"A still more glorious dawn awaits. Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise. A morning filled with four hundred billion suns, with the rising of the Milky Way."

Now, this article is rather interesting. Go, read it.

The new Muse album is fun! Loving the full preview (on The Guardian)!

Cheers, LT.

Coming up: Two exams! Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow! Both at 9:45am! Terrible.

Eh, back to revising, just needed to do something else for a moment.

Cheers, LT

"Eyes might be the windows to the soul, but the voice is the door."

Cheers, LT.

The power-storing sort of battery, not the "assault & battery"-version, mind you!

Zen and the Art of Laptop Battery Maintenance

While this guide is aimed at laptop/netbook-batteries, it - basically - applies to all rechargeable batteries on Lithium-ion basis. Be good to your batteries!

On a more personal note: Exams are coming up... in two weeks, I'll write the first of six exams. I'm learning now - and it's annoying. And I'm a bit stressed. But after I've finished the exams... it will take a lot of time until the next round of exams arrives, so there's plenty of time to relax afterwards.

Cheers, LT.

In my last entry, I listed some useful and/or essential Firefox Plugins. I missed one that turned out to be remarkably useful:

FoxyTunes: Control your music player from Firefox.

It is really useful, because even the best music player in minimised mode will eat some space on the screen - no more!

Cheers, LT.

Me loves my Firefox - it's a (relatively) fast browser, nice to use and very customisable. Opera is perhaps - out of the box - better, but the sheer number of add-ons for Firefox put it ahead for me. So, here are some of the best and/or add-ons for Firefox - from my point of view, of course.

Basic & Essential Add-Ons
Adblock Plus: Blocks advertising and hence potential malware channels. Now, websites need advertising to pay for their bills, so I selectively disable it for trusted websites - and I suggest you do the same. But for random browsing, it's probably a good idea to keep some protection up.
NoScript: Basically Adblock Plus' big brother, in some ways. It simply shuts down all Java and JavaScript elements, as well as embedded content, like Flash. Good protection, though it requires a lot of user input, as most websites implement such material, nowadays.

Little Helpers
Morning Coffee: Do you do daily website visits? Especially in the morning, before going to university/school/work? This one is for you. With one click, you open a collection of websites, depending on the day of the week - so you get your daily dose of news, webcomics and entertainment without clicking through your bookmarks.
Context Search: Do you use different search engines, like for Google, Wikipedia and so on? Then install this, allowing you to access all of them from the context menu. I wonder why this didn't go into Firefox list of base features a loooong time ago.
Go to Selection: Another context menu helper - access plaintext URLs without hassle, by selecting and clicking.
Undo Closed Tab Button: Self-explanatory, but very, very useful, if you have a finger as twitchy as mine. Or if you're just too lazy to wander through your menus.
QuickPageZoom: Little helpful buttons to zoom the entire page without using menus. Put it into your status bar for quick access.

Appearance
AnyColor: Allows you to tweak the colours of the standard theme without switching the theme. It has presets and lot of little tweaks that are very useful, like the "Compact Main Window", which cuts down on the white space your buttons use. Experiment with it!
Fission: Very simple - it puts your progress bar into your URL bar. It looks flashy, but more importantly: It looks intuitive, once you use it, as you are probably look into the URL bar to see what page it is, no?
Compact Menu 2: Who needs a menu bar, anyway? With this, the entire menubar becomes a little button in the toolbar. Combine with AnyColor's "compact main window" and your entire Firefox basically shrinks down to a title bar, a slim toolbar and the status bar. With the little helpers above, you don't really need the full menu bar very often, anyway - make the most of your real screen estate!
Fast Dial: Above, I said how much I like Opera - and the start page definitely adds to that love. This emulates it, but also gives you a lot of customisability - to make it look neat.
FoxTab: Okay, unlike the ones above, this one doesn't help you a lot with useability (i.e. this appearance tweak doesn't improve the ease of use) - but it is sooo pretty!
NASA Nightlaunch: Just a pretty theme. Nowadays, I use AnyColor, but before, I really liked it, as brighter themes burn my eyes on LCD screens.

Cheers, LT.

The name... is ill-chosen, but the project is really, really cute: TweenBots. Essentially, they're cute little robots looking for their way through a park - depending on human help to get them on the right way.

And: People are really helping them! That's definitively an awesome art project showing us that people in general are still nice and good - at least if they are encountering cute things.

In other words: The future is cute?

Cheers, LT.

Well, this explains a lot. Or not.

Cheers, LT.

Watch this, it's funny and catchy!


Cheers, LT.

Still alive, just a bit busier than expected.

