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On Vacation

Harald Welte — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 16:00:00 GMT

In case you're wondering about the lack of activity not only on this blog but also in git repositories, mailing lists and the like: I've been on vacation since September 13. It's my usual "one month in Taiwan" routine, during which I spend some time in Taipei, but also take several long motorbike tours around mostly rural Taiwan.

You can find the occasional snapshot in my twitter feed, such as the, pictures, here and there.

8-day motorbike round-trip in Taiwan

Harald Welte — Sat, 20 Sep 2014 19:00:00 GMT

I always wanted to do this during the years I spent more time in Taiwan (the good old Openmoko days in 2007/2008), but of course never found the time back then. This year, I finally manged to do it: A motorbike ride around the island.

To be more honest: It was not literally around the island on the coast line, as I find the west coast not very attractive for a leisure ride: It is quite densely populated and has lots of industry. I also skipped the north coast north of Taipei city, as I've been there so many times before. So in fact, it is a trip from Taipei along the east coast all the way down south, and returning back north towards Taipei on the western side of the mountains.

You can see (a smplified version) of the GPS track via Google maps or also via OpenLayers/Openstreetmap.

My biggest doubt in the past was whether I would be able to find accomodation 'on the go', given my very minimal mandarin language skills. If you don't know the road conditions, weather, etc. it is hard to plan all the stops in advance. Also, given that typhoon or earthquake induced landslides or rockslides are quite common in the mountains, advance planning is not the preferred option.

However, given the quite universal mobile wireless data coverage and a smartphone, I was able to always book the next accomodation (1 day in advance) using popular booking websites such as agoda.com or booking.com. This worked quite good, except in the rare case where those websites get the address/location of the hotel/homestay completely wrong.

Regarding the trip itself:

Day 1: Taipei to Hualien
I don't even remember how often I have taken provincial highway 9 from Xindian (south of downtown Taipei) through the mountains to Yilan before. It must be the road that I travelled most frequently. What was different this time is that the departure was on a weekend, so there were literally hundreds of motorbike riders on the track. Also, interestingly, in virtually every curve there was at least one photographer taking pictures of the motorbikers.

(Side note: I usually avoid leaving the hotel/apartment over the weekend, as Taiwan is simply to crowded. Doing any kind of travel, sightseeing or even going out for dinner is almost bound for a disappointment on saturday or sunday).

Having travelled 'number 9' many times still doesn't make it a less interesting mountain ride, with plenty of serpentines and marvellous views, particularly when you can first see the coastline from high up in the mountains. I'm also quite familiar with the coastal provincial highway 8 down to the entry of Taroko Gorge, along the steep cliffs, passing the various industrial harbours and cement factories as well as the numerouns tunnels along the road.

The remaining kilometers down from Taroko towards Hualien go much faster than anticipated, as it is suddenly quite flat terrain and a wide (two lane per direction) road that permits 60/70kph. The latter doesn't sound like much, but it is a lot, compared to the 30/40kph limits in the mountain roads.

Accomdoation at a hotel inside Hualien city. Nice and clean room, close to the shore. However, difficult to actually get to the shore as a pedestrian, and aside from concrete bricks (to break the waves) there's really not anything. No natural coastline, no rock or sand beach, nothing.

What was worth noticing where two anglers who were actually using a quadrocopter to take their hooks/bait way further off the shore than you would be able to achieve with manual casting of the fishing rod. I have no insight into current angling practises. To mee it seemed quite high-tech / nerdy / sophisticated ;)
Day 2: Hualien to Taitung County

Accomdoation at Lehuo Shoudo Moli Homestay
Day 3: Staying in Taitung County
We actually liked the location (and the "private beach") so much that we decided to stay for an extra night.

Accomdoation at Lehuo Shoudo Moli Homestay
Day 4: Taitung to Kenting

Accomdoation at Miami Hostel
Day 5: Kenting to Pingtung
Day 6: Pingtung to Chiayi

Accomdoation at Tea Homestay
Day 7: Chiayi via Alishan and Yushan and Sun Moon Lake to Taichung

Accomdoation at Sky Villa
Day 8: Taichung to Taipei

Strain of bad luck

Harald Welte — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 19:00:00 GMT

From roughly September to December 2012 I seem to have had a quite unusual strain of bad luck and set-backs. I don't want to go into the details here, as most of the issues are of quite private nature.

This has kept me quite distracted from a lot of my other activity. Projects like the various Osmocom sub-projects, gpl-violations.org are in desperate need of attention, and I have severely neglected my responsibilities in the Chaos Computer Club Berlin e.V. :(

I don't even want to talk about actual paid work, where customers also had to put up with repeated schedule slips and lack of availability.

I let down friends and colleagues at a number of occasions, as I was unable to keep up with anything that remotely resembles my typical work schedule.

Last but not least, I regrettably have also not felt much of an urge to write many blog posts here.

My sincere hope and expectation is that things are going to improve quickly in 2013. At least most of issues from the last half year have been resolved. Now I need to work through a considerable back-log of work and find more time for my volunteer projects in the FOSS and hacker worlds. However, this will need some time and I would like to ask for some patience. I do intend to be up to speed with things just like before.

In this spirit, I am looking forward to a productive and exciting 2013. Happy hacking und Viel Spass am Gerät

Back from a 3-day motorbike ride to the central Taiwan mountains

Harald Welte — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 19:00:00 GMT

I've wanted to do this for many years, but somehow never managed to do this even back while I was spending a lot of time in Taiwan: A motorbike ride crossing the mountainous center of the island using the Central Cross-Island Highway. This highway is probably not what most people imagine a highway would be like: A narrow road consisting almost entirely only of serpentines with a speed limit of typically 40 km/h. In other words, a motorbiking paradise.

You can enter that highway from the east by starting from Taroko Gorge. In order to get there by motorbike, you take the famous Provincial Highway No. 9 from XinDian via Pinglin to Yilan, which is frequented a lot by Taipei motorbike riders on weekends. The No. 9 further leads along the cliffs of the coast to Xincheng, from where No. 8 starts.

The trip from Taipei to Xincheng is only about 200km, but still you need at least something like 5.30 hours if you want to ride safely. This is once again due to the mountain roads. You can barely see 100m at any given time to the next turn in the road all the way between XinDian and Yilan.

So I stayed one night at the entrance of Taroko Gorge.

Upon arrival I was greeted by the hotel owner with the news that No. 8 had been closed temporarily due to rock fall at km 150.9. That was pretty devastating to my plan, as this road is the only connection in the northern two thirds of the entire island. There is no alternative, except for No. 20, which would have been probably three times the amount of distance (and thus time). However, as it later turned out, the road would be opened for 30 minutes between 6am and 6.30am. So I had to leave at 5.00am in order to safely ride the first 30 km up to the road block. This turned out to be the best thing that could have happened:

There was absolutely zero traffic in either direction (the first 25km to Tienshang that are normally full of tourist busses).
I was able to witness the sunrise at about 5.40am in the mountains
very clear sight, which at other times is not clear at all

So I reached the road block even ahead of schedule and was able to pass as intended.

I continued along the road, and due to the fact that the road was closed again after 30mins, there was close to zero traffic all day on the entire road. /p>

At Dayuling, you can either continue the 8 towards Lishan (but not much further due to repeated subsequent earthquake and typhoon damage), or you an continue along No. 14 A towards Hehuanshan (Mt. Hehuan). I first went to Lishan (a major tea planting region) and back, as due to my early morning start I had lots of time left for detours, to continue towards Mount Hehuan , where the road reaches an altitude of more than 3100m.

I spent the second night in Renai, where I arrived just in time: The first rain drops of a heavy afternoon thunderstorm were falling. In the morning, I was greeted by the following view from my hotel room:

I left again in the early morning, drove through Puli and headed for the Sun Moon Lake. It really is beautiful, as you can see in the following picture. However, it is also over-developed to care for tourists of all sorts, including lots of concrete directly at the lake, and bus-loads full of tourists, Starbucks coffee shops and everything that comes with it. After two days in remote mountains with little buildings and almost no people, the experience was so shocking that I decided not to circle the whole lake but instead continue down south along No. 16 until it meets No. 3, which I then drove more or less all the way back to Taipei.

The first sixty-or-so kilometers are painful, as they lead through heavily populated areas around Nantou and Taichung. This means that there's lots of traffic, and very frequent traffic lights that make you stop. Later on, the road leads through less populated mountainous regions, and driving is more relaxed again.

Having managed this trip without any problems (nor getting lost even once), I'm hoping to find some time in the future to ride No. 7 from Yilan to Lishan, and particularly Provincial Highway No. 20, crossing the mountains much more south.

And if there's one part for me to remember: Always avoid the densely populated regions in the west of the island. If I wanted to ride stop-and-go all day long, I don't have to leave Taipei or New Taipei City in the first place ;)

Getting woken up by an earthquake...

Harald Welte — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 19:00:00 GMT

...is a good adrenaline rush to start your day. Happened to me this morning at 5am in Taipei, caused by a Magnitude 6.5 earthquake 70 km off Yilan on Taiwans east coast. If it happened two days earlier, it would have caught me on the motorbike ride, possibly causing even some more road blocks due to rubble coming down from mountains.

I'm still alive - short update...

Harald Welte — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 19:00:00 GMT

In the last two months I barely found time to update this blog. I'm now back on track and will try to update the blog more frequently.

The CCC Camp 2011 has been great, and the OpenBSC based camp GSM network has been a success, despite some initial problems. Thanks again to everyone helping with the build-up and operation of it, and thanks for all our volunteer users/testers.

Most of the time since I've been buried alive in work, almost exclusively related to various sub-projects surrounding the Osmocom GSM protocol implementations. We're working on every level of the protocol stack at the same time, and on network elements from BTS, BSC up well into the core network, media gateways, etc.

Most recently I've been doing some work with openembedded (OE) again, and I've had more contact with the intrinsics of GSM AMR than I ever imagined I would.

There's lots of exciting stuff ahead, but I don't want to talk about it until the respective code is public and the stuff actually works.

The only really ugly thing that I have to deal with again and again is a lawsuit related to the GPL infringement of the German vendor of the Fritz!Box DSL routers. I'll follow-up on that shortly. One of the most ridiculous things they claim is that their products are not DSL routers :)

I'm still alive ;)

Harald Welte — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:00:00 GMT

In case you're wondering why there is such a long period with no updates: I've been travelling over the last week and barely had sufficient time to follow my e-mail and get the most high-priority work done. Hope to update the blog soon.

Family visit is keeping me busy

Harald Welte — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:00:00 GMT

In case you're expecting a quick response from me these days, please apologize. I'm currently having family visiting me in Berlin, and I very much enjoy being the personal tourist guide for some days...

I shall be back to normal by the end of the week.

Heading off to Europe's largest Goth festival

Harald Welte — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:00:00 GMT

Despite lots of very exciting work at this time, and a distinct lack for progress on my various 'just for fun' software/hacking projects, I'll be visiting Wave-Gotik-Treffen from tomorrow on. This means that I'll be listening to some fine music and will hopefully have a most enjoyable time offline.

Don't expect me to read or answer e-mails or get any work (paid or unpaid) until at some point Tuesday next week.

