geek imparts experiences

Scotland the home of the Picts, Kilts and the Gaelic

admin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:57:44 +0000

Last weekend I visited Edinburgh in Scotland – the city where Sean Connery was born, and the place of inspiration for writers such as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. The roots of the residents called ‘Scots‘ (or even sometimes Scotch) are hundreds of years old, deriving from tribes who lived there as a confederation known as the Picts. Most of the unique culture has survived to the present time; for instance, the Kilt and the traditional Scottish music. However, the Scottish language, Gaelic, seems to be threatened with extinction, as only around sixty-thousand people are able to speak it.
Edinburgh itself is a wonderful old city with a lot things worth seeing. Therefore, on this occasion, we spent the whole weekend there. On Saturday we had amazing weather, with a lot of sunshine and just a bit of rain in the evening, but it stopped raining in time for the Halloween spectacle in the city centre. Sunday was completely different and absolutely atrocious as it was coming down in buckets the whole day – but we made the best of it! I hope you enjoy the gorgeous pictures of the trip.

Link compilation of past month

admin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:58:58 +0000

Cloud by stan on flickr.com

The first link is about a presentation hold a few weeks ago at the University of Manchester about which part cloud computing could play in future development of the web and managment of data.

The next link you could call, google street view advanced. It is an website which enables you to do go on a sight seeing trip, just at your own PC. At this moment it provides data for a some major cities in Germany which are Bonn, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Köln and München. The website shows in which direction the development is going and how rich the potential of such applications can be.

For me a world without wikis like mediawiki or moinmoin is hardly imaginable. The Blikis combine now the world of blogs with the world of wikis and time will show us if people are going to like it or not

GoogieSpell is an nice implementation of a spell checker which you can use in your own web-application. It should be worth to have a look on it, if you like to add a spell-checker to your web-application without going through big trouble, especially if you just have restricted access to your web server and you are not able to install any software.

Last but not least is a link to a post

I found looking for a nice software with graphical interface to merge PDF files with Linux. It makes your life much more easier if you want to merge various files and you do not know in which order you want them to merge.

Lyme Park, the British in ancients days

admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:16:29 +0000

This week I was in the cottage Lyme Park not far from Manchester. Beside the wonderful old house with its old furniture and art we could see the porperties garden as well as the huge surrounding park. Once more I have seen a absolutly different perspective compared to the city of Manchester.

York, England like I tought it is!

admin — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:42:39 +0000

This weekend I visited York a old, really English city with it’s minister, the city wall and medieval houses. This time I traveled there with the International Society of Manchester and just after we reached the park space we started our sight seeing tour. We are two German students, one French and of course me. We all liked the nice ambiance of the city with it’s old buildings and green areas near the river. It corresponded exactly to the cliché I had about England and what I expected to see before I came to Manchester.

A trip to Crowden in the Peak District

admin — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:13:07 +0000

Two weeks ago we did a hike in the countryside of the Peak Ditrict, southeast of Manchester. Such a weekend trip into the impressive and rough nature of England with it’s fresh air and chilly temperature is a welcome change to the crowded, noisy and bustling city on the weekdays. It was recreative as well as huge fun jumping from mud puddle to mud puddle. There is nothing more to say about, just have a look at the amazing pictures and you will get an impression.

Fish’n'Chips and Sunday lunch

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:43:43 +0000

As I wrote in my recent post I got a nice dinner with fish and chips after this trip to Salford Quays. I just can say it was the perfect rounding off this trip. Just after I got used to British fast food I was introduced next day to real British food by my hosts with typical Sunday lunch. They made lam with yorkshire pudding, green beans and potatoes and as dessert they made us apple pie with ice cream which I enjoyed very much.

Old Trafford and Salford Quays

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:51:26 +0000

After being two times at Salford Quays for a short trip I decided to get there a third time and spend more time to discover this area of new architecture style buildings in the city. I got there as on my other trips before by foot. After a nice stroll along the entire Quays and a side trip to the Lowry and a view to the football ground of Manchester United I went back on the other site of the river to the Imperial War Museum. You get pretty hungry having walked all the day, so I decided after nearly being one month in the UK to try my first fish and chips ever, but for this story you will have to wait for my next post

University Orientiation and Freshers Week

admin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:54:59 +0000

At the 17th September started the orientation program at the University of Manchester. This introductory lectures were held to supported the new international students with some information to the registration process and the other duties.

Among the orientation program the International Society offered a wide range of activities, like city coach tours and many occasions to socialize like barbeque’s, karaoke and quiz nights in the pub Jabez Clegg next to the building of the society.

At these events I got the chance to meet a lot people from all around the world. I met people from China, Germany, France, Belgium, Greece, USA, Iraq, Uganda, Netherlands and of course some of UK too. By one of these events, the Sunday night party I was particularly impressed through the atmosphere. The Pub was full to the brim with people united from different countries and religions, which were dancing and smiling altogether. This showed me once more that there are no gaps between people that can’t be overcome. Moments I won’t forget in my life time!

At the following week party time began, called freshers week! During daytime events were advertised by party parade buses driving up and down Oxford Road with loud music and nice girls ^^ dancing next to the bus and distributing flyer to students. I had a wonderful time during this week. I visited some nice pubs and clubs and heard few nice stories of interesting people.

Sportcity Manchester

admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:22:09 +0000

Today I was in the Manchester Sportcity area, it is home of many sport facilities like the Manchester City football ground, the Velodrom with the cycling track, the squash court, the tennis court and some others, too. Next to the Velodrom is the Philips Park were I did a little walk through along the Philips Park Cemetery, which is attached to the park. After then I went back to Piccadilly Gardens where I picked up my bus back home. Write me comments where I should go next or if you like what you have seen already!

Tryfan at Llyn Cowlyd in Wales

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:38:46 +0000

Yesterday on Friday the 12th September, I went with some of my new colleagues into the wonderful Snowdonia National Park in Wales. As you can see on the map we were driving along the motorway at the coast, where we could see a bit of the seaside. As we reached our destination, the lake Llyn Cowlyd we started our walk on the top of the mountain Tryfan. On that peak we did a little break with some others until we went down. To round up the day we enjoyed a delicious ice cream in a lovely village named Betws-y-Coed. See the pictures of the beautiful sunny day.