The zoo, Take 2, now better equipped with a 2x teleconverter, a Canon f5.6 400mm zoom lens and a 100mm f2.8 macro lens - yeah baby! The full collection is available on my Flickr account

Enjoy!

Boyz and Girlz listen up: Tsonny proudly presents the hottest Lavin summer weekend ever! Relax and hike during the day, enjoy the fireplace during the evening, a nice movie and drinks. But that's not all: This year's special is the Saturday night special "Grischa Beatz", featuring the best of 30 years of hiphop, gansta and normalo rap, mixed exclusively by our self-made DJs. Dress appropriately, pimps and bitches!

UPDATE: Check 'em party date and crazy VIP guest list:

Grischa Beatz takes place from June 18-June 20.

Pimp & bitch list

• Brandy Sandy
• Stoop Dogg
• Goalgettah
• MAD
• Missy M.
• Mitch da Bitch
• Queen Matifah
• Reverend Coach
• Suga-Masta (yo, Hoschi, tis yo new name, bro!)
• Beatfinga
• Unknown chick

Da supa cool Grischa Beatz Flya!

Poor man's trip around the world: Visit the zoo... Great Friday afternoon and great company ;-)

Posing in da sun, man!

Well, they didn't have it in green anymore...

Good morning!

Pattern-perfect

Indians, Indians! To the weapons!

Breaking news Today, Swiss undercover journalist T. Sonny disclosed top secret FBI files regarding various illegal activity at the beforementioned Openair Festival in Hohen Rätien. The highly explosive content is now made public on this blog exclusively. Read at your own risk. You have been warned.

For the full report, click here (make sure you are over 18)

Some samples are shown below

This seems to be my hiking year... Another beautiful tour, this time in the Swiss Alps, in the Wallis county. Many thanks to Thomas for the great organization and to his parents for the superb breakfast! A gallery of images is ready here and on Flickr (soon).

Enjoy!

I was given the great chance to take part of one of the famous Les Houches (France) summer schools. Fantastic atmosphere, top lectures and lecturers, and great people! Let me focus here on the leisure time we had. Check out some pics below and some more on flickr and on my personal gallery (coming soon).

Just returned from a great but short trip to Sweden and don't want to withhold the pictures, as usual on my flickr page. And some previews for the impatient:

A wonderful festival is over and everything went better than we could ever imagine. This year's performers where: Dabu Fantastic, Transmartha, Gulliver and Brothertunes. A huge thank you to all the helping hands, sponsors and the organizers Cathy, Rino, Luzi, Georg and Sam.

Check out the galleries on my site and flickr.

Preparations on this year's Hohen Raetien festival are proceeding full steam. Lots of work has been done and I don't want to withhold details from where the action is:

Another nice weekend in the mountains - perfect weather, wonderful people, delicious food and a good time for everyone!

This time the hiking trip lead us to the Val Tuoi, just above Guarda. Check out the pics on my flickr page.

Thanks to all of you for the nice time!

Guys and gals, have a look at this year's march meeting footage! Brand new and exclusively produced for this meeting is the ski and boarding video, see below...

Go to the photo gallery

The Lavin alpinists can find the photos of this year's hiking camp below and in the new slideshow page. Now let's go the easy way and fill the rest of this post with some selected imagery:

Last but not least the pictures of this year's group excursion. Hope you all enjoyed and see you next time!

UPDATE: More photos on my Flickr page

Lickweeds players unite! And well and truly they did, on the 14th of April, in the year 2007 a.c. Left over, apart from Hüsi's empty beer tanks, were these photos that I will shortly present with some other shots in the usual gallery place.

To give you irrefutable proof of the best soccer club in the Zurich Wyland, check out these exclusive pre-print samples (reprinting and any other usage requires approval by the Lickweeds club president and Coach Ralph):

It is my pleasure to announce that tickets for one of the finest festivals (you believe me that, don't ya?) are on offer now! Ticket sales are limited due to geographic size constraints at the location. First come first served. Or, to put it in a more suggestive language: Go get it now! What are you waiting for?

This years theme is global warming and the organizers have teamed up with myclimate to compensate for the CO2 emissions caused by the festival. That's a nice idea, and worth a blog entry, I guess.

For the art fanatics among us, check out the festival flyer below. I though I hould give my Wacom tablet a try and I'm quite happy with the result.

Grunge is back

I am happy to announce that the photos of the latest Lavin ski weekend are now online.

Apart from this blog entry, which shows only a sample of the nice weather we had, I've put together a gallery at the usual place (The stoop.net gallery) unveiling the perfect meteorologic conditions we had throughout the whole week.

As a special goodie for those snobs of you having broadband access, try this slideshow (yagr, that was a hell lot of work).

No snow...?

... there you go!

The band hanging around in Tirano

Real man work hard
(and drink beer immediately after)

I admit, I'm late with this post. Very late even, since my PhD work keeps me rather busy. But then again, you like pictures more than boring text anyway, right? Let me just add this: We had a full house this year and it was nice to see everyone contributed in their way to the party. I guess we all would agree that we had a lot of fun. There was the superb food prepared by our kitchen wizards, Dana's riddles that especially embarrassed some of us, and the Poker round which made some of us rich - if only fictitious.

