First blood with MonoTouch

mtI’m slowly getting settled into our new home and the number of construction tasks still to be handled slowly is decreasing. So I finally found an evening to do something I have been longing to do for quite a while: Toying around with MonoTouch in order to do some iPhone programming.

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Blog-Housekeeping

micI just noticed that I already did quite a lot of talks this year and that I still have a few ahead of me (saturday at the OpenRheinRuhr conference and at least two more next wednesday at the W-JAX in Munich). Thus I decided to use the long train trip back from Stuttgart (nice Lisog meeting) to – among other things – update my publications page. And if you want to meet me in person…

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Impressions from the Essener Spieletage 2010 (Spiel 2010)

spiel20101This year the Essener Spieletage – or Spiel 2010 – as it is also called take place from the 21st of October to the 24th. (I just noticed that the official name seems to be “Internationale Spieltage” – we never called it that πŸ™‚ ) It is the largest game convention in the world with over 150.000 visitors and more than 700 exhibitors from more than 30 nations… all of them enthusiastic about board games, card games, tabletop games, roleplaying games, cosims and various gaming related topics. For me visiting the Spiel 2010 is the 23rd year in a row… you might call me a Spieletage Grognard. Here are some impressions…

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New beginnings

boxesRight now we are preparing our Great Move ™ from our rented appartment to our own house. Packing things always brings a lot of memories up for me and this time it’s no different. Since this is the Great Move ™ – maybe the final one in our lives (we wouldn’t mind πŸ˜‰ ) – a lot of memories come back.

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P != NP ?

homerFrom time to time it’s very cool being reminded of the exciting theoretical problems I encountered during my studies… and from which I sadly (or luckily πŸ˜‰ ? ) am very far removed these days. Nonetheless it’s time for yet another attempt of proving that P != NP and I’m looking forward to the resolution. Although I’d rather prefer P == NP πŸ™‚

Good luck to Vinay Deolalikar until the final results are in!

BattleDuel: Very cool iPhone/iPad app

BattleDuelToday I would like to recommend an iPhone/iPad app of a very good friend of mine: BattleDuel. A game that has been around on the Amiga and on the PC. A game that has been implemented in C and in Java. And a great game that now is available in Objective-C for the iPad and the iPhone.

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“Dr.-Ing. Thomas Biskup” :-)

doktorhutNow it’s official – my German Ph.D. equivalent has been documented and now I may call myself a “Dr.”. Whew… great feeling πŸ™‚ What a day! Feels even better than the day of the defense πŸ™‚

My personal Google & Android conspiracy

bulbI love a decent conspiracy theory – and because it keeps popping up when talking to colleagues here’s my personal pet believe about Google and Android. Your mileage may vary.

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Movie Review: Avatar

avatarMost of my recent movie reviews have been… critical at best. Today we watched the match tooted movie “Avatar” by James Cameron. I was very curious about the “new 3D” technology (having been less than impressed by Hollywood’s earlier attempts) and really hoped for a great movie.

And what did we get πŸ™‚ ?

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OpenSAGA – my recent business pet project

opensaga1Yesterday we released the OpenSAGA website to the public. What’s the buzz about? It’s about a Java- and Spring-based web framework for which I am the project lead and principal architect and which is going to be released to the public in the first half of 2010. Let me tell you some more details…

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