Markus efter Sverige

These are my final days as student, for the trip to Sundsvall was a success. When Ulrich (surprise-guest) and I arrived in Sundsvall on Friday evening, it was too warm for snow and the streets were clear. But during the presentation next morning, it started to snow. Since then I have been in a snowy winterland. The weekend was beautiful. I somehow passed the presentation, I just need to make some corrections. Because of holidays it will take until February until I can apply for the master degree - until I receive it, it may take weeks or even months of bureaucracy. Anyhow, it is nothing that needs much effort, but patience. Sundsvall is pretty much the same like last February. They reconstruct the outdoor swimming pool to a kind of adventure pool and the campus at the university gets a new building. I was able to do everything that I wanted to do: A lonely night walk on the tiny paths in the woods while it was snowing and visiting Norra Berget and Alnön again. Sandra and Ulli have th

Since this summer I was wondering where a beach could be in Aken. Well, there is Jens' favorite joke "If Holland would not be, Aken would be at the sea", but since luckily our western neighbours are still there, a coast in Aken is hard to imagine. Therefore, I was wondering about the following story that happened this summer: Me and a friend were on our way home from the pubs. At one traffic light, a car stopped and two guys asked us "Do you speak French?" - "No, sorry". So the guy tried in English: "Where is the beach of Aken?" - "The BEACH????". They got a little bit embarrassed, but still willingly to find the place, they said "Yes, the beach". We laughed hard and said that there is no beach in Aken. Obviously becoming red, they drove away. Since then we always wondered: how the hell can you seriously look for a beach in Aken. Until today. After dark I was on my way to the city center getting my last presents for Christ

During the boring time in October/November I was asked if I want to join a short trip to Bad Kreuznach. Of course, I join. Why not finally some action. Therefore I spent two days near Mainz, including two short hiking trips, a lot of cold fresh air, beer and glühwein. And, of course, when I make a trip, Sweden can't be missing: on the Christmas market on Saturday evening I met with Basti and Inga. It was the first time since Leipzig in summer last year. I stayed longer with them on the Christmas market and went back to the hostel alone at night. This weekend was the start of my trips. During the next week I have to prepare my master defense in Sweden. My plane will take off Friday morning. On Friday evening I will be back home in Sundsvall.

Only two days left for finishing my thesis. And unfortunately the last two days have been a weekend. That meant, that I could not enter Atos where my computer was calculating the final results. This morning, I was a little nervous. Maybe somebody could have switched my computer off in between or there could have been a mistake in the calculations and I would have to start again. A calculation needs hours and this computer is not the slowest. But to my surprise, I did not have any results. The computer was still switched on, but the calculations aborted with the dooming message "out of memory". Maybe I should not have started two calculations in parallel, although that should work fine (two cores on one CPU). No clue. I checked the programs and I could not find any bottleneck. I guess then it is a problem of the API's I use. They do not seem to be in a final release anyway. Now I try it again. With more memory assigned and only one calculation, because I need the other cor