There is so much that could be said about this beautiful town, my alma mater and all the friends that I will dearly miss. For now, I would like to keep it brief: Adela!
And with Daniel in mind: Servus! Tschüss! Ade!

In case you are looking for me, you can find me in Cologne (German: Köln).

1. Open this page.
2. Visit amazon.com.
3. Observe Dale Carnegie’s classic How to win friends and influence people appear on your personalized amazon.com homepage (see screenshot below for comparison).
4. Order it if you are interested, it is a great read (optional step )!

So how does it work? The page contains a hidden iframe that triggers an HTTP GET request to the book’s page on amazon.com. Now amazon thinks you are interested in this article and recommends it and similar ones to you on their homepage. I would like to leave possible malicious applications to your imagination.

How to fix this? If the X-Frame-Options response header is set to SAMEORIGIN, modern browsers will not allow third party websites to include a page. Interestingly, the German amazon website amazon.de does this.

I have informed amazon.com of this issue via Twitter and E-Mail.

Disclosure: all links to amazon.com are referral links.

Update (2012-04-05): amazon.com got back to me and told me that they have added the X-Frame-Options header.

The first nine were taken in Friedrichstadt, a lovely little Dutch town with canals. I always enjoy going there (and they have a great ice cream parlor).

The following five shots were taken in Husum, the grey town by the sea (Theodor Storm). I love to stroll around the harbour. Although Husum is a rather small town, it’s of importance for the region due to its role as the capital of the district Nordfriesland. Nowadays, it is actually not very grey.

The last three photos were taken on Nordstrand, a green peninsula near Husum. Nordstrand is an invitation to relax and forget all worries for a little while.

Oh, how am I longing to go back!

This is YouTube letting me know that I cannot watch a certain video. The reason?

Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because it may [sic!] contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights.

GEMA is an acronym and stands for Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte which is a marble of German officialese and roughly translates to Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights.

Because the GEMA asks for €0.1278 [sic!] per play – a price which is obviously not sustainable for the traffic gorilla that is YouTube — many of the (music) videos I have posted on Diskurswelt are not available to you if you are visiting from Germany. Sorry about that, but there is not much I can do about it. We have to wait for GEMA and YouTube to stop pointing fingers and sort this out like grown-ups.

So Simon and his readership should probalby add this blog to their feed readers (I already did).

Sowohl im Ersten als auch in den Dritten Programmen werden unter der Woche zahlreiche ältere Fälle ausgestrahlt. Wer also Lust auf Tatort hat, der kann diesem Bedürfnis fast täglich nachgehen.

Zur Beantwortung der Frage Welcher Tatort kommt heute? habe ich Tatort Zeit entwickelt. Es handelt sich um eine Android App, welche es Tatort Fans wie mir nicht nur erlaubt zu erfahren wann und auf welchem Sender eine Tatort-Folge ausgestrahlt wird, sondern auch den komfortablen Zugang zu weiterführenden Informationen (Erstausstrahlung, Besetzung, Handlung etc.) ermöglicht.

Ab heute steht Tatort Zeit im Android Market auf über 1100 Telefonen und Tablets zum kostenlosen Download bereit, deins ist bestimmt auch dabei:

(Vielen Dank an Marian Sander, der für mich nicht nur ein tolles Icon entworfen hat, sondern mich auch bei der Namensfindung unterstützt hat.)

Being an avid tea drinker, my favourites are very obvious: Tea for Two and Tea for Three. But check out the others and be assured to have a few good laughs!

(And if desktop wallpapers are not your thing, you can order prints.)

def derivative(f, h=0.000001):
    return lambda x: (f(x + h) - f(x))/h

sqd = derivative(lambda x: x**2) # first derivative of f(x) = x²
print sqd(12)

Beautiful, isn’t it? Although this is CS101* material, it never ceases to amaze me. (In Scheme this is more aesthetically pleasing, but I thought that more of you would be able to read Python.)

* e.g., Einführung in die Informatik offered by Prof. Guido Wirtz (University of Bamberg)

In Bamberg (2006-2008, 2009-2012):

1. Sandra (D/PT)
2. Coreen (D, briefly)
3. Christa (D)
4. Heleen (NL)
5. Caro (D)
6. Steff (D)
7. Jakob (D)
8. Klöte (D, does not really count, just a few weeks of couch surfing)
9. Hans (D)

In Dublin (2008-2009):

1. Chris (D)
2. Eddie (IRL)
3. Peter (IRL)
4. Marinke (NL, briefly)
5. Simone (IT)
6. Boris (D)
7. Ismael (ES)
8. Donna (IRL)
9. Ennis (IRL, rather unofficial living conditions)

Why are you telling this, Felix? you ask. Well, in case I should ever become famous enough to be the subject of future Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? opening questions, you better learn names as well as order of appearance . Read: for my personal amusement and as a reminder to a future me.