Blog | Dominik Mayer – Products, Asia, Productivity

Joachim Müller of Chinesisch Lernen discovered a nice web site about China:

Picture China is a photographic journey through contemporary China. From the teeming metropolises of the east coast to the rural villages of the interior to the lofty Tibetan plateau, New York City based photographer Dan Eckstein traveled 10,000km over the course of eight weeks to document this rapidly changing country. The result is a unique portrait of life in modern China and the issues that its people face.

(Quote: Picture China)

Same (white) T-shirt, different actor. I accidentally put it to the dark laundry resulting in a new, light grey color. Some bleach should do the job.

I’ve been to the Botanical Garden München-Nymphenburg on Wednesday and regret that I haven’t visited it before.

The Shanghai Botanical Garden is definitely on my list of things I have to see there.

I did it again, another experiment. No LEGO this time, today was all about cruising. Driving a BMW 6 Series in a simulator seemed to be fun. It seemed. Instead, I got a chance to gain first-hand experience of how you feel when the motions you see don’t correspond to the ones you sense…. not good. The whole simulation didn’t even feel like driving a real car. The automatic transmission was odd and the steering had a delay.

I actually managed to run over a pedestrian and the fact that I hadn’t noticed it at all didn’t help me answering the question of how I thought the accident could have happened. I chose “I didn’t see the pedestrian.” But I saw the next one I hit… continuing his way.

1. Flight Mechanics I is not Flight Mechanics II. The same applies for the exams.
2. Mechanics exams were longer two years ago.
3. On a late trip to the botanical garden it’s advisable to visit the greenhouses first.
4. If you want someone reluctant to come along, you just need to find the right person for asking.
5. Bavarian politician Gabriele Pauli wants marriage to automatically end after seven years unless it’s been renewed.
6. Coming back from Sweden to Germany is like switching from a monthly to a strip ticket.
7. Pizza in TribüHne is inexpensive and tasty.
8. You better don’t eat anything in China and use tap water only for showering, bottled water for everything else.

The freshmen wrote their mechanics exam this morning, so there’s only information technology left. My last one for the time being is flight mechanics which will start in 50 minutes. Wish me luck.

(It’s time that it ends, my script starts to fall apart.)

The lecture Produktentwicklung und Konstruktion (PuK), product development and construction design) teaches how to generate various ideas for technical products.

How would you close a pitted, almond-filled date? I used, amongst others, excess pressure while the proposed solutions contained throwing it on the ground as well as shooting two balls at it.

Today’s exam was trickier, it was about a highly realistic bicycle trainer which permitted tilting and could simulate inclines.

Because the computer here in Cham is almost seven years old and not the fastest one, I gave Xfce a try. There are still some problems with the panel, especially the task bar which only shows question marks instead of the window titles. So at home, I’ll stick to GNOME but Xfce is really speedy and probably the best desktop environment for this machine.

If the instructions on a T-shirt say “Do Not Tumble dry” then the T-shirt is not supposed to be in the tumble dryer. Not even for ten minutes. I’ll never ever give away my laundry.

It’s a great idea of the Munich city council to organize cultural and ecological events like the Streetlife-Festival while the closure of a main road in combination with unadjusted traffic lights might dampen the fun for those who can’t participate.

I should be in Cham by now as taking pictures for the family album is more important than two exams next week… Anyway, I’ll head for the University Library first, the TribüHne second and finally the State Library. I can still drive home when it closes at midnight. Positive side-effect: There won’t be any trucks on the roads.

Today was the third intermediate exam, Materials Science. There are only two left. Keep up, you’ll make it!

I finally decided to get the books of the New Approaches To Learning Chinese series: Intensive Spoken Chinese, The Most Common Chinese Radicals and Rapid Literacy in Chinese. The reviews are quite promising and the method convinced me. As the books are already sent, I hope they’ll arrive tomorrow.

Lenovo Worldwide Competitive Analyst Matt Kohut published two interesting posts on his blog. He first wants to figure out if and why people would want Linux on a ThinkPad and asks for the prefered distribution in the follow up.

I can’t say I’m unhappy that Ubuntu is leading the field with 47 % of all votes. The chances increase that they will offer a laptop as desired.

According to an article on the German news site Spiegel Online, the Second Legal State Examination is one of the hardest exams worldwide:

Denn das zweite juristische Staatsexamen gilt als eine der schwierigsten Prüfungen der Welt. Gut jeder fünfte Referendar scheitert im ersten Anlauf.

The Second Legal State Examination is reckoned one of the most difficult exams worldwide. Almost every fifth trainee fails at the first attempt.

Every fifth, ok, so 80 percent pass. I think many candidates here would be highly pleased with that quota.