After four great years, the integrated EU project Dexmart is over, at last. It was a great time and thanks to everyone involved! Also, thanks to all taxpayers for financing it. I believe it was worth it and there will be a massive return of investment in the coming decades.
The bike office had come to a sudden stop shortly after being introduced more than a year ago. Today was the day I could reactivate it, writing these lines on the bike office. So the knee is still getting better. Let’s see how good it will become again, as it is still far from normal yet.
On 18.2.2011, I tore the ACL in my left knee, which was followed by replacement graft surgery two months later and some generalized arthrofibrosis afterwards. As a result, being an avid runner did suddenly and profoundly stop that day. In fact it is still not clear, if I will ever run again. Two things are interesting at that point: a) the physical development of the condition, still ongoing and b) the psychological development triggered by the events.
I promised to post updates about my experience with my CHAP diet scheme. I am now eating according to it since three months and there are some preliminary points to be made:
Because many people ask me about it, I will post the CHAP diet scheme here already now.
You can read about the latest science in:
I will write more about this topic in a few months, but even the preliminary results of the effect on myself show clearly: This is It! After 15 years of trying all the different common stuff, I finally stumbled over the truth, found the functioning concept.
Click on “read more” for a look onto the scheme.
I have to say, I am no Harry Potter fan. And thus, the name Dobby, especially considering that character is surely a bit pejorative. However, although it is surely a little dumb, which lead to its name, this new floor cleaning robot really compensates all dumbness fully with its effort. As a roboticist, I am of course a bit reserved about the practical state of the of the field. And reviews of floor cleaning robots are often quite reserved as well. Yet, when having the right flat configuration, such a robot can be a marvel of technology. The flat really is a lot cleaner now, with a lot less effort. Hopefully, more capable service robots can push the limits even further one day, beyond floor cleaning.
In the year 2011, a computer is just an appliance, even I have come that far 
. And still, my third workstation W3 (Athlon 700 CPU), acquired in 2000 and my first laptop M1 (Celeron 550 CPU), acquired in 2001, have served for a decade in such diverse circumstances and under such diverse operating systems, that their retirement is still worth a special note. W3 served shortly under Win 2000 and then FreeBSD as a main workstation, before becoming the main local server under Debian GNU/Linux in 2005. It provided some mail server functionality until the very end. M1 was mostly active until 2006 as my main laptop, first shortly under Win 2000, then under Debian GNU/Linux. I remember soldering WLAN antennas, used at this laptop in 2003 over 10km ranges, when WLAN was still something new and fresh. Those were the times .
And now they are gone, dumped onto the disposal site a few days ago.
Since my teens I have claimed, that learning is playing and todays school system is a totally ineffective and imbalanced way of generating useful experience for individuals. Although I usually fell into the high end of benchmarking systems used in school and university, I always had the feeling that I learned the important stuff in my free time.
Today, I stumbled over an interesting article which gives evidence why this feeling is most probably completely true.
Yesterday, the Pirate Party (PP) entered a parliament in a German state for the first time. Berlin was “raided by a boarding party” with astonishing 9% of the votes, leading to a total of 15 seats. As a passive supporter of the PP at state and federal level since its beginning, recent developments create mixed feelings with me. The challenges of the PP have been a) the extension of its program beyond the core idea of “digital liberty” encompassing freedom of information and privacy of the individual and b) its dubious personnel.
For most people, recovery from ACL replacement goes fine and they can return to an active lifestyle after 6-12 months. Sadly, that seems not to be a case with me. Probably because of a combination of bad luck and not absolutely perfect treatment directly after surgery, I have developed scar tissue within the joint which can lead to quite serious complications. Thats is at least the most likely indication with me at the current state of investigation. Scarring in the joint following surgery can have very different types of expressions but has one common biological factor: the inflammation within a healing process. The general condition is called Arthrofibrosis (AF) and there are several, often difficult to distinguish sub-types called localized, secondary generalized and primary generalized AF.