my hands are tight
oh yeaz. this morning my keyboard decided not to responde to me tapping shift or control any longer this means no copy, paste, exclamation or question mark, nor paranthesis, nor curly braces or xml-tags.... hm, it's sure going to be a different blend of xml and java coding today uhuh, and the good news is that i'm having a qwerty keyboard otherwise i would have no digits even. damn, it looks like it is the lower region of the keyboard malfunctioning, i can't wait for the [space] todieonme,aaargh... well, it's once again time for compaq to show the value of their carepaq support contract. who's into gambling [question-mark] will they be here tomorrow morning [question-mark] in any case, untill their engineer shows up i'll grmblprt some more... # Posted by mpo at 12:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Spring

Yeah!

The weekend didn't only change our clock in preparation of the new season it also brought us a very nice preview of the weather to be (at least we hope)

It gave us the opportunity to fire up the mexican fire-pot: one of my true pleasures, just sitting next to the missus and staring into the flames, then looking up to moon and stars, tallking a bit, cuddle up and throw some more wood in. Ah, the simplicity of happiness.

Just to remind us that medals have other sides too... Nice weather also leads to girls bicycling around, which can cause arm injury which needs a plaster dress-up at the doctors'. Oh well...

# Posted by mpo at 11:12 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Outerthought.

Strongest memory of our last trip, dated on the very first day (28 Jan).

I buckle up little Tuur in the airplane, ready for our first flight. It's a smaller plain for the relatively short flight into Munich; from there we'll catch the long haul to Capetown. Little Tuur is quite excited, stretching himself to get a glimpse of a wingtip through the small window. He's quite sure INSIDE one of those planes he has seen flying over the house: tiny white arrows in the blue sky trailed by a long white line. The question pop's up very naturaly:
    "Daddy, are they now going to shrink us?"
There is no fear, just scientific interest and honest expectations. Probably the only satisfying explanation I could give just pops up out of nowhere:
    "Nope, when you are inside the plane, then it's the rest of the world they shrink. As soon as we fly you'll see."

Perception is reality.

Having kids is utterly great. Although you never quite 'get' them.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love, but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies, but not their souls. For their souls dwell in the house of to-morrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness. For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
--Kahlil Gibran

# Posted by mpo at 12:36 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Poll

The short selection of pics from the holiday is out there. (warning: still 12MB)

*UPDATE*: also now in online browsing format and up to the original quality resolution.

You can either react by letting me know which one(s) you (dis)like most, either with funny subtitles, or just if you'ld like to know what you are actually looking at. (Nature Spotting Quiz: Who finds the cheetah and the buffalo?)

# Posted by mpo at 06:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Background Switch

I've just switched my laptop-desktop-background to a larger version of these ostriches... Probably not the most beautiful shot of our travel, but I like how the color palette matches the one of our company-skin :-)

In any case it allows me to step onto the mental background of my thinking and the fresh ideas some the holiday reading has been bringing me. Compared to online-snippets it was quite refreshing to be holding a vaste amount of paper and ink again.

I started off reading The end of the Affair by Graham Greene and enjoyed it very much. (Oddly enough, while we mostly share our taste for fiction and novells, my wife couldn't even finish this one. She disliked the 'Maurice' charachter too much and could not relate to his line of thinking and behaviour in any way) I kinda started with a quite sceptical looking out for what she disliked soo much, but was soon captured by the intense philisophical questions that were raised. Looking out for the fundamentals of the feeling we call love. Is it (only to be) measured by Jealousy? Does it need to be reciprocal and expressed? (re-)Assuring? Or is it on the same basis as religion and thus more a solid conviction that grows into a Believe? I didn't feel like the book was giving answers, but I mostly enjoyed playing around with the questions :-)

And then I let Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig ride through... One of those books I 've listed down as must read a long time ago without any special reason: Maybe just the catchy title? I don't remember anyone raving about it. Equally I have no idea why I didn't buy and read it earlier then. In any case (and I'm getting pretentious maybe) I've mostly found a well argumented base, a deeper insight and some nomenclature for what I mostly recognized as my own thoughts over the value-hunt in life.

Fun to see that the book I preserved for my return to home: Understanding Computers and Cognition by Winograd and Flores just starts off with a *moderate* valuation of the rationalistic tradition (yeah, the Church of Reason). Have to do some more reading still to know if it actually comes to its own promise of providing a new fundation for computer design...

# Posted by mpo at 02:19 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Back

We're back from our stolen (it still feels like that) long holiday to .za since last thursday and I'm still figuring out how to behave as an economically active being :-)

The trip has been a lot more 'disconnected' then I guessed before leaving: having an internet connection was most of the time just a luxury we could better do without. Also our mobile kind of traveling (we were mostly only 2 nights at the same place, with a max of 5 in the mother city) in combination with our flexible travel-plans (we mostly didn't make reservations further away then the next day, ready to react on tips from fellow guests in the backpacker accomodation) made the cellphone a more logical tool then stopovers in internet-cafe's.

So now that I didn't make regular travel notes over here I think it makes more sense to just drop some random memories as they pop up by some weird association connection in my head... Being back, the first association is about this sign up at BMC.

In the Central Drakensberg we hiked up from Monk's Cowl to Blind Man's Corner. The view from up there is it's own reward. Achieiving it with our Tuur (3y) and Fien (5y) who didn't even complain one bit during the 9 hours gave it some special ring. They were practicaly welcomed as heroes by the other hikers/guests upon arrival back in the inkosana lodge (the best accomodation we had)

# Posted by mpo at 05:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)