Some more thoughts on the Yamaha TW-225

Harald Welte — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:00:00 GMT

A Yamaha TW-225 is my motorbike in Taiwan. Although I often refer to it as my toy bike (compared to the BMW F650ST and FZ6 Fazer in Berlin), it has proven to be a very reliable bike.

Before I cam to Taiwan and bought it, I was used to ride the heavy BMW for almost a decade. Ever since driving school at the age of 16, I didn't ride a small/light bike again (at that time a Yamaha DT80). So initially I was skeptical about the TW-255. Sure, for getting from one place to another inside Taipei it is great. But what about riding further distances and/or in the mountains?

To my own surprise I actually think that it is an almost ideal bike for the conditions in Taiwan (at least those that I encountered so far). It is very light, so you can actually manually move it around easily - very important considering the parking conditions in Taipei. The small weight also means that you don't have to throw around much weight on mountain serpentines.

The engine with its 18 horsepowers is also surprisingly strong, even on steep mountain roads. On the other hands, the engine is not too strong, i.e. it is forgiving in case you make any mistakes. You certainly don't make a wheelie or get your rear tire to slide while accelerating. You also don't run into the danger of a rear wheel blocking when shifting down and being a bit too swift with the clutch.

You can almost do anything with (or to!) the bike and it will tolerate it. You can pull the throttle as you want, make mistakes while shifting gears and whatever else. I've experienced many less pleasant situations with my other bikes, but not with the TW-225 despite plenty of opportunity.

As opposed to the ever-so-popular scooters you have a manual gear, much bigger tires, different center of gravity, better suspension (think of potholes), ... - and most of the scooters also have a weaker engine anyways.

The only two weak points that I could find so far:

The brakes could be much more aggressive, saving important time when you have to do a full stop after some unexpected event in the traffic ahead.
The seat is ridiculous. I'm by no means tall with my 172cm, but I think the seat TW-225 seat is way too low for me. And god, is it uncomfortable. Not sure if it was designed with an Asian anatomy in mind (the TW-225 is officially selling only in Japan) and if it is less painful for Asians. But thinking of doing more/longer tours through Taiwan, I definitely need a different seat...

Having said this, I'm still looking forward to trying some of the high mountain roads like the central cross-country highway from Hualien to Taichung. Let's see how the carburetor will do once you get to around 3,000 meters of altitude..

Holidays in Taiwan

Harald Welte — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

Just in case you are wondering why there are no updates here: I'm currently on holidays in Taiwan and thus not working much on my various projects, i.e. no major updates on this blog until some early/mid April.

German news site Spiegel Online has video of my torched car

Harald Welte — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Some 9 months after some idiots have put my car on fire, the german news site Spiegel Online reports on a court trial unrelated to my car, but showing a video of my car.

Quite funny how they always dig out that footage. The court case was about an alleged failed attempt to torch a car, so showing two completely burnt cars in that article is not really sensible anyway.

As you can see from the article, there' already more than 250 burnt vehicles this year in Berlin.

Migrating from Panasonic CF-R5 to CF-R8

Harald Welte — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:00:00 GMT

I've just received my new laptop, a Panasonic CF-R8. As you may remember, some time ago I ranted about the lack of reasonably small laptops with decent number of pixel lines in the LCM. Since I was not able to find any other product that really qualified according to my requirements, I had decided to buy the CF-R8, the successor of my 3 year old CF-R5.

The specific configuration of this unit is:

Intel Core 2 Duo CPU U9400 (1.4GHz, 3MB Cache)
4GB of RAM
320GB 7200RPM SATA drive (Hitachi HTS72323)
Intel 82567LM Gigabit Ethernet
Intel ICH9 chipset
Full black color case / keyboard / everything

It's a nice device, the dual-core CPU and much faster/bigger hard disk as well as the 4GB RAM make a real difference. At the same time I still have the same 4:3 aspect ratio display, and the same keyboard layout, i.e. I don't need to get used to different location of function keys or the like.

Comparing it with the CF-R5, I think the following main differences have to be noted:

the case design is more modern and looks more ruggedized
on first sight, it seems a bit thicker than the old model, but careful comparison reveals that this is just an 'optical trick' and in reality the height is the same
The battery form factor has been changed completely. This means that the display can be folded further back than it used to be the case. Great!
There is no need for the pcc_acpi/panasonic-laptop ACPI driver in the kernel anymore, display backlight and function keys are just controlled using regular/standard ACPI methods.
They did actually add a very small fan to the back of the device. However, it is so silent that it's actually hard to notice during normal operation.
The new hard disk is even more silent than the CF-R5 one
The power switch has been moved to the inside, i.e. under the LCM. This prevents accidental power-on/off while shoving the device into a notebook bag/sleeve. Again, a very useful modification.
The old 100-Base-T Ethernet has been replaced by 1000-Base-T. 100MBps was pretty embarrassing for the CF-R5 even 3 years ago, considering my 3 years older powerbook G4 already had Gigabit Ethernet...

Flying with KLM: Feeling like time-travel to the past

Harald Welte — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Today I found myself on my way back to Korea. This time not on the Finnair flight that I'd used before, but on a KLM flight. What was a big surprise and almost a shock to me is that KLM operates airplanes on long-haul intercontinental routes (Amsterdam - Seoul/Incheon) which do not have a personal in-flight entertainment system in economy class.

I think the last time I have experienced this must have been 6 or 7 years ago. And actually, now that I'm thinking of it, even while I was working in Brazil in 2001 many planes already featured this.

How on earth does KLM think they can compete with that level of service? I mean, European airlines suck as opposed to Asian airlines, I have realized this... but even among European airlines I have not seen something like this for a long time.

It's not so much that I absolutely need the personal entertainment system. It is more a shock about how KLM can risk looking that old-fashioned against all of their competition.

Today, many of the planes on the EU-Asia routes that I frequently use already have the second generation of in-flight entertainment with the 7" or bigger wide screen displays, or even have 110V power outlets for laptop power supplies in every seat...

Learning Hangul characters

Harald Welte — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Since I'm in Korea currently, and I'm expected to come back a number of times during the next months, I thought it might be a good idea to start learning Hangul, the Korean alphabet.

It really is surprisingly easy, there are only 24 basic glyphs that are combined in sets to form syllables. So it actually is less complex than the western alphabet, especially if you consider upper and lowercase glyphs (which Hangul doesn't have).

Of course being able to read the alphabet only allows me to convert from written to spoken language and back. Without any vocabulary, there's no way to make any meaning of the words - which is fine for me now. At least I can start to memorize names of locations/restaurants/shops this way. There really is almost no English writing anywhere - at least much less than I'm used to from my extensive time in Taiwan.

What I found particularly funny are the borrowed words from English. Things like Like "laserprinter" or even the names of the various fast food items at KFC really sound funny once you read them in Hangul and pronounce them (or hear them pronounced) ;)

FZ6 Fazer is beyond reasonable repair

Harald Welte — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:00:00 GMT

As it seems, the cost of spare parts and labor to fix the engine of my recently bust FZ6 engine are well beyond EUR 4000, so there's no point in repairing it.

As it further turns out, the previous owner of the bike (I bought it in April last year) had forged some signatures in the service booklet, i.e. the motorbike has likely not seen the regular inspection and service like it should. Haven't yet decided whether to file any claims against that previous owner or not.

Now I've decided to buy a new one of the same model, and keep the old one for spare parts. At some point next week I should be the proud owner of a brand-new FZ6 Fazer. With three full years of Yamaha warranty. Hopefully this one will live longer than 17,000 kilometers.

Bad luck with motorbikes, episode 2342

Harald Welte — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Last night I was riding back to Hamburg (on my Fazer FZ-6) from a two-day visit to my home in Berlin. It was a pleasant ride, at least for about the first 210 kilometers. Suddenly at about 1am when I was riding at smooth 190kph (far away from full throttle), there was a sudden loss of engine power and the engine sounded as if it was running on 3 instead of four pistons. I immediately pulled over and used the conveniently placed highway exit. While I was getting slower I realized enormous amount of smoke (identified correctly engine oil that vaporized on the surface of the exhaust pipes). As soon as the clutch was pulled, the engine went off.

I then realized that a lot of oil had spilled to the rear wheel, including the tire. There was no other solution then having the bike transported to Hamburg in a van... Thinking about the possible cause, I thought of something along the lines of a blown cylinder head gasket. Arriving in Hamburg at roughly 4am in complete darkness, there was no way to dig any deeper into it.

This morning, in bright daylight I could clearly see the actual cause: An about 5x7cm wide hole in the engine case! WTF ?!?.

So it seems that suddenly, while travelling, the aluminum-cast engine case decided to blast a part off. Quite amazing. And that not at any particularly high rpm or under high load... let's see what the Yamaha mechanics will say about that.

So now I have a broken BMW F650 in Berlin and a Broken Yamaha Fazer FZ6 in Hamburg. And that in the best part of summer. *sigh*. The only remaining bike is in Taipei and not really of much use to me right now.

Soon I'll say hello to Hamburg

Harald Welte — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Some of my friends already know it: I'll be spending some 6 weeks in the city of Hamburg starting from June 21st. I can't talk about details of the particular project that I'll be working on, but I'm extremely excited since it's related to what I've been most passionate about recently: GSM networks and their security. And no, it's not about any software development and it is completely unrelated to OpenBSC.

If you happen to be in Hamburg and want to meet at some time to hang out, feel free to drop me an e-mail.

Back to Germany, travel plans during next weeks and months

Harald Welte — Mon, 25 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Just as a quick note, I'm back to Germany. Besides catching up with various aspects of work, I'll be visiting what I think is the world's biggest Gothic / Dark Wave / EBM festival, known as Wave Gotik Treffen over the extended weekend, and in less than two weeks I'm heading back to Taiwan for FreedomHEC Taipei 2009.

From the second half of June on I'll spend quite a bit of time in Hamburg on a customer project. I'm looking forward to using this opportunity to get to know the city better...

Enjoying holidays in Brazil

Harald Welte — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:00:00 GMT

I've been offline for an entire week, something that rarely happens to me as long as I can think back. It has been great. I took the time to read Cryptonomicon again, and it was just as great as the first time. I also found sufficient time to continue my (still embarrassingly little) chinese studies, and had even more time to think and reflect about my life.

So all in all it is a holiday like it should be. Don't expect any news from me in the blog or by e-mail before March 26th.

First couple of days in Brazil

Harald Welte — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:00:00 GMT

I've arrived in Brazil for 2.5 days of Rio de Janeiro before heading to Recife and Porto de Galinhas for BOSSA 2009.

Rio actually was a much more pleasant experience than anticipated, and as far as I can tell after that short of a visit, I seem to like the city - at least much more than Sao Paulo which I felt was a big disappointment while visiting it last year for a similarly short period of time.

Being in Brazil always fills me with some kind of strange sentimentality. I've spent most of the year 2001 in this country, it was my first long-term experience in a foreign country. It was a great work environment at Conectiva, and times without a lot of the sorrows and worries that I am having today, working with hardware companies who often still not have noticed even remotely what was happening in the Linux world eight to ten years ago.