Okay, 'nough said, there you go:

Awaiting feeding

Gang of three

Stepmania rocked - next time with dance pad, I promise

Snow & sun - what more do you need?

We had real chefs at the party!

The rest of the pictures still need some editing before they'll eventually appear in the photo gallery.

UPDATE: More pictures on my Flickr page

The first and hopefully not last workshop on Web 2.0 is over. Actually, workshop is the wrong word, since it was more a roadshow of web 2.0 related technologies and concepts (including Django). Anyways, I hope the participants enjoyed it as much as I did.

This workshop was held in our family's holiday home in the Swiss mountains. We had great luck with the weather, which was very mild and rather dry. The temperature inside the house was at some chilly 20 degrees C, turning the entrance hall into a cosy conference room (or cinema room at night).

Apart from drinking far too little beer (that will be taken care of at New Year's Eve, I'm sure), we also listened to a couple of talks and made some progress in the development of the Activity rewrite. The latter will be available in written form soon, the workshop talks will be put online as PDF as soon as I get all the slides.

The conference room

A cosy way to listen to talks!

Coach explains the math...

I'd like to thank all participants with special thanks going to my father and Claude Berner of Vitus GmbH.

Update: A short movie of some impressions is now ready for your viewing pleasures.

Update: Slides in chronological order:

• Web 2.0 - Analyse eines Paradigmenwechsels (PDF | QT)
• Was sind Webapplikationen? (PDF | QT)
• Webbased Projects using PHP (PDF)
• Django - Python Framework für Leute mit Deadlines (PDF | QT)

Taoism:

Shit happens.

Confucianism:

Confucius says "Shit happens."

Buddhism:

If shit happens, it isn't really shit.

Zen:

What is the sound of shit happening?

Hinduism:

This shit has happened before.

Islam:

If shit happens, it is the will of Allah.

Catholicism:

If shit happens, you deserve it.

Protestantism:

Let shit happen to someone else.

Judaism:

Why does this shit always happen to us?

Calvinism:

Shit happens because you don't work.

Creationism:

God made all shit.

Capitalism:

That's MY shit.

Communism:

It's everybody's shit.

Impressionism:

From a distance, shit looks like a garden.

Atheism:

I don't believe this shit.

Altruism:

Want some shit?

Nihilism:

Everything is shit.

Fundamentalism:

If shit happens, they deserve it.

Agnosticism:

What is this shit?

Wer nicht mit der Zeit geht, geht mit der Zeit...

Bei uns läuft alles wie geschmiert. Man braucht uns nur richtig zu schmieren!

Viele Leute glänzen, obwohl sie keinen Schimmer haben.

Alle Chirurgen sind Aufschneider.

Wer überall seinen Senf dazugibt, kommt in den Verdacht, ein Würstchen zu sein!

Der Abwesende hinterlässt eine Lücke, die ihn voll ersetzt.

Angeber sind wie Zwiebeln: Man enternt Schale um Schale, und was übrigbleibt ist zum Weinen.

Wissen ist Macht. Nichts wissen macht nichts!

Allen ist das Denken erlaubt. Vielen bleibt es erspart.

Alle sind gleich. Nur einige sind gleicher.

Thun ist schön. Nichts tun ist schöner.

Your mouse has moved. Windows NT must be restarted for the change to take effect.

I'm not a programmer, but I play one at Microsoft.

A PC without Windows is like a fish without bicycle. Install Linux.

Computers are like airconditioners - they stop working properly if you open windows.

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain. -- Lily Tomlin

Life is like a 10 speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use. -- C. Schultz

Some drink at the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.

If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure -- former US Vice President Dan Quayle

We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world -- former US Vice President Dan Quayle

I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix -- former US Vice President Dan Quayle

So lange ihr tut als würdet ihr mich bezahlen, tue ich so als würde ich arbeiten.

Wichtigtuer sind zwar zu gut erzogen, um mit vollem Munde zu sprechen. Aber sie haben keine Bedenken, es mit leerem Kopf zu tun.

Wer glaubt, ein Christ zu sein, weil er die Kirche besucht, irrt sich. Man wird ja auch kein Auto, wenn man in einer Garage steht. -- Albert Schweitzer

In heaven all the interesting people are missing. -- Nietzsche

Man könnte viele Beispiele für unsinnige Ausgaben nennen, aber keines ist treffender als die Errichtung einer Friedhofsmauer. Die, die drinnen sind, können sowieso nicht hinaus, und die, die draussen sind, wollen nicht hinein. (Mark Twain)

Nichts auf der Welt ist so gerecht verteilt wie der Verstand. Denn jederman ist überzeugt, dass er genug davon habe. -- Rene Descartes

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go. - Oscar Wilde

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher. - Socrates

I have read your book and much like it. -- Moses Hadas

Ein guter Slogan kann jegliches Denken 50 Jahre lang aufhalten.

Nicht alles, was zwei Backen hat, ist ein Gesicht. -- Winfried Bornemann