Today I sat in bureau with my netherlands collegue, our search engine optimization specialist, to install Kubuntu on his computer. Well, that sadly didn't work out for some weird partitioning reason.... (read: use Gentoo :P ). But I had a Mountainbiking-Video of Freeride Entertainment with me and we watched it meanwhile. I got a flat tyre on my brand-new bike about two weeks ago and fixed it just last weekend. While fixing it, I first time got into adjusting the brakes and stuff. So I really got interested again in the bike, for now I just used it for getting to work and back. This bike I got used from my biker collegue Lars, who really put together some awesome riding machine. After tinkering with it a bit, I tuned it more to my likings and also made the first plans for improvement... but however.. I got into downloading some mountainbike videos and I stumbled upon Freeride Entertainment. And those videos really made me wanna ride my bike aggressively again. I never was a daredevil-style rider, but I always liked to push the limits (read: my limits are small... ;) ). Today on work then, while installing the Kubuntu, I got into talking how fearsome and lameass I have gotten. And when we were standing on the balcony having a smoke, I told him, that I wanted to jump off that loading ramp since we moved here with our bureau (yeah, my work place changed location in december). Well, we both agreed, that I am too drunk to do it, but the idea was stuck in my head... ;) )

When we were leaving, I just directly put my backpack with my laptop (that always was the main excuse not to try it) onto the ground. When standing on my bike at the edge of the ramp I just feared the height (about 60-70 cm). Michiel, as the search engine optimizer was called by his parents, told me: "Ah, I would almost do it with my bike!". And he's riding a classic dutch town bike.. :P

So I hesitated some two or three more times on the ridiculously low edge and then Just Did ItTM - worked out!!! :D

Man, was I happy, awesome, great, fuckin' helluva kickin'!!!! :)

You'll find them in the WG Stollen Dissolvement-gallery. I didn't yet annotate or rename them correctly, but I think you might want to have a first look at them.

The ones beginning with "dsc" in the name are made by my bro the day after the party - you'll recognize it from me not looking too fresh.. ;) The other ones were made with my cell phone and have dates as names. So pictures starting with 16 are from the party itself - yeah, not too many, I know! But that shows, that the party was too good to remember making photos!
And we'll remember that party anyways! ;)

On Saturday was the last act of the WG Stollen in Ilmenau. Their headquater has been dissolved after more than 6 years. An era ended and a myth became immortal.

WG Stollen started actually on Pöhö, Pörlitzer Höhe, the main ghetto in Ilmenau with Marcus, Marco and Kai. The flat was also located in an original GDR con
crete slab building, but it was pure crap - there weren't even any tiles on the walls in the bathroom. I will need to organize some pictures of it still, so that you know, how it really looked. After about half a year those three people moved to the Stollen, the 'upper class ghetto' of Ilmenau, still a building made with precast concrete slabs, but a freshly renovated flat. The bathroom was brand-new and the ground plan of the flat was modified by adding another w
all to accomodate three people comfortably.

I have been a guest to this flat-sharer community since PöHö-times and on Stollen I became official 'inventory'. It was the usual procedure to go to the WG Stollen after a university day to discuss the world, politics, philosophy, useless shit and whatever came up - and there were as many opinions as participants. Seldom a consensus was found, but every time it enlarged the perspective of the attendees.

WG Stollen was also the place, where I started using Linux for routing and serving and it later on became the place where I kicked windoze completely. After a couple of semesters Marcus decided to stop his studies in Ilmenau and study janitor, err facility-manager, in his home-town Dessau. I was in my practical semester at this point and the people called me, if I would like to move in there. Well, after some thinking I agreed. I had many hours of Linux-hacking with Kai together and we eventually came to the point, where we ditched windoze as a desktop-OS.

Kai then in some semester-holidays vamoosed from the flat after a couple of stressful and communicationless months in which he refused to talk about his iss
ues. Some months Marco and I had to hold up the flat with only two people and then my beloved Püppi moved in. She somehow couldn't be cocked up by us and finished her studies quickly in almost the regular time. Again Marco and me were alone and we kept this state until the final end this monday.

On Saturday we had the final party and it surely was worth of WG Stollen. We had many different people and lots of beer there. ;)
Old friends from the first semesters were there, people we don't know for too long and even my bro luciash (who was already beforehand incorporated as a 'virtual member') came all the way from czech! :D
Though a lot of people (also important ones) were missing, we again had a colourful mixture of people from different social standing and background, philosophies, attitude towards life and even countries this time. There were acrimonious, but thriving and peaceful discussions between people, who never met before. And the last ones of them left long after I already fell into bed (which actually isn't the usual behaviour ;) ). It was a real WG Stollen evening! :)

On sunday then Hillwig (as Marcus is called, just by his family-name), Marco and me cleaned the flat completely. Yes, Hillwig was still there and helping with everything up to handing over the flat. He's still counted as a member of WG Stollen and he acts just like that. Monday then we gave away the flat to three new students, who didn't realize what legacy they accepted.

WG Stollen is not about this special flat, it's about the people, respect and openness. But this flat was the symbol for it all - a symbol, that was hard to give away.

Hello again after a waay too long time. But I have an important message to all of you and will try to get blogging by this again...

Russian crackers have used Tikis to create a bot-net. The exploit is as easy as it is dangerous and I urge you to upgrade immediately to 1.9.5.

Read more about the security problems here:

• Tiki under attack

Gete the release here:

• Tiki 1.9.5 at SourceForge

Today really is the last day on which I can do some preparing stuff for my move to Bayreuth(which will be tomorrow morning). I have been packing my books, CDs and DVDs into boxes - and found out, that with four full boxes my room is still as packed as before! Well, that's pretty common for moving people afaik..... ;)

This whole moving-thing needed some real change in mind: I needed to understand, that "I will be moving out of Ilmenau". Once I realized that, it wasn't any problem at all to start packing - once I realized, that I will be leaving Ilmenau. Ilmenau - this city, that coined seven years of my life - that city, that every student hates, but I love for all its dark secrets and the life underhands - that city, that is only a village of people from around the world(yes, chinese make a big percentage of students) - that city, that presumably produces the world's best graduands - that city, that is slowly leaving its GDR-past behind itself - that city, that is ruled by an university not worthy of being called an "alma mater" - the city in which I gained my freedom as an individual!

I just performed a symbolic act of leaving. My Finland-flag (which was hanging in every single appartment [4 of them all-in-all] I have ever had in Ilmenau) was just folded for transport according to the rules of the probably most nationalistic country of the world.