” + “thing” = lighter. As in a cigarette lighter. Or how about:
Werkzeug = werk + Zeug = “work” + “stuff/things” = tools. Yesssss.
Can you guess: Flugzeug?
flug + Zeug = “fly” + “thing” = airplane.
But see? English is guilty of compound words of its own–like “air” + “plane”. Yet these zeug words never stop being fun.
Luftkissenfahrzeug = Luft + Kissen + fahr + Zeug = “air” + “pillow” + “drive” + “thing” = hovercraft.
It is therefore with a wee tear in me eye, that I say farewell to my first apartment in Berlin: the tiny room at Zeughof Strasse. Yes, I’ve been in my new place on Legiendamm for nearly 6 weeks now. But this is just another example of things that take longer in Germany than they do back home. I accepted the new place on Legiendamm in mid-November to ensure that, no matter what, I’d have a good “overlap” at both places to allow a non-stressed move. I was pressing my luck when I asked if I could move out of the Zeughof apartment by end of November since I already “knew” the required notice was 30 days. But I figured it was worth the try. Since that failed, I had 30 days to move out–lots of time. What I didn’t realize is that I had 45 days because they only do 30-day notice or end of the month, whichever is longer. See? Because the 30-day mark from mid-November was mid-December, I had to hold on to the place until the end of December.
It was good, I guess, since my foot was still hurting a couple weeks ago, that I ended up having the full 45 days. This morning, I took out the last bags of trash, vacuumed, and cleaned the bathroom before meeting the hausmeister. I turned over the keys, grabbed a last bag of belongings, and headed out. I will miss the place for the fact that it was very close to work. A 15-minute walk door-to-door. As it turns out, I never had to try that walk in the snow since I was already living at the new apartment by the time it snowed (I’d even purchased all the big furniture from IKEA by that time). By moving before the snow and having enough time to let my foot heal before finishing up, I guess the timing of everything couldn’t have been better.
That’s one more major chore checked off the list. It’s nice to see that the “done” column is longer than the “to do” on that list.
To all of my friends and family all over the world: I send you much love and gratitude from Berlin on this Christmas Day!
And now that I have decent bandwidth, I can share the following video with you. I saw this strange phenomenon occurring on the pond outside one morning. As you’ll see, there appear to be white ghostly formations moving across the surface of the pond. While I’m not 100% sure, I believe what is occurring is that a slight gust of wind would come along and freeze a very thin layer of water on the surface of the pond. According to the weather report at the time, it was 0?C at the time and you can see that there are still many frozen section remaining on the pond. If the water was right on the threshold between liquid and frozen, it would explain what’s going on here. When you watch this, be patient as the first sweep of freezing doesn’t occur for about 20 seconds. At one point, I will zoom in to an area where frozen water meets liquid water. There is a bizarre motion occurring there that sort of looks like white fire. Very cool!
GhostPool-H.264 300Kbps Streaming
I have also uploaded a higher quality 640×480 version in .m4v format for iPod/iPhone which can be found by clicking here.
As promised, I have posted pictures of my new apartment–this time it’s furnished. I have added the pics to the existing gallery. You can jump to the page by clicking here. Some things to note:
I still want to do some more things in here. For starters, I want to get a few rugs since, in a couple locations, there are some stains on the carpet. Would be nice to cover those up. Also, even though I appreciate having blinds and curtains here, they are pretty horrible colors and patterns. They’re functional for now, but soon they’ll have to be replaced with something that is more complimentary. I also need to do something about these bare walls. Pictures? Sound-absorbing materials? We’ll see…
How did people live before the Internet? It’s a weird question to ask because, until the Internet was invented and deployed, I was one of those people living an Internet-less life. The whole world was Net-less. Sure, I ran a BBS when I was still a teenager, a sort of isolated website where the user actually had to call in via a phone modem. Had nifty ASCII graphics, online games, and even FIDO mail (an early form of e-mail). But it didn’t touch what the Internet can provide today.
Ever since I arrived in Berlin in mid-August, I’ve been somewhat thrown back into the Internet “Stone Age.” Native Instruments has excellent high-speed Internet which I’ve used at the office, but this same service was not available at my apartment. To hold me over, I had to use the comparatively-slow Internet capabilities of my iPhone or use a USB Wireless Internet adapter from Vodofone. The Internet access with my iPhone is covered in the contract price but I needed to pay for the Vodafone service any time I used it. The pricing was something like this:
As a result, I purchased many 1-week packages at 12,49€ a pop, but the service was too slow to allow Skype chats or decent video streaming, and the download limit put the kibosh on downloading any US TV episodes. In total, I’ve paid Vodafone 89€ and $95 for slow-as-hell Internet access over the last four months–we’ll over $200.
