Lichthof

Uni Zurich 2008-02-29

Psychology And Buddhism

Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being
by
Paul Ekman, Richard J. Davidson, Matthieu Ricard, B. Alan Wallace

BTW, Paul Ekman is the authority in interpreting facial expressions and author of the very interesting and practical book Emotions Revealed and Matthieu Ricard wrote the wonderful book Happiness.

Dreamjob

Mein Traumjob

Seem's to have a microwave, but I am not so sure about internet:). And I am not sure this will last for much longer.

Deepest Niedersachsen (north of Germany) in the year 2006. Gatekeeper Laumann.

If you ask me, this is located here on google maps (just a small excercise on local history and geography:). Btw, in the video they show the Bauerwiese, the dead alley they talk about is in the opposite direction... Sorry:o).

"... and otherwise, there is not much more, except this post, and this house and the two families over there."

"A car hasn't come by all day. Horse I also haven't seen yet today."

"So, today is Tuesday, Tuesday we have to test signal tools, let's start with the signal horn - OIIIINK!" "And?" "Signal horn is all right."

In moments like these, it's experience that counts.

Also, funny comments in German here.

Thanks to Christoph.

Cognitive Surplus

Below are two links about what Clay Shirky has to say that made me remember a chat (I mean a real chat, like Internet Relay Chat aka IRC:) with a pal named "Empe" more than 10 years ago. Back then we were playing Quake online, chilled out and organized the next couple of games in chat rooms, and observed the whole scene and how web pages got created all around it (I remember for Capture the Flag it was made obligatory to study a certain web page with all the strategic positions for the standard maps that were played. As there were a few young kids who didn't speak English, one guy took the effort to translate the page into German.) So basically Empe said, people are bypassing the whole media and commercial system by entertaining each other and they are not even spending much while doing so.

Anyway, Clay Shirky's point is how much time is spent watching TV compared to the time that was needed to create something like Wikipedia. Furthermore he compares TV (before the emergence of the Internet) to the time when the industrial revolution started and the cities for the first time became really big and crowded and people were basically killing the time drinking Gin and before society started to create all kinds of new institutional forms to organise and make use of all the people stuck in one place.

Cognitive Surplus
Cognitive Surplus Part II (contains a video)

Pointer is from The Big Picture.

Malcom Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink and The Tipping Point) on video about hiring.

Pointer is from The Big Picture.

Bach Cello

BACH Prelude for Cello PaulTortelier MasterClass&Performance


Pierre Fournier plays Bach

Rostropovich plays the Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1

Beethoven Parody

This is so funny, haha:

Dudley Moore Beethoven Sonata Parody

A Painting Elephant

and an elephant painting

This is just amazing! Watch till the end...

Elephant Paints Self Portrait



Click on both pictures below if you want ot see the full size of Mwana from the Magdeburg Zoo.

Swisstrains.ch

Die spinnen, die Schweizer!

www.swisstrains.ch

Welcome! For all of you visiting this website: this site is still in ALPHA-phase, we keep on developing. The current view is based on the Swiss traintimetable, and does not yet show the actual GPS-positions of the trains. But, as Swiss trains are almost always on time, most of the time the position is accurate.
In the meantime, please help us solving the buglist by mailing me at robert (at) swisstrains (dot) ch .

23.1.20008 - We're happy to inform you that we will shortly be adding the realtime position of the trains, based on the delay-information on http://prosurf.sbb.ch.

One of the coolest functions is one that is a bit hidden: click on a moving train, and click in the unfolding menu on the button "Follow". This will show you from a bird's eye view via satellite images, the moving train.

My English collegue Bill once told me about his consternation, that all the Swiss people were nerviously looking at their watches on the platform because the train was 2 minutes late when working here and waiting for the train home. No one in London would have been the least surprised.

Thanks to Aldo for the pointer.

Dancing Walrus

Dancing Walrus

Tale Of Two Brains

Comedy by Mark Gungor on how the male brain differs from the female.



Thanks to G.

Paulus

This week I have been twice to a choir. First time ever (of course, only the first session). Would have never thought. Yeah, astonishing how people can change :o).

Practicing Paulus Oratorio from Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.
Here is a really bad sound quality sample from Amazon. Still I get goose bumps listening to it.

Linus On Source Control

Tech Talk: Linus Torvalds on git


In case you want to see the Linux creator - an embodiment of common sense, pragmatism, independent thinking, and good judgement.

The topic is very technical. Source code versioning systems (or however you want to call them SCM/software configuration management systems bla bla).

Few people care about that. But, most software is written in teams. For comparison, imagine a book written by many authors. Everyone can edit everything. You sure would like to have a way to restore and get back previous versions. If something stops making sense, you would want to know who changed what when. You can imagine the whole process has lots of social "dynamics". So the software you use to version computer files has quite some impact on the way people work together and how software is build. Now the funny thing is, in most cases the software used is actually an ancient piece and the world hasn't settled yet on a new system. And also, it is actually a difficult problem to understand and also technically quite challenging to address.

So enter Linus Torwalds, as he had the same basic problem (or pleasure) as every other programmer out there. How to work together with other programmers.

Plane Almost Crashed

A plane almost crashed in Hamburg. See the video.