ByteLabs

Yesterday my MacBook arrived and I have to say I am very happy with it. There is just one big drawback, or let’s better say nuisance I have to get used to, namely the keyboard!

This is how to type the following keys:

• ‘{’ -> ALT+8
• ‘}’ -> ALT+9
• ’|’ -> ALT+7
• ‘[’ -> ALT+5
• ‘]’ -> ALT+6
• ’\’ -> ALT+SHIFT+7
• ’~’ -> ALT+n

If you are having trouble finding a key just try ALT SHIFT ‘some key on your keyboard’. The ‘Enter’ key is also waaaay to small and the control key is at a very position as well. And whatever is the combination for the @ sign on a german standard pc keyboard has the semantics of ‘close this application’ in MacOS X – that results in some funny mistakes ;-)

Oh ja, mein Erster Blog Eintrag. Klingt unspektakulär, nicht? Auch egal, wenn ich es schaffe etwas regelmäßiger zu schreiben, möchte ich was dafür haben! Denn Tagebuch bzw. Blog-Einträge regelmäßig zu schreiben ist eines der wenigsten Dinge die ich kann.
Tja, nicht mehr lange und ich bin in Australien, noch ungefähr 4 Monate...
Ich habe auch schon meine Gastfamilie "bekommen" und morgen setze ich mich an einen Brief. Sie haben einen kleinen Hund und 2 Söhne =D. Harrison (12) und Ken (16), Ken lebt aber nicht mehr daheim. ;)
Ach, ich habe auch ein eigenes Zimmer. Klingt eigentlich alles zu schön um wahr zu sein, mal sehn was daran der Haken ist. ^^ Ich setz mich einfach mal an den Brief, bzw. die E-Mail und mal schaun wer da zurückschreibt. gglg. Ines

A little while ago I posted that I started working on a compiler for the SL language. As the name suggests it is a S*impleL*anguage. First I started out and implemented a complete type checker. Now I have also finished the AST generation phase. It is really neat and the code looks very good as well.

There is also a nice feature where you can dump your symbol table and AST as XML and then analyze various things. Oh well, I far from finished though since the next step, namely code generation is still missing. The only thing I dislike is that I have to generate code for the Intel architecture. I would much rather generate code for a nice RISC architecture but that’s life. Well, I should better catch up on my reading and get away from the computer for today…

“Enforced disappearances were almost unheard of in Pakistan before the start of the US-led war on terror. Now they are a growing phenomenon, spreading beyond terror suspects,” Amnesty researcher Angelika Pathak said.

This quote is from a news article on the BBC website. When I read it, I instantly thought of George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. The clandestine disappearances and abductions remind of BigBrother and the way Orwell portrays how dissidents, insurgents or people only slightly deviating from a given doctrine or party line are subject of enforced disppearances and terror.

Also the use of phrases such as “war on terror” and “promotion of democracy” are a blatant example of Orwellian doublethink.

It is frightening how close the current situation comes to resemble Orwells “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.

Lectures WS 06/07:

• Spezielle Kapitel aus Softwareentwicklung: Functional Programming for Databases
• Formal Semantics of Programming Languages
• Telekooperation
• Grundkurs Französisch 1

Well, looking at the date of my last entry shows me that I have been quite busy. Too busy almost. But instead of the usual bragging about being busy I should talk about more delicate things in life.

Tomorrow night I am leaving to go visit a good friend in Switzerland for a few days. That is surely going to be loads of fun! I have never been to Switzerland before so I am already very excited to go :-) Of course there will be pictures and stories as soon as I am going to be back.

Almost a month ago from now I have returned from a very pleasent year long stay in Britain. Well, among one of the things I was instantly missing the most was the BBC television channels – especially the UKTV History channel. Luckily enough for me, the british broadcasting corporation runs a website which makes many useful things accessible over the internet. Among my favourite are the local radio channels as well as daily news coverages.

...so for all of you interested in the diverse offerings, go visit the BBC website.

A few days ago I returned back home after having been to Edinburgh for 9 months. As usual coming home after such a long time is like going abroad for a long time – you have to adjust or more appropriately re-adjust to your surroundings. But all in all it was good to come back home even though I already started to miss Edinburgh and of course all the friends I made there.

In the last few weeks abroad I had almost no internet connection thus I was not able to put many reports online but this post serves as a summary of events.

Before I left Edinburgh we made on last pub crawl on Rose Street with an after party in our flat. It was really nice and fun even though all the pubs close quite early on a wednesday night.

Before our departure to New York Christina and I made trips in and around London and one of the most exciting and fun things for me was Madam Tussauds. Even though we had to queue for a very long time (almost two hours) we had a great time and made loads of fun pictures.

Last but not least came our trip to New York! We went to visit Clemens who works there as a teacher and to get to see and experience the ‘Big Apple’. It was an exciting but also exhausting trip. We also went to Washington D.C. and to Frostburg to visit Ralf. There are also tons of pictures of this cool trip. We really got to see many things and Clemens who can readily be considered a New Yorker by now also gave us many inside tipps about things which are not written in any tour guide.

On the 16th of May I wrote my last exam for the 05/06 university year. The past 4 to 5 weeks were quite filled up with constant studying but in the end it payed all off and it is a very good feeling to have it all done!

The end of my Edinburgh adventure is also slowly approaching and it is about time to get ready to pack up and leave for good. But who knows, maybe I will be back sooner or later. After all, I have to admit that this year has really been an outstanding one and it was definitely the right decision to come to the University of Edinburgh.

Well, but another adventure already lies ahead – our New York trip! Soon, we – that is Christina and I – will leave from London and visit friends in New York and get to see the ‘Big Apple’. This will surely be very exciting and adventerous and of course there will be some photographic coverage for you to enjoy :-)

Well, this is not a post about a nice and wonderful trip but just something to confirm that I am not dead – just very busy. I have many many exams coming up and plan to make them all and achieve the best possible grade on them – thus all I do right now is study, study, study…. On the 16th of May – juhuu – this situation will drastically improve since that is the day of my last exam :-)

Also make sure to check out the newest layout @ www.fire-graphics.org, it is awesome! Maybe one thing you didn’t know about that page is that it exists for quite a while now, offering graphics, tutorials, layouts etc. for FREE to the web community. Another interesting page is the past layouts page, which gives an overview of the looks and feels of the various fire-graphics layouts.