Going to Berlin for New Year’s Eve
Fernsehturm in Alexanderplatz
I just got non-binding but relatively firm approval today at work to go to Berlin at the end of the year. I’m going to go to the 25th Chaos Communication Congress (25C3) this year for Mozilla, along with “Tomcat,” one of my German coworkers.
The Chaos Communication Congress is an annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club in Germany. It takes place at the Berliner Congress Center at Alexanderplatz in Berlin (the former East Berlin). Over the four days, there are sessions from the late morning through to past midnight on each day with the event ending on December 30. Wikipedia states that the event has had 4,500 people in the past.
If you go to the wiki for last year’s events, you can get more details. They have the schedule up from last year and it includes sessions ranging from Simulating the Universe on Supercomputers (video) to Hacking in the age of declining everything (video) and Overtaking Proprietary Software Without Writing Code (video). You can see recorded video from last year as an iTunes podcast as well.
R plans to come to Germany as well though she may not attend much of the congress. How often do you get a chance to go to Berlin for New Year’s Eve, after all? We’ll probably arrive just after Christmas on December 26, which is a Friday, and stay for eight days, leaving on January 3. This will give us some time to see the sights in Berlin, visit some museums, etc. after the congress is over before heading home. I’ll be pretty busy for much of the even since sessions run all afternoon and evening for those four days. Still, it ought to be a lot of fun.
This makes for an even busier travel year between Canada in July, Las Vegas in early August, Black Rock City at the end of August, and Egypt in late September or early October. Of course, half of these are for my work so they aren’t all vacation but it is a lot of travel.
Paper Finished and Summer Plans
I finished the first full and largely complete draft of my term paper for my esoteric Buddhism class today. It came in at 28 pages but one must remember, since we’re using footnotes for citations, that anywhere from a half to full inch at the bottom of many pages is taken up by footnotes.
The paper is off with my editor now (which means that my wife consented to look at it and catch the typos that I haven’t caught after ten minor redrafts for some reason and to see if it reads like a real paper). Once it gets past her and any mistakes she finds, I’ll send it in. With that, I’m done with this class and just in time for Summer!
This summer is shaping up to be fairly busy. I’m still quietly doing an online course with the Buddhist group that I work with for our education program. Those will continue one after the other.
R and I took a little time off today and drove down to Half Moon Bay to go horseback riding. I hadn’t been on a horse since I was a kid (which is shameful since my dad’s family owned a horse ranch of sorts in Wyoming). R had done horse camp as a kid but that was a long while ago. We did an hour and a half trail ride with a guide along the ocean, which was rather nice. I spent much of my ride trying to convince my horse, Chico, to quit eating flowers and shoots and to keep moving along. I had the “no riding experience” horse so he pretty much did what he wanted much of the time. I’m glad we went but my ass is pretty sore right now. I would like to do some more riding in the future though this wasn’t particularly cheap to do.
Beyond my continuing education work, R and I found out that Emeryville (which is a block West of us) has a Taiko dojo with regular open classes. Since we’re both interested in drumming (especially Taiko) and like joint activities, we’ll probably try out the classes there when the new series begins in two weeks. Learn to drum the Japanese way! They have their own Youtube channel as well if you want to see the local group in action.
We’re going to Seattle next week, where I’ll be seeing the Karmapa in his rockstar tour of the United States, as well as my daughter, grandparents and a few friends.
At the end of July, I’m going to Canada for a week for the Mozilla Summit with my co-workers. I’ll come back from that for four or so days and then head off to Las Vegas Black Hat and Defcon, again for work (since I’m the QA lead for security releases).
At the end of August, R and I will be going to Burning Man again. I went last in 2006 (she in 2001) and we’re looking forward to it.
Oh, and we are planning our Fall vacation trip (when we normally try to travel) to Egypt for late September or October for a couple of weeks.
Speed Racer
R and I went and saw Speed Racer this evening. We both wanted to see it on the big screen.
I’ve heard mixed reviews of it, with some people find it too cartoonish or just frenetic. For a movie done by the Wachowski brothers based on a cartoon, I’m not sure what they were expecting… I enjoyed it quite a bit and I think R did as well. It has a simple plot but it is probably the most psychedelic movie, from the point of few of colors and motion, that I’ve seen in quite a while. It is just awesome to behold on a big screen. I enjoyed the look and feel quite a bit and I found it a worthwhile night out to go see it. Too each their own.
Going to the theater, I did notice the line around it to see the new Indiana Jones movie but I’m glad that I went and saw this while I had the chance.
Of course, now I have the sound of Big Black’s song, “Racer X,” running through my head constantly…
The first seven minutes of the movie are available online, with higher resolution versions on the site.
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