Living in the center of a multinational alliance with their own languages, cultures, music and tastes is great to be able to walk through the streets of a small French town in the morning but having dinner in Rome, Barcelona or Hamburg. I made a day trip to London once, a weekend in Milan or Rome. A short trip to Copenhagen, watching a soccer match in Camp Nou (that’s the stadium of FC Barcelona), visiting distilleries in Scotland or enjoying the beautiful city of Prague. Everything is so different and yet easy to reach.
With the Euro (that’s our currency- exempt in the UK and Switzerland) and Schengen (again, except UK and Switzerland) traveling is as easy as a bus ride to the next city. Low cost airlines make it affordable and cabin luggage is all you need.
Even the hoop to Africa with their northern countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco is not that far. A little more difficult but not much more than traveling to the UK (sorry guys, you really should join the Euro and Schengen).
Get out of you home, drive to the Airport Friday after work and enjoy a vino in Rome!
Thanks Europe for making this possible.
Author: _holger
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Living in Europe is great.
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Do we still need desktop / laptop computers?
My MacBook Pro is from late 2008. Except of upgrading to an SSD and a new battery not much has changed on the machine since I bought it. It’s about 7 1/2 years old now. While the MacBooks sold by Apple have improved a lot within these years, my requirements on a computer hasn’t changed a lot. Even the updates of the operating system from Mac OS X 10.5.5 to the up to date OS X 10.10 had no negative effect on the computer’s performance.
While still wanting a new computer I was wondering why.
I might have to say that I own a second Mac underneath the TV acting as a Server. This machine is a 2011 Mac mini. I use it as local storrage for my photo and media library.
Back to my wish to buy a new computer, I was thinking about what I need and what I want. I checked my requirements on what I’m doing with it and discussed with some friends and colleagues. Besides the speciallity that I do some iOS development, my other requirements are photo and simple video editing (from my GoPro) and surfing the web. Quite simple. Only the iOS development can (currently) not be done on one of my non-Mac-devices. Photo- and the simple Video-editing I do can be done on the iPad on a very good level – I did this during my last holiday. During that 6 weeks trip, I only took my iPad and my iPhone. I edited photos, wrote blogposts and edited video coming from the GoPro and my EOS M3.
Speaking to my colleagues I found that most of them don’t even do that, but own a PC mostly to surf the Internet / do Facebook and connect it to a TV to watch videos. Both can be done on a smartphone very easy, if not much better than on a PC with keyboard and mouse connected to a TV. If I wouldn’t have restared development or if Apple would provide a development environment in iOS, I would not need a Laptop or Desktop machine.
The need of managing your own music library is, with Apple Music and Spotify not needed any more. TV Series and movies are coming through iTunes, Netflix and Amazon Video (the last is not include in amazon premium in france, which is really sad). After realizing this, I believe the promissed post-pc era is already there. But it’s not the tablet replacing the PC, it’s the phone. We just haven’t realized it. And I would include myself in this. I guess even though I could do everything I do on my device, I still would buy a new Mac. I don’t know why. I guess we are just not ready for post-pc eventhough our environment and all the services we use are. Maybe this upcoming Retina MacBook Pro will be my last ‘real’ computer.
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Multi room wireless sound system
Since 1999 I’m carrying the same sound equipment with me. A Yamaha RX-V496RDS with relatively small 5.1 Quadral speakers. Within the last 16 years a lot has changed. I watch less movies, especially much less delivered on spinning plastic discs. I moved several times, the equipment stayed the same. I recently ditched the Sony 5-CD changer which I haven’t used at all in my last two apartments. Now the other parts of that setup has to go.
As the apartments get bigger, with more rooms, compared to what I used to live in as student, I wanted a system covering several rooms. As I’m renting the apartment I don’t want to drill holes and put cables in every room, that’s why something wireless needs to serve this purpose. As I’ getting lazier and don’t want to build a audio-Frankenstein out of my old equipment with wireless components from different companies, I wanted an integrated system.
I do have some other requirements on the system and the longer I researched, the more requirements are appearing.
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iPhone 6 (128 GB) zu verkaufen (simlockfrei)
Hi,
Ich verkaufe mein sim- und netlockfreies iPhone 6. Es ist ein spacegraues 128GB Telefon. Es hat gerade einen neuen Bildschirm von Apple bekommen (wurde danach nur noch zum löschen des Telefons benutzt) und hat keinerlei Kratzer oder ähnliche Macken (siehe Fotos). Es sieht aus wie neu.
Das Zubehör (bis auf das USB Netzteil) sind nagelneu und original von Apple (neue Kopfhörer, neues lightning Kabel). Es hat noch ca 10 Monate Apple Care+ (Erweiterte Garantie direkt von Apple)
VHB 650 Euro (inkl. versichertem Versand aus Frankreich – oder Übergabe am 29. oder 30. November in Hamburg). (more…)
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Dubai
ok, let’s see if I manage to write some blog posts about my travel…
My first stop was Dubai. The city of the United Arabian emirates is the first Arabian/Islamic city I ever visit. Before booking my trip, friends told me that 3 days in Dubai are more than enough. I can completely confirm that, at least unless you bring a lot of money to spend.
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Six weeks in Toulouse – riding the bike
Six weeks in
After six weeks in Toulouse, I’d like to share my experience of riding the bike in this city. I sold my car, when I was living in Bremen. Due to the good public transport and the acceptable bike infrastructure, I was never using it. When I moved to Hamburg, there was also no need for a car. With the public transport, acceptable bike infrastructre and car sharing systems like car2go and drive now, it was easy to come around without any hassle.
