I for one welcome our new feline overlords

An evening of TED talks

2011-03-14T20:50:49Z

Started with this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA&NR=1 about "filter bubbles" and how the increasingly sophisticated ranking and filtering systems put each of us into a bubble of our own preferential reading, where we only get information that confirms our beliefs, a fast food of information rather than the vegetables of being challenged.

Then this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA by the author of "Eat, Pray, Love". Apart from giving some potentially life-saving advice to people in highly creative jobs, is also just very funny. If her book is of the same quality, I may just have to read it.

Followed by this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y about how in basically any creative endeavour, adding more incentives decreases performance. Tested and proven again and again. Can we stop handing out huge bonuses to CEOs now?

A curious (long) interlude by the French artist JR in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PAy1zBtTbw doing semi-illegal large-scale photo art in dangerous areas.

The title "The Power of Vulnerability" sounded interesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o&NR=1

I watched the last one twice.

Faschinating!

2011-03-08T20:36:47Z

New set of photos on Picasa: Fasching in München

Mosin' around SF

2011-02-13T06:27:24Z

After a week in Mountain View (where I lost two days to a stupid cold), I'm having a weekend in San Francisco, City of a Thousand Hills. Everytime I visit this city, it has a different feel -- not because it's a different season (it's pretty much always the same). Not because I go to different areas. Just because it's a strange city that hides its true nature from me.

I spend the morning walking down Valencia and back up, which was interesting. Apart from dropping by a store that needs to be a secret a little longer, I found several other cool places, including three used book stores (I'm somehow managing to not come home with an extra wheelbarrow of books), a store called "Stuff" which indeed has all manner of stuff, vintage, modern, weird, funny. I want to buy half of the things there and throw the other half out. Also found a neat store by the name of Paxton Gate, which bills itself as "inspired by nature and the pre-digital era" and has various nice artwork interspersed with all manner of dead animals. Nifty! Somehow I managed to pass by the Pirate Store, though.

After this roughly three-hour walk, I rested briefly before going off to Golden Gate park. Despite its confusing layout and shortage of maps (at least where I was), I found the Japanese Tea Garden and took some time walking real slowly and taking unusual pictures there. Then at sunset, I bussed out to Golden Gate bridge to try to recreate a picture I did there in 2005, but alas! they have redone the area south of the bridge so I couldn't get to the right spot. Nice sunset over the Pacific, though.

I had dinner at the local cult restaurant, run by the disciples of one Sri Chinmoy, a guru I hadn't heard of before. Apparently quite productive, having made 1500 books, 200,000 paintings and 14 million "peace harmony bird" cards. I'm slightly skeptical of these numbers - 10 paintings and almost a thousand cards every day, and a book a week during his writing years? Plus running, meditating, teaching, writing poems, writing songs, giving concerts... But I can't complain too much - I was there right before closing time, so they gave away the cake that couldn't be kept over the weekend. Yum.

Selected pictures 'r' up at https://picasaweb.google.com/110769792326934861724/SFFeb2010#

Tomorrow: The Exploratorium!

Jane Eyre

2011-01-28T14:42:50Z

I've taken to doing more reading, using iBooks when on the go, and I'm going to rotate between classic works, sciencey works, computer works and German stuff. First up: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brönte (funny, the fancy editor here doesn't allow the standard accent composing). I've been wanting to read this one since I read the Thursday Next books, where scenes from Jane Eyre are a recurring feature (BTW, if you haven't read the Thursday Next books, and meta-humor/alternate universes are at all appealing to you, go read!).

<lj-cut text="Notes with spoilers">
I haven't read a lot of contemporary litterature, but I have read enough to recognize the style of writing: Elaborate descriptions of feelings and scenes running sometimes to several pages. Unlike, say, Bram Stoker's Dracula, the characters in this book are not cardboard cut-outs, but have some amounts of internal conflict, especially the main characters. It's not subtle like in today's literature, and each character has a definite and, especially towards the end, obvious role to play in what the book is meant to convey. There's also plenty of tropes, or at least what is now seen as tropes, I don't know if they were at that time: Rich uncle in America dies and leaves a lot of money, virtuous young employee is being seduced by rich employer, etc. But unlike the simpler stories, the characters are more mixed-up: The rich employer is not beautiful nor a total crook, the beautiful suitor is not a scoundrel but a fervent missionary, etc.

