And the third link list:

DuoLingo - Learn a language for free, and simultaneously translate the web.

Talking Robot Mouth Mimics Human Speech (via) - impressive, and somehow terrifying.

The future of our world - A small glimpse into a timeline of epic scale.

http://fatpita.net/?i=5025 - a nice, somewhat disturbing comic.

10 random video game facts

An Excerpt from the book "Dumbing Down our Kids" by Charles Sykes

At school, I often wondered why my English is judged by tasks I would not even be able to solve in German. Like listening and repeating historic facts, or conversations I just heard, or expressing my opinion on a topic I do not care about. I hated that.

Well, today I had my "Internet Based TOEFL". Before it started, I had to sign a form, and copy (!!!) an agreement, explicitly not in printed form (I hope they can read Sütterlin). If I understood correctly, this agreement forbids to give information on the contents of that test, which is why I cannot share any examples. Because you know, if I did so, the prices for training materials could decrease - heaven forbid!

So there I was, finally, at a time as early as 9.30, after I had to take the train from Munich to Nuremberg, because there were no free places for a test in Munich at a sufficiently early date. Having payed 250 Euros to be allowed to talk to a computer for about 4 hours.

A few instructions on where to put my baggage, a quick check of my passport and a bad webcamshot of my face without glasses later, I was sitting in front of a screen on which my tired face smiled back at me - what an amazing technology! All that was missing now was the supervisor logging me (and the other students who have gathered there) into that system, and a quick calibration of the headset and the microphone.

The "reading section" began. And it was similar to the questions I saw in practice exams before - except that the text was shitty, and I could not have cared less about its topic. Same for the second text. The third one was better, though. Also, no luck with the topics in the "listening section". Some stupid questions about details that I did not consider meaningful while listening, but in general, I think it went good for me.

Then a break for 10 minutes - I actually do not see any reason why it is not possible to pause the test at another time. I mean, sometimes people need to go to the toilet or something. Whatever.

As all the people needed about the same time, the blabbering began - all students started with the "speaking section". I was a few seconds slower than my neighbour, which is why I could hear her start talking while I still had to prepare my answer, which was very distracting! You are asked about two "familiar topics" - which were both topics I have never thought about. So I came up with some shit I could make up during the twenty seconds of preparation time and tried to make the best out of it.

I mean, come on, what the fuck? I already gave talks about complicated scientific topics in English. You always find time to think about your answer for a minute. And this is an exam situation!

However, after the "writing section" was finished, I could finally leave. Some other students also left. All of us agreed on these tests being a rip-off. For 250 Euros, you could afford a real teacher testing you. At an appointment that fits you. Under fairer testing conditions.

So, here is this week's Link List:

http://browserling.com/ - interactive cross-browser testing

Kitchen Myths: Bread does not become stale by drying out - they do not give any evidence of this, though.

The scale of the Universe 2 - scrolling through objects of several sizes.

An illustrated history of scientology - interesting.

Today I had to configure a MacBook Air.

What the FUCK are these MacBook Air laptops about? Why do people buy this crap? I mean, seriously - I do not like Macs, but at least normal Macs are real computers.

This MacBook Air does not have an ethernet port - what the fuck? Even the crappiest computers I know have one. And when trying to configure the Wireless, I had to notice that, with the newer version of OS X, the GUI for WiFi-Configuration has changed again - advising me to "ask my admin".

It also has no CD-Rom-Drive, you need the USB-Port for it - the only USB-Port it has! And that crappy default Apple USB CD-Rom-Drive does not work over (powered!) USB-Hubs - it only works when directly plugged in. This is a nightmare when trying to install Windows via BootCamp - you somehow want a real mouse for this.

Normally, I try not to blog about topics regarding popular culture. Famous people die, like everybody else, and I usually do not care too much - it makes me sad when they die, but not because they are famous, but because it is just sad that somebody died.

For example, I did not really care much about the death of Amy Winehouse, except feeling consternation, for she died very young, probably killed by her own success. I did not really care much about the death of Michael Jackson, he was a rich and famous person, but probably also not always happy, when thinking about his several lawsuits.

Somehow, I found the death of Whitney Houston more shocking. I am not a fan of her, nor do I know much of the music she made. In fact, the only song I remember is "Could I have this Kiss forever". I saw the video for this song when it came out, and heard it on the radio. That is about it.

However, somehow, memorizing those times and now knowing that she is dead makes me sentimental. Having a list of artists who made music I heard when "I was young" who already died is something that makes me feel old, and reminds me of how volatile my life and life in general is.

I think that the general mourning about deaths of famous people is overdone - thousands of people die every day, and one cannot feel dolor for everyone of them, there is nothing special about famous people. And there is probably enough space for dolor in everybody's personal circle.

But famous people can remind us of these things. May they, as well as all the other people, rest in piece.

Nibbles was a Snake-like game, which was part of MS-Dos, as an example file for QBasic. The name "Nibbles" (probably ?) came from the half-bytes - "nibbles" - since on the terminal, it uses characters that split every terminal character into two parts.

Well, there are a lot of newer Snake-like games out there. However, the special thing about cNibbles is that it is, as the original Nibbles, a pure terminal application.

Often, I find some links to which I do not have to say much, except that they are there and you should follow them, and maybe a small comment about what they link to. So far, I made one post out of such links, and flagged them as "Link". But the more common way of doing this I saw on other blogs was to regularly give lists of interesting lists.

This is something I will try now. I plan to do this weekly, let us say every tuesday or wednesday or so, but I cannot promise this, of course. The links will be both German and English, and I will try not to post links that already spread through the (more famous parts of the) blogosphere.

So here we go for the first time:

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2508 - gives a good illustration of the discussion on privacy and internet repression technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globster - heard of it in a TV documentation about "paranormal" phenomena. Interesting.

Apple can update your twitter ... - True.

€200 KDE Plasma Active Tablet Announced - let us hope that this will be a success.

http://fatpita.net/?i=1036 - Second world war, simply explained.

I voted Republican - and all I lost was ...

I am a vegetarian. I blogged about that in former blog posts, especially on my old blog. In the past, I used to explain the people about my feelings and opinions about meat. Meanwhile I am more careful with whom I tell that, not because I respect the decision of a person to eat meat in any way (I would probably sign a law that forbids eating meat immediately), but because I am tired of discussing, and I did not hear a single point which I did not know before, for years. Also, I am not vegan (yet).

However, of course, when there is dinner somewhere, I sometimes have to ask whether something contains meat. And more than one time I had to endure stupid comments from carnivores around me. To me, some people seemed to feel attacked when they see a vegetarian. Some psychological study now claims to prove this (however, I do not have access to the actual study).

I can understand that somehow. Vegetarism is morally superior, and people do not feel good about that. I can remember times when I thought that veganism was exaggerated - or at least I thought that I thought this. I actually always knew that veganism is morally superior to vegetarism, and I tried to be vegan, but I could not achieve that goal so far. I also think that frutarianism is morally superior, but I think that the world is not ready for that radical form of nutrition yet - which does not lower the honor I assign to people doing this.