Markus efter Sverige

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...

Now, it is official: I will go back. For one last time I will go back to Sundsvall, for presenting my master thesis on the weekend before Christmas. Was I first looking forward, I now have mixed feelings about it. It will only be two days there. Luckily the presentation is on Saturday morning, so I will have Saturday afternoon and whole Sunday to catch up some memories while I wait for my plane back to Germany. It will be dark the whole day and it must be cold then. A walk through the woods once again would be nice. All alone, only with snow and firs. A place where you actually fill in some space.

Stefan, my flatmate, wondered about me and described my life of the last week: "You must have increased you efficiency by 300%". I think, that is even underestimated. He refers to my effort on the thesis. Before last week I was very inefficient. No chapter seemed to belong to the other and although I was writing and programming, the amount of pages did not grow, because I mostly rewrote everything. But last week it changed. Since then I am sitting from the morning until the evening and write and program. And it is even fun. Although this might be my last academical paper for a long time, I started to like it. Maybe I can continue paper research at Atos. However, I am starting to feel the side effects. I only eat, because I think I need something, not because I am hungry. I never am. My flatmates are so kind to cook, because I hardly leave my room, for I always need to finish the last thought which usually leads to another. Because of my limited space for activities, I left t...

Time is flying. Did I first plan to finish my thesis end of November, I more and more believe, that I will use the December, too. Atos already extended my thesis until end of December. If I really need longer than end of November, I can burry the plans to see Sundsvall this year again. Then I will need to make my final presentation some time in between when I work next year. But it was not going at all during the past weeks. I was writing and programming, but somehow... without any real goal. The thesis seemed so pointless. Maybe it was the staying at home. Because today I spent the afternoon with my flatmates at the university's library. They needed to study for exams and I just did not want to stay at home again and went with them. However, reading chapters from my book and a few scientific papers again, I got totally different things from my sources than when I read them before. I read all this before at home or at work. Maybe I needed the atmosphere of a library or the time to ...

Is it already 2 weeks ago, since I posted the last time? Man, time is flying... The thesis is growing slowly. Most of the time I spent with designing graphical user interfaces (GUI's). It did not really take so long, because I wanted to let it look perfect, but the GUI editor sometimes crushed the complete design. In between I wondered if my own GUI would stand the critics of my last thesis which was about user friendly GUI's. I guess, it would not pass, but since I am the only user, it does not even has to. It looks pretty cheap. But now it is working. The first test results are a disaster, but since I know why, I can already write things down in a new chapter. Today I got my contract at Atos in Aken. I will start in beginning of February as software architect. It sounds pretty good: high chance for traveling around the world, cooperation with several departments in different countries, and insight into all kind of different projects. As far as I know, they are still looking ...