What makes this book special for its time, though, is how much it goes up against the existing societal norms. Children and women that stand up for themselves and have good come of it, women who set up independent lives rather than just becoming a man's wife, Christians who do repress their fellow beings in the name of God.

Curiously, the start of this one resembles the start of Harry Potter quite a bit: Parentless child taken in by relatives who hate him/her, make him/her do all the tasks with lots of abuse while spoiling their own kids. Eventually, child goes off to school and finds a better place and real friends. Mr. Brocklehurst even matches Snape well in description.

It wasn't until about the middle of the book that I could predict what was going to happen. In the first parts, things are so, well, commonplace that there's really little setup for the major changes. Once Mr. Richardson reveals that he wants to marry Jane, the next steps were reasonably foreseeable, though.
</lj-cut>

All in all a good read, though the florid descriptions could run a little long at times. It is worth the reading if nothing else because it was an important work for its time.

Thoughts on measuring the ISO of the human eye

2011-01-27T21:46:48Z

Just read a little article on what the ISO of the human eye is: http://www.pixiq.com/article/eyes-vs-cameras (short answer: can't really say) and started toying with the idea of making a controlled experiment to determine the speed and ISO of the eye -- the aperture is said to be between f/2 (maybe f/3) and f/8.

Tests have shown that images shown for as little as 1/200th of a second can be seen and recognized (tested on fighter pilots). The problem is that to be able to compare what a camera captures with what the eye captures, we'd need some way to quantify how much detail we can actually see. The longer we look at something, the more detail we get out of it, much like frame stacking can be used to reduce noise. But we can't just show a picture to a person for a fraction of a second and ask how much detail there was. One approach would be to show a text and ask the viewer to read it, but that would include the time it takes to actually read the text. We'd need something where fine detail makes the difference between seeing different things. If we could find that, we could see what amount of noise renders the same detail unrecognizable.

I also hold that I've seen the spoke-wheel effect in daylight, but I will have to keep an eye out for seeing it again. It could be interesting to take, say, a bike wheel and rotate it at a certain rate. By covering it with black and white striped cardboard we can test if and at what speed there's a spoke-wheel effect. But I'll have to see it in real life first before I'll go to that bother.

But people with more time on their hands than me have looked into these matters before. I just like to think about them.

Photos for sale at larsrc.zenfolio.com

2011-01-09T20:52:28Z

In the coming week, I will have the best of my photos up for sale at http://larsrc.zenfolio.com. I'm doing it as a test run - ZenFolio is a pretty slick site and has very reasonable pricing for sales, but they charge $100 per year for the account where you can sell your photos. I'm using the preview period the have to see how much interest it can garner.

Please take a look, or if you know someone who might appreciate them, please spread the word.

RHPS

2010-12-18T01:35:22Z

I went to the local regular showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show this night. God, it's been way too long, I'd forgotten most of the participation, and a lot of what I remembered was off. But it was good to be back.

The showing is in a little art theatre that's five minutes walk across the bridge. They show it every Friday and Saturday around midnight, in a room that is especially decorated for it - there is even an "Enter at your own risk" sign and frowny Mona Lisas on the walls.

The crowd, however, might as well have been virgins all of them. I get the impression that they had read bits and pieces in the papers - they knew the main places to throw stuff and were pretty timely about it, and knew the standard person calls, but no participation beyond that. Nobody (as far as I could tell in the dark) were dressed up, and nobody got up to dance or anything. They did, however, seem to have a good time. The crowd was mostly women, probably mostly in their twenties, who came mainly for the sexy men.

