Walden. It’s one of the books that need the right time to be read and took eons otherwise. So what’s it about?

Self-Reliance and human development. Mostly through simple living and solitude. Rethinking common moral assumptions.

Good points. Sometimes excellently written. But if you can paraphrase the whole book with three sentences why write around four-hundred pages about it? Now I know lots about animals and geography around Lake Walden, most of that knowledge is of course dated nowadays (and wouldn’t be of use even otherwise).

While reading the book never forget that the self-reliant dweller lived two miles from civilization and got a food basket each weekend from his mum. Wilderness indeed.

Still the idea of a simple lifestyle has its merits.  Paired with the will to give most commitments freedom might truly await.

I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.
Walden, Henry David Thoureau

..I’ve only lived to tell. All after all the festival was a good one, the only disappointment was the weather: At the end of the first day heavy rain broke out which led to heavy mud. I was very impressed with the bands overall, there were no real disappointments:

Nine Inch Nails. I’m more than a bit biased, I’ve listened to them too much for a long time and they were the primary reason for my attending of Novarock. Half an hour into their set heavy rain broke in and after ninety minutes a fuse blow and the band had to stop. Till then the concert was totally awesome: this was the best or second-to-best NiN concert that I’ve ever attended. And on the other side the rain did help me: my head made unwelcome acquintance with a thrown glass of vodka lemon and the water washed all out from my hair and skin.

Machine Head. My second reason for Nova Rock. I’ve seen them one and a half years ago in Vienna where the audio sucked, this time they took extra long to tune their gear.. and it was worth it: they played an absolute amazing concert. I went there having quite a bit of a headache but after approx. ten minutes started to bang my head.. and never quite stopped. The atmosphere during the concert was magical, the band seemed to enjoy it too. And I lost some scrunchies during head-banging.

Faith No More. Wow! The band does not really take themselves too serious.. their Pokerface (by lady gaga) cover was.. cool. Also they should have been awarded a price for best audience interaction.

Staind. They played in the mud on the second day. Cool band, there aren’t many bands that can combine that gutural growling and melodic singing as Staind.

Chickenfoot. This superband consists of parts of Satriani, Van Halen and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I expected much and wasn’t disappointed. I kinda miss never hearing to Van Halen, if that band was half as good as this one they must have been great.

Chris Cornell. He started weak (Bitch ain’t part of me) but got better. In sum he played songs from half a dozen of bands (Audioslave, Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, Pearl Jam, Led Zeppelin). You still can’t call him doing covers as he was lead of most of that bands. And you can’t be too sorry after hearing Black Hole Sun or Good Times, Bad Times live.

Disturbed. Lead singer: My brother and sisters.. we are.. audience: DISTURBED!

Today I’ve reentered civilization, enjoyed a long bath and now I’m off to see a coffee house. The festival was great, thanks and kudos to all people that made it possible.

Now back to writing my master thesis..

You know that you’ve done something right when your working environment looks like this. Yes I am working in computer science but there’s nothing for creativity than a fountain pen and some sheets of blank paper.

Add a coffee house featuring dark interior, subtle music and a never ending supply of well-brewn coffee and I’m happy. Subtle music in this case was an interesting mix of Tom Waits and Gotan Project.

This is the Amacord and is situated at the Naschmarkt/Schleifmuehlgasse, 4th district, Vienna. Coffee is not too expensive too.

Okay, I didn’t learn and went to the Institute again. Was it better than last time? Certainly not. This lesson was accompanied by a soundtrack made by our instructor (good idea: as soon as you notice repeating songs you’ll know that soon it will be over), it started with AC/DC’s TNT.

Guided by the song I started euphorically into the warm-up exercises. I lasted longer than the song, alas not much. At the end of the second song, which I don’t remember as I was trying to keep going, I looked at the clock and noticed that my endurance is down to approximately ten minutes.

The next song that came through my fatigue was Foo Fighter’s Burn Away. At least I only gave up during the last exercise (which was meant to power out everyone), but my body ain’t made for too many alternating push- and sit-ups.

Have I already mentioned that after that I enrolled for a three month beginners course? Might do some good.. for example I wouldn’t be able to smoke today even if I wanted. So where’s my magnesium? Maybe I can prevent some of tomorrow’s muscle soreness.

I am realizing that everybody’s lost their simple ways
and now that it’s here I see it all so clearly
I’ve come face to face with the enemy, the enemy.

