passed my first exam :)

Yeha!

I just got my mark from my first exam (the mobile graphics course). I have 3.4 out of 6 possible points which means I am positive. Mainly, I am happy that I passed because the exam was quite hard and 2/3 of the students did not pass. But I am not sure if this number is of any value since I don't know if they count the students that did not finish the assignments (they were a precondition to be able to take the exam) or just those who actually did the test. If you look just at the positive students I am still in about in the average.

As usual I am not 100% satisfied, since there are still 2.6 points more to get but I gave my best and learned a lot and that's what really matters :)

Göteborg

Since I am lazy bastard, too foul to write an own report from our awesome weekend in Göteborg I just forward the interested reader to a blog-entry from my Canadian friend Alex and post a few more details in the upcoming days.

Alex's blog can be found here

everyday's extremes

Since both of us have bought a new, warmer sleeping bag last week we decided that we have to test them better sooner than later. So how to do that when both of us have university on the next and we have to get up at 6.30(Annina) and 7.00(me)? So time for sleeping in our tent.
The obivious(but maybe crazy) solution is inspired by a film we have seen at the "Banff mountain film festival" 3 weeks ago: Everyday's extremes. This means grap your sleeping pad, put it on the floor in your room, put your sleeping pad on it, open all windows as wide as possible, feel the cold air coming in and creep into your sleeping bag. Voila, as the French in me says (i am sure there are more misspellings in it than letters - but who cares ;)). The first thing we realized: It was to warm to keep the sleeping bags closed, mine has a comfort temperature up too -10 degree. We had decent mild weather the last days so temperature reached about 15 degrees during the day and no less than 10 degrees during the night. But in a room, even if you open all windows it never get's that cold.
So we opened our zippers at the foot-side and then it was quite comfortable. The only drawback were the karaoke singing, partying neighbours that let me think about big side cutters able to cut even the main electric power cable.

*UPDATE*
For those who haven't registered so far, I updated the link-list and added some awesome flags that indicate the language the blogs are written. I added all the blogs I know so far but if someone is missing, send me a message or post a comment, then I will add him/her.

the joy of hiking again

Since I was quite busy for the whole week I will summarize the last one and a half week briefly.
Last weekend we did another hiking trip - again to Söderasens national park - to enjoy the nice(sunny!) weather and get our rusty body moving. This time Brice(France) and Hermann(Soizbuag) joined us. We had a marvelous time sitting around the fire, drinking some wine and having a nice conversations with a Swedish family while improving our understanding of the Swedish society. The night was again very clear and therefore also very cold, so we where happy to have the fire(and the fire-wood being supported by the local authority - god bless the welfare state ;)). It was also the first time we could test our tent in action and I am still getting more and more enthusiastic about it - every detail is at the right place!
The thing I knew after the first night outside with such temperatures (around 5°C) was that I need a better sleeping bag since I was freezing a bit although I wore my thick fleece-pullover and my hood. The once I have right now is from my father and quite good as long as it's warm enough. The temperature range is comfort 20°C, transitional -5°C and extreme -10°C but no way to use it at such temperatures. Maybe it's because it's already a few years old and the down has lost some of it's warming capabilities, maybe it's because it has been compressed all the time, which is not good for sleeping bags, maybe it's just because it's old.
Anyway, today I bought a new sleeping bag in Malmö which has it's comfort temperature at -9°C and should therefore have some reserves left for real cold nights :). It is a "Marmot Wave 4" and was only 75 euro (special price - seasonal sale). Annina bought also a warm sleeping bag, but a special short one - 1,6m ;).

Since I am not only having party up here but studying at the university I also have exams and the first one was yesterday. It was a quite hard one, but more on that tomorrow.

As usual some photos from our trip last weekend:

hermann to the left

and finally Brice. Most photos are stolen from Brice. If you speak french than you can also check out his side (with a report written in French) here

autumn is definitely here

After talking about the coming autumn for a long time it has finally arrived. There is no way around stating this. The air got colder, the sun is rapidly loosing it's power, (if she is shining) and is not much more than a lukewarm spot on the sky. The heat radiated by the sun can be immediately blown away by a puff(ger: leichter Windstoss), and the cold catches you again. The average temperature during the day is about 10 to 12 degree and during the night temperatures drop down between 5 and 8 degree. Today it is the first day that I woke up as early as Annina (which means 6.30, ahhh!) and I suddenly realised that it is completely dark outside. Now its 7.30 and the sun starts raising slowly, although it is foggy and you can't see that much. Hoarfrost(ger: Raureif) is on the roof of the houses and I am happy that I can stay at home in my room and don't have to go outside. I hope they will turn on the heaters soon since it is getting quite cold in my room. I have an exam on Friday so I will continue learning and sum up the weekend later on. So enjoy the weather at home!

Är det ockso höst i österrike?

update to/for life

hejhej!