Because of my lack of recent training, and to better gauge the levels of everybody else, I kept my participation to the fairly clean & simple. I did get laughs at some of the better lines, and no hushings or anything. After the movie was done (everybody stayed in the seats during the credits!), one French girl came over and commened my voice (!), even though she hadn't understood all of it, she liked that I'd spoken up, and hoped I'd be back. I promised her I would, as I have every intention of building up this audience. I will need a partner-in-crime, possibly Mickey, to come along to do the parts that have replies, as they are some of the best ones. I have hope that I can improve this group.
Let there be LIPS!

Rant of the Day: Microwave oven controls

2010-11-25T16:55:43Z

I've had an uneasy co-existence with microwave ovens since they entered my life about ten years ago. In particular, I don't like the huge amount of buttons and settings most of them feature - in my mind, the perfect microwave has two dials: Power and time. Todays breakfast is a perfect example of why.

In a moment of sheer laziness, I bought some frozen breakfast burgers for these two breakfasts I can't have at the Googleplex. The instructions say to defrost for 1:30, then try at high for :40. "Great", I say as I put them in, "there's the defrost button right there." I press it, and the little scrolly display scrolls at me: "MEAT - TOUCH 1 - POULTRY - TOUCH 2 - FISH ..." Figuring "breakfast burger" would not be one of the choices, I "touched" 1, 'cause, hey, there's a meat-like substance in there. But the oven is not done with me: "ENTER WEIGHT," its scrolls spitefully. Great. This is for defrosting large chunks of meat. So the defrost option is useless because it has become too specialized, and now the instructions are useless because they are too specialized. I have to guess at what power setting corresponds to "Defrost". Probably low-ish, depending on the actual output in watts.

If the microwave companies had just had a standard for power, either measured directly in watts, or a fixed scale if you don't want to advertise how much power is actually being used[1], it would have been easy to make universal instructions and to follow them. But no; in the name of making them easier to use for some arbitrary set of use cases, they have been made harder to use for a lot of other use cases. In fact, defrosting large chunks of meat is one of the last things I would want to do with a microwave. If I had some microwave popcorn, I would have to try the "Popcorn" setting just to see if it actually works. If the timing or power is off by just a bit - which is quite likely given the lack of standardization - my popcorn are going to be unpopped or burned.

The breakfast burger was about as unpleasant as I expected, but that, I asked for.

[1] In which case, making one that goes to 11 actually makes sense: http://xkcd.com/670/

Monterey and surroundings

2010-11-22T06:05:08Z

Today was my day to go see stuff (yesterday was my shopping and goofing off day). So I rented a car (!) early as could be and went off to sunny Monterey Bay to see fishies and sea otters. The drive down would beautiful (though it beats me why the richest areas of the US have the crappiest highways), with the sun occasionally breaking through to light up the patches of fog that were left across the mountain road like puffs from a giant's cigar. Didn't expect the looong stretch of marshland, but there were some ginormous dunes of a beautiful rounded shape that I marked for the return journey, having found little chance of stopping at the highway for photos.

Cannery Row and Monterey Bay Aquarium are quite the gentrified area, not to mention one big tourist trap. The aquarium was not actually as big as I had expected, and the otters in a fairly small area being rather uninteresting today. The best part was clearly the sea dragons, especially the leafy ones, they are utterly beautiful.

I made sure to have some extra time to go back to the dunes I saw on the way, full hour and a half before official sunset. Unfortunately, the road that seemed to lead to them led to a state beach that didn't have those nice forms at all. I tried to get what I could, but it was not what I hoped for.

The way back was not *quite* as scary as I was fearing. Yes, it was dark and winding and steep, but at least it was too dark to see the steep cliffs and sheer drops next to the road.

Lessons learned: An hour before sunset is not too long for sunset photography. When asking a local about the terrain, be sure to mention what you're looking for, that he may more accurately guide you. And make sure the pockets on your new fancy new photo bag are securely zipped when rooting around with the tripod, lest one fall out, roll down the dune, over the edge and drop down on the beach.