And I'm always surprised how well I can manage with those few bits of Portuguese that I learned during my 2001 stay. It's actually more than just barely managing, but being able to grasp at least the key aspects of most conversations, etc. And this despite not having had the slightest bit of practice between 2002 and 2007.

If only I could ever get my Mandarin to that level. Well, this is also the reason why I've brought my Chinese language books with me and I'm planning to study quite a bit in them during the two weeks of holidays following after BOSSA. With some luck I can also find some time in May or June to take up my language classes in Taipei again.

I have back my old car

Harald Welte — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

In late 2008, I 'sold' my old car (Opel Vectra) to a friend from the local Berlin CCC (starbug) for the symbolic price of 1 EUR. I didn't mind, since the car was not worth all that much, and it was for a friend.

As it turns out, starbug immediately said "if you need it back at any given time, just let me know". I never thought that case would happen, but due to recent events it actually happened.

So now I have my old car back, which makes the feeling of the Golf even more surreal. Owned a car for about 3 months of which I was probably travelling at least two, then suddenly lost it, and am back with the old car. Feels a bit like I'm back in the past, rewinding back to times that one thought were gone.

In any case, big thanks starbug!

Photographs of my torched car

Harald Welte — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Today I arrived in Berlin and could take some pictures of what was my car:

As you can also see on the following pic, I was "lucky" not to be the owner of the Porsche next to it - apparently the actual victim of the attack:

What I cannot describe or show here is the actual smell of that burnt car.

Rest in Peace.

UPDATE: There's even a picture while it is still burning in the newspaper

Some idiots apparently put my car on fire

Harald Welte — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

While I'm still in Taipei, I suddenly get a mobile phone call from the Berlin police department. It seems that somebody has parked a Porsche next to my car, and then some retarded people put that Porsche on fire, and the flames from the Porsche then torched my car (a VW Golf), too.

I currently don't know the extent of the damage, but it makes me quite sad, as I just had that car for some three months. Luckily I'm leaving Taipei today, just in time to get home tomorrow and have a look at my [partially?] burnt car.

Oh, and it still had one of the BS-11 GSM Base Transceiver Stations in the trunk. Curious to see if and how that one has survived.

So I'm returning to my home in Berlin. The car is torched. My BMW F650ST motorbike is broken due to some carburetor issue. And the Yamaha FZ6 is only registered from March through October for the summer season. *sigh*. Must be Murphy's law.

As if I didn't have other things to do.

UPDATE: The car is apparently completely burnt out, beyond repair.
Farewell :(

First Impressions of South Korea

Harald Welte — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:00:00 GMT

So today I arrived in South Korea, after a one day stop-over in Taipei (following a flight connecting in Abu Dhabi). I've arrived at about 6pm local time and had a 90minute bus ride to the hotel in Yongtong-gong. So besides check-in and a quick stop at the convenience store, I didn't yet do much.

Some first impressions, in no particular order:

Heating like crazy. This first occurred to me in the airport, but became more of an issue in the bus. I was actually sweating with my long-sleeved shirt, without any jacket. The hotel has a default temperature of 28 degrees Celsius, not only in the lobby but in every room. you can adjust it, but as soon as you leave the room, it resets to 28. So the setting is not very useful, considering that a floor based heating has a very high latency, since the entire floor tiles are heated up and dissipate heat even hours after adjusting the temperature.
The hotel clerk asked me in the elevator what kind of power plug my laptop had, and if I needed any kind of adaptor. Furthermore, he actually showed me the LAN cable and indicated "IP address automatic" ;)
After a first try, that automatic IP address is actually a public IPv4 address. Wasn't there something about IP addresses running out in Asia? Weird, but definitely very welcome! Traceroute indicates all intermediate routers in Korea don't have any reverse lookup. Even more weird ;)
The hotel room has flat screen plasma TV and a PC (running Windows, so I just disconnected the screen and run it in multi-head. Interestingly, the VGA and audio inputs of the plasma TV are connected with the PC at the desk, so you can play back video from the Internet or DVD's on your plasma TV. That's way better than crappy pay-TV in western countries :)
Samsung is apparently so big, that they have a dedicated bus stopping at this hotel, taking people to the company twice every morning. A sign in every hotel room indicates this fact :)
I totally love the sound of the language. To me, it actually sounds even better than Japanese.

So I remain thrilled what happens next. Not sure how much time I will have during the week, depends how busy it is at work.

The "Deutsche Bahn" experience

Harald Welte — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Given that I'm a person who constantly interfaces with a very international crowd and travel a lot, I used to be quite positive about the great railway system Germany had. The comfortable travel in high-speed trains, with power outlets under your seat, from one city center to another city center faster than you would ever be with an airplane. Just enter a train, sit down, hack for something like five hours straight the entire trip.

Now I know that the railway company "Deutsche Bahn" has had its fair share of trouble in recent months with technical problems and what not. But given the fact that those problems (resulting in less trains/cars being available) exist for some three months now, I would suppose that they deal with this properly

Having said that, the online ticketing and reservation system made a reservation in a car that doesn't actually exist in the train that I'm using today. So I was confident that I had a reserved seat for the five hour trip back to my family in southern Germany. What a misconception :(

How difficult can it be to update the reservation system with those trains / car numbers that actually operate? Or at least refuse to make reservations at all, if you cannot guarantee them? It would probably be a couple of SQL updates here and there in the database.

This is not the kind of quality that I expect from DB. And I won't even start to complain about the complete lack of heating in this particular car. There we are in hyper-modern, super-silent train cars at 200+ kph, in the middle of winter, without heating. Yes, I can wear a jacket, sure. But my fingers are freezing from typing at this temperature. And no, gloves + keyboard don't make a good combination. Maybe I should start bringing an electrically powered heater net time, given the fact there is a power outlet...

Klangstabil in concert @ Schlagstrom

Harald Welte — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Last night was the greatest fun I've had in a long time. I've attended a Klangstabil concert as part of the Schlagstrom Industrial/Noise events in Berlin.

There is probably not much music that provokes as many endorphines to be released in my body as some good, loud, noisy and rhythmic electronic music :) Klangstabil have been one of my favorites for quite some time, but this concert was the first of their concerts that I actually attended. Now after it, I'm asking myself why. Probably due to the fact that contrary to some others I actually think the latest album "Math and Emotion" is great. Will make sure not to miss another concert in the future. promise!

I remain speechless, fascinated, moved. Happy.

First-time visit to (South) Korea in January

Harald Welte — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Despite being a business trip (more details might be disclosed later, after it has happened), I will talk about this in the 'personal' section of my blog.

I'll be in Joungin-City and Seoul for about 10 days in early January. Most of them are probably spent with busy working days, but the weekend is definitely free for some sight seeing and the like.

I've always been excited about Korea (for whatever reason), and it is definitely one of the major countries in South-East-Asia that I haven't visited yet. I know it is culturally very difficult and probably hard to get adjusted. Some business travellers rank it as higher difficulty than Japan, let even aside China or Taiwan.

In any case, I'm happy to go there and get a first impression. Too sad that it's the wrong (cold) time of the year. But well, the first trip doesn't have to be the last.

Some almost two more weeks will be spent again in Taipei, where I am looking forward to some exciting appointments, before I seem to be heading for some more work in India in February, potentially visiting FOSDEM before.

Back to Berlin

Harald Welte — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

After almost one month of travels (Berlin->Paris->Bangalore->Delhi->Taipei->Delhi->Bangalore->Mumbai->Bangalore->Paris->Berlin), I'm finally back to Berlin. It always feels good to be home, and in fact I'm probably home for more than three consecutive weeks, something that doesn't happen very often.

It has been an exciting time, and I've made quite a bit of progress on both the GSM scanning side as well as on the gnufiish (Linux for E-TEN glofiish) side. Still, lots of work remains, and it's a challenge to see how much time I can spend on it.

During the next couple of weeks I'll be working on VIA related stuff. Most of it is behind-the-scenes work, but I'm also actually going to work on some actual code again. What a relief ;)

Obviously, there is also still a lot to be done on the GSM base station + GSM network front. The interested hacker might already have figured out that I'll be co-presenting with Dieter Spaar on how to run your own GSM network at the 25C3, but I'm mentioning at this blog anyway for the sake of completeness. The code will be released at the 25C3, and we'll hopefully also have some fun at the GSM hackers desk in the hack center.

With some luck, I'll be heading for Taiwan and (for the first time) Korea in January 2009. The other news about 2009 is that I'll likely spend more time than before in India.

Availability of Bollywood DVDs in Bangalore

Harald Welte — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

I've been visiting Bangalore many times throughout the last five years. Every time I've spent a visit to "Planet M" on Brigade Road for buying some Bollywood DVDs.

And for some unknown reason, the size of the racks with Bollywood DVDs is shrinking from year to year. And with it, obviously the choice...

What you can get are sort of the last five major blockbusters, and tons of cheap re-releases of old movies from the seventies through nineties. But what about the last five years? What about anything that was released recently but is no longer part of the top-10? _nothing_!

Oh, and then you can get tons of Bollywood VCDs. But who wants that low quality? It's definitely no pleasure to watch a VCD. Even DVDs have way too little resolution to capture e.g. the details of costumes in a lot-of-people-dancing kind of scene.

It's really sad. Are people no longer buying those DVDs? Do Bollywood fans go to different places? Where should I go in Bangalore for a decent selection? Hints welcome, please send e-mail.

As a side note, yesterday I've also been at Planet M in the Esteem Mall. It's sort of a joke. Never seen a CD/DVD store that small. Obviously no choice at all.

In Switzerland again. Feeling like in a Bollywood movie

Harald Welte — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

I'm back to Switzerland for some Swisscom related work. Right now I'm sitting in the Intercity train between Zurich and Bern. And believe it or not: Half of the car is occupied by (loud) Hindi speaking Indian tourists ;)

It really feels like I'm in a Bollywood movie. Indians in Switzerland. And not only in Switzerland, but in the Train. Couldn't be any more cliche ;)

Drona - what a disappointment

Harald Welte — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

In Berlin there are not many chances to watch a Bollywood movie in an actual cinema. Those few movies that they show, I usually try to watch, at least if I'm in town. So far they've always made a great selection and picked only blockbuster movies that actually were any good.

Since I haven't been staying up-to-date with the latest Bollywood releases (mostly due to time constraints and lack of access to Indian DVD's in Taiwan), I didn't even check about the background of the latest movie they've started to show here: Drona.

After watching the first five to ten minutes of the film, it became already clear to me that I should have done better and check beforehand. Never seen such a trashy movie before. What a disappointment.

1654 THE CAVE

Harald Welte — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Today I found out about this years schedule for 1654 THE CAVE.
Today it will happen.
And I'm even going to be in the right part of Germany.

The best coincidence of this year.

A trip to Fulong beach in the northeast of Taiwan

Harald Welte — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

On Saturday I went to Fulong beach. Believe it or not, my first bathing-at-a-beach trip in Taiwan, despite the long time that I spent on this tropical island.