Godsmack – The enemy

Finally I finished “Against the Day” by Thomas Pynchon. It went as the last one: small interesting episodes were mixed with long passages that I only read to get through the book. It’s not surprising that I’ve read half a dozen other books during that one. I must confess that I lost track of the various story lines through those escapades. Afterwards I’m not sure that it was worth the time (although there’s something with Pynchon that makes you come back to the books) especially because of the anti-climaxing end. At least “The crying of lot 49″ had a better ending.

I also had my first Krav Maga lesson yesterday. Pain ensured. I’m not sure if I should continue: it’s not a bad idea overall but I might have a small problem with a hobby that consists of “punch the enemy in his genitalia or face and run like hell”. I had fun though. By now I’m quite good in differentiating the different kinds of muscle soreness.

So on to the next book on my “force myself to read”-list.

Over the last one and a half years I’ve been involved with the SECOQC project. It’s goal was to provide a prototype of a quantum key distribution network. Such a system would provide unconditional security, thus wouldn’t be isn’t vulnerable to improvements in computing power as traditional cryptography.

The final presentation of the prototype happened this Wednesday. The last days and nights before that were filled with applying the last fixed but finally it was worth the time. But let the newspapers do the talking: orf, heise, der standard, sueddeutsche, Austrian Telekom News. There was quite good news coverage in german-speaking Europe (and some eastern europe countries) but sadly the news didn’t seem to have jumped over the pond (at least some American physicists were at the presentation so it got noticed anyway).

Feels strange to know that something that big and cutting-edge is finally successfully finished.. and that I’m an unemployed student agai

After some years I’ve finally come to ride my bicycle in Vienna (no, I don’t count those city-bikes as real bicycles). The journey from my flat to my company takes around 9 kilometres and should take me around 38 minutes according to the Viennese bicycle route planner.

The travel to my company took me approximately 50 minutes, on my way back I needed 35. Why? First of all the quality of the route planner is mediocre. It’s like “I’m not sure on which side of the river my route should be”. So just memorize the general direction, throw away the plan and try to move towards your goal while driving against as many one-way streets as possible. It will work. Second of all, who thought it a good idea to not label the bicycle tracks? It has a little bit of playing Half-Life: you want to get to the tall building seen on the not-so-distant horizon (some subway/tram bridge in my case) and you have three choices: the one that would lead directly towards it will of course lead you to nowhere. And finally the gear shift of my bike didn’t work as well as I remembered..

But big kudos to this morning’s Viennese car drivers: I survived them and this might have taken some steps on their parts. The same goes to the people on foot that where at high risk today.

Oh, and never, really never, try to stop with wet brakes. Now I’ve the rest of the summer to get under 25 minutes.

One hundred plus through black and white
War horse, War head
Fuck em, man, White knuckle tight
Through black and white
Metallica – Fuel

Austrians are currently bombarded by news of Josef Fritzl and his crime. While freedom of press is dire to me, a little bit of self-imposed constraint might be more helpful for the victim’s recovery. Alas in a perfect world where that would happen the crime itself would never had taken place. Unfortunately there was another similar case not too long ago where the media coverage rather reminded me of cynical movies.

One also witnesses international coverage of the events through the Internet. They ranged from good (thank you, BBC) to poor. My personal favourite was some Swiss paper that claimed after those two sad cases that Austria is collectively mentally ill and somehow created a correlation to the second world war. Another interesting thesis was that Freud (an Austrian) could have only pioneered psycho-analysis in Austria as here are enough mentally-ill persons as test cases. Being a mostly healthy person this feels a bit estranging. But this is only small compared to the irritation from facebook groups. Why do people think it’s hip to create groups whose names reference to the crimes or try to joke about it?

Is being dumb really the new black?

The other piece of news that covered Austria recently is our glorious failure to keep up with the Kyoto protocols. Interestingly I didnt’ get any news coverage of that from national news companies. Not flashy enough?

I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

Rolling Stones – Paint it Black

My unhealthy addiction to cigarettes wears hard on me. I tried to quite multiple times but alas those times were mostly breaks before I started again. Sometimes longer (even a year), sometimes shorter (three days till yesterday). So it might be time to actively do something against it. My punishment for the pack of cigarettes that I smoked yesterday is simple: I won’t go to the Eläkeläiset concert in a few days. Concerts are the one thing dear to me, maybe missing some of them reminds me that I want to stop smoking in my weaker moments.

Also I might need a carrot matching that stick. After I’ve bought one of those limited NiN Ghost CD sets last month I’m in dire need of record or blue-disc player (yeah, I’ve opted for the very limited autographed set). That will be a perfect gift to myself after, let’s say, one month of not smoking.

Could someone please buy them better drugs? This is just ridiculous.