Why I talk to people on the train/bus/plane

2010-11-21T01:13:19Z

I'm one of those annoying people who'll actually try to engage in conversation with complete strangers (when I'm feeling sufficiently extrovert). Today, as I was going back from San Francisco on CalTrain, I sat (in the quite nice new CalTrain cars) across from a nice lady probably in her 60ies and started talking with her about this and that. Of all coincidences, it turned out that she was from München as well! She'd been in the Bay Area for three years back around the .com bubble and was back to visit. So we had plenty to talk about between how the 'Valley had changed, how I like München, etc.
When I mentioned that I was a programmer, she asked me if it was possible to get a good job as a programmer. I was kinda boggled at the question, but proceeded to tell her something about the Google culture. She was quite interested, because, as it turned out, her 24-year old son was taking an E-commerce education, and the whole family was despairing that he'd ever be able to find a job and trying to discourage him from it. Say what? I had to restrain myself from calling her directly crazy, but I was quite insistent that her son had made an excellent career choice, and that they should support him as much as possible.
I would have told her to support him in any career that he was enthusiastic about. Whatever career you try, there's a chance you make it and a chance that you fail, so why no do something that you like? As it were, I have the lady my email so she could put me in contact with her son. Obviously, I don't know if he's good enough to work at Google, but it sounds like he could use some support or somebody who can convince his family that he's not crazy, and that I will be happy to give him.

Also, I happened by the opening of a frozen youghurt place called Yoogl. Yes, done in bright colors like Google. Obviously, Google needs to work out an employee discount here. They have more fruit than sugary toppings. I like that.

Curious

2010-11-19T17:45:18Z

The number of journals and communities on LJ is doubling roughly ever other year, and has been for at least 5 years. However, the number of postings per day has been as high as 500K, but is now stabilized at around 200K. So not only is there less overall activity, the average activity on each journal/community is halving every other year. Which fits well with my own experience.

Between that and the fact that LJ now sometimes puts ad pages in when you click on a cut tag, I'm strongly considering moving to Blogger.

Exploring the East Side

2010-11-06T14:58:30Z

Mickey and I went shopping on the east side of the Isar today, looking for a couple specialty shops. What we didn't expect to find was a large city library, a great but not pricey supermarket, a possible job opening at a yarn shop, and one of the few English movie theatres - that holds the world record for longest regular showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show!

I was told when getting hired by Google that München was a very expensive place to live. Today we did a goodly chunk of grocery shopping, getting the following:

1/2 liter soya youghurt
1kg clementines
150g sliced gouda
1l Cola light
1l red grapefruit juice
1/2l Balsamic vinegar
150g Mixed salad greens
630g Dill pickles
350g Peanut butter (not that many varieties available, Germans consider peanuts to be pig food)
450g Haribo gummi bears (in a gummi-bear shaped plastic container that begs to be used as a jello mould)
Kærgården spreadable butter (!)
Tube of mayonaisse
Tube of mustard
1.2 kg bananas
Knorr dressing mix
100g sliced ham
450g Plum jam

Mickey's guess at the price of all this was 400-500 kr. It cam to 28 Euros, about 200 kr. I'm impressed. And relieved. And going to RHPS for the first time in years.

Most generally useful thing learned at Google so far...

2010-10-22T03:11:02Z

In many Google apps, you can press ? to get an overview of keyboard shortcuts.

Car painting notes

2010-10-17T20:28:05Z

Dunno if I'll ever need this, but... to paint a car well, paint it thoroughly, then polish it (using machine polishers) until rubbing chalk across it leaves no trace. Then give it two layers of lacquer in the same way. From a program on Rolls-Royce. Possibly requires robots to do it evenly enough.

Apartment-hunting in München

2010-10-14T18:15:48Z

Today I got to see two apartments that could be my home for the next 9 months. Take a look at them and see which one you like better:

First one
Second one

I thought at first that the second one would be the better one, it looked more interesting and modern, but the apartments around here are going fast, so I took the opportunity to look at them both.

The first one is decent. It has one wall that's all east-facing windows, unfortunately facing into another block, but that's well-nigh unavoidable in city center. They give a lot of light onto the bed, good for the mornings. The kitchen is small but complete, which is ok given that I can eat most meals at Google and most of the remainder I could eat out. I would only need the kitchen for when I have visitors. The bathroom is an ok size, pretty new, and includes a bathtub - I haven't had a bathtub in aeons. The main room is interesting, and there is an extra futon for visitors. While there's no window to it from the apartment, there is a nice garden readily accessible in the back. The area is close to center without being noisy.