The venue of the beach is really nice (photos will follow later). The water temperature of the pacific ocean felt surprisingly cold to me - but keep in mind that I'm still spoiled by the 28 centigrade warm Atlantic ocean in Pernambuco/Brazil ;)

However, it wouldn't have been a Taiwanese experience if there weren't some strange observations. First of all, I obviously appreciate that there are a number of life guards. But then I found out that they had a rope in the water, which you were not supposed to pass. The problem with that rope, though: It was at a water depth of about 1 meter to 1.10 meter!

So imagine a huge beach, of which there is a small portion separated by this rope floating on the water, and all the people are crammed into the small confinements between the actual waterline and that rope. The sea was incredibly calm, I could not even detect the remotest hint of any underwater currents, the slope of the ground is _very_ flat, but you can't actually get into the water to swim.

The other peculiarity was that the beach closes at 5.30pm. WTF? Especially during those incredibly hot days, why not just stay in the water into the evening or even at night?

So as a summary, I have to say, Brazilian beaches rule in comparison! Nobody to tell you that you cannot go into water deeper 1.10 meters, beaches are always open (there are no private beaches, they're all public), and most part of the day you will get served beverages, alcoholic drinks and fresh food.

So this trip to Fulong beach was certainly an experience I wouldn't want to miss. But not one that I'm likely wanting to repeat again. I now know what it's like :)

Electrical installations in Taiwan

Harald Welte — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

I haven't noted this here yet, but I'm in Taiwan again since two weeks ago. I also have two more weeks of Taiwan ahead, since I decided to stay a full month and go to a Chinese language school. Now don't expect too much, this is basically just to find out whether I really want to seriously learn about the language or not. Four weeks will not get me anywhere, at least not beyond pronunciation drills and very basic sentences + vocabulary.

Anyway let's get to the subject of my posting: During the last couple of days I actually spent a significant amount of time trying to find something that to me is the most normal thing: A 60W 220V light bulb with an E14 socket. But that would apparently only be normal in Europe. Here in Taiwan, the voltage typically is 110V at 60Hz, with US-style power sockets. Basically just like the US or Japan.

However, for some really strange and unknown reason, the particular apartment has both 3 phase 110V and 3 phase 220V. The power sockets are all 110V, whereas the fixed ceiling lights are all 220V.

So apparently sometimes people have 220V lights here, and you can get a limited selection of usual bulbs in 220V type, even though 90% of the light bulbs in the store would be 110V.

I've been to Carrefour, B&Q and Tsan-Kuen (all large super-stores in NeiHu). 220V was really rare, and neither of them had any E14 bulbs (independent of shape) for 220V. So after a lot of wasted time, I then decided that I'm just going to replace the entire lamp socket with an E27 type in order to accommodate a different lamp. My other option would have been to add another E14 socket in series and then use two 110V bulbs attached to 220V mains.

Now the really big question is: Why would anyone have the lighting at 220V whereas the power outlets are running1 at 110? This means you need separate infrastructure, separate lines, transformers, metering devices, circuit breakers, etc. And three simply is no point. I could understand 3-phase 220 is better than 3-phase 110 in case you want to use extremely high-power consumers.

Bought another motorbike: Yamaha FZ6 Fazer

Harald Welte — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

During the last week or so, I spent a lot of time test riding a number of various motorbikes. Both real sports / supersports bikes, as well as 'sportive touring bikes'. I wasn't really sure if I should go for a true/real sports bike like the Suzuki GSX-R (750/1000) or start with something less 'extreme' first. One thing I learned, though, is if I went for a sports/supersports bike, I'd definitely have to keep my BMW F650ST around. Those racing bikes are just not useful for casual riding in city traffic. But I want both, fun at the motorway, as well as a useful bike for local travel inside Berlin.

Then I got a really irresistible offer for a two-year-old FZ6 Fazer (with ABS), and I had to buy it. So for now, it is this. It's probably reasonable to first go from the familiar 48bhp to 98bhp before reaching to the 160bhp range of the Suzuki GSX-R. So in the end, I can even claim that I'm being rational and reasonable here, going "only" to an (already-ridiculous) amount of power, than a beyond-ridiculous amount ;)

And please don't worry too much. I'm not suicidal, and I've been riding quite safely for more than 11 years now ;) This is not going to change!

Motorbike troubles again

Harald Welte — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

It seems like I lost all my luck. Only a three weeks ago, the Yamaha TW-225 in Taipei had problems after my arrival. Now that I'm back to Berlin, my BMW F-650 had some serious trouble, too.

Starting the engine turned out to be really hard (started only on something like the 10th attempt, even though usually the first one is sufficient). Furthermore, pulling the gas handle only the tiniest little bit kills off the engine completely, independent of how far the choke is asserted.

So today I spent some five hours in disassembling almost the entire bike, removing the twin-carburetor, disassembling and cleaning it and putting the entire bike back together again. The engine is running fine again. I just wonder why I have this kind of carburetor problem already the second time in the last couple of years.

There's almost no visible dirt inside the carburetor, and all the fittings are fine, no signs of any leakage, no signs of any significant wear of any of the involved parts. Still, cleaning and re-assembling it clearly removes the problem.

Back from WGT

Harald Welte — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

There are two fixed dates every year that I never miss: The annual Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin between Christmas and new years eve, and the Wave Gotik Treffen music festival in Leipzig.

This year I was camping at the event campsite again, following two lazy years in a hotel. I enjoyed it a lot, especially since the weather was perfect. Only sunshine, not a single drop of rain for the entire four days.

The festival itself was like always. Great. :) I think my personal favorites this year was the industrial (probably better: rhythmic noise) act NULLVEKTOR as well as INADE.

Back from the trip to Taiwan

Harald Welte — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

It's been some time since my last blog post, mainly because I've been quite busy in Taiwan. First there was the conference, then there were a number of meetings with various companies to educate them about GPL licensing and how to interoperate with the FOSS community for better hardware/driver support.

The other part was actual spare time. I spent many months in Taipei during my work for OpenMoko, but I never really had much time to explore the city, or even other parts of the country.

This time I explored quite a bit of the Taipei nightlife, visiting places like Luxy, Lava, Room18, Barcode, ageha, and even the so-called "meat market" of Carnegies and Tavern.

I've also had time to try one of the many hot spa's of Taipei in Beitou, as well as a really great motorbike trip to the national forest in the Wulai mountain region.

Unfortunately the weather wasn't that great, so I had to postpone my plans to visit the northeastern and the eastern coast to some future trip.

And the most interesting part is: I actually made contact to Taiwanese people who are not at all in any way related to work :)

Further Taipei exploration brought me to the Wufenpu fashion wholesale area, as well as Ximending. Most impressive is also the "Taipei underworld", i.e. the various underground shopping malls near Taipei Main Station, such as the Taipei City Mall, Station Front Mall and ZhongShen Mall I and II. You can literally walk for many kilometers underground...

Now I am one day in Frankfurt, and tomorrow one day in Munich, Friday one half day at home, and then there will be four days of music festival at WGT 2008.

Back to Taipei

Harald Welte — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

After a break of almost six months, I'm back to Taipei. Obviously I now see everything from a quite different angle: I no longer work for OpenMoko, Inc., thus I actually have spare time here and can explore both the capital city as well as the country much better than before with that ever-growing OpenMoko workload.

However, the first day wasn't quite as relaxing as it should have been. First, the apartment key that was supposed to be with the guard of the apartment building accidentally was mixed up with some other key and got sent to the landlord.

A couple of hours later I discover that my Yamaha TW225 motorbike doesn't work anymore. First diagnosis: Battery is empty (not surprisingly). I try for like 15minutes to kickstart it, to no avail. Not even a single explosion in the engine. Then I tried to push it, and got it to a couple of explosions after which it died again. Further push-starting was prevented by the way-too-smooth floor of the parking garage, where the wheel just slides as soon as you release the clutch :(

Some disassembly revealed where the battery is (I don't know this bike at all, much opposed to my F650ST in Germany). The battery was severely short of acid/fluid, maybe somebody pushed the bike over and it leaked. Obtaining battery additive and refilling results in only 800mA charge current. I think it's dead. Now I'm in the process of ordering a new battery.

Let's hope the next couple of days are better than the start of this trip...

Back from holidays

Harald Welte — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

I'm currently sitting at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, waiting for the last connection in my Recife - Sao Paulo - Amsterdam - Berlin return trip.

I'll be wading through the several thousand emails over much of the next couple of days, so please give me some time to get back to you.

Update from first week of holidays

Harald Welte — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

For those of you who're curious: The first week of holidays went just fine, spending something three days in Sao Paulo and three days in Curitiba In Curitiba, I had a rental car and went to Vila Velha, as well as driving the serpentines of the Rua Graciosa through Morretes to the Beach. Oh, and obviously in Curitiba I had to go to Homem Pizza and Happy Burger, the two restaurants that I frequented the most while working at Conectiva 7 years ago.

The biggest problem so far was the malfunction of the in-room Save of the Hotel in Curitiba, resulting in not being able to access any of my cash reserves, credit/debit cards, passport or laptop for two days. They actually had to physically break the safe open since the lock mechanism was stalled/clogged in a way that it did no longer move.

Now I've just arrived in Recife, where after two days, the journey will continue towards Porto de Galinhas.

Almost offline for holidays

Harald Welte — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:00:00 GMT

I'm hereby announcing that I'll be offline most of the time between March 3rd and March 26. This is the longest time that I've been offline for quite some time - and it's a much deserved holiday after the intense work of the last year.

I'll be doing quite a bit of travel in Brazil through those more than 3 weeks, meeting some old friends and ex-colleagues from my time in 2001 at Conectiva. I'll also be spending some time at the beach, plus exploring a bit of Parana and Pernambuco by [rental] car.

This also means that I'll likely end up being forced to use my horrible Brazilian Portuguese again. But well, at least for me, unless forced to speak a certain language, I won't speak it at all. So this must be a good thing, then.

Please don't expect any reaction to e-mails, snail mail, phone calls, faxes or any of the like during that period of time. I won't even have my German GSM phone online to avoid roaming charges killing me.

I now own two motorbikes

Harald Welte — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Besides my BMW F650ST in Berlin, I now (since 10 days ago) own a Yamaha TW200 in Taipei. To me, this is sort of a joke of a motorbike. A toy bike. 200cc feels like a bicycle with ancillary motor. No acceleration, no torque...

But then, Taiwan is an incredible strange country when it comes to motorbikes. And that TW is definitely better than one of those 2-stroke plastics scooters (I had one when I was 16: 3 jammed pistons in two years, plastics above the exhaust completely melted up to a point where I had to add custom-made aluminum pieces for it not to loose its structural integrity).

So it somehow fits the overall Taiwan experience: A never-ending compromise....

I'm single again

Harald Welte — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:00:00 GMT

And this time actually looking forward to it. What kind of strange feeling.

Always in motion, the future is.

Dor

Harald Welte — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 19:00:00 GMT

On my China Airways flight from Frankfurt to Taipeh, I have continued my tradition of watching the [usually] only Bollywood movie that the in-flight entertainment system offers. In this particular case, it was Dor

I had not yet heared/read anything about that movie, and not even the name sounded familiar. So I was a bit skeptically if this was one of those cheap superficial "B-class" movies that I try to avoid.

