Wave goodbye …

After another day of reading mostly boring or even silly messages on twitter, I finally decided (after deleting my very first account in 2006) to again delete my account. Different to other sites where it takes ages for your account to get deleted, it was fairly easy with twitter: just a sad picture and, after pushing the button – a brief message saying not much more than ‘bye from twitter’.

wave goodbye, twitter!

Dearest twitter, I think I’ll not miss you. I’m just not the short message type of person.

Gate To India

“Ich hatte mich der Aufgabe verschrieben
den narrativen Gottesbeweis
langsam zu lernen (…)”

I will, against all odds, go travelling again.
To India, that is, for all that didn’t read the headline.

For such a long time I have been dreaming of doing that. Now that dream is becoming reality.
I had an interesting conversation with a friend just lately. It was about people that are not inspired and see nothing but problems. He made me strangely feel pointed at. Because all that seemed so true.
I spontaneously decided to make my plan become real. I have no plans yet where to go, I guess I will – like every time I travel – just get there and then see what happens. That’s the best way to do something like that … just go ahead, let things happen. V. once told me I had to trust people more. This is what I’m going to do – I’ll just trust everyone more and see where this will bring me.

A note to all people thinking (and telling me) this was odd and not very clever:
I could die tomorrow. So why not make big plans now to have something to look forward. At least, I would then die with something beautiful in my mind. I might not have the money to do this, but I might as well win the lottery (I’d have to play first, anyway …) – I AM JUST SO SICK OF THINKING ABOUT WHAT MIGHT AND MIGHT NOT BE, you stupid beggars.

For today, I am happy and all such things. If you feel like, make a donation to my special India savings account

Turn me on

Student protests in Austria are ongoing and rapidly spreading all over Europe – looks like we have to keep the spirit burning at least until Christmas. Many people will go home to see their families and celebrate. I don’t feel like celebrating this year, well, every year, I’d say. Buying presents for people I don’t care about, singing songs that already now are causing this certain ringing in my ear … Not very promising, altogether.

What I’d like to do for Christmas Eve: go to my appartment, sit there all alone and watch a candle burning from the beginning to the very end. Or, if no candle is available, just meditate over the – then almost – past year. I think I’ll do that and save some money I don’t have to spend …

Every day there are more reported cases of Swine Flu, but me, I’m not sick yet. It’s actually quite cozy here at the moment although I’m busy over my books. Hopefully I’ll pass that exam on Thursday, and yes, hopefully those 2 days all on my own will do to make the appartment look all neat and tidy and clean.

My last blog entry

… should have been about procrastination. I still have it somewhere, but it’s not finished yet and I can’t put it online the way it is. I have been to TU Vienna and Vienna University today to see how the protests are going. In case you still don’t know what’s going on, search for #unibrennt or #tubrennt on twitter.
Most of my friends – me included – are involved in the protests and we all hope that we can keep going … but as our dear minister Johannes Hahn decided to leave the ministry for some EU commission job, we are very much looking forward to what is coming next. I did not have the guts to take pictures of the protesters, and in my opinion this is nothing that should be on the net too much. Officials are always watching and you never know one day who will use your political direction against you …
I myself will now rather go and do something for the cause than just sit around and wait for things to just happen, nothing ‘just happens’.

Lessons learned

Why for heaven’s sake does one still have to convince people of eliminating racist vocabulary from their speech?
Sometimes I can’t help myself but wish an epidemic to break out – in terms of thorough brain-cleaning for this kind of cititzens.

In medias res

My motivation for the ongoing semester is very good, so I plan to release lecture notes on “Mathematik I fuer Informatik” at Vienna University in the library section. Please check back next week.

A new semester

… and hopefully a fresh new start. I should start wasting less time on reading useless stuff on the internet and focus on my studies. At least I want to try to finish in 1.5 yrs or so.