Well, my lab project never really cooperated with me - but it's finished. The mark is disappointing, but not that bad - but it it will drag my average down a bit, annoying, meaning I have to do better in the exams, if I don't want to have an "almost first class" moment again.

On the bright side, without lab, every Tues- and Thursday is free now, giving me much more actual time to do actual coursework - and lab was exhausting (mentally), so I not only have more time, but also more motivation. Plus, the presentation for the project was actually pretty good - and even the timing spot on. Considering that the slides, pacing and structure of the presentation was my work, it's at least a personal win.

Other news: Have new stuff, stuff that was actually sort of overdue - the two things standing out most: New bag! New phone! Both are much needed and snazzy! Especially the camera in the phone is great - very happy!

Cheers, LT.

I just realised something interesting: I never get annoyed by things, only bored. Real problems without any viable solutions don't frustrate me because I get annoyed, but because I get bored by the fact that I have nothing else to do, once I tapped all my ideas.

Cheers, LT.

Okay, this is hilarious: The story basically goes like that - Christian Bale was doing some scene for Terminator Salvation... and somebody walks into the scene during the shoot... and Bale goes on an epic rant. And it was recorded! And leaked! And somebody remixed the rant as a dance track - which is hilarious, just watch/listen to it!

(Warning: He swears a lot, really a lot)


Cheers, LT.

Well, read for yourself. It keeps coming. Little bit annoying, I had enough snow in Germany - those who are on facebook can check my account. I made pictures of the snow in Germany during christmas.

Funny thing: It's much less snow here, but people here a complaining - at least in the news.

Cheers, LT.

It's snowing! Here in Manchester! It looks great... but also cold - and I have to go to university tomorrow... *shiver*

Cheers, LT.

Well, exams are over - finally. The last two - "Introduction to Non-Linear Physics" and "Research Masterclasses" - went pretty well, so I'm confident that the results are going to be okay - for these two at least.

Apart from the exams, not a lot happened during the last days - obviously. So, right now, I'm enjoying my weekend (though I'm doing my lab report as well... but that's much easier on my nerves!)... and Monday, it starts all over again. I really wish there was a free week between the exams and the start of the new semester - especially because it starts with a new lab unit.

Well, you can't have everything you want... so I guess I live with it. At least university makes life pretty steady - the last weeks were somewhat troublesome, because Caro confuses the hell out of me... and only now I have the mental capacity to think about it - I had the exams on my mind, after all. But I think this will be sorted out as well - I mean I - or rather we - have to sort it out... after all, it's sort of the elephant in the living room.

Other news: Rediscovered my love for Massive Attack, at least two newer albums. Was a fine sound to learn to - because it's moody, yet pretty inobtrusive due to the lack of overt lyrics. Right now, it's Wir Sind Helden as I need a bit of distraction. ;)

Cheers, LT.

I'm busy. Writing three exams this week, two next week. So I'm learning diligently, as I should. But I really don't want to.

Well, I have to.

Cheers, LT.

Christmas is greatly enjoyable, as usual. Back home, spending time with my family, eating a proper Christmas dinner... all around, fun times, though I had the occasional flash of melancholy. I also got some nice presents, though no real surprises. But I'm pretty happy with my new fob watch and the "definitive edition" of the Feynman lectures (in fact, the current image there looks like mine) - good stuff to read, though it's probably only appealing to my inner Physics geek.

My sister has a lot of fun with the game Spore. I also played with it a bit... and it's definitively a good game, but lacking depth. The first stages of the game, where you work on your creature, collecting points to build it are fun, a bit short, but fun - though the gameplay itself isn't very deep, but the fun you have with the editor makes up for that. Then the bad stuff follows: You enter the tribal stage, then the civilisation stage. The former plays like a very simple real-time strategy game with only one real unit, the latter plays like a real-time civilisation with one real unit and a token diplomacy system.

At that point, I was severely disappointed with the game... and then I entered the space stage. It's basically just a sandbox game, but it is a hell of a game! A bit like Elite or Freelancer, it allows you to fly around at your leisure, trading and shooting stuff. It's a bit like GalCiv or MoO 2, as you can expand your empire, trade and interact with other empires. And you can terraform planets, watch them in their earlier stages, abduct animals, uplift civilisations... great fun - it's the real heart of the game. Just a shame that the first fun stages and the incredible sandbox are connected by such shallow gameplay. Great potential was wasted here.

Well, that was Christmas for me and an amateur game review for you, so I wish you a (belated) merry Christmas, take care!

Cheers, LT.

See title. It's 3am here, and I'm home. Actually, I arrived 1 or 2 hours ago, but I cannot really be coherent right now, wrong time of the day. Night. Whatever.

Cheers, LT.