When I moved to Toulouse, I was always asked what kind of car I drove. Answering ‘none’, nearly everybody asked me how I can manage to live without a car. I was never asked that in Bremen or Hamburg. After a short period, I’ve noticed why. -
Three weeks in France
About three weeks ago I moved from Hamburg-Altona to Toulouse Saint-George. Even though Germany and France are similar in many points, there are a lot of differences between these neighbors. While I’m living here, in the south of France, I’ll try to share my experience.One of the first differences, I want to focus on today, is the way of paying for goods. May it be the train ticket, any electronic device or the coffee at the bakery, in France, other than in Germany, you can pay everywhere using a credit card. This is so convenient, that on my first weekend back in Germany, I forgot to bring cash. I can not tell if the cost to process the payments is less in France than in Germany, but I have never seen a “credit cards accepted for purchases higher 20€” sign in France. Even for higher prices, credit cards are often not accepted in Germany (e.g. at IKEA or MediaMarkt – the German equivalent to Bestbuy).
Besides the acceptance of credit cards, it’s common to use a complete ancient technology to pay for goods: Cheques. I rarely had contact with cheques in my 33 years in Germany. If I remember well, it was two times, once I got a payment from a U.S. bank in 2000 and another time was in the late 80s when me and my brothers won a price which was payed with a cheque. In the first 3 weeks in France I have not only seen people paying with cheques in the supermarket, but also got one myself without having any idea how to cash it in. The other time I was asked to pay a eBay auction with a cheque. Besides the simplicity of PayPal, we have SEPA which allows free EU-wide money transfer. Both was first not accepted by the seller, as it was not secure enough- I wonder how sending a cheque in a paper envelope is more secure.
The modern France is with the acceptance of credit cards, so far it is behind by using paper where you just write a number on to pay for goods. I wonder how the difference between Germany and France changes once ApplePay reaches Both countries. I’m still hoping for a wider acceptance of credit cards in Germany and I don’t believe it will change the usage of cheques in France. -
Why I stopped using the Apple watch (during sport)
After more than two months of using the apple watch everyday, I decided to stop using it during sport. Since my initial review I was using it besides my Suunto Ambit 2S while running and cycling. The only reason was to fill the activity rings, all my sport statistics are done within the system of the suunto.
Apples activity tracking system is not mature enough to rely on the data. I was finding myself running around the appartment and walking up 9 floors, only to fill the green and red ring at the end of the day. This usually happend on days where I was going swimming for 2km without the watch. On the other side I was filling the green (activity) ring by beeing ill in bed or on the couch, just by the elevated heart rate (or some other weird reason).The advantage of the apple watch (during sports compared to my Suunto) is the integrated heart rate sensor. With the Ambit 2, I’ve got to use a chest strap to monitor the heart rate. But as we have seen this kind of sensor in other dedicated sport watches, I expect it to be integrated in a future version of the Suunto Ambit watch.
With the Version 2 of the watchOS, Apple introduces the capability to fill the rings with the data of other apps. I still wonder why they don’t rely on the data already collected in the Health app. I don’t expect Suunto to create a watch version of their movescount app only to fill the rings, they don’t even bother to integrate health kit (the framework to push data into and pull data out of the Health app). As long as Apple doesn’t integrate health kit into their own activity app and as long as there is no automatic way to push the suunto data to health, I will stop worrying about the rings on the apple watch and limit the used functions to reading iMessages and getting informed about the time.
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“Apple Watch Sport” Sport Review (running)
This weekend the new Apple watch hit the wrists of the early adopters. Having been sceptical about the usage of this new product, I ordered to see if I find a use case for it. As Apple is marketing the watch not only as a communication device but also as a sports tracker, I wanted to test those functions deeply. Since some years I’m using a Suunto Ambit2 S to track my workout. I’m training for a triathlon, therefore I’m going swimming, cycling and running. The Ambit Series offers function for all those and more sports. It contains acceleration sensors as well as a GPS-Receiver (which is not build into the Apple watch). I know that the comparison of a $349 (original list price, often available cheaper) dedicated sports watch (plus additional HR-strap) to a $399 (Apple watch Sport 42mm) multifunction Smartwatch might not be 100% fair, but I’ll do it anyway.
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Funkzellenauswertung in HH 2014 (Update)
Moin moin,
schon die letzten beiden Jahre (2012 und 2013) habe ich die Hamburger Behörden (vor allem die Polizei) nach dem Einsatz der Funkzellenauswertung (Link zur Wikipedia) gefragt. Dies habe ich auch dieses Jahr wieder über die Plattform ‘frag den Staat‘ getan.
Bei der Funkzellenauswertung handelt es sich um eine Maßnahme der Behörden, bei der Mobilfunkbetreiber gefragt werden welche Mobilfunkgeräte sich zum Zeitpunkt einer Straftat in einem gewissen Bereich aufgehalten haben. Dabei werden die persönlichen Daten der Besitzer dieser Geräte eingeholt. Betroffene (Unschuldige, die nur zufällig in der Nähe waren) werden darüber nicht informiert.
Bisher führte die Polizei Hamburg keine Statistiken über den Einsatz dieser Maßnahme.
In diesem Jahr wurde mir mitgeteilt, dass die Anfrage zwischen 50€ und 500€ kosten wird. Ich habe dies so akzeptiert, würde mich aber freuen, wenn ich beim zusammenbringen des Betrags (vor allem wenn es wirklich 500€ werden) unterstützt würde. Dazu habe ich einen Spendenbutton eingerichtet:
Vielen Dank für die Unterstützung.Update: das Ergebnis der Anfrage deckt sich mit denen aus den vorherigen Jahren: die Funkzellenauswerzung wird benutzt aber keiner schreibt auf wann und wie oft.