Since I was young and we got the Internets at home, one believe has always been fostered in me: you can find anything on the ‘net, if you just look hard enough. Till yesterday.

I’m currently looking for new shoes because I very badly need them. Near my workplace (or rather intern-place) there’s a small Levi’s shop that has some shoes in their window that I thought might be good, but I wanted to show them my girlfriend first. That’s why I tried to find a picture of the Levi’s Almayer shoes with red and yellow stripes online. You can find a lot of images of Almayer shoes, but not with this particular color combination.

This deficiency cannot continue. Here’s my contribution to the Internet’s omniscience, for all those image search engines:

Levi's Almayer Red/Yellow Stripes

From the Weltensaga news:

Zunächst einmal die gute Nachricht:
Die Gewinner des Quizes zum dreijährigen Geburtstag von WELTENSAGA stehen fest. Jeweils einen Premium-Account erhalten:

• Gilgamesh
• Beliar
• Haku

Herzlichen Glückwunsch!

Jetzt der aber der weniger schöne Teil:
Im Rahmen des aktuell nahenden Rundenendes haben wir die Erbauer der Superwaffen noch einmal ganz genau unter die Lupe genommen. Dabei ist leider herausgekommen, dass bei einigen etwas faul ist. Deshalb:

• Der Bau wird bei Boehser Eti abgebrochen und er wird gesperrt.
• Der Bau wird bei Saedelaere abgebrochen und er wird für 3 Tage gesperrt.
• Der Bau wird bei Buck Rogers abgebrochen und er wird für 3 Tage gesperrt.

Die Gründe dafür sind unter anderem Pushing und Accountsharing. Ich hoffe, ihr versteht, dass dieser Schritt nötig ist, damit diese Runde regelkonform beendet werden kann.

Update
Dramaking ist nun auch für drei Tage gesperrt worden und seine Superwaffe ist ebenfalls abgebrochen worden.

Last Thursday, I was at my first IGDA meeting. More specifically it was a meeting of the IGDA Chapter Hamburg.

IGDA Hamburg

There was free beer and an interesting presentation by Splitscreen Studios who are working on their upcoming browser-based MMOG Pirate Galaxy. The game itself looks preety good, though their definition of “browser-based” seems to be different from mine. In this case it just means “started from the browser”, as far as I could find out. A few megabytes must be downloaded initially.

IGN has more information on the game itself.

A few weeks ago, I read an essay by Paul Graham on messages that cities try to send their inhabitants. It’s called Cities and Ambition.

He talks about cities like New York and Cambridge and messages like “you should be smarter” and “you should be richer”. I’ve tried to listen to Hamburg’s message for some time now, but it still comes down to what I first thought of when reading the essay.

The prevalent message here seems to be: “Drink more beer”. Everyone does it anywhere and anytime. You’re almost an outsider if you’re not drinking your first beer at 10 am on the subway.

What does your city tell you?

From the Weltensaga news:

Party, Party! Heute vor genau 3 Jahren ist WELTENSAGA online gegangen. Am 17.10.2005 hat die Beta-Phase begonnen.

Es ist doch erstaunlich, wie schnell solch ein Zeitraum vergeht. Ich persönlich kann es kaum glauben, dass wir schon in der fünften Runde sind, wobei es davor auch noch vier Beta-Runden gab, und dass das Spiel tatsächlich schon drei Jahre alt ist.

Wenn das mal kein Grund zu Feiern ist – ich zumindest werde das heute abend tun.
Prost!

Update: Ab sofort gibt es wieder ein Quiz, an dem alle teilnehmen können, die Ahnung von WELTENSAGA haben oder meinen sie zu haben. Als kleine Motivation gibt es für die besten drei jeweils einen Premium-Account zu gewinnen.

Hier geht's zum Quiz!

Over the weekend I was on a short trip to Trento, Italy. The flight from Bremen to Verona came rather cheap because of Ryanair.

The adventure started with a Fanta I had never seen before. It’s called Fanta Chinotto and is supposed to have the taste of the chinotto fruit which seems to be quite famous in Italy. All I can say is: It tastes disgusting.

Mimose is German for sissy.

These pizzas actually hung over the plates onto the table.

I quote:

In Fall vor Gefahr
[...]
- 4. Einen Ausgang erreichen

So, in case before danger you are supposed to reach one exit – sounds like a video game.

The Italians seem to think those spaces in German aren’t really necessary.

Not just a fire, but a fire blaze threatens the Germans.

Enough fun, there was also some culture to be found. At the moment, the Manifesta 7 is going on in Trento. The manikins shown above probably were a part of this biennal. This street and some narrow streets were full of them.

Here in Germany, Pro7 currently airs all six Star Wars episodes. So far, I’ve seen the first three and there was one scene that really cracked me up. Because it was so funny, I guess it’s my favorite scene of the first three episodes. It’s from episode 3:

R2-D2 stands in front of a hostile droid and tries to shock it with his built-in electroshock weapon. The shock doesn’t do any harm and the enemy kicks R2-D2 so that he falls over.

Here it is at about 0:20:

It think it’s even funnier in German because the bad droid says something like “Du spinnst wohl.” If the above clip is correct the droid doesn’t say anything besides the “ouch” (which he also says in German).