My slow-Internet-woes are over now, though, thanks to the arrival of Kabel Deutschland and their installation of my cable Internet service. I appear to be getting 32M/Bit speeds and the service costs 19,95€ per month. I get 10 months of kick-ass broadband access for the same price I paid to Vodafone in the last 4 months. Jeebus.
This is great news because it means I can now stream data. This is essential for voice and video VoIP calls (aka Skype and iChat) back to the States. This came just in time for Christmas and I know I’ll be talking to a bunch of people that way this coming weekend. I can also download all the episodes of The Big Bang Theory that I’ve missed (I’d been trying to do this at work but I often forgot). Software updates are now easy to obtain and I can also connect all my other gear to the Internet now (the Apple TV, the Wii, as well as my iPad).
Speaking of the iPad, I’m very excited to finally be able to use this thing as a Web-enabled device. It’s been fun as a standalone thingy, but I expect the experience to be much more satisfying when I can actually use Safari for browsing, connect to my Mail accounts, and perform my banking all on the nice large touch-screen. Maybe I can even join some multiplayer TRON games with the new TRON: Legacy iPad app!
I would say that proper Internet access has been the final piece to fall into place. With the exception of a car, I have now re-established myself in Berlin with the equivalent of what I had in the States. An apartment, furniture, phone, job, etc. The 4 months it took was much longer than I’d anticipated, but it feels good to be successful nonetheless.
After nearly two weeks of being stuck at home, I’ve finally been given a clean bill of health and can return to work starting on Monday. The doctor says that it will probably still be a few more weeks before my toe is in tip-top shape again, but it’s at least healed to a point where I no longer need any follow-up appointments and the tape on my foot has been removed.
I’m quite happy about the de-taping of my foot since one of the consequences of having a taped foot was that I could not get it wet. Doing so would have ruined the adhesive on the tape and it would have all fallen apart. This limitation made bathing a lot more complicated the last weeks and provided me with an opportunity to use some bathroom features that I normally would have not.
The first attempt at bathing was performed by taking a bath–in the tub. Until moving to this new apartment, this was not an option. The old apartment simply had a shower stall that was nothing more than a section of the bathroom floor set down about half an inch from the rest of the floor. Combined with a floor drain and a shower curtain, it created a stall that was quite easy to get in and out of. Now, with a full tub, I’m having to step in and out and, surprisingly, I have to step up to get in and down to get out. I nearly fell over the first time I tried this since I expected the bathroom floor to be closer to my foot than it was. Nevertheless, the bathtub itself works great–the drain seems to seal properly and the water stayed warm for a satisfying amount of time.
There is a ledge at the foot of the bathtub and that’s where my left foot went while I tried to have my bath. This ledge is also where my foot went when attempting showers. By propping my foot up on this ledge, it kept water from running down my leg and soaking the tape. Another thing that helped was another European bath-tool: the hand-held shower nozzle. The old apartment had one of these, but it also had a wall mount so I was able to set it up at the top and use it like a “regular” American shower. In my current condition, though, it was actually helpful to use the hand-nozzle to direct water away from my foot. However, the water pressure sucks. I don’t know if that’s because I’m on a higher floor or if the pipes are sort of clogged, but the shower trickles more than it sprays, and the temperature can vary from cold to skin-peeling-hot within a second. Gotta be careful.
I’m very much looking forward to my shower tomorrow when I can do it normally: on two feet under the big shower head. Though I have them available, I’m not a fan of the bath or the hand-held shower–I know that now. I’m also looking forward to getting out of this place! In the last two weeks, I’ve only ventured out for two doctor’s appointments, a few trips to the corner grocery store, and a taxi ride to and from the old apartment so I could pick up my dirty laundry. Staying off the foot was required, I guess, but I’m now actually looking forward to getting out in the snow!