The second one is nothing like what the pictures show. It is small and crowded, the layout is weird, and the windows tiny and without much light. The kitchen is so tiny there isn't even an oven. The doors are flimsy sliding doors, and the bathroom is teeny-tiny. Obviously no tub here. Everything looked second-class and worn. Definitely wouldn't want to live there, no matter how central.

So much for getting an impression from the pictures. I'm glad now that I didn't go with my impulse to rent it without having seen it first - one of the other apartments I was interested in got rented out that way before I even had a chance to book a viewing. The apartment market is just crazy here, so rather than trying to wait for something slightly better, I am going to get the first one. Unless somebody beats me to it, of course.

Got lost again on the way home (semi-deliberately). My zen navigation skills are no match for Münich at night, but I did make it home without resorting to a map. And got to see a Tesla Roadster up close for about five seconds before they informed me it was a private event. At least now I know where the Tesla dealer is. Now for some bread.

Can you find food in Münich?

2010-10-10T18:56:22Z

You betcha! I was wondering before going down there if there would be as many bakeries as in Denmark. There aren't. There are way, way more. I have found at least three chains of bakeries (Rischarf, Müller and Wimmer) that have bakeries all over the place, plus some independent ones, plus every cafe has a selection of bread and cake. The main problem will be to not gorge myself on yummy bready products. Mmmm... bread... speaking of, let's have some.

That's some great bread. Where was I... oh, yes, food. I'm staying at a hotel in a room with a kitchenette. As such, it has a fridge, a stovetop, a sink, a pot, some plates, and a spoon. That's it. No oven, no utensils, no cutting board, not even a dishwashing brush. I don't know what you're supposed to do with this. I got a knife and bought myself a bread knife, so now I can have bread with various things on top, at least. Thereto various fruit that does not require tools. It should come as no surprise that I have been eating out a fair amount here. Trouble is, for someone who's previously been happily vegetarian and whose stomach is happiest with plenty of veggies, this is the wrong place. These are the realms of the bratwurst and the bretzel, meat and bread in a myriad ways. While I like both, a steady diet of them are not good for me.

Google to the rescue! Fortunately for me, Google provides me with breakfast, lunch, optional dinner and assorted snacks, fruits, deserts, ice cream (Ben & Jerry's in reasonable portions, for instance) and a variety of drinks. And while I'm at the hotel, I can get a good breakfast here. If I'm not careful, I will gain some size from that as well - there's apparently an equivalent of the Freshman Fifteen at Google. The food varies from slightly better than dorm food to really quite good, though there is some German influence: Lots of meat, creamy sauces, deep-fried things (yes, here too) and potatoes, and veggies sometimes cooked to an unsavory death. But there's also always salads, frequently some good veggies dishes, and plenty of variation, so I have not had a desire to go elsewhere for lunch yet. I can particularly recommend mashed potatoes with chestnuts. And, of course, there is a desert of the day.

I figure I'll mostly keep long hours until I'm out of the hotel at least, and then start making myself large batches of veggie-rich dinners, making lunch the main meal of the day. Might have to find a good place for a post-prandial nap, though, or go for a walk after lunch. Despite the general dearth of such in restaurants (especially the more traditional ones), it's not hard to find good vegetables. The supermarkets of course have plenty, but there are also great open-air markets, in particular the Viktualienmarkt (about 200m from work) is worth going to if you don't mind paying a little extra for the experience and the incredible variety of things to buy there. In fact, it could be the subject of a post all of its own.

Tomorrow (early) we all go to Zürich for a pan-European engineer's conference. It'll be fun, I'm sure!

Life at Google

2010-10-07T20:13:29Z

One of the problems I'm finding in working for Google is the confidentiality agreement. Not that I want to sell out confidential information to other companies, but my fingers are itching to tell all my friends about all the cool stuff that is going on at Google and the awesomeness that is coming up. But, alas, I can't. At most, I can give a feel for how it is to work here.

