Thursday, November 10, 2011

German Museum of Technology in Berlin

I am currently taking part at the Wissen und Macht symposium in Berlin. While presenting some fact about my university and about the Blog-Intelligence project, I can listen to diverse talks about the power and oppurtunities of the web.
Hereby the main interest is in improving the quality and distribution of knowledge. The message is that universities and online communities shall interact more to build a trustful knowledge base.
One contra point mentioned is that this will make the web more inklusive, so normal people like you and me without an reputation will get problems.

The important point discussed now is the influence through social media and especially through the blogosphere. For example a journalist presents the Egyptian Blogger phenomen.

Check out the homepage and the Tele-Task for more information and streams.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Setting up a new notebook

Hey Guys,
I am just setting up my new notebook. Business as usual, installing the same stuff and configuring it in the same way as before.

I found a nice tutorial for transfering your putty configuration from one pc to another Link to Tutorial.
So you just have to know the right registry key, export it and all your ssh config is back.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Citations of The Day

For the Beginning of this semester my citations of the Day

"Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely." - Hesketh Pearson
"Men who seek happiness are like drunkards who can never find their house but are sure that they have one." - Voltaire
"A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards." - Karl Krauss
"No one on his deathbed ever said, "I wish I had spent more time on my business."" - Arnold Zack

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Trip to Florida

Guys, I just went to Miami for vacations. It was an awesome trip. Let's begin! 


First, we arrived in Miami. So warm, unbelievable compared to the ultra cold AC of the plan.
Directly to the Miami International Hostel, just 500 meters from the beach. And the beach was nice. White, long and lots of ladies around there. We've been a bit unlucky with the weather, so cloudy and some strong rains.
Nevertheless, chilln around the beach promenade can be expensive, but it is worth it. Lots of bars and a quiet busy place.Next, we went north. Titusville, nice motel Daysinn nearby. And there it went to Space, Cap canerval, Kennedy Space Center. Pretty awesome to see the rockets in real life, I can recommend the rocjet garden and the cap tour with the launching pad. A pretty nice simulation of the moon landing and of a apollo launch are definetly a must see. All in all: a filled day.
Next station Orlando with all his Theme Parks. First Sea World, incredible cool animal shows with dolphins and orca whales. Including some awesome roller coaster trips. Next day, next park, Aquatica, an chilled water park with swimming, sun bathing and scary slides. And finally on the last day in Orlando, we visited Universal Studios park. It felt like being in a movie, really nice rides with fire and other stunning effects. Including the Mummy ride and the white shark boat trip. Pretty cool.




Next up to the best beach ever Siesta Key. Rip currents all over, really scary but we managed it. After a swim and a long beach walk we continued to the Everglades national park. Simply impressing nature, all over the place. We made a nice boat trip and the guide explained us everything about all the plant and crocodiles. Next day we made a cool cycle trip through the park and chilled in the evening in the Hard Rock Cafe Miami beach.
And finally we went for a trip to Key West. All in all a nice sleepy pirate village with a quiet good bar mile and an awesome sunset.
So far the sum up of 12 days Florida.
See you in the sun!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Creating a Data centric website

Hey Folks,
I am just starting to create a data-centric webapp. The main goal is to allow the user to discover an huge dataset.
Therefore I am currently searching for diverse libraries. Here some early results:
Post on Highcharts JS
Post on JS Charts
Article on Accessible Data Visualization
Post on Google Chart API

To sum up, Google Charts seems to be the fastest solution, but only enough for a prototype. For an highly interactive and discoverable chart I will dive into Highcharts and js chart.

Stay tuned!



Thursday, April 21, 2011

Apache Nutch and I

Hey Folks,
I just started to working with Apache Nutch during my studies. Seems to be a quiet sophisticated spider/search engine. So it might apply perfectly to the blogIntelligence-project I currently working on. Let's see. Nevertheless, it's an official part of the Search Engine lecture at HPI so I will have to get along with it.
So I decided to make an extra blog on nutch check it out.

http://nutchinprogress.blogspot.com/

Monday, January 3, 2011

How to negotiate with Auto drivers a.k.a. rickshaws a.k.a. tuc tucs?

First of all it's everytime useful to be prepared. So, check with some friend for the usual fares or check on google maps for the correct distance to your location to estimate the meter price (currently 8 INR per km, min 19INR). In addition if you have plenty of time in advance it's quiet useful to learn the local language like Kanada for Bengalore, if you able to speak than you mostly get the correct price (even at night time you will be able to make the best deals).
Nevertheless, don't worry if you have no idea of the destination or language, you still able to make a good deal.
So let's begin, go to the street and wait for a rickshaw, if you now the direction wait on the appropriate site.
Clearly avoid to go to non-police driven rickshaw stands,the rickshaw drivers  there do not act like independent competitors like the drivers you will find on the street. They will act as an overpriced collectiv with nearly no negotiation. Instead you should prefer to stop a rick or go to some police-driven prepaid rickshaw stands like the one at Bricade / MG Road.
Check the frequency of rickshaws to decide whether you can effort to wait for another one. It's always better to plan a bit more time because it's always possible that especially at nighttime it takes time to find a rickshaw or that a rickshaw driver don't understand the correct destination or a driver takes you for a roundtrip.
When the rickshaw driver arrives the best tactic is to say only the location and when the driver confirms directly enter. Usually the driver will automatically start the meter if it's daytime and begin to drive. Otherwise you have to ask for meter, at daytime you should not agree on anything else.
In the case a driver ask you for a certain amount you have to bargain. To know the target of your negotiation it's usefull to know the distance/normal price, otherwise you only possibility is to achieve like 40% of the requested price. So if a driver ask you for 50INR the normal price is hardly around 20INR. But be aware of drivers asking for immense amounts like 400INR this prices are not even applicable for the longest ride you can take in BLR, so go for 100INR. The drivers are using lots of legends around the law and police to get extra charge from you.
Only 3 guys per rick -- There is the legend that rickshaws are only allowed to take 3 people otherwise the police will charge them a fee, this never happens for my time here in India and none of my friends ever experienced this, so do not take it as any argument.
Double meter at nighttime -- The nighttime fare starts at 10pm and is about 50% more, so one and a half meter. Do not believe any other stories they wanna to tell you like double meter or nobody will be there on driving back.
So the golden rule is to stay near your targeted price, stay friendly and keep on arguing. Should the driver not come near to your desired, you should try to find another rickshaw (even the attempt will shrink the price). And don't worry, the next driver will even be easier to negotiate, because he already realized that you do not take any random price.
Although, a rickshaw is going by meter, one has to be aware of faked and very fast meters. So it's quiet useful to know the distance or at least own a feeling about how much is one km that you can check if everything ticks the right way. In addition please watch out for roundtrips, tuc-tucs tend to take longer ways as usual to get more money out of you. So even if you not knowing the way and get some deja vues, just tell the driver to go straight to your destination. (it's worse to risk a bad feeling if he didn't cheat on you).
Any price you aggreed with your driver is fix and no circumstance can change it. Even if the driver did not clearly understand the location and therefore take a roundtrip, you have to clearly refuse to pay more. Same for adds to the meter price such as entered nighttime or 4 people and so on.
In general, you should always stay patient and calm to rickshaw drivers, avoid harsh and loud language and do not make yourself any stress it is not worth it.