Almost 10 days have past by since my last blog entry and it is definitely time for a update! I was kicking-ass in the last week to finish my mobile-game together with Alex (-> Check his site out here). Deadline was this Tuesday at lunch and since we spent quite a while during the last week to work on the project we were able to finish it in time thought - like always - there was a lot of stuff we wanted to implement but had no time for it. I will post a separate blog-entry about our game with some screenshots and the jar-file that you can actually play it. The graphics were not that good compared to the others but still it is quite addicting to play. But no I am coming to other things (which might be more interesting for you...)

As most of you won't know so far I have booked a flight to Dublin in November. My friend(and crazy asskicking lecture-mate too) Brice is coming with me. The booking was a really funny thing. Sometimes if I have time in the evening I read some Swedish online newspaper for the sake of improving my Swedish. One evening I checked out a Swedish newspaper at about 23.45 and instantly my attention was raised by a big Ryanair-special-offer article. I skimmed trough the article and found out that at this day Ryanair had a special offer running till 24h. So 15 minutes left. After that I immediately checked out the the ryanair-webpage to check for the real prices and found out that they fly from Malmö to Dublin or to London for only 20 Euro both ways including taxes. So no opportunity to miss! I just jumped off my chair and ran to the next door were Brice is living, knocked and fortunetly he was still awake.

F: "Wanna come to Dublin with me? Ryanair has a special offer"
B: "äääääh, when???"
F: "what about in the middle of November? "
B: "Hmm, sounds good, how much is the flight"
F: "only 20 Euro"
B: "wow, so let's do this ;)"

So after that about 7 minutes left until 0.00h
booking a flight in 7 minutes is not that easy, especially if you have to enter in all the payment details (for example credit card number - quite long and you have to double check them), addresses and whatever else. But we finally made it until 23.59. YESSS! The flight is at 16. Nov(Th.) until 21. Nov(Tue), so quite a long time for sightseeing and enjoying Guiness, Kilkenny and lot's of other good beer :D. Unfortunately Annina has no time to come with us because she has a big exam the day after we come back. I hope I won't have any important assignments to miss, but since we booked quite early in advance we should be able to prepare things in advance or do them after we are back. At this point I am just hoping for the thoughtfulness of our lecturers.

Before we booked I thought about going to London to visit Marlene and to some other sightseeing but considering the fact that I already was there a few years ago and already planned to go there in the spring or early summer maybe with "le kongelige Wg" and Annina i finally decided that it's just to early and I won't get to Dublin that fast again. Anyway I am looking forward to this, it will just be awesome!

Another good thing is that finally my personal birthday-present has arrived. It is slim and light but still has the curves at it's right place. It is very cosy inside it since it is not to tight but also not too wide. And in contrast to most other things in life it is very stable and also can withstand some storms as they might happen in life. What is it?

Look here to find out!

As I guess, most of you were already expecting, it is an awesome, cute, shiny(!!!) tent by the famous Swedish tent-maker Hilleberg. They produce nothing less but the most outstanding combination of durability, extreme light weight, quality, quality, quality and not to forget to mention: a lot of clever details. AND: only 2.4 kg including tent pegs and the rods.

Check out their webpage, surf to products/tents/nallo to find out more about those cute thing. The more experienced campers may know Hilleberg and it's outstanding reputation and may ask how I can afford such a tent. Normally it costs about 600 Euro (for a fucking tent!!!), but I got this via ebay from a german outdoor-shop who sold the last year-model for only 386 Euro. Lucky me, that Hilleberg has changed some details. You may ask -> 386 Euro for a fucking tent? omg! haha, you are right :D. But anyway, I talked to Aaron and Annina before buying it and we agreed that we will make a lot of cool outdoor stuff during the next years and we definitely need a tent that can withstand even harsh weather conditions (like in Sweden, for example...) and that is 100% reliable and light enough to carry it with us wherever we go. So we ended up buying it together which makes it affordable for each of us. And its so awesome! Thanks so much to Aaron and Annina, love you ;)

I will stop now, otherwise I have no cool other things to tell in the next days (even if there would be many other cool things to tell!) *evil laugh*

Lisl, es war sehr schön

Weil ichs grad im Standard gelesen hab: "Gehrer zieht sich aus Politik zurück". Kommt mir grad vor wie Weihnachten und Ostern zammen, deswegen auch auf Deutsch.

Austrian pubs in Sweden

I had a very cosy and interresting pub-evening with Hermann in an so called "Austrian-Pub". They call it this way because... hmmm... , ähhhh...., hmmm.....I really don't know why it is an Austrian Pub! They have the austrian flag, but you can't order a beer in "österreichisch" and they don't even have austrian beer. No way, they only sell german beers. So I guess it is just a marketing gag, allthough the pub itself is very nice (but the beer is too expensive, as in the rest of Sweden). Tonight I found out, that after 2 months of only lättöl (ligth beer, maximum 3.5%) I am a little bit drunk after 2 "normal" beer :). This sucks, but is a little bit of fun too and of course better for your purse. So anyway, good night and nice dreams too all of you, I have to go to bed now to be fit for classes tomorrow :)