To the contrary. What seems like a low-budget production without any major actors [that I would recognize], is actually a masterpiece. Very unlike the cliche Bollyowood, it is not "overdone". Nothing is exaggerrated into self-irony. Everything feels real, down-to-earth. No princess-like costumes, no palaces and no super-rich Indians in their mega-cities. This impression is further substantiated by the somewhat simplistic editing. Scenes end abruptly, and the audio track does not spawn such 'hard cuts' smoothly either.

Dor is a sincere and honest movie about two women who have nothing in common, and come from completely different cultural backgrounds of Indias diversity. However, both of their husbands go abroad to work in Saudi Arabia very soon after marriage. A terrible accident involving those two Indian workers sets the stage for the remainder of the plot.

The whole movie is shot at various locations on the country side. The only remnescent of modern india is a cell phone with SIM card, and the mainstream bollywood songs that are sometimes playing on some squeaky radio.

It seems like this is the next DVD on my 'to-buy' list. Let's see if I manage to pick it up during my trip to Bangalore in early April.

Seen "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" in the cinema

Harald Welte — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Just by coincidence I noticed that yesterday was the only show of "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" anywhere near Berlin _at all_. So no matter that it was some 60km away, and I had to drive all the way to Potsdam, I had to go. And that decision was right. It definitely has become of my personal "all-time top ten" Hindi movies. It could have been a bit more serious, according to my taste. But apart from that: Great music, fabulous choreography, camera, costumes, acting, .... - everything!

So as soon as it becomes available here, I have to buy the DVD. Oh, and yes, I still have to buy that LCD projector for my home cinema, the one I intended to buy for several months now...

The new woman in my life: Sarah.

Harald Welte — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 19:00:00 GMT

After more than half a year after my separation from Elisabeth, there is a new woman in my life, Sarah. The most amazing thing is, that I didn't actually have to look out / search for a new girlfriend, but she just happened to come into my life. There also wouldn't have been any other chance, since I actually have zero time to go out, and even less time to think about anything not related to paid or unpaid work.

She's intelligent, and probably the most geek-compatible type of woman you can imagine. Not that I would ever consider this an important factor (I'm not a typical geek either), but it definitely helps things a lot, if she just understands the way geeks talk, has lots of experience with geeks from previous relationships.

It's the kind of pleasant small surprises like learning that she's running Linux on her computer[s], and that she understands a lot about the net and the FOSS world, without having to start to explain your whole world from its very beginning. As indicated, those facts in themselves are not really important at all. But imagine: Everything else seems to match, and you get those details [right] in addition to the 'usual' partner compatibility :)

It's been a very intense three weeks, and I have to admit that I never happened to get to know somebody in that short period of time, at least not to that level. Actually, it makes you frightened a bit, if everything goes that fast... wondering whether this is real, whether it is sustainable.

Anyway, it has been extremely pleasant, and I'm very happy about that. I'll continue this "experiment", keeping up the pace of this relationship by taking her along to India for FOSS.in 2006 next week. Before meeting Sarah, I probably would never have considered such a step - taking somebody along a long distance trip, whom you barely know for a couple of weeks. But then, if you can hardly imagine being apart from her during that time, there's probably also a lot of egoistic reasons for taking her along, too ;)

No news is good news

Harald Welte — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 19:00:00 GMT

You might have noticed that the posting frequency in this blog has decreased quite a bit recently. In this particular case, no news is good news. There's been a lot of progress in a number of work related projects.

QNTAL concert in Berlin

Harald Welte — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 19:00:00 GMT

One of my favourite band for many years, QNTAL, have been playing tonight in Berlin. The concert was fantastic, and due to my recent high workload, I apparently actually missed their last album relase. They did very well with that latest release.

However, apparently day 15 of the tour (one concert every night) has already left quite some traces on Syrah's otherwise brilliant voice. It was still extremely good, but you could notice she's [again] having some problems :( What kind of torture must it be, to be an excellent singer with classical training, with a crystal clear voice - but then having chronical problems with your throat..

To my big surprise, the support band Unto Ashes was actually extremely good. I'm not saying this because I thought Unto Ashes was bad, but rather because support bands generally suck quite a lot. Maybe it's just me being unlucky, but this was actually the first concert with a great support band that I've been to.

All in all definitely a memorable evening. If it didn't eat that much productive time...

Bollywood Musical in Berlin

Harald Welte — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Tonight I've been to Bollywood - The Show, a Bollywood musical that is touring through (I guess among other countries) Germany for the next couple of months.

It was truly amazing. First, there is the irony of playing a story that is remotely based on a true story - probably an idealized form of the story of the musicians and choreographer family behind this musical: The Merchant family. Secondly, the number of dancers is actually quite limited, so they need to danca and dance and dance for hours. What is usually done in many takes (with breaks) when shooting the song sequences of a Bollywood movie - those musical dancers have to do it all in one row. One some days even two shows on one day. What an amazing talent and stamina.

It's too sad to learn that such musicals can only exist in the west, since their cost of production is just too expensive for India, plus apparently the lack of a musical culture there.. quite strange, isn't it? I bet a lot of Indian Bollywood fans are definitely sad to lack the opportunity to see this (or another upcoming one, such as the Bharati).

Bavaria's best gothic/dark wave/industrial/ebm club "Top Act" about to close

Harald Welte — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 19:00:00 GMT

I'm sad to hear that the best club "close" (50km) from my old home city is about to close at the end of the year. This is extremely sad, and I suppose it will have quite an impact on the subculture there.

I can only hope that I'll find some spare time for a goodbye visit in November or December this year. A night at Goettertanz or La Nuit Obscure has always been a deeply touching, emotional and aesthetic event. No other club anywhere else has ever managed to make me feel anywhere close to how I felt at Top Act back then. Excellent DJ's, great choice of music, the right kind of people, 18+ limit for admittance, and a gothic dress code(!). Call that elite, if you want - I'll tell you: The result was spectaculous. People would travel 150+ km every weekend to get there.

Good bye Top Act. Thanks to Thomas Manegold and his crew, thanks for hosting that many memorable events. Thanks to Kodachi (didn't forget you!) for first recommending that location to me.

Bollywood / Hindi-pop Web-radio: Radio Teentaal

Harald Welte — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 19:00:00 GMT

I've recently discovered Radio Teentaal, a web-radio dedicated to "100% Indian music" - being streamed live from Paris.

It's certainly no surprise to see the radio being shoutcasted from some western country, since [that kind of] bandwidth is still not really affordable in India. But it's surprising to me that it's not from UK, US, Canada or another English-speaking country with large NRI community.

Anyway, they seem to play the latest popular Bollywood beats, no commercials, no interruptions, not even one the otherwise omnipresent self-advertisement jingles. Just pure music, at 128kBps stereo mp3.

Getting hooked once again by Techno

Harald Welte — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Just last weekend we've had (once again after two years break) the Love Parade, basically a huge open-air rave. Now fully commercialized (but that's a totally different story). I didn't attend it, but somehow the publicity surrounding that event prompted me to look into my 15GB archive (and corresponding CD collection) of early nineties Techno music.

Little of my blog readers will know me for that long time. Most of you will think, yeah it's that Goth guy, he listens to strange dark wave, industrial, ebm, music. Some of you also know that I enjoy a fair share of popular Hindi music.

But actually when I first started to actively listen to music, maybe at the age of 12 and up, I was a _huge_ fan of the then-popular electronic music in Germany: Techno. In a very short time this genre made it mainstream, creating a new youth culture in mainly Europe, but particularly Germany.

It was an euphoric time. German had just reunited. People were enthusiastically looking forward at the supposedly-bright future, now that the cold war was over. Everything was looking bright. People still mostly had job security, unemployment was low (compared to now), the negative effects of the neoliberal globalization did not yet affect the public at large.

At the same time, technology was en vogue. Home computers had started to become public in the second half of the eighties, the BBS scene existed, a small minority of people had access to Usenet, later the Internet. Music that used (mainly) synthesizers, samplers, sequencers and the like was very modern/futuristic.

So this was the kind of setting in which I spend my teens. Obviously I was too young (and shy) to attend any of the big raves at that time, but I was listening to music from Westbam, Marusha, DJ Dick, Hardfloor, PCP, Sven Vaeth, Sunbeam, RMB, Star Wash, Underworld, Cosmic Baby, Members of Mayday etc. I spent literally hundreds of Sunday nights recording the (in)famous "Techno Club" at the local radio station N1. God, how often did I watch the recordings / live shows of the cult "Mayday" raves.

So this was about 1991 to 1996. After that time, this kind of electronic music became less and less mainstream. I listened to Dutch "Rotterdam" hardcore for some time, but gave up on that very soon, too. Disappointed by the perceived in-availability of any good electronic music as I knew it, I resorted to classical music for a couple of years, until I got more and more into the "all etc. kinds of dark music" in which I still feel at home today. Music that is much more depressive/negative/destructive than the "happy partying" kind of Techno music. This sort-of resembles my change of mind-set during the same period of time. Reading up on world poverty, globalization issues, north/south conflict, environmental issues, the neoliberal model, increasing unemployment, increasing divide between rich and poor, the constant destruction of civil liberties, etc.

Anyway, so given that recent love parade revival, and me listening to "L.A. Style - James Brown is Dead" at some Industrial/Gabber/Minimal Electronics party last month, I decided to tune into that collection of old music once again.

I'm almost overwhelmed by the amount of feelings and memories this has triggered inside me. Basically it teleported me right back into how I felt 10-15 years ago. A life still in school, not knowing the [evil] world as I know it now, a life full of dreams, hope, happiness and the corresponding music.

This "trip back in history" is now basically going on for the better part of one week. It's going to end soon, and it will leave me longing for the corresponding sorrowlessness. Depressive reality will reclaim its terrain...

Retrospective on Shah Rukh Khan

Harald Welte — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:00:00 GMT

The much-to-be-thanked Rapid Eye Movies cinema movie distributor for Asian cinema brings a retrospective on SRK into German cinemas. It includes the movies Baazigar, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Dil Se, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Swades and Pardes.

They start with showing those movies from July 20 (today!) to August 8th in the Babylon Theatre Berlin.

I've seen most of those movies before, but on DVD. And I'm definitely going to watch many of them in the cinema, since Bollywood movies are just too colorful and rich in detail to watch them on something as "low-res" and compression artefact encumbered as DVD...

So I'd expect some drop in productivity over the next two weeks, but I can't help myself...

Shanghai Food

Harald Welte — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 19:00:00 GMT

While on my business trip to Shanghai, my business partners have been extremely well taken care of me. This includes assisting me obtaining some rather unusual souvenirs that I wanted to bring back, taking care of the sight seeing programme, but found it's most explicit expression in food.

While I'm extremely fond of Indian and Thai food, I never really enjoyed Chinese food too much, at least not what is sold in the western world as Chinese food. To me it's ok, but nothing spectacular. Before getting to China, food was my biggest worry. Remembering all these documentaries about seafood (which is basically the only kind of food I refuse to eat), and all the snakes, frogs and various insects that the Chinese cuisine tends to have.

Anyway, so my hosts knew about this and took me out to eat twice every day (yes, I'm probably now back to my weight of the Brazil trip in March). The food was always very interesting (as in, interesting ingredients, interesting taste, interesting structure, mode of preparation, ...) and also enjoyable. I kept asking them about spicy food, keeping in mind my preference for Indian and Thai. They promised me to have some spicy food at some point, they themselves not being into it at all.

