Alpha Core

Some people already know it: I just LOVE waffles!

But with waffels I don’t mean any kind of waffle, they must be ‘Luikse wafels’, which are also known as ’suikerwafels’. In English known as ‘Liège waffels’ or in German as ‘Lütticher Waffeln’.

Lately I spent 10 days in Leuven (Belgium) and had a warm waffle almost every day in a waffle shop in the Leopold Vanderkelenstraat (at the corner of the Bondgenotenlaan). Now that I’m back, I of course can’t just stop with it. I searched for a good recipe and I didn’t give up until I found one. I immediately started preparing some and they where so delicious that I decided that everybody should know how to make them. Here is the recipe: Read more

Nobody might know it, but I just LOVE escape games.

In this kind of game you find yourself trapped in a room, often you don’t know how you got there and you never know how to get out of there again. Your task is then to look around in this room (meaning: point and click with your mouse) and to hopefully find things, which could be helpful for your escape. In a lot of these games you also have to solve some riddles or logic puzzles in order to get the next clue. Usually you can’t die in an escape game, but there are also some where you do, if you make a mistake. Most of them give you unlimited time, some don’t. I myself like the ones most where you can’t die, even if you try the most stupid things and take three days for it.

One really nice example (I think maybe the best I played so far) is the Escape Game [Vision], which I found recently. This game has very nice graphics, doesn’t require pixel hunting (searching for the tiniest things, which are almost unvisible for normal peoples eyes), but offers a lot of tricky logic puzzles and a reasonable storyline. It is not too easy, so I’d better give the link to the walkthrough as well.

If you want more afterwards, rest assured that there is an unlimited amount of free escape games online allowing you to escape from almost every scenario possible. Click here for a choice of the better ones and google for something similar to ‘escape game’ or ‘room escape’, if you played through all of these and still don’t have enough.

Don’t forget to also check out my post about Weekday Escape.

We recently went to see ‘Auto Auto!‘ (by Christian von Richthoven and Stefan Gwildis) at Fliegende Bauten in Hamburg. At the beginning of the show, there’s a nice looking Opel Kadett E on stage. At the end, well, let me say its value decreased quite a bit and they need another car for every show.

Performed by Christian von Richthoven (amazingly great percussionist), Kristian Bader and Rolf Clausen, the show offers a wide variety in music styles, from classical Tchaikovsky to samba, all being played on… the car! The instruments used are quite creative, ranging from wooden sticks and pieces of cloth to grinders, demolition hammers and heavy axes. Here’s a short clip to get an idea what it’s like:

After a break of about one and a half years, I decided to continue learning Japanese again. For some inexplicable reason I’m immensely drawn towards this language. Maybe because of its complexity, maybe because it’s so completely different than any other language I know.

In Belgium, I did 2 years at the Centrum voor Levende Talen (CLT) in Leuven, thereby completing level A1 (Breakthrough). During my third year, I moved to Germany and put my language study on hold until now. Yesterday, I enrolled for an A2 (Waystage) course at the Volkshochschule (VHS) here in Hamburg. I’m studying hard to get back up to my level again until next week and I’m keeping my fingers crossed, because it’s not entirely sure that the course will actually take place, because that depends on the amount of people enrolling for it.

I also wanted to share some links and name some software for people learning the language as well. First of all, you have to learn Kana (hiragana and katakana). For Microsoft Windows users, you should also install the Japanese IME, so you can type Japanese on your PC. Its IME Pad (with handwriting recognition) is a really good thing to have as well! In my humble opinion, the greatest learning and dictionary tool of them all, both for Japanese as well as for Chinese, is WaKan. Among some of its great features are dictionary searches as you type, kanji lookup, stroke order and card printing. If you’re browsing the internet with Firefox or you’re using Thunderbird as your e-mail client, Rikaichan is a great add-on that adds tooltip help and dictionary word and kanji lookup when hovering over some Japanese text. Kanji-A-Day offers you a kanji, guess what.. yes, every day, so that’s another one of those things to start your day with. Furthermore, any article about Japanese is incomplete without a link to Jim Breen’s Japanese Page and finally also take a look at the Japanese Learning Suite.

I would also like to recommend the following books: as a course book I would suggest Japanese for Busy People I and II. An amazingly good book to learn your kanji is Kanji & Kana: A Handbook of the Japanese Writing System. Although opinions about Heisig’s method are divided, I also suggest Remembering the Kanji 1 (here are some free sample pages). However, I don’t think you should wait with studying readings until you finish the book though! Finally, if you’re looking for a good dictionary, take a look at Kodansha’s Furigana Japanese Dictionary.

Here’s Mocha the hamster, enjoying his very first broccoli at the age of 13 days! Warning: extremely high cuteness factor!

We were recently at IKEA to look for a piece of furniture and I saw that they unknowingly have some great Go equipment on sale at the moment. They’re selling a product called Pärlor which are basically plastic pots with a lid filled with about 100 glass stones for €1,50 (price valid until August 2008) of which you can see a picture I made here to the left. Although a bit small, they’re quite good to use as Go stones: there’s black and white ones, they’re quite equally round in shape and easy to hold with two fingers and even the pots are great to hold the dead stones in. They’re great to give Go a go without the need to invest lots of money into some decent equipment (board, stones and pots).

For those who never heard about the game of Go (also known as Igo, Weiqi or Baduk): The Interactive Way To Go is a great place to get you started understanding the game. You can then test your skills in a game against the computer with Igowin. To divulging yourself even further into the matter, I can highly recommend Sensei’s Libary which contains tons of useful information and strategy discussions. Very nice is Tsume Go Of The Day, which serves you a new Go problem every day. Nice to get those brain cells working early in the morning.

Update (March, 19th): I removed the link to the Tsume Go Of The Day website, because it seems to have been taken offline. That’s very unfortunate, because it was one of my favorite sites to visit first thing in the morning.

If you want to play the game online, take a look at The KGS Go Server (KGS) or The Internet Go Server (IGS). Also take a look at MultiGo if you’re looking for a great game file viewer/editor. It also allows you to play against the computer if you install GNU Go next to it. EidoGo is also a very nice open source web-based editor and joseki tutor. Enjoy yourself!