Tag Archives: english

CouchSurfing

A little CS break

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As always, after attending a CS invasion, I needed a break of Couchsurfing in the last weeks. Especially after the marathon we had completed during September and October, going to Salzburg, Augsburg and Graz, Georg and I were not at all motivated for hosting anybody for some weeks.

The end to that break came with Armi and Andre, who sent Georg a really nice request (also including my name, and some of our hobbies). The last years, they lived in Christchurch, New Zealand – does the name ring a bell? Christchurch has seen about a dozen earth quakes since February, at least one per month. I don’t know if that was the only reason for them, but in the end, Armi and Andre decided to leave New Zealand for good and try their luck in Europe. They will be looking for jobs and a place to stay in Berlin pretty soon, so if anybody of you knows something, let me know 🙂

Other

My new toy

Reading Time: < 1 minute

The kindle arrived 2 days after I ordered it. And I’m so happy with it, it’s unbelieveable 🙂

I can put the task description for the weekly exercises on it, all the slides from our lectures and even the script they gave us for Technical Basics for IT. The only thing with Text-PDFs is that the zoom is not designed for such. It’s very good with the slides, as they usually cover one whole page, and are well readable, but the longer texts (as scripts) I have to convert to a kindle-able format, which destroys all the previous formatting. It looks a bit better when the screen is turned by 90°, though.

And of course, I can download books just like that from the kindle store, because I did not care about 50 Euros more and bought the kindle 3G. So when I finally remembered that I wanted to read “A Dance with Dragons”, I just opened the kindle store, looked it up (keyboard FTW!) and bought it. One minute later, I could start reading.

That was last Wednesday evening. I finished yesterday.

This might be one of the reasons I’ve been so lazy during the last weeks 😉

Work / University

Programming basics

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I did not do much programming before I decided to study IT. Still, I understand the basic rules of it, e.g. that in Java you always have to conclude a line with a ” ; “, or that you should make sure that there is some case that ends your loop before you test it. Anyways, I am one of the bloody newbies considering programming in the mass that is my fellow students (we’re about 690 – only counting those who START studying IT this autumn). So I decided to take part in an optional tutorial group for programming. First meeting was yesterday.

After 30 minutes, I was close to leaving, as I was not sure at all how I should solve the task. Today there will be a tutorial on Java basics, so I thought it might be better if I did that tutorial before cracking my head by trying to solve this exercise. But in the end, I got a working program. Not on my own, but that’s okay. I cooperated with another student who was struggling hard, too. And the tutor was ok with it, he only pointed out that the University would use a plagiarism-scanner on our submissions, so in any case we would have to re-write the code and make some changes.

This was the exercise:
Write a program that can scan a textfile containing an ASCII-picture. The program should finish after the last line and then state the lenght and broadth of the picture, length being the number of lines, broadth the number of symbols per line. If one line was too short, the program should stop and state “INPUT MISMATCH”.

Stating length and number of signs of something you put into the prompt was by far the easiest part. Boy, it took us some time to get the program to read the file.

But, step by step, we worked our way through the problems we encountered, and finally, after about 1.5 hrs, the program was finished 🙂

So the only thing I now have to do is get moving and make some changes to the code.

Yay!

Other

Whew!

Reading Time: < 1 minute

In between lectures at University, doing homework (!) and finally reading the book I’ve been waiting for for 3 4 weeks, I just did not manage to write as much as I did before I started studying. The whole picture of students in Austria is wrong, I knew that before. If you really want to get something done during your time at University, if you really want to be done with your Bachelor’s degree within 3 years and a bit, there’s not much time for doing nothing or going somewhere, for spending a weekend off or something like that. Lectures alone are 25 hours per week, plus 6 hours of tutorial groups plus some more hours of learning and preparing exercises for the tutorial groups.

The time left by this schedule, I spend (I guess, for the next 3 days) by reading “A Dance with Dragons”. I only bought it last Thursday, but I already got to 80 % (kindle doesn’t show the amount of pages). The book is great, as I expected, and the stories go on – some as thought, some changing to a totally different direction.

Just wanted to let you know that everything’s okay – there is just not enough time to write 😉

CouchSurfing

Sturm Graz

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Sturm Graz is a CS meeting to find new friends; to get to know the city of Graz; to find out about culinary specials in the surroundings; and of course to have a great time!

Well, okay, it sounds like your typical CS meeting. But CS is all about cultural exchange and making friendships all over the world, so why not in Graz?

Sturm Graz, as Sounds of Salzburg, was inspired by Vienna Calling. In October 2010, Kersy, Thomas and Tom and some 100 couchsurfers met up to have pub crawls, pick nicks, city tours and a great night out at a Buschenschank in the outskirts of the city.