I read an article in a crappy student magazine today. Although I didn’t like the writing, it made me think about the quality of my education … and about education in general. Basically, the article outlined how ‘poor’ our society is to put actual people into our schools and universities to receive some nicely shaped and worklife-adapted idiots afterwards.
Is it really that bad?
Of course, the lobbyists of the Bologna Treaty wouldn’t say so (and there is a large number of them under the Informatics/ Business Informatics teachers at our uni). What is especially outlined to us is always that after a regular 3-yr curriculum you hold a degree which is actually a good thing. And might be suitable for people that are not so long-lasting or just feel like they don’t want to spend that many years going to university and keep up a student lifestyle.
So far, so good. But on the other hand: how long will there still be a free choice for everyone to continue with a MSc?

Until now, it used to be enough to just have a ‘Bakk.tech.’ degree in your hands. But will it still be, for the future? And what will my possibilities be, what achievements can I reach, in case I decide to not tailor my education the the industry’s needs?
Will I have a choice? Will I appear useful enough to the IT or whatever economic branch I’ll be working in? Honestly – not all my grades are an A
Working in a job that has nothing to do with my studies and is just paying the next rent, the next meal, my phone bill … is not uncommon. Bad for me and my career, part I. And being true to myself I have to admit that sometimes I could have been studying harder for my exams – but sometimes I just didn’t, because I felt tired, or I rather wanted to go for a coffee with friends. B. f. m. a. m. c., pt. II. And now to come to B. f. m. a. m. c., pt. III: I should finally do some sort of practical training – but how should I? The most trainings are paid so badly that I couldn’t even pay my rent for a month. And now: B. f. m. a. m. c., pt. IV: to sum it all up, I’m too average, anyway. I’m none of the kids that spend nights and nights sitting in front of the computer, compiling kernels and doing [insert random geekspeak here]…

This is what keeps me thinking… and I hope to be one of the last ones not to be bitten.

Moodlemoot 2009, pt. II

Just returned from another day at the Moodlemoot 2009. I’m tired and will have my hair cut like real soon, so I gotta go. I will write a nice long post later today – or tomorrow, if something comes in my way, so bear with me…

Moodlemoot 2009 – pt. 1

The Moodlemoot Conference 2009 is taking place at TU Vienna today and tomorrow, and I will be there, too. Actually I’m quite excited because it’s my first conference – at least the first one I’m attending. I have been co-organzing some smaller events administratively, and now I’m in the position to see all that from a different angle.

Some more detailled post about what I did and heard will follow. What I can say for now is that the workshop held by members of the Department for Data Processing from Kepler University Linz was promising

Monika Straif and her colleague prepared a short hands-on session to introduce the Moodle course they set up for their ‘Informationsverarbeitung I’ lecture. What’s so special about it is the use of some modules developed in-house (mainly) by diploma students. It seems they managed to really build an eLearning environment where students felt especially comfortable working in, at least roughly 75% of the people taking the course rated this it as being ‘very good’ (grade 1). This might probably be due to the fact that the physical presence of the students has been reduced to a very minimum, so this course would also suit fulltime-employees as well as people having children. For this group of people it is normally very hard to make time to come to Uni once a week. The way the teaching staff and tutors handle the platform is not that students are integrated into the platform, it is more or less the other way around – the platform is linking the students and forcing them to work together (apart from being a simple ‘workbench’, what I like to call it).
Especially the payment extension – an interface to an external payment service has been developed – makes Moodle more interesting for more commercial use as well. Unfortunately for me, there was so much more to see but so little time…
What I want to mention is that in this showcase, what comes out very clearly is

The long anticipated real first post

I have been busy in the past few weeks – busy seeking books, reading them half way through , planning the new semester, seeing friends, looking around for Salsa lessons that would fit both into my and my boyfriend’s schedule …
Oh and, ah yes, did I mention I quit my job? I got the possibility to work as a tutor in a department that cares for students with special needs. I am very much looking forward to those new tasks and will hopefully meet the expectations I think the best thing about the job is having the feeling of finally doing something that actually makes sense.