Two days ago it finally became true. We've been to one of these "hot spot" places, where you have a boiling pot in the middle of the table. The boiling pot contains all kinds of spices, and you put raw ingredients such as tofu, meat, mushrooms into it. Pretty much like a Chinese version of the "Fondue".

However, that pot was split (2 thirds/one third), and one side would be exclusively for me. My side was ordered to be "medium spiced", and it had something like at least 12 red chili peppers in it :) I took a photograph of it in its initial state. The chilies basically disintegrated into tiny little pieces while they were boiling with the remaining food.

God, was that good. The best food I had since my last trip to India. It really was "medium spiced" in a way that there was no pain whatsoever, and it was just extremely strong-tasting, but not just spicy for the purpose of being spicy (if you know what I mean).

Since my business plans will include some more travel to Shanghai during the next couple of months, I _have_ to go back to that place, multiple times :)

Krrish

Harald Welte — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Yes, apparently it's Bollywood season in Berlin, thanks to rapideyemovies.de who has brought Krrish at least for one week into one of Berlin's smaller cinemas.

I definitely enjoyed the movie quite a lot. I believe it would be a good example for a "masala movie". Love, Romance, Action, Eastern, Sci-Fi, Thriller: all-in-one. And that with the most excellent dancer and "India's Schwarzenegger" Hrithik Roshan and former Miss India Priyanka Chopra as the two lead actors. And despite all the action scenes, the film actually is still cheesy enough to fulfill the Bollywood cliche :)

I also think it marks a new milestone in the area of special effects for Bollywood cinema. As a sequel to "Koi Mil Gaya", it definitely goes way beyond its prequel.

Rang De Basanti

Harald Welte — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 19:00:00 GMT

It doesn't happen very often that one of the many Berlin cinemas shows Bollywood movies. Last Thursday, even two of them started simultaneously. So yesterday I had no chance but to watch Rang De Basanti. I had to go, even though I had seen that movie in Bangalore before. Obviously at that point without any subtitles, so there certainly was a lot of the plot that I didn't realize yet.

The movie was as good as the first time. There are very few movies that don't get overly pathetic when it comes to telling/interpreting a story about [past] heroes. But in this one, everything feels real. The strong emotions, the incredible pain, hate...

Definitely one of the top Indian movies that I have seen, even though it isn't not a very typical cliche Bollywood movie at all ;)

On Monday, I'll be watching Krrish. Let's see how Hrtik Roshan plays Krishna ;)

KRISH in German cinemas

Harald Welte — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Thanks to rapideyemovies.de, the follow-up to the Bollywood sci-fi "koi mil gaya" called "krish" will be shown soon in cinemas all over Germany (well, at least in all major cities).

I'll certainly make use of it, especially since I'll be missing the Bollywood night at Filmmuseum Potsdam because of my trip to the GPLv3 conference in Barcelona.

Motorbike fixed

Harald Welte — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Since people have already seen me using my motorbike again and almost complaining about my blog still stating that I have problems repairing it: It's all fixed now. Seems like indeed it only was the anker of the starter engine plus the battery. must have been one hell of a short-circuit to first fry the magnet wire and then the battery.

During my repairs I misplaced a washer which led to the blocking of one axis (which in turn prevented the starter engine to do its job). Luckily somebody else did the same mistake before and documented it in some F650 related web forum.

Returned from WGT 2006

Harald Welte — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 19:00:00 GMT

I've just returned from the 2006 incarnation of Wave-Gotik-Treffen, the worlds largest festival on all styles of dark music.

I was very happy with the music, and in fact discovered a number of very interesting projects, such as Dark Sanctuary, Protagonist, Maschinenkrieger KR52 vs. Disraptor, S.K.E.T., and last but not least Omnia.

The weather though was an embarrassment. We had something like six degrees centigrade during the night at the camp site, definitely much colder than anybody would expect from June in Germany. Seems like the climate changes really become visible :((

As many of you will be asking: Did you take pictures? No, I was forbidden to. It seems this year they were only allowing non-SLR cameras for people who are not accredited press. This usually only was the case at concert stages, but now they extended this to all of the festival area. Since I don't own any non-SLR (either chemical or digital), I didn't take pictures. Need to check whether I can get accredited next year (*sigh*).

First Motorbike defect in ten years

Harald Welte — Sat, 27 May 2006 19:00:00 GMT

I've always had a BMW F650ST ever since turning 18. It never let me down so far, apart from one minor problem two years ago, when the carburetor was stuck and the bike was leaking fuel.

Yesterday, the starter motor apparently broke. Waiting for the replacement parts right now. Let's hope this is a one-time defect and not an indication that I should get rid of the bike before a long series of "bike is getting old" repairs.

Swades

Harald Welte — Sun, 14 May 2006 19:00:00 GMT

I've had the chance to watch Swades at the home cinema of a friend. Swades is a quite impressive film, and definitely [for me] one of the best recent Bollywood films.

I think the most interesting aspect is the way how they display the transformation process of an initially extremely alienated NRI (officially "Non Resident Indian", in the movie jokingly referred-to as "Non Returning Indian") back ti a "true Indian".

Back from Brazil

Harald Welte — Mon, 01 May 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Yes, I survived. Now I need to address that backlog of real world issues and emails...

More of Curitiba and surroundings

Harald Welte — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 19:00:00 GMT

The last two days I had a rental car. First I visited "Vila Velha"

Vila Velha really is both beatufil and impressive. Took lots of pictures of those unique rock formations dating back from the ice age.

On the next day (after some OpenEZX hacking) I first drove to Santa Felicidade to visit the cemetery there. Took a couple of pictures, since it is quite unique in that it is a very urban cemetery. Multiple storeys (!) and all concrete floors. Obviously, people can only put urns there, no dead bodies...

Next I drove to the Graciosa road, which I still remembered from my trip to Morretes five years ago. The Graciosa road is the old connection between Curitiba and the harbour. It leads through the few 3% of remaining "mata atlantica", south Brazils version of the rain forest. It's a small, extremely curvy road with lots of viewpoints to the surrounding mountains. Also did a short walk into the forest, tried to take a couple of pictures of an amazing ant trail which must have been multiple hundreds of meter long.

Travelling by bus to Curitiba

Harald Welte — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Tomorrow I'll be on a 11 hour bus ride from Porto Alegre to Curitiba. I'm voluntarily using the bus rather than the plane. Since everybody thinks I must be crazy for doing so: First, I don't really have any idea how the landscape/countryside in that area looks like. Second, I haven't really spent all too much time outside of the big Brazilian cities yet. Third, I have the time to do it (and two laptop batteries). Fourth, it's more friendly to the environment... my intercontinental flights consume way too much kerosine anyway.

O pizza doce numa pizzaria com sistema rodizio

Harald Welte — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 19:00:00 GMT

One of the things that I've always missed the most, ever since leaving Brasil in 2001: "pizza doce" (sweet pizza). You can have it with chocolate, coconut, banana/cinnamon, caramel, ice cream, etc.

Yesterday I just had to make use of the opportunity and have lots of it in one of the nice all-you-can-eat pizza places that are common in Brazil. There also was the opportunity to introduce some of the other foreign speakers to this Brazilian interpretation of Italian food :)

Back to Brazil after 4.5 years

Harald Welte — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:00:00 GMT

So finally it's happening: I'm currently sitting in an airplane, already deep into .br airspace. Ever since I left Conectiva/Curitiba/Brazil in quite a hurry in late summer of 2001, I intended to come back. My original plan then was to take Elisabeth with me and show her what I've experienced in those six months of Brazil. Also, due to my way-earlier-than-planned departure from this fascinating country, I missed many of the things I had planned originally - such as travelling to the northeast and the amazon region.

But just like that never worked out the way it was planned, I now find myself in an accidental symmetry: I left Brazil to live with Elisabeth - and just after that has ended now, I get back to Brazil. No, not moving back - but at least two weeks of visiting ex-colleagues, (ex-?)friends and places I have known and loved.

At a time of such fundamental change in my life, I feel excited about any kind of new adventures, possibilities, etc.

Due to time restrictions, this is unfortunately not the time when I will be doing all the travel that I originally intended. I'm really too much involved with my many non-profit projects, and besides that I somehow have to earn a bit of money, too ;)

But I'm quite sure that at some point I'll come back. Talvez um pouco mais preparado, depois de ter aulas de portugues. Acho que e muito dificil no Brasil sem falar a lingua nativa.

The most relaxing flight of my life

Harald Welte — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:00:00 GMT

The day started early for me. Taking the local train to the airport at 4:09am. Then some annoying KLM ground staff who told me to only bring one piece of hand luggage next time. If you know me, then you certainly know that I find nothing more annoying than people with large carry-on luggage. All I had was a laptop bag and a very small camera bag. No backpack, no trolley. I started a discussion with that staff member, indicating to him that he should read his own regulations before trying to lecture me. Neither laptops nor cameras are allowed in the checked-in baggage, and usually they do not even count as 'piece of hand baggage' but are allowed in addition to that piece. I'll make sure to re-check with KLMs current regulations and file a complaint with KLM. Given my last trouble with the KLM flight to Bangalore last December, I have good contacts to their customer care department now.

Anyway, the situation drastically improved in the Amsterdam - Sao Paulo flight. A Boeing 777-200 with the latest in-flight entertainment system: 111 full-length cinema movies, lots of TV shows (not that I care about them) plus individual music playlists.

It comes even better: I had a whole three seat row for my own. After watching "Memoirs of a Geisha" (I already knew the two Bollywood movies they had), I had a very comfortable sleep. Next time I woke up was already in Brazilian airspace. The only time I had that much space was when going to Israel, but that flight was short enough to not care about that extra comfort.

So in the end it wasn't of much use that I just bought a second battery for my notebook computer ;) Anyway, I'm sure my next, less relaxing long-haul flight will not be too distant.

I'm single again

Harald Welte — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Those of you who know me one a more personal level will find it hard to believe that I'm actually a single again. Especially following up the engagement some two years ago.

After knowing Elisabeth for nine years, having lived together about half that time, it actually feels more like a divorce than 'just' a normal separation / split-up.

I will not make the mistake to state any reasons publicly in this weblog, sorry ;) Let just be said that we both feel very sad, and it was certainly not a lighthearted decision.

There's going to be some rough time ahead, and I'm certainly not in the mood for any kind of serious relationship anytime soon.

Always in motion, the future is.

Returned from vacation in India

Harald Welte — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Just got back from the airport. Everyone who emailed me: Please keep patient, as I've got some thousands of mails to wade through. Sorry for any inconvenience. I should be back and fully running no later than end of the week.

Offline / Holidays

Harald Welte — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 19:00:00 GMT

As announced before, I'm offline till March 21st.

Family - Ties of Blood

Harald Welte — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Tonight I enjoyed the rare opportunity to watch a Bollywood movie in Berlin, almost at the same time the movie is released in India. We usually only get a hand full of Indian movies every year, to very small cinemas, and about one to two years after they ran in India.

