Last weekend I baked a very tasty cake called "Donauwellen" (Donau waves). While I forgot to take a picture, I created a process diagram showing the necessary steps to reproduce the result (in German):




You can find the full recipe here (also in German).

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Today I just wish you all a happy new year! May all of your dreams, wishes, and hopes come true.

And yes, I promise again, that the things I promised in some of the last blog entries might be come true next year.

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Together with my family and good friends, I spent this year's summer holidays in Sweden. Somewhere here.


Our house.


Our boat.


Our rainbow?


A lake.



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So, time is up. I've waited long enough for Apple's iPhone. While it seems to be a nice technical goody, the price is way to high. While the Telekom was not mentioning any details, O2, the british carrier, introduced a pricing similar to the AT&T model. Thus, the lowest rate will be about 50 euro a month. Combining 400 euro for the phone and twenty-four times 50 bucks, the iPhone will cost at least 1600 euro during the two years plan. A bit too high, if you ask me.

However, my good old SE K700i died right away some weeks ago. As a replacement, I'm happy with a SE K810i. The phone is capable of doing almost everything interesting the iPhone can do. It plays music. Okay, without Coverflow. It plays videos. Okay, at a bit lower resolution. It shows Google Maps (anyway, already my K700i did that). Well, it's not playing YouTube content. Otherwise, it has (1) extendible memory, (2) no SIM-lock, (3) Java-Application support, (4) an RDS radio, (5) a lower weight, and (6) a way better camera. That's how I came to the title:


A Christian spider in the wood.

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Yesterday I had to visit a photographer to take a picture of me to update my identity card. Until now, I always avoided getting new documents, because the rules for the photos have been changed since 2005. I decided to get the new "digital recognizable style", because this one is required for the passport (so maybe I could reuse the picture some years later). Interestingly, besides technical sound pictures, regarding sharpness, contrast, lighting, background, and print quality, also the person in front of the camera has to fulfill some requirements. In particular, you have to

1. Look with a neutral face into the camera (without open mouth and any non-aligned angle of your head)
2. Look straight into the camera (no closed eyes, no hair in front of your face, don't squint)
3. The eyes have to be visible (e.g. no dark glasses, shadows, etc.)
4. You're not allowed to wear anything on your head (except for religious wear)

Afterwards, the photographer has to crop your picture to show almost only your face (e.g. hair cut of). My photographer told me that he once had to take pictures of a man with a rounded face and jug ears. Unfortunately, the tailored software software he was using (certified of course), told him to crop his ears!

As a result, a computer system might have the change of detecting your identity with a failure rate of about 3/10. For any other kind of resource (e.g. official, policeman), it might be a bit harder. However, since my photo is now officially registered, I can freely provide it to the remaining people as well:



I already ran an edge detection filter, giving you the information required to recognize me. Have a nice day!

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