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My iPhone is shuffling through my 20'000 or so tracks I have in iTunes - every day I get to hear around 30 minutes of music - often stuff I had forgotten I had or not heard in a long time. Today I got another dose of Frank Zappa - easily my favorite musician. I absolutely love this part of the lyrics of the song Packard Goose: Information is not knowledge Knowledge is not wisdom ...

A couple of weeks ago we had a photographer coming to our office - the technical HQ of Mobino. The result is the illustration to the current Bilan in an article about “The future of money” (not available online, but I will get a copy on wednesday) From left to right: Alvaro Fussen (senior developer), yours truly, JF Groff (CEO) and Chengchen Ji (our intern for the summer). Not only do we move money, we also do it in style… ...

Es hätte schlimmer kommen können. Til Schweiger als neuer Hamburger Kommisar bringe einen eher unrealistischen, Action geladenen Tatort. Keine Reflektion, kein Seelenstriptease, dafür viel rumgeballere und einige coole Sprüche. Trotzdem ist das bei weitem nicht so schlimm herausgekommen, wie zu befürchten war. Dennoch - ob der Tatort unbedingt US lastig (was den Munitionsverbrauch angeht) werden muss? Bis jetzt hat mir eigentlich ganz gut gefallen, dass die Tatorte wenigstens in Ansätzen den Anschein hatten, knapp etwas mit der Realität zu tun zu haben. 2011 wurden in Deutschland 36 Schüsse auf Personen abgegeben, davon 6 mit Todesfolge. Der neue Hamburger Tatort brauchte dafür gerade mal 90 Minuten… ...

Everyone with a teenage son will know that this species spends an incredible amount of time in front of game consoles and computers if left to their own devices. I don’t want to go into the fights we have with our son about his excessive use of electronics (after all, I am guilty of too much electronics myself). One thing however, that I have absolutely no understanding for - and that surprised me, when I found out is the following: ...

It has been a long time since I was out in a bar with a friend, talking for 3 hours over a couple of beers. Walking home, I realized how much I have missed this. Thank you, friend, for your stories, your insights, your listening, your advice, your cheers. Hopefully, it wont’t take that long until the next time.

When I teach my students the beginning points of monkey patching I usually get a gasp or two, a muttered curse and something like “I will never want to maintain something like that”. Being the Ruby and Rails developer I am, I console them and tell them that in practice hardly anything bad happens, that Ruby gives you a sharp knife (instead of the plastic implements the Java people get dealt) etc. I also actually believe that this is so. ...