If all goes well, I hope to pick up a few rugs for this place this weekend. This place is carpeted, but it’s been used and there are some dirty areas that would be nice to cover up. I think the rugs will also add to the whole look of the place–then I’ll just need something for the blank areas on my walls. The exciting news, though, is that I will be getting proper Internet installed here on Monday which will bring me back into the online world. This means I’ll be able to upload the pictures of this place that I know you’ve all been dying to see. I should also be able to catch up on a few weeks of The Big Bang Theory that I haven’t seen. Gosh, I wonder if I’ll even remember how to use the Internet once it’s available. I’ve been dealing with this epically-slow USB adapter from Vodafone that I think I’ve learned to limp along on the Net, too. It’s time to learn to walk (and run) again!
With my broken toe keeping me home this last week, I decided to try getting some better sound happening in this apartment: I broke out the M-Audio CX5 monitors. In visualizing the setup of my new apartment, I figured I would be putting the studio in the corner farthest from the couch. There’s a lot of space there and the speakers would be able to fire out into the room instead of reflecting off walls to my sides. Since I’d managed to get the big desk setup before injuring myself, I placed the speakers on there, connected them to a little Behringer mixer, and hooked up my iPhone to hear the results.
Crap.
Actually, I’m not sure if “crap” is an appropriate term here. How about “Holy crap this sounds terrible!” That’s more of what I was thinking. For a musician living in an apartment, this place is sort of a blessing and a curse, and it’s all due to the pure concrete walls, floor, and ceiling surrounding me.
The good: Being that the walls are concrete, it’s very hard for sound to leak through the walls and annoy my neighbors. And I’m not just talking about treble frequencies, but bass frequencies as well. Bass is often the hardest thing to control in an apartment building. The bass can pass through the walls, run along floor joists, and end up in many apartments even at quiet volumes. This usually puts the nix on any sort of quality home entertainment center (5-channel surround with subwoofer) and definitely puts the kibosh on a music studio.
The bad: Being that the walls are concrete, it’s very hard for the sound to leak through the walls and annoy my neighbors, thus the sound is reflected back into my room where it creates massive reverberations with a surprisingly long decay time. When any sort of bass frequency is released in this room, it bounces around all over the place at a specific pitch–it sounds like my head is inside of a bass drum shell. The built-up frequencies are so strong, in fact, that I cannot hear the pitch of the bass that’s coming out of my speakers. It’s completely gone. Without a doubt, this is the absolute worst place I’ve ever tried setting up a pair of monitors.
Something must be done about these reverberations or I’ll need to buy an amazing set of headphones. Normally, a person would resort to mounting acoustic foam on the walls to minimize the reflections. Indeed, this will help a bit in my case, but it will only dampen the high-frequency reverberations (which are definitely bad in here). But the foam won’t do squat for the bass frequencies. Because the bass frequencies are so long and so strong, they’re the hardest to control. To wrestle them into submission usually requires serious physical reworking of the room including finely-tuned bass traps (aka huge hollow boxes) positioned in key, but not necessarily convenient, locations throughout the room.
I obviously want to avoid installing bass traps in my living room, so I’ve had another idea: The Auralex MAX-Wall. This is a system of broadband absorption panels that can be set up on stands to create a temporary sound booth. There is a system that would create 4 walls 5 feet high and 4 feet wide each that could then be arranged to separate my studio workspace from the rest of the living room. If I also put foam padding on the walls in that corner of the room, I may be able to create a fairly dead sound-pocket within the living room where I can work. The MAX-Wall would attenuate some bass on its way out into the living room and it would attenuate the reverb from the living room that may try passing back through the wall again. Double-attenuation of bass coupled with massive high-frequency damping may solve the problem.
Admittedly, this solution would not be particularly sexy. This living room is nice right now because it feels so open. Setting up this wall will shrink the size of the room quite a bit. And, unless I missed something on their website, Auralex doesn’t make this MAX-Wall in light colors. They only seem to have dark colors like charcoal gray, deep purple, or burgundy which would really make the room seem smaller.
So it seems I’m stuck between concrete and a MAX-Wall. What should I do here? Should I not even try this and basically give up on having a proper studio at my place? Sure, I can still work on headphones but, as any sound engineer will tell you, achieving a great mix is really hard to do on headphones due to a loss of certain psycho-acoustic characteristics inherent with speakers in a room. Relative volumes get harder to judge, the stereo field gets exaggerated, and even bass pitches can be transposed.
If I do go this wall route, it won’t be cheap, so I welcome any suggestions from anyone who may be reading this. What do you do when you’re stuck inside a concrete room?
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