Concert of the year – Jamie Lidell

I had the pleasure last night to go to the second show of Jamie Lidell at the Apollo Saal in the Staatsoper in Berlin. Accrording to Berlin rules the concert started an hour an a half late with the support act Snax. The drummer and guitar player started the show and I was shocked because I thought I’d have to listen to yet another German rendition of what funk should be like. So I stormed back to get a drink and when I turned around the singer had taken the stage and the music transformed into a combination of Prince, Jamiroquai and some sort of Punk that I can’t quite put my finger on! In short: they rocked!

But then Jamie took the stage starting the show with a slow soul/blues number and at first I was a little disappointed but my patience was going to be rewarded manyfolds! As the show went on the energy produced by Jamie and Gonzalez (the band that accompanied him) was at times too much. I was jumping up and down, singing along but most of all I was amazed time and time again by the super-tight grooves and sounds this guy can produce with his mouth and his level of control over the FX and loopers he uses. Although I stood pretty much right next to him, I didn’t get a good luck at the setup, but then again, who really cares? Did I go there to look at gear porn? No, I wanted to see a modern rendition of soul, house, disco and whatever you wanna call the electronic stuff. And boy, did he deliver.

Everyone: go see his show, whenever you get a chance, the man is incredible and a total sweetheart on stage!

How the japanese see Germany

Kiyoshi Inoue (japanischer Fußball-Kommentator während der WM):
Auch ein paar Schwarze spielen für Deutschland. Auch Deutschland hatte ja
viele Kolonien in Afrika.

Kiyoshi Inoue (japanischer Fußball-Kommentator, beim Spiel
Deutschland-Italien bei der WM 06):
Der Mann, an den sich Angela Merkel da kuschelt, ist der italienische
Präsident – Romano Berlusconi. Schon im Zweiten Weltkrieg arbeiteten
Deutschland und Italien zusammen.

Kiyoshi Inoue (japanischer Fußball-Kommentator während der WM):
Hier in Dortmund sieht man noch deutlich, dass hier früher das
kommunistische Ostdeutschland war.
(Daraufhin der Ko-Kommentator:) Ist das wirklich schon Ostdeutschland?
(Inoue:) Ja, der Fluss Rhein war früher die Grenze. Wer da rüber wollte,
wurde erschossen. Es gab nur eine Brücke, bei Remagen, die ist jetzt wieder
aufgebaut.

Kiyoshi Inoue (japanischer Fußball-Kommentator während der WM):
Diesen deutschen Spieler kann kein Mensch aussprechen, ich muss mal auf
meine Liste schauen: Shi-wai-nu-shi-tai-gari. Nennen wir ihn einfach “Das
Lachsgesicht mit der Bürste auf dem Kopf”.

Kiyoshi Inoue (japanischer Fußball-Kommentator während der WM):
Viele Frauen haben uns angerufen und gefragt, wer denn dieser supergut
aussehende Mann auf der deutschen Bank ist. Das ist Biru, einer der drei
Trainer der deutschen Mannschaft (gemeint war Oliver Bierhoff).

Kiyoshi Inoue (japanischer Fußball-Kommentator während der WM):
Auch er (gemeint war Klinsmann) wurde kritisiert, weil er nicht in
Deutschland Steuern zahlt. Das machen viele deutsche Sportler, wie auch der
Tennisspieler Beku (gemeint war wohl Boris Becker) und der Rennfahrer
Schumi, denn nach der Wiedervereinigung wandern alle Leistungsträger aus
Deutschland aus. Die Regierung kassiert alles Geld, um es den armen
Ostdeutschen zu geben, die sich noch nicht an Arbeit gewöhnt haben.

Fun with programming languages

TASK: Shoot yourself in the foot.

C: You shoot yourself in the foot.

C++: You accidentally create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can’t tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying, “That’s me, over there.”

FORTRAN: You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue with the attempts to shoot yourself anyways because you have no exception-handling capability.

Pascal: The compiler won’t let you shoot yourself in the foot.

Ada: After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover you can’t because your foot is of the wrong type.

COBOL: Using a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be re-tied.

LISP: You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds…

FORTH: Foot in yourself shoot.

Prolog: You tell your program that you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn’t permit it to explain it to you.

BASIC: Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On large systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.

Visual Basic: You’ll really only _appear_ to have shot yourself in the foot, but you’ll have had so much fun doing it that you won’t care.

HyperTalk: Put the first bullet of gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.

Motif: You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the bullet, its trajectory, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.

APL: You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.

SNOBOL: If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.

Unix:
% ls
foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
% rm * .o
rm:.o no such file or directory
% ls
%

Assembler: You try to shoot yourself in the foot, only to discover you must first invent the gun, the bullet, the trigger, and your foot.

Games convention 2006

So, yesterday I spent the day at the games convention in Leipzig (beautiful city, although I didn’t have a chance to see too much this time). It was very exhausting I found, although the noise level wasn’t nearly as high as at the Musikmesse…

There wasn’t a whole lot of new stuff I found… I was expecting more virtual reality type things, but there pretty much weren’t any. The weirdest thing was the Painstation, a part of the exhibition showcasing real world versions of the classic game Pong. As punsihment for lost points it featured electro shocks (yes, real ones), heat and a particularly painful punishment: the whip. And I am not kidding here, this thing was as a matter of fact painful.

Painstation 1

These are the torture tools:

Torture Tools

All other pictures can be found in the Gallery

I have also uploaded a couple of videos to my YouTube account