There's a lot of videoconferencing going on. It seems fairly natural to me, but it occurred to me in the middle of a session that this is a prime example of sufficiently advanced technology: It's the fabled magic mirror that will let people see each other and talk over long distances. But it's old hat these days:) Todays VC was the quarterly overview of all parts of Google and how they're getting towards their goals. I was left with a very conflicting feeling of inability to scale my brains to this size of operations, an excitement at all the cool things that are going on, an impression of the conflict between not being evil and having to make enough money to keep the thing going, and an idea that Vernor Vinge was overcautious in his prediction of the singularity.

Life here is certainly not going to be boring. There are things happening all the time, so it's more a question of filtering out what you don't need to go to than finding things to go to. That goes both within Google and around München. I've found a list of local gaming groups on the find of the day, the http://www.freizeitspass-muenchen.de/ - a triple event of gaming, creativity and research. There's not going to be enough weekend for all I want to do there. I'm also going to attempt to revive the Google gaming group, bringing down more games every time I'm home. And I haven't even started to look seriously at photo groups, hacker spaces or other of my interests.

I've dived into the code already, and I'm pretty happy with what I see. Code reviews are not just suggested, they are required, and the code shows it. It is a pleasure to work in it (even though I can't currently get IntelliJ to work with the Google tweaks, so I have to use Eclipse), and coding is probably going to take less time than figuring out how to design the UI. The old code I'm replacing is pretty awful, though, one file with 6000 lines of C++ code. Fortunately, I don't have to understand it, I just have to implement the main functionality in the new, pretty system.

I've previously talked about mind-boggling things when considering astronomy or geology or other things that are fairly abstract. But being in the middle of so much development in so little time is stretching my brain cells in a totally different manner. Which is probably good for them.

I will not be able to preannounce anything, of course, but I can at least mention when interesting things launch, and why they're cool.

Why Oktoberfest works

2010-10-03T17:40:17Z

I ended up going out to the Wiesn twice more today, well shielded against the burning sun. I tried a couple rides - the AlpinBahn is great! Also tried various combinations of mostly carbs and fat, though I did spot an actual fruit stand. Didn't try no bier, as I have a principle of not drinking alone, except after hard work.

For the amount of people and beer being combined, it is amazingly trouble-free. A few things that help: you can only buy alcohol inside, and you're not allowed to take it out (except inside you). There's no seating except in the beer tents and their "gardens" (outside seating), so movement isn't impeded. There is a *lot* of walking space - the main streets are perhaps 20 meters across. The rides are extremely efficient, with passenger exchanges in a few seconds, and most of the line after the ticket sales. There are of course extra U-Bahn trains carrying people to and fro.

This was all needed, as apparently today was unusually full. Winding down towards the end? Not a chance. Everybody sleeping it off from yesterday? No, this was the big family day, with tracht everywhere. Plenty of Rule 7. Pictures will follow.

For this, I would wear lederhosen

2010-10-02T19:05:28Z

Or possibly even a dirndl. I went to take a look at Oktoberfest, and I knew it was going to be large, but noone had warned me that it would be *huge*.

The beer tents are tents in about the same way the Titanic was a boat. There are outlying houses around them that would each house a sizable restaurant or two, but they were utterly dwarfed by the behemoth "tents" behind them. Some of them simple, some (possibly the older breweries?) made up to look like giant log houses or over-size castles, complete with balconies full of men in colorful shirts and lederhosen, of course.

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get into any of them, since not only were the lines long, most of them were so full they didn't let anybody in anyway! Besides, I brought my camera and flash (pictures will be up once I have power on my laptop), so any drinking would have been impractical.

Instead, I divided my time between taking pictures, enjoying all the pretty mädchen in dirndl, and looking at all the things going on around the "tents". Besides the drinking, Oktoberfest is also the biggest carnival/tivoli I've ever been to. Any amusement park item you can think of is there, and then some. Many of them in oversize. Everywhere there are booths selling lebkuchen in heart shapes, roasted almonds, souvenirs, and meat in a gazillion forms. Sights, sounds and smells everywhere entice you to eat, drink and play, at a levels that baffles my little Danish mind.