The program for Sturm Graz 2011 has been announced only in early September, and it looks great. Unfortunately, I will have to make some decisions, like: do I prefer chocolate over a guided tour through Graz’s underground? Will I do a City Rallye, or a City Walk? And – most of all – what the hell should be my late-birthday-and-thanks-for-hosting-us-present for Kerstin?

I am dearly looking forward to this 🙂

Work / University

Propädeutikum Recap

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In the last days, we had 2 units Maths, 2 units Algorithm Introduction, 2 units General Introductions and 2 units of Introduction into Programming. Each has a “?” in its title, to show that the units should prepare us to what is coming forth during the next weeks and months. Whew.

Yesterday, I not only bought the script for the Maths units (again, the whole thing is NOT compulsory!), but also had a look into the exercises given. As the Propädeutikum was shortened by 50 % from last year to now, the script contains more information than the actual lectures. And that’s good. Because if the script contained only what the professor told us so far and will tell us during the next days, there would be a lot I would have to search for in my Maths stuff from school. And those documents are well hidden in some dark corner of my cellar back home in Tirol, if they still exist.

I will have to repeat Maths. A lot.

That’s one thing I learned during those days. Another thing: professors are at least as geeky and nerdy as their students. During these introductionary lessons, there’s been a lot of jokes on viral videos (double rainbow!), BBT, Futurama and the even The Hitchhiker’s Guide.

I like these people.

Other

Eierlegende Wollmilchsau

Reading Time: < 1 minute

This is one point where the english language is short a word compared to German. “Eierlegende Wollmilchsau” is fantasy animal that is able to produce eggs, wool, milk and ham. The english translation for it is “swiss army knife”. It’s a bit poor, in my opinion.

But that’s not what I wanted to say.

What I wanted to say is that there is a solution to my agonising problem that came up some time ago!

It is the Kindle 3G.

Able to read eBooks (newspapers, books), to download them directly from the store via WiFi or (free!) 3G, and even able to work with PDF files.

Wait a minute, you might say. PDF files?

Yes! Although they look horrible when used in original format, there is a way to convert them: simply email them to a certain amazon mail address, put “convert” in the subject, and then wait some minutes. And there it comes! Converted, so you can zoom in and out, make your notes, and so on and so on.

Great. I’ll get me one as soon as I get all the money from my old company. And I am SO looking forward to the first book to be downloaded and read in pretty much one go …

Other

Couchburg @ Augsburg

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One might get the impression that there is some Couchsurfing Invasion every weekend.

And this is right!

Some Couchsurfers literally spend their summers traveling from one big meeting to the next. Some do work in between, some just take as much days off as possible and have one huge summer holiday surfin’ through the world.

As we met some of the organizers at the Sounds of Salzburg, Georg and I decided to give it a try and go for Augsburg. We already know some people who live there, but have never been to the city.

The event will take place from September 30 to October 2nd, so just before my life as a student really starts. Georg will hitch hike there, starting in the morning. As I will have to attend some information event at the University already, I will leave at 4 pm. Hopefully, I will arrive before midnight 😉

Work / University

Propädeutikum

Reading Time: < 1 minute

It took me some time to pronounce this right, and also to remember the name of it. A nicer, shorter and better-to-understand name for it is “Prolog”.

This is what will occoupy me throughout the first week at University. It is kind of mandatory for all students who start studying information technology at UT Vienna, so I will have to go, too.

Most of the programme sounds interesting or at least good-to-know, like explaining the level of mathematics they want to work with or build on; also, first steps of programming and the introduction to algorithms sound interesting. The only question is: at what level will they start – in programming, but especially in maths? Programming we ought to start at the beginning, as many people did not attend special technical schools before. But for maths, there should be “Maturaniveau” – but I never took A-levels in maths.

I am getting nervous.

Other

Very nice.

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I just handed in my application forms for the Selbsterhalterstipendium (the grant I hope to receive as I have worked full-time during the last 4.5 years). The people at the agency are very nice and helped me complete the forms where I was not sure what to fill in. Also, I can ask to receive a subvention for the public transport annual ticket, they just need a copy of it. As I forgot to mentio that when I was there, I called to ask if they needed to see the original, but the lady on the phone said that a copy of the ticket with my name on it was enough. And as my parents are living in Tirol, I might even receive a subvention for visiting them – called “Heimfahrtkostenzuschuss”.

Austria’s just great 🙂

So let’s wait and see. Should not take too long, according to the clerk who took the forms over from me.