I personally enjoyed the film quite a lot, even though the critics in India seem to be disappointed by it. But well, what do I care about those critics ;)

One advantage of watching Bollywood movies in Germany is that you don't need a ticket reservation, since very few people are interested in those movies anyway. Second, you can actually enjoy a film without some 20 to 30something minutes of advertisements and anti-screener propaganda.

Holidays in India

Harald Welte — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 19:00:00 GMT

For the third year Elisabeth and me have been planning to take holidays in India, unfortunately with no success so far.

But now it's fixed: We've booked our flight tickets for March 2006 just two days ago. We'll be starting in Bangalore, and do some travelling in Karnataka and Kerala.

So please don't expect me to get any productive work done during March this year...

My first Bollywood party in Berlin

Harald Welte — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 19:00:00 GMT

The frequent reader of this blog will have noticed that I love Indian Bollywood cinema (and of course the corresponding music).

Unfortunately there are very little Bollywood movies in the cinemas in Germany, and other Bollywood events are almost as rare. However, Club Deewane now organizes more or less frequent parties in Berlin.

Due to my frequent travel, yesterday was the first time I was around when the event took place. It was quite an experience... I wouldn't have imagined that such an event could actually draw some 200+ people. I'd say no more than 20% of the guests did were of Indian origin/decent, the rest was the usual multicultural "Berlin mixture".

Anyway, I had a great time, and was surprised how much of the music I actually recognized ;)

Back from holidays - catching up

Harald Welte — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 19:00:00 GMT

So I'm back from holidays and are half way through reading the incredible backlog of emails.

It seems like netdev has been a bit more quiet than it was before, and surprisingly there were no more bug reports on the recently introduced netfilter code (nfnetlink, nfnetlink_log, nfnetlink_queue, nf_log, ...). So things seem to have settled down a bit.

Organization of the netfilter developer workshop seems to proceed quite fine, too. Travel sponsorships are taken care of, however we're still lacking some EUR 1600 for the cost of accommodation. If anyone (any company/organization) is interested in contributing to the netfilter project by funding accommodation for the workshop, please let me know.

Most of the 'interesting' new email seems to come in on the GPL violations front. I haven't yet analyzed any of the new alleged violations, but there seems to be plenty. It's a pity since it will again keep me from interesting real work. Also, there's still some minor cleanup to do in order to fully close the last 11 cases that I've dealt with...

Offline until Aug 25

Harald Welte — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 19:00:00 GMT

I'm off for holidays in Scotland, so please don't expect any email to be answered before Aug 25.

Don't send any important netfilter issues to me personally, but rather to the core-team or the respective lists.

Visiting parents and friends in Nuernberg

Harald Welte — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 19:00:00 GMT

This week I'll be visiting parents and friends in Nuernberg. I'm telling you that because this implicitly means that I'll most likely not be able to continue the pace of netfilter development like in the last couple of weeks.

It also means that I'll probably be doing some scheduled maintenance of the netfilter.org boxes (which are located in Nuernberg, too). So don't be surprised by some shortly-announced downtime. If you're curious what I'm planning: ganesha needs a RAM upgrade (512MB->1GB), and lakshmi needs an upgrade to Debian sarge. Maybe I'll also have time to work on the fail over solution, too.

I expect to read my mails daily, so there shouldn't be any delay in that.

Estampie - Marco Polo (Live DVD)

Harald Welte — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 19:00:00 GMT

Estampie is definitely one of my very favourite music bands ever. For the majority of my readers: They do serious medieval music. "serious" meaning they are doing this at the level of profession that you expect from classical musicians. Estampie is doing this for some 20 years, and they're not to be confused with the Spielmannsmusik that you recently find at any of the tourist-laden medieval festival.

At one of those dates when I was travelling to yet-another Free Software related conference, they played a programme called Marco Polo - Music of the Silk Route. Basically they tried to go beyond European medieval music and build bridges to other musical traditions of the same time, such as Khorasan Dotar music from Iran, traditional Mongolian music and some Indian Percussion.

They recently released a Live recording DVD from that project, and I am totally in love with the blend of music they have created. What they have created is "real" world music to me.

And there is more to come. As Michael Popp (the leader of the ensemble) points out in the interview section, "Marco Polo" was just the beginning of a trilogy. I'll definitely make sure that my travel schedule will adjust to the dates of the second and third part of the trilogy. There's no way I'll miss them.

Picking up pre-paid SCNF tickets in France

Harald Welte — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 19:00:00 GMT

If you want to do an online purchase of a SCNF (french national railway) ticket, the only option you get is: Pre-pay the ticket via credit card in their online store, and later pick up the ticket at some vending machine at the railway station.

So this is what I did for my Paris->Dijon travel. So I went to the first vending machine at the CDG Airport in Paris. For authorization you are required to enter the booking code, your name and the credit card you used to do the online purchase. The first machine was broken, since it wasn't able to read the magnetic stripe on my credit card. The second machine already had a sign attached that it is malfunctioning and cannot be used for pickup of pre-paid tickets. Al the other machines were out of service.

Then I went to the next machine and tried to buy a public transport ticket from CDG airport to Gare de Lyon. The fare is 8 EUR and according to the signs on the machine, you can pay cash (in coins, which I never have), by french debit cards (which I obviously don't have) or by VISA card. Unfortunately it refused to accept my perfectly valid VISA card. So I had to line up at the long queue in front of the ticket counters.

At Gare de Lyon, I tried again to pick up my train ticket to Dijon. Most of the machines would again have problems reading the magnetic stripe on the VISA cards, and the others could read it, but would just tell me: Cancelled, please retry at a different machine.

So I again had to line up for the extremely long queue in front of the ticket counters, wait in addition for the only English-speaking cashier to become available. I told her my story, and she said: Yes, it only works with french VISA cards.

I was outraged. The online shop for buying tickets is fully translated to English and German (among others). You can buy the ticket using a non-french VISA card, and the amount is charged to your credit card account at that time. The translated instructions tell you to pick up your ticket at the machines, and nowhere it was stated that you have to queue up in front of a counter with non-french VISA cards.

The sole purpose of reading the credit card at the ticket machine is to provide a third authentication factor ('is this person really the person who booked the ticket'). There is no technical reason for restricting this to credit cards of a particular issuing country.

I'm planning to write some letters about this, since this is actually against fair competition regulations. If I want to receive the same service and not wait for half an hour for every train ticket I buy than everybody else, I have to open an account with a french bank.

Liquid cooling system of my workstation massively corroded

Harald Welte — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 19:00:00 GMT

Only three months after putting in place the Alphacool liquid cooling system for my dual Opteron workstation, it has already corroded severely.

I don't really understand why, since I only used a readily-packaged set as offered by the vendor, and I only used original anti-corrosion liquid from the same vendor.

Spent multiple hours getting rid of all the crystals in the system, dismantling the CPU coolers, etc.

I hope the vendor replaces some of the parts for free and comes up with a good solution to prevent this in the future. I don't want to give up my silent office anymore. (btw: I didn't tell you about my new managed VLAN-capable fan-less 16port gigE switch, did I?).

Arrived in Karlsruhe

Harald Welte — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 19:00:00 GMT

I've just arrived in the south-west German city of Karlsruhe for three days Astaro and two days of LinuxTag.

In addition to that, there are several scheduled GPL-related meetings. The most important one is probably the meeting with Cisco Germany. I'm really interested in what they want to say with regard to the recent uprise in GPL-issues inside Cisco.

Unlike a lot of my recent travel, I have Internet access every day. This means there will be little [additional] delay in responding to email.

Thesis on Motivation of Free Software Developers

Harald Welte — Sat, 11 Jun 2005 19:00:00 GMT

Some time ago I was interviewed as part of the preparation for a thesis on the motivation of Free Software developers. For those of you who understand German, the full paper (109 pages) by the Sociologist Thomas Breitner is now available online.

Amazed by new QNTAL Album

Harald Welte — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 19:00:00 GMT

One of my all-time favourite groups QNTAL has recently released a new album called "Ozymandias". QNTAL is known for their advantgardistic combination of medieval music with electronic sound. The medieval background is easily explained if you note that two of the three QNTAL members are well-known from the medieval ensemble Estampie.

Since I've just seen QNTAL live at WGT 2005, I wasn't expecting too much of the new album. IIRC they were playing three songs of the new album, of which one was the usual QNTAL style, the other two were way to "normal" for my taste.

Now that I've received my latest EUR180 CD order [seems like I'll be again spending more money on CD's this year], I'm amazed by this exceptional new album.

I think the songs can be grouped in three categories. One category (e.g. Flamma, Noit E Dia, )is what I would consider the "usual QNTAL style", which is in the spirit of the first two albums. However, I think it can be clearly recognized that it's no longer Ernst Horn at the synthesizers, and sometimes the digital effects just sound too "digital" compared to the old stuff.

The second group (e.g. All for one, Flow), reminds me a lot to the style of the "Futura" album of Cosmic Baby from about a decade ago. A single classical female singer dominating the overall sound, accompanied by electronic background sound. No strong percussion.

The third group (e.g. Amor Volat) sounds way more "normal" than the other QNTAL stuff. Saying this is not a negative judgement, merely an explanation of how I perceive the sound. More specifically: Less medieval influence, regular percussion, E-guitars, standard "wave" style rhythm.

My personal favorites of the new album are definitely the songs of "group two", i.e. All for one, Flow, Remember Me.

Travel season

Harald Welte — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 19:00:00 GMT

Ok, now travel season has started. I'll start with a quick visit from 3rd to 6th of June in Sofia. 7th and 8th will be spent in Vienna, 9th to 13th in Copenhagen. 19th to 24th in Karlsruhe. 5th to 7th July in Dijon, 13th to 18th in Montreal, 19th to 24th in Ottawa.

If I'll survive that, I'll probably continue with WTH in the Netherlands - but I honestly fear that I'll be more than exhausted and wish to remain at home at that time. So don't count on meeting me there.

WGT2005 over

Harald Welte — Tue, 17 May 2005 19:00:00 GMT

Even though I'm physically back from Leipzig, my thoughts haven't yet arrived. It has been a wonderful time, despite the sometimes troublesome rainy weather.

My personal favourite was the Estampie concert. Open air, in full rain, but an incredible spirit :) Very interactive though, since everybody seemed to gather very close to the stage, me being in the first row.

And since everybody else seems to have gone totally photo-crazy, I didn't even take a single pic this year. One item less to carry :)

I'm off for Wave Gotik Treffen 2005

Harald Welte — Wed, 11 May 2005 19:00:00 GMT

After a break last year, I'm this year again vising WGT.

I'm a bit curious on how much I'll be able to enjoy it. For one part, the weather is anything but nice. For the other part, the bands this year seem a little bit less matching my taste than let's say two to three years ago. There seems to be an increasing trend towards 'goth metal' 'nordic metal' and the like :(

Anyway, I'll try to not be preoccupied and enjoy myself. I guess this is also the first time for years that I'm travelling without notebook for four days... so expect even more delayed replies than usual.

Back to Curitiba after 4.5 years

Harald Welte — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:00:00 GMT

So this was my first day of Curitiba, after being on a scheduled-11hrs but finally 13hrs bus ride from Porto Alegre through the interior of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. The bus ride was really nice, something that I could be doing every day ;) Lots of interesting landscape passing by, very comfortable seats and an extremely quiet atmosphere. I had lots of time to listen to music, do a bit of hacking (though typing is a bit difficult considering the condition of many roads), reading as well as thinking about various aspects of life, the universe and everything ;)

I've also encountered to signs that are note mentioning: One was translated to "smile! you are being filmed by surveillance cameras". The other one was "This hard shoulder is provided by the federal government". ;) Unfortunately in both cases I didn't have the time to get my camera out and ready to take a picture. SLR's are just not the right tools for quick snapshots.

In Curitiba itself, it was nice to recognize the various places once again. I yet have to go to my former apartment, but I've seen the former office of Conectiva, the commercial center, etc. Everything has changed quite a bit...

First I was thinking of hiring a motorbike here for a bit of travelling - but then I recalled that riding a bike while having a bit of a flu is not really a good idea, so I'm actually hiring a car for two days now. Planning to visit Vila Velha and Santa Felicidade (which apparently claims to have a beautiful cemetery, for Brazilian standards).

At night went out for dinner with Claudio Matsuoka and Helio Castro. Talked a lot about my travels to India and got them interested in travelling there at some point.

Tomorrow I'll probably be mainly working. Having broadband at the hotel always has a good and a bad side. There's always a pile of work waiting...

The largest original collection of Bollywood actresses rendered in ASCII

Harald Welte — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 19:00:00 GMT

It's amazing what kind of websites people are starting. This one is definitely one of the most geeky subjects I've seen so far.

Source for Bollywood movies at least temporarily down :(

Harald Welte — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 19:00:00 GMT

Some months ago, when I first discovered bwtorrents, but that's "full" with 40k users... seems like a strange idea to me, since the torrent distribution mechanism works better the more users you have.

Yay, holidays coming up

Harald Welte — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 19:00:00 GMT

I'm already in travel preparation mode. Buying the last couple of gifts, shutting down servers that I won't need, writing packing lists, and wading through the remaining two A4 pages of TODO items for the remaining four days.

I'm going to have three weeks of holidays. Contiguously. Not attached to any conference or other FOSS related event. At least two weeks of it without touching a notebook or PDA. I have no idea when I last did that. Probably while I still was with the boyscouts.

Well, yes, I will meet some hackers in the first couple of days, but those have become friends, and meeting will be strictly off-duty ;)

Elisabeth and me are heading for three weeks of Southern India. It has been suggested to me that details are not to be revealed beforehand, otherwise LUG members might approach me for giving speeches/talks/presentations. Not this time, sorry folks.

I only wish it had already started, and the next four days of TODO bashing had already passed...

A really big Bollywood fan

Harald Welte — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 19:00:00 GMT

Since there's a severe lack of non-technical subjects in this blog, I decided to write something about a passion of mine that developed over the last two years: Bollywood Movies.

Most German readers of this blog will probably not have heard about Bollywood before, it's India's mainstream Hindi cinema, from Mumbai aka Bombay (guess that's where the 'B' is coming from).

Unfortunately Bollywood DVD's with English subtitles are very hard to get here in Germany, so I've had to order the initial couple of movies from Canadian NRI-oriented mail orders.

More recently, my friend Atul Chitnis was kind enough to bring a stack of DVD's every time he travelled to Germany - despite his personal dislike of Bollywood cinema. Thanks again, Atul.

Since a very short time ago, I also know DesiTorrents, a forum related to all kinds of Indian cinema, music, music videos, ...

Now you will ask yourself, "hey, isn't that the same guy who prosecutes copyright infringers?". Yes, it is. However, I have no way of legally obtaining the DVD's of the respective movies over here. I haven't found even a single DVD mail order specializing in those DVD's within .de. And ordering from abroad is very impractical, due to the high cost of shipping, and even more due the complicated customs procedure here in Germany.

So as soon as anyone can point me to a less problematic source of desi movies here in Germany, I'll immediately stop using DesiTorrents!

Shopping in Bangalore

Harald Welte — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 19:00:00 GMT

Today I went shopping in Bangalore. The first thing I had to learn, is that you need a lot of travel through the heavy traffic in order to get to the respective stores.

Secondly, buying/finding a Sari (Including the blouse and the Petticoat) is not as easy as buying women's clothes in the western world. The choli (blouse) is made-to-measure, and they require more information than the usual under bust / over bust / waist measurements. So I only bought one this time, let's first see how it fits Elisabeth before I buy more items that in the end don't fit.

Getting Hindi learner books (apart from the usual Devanagari alphabet training) in Bangalore turned out to be more difficult than expected. Students tend to get the books from the Schools, and the local language is Kannada. But finally we managed to get them, too.

Finding Bollywood DVD's is obviously the most easy task ;) I got a stack of 8, and I'll probably be buying more of them once I get to Mumbai on Tuesday.

Never ride trains on weekends

Harald Welte — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 19:00:00 GMT

If I'm ever about to travel by train on a weekend, please somebody remind me not to do so. All these crowds trying to find available seats, incredibly busy, delayed trains, ...

Travelling during the week is just so much more convenient.

Fun with incompetent BMW employees

Harald Welte — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 19:00:00 GMT

So during the repairs of my BMW F650's carburetor, I lost the choke plunge. Not a big deal, just a tiny part regulating the fuel/air ratio at engine startup time.

So I picked up the phone and called the spare part department of BMW in Berlin, and told them the exact part I wanted. "Chokekolben" is 100% not possible to be misinterpreted, there is no other part with the same name. So I was told that this part is not available on it's own, but just in a set bundled with the linkage/string that actually attaches to the plunge.

One day later I was called that the part had arrived. It took me about an hour to get to the BMW subsidiary, only to find out that they had ordered the choke string, but it came without plunge.

They showed me the exploded view of the carburetor, and it was very clear that the plunge is sold separately for about EUR 3. I have no idea how one can misunderstand the exploded view and/or the spare part list associated.

After ordering the plunge, I asked them if they made the exploded views available for customers, so they could directly order a particular spare part number in order to avoid such misunderstandings. Apparently they only provide those spare part catalogues to their BMW partners, and they see no way how they could provide me a copy. *sigh*. So I will have to rely on some brain dead spare part sales assistant who has most likely never disassembled that bike ..

Luckily, there's eBay and I found somebody who sold the original BMW spare part catalogue on CD-ROM. What would the world be without eBay.

BMW, this happened about two weeks ago, and I still don't have that spare part.

Motorbike problems

Harald Welte — Sat, 02 Oct 2004 19:00:00 GMT

I wanted to take pictures of a recently detonated old building in Berlin. I wanted to go there via motorbike. Unfortunately the bike got some problems: After about 3km from my home, it suddenly stopped and refused to start again. While trying to get it running, I suddenly noticed vast amounts of fuel leaking from the air filter. That's a bad sign, it basically says that somehow the carburetor is getting fuel into the wrong direction.

I went home by public transport (no photos taken), and luckily found a truck rental that was open on Sundays. So I managed to get the bike back home, take everything apart and clean the carburetor. I couldn't find something serious like a worn out fitting... all I found was a minimal amount of dirt.

I'll put the bike pieces back together tomorrow, let's see whether cleaning the dirt actually helped. Jeez, as if I hadn't enough to do already...

Extremely busy

Harald Welte — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 19:00:00 GMT

I've been horribly busy during the last week(s), so I didn't even have five minutes per day to fill this weblog. Apparently things have now settled down and I will start to have some more time again.

The big move...

Harald Welte — Sat, 15 May 2004 19:00:00 GMT

Well, it's been quiet on this weblog for quite some time. The reason is that about everything related to my move (within Berlin, Germany) became way more complicated.

As an example, it took two of the largest German Telcos (Telekom and Arcor) four days and five technicians to determine that they accidentally switched two wires in my basement - causing a total phone (ISDN) and DSL blackout.

Anyway, stuff is getting settled. I now have VLAN-tagged 1000base-TX Ethernet to the servers in my basement, most of the furniture is set up again, and I even have light in almost all rooms. There seems to be some further debugging on the electrical installations necessary in the living room, though.

If you sent me email during the last couple of weeks and didn't receive a reply so far: sorry. I'm totally overloaded :(

We have a dog!

Harald Welte — Fri, 14 May 2004 19:00:00 GMT

Since the cat of my fiance has disappeared, we decided to get ourselves a dog.

We went to the 'animal shelter' and got a 8-year German Shepard's dog mix. She's a bit smaller than a Shepard's dog, about 20kilos of weight. Photos of Lucy will follow later.

LaForge's home page (Posts about personal)

On Vacation

8-day motorbike round-trip in Taiwan

Strain of bad luck

Back from a 3-day motorbike ride to the central Taiwan mountains

Getting woken up by an earthquake...

I'm still alive - short update...

I'm still alive ;)

Family visit is keeping me busy

Heading off to Europe's largest Goth festival

Some more thoughts on the Yamaha TW-225

Holidays in Taiwan

German news site Spiegel Online has video of my torched car

Migrating from Panasonic CF-R5 to CF-R8

Flying with KLM: Feeling like time-travel to the past

Learning Hangul characters

FZ6 Fazer is beyond reasonable repair

Bad luck with motorbikes, episode 2342

Soon I'll say hello to Hamburg

Back to Germany, travel plans during next weeks and months

Enjoying holidays in Brazil

First couple of days in Brazil

I have back my old car

Photographs of my torched car

Some idiots apparently put my car on fire

First Impressions of South Korea

The "Deutsche Bahn" experience

Klangstabil in concert @ Schlagstrom

First-time visit to (South) Korea in January

Back to Berlin

Availability of Bollywood DVDs in Bangalore

In Switzerland again. Feeling like in a Bollywood movie

Drona - what a disappointment

1654 THE CAVE

A trip to Fulong beach in the northeast of Taiwan

Electrical installations in Taiwan

Bought another motorbike: Yamaha FZ6 Fazer

Motorbike troubles again

Back from WGT

Back from the trip to Taiwan

Back to Taipei

Back from holidays

Update from first week of holidays

Almost offline for holidays

I now own two motorbikes

I'm single again

Dor

Seen "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" in the cinema

The new woman in my life: Sarah.

No news is good news

QNTAL concert in Berlin

Bollywood Musical in Berlin

Bavaria's best gothic/dark wave/industrial/ebm club "Top Act" about to close

Bollywood / Hindi-pop Web-radio: Radio Teentaal

Getting hooked once again by Techno

Retrospective on Shah Rukh Khan

Shanghai Food

Krrish

Rang De Basanti

KRISH in German cinemas

Motorbike fixed

More problems with my Motorbike

Returned from WGT 2006

First Motorbike defect in ten years

Swades

Back from Brazil

More of Curitiba and surroundings

Travelling by bus to Curitiba

O pizza doce numa pizzaria com sistema rodizio

Back to Brazil after 4.5 years

The most relaxing flight of my life

I'm single again

Returned from vacation in India

Offline / Holidays

Family - Ties of Blood

Holidays in India

My first Bollywood party in Berlin

Back from holidays - catching up

Offline until Aug 25

Visiting parents and friends in Nuernberg