All this can of course only work because people come here in droves. Nay, in herds. Or actually hordes, plural, is the fitting word here. Already in the U-bahn you can tell it will be crowded. Two good tricks for avoiding being squished are to go to the center of the platform instead of staying at the end like most, and to wait for the train coming one minute later so fewer people have time to get to the platform. Even so, there is little likelihood of being able to move, let alone sit, in the train. Luckily, the trip is short, since the "wiesn" where the whole thing is held was right outside the city when it started 200 years ago, so now it's one U-bahn stop from the Hauptbahnhof.

Once off the train, you're gently guided by the police (or the landeswehr or something) outwards as quickly as you can. Which is not very quickly, in fact the next train arrived before I got to the stairs. The crowd at this point is probably about 25% in proper garb (lederhosen/dirndl as appropriate), which makes it very enjoyable and gives an air of the Bavarians really being proud of their roots.

Getting around once you're there is an exercise in crowd dynamics. There are "main streets" that the shops and amusements face onto, and there are "back streets" with nothing happening. The back streets are as crowded as a shopping street on a good day. The main streets are worse. There are lanes of people going either way, sometimes dissolving into pedestrian traffic jams, especially at the crossings. The best way to cross a lane if coming from the opposite direction is to follow the lane for a bit. A clear space for taking photos is impossible to find, but if you stand in the "shadow" of a shop, you can at least avoid being constantly jostled. It's anyone's guess if my DW would go into panic from the crowds or go hyper from all the goings-on. Possibly both.

Next year, I will have an apartment here, and whoever calls dips first will have a way to solve the biggest problem of going to Oktoberfest: finding an affordable place to stay.

Long story short: I did a "scouting tour" of Oktoberfest without actually trying anything, but will certainly go back there tomorrow without my camera and see if I can make it into a "tent".

My first day at Google

2010-10-02T07:47:38Z

Yesterday was my first day at Google (I just love writing that). It was comfortable, yet scary, cool and confusing, and unsurprisingly a massive information overload. They really have everything written down and explained, and are very helpful with any other strange questions I can come up with (and I can come up with a few). There were (gasp!) a few technical problems - I just write it up to computers hating me.

There were two video conferences with other Google locations, and I still can't say I like them. Between the difficulty seeing the body language and the poor sound quality, it was really hard to keep focused on what was being explained. Fortunately, we got URLs for everything, so we can sit down and reread it afterwards.

Google has a large amount of internal tools for handling all manner of things, including scheduling massages and even a RPG version of the one-time password entry, to make it a little more enjoyable. It's wonderful to be at a place that so values creativity.

What else to say... there is good food, including breakfast and (if ordered in time) dinner, and snacks (including fruit) here and there. Coffee comes in many variations, including espresso machines that require instructions to use. Techsupport seems to know what they're doing, but unfortunately most of them were off-site today - bad timing if I ever saw it. There are little bits of information everywhere, after all that's what Google is all about. I'm very excited about what I'll be working on come Monday.

Overall a slightly rocky start, but the important thing for this day was to have things set up and information dumped on me, and that happened. And can I just say - WOOT! I'm working at Google. Even now, it's a little unreal.

Training it to München

2010-10-01T21:09:25Z

The part to Hamburg was almost exactly what I hoped for: quietly rolling train, green countryside, noisy beer-drinking Danes going to Oktoberfest. Well, two out of three ain't bad. They played Meier most of the way, but with a silly rule where you can just pass on the dice. Wimpy!

As I'm getting closer, my worry about not being good enough increases. I keep telling myself that they accepted me, so if they were wrong, it's their fault. I just don't feel like my design and code is up to Google standards. I know it's silly, and I'm just being a worry-wart. Once surrounded by nerds like me and in a good development process, I will do fine. I must.

Also: never trust a wok place whose woks are squeaky clean. They heated my dinner in a microwave! Should have dragged my suitcases a little further in to the Syrian place, it looks interesting.

