Baruch's cat Rysza – my only company for this afternoon

Rysza (sp?) is a word in Polish, and it means "red-grey" IIRC.

Baruch is my son#1; he is now off for the afternoon with João Gabriel (his brother resp. my son#1) and Cristina (J.G.'s mother) to meet "Brother Simion" and family in Berlin-Steglitz – friends of my Brazilian "sub-family". (I would rather point you to www.brothersimion.com.br, but apparently he abandoned that domain name.)

So I am having a few hours alone (apart from Rysza) at home on this 1st Christmas holiday (Dec. 25th), and I am rather enjoying it.

E-mailing, Facebooking, phone, listening to music on JazzRadio.net (and maybe other stations later this afternoon), …

I am sorry for being lazy doing something we that reflection in Rysza's eyes, the cats' version of red eyes.

I just removed the Google Picasa application from my Mac's hard drive.
Can you imagine, how easy it is to accidentally upload your whole private life in pictures to your Google Photo / Picasa page?!?? That rather frightens me.

I want to give away this book for free: "Ukulele For Dummies"

Ukulele For Dummies:Book Information and Code Download - For Dummies

Includes an audio-CD.

I would prefer to give this away within Berlin, Germany.

JasperReports in Berlin | Google Groups

JasperReports in Berlin | Google Groups

I hope we can start a lot of activity there and esp. within Berlin.

Of course I don't mind, if you contact me directly. I am looking forward to challenging projects.

Friday evening, 6:20 at Berlin, waiting for my date to show up at her place

online in a public transport bus in Berlin with a router in my pocket

I am amazed! No USB device sticking into the computer …

Rosenstrasse [Berlin] (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rosenstrasse (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

O, how interesting, this is where I joint a project last week.

Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin: Exhibition: Hitler and the Germans. Nation and Crime

Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin - Hitler and the Germans. Nation and Crime - Exhibition

Location: Deutsches Historisches Museum, "Ausstellungshalle von I. M. Pei".

Opening hours: 7 days a week 10:00 through 18:00, on Friday through 21:00.
2010-10-15 .. 2011-02-06.

I found the exhibition far too overcrowded. The captions made very bad use of 3 different fonts, occasionally making the text rather unreadable. I never saw any exhibition as badly made as this one.

DocBook Berlin – created the Google Group for the 1st regional DocBook User Group

I am very excited about this.

There is an exploding number of web views on that Google Group.
Keep your fingers crossed, that there will be frequent activities soon.

DocBook Website is going to revolutionise the activities necessary to set up static and almost static web-sites, it will not stay the gold mine for a few – it will be affordable for the many.

DocBook Slides is the new way to create slides, forget everything before!

Tell everybody about this user group in Berlin! Join "us" for learning and helping each others!

public transport in Berlin

Here are a few hints, I looked up today, and that may be valid for a couple of weeks or months.
No warranties at all!!!
In case of doubt or for further information, pls refer to the BVG Tickets+Fares home page: www.bvg.de/index.php/en/ / Tickets+Fares !

• There are 3 "tariff zones" in Berlin. For simplicity assume, you will always only be traveling within zones A and B aka "A+B" aka "AB".

• Single trip tickets "A+B" cost EUR 2.10. 4-trip tickets (or any kind of "n-trip tickets") are not cheaper than single trip tickets, but you have less hastle with 4-trip tickets.

• Single trip tickets are valid for 2 hours, they are strictly "one direction only", at least certainly no loops involved.

• A "day pass Berlin AB" costs EUR 6.10, obviously it's worth going for a day pass, if you think, you would need at least 3 tickets per day.

• There is a "Berlin WelcomeCard (5 days)" (basically a 5-days-ticket to "Berlin AB" plus a few vouchers, whose usefullness I cannot assign a proper value to so far) for EUR 29.90. (There exist a few variations of that as well ..., have a look here, if you want so!)

• A simple regular 7-days-pass costs EUR 26.20. (I rather recommend that one, if you don't stay longer than 5 days.)

• I also recommend you get tickets at a vending machine or at "info points" like at Tegel Airport, not on the bus.
• Ticket machines usually accept cash and  Maestro cards, no credit cards at all.