//extrabright

I have done a refresh of the publication page, that can be consulted at this address.

I have stumbled upon a nice site tonight. It is a seal generator enabling to chose among a fair amount of models and to define the border and text as desired. Nice stuff.

Official Seal Generator

I have seen this featured article while browsing on the wikipedia and I can just recommend it. It is all but uninteresting:

Free Will Article on the Wikipedia

There has been a review on ZDNet Australia, regarding Goanna, the static analysis tool which I have been working on during my stay at National ICT Australia. Two former colleages, Ralf Huuck and Gerwin Klein have been interviewed at the TechFest in Sydney and a short demonstration of the tool capabilities on a buggy code is done. I recommend a reading of the original article on the link below.

Goanna Review on ZDNet Australia

Back in Switzerland, I had one week to rest. I then started my master thesis at the ETH. The topic is to build a lineage tracking system for JOpera, a process composition framework developed at the ETH. This is what I am doing for 7 weeks now. Really interesting. I will give more details about the project later on.

Already some time that I haven’t posted a news. I’ll do a summary of the end of the holidays on the east coast.

After Fraser Island, we spend another day at Rainbow Beach. Taking some rest and hiking in the village. The following day we took a coach to Noosa, further south. We stayed there 2 days at the Koala’s backpacker. We went hiking in the national park the first day and took a surfing lesson the following day. Surfing is really nice. It is worth taking a lesson at the beginning to get some useful tips on how to handle the board, how to get up, how to paddle and so on.

After Noosa, we moved to Byron Bay, a place where we decided to stay 5 days. It is an awesome town a couple of hundreds kilometers south of Brisbane. Byron Bay is the most eastern point of Australia. There, the warm waters from the North and cold waters from the South meet. There are therefore a lot of different marine species off shore. We did some
see kayaking where we saw dolphins from a distance, jumping in the waves. I got see sick during the kayaking, what is not a very nice experience. The waves where quite big that day but I guess I am also sensitive to that kind of thing. The next day we went diving. Silvia
just did some snorkling and I tried a scuba diving introduction course. There was first exercices in a swimming pool and we did then 2 open-water dives, at Julian Rock, 2 or 3 kilometers off shore of Byron Bay. This was a wonderful experience. I saw lots of different fishes and animals, like a ray, a see turtle, a couple of huge peaceful vegetarian
sharks and lots of other fishes and stuff. Later on during the week, I took two days of surfing lessons. This as well was awesome. I am definitely enthusiast about surfing. At the end of the second day I could take a few waves of (for me) descent size myself. Really cool stuff.

After these 5 days at Byron Bay, it was already time to move on to Sydney. We just stayed 3 days there, where we went a last time to Bondi Beach, packed and weighted our stuff, and then took a plane back to Zurich with a stop at Dubai. Awesome this australian adventure. There is also an online gallery with pictures. Just ask me the link if you want to see it (pat /at/ extrabright.com).

Rainbow Beach is an interesting village, named after its sand of various colours on the beautiful beaches. On Sunday the 5th we began a 3-day safari on Fraser Island. Wonderful experience. We were a bunch of nine people with a 4WD, a couple of tents, food and a map of the island. The goal was to visit the different incredible places of the island while travelling on the beaches during low tide or on the very bumpy inland roads.

First day, after a late start at 2:00 pm because of the high tide at 12, quick stop at Eurong to buy a few stuff, then driving North towards Indian Head. As the night was coming, we decided to stop for camping around Dundubara. We slept right beside the beach. Bad night. It was very hot. We heard a dingo, kind of wild dog, sniffing around the tents for food. Hopefully we had all secured in the car.
Next day, after an english breakfast (i.e. a can of beans and pasta, toasts with scrambled eggs) we headed to Indian Head, on the North of the Island, again. But it was short before the high tide, so after having tried a bad road with soft sand at Indian Head, we decided to go inland to swim in lake Garawongera and in lake Wabby. Wonderful places. There we saw one other group from the same safari operator and we went camping together on the beach.

Third and last day, we went to lake McKenzie for a swim. Then we headed to Central station for having lunch. We went also for a walk in the rainforest. Finally back to the southern beach to take the barge at 4:30 pm after a few bumby inland roads.

Arrival on Wednesday the 1st at Hervey Bay, about 400 km North of Brisbane. Bad weather. Heavy rain, what is quite unusual according to the locals. The same day, we caught a bus for Bundaberg, about 3 hours driving North of Hervey Bay. Our Hope was to do a one day tour to see the Great Barrier Reef. Bad weather continuing, in particular bad conditions on the sea causing the tours to be cancelled. Boring town of 60′000 people when it is not possible to go on the sea. On Friday evening we could go see the turtles on the shore though. It was a very interesting spectacle to see the baby Loggerhead turtles, that are already 10 cm long when coming out of the egg, struggling to go into the ocean. The same night at 3:30 am we took a bus to Rainbow Beach. Arrival at about 8 am. We stayed altogether 3 days at Bundaberg.

The stay in Sydney comes to an end. My work is finishing this Tuesday with the end of the month. After that, take off on Wednesday for Hervey Bay, about 1400 km North of Sydney. From there, discovery of the coast starting at Bundaberg. There, we will take a ferry to Lady Musgrave Island, so see the great barrier reef, or unfortunately what remains of it. Then Fraser Island, the biggest sand island of the world, where we will spend a couple of days. Probable stop at Noosa before reaching Byron Bay, where we will stay 5 days or so. Then, from there back to Sydney, our last stop of 3 days before heading back home to Switzerland.

I cannot resist to put that link on the blog. It is funny to laugh one’s head off.

We are Sinking – Clip

Apparently, it’s going crazy again in the Silicon Valley. This time, many share the opinion that it is not a bubble but a real boom. The reasons for that are numerous — healthier economy, broad technology adoption, cheap internet bandwidth, broader open-source usage and cheap hardware prices. This results in costs for launching a new company being a fraction of what it was 5 or 10 years ago. Read the full story by following the link below.

Wired – The New Boom

Article très intéressant, du quotidien genevois Le Temps, se détachant de la superficialité de l’actualité en privilégiant une lecture plus en profondeur. Cet article retrace les événements importants dans la vie de Mahomet, brosse un portrait de l’Islam et illustrant le rejet de l’idôlatrie dans la religion musulmane. Une bonne manière de laisser tomber quelques préjugés.

Le Temps – Le vrai visage du prophète

Interesting story. Apparently a lot of cyber attacks have been launched on danish websites by hackers of the muslim world. I find the 1st defeated page from the list funny and actually I can follow the argumentation. That is, in my opinion, the 2 camps are in a certain way right.
Zone-H Page

Due to foreseen popular demand I take the opportunity to put a link to a very funny and somehow realistic page about the German language. Mark Twain explaining its adventure or even journey in learning or let’s say trying to learn German. It is just great.

The Awful German Language by Mark Twain

Something is quite impressive in Australia, the strength of the sunlight. When we are under sun exposure for a couple of minutes, we quickly feel the strong bite of the sun on our skin. This is not surprising when we look at the uv index down here. For example today Sunday as well as tomorrow Monday, the uv index in Sydney under sunlight is 11. That corresponds to a level judged as extreme. Today it was 9 under cloud, what is already rated as very high.

More info on the uv index:
http://www.uv-index.ch/de/uvindex.html