After spending a rather chilly hour and a half waiting for my connection, I got onto the night train. Space was very much at a premium, it was a three-dimensional puzzle to get my two rather large suitcases stored for the night. I ended up not sleeping very well, partly due to having slept on the first train out of sheer panicked exhaustion, partly due to Jante really rearing his ugly head. Working as equals with some of the smartest programmers in the worlds does not easily cohabitate a brain that has "Thou shalt not think thyself better than the rest of us" subtly engraved in it since childhood. Gotta deal with it; I'm here, and it would be such a waste of effort if I just collapsed into a stupid heap of self-denigration.

Anyway, after a fitful sleep (fits 1 through 4, for snarkers), we got to München at 7:30 - half an hour late! Whatever happened to German railways and their world-famous punctuality? Oh, right, they got privatized, never mind. I dragged one suitcase into storage, only to find that the other one had bent wheels and was scraping itself apart on the sidewalk. Kinda disappointing for the otherwise very nifty High Sierra backpack/duffle/luggages. Due to that, I for once took a cab even over an otherwise walkable distance and got to Marienplatz with time to spare for a lazy breakfast.

Next up: my first day at Google! But that'll be tomorrow, as my body is crying out for proper sleep.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

M2M: T - 1H

2010-09-30T11:38:25Z

Gaah, panic!

Got everything squared away and ready last night, except for some errands. Ran errands this morning. Got home and looked at registering move. Whoops! Have to fill out a form - in person - before taking off. Down to the lokal borgerservice, but no go, they don't handle that. Gotta go to the center of town. Bike, don't run, to the bus and get speedily into center of town, where I get into one of these pull-a-number lines, but with several different number sequences, so I didn't have any idea how long it would take. Took five minutes that felt like fifty, but it was quickly processed, and I got a bus back again quickly. Now I might have time to grab a quick lunch before heading off to the train.

M2M: T - 19H

2010-09-29T17:40:12Z

Today was the day of absolute madness. I had until 14:00 to get everything ready and in place for the photographer, and the house was an absolute mess, as was the garden. With help from Dan, our renter, the two of us got so much cleared out that the room looked like something out of a living style magazine, if a magazine with slightly strange tastes in decor. It looked huge! I'll post links to the pictures as soon as they are available.

After the madness died down (kinda like running over the edge of a cliff), my mother and I went up to DSD for me to say goodbye to Mickey and for my mother to see the place. While I know it's a wonderful place for her and probably the best place she could find for finishing her thesis as well, I will miss her something ferocious.

Tonight, I pack my suitcases and sit down with a beer. Tomorrow, the last few errands and then it's off for a long but relaxing train trip through the German countryside. I need that, I feel like I've been run through a wringer. It would have been really nice to have been able to take the offer of having the movers pack everything for us, move it down there, then unpack it again, but with the way we're relocating, it wouldn't work. This way, at least, I've gotten a feel for how much I can actually handle of planning and doing when it comes down to it. Though it's less than I planned for, looking back I'm amazed I got as much done as I did. I deserve a long, relaxing journey, a day of meeting new, exciting people, then a weekend off. And hey, that's exactly what I'm getting.

M2M: T - 41H

2010-09-28T21:12:22Z

The crazy continues. Mickey has returned to DSD after having triaged her clothing and a number of other random items. The apartment looks larger than ever since we moved in. There's still odd stuff lying around in the corners, but no more than that we can pack it up in a couple boxes before the photographer gets here.

I'm very, very glad I don't have to do this frequently. I envy the stone age people who only had a bag of stuff to move. I'm so very tired, just want this thing to be over.

M2M: The Gardener Cometh!

2010-09-27T20:40:26Z

The moving process continues, and picks up speed. After a weekend with friends and family coming over to say bye, and further furniture rearrangements, the apartment is coming nicely together. Still some stuff to take to storage and various appointments, but by Jove, I think we can make it.

A gardening fiend friend came over and helped us for a couple hours to get the garden straightened up. It's amazing what somebody who's good at it can do in short order, the garden looks like a totally different place now.

On the Google side, I have confirmation that I'll be on the internal tools team, which is what I was hoping for. Massively distributed build tools, semantic analysis and dog food, here I come!