Today (i.e. friday, 5th november) I'm on my way to a close friend of mine at the other end of germany. Tomorrow evening we'll go to a concert of the famous (in Germany) acapella band "Wise Guys". They are a bit similar to the legendary "Comedian Harmonists". Most of their songs are in german, so i don't expect many of you will know them - but since I love Rock'n'Roll, one of my favourites still is their acapella version of "Let's twist again". That'll be a really nice weekend, and good to shake off the stress I've been building up the last days. Apart from my usual studies and work load, I've been doing a lot in extracurricular studies, including the joint course with the SIMS UC Berkeley and a media product development project with Siemens Corporate Technology featuring a Linux-based Set-Top-Box with an extra video processor. Nice box, but it'll be hard to sell it I fear, not being a full-blown PC.

In about two weeks I'll have the final presentation of my project thesis, at which point I should be admitted to take my final exams (but I won't do them until next year, I'll also have to decide upon a topic for my diploma thesis...). My topic is a new "xmldiff" tool. Well, I've actually written an algorithm which can work on arbitrary graphs. I developed quite nicely and my biggest concern is that the topic is really hard to get into and to understand what I'm actually writing about (for computer scientists, it contains lots of mathematical notions that can become confusing). From what I've seen of other project thesises, I might also have chosen a bit too big and hard topic. It could've passed as Diploma topic I guess. ;-)

The xmldiff tool, albeit working better than the "xmldiff" package in my tests, is not ready for end user use, though. Memory use is till way to high, and end users will probably accept an approximative solution as well, if they can get that much faster. I also have many ideas of improvement, but not the time to implement them.

If you ever come to visit Germany, avoid do travel by train. Trains in Germany are just great. Of course, us germans complain that they are often late, but it's not really bad in longdistance. I believe that most trains depart on the minute...

The german highspeed trains, named ICE and capable of 330 km/h Vmax, are really nice. They are very spacious, in some newer models like ICE 3 you can even sit right behind the driver and have a great view. Some places have tables and power sockets, and the rocking is so low you can work perfectly. Or when you go overnight you can sleep okay - saves you a day if you can just get into the train one evening and get up in a different city the next day. The difficult part with german trains is getting the cheap tickets. Usually you have to book in advance and know the travel rates well. My personal record is about getting down to ~28% of the regular fee with a free seat reservation. There are some odd tarriffs like the one i'm using right now named "november-summer". This is a revival of a rate they had in summer, but only available 1.Nov till around 12.Dec - any long-distance trip in Germany is a fixed charge of 28 € (around 35 $), but the availability